Includes the previously published essays Early Reading(2013) and Early Writing (2014)
TRIBUTES
BOOKS & WRITERS
MUSIC & MUSICIANS
SONG LYRICS
INFORMATION
NOTES
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I had turned myself into a novelist, and novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although, like Aldous Huxley, he may be permitted to be an intellectual. It is in order for him to make aesthetic judgements, though these will tend to partiality and the reflection of his own practice. But it is dangerous to turn him into a little seer or twopenny philosopher, though this is probably bound to happen when professional philosophers and churchmen have so little useful to say about moral or social problems. The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world.
You've Had Your Time (1990)
Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.' It also operates a museum/performance space in his home town of Manchester.
Some songs appear to break every established rule of songwriting and go on to achieve classic status in spite of it. Ode to Billy Joe, title track of Bobbie's Gentry eponymous debut LP, reached #1 on the US Billboard chart in August 1967, won her three Grammy awards and has since been voted one of the 500 greatest songs of all time by the (predominantly male and white) readers of Rolling Stone magazine.
Yet the song itself, released more than half a century ago, remains an enigma wrapped in a riddle. Who exactly is Billy Joe McAllister? What is the precise nature of his relationship with the song's unnamed female narrator? What object did they throw off the bridge together before Billy Joe threw himself into the muddy waters of Mississippi's Tallahatchie River? None of these questions are answered yet ultimately the lack of definite information doesn't seem to matter. The song remains a masterpiece of allusion and understatement, an example of what I would describe as 'sonic cinema' which takes the listener on a compelling aural journey that possesses the cumulative power of a brilliantly conceived short story.
Gentry achieves this effect by continuously shifting the song's point-of-view. Its shared past tense narrative begins in the fields, then moves to the family kitchen, then shifts again to a memory of the past before ending in the present day. Yet none of this feels jarring to the listener because the accompaniment, like Gentry's voice, is deeply soulful, with orchestral backing used to emphasize certain key lines without ever becoming obtrusive or overly dramatic. The technique is almost entirely cinematic, jump cutting between incidents and images in a way that never compromises the song's appeal as a straightforward piece of storytelling. None of that is easy to do in a four minute pop song, requiring laser-like precision on the part of the writer and, of course, on the part of the vocalist performing it as well.
Ode to Billy Joe also has the distinction, shared by only a handful of popular songs, of serving as the basis for an entire motion picture. This film, directed by Max Baer Jr (who played the character of Jethro in The Beverly Hillbillies television series) and starring Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as his girlfriend Bobbie Lee Hartley, was released in 1976 and attempts to 'solve' the mystery of the song via a plot which shows the typically small town southern teenagers grappling with their first experiences of love and sex and, in the case of the title character, his unadmitted homosexuality. The script, stated in the credits as being penned by Herman Raucher, was allegedly co-written by Bobbie Gentry herself, with some of the scenes filmed on the farm owned by her grandparents in rural Mississippi where she grew up. It was made for the minuscule sum of $1 million and grossed $50 million at the US box office, a considerable achievement in itself given its setting and, for the time, its somewhat controversial subject matter.
Gentry is thought to have retained ten per cent of the film's profits for life in her deal with Warner Bros Studios, which may have helped to fund her disappearance from the music business — and from the public eye altogether — after her final live appearance in 1981 on the Bob Hope All Star Salute to Mother's Day television special. She's now rumored to be living in Los Angeles where she continues to ignore all requests for interviews and information about herself.
Use the link below to visit the UK-based Bobbie Gentry website which features a full biography of North American singer/songwriter BOBBIE GENTRY along with a news section, a full discography and a photo gallery:
Wat = abbreviation of Walter, ie. Sir Walter Ralegh
ne = nor
rede = counsel
speed = success/succeed
Elizabeth Tudor — or Elizabeth I Queen of England and Ireland as she would be known after ascending the throne on 17 November 1558 following the death of her Catholic half-sister Mary — was arguably one of the most well-educated people and possibly the most well-educated woman of her time. Not only was she taught to speak French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish as a child, she was also fluent in Latin and thought to have had an extensive knowledge of Greek along with a fair command of the Welsh, Cornish and Gaelic tongues. She made many translations from Latin, including works by Cicero and Plutarch, and boasted an extensive knowledge of music and poetry as her father Henry VIII had before her. She was raised, not as girls generally were in Tudor times to be seen but never heard, but as a Renaissance prince just as her father and half-brother Edward, who reigned as king until his early death in July 1553, had been raised.
