writ large

I'm returning library books at a slower rate than I borrow. In order to make these loans meaningful I will record the titles that I borrow, and my reasons for taking them out.

---

Title:

Poem of the Deep Song

Author:

Federico Garcia Lorca

Extract:

The labyrinths

that time creates

vanish.

(Only the desert

remains.)

Why I borrowed this:

I like Lorca's poetry and I thought that reading a book of poetry titled Poem of the Deep Song would be a gratifying experience. I tried to read the poems in the original Spanish, and felt that they sounded more romantic and passionate; in English they sounded plaintive and woodsy, like a person with a beard and 1930s salvaged denim should be reading them aloud.

Questions:

Is the deep song an outmoded form of poetry? How do images of the Andalusian setting refract that urgent, searching interiority into a work about soul and nature?

---

Title:

Candide

Author:

Voltaire

Extract:

Discussing the distressing circumstances in which Candide, Cunégonde, and the old woman reached Cadiz, and how they set sail for the New World

'Who could have robbed me of my moidores and diamondes?' cried Cunégonde, bursting into tears. 'What are we to live on? Whatever shall we do? Where shall I find more Inquisitors and Jews to replace them?'

Why I borrowed this:

I wanted to read Voltaire, that's all.

Questions:

How is the satire in Candide different from satire in The Noose? What's up with satire commenting on the nature of art all the time? Will I ever finish reading a French novel?

---

Title:

The Professor

Author:

Charlotte Brontë

Extract:

Now, reader, during the last two pages I have been giving you honey fresh from flowers, but you must not live entirely on food so luscious; taste a little gall — just a drop, by way of change.

Why I borrowed this:

I walked a flight of stairs up to the fiction section, and decided that I needed to borrow something there to make my effort worthwhile. I have never read anything by the Brontë sisters before. I haven't read much Victorian lit. Books are kind of cheesy. (see extract above) I did not finish this book.

Questions:

How did Charlotte Brontë look like while writing in the voice of the bossypants omniscient narrator who dispenses advice freely and irresponsibly? Was she frowning?

---

Title:

Shorts 1

Author:

Haresh Sharma

Extract:

Sanjay: I finished my story. It's good. It is. It's brilliant. Even Suzanne said she liked it. Well-researched, good style, good variety of quotes. Perfect. I spoke to Choo yesterday. My whole life has been wrong. I don't know when it started being wrong. I don't know when it started being wrong, or how... When I edit, it's someone else's words. I just make it... nice. But I can't write, I can't create those words, because any way it comes out, it's manipulation. Every person I interview, every word I write... it's all a scam. A conspiracy which we're part of.

Why I borrowed this:

The Singapore Collection was near the fiction section. Also, I saw this at a certain local bookstore in Tiong Bahru a while ago but didn't bother buying it because I would probably ruin the cover in my disorganized dump bag. This copy was lovingly wrapped in plastic by the gentle book custodians at NLB.

Questions:

How do local plays create emotional peaks and frosty endings? What is a "local play" anyway?

---

Title:

Simone Weil — An Anthology

Author:

Simone Weil, edited by Siân Miles

Extract:

The Greeks knew about art and sport, but not about work. The master is the slave of the slave in the sense that the slave makes the master.

Why I borrowed this:

Simone Weil is a person who inspires me because her critique of force shapes my view of the world, and now I'm bitterly anarcho-pacifist, or, at least, philosophically anarcho-pacifist.

Questions:

Is there a place for rhetoric when writing about oppression? How is force analysed?