Context
Things
Anne Burke
We here at Dalkey Archive Press were
honored to be invited to St. Petersburg this summer to participate in
the Summer Literary Seminar writers workshops (see page 24). Very
interesting experience. I am not good at making penetrating comments
about other countries or peoples, but this I can say about the
Russians, at least those of St. Petersburg: the women are very
attractive, and the men are lumpish. Other observations: it was not
unusual to see men drinking bottles of beer at 9:30 in the morning on
their way to work; the Russians (perhaps for obvious reasons) tend to
start the workday rather late, especially the publishers; there is a
bitter rivalry between Moscow and St. Petersburg writers, the nature of
said controversy escaping me; there are also conflicts over what is
seen as the “new” Russian writing and the “old” (the latter represented
by Dalkey Archive-published titles); beware the police; the tour of one
of Dostoyevsky’s apartments was not worth the price nor the effort (I
must have walked a mile to the place, my aching feet); the visit to
Dostoyevsky’s grave was well worth the price (yes, you pay to enter the
graveyard of the artists) and effort (fortunately the cemetery is
nearly across from a subway station); there is something very eerie
about the city, as though the buildings (some perfectly re-stored,
others crumbling) have witnessed too many horrors in the streets over
the past 300 years (cannibalism became rather commonplace during the
three to four year siege by the Nazis during World War II); I believe
that the book editors from Dalkey signed on a few titles and are
looking at others (they do not let me participate a great deal in these
delicate matters); I think they also signed on to do a few special
issues of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, something else they do
not let me near, one devoted to contemporary Russian writing and the
other to South African (!!!!!) writing (I’ve no idea how South Africa
came up in Russia, except that a few of the editors seemed to have been
drinking rather too much). From St. Petersburg we went on to London, via Frankfurt,
where the security people might better be described as muggers. The
food (that is, “food”) is awful at Frankfurt. The airport’s specialty
seems to be pretzel sandwiches. . . . London is, well, London. Again, I
was usually kept on the sidelines when delicate negotiations came up
with publishers. According to the editors, I get argumentative. We met
with John Calder, and an edition of a Pinget novel was arranged for. We
also met with Peter Aytron at Serpent’s Tail (Dalkey may be doing some
Goytisolo), and Catheryn at Marion Boyars, Max Eilenberg at Methuen,
Christopher MacLehose at Harvill, and then off to Oxford to see Fiona
Sampson, new editor of CONTEXT and editor of Orient Express,
just out with her second issue devoted to Balkan literature (does
anyone in the States know where the Balkans are?). . . . Nicholas
Mosley is working on another novel, which he again says will be his
last. . . . Deborah Levy is also working on a new novel. . . . We saw
Michael Schmidt at Carcanet in Manchester (very nice offices). The
British Arts Council funds his mostly poetry press at a level of
$150,000 per year and lets him know in advance what his funding level
will be. The Arts Council also has a special fund to support
translations; unlike American funding agencies, the Council sees
translations as a form of diversity. The people we met at the Council
seemed to have read a great deal and knew their writers. . . . In the
EU, this is the Year of Disabled People. One knew this because of the
large posters in the underground (i.e., subways). Strangely, almost
none of the underground is accessible to the disabled unless they are
willing to be thrown down a few hundred concrete stairs, or in reverse,
crawl up them. As in the States, all is appearance: call something “the
year of” and you have somehow addressed the issue. . . . The London
newspapers are filled with book reviews and book review sections. They
take their books seriously, though everyone complains that publishing
has now become completely commercialized. And Borders has invaded the
island, with piles and piles of the same books. . . . The best
bookstores in London are the London Review of Books store, Calder’s,
and Foyles. Then on to Ireland. Not much to say about this place. Drunks
falling out of bars. Those not falling out were shouting obscenities to
women passing by, who seemed quite pleased to return in kind. A dirty,
mean place, with a dirty river running through it. No wonder Joyce and
Beckett fled. We saw Aidan Higgins, Joyce’s and Beckett’s descendent.
Cranky and funny and brilliant. The man knows how to write. . . . The
Irish are a sullen, angry people. It was a relief to leave them to
their bitterness. We met with no publishers. I was greatly relieved, upon our re-turn to the United States, to find that the New York Times Book Review had not changed. In a review on July 20 of Michel Houellebecq’s Platform,
the critic asked this question: “Is it fair to demand of novels that
they be articulate and reasonable, that they attempt in some way to
make the world a better place?” You can imagine the reviewer’s answer
to this question. But I would like to remind the Times that
making the world a better place should be left to ministers, social
workers, careful drivers, drug manufacturers, and house painters.
Novels cannot make the world a better place because they are, well, a
bunch of pieces of paper that have printed words on them. Some would
argue that they exist as works of art, and that, in fact, is why they
were made.