During her own reign, the English language became perhaps the most expressive and precise language on earth, its many expert users helping to create what is now known as 'the Golden Age of Elizabethan literature.' The Queen was an active participant in the rebirth of English culture, serving as patron to the theatre company of William Shakespeare and as the inspiration for Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queen (1590–1599). She similarly inspired Walter Ralegh, who named the new North American colony Virginia in her honour, and had what was, at times, a very difficult relationship with her following his secret marriage to Bess Throckmorton, one of her ladies in waiting. This probably accounts for the teasing tone of Ah, Silly Pug, Wert Thou So Afraid? with its suggestion that Ralegh, here identified by the nickname 'Wat,' was mistaken to believe that she would ever be capable of truly doing him harm. That would be the task of her successor James I, who had the Queen's former favourite beheaded on 29 October 1618 at the behest of Count Gondomar, Spanish ambassador to England, who was outraged that a party of men commanded by Ralegh had violated a treaty between the two countries by unsuccessfully attacking a Spanish outpost in Guiana.
Use the link below to read more poems by QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533–1603):
In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep, and the details unfold in the dream.
'Mrs Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles'
[Article by HERBERT MITGANG published in The New York Times, 22 April 1984)
Use the link below to visit the website of British/Zimbabwean writer DORIS LESSING (1919–2013):
I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.
Source unspecified
Use the link below to read more about the long and tragically unsuccessful battle ROBIN WILLIAMS fought against Lewy Body Dementia, a rare and little understood but devastating neurological condition:
The following information appears on the artsQueensland website. It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.
Judith Wright was a Queensland resident for more than 30 years. Born in New England in regional New South Wales, Judith settled in Brisbane as a young woman. She lived for a time at 100 Sydney Street, New Farm and worked as a statistician at the University of Queensland (a job she was completely untrained for) while she wrote the first of the poems that were to make her famous, among them Bullocky and The Moving Image.
In Brisbane she met and fell in love with philosopher Jack McKinney, and in 1945 they bought a small cottage on Mount Tamborine. They later moved to a nearby house which they named ‘Calanthe’, after a white orchid which blooms on the mountain in December. They shared 20 happy years together on Tamborine, until Jack’s death in 1966.
During the 1950s and 60s Judith’s fame as a poet grew, although she also wrote children’s stories, books of criticism, and Generations Of Men — a novel about her grandparents who were early settlers in Queensland’s Dawson Valley. She wrote most of her works in the mountains of southern Queensland.
Judith’s deep love of the Australian landscape, and her growing distress at the devastation of that landscape by white Australians, led her to help form the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland in the mid-1960s, an early and powerful conservation group. She fought to conserve the Great Barrier Reef, when its ecology was threatened by oil drilling, and campaigned against sand mining on Fraser Island. Along with her deep awareness of environmental issues, Judith became an ardent supporter of the Aboriginal land rights movement.
In 1975 Judith moved south, to Braidwood in New South Wales and soon after she and Nugget Coombs helped form the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, an organisation dedicated to helping spread the word about the need for land rights and a treaty among white Australians. Judith continued to fight both for the environment and for Aboriginal land rights until her death in June 2000 at the age of 85. Shortly before her passing she attended a march in Canberra for reconciliation between white Australians and Indigenous people, full of hope that the tide might at last be turning.
Judith Wright has been called ‘the conscience of the nation’ for her commitment to the environment and Aboriginal land rights. Nevertheless, it is for her poetry that she is best remembered, poetry which has helped shape Australia’s perception of itself as much as her tireless battles have helped to save it.
Use the link below to read more poems by Australian poet JUDITH WRIGHT (1915–2000):
Hiking in the Adirondacks is a lot like writing a novel. It always feels impossible at first, and no matter how long you work, you start to doubt that you’ll make it. But ultimately, you have to take it one small stretch at a time. Just one more mile. One more chapter. And there are so many wonderful discoveries to make along the way.
Interview [BookPage, 5 February 2020]
Use the link below to read the 2020 interview with Northern American children's author KATE MESSNER:
Social predators won't just focus on a person's needs but will often confide how much his or her emotions personally resonate with them, using what researchers Paul Babiak and Robert Hare refer to as a psychopathic fiction to cultivate false similarity. Consummate chameleons, social predators will profess the exact same emotions as their prey, leaving victims feeling both grateful and relieved to have finally met someone who knows how they feel. Never mind the details (which are often fuzzy due to flaws of fabrication), it is heartening for them to realize that someone can relate.
The Stealthiest Predator [Psychology Today, 1 May 2018]
Use the link below to read the full 2018 article by WENDY L PATRICK:
I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
'Long Work, Short Life' [from The Magic Worlds of Bernard Malamud (2001) by EVELYN GROSS AVERY]
Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American novelist BERNARD MALAMUD (1914–1986):
