Today, school librarians and their supporters will stage a mass lobby in support of school libraries at the Houses of Parliament. I’d hoped to go but childcare duty calls, and the child is a bit poorly to be dragged off to That London. So instead of fresh air and rallying around in London, I’m blogging in support.
In 2010, I had the honour of being invited to present the award to the School Librarian of the Year. I blogged about SLYA 2010, but today I thought I’d quote a little from the talk I gave.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. (Jorge Luis Borges)
One of my favourite authors, Borges, was obsessed with libraries, and in fact worked for years as a librarian. One of his best stories, The Library Of Babel, seems now to be an eerie, almost prescient vision of the World Wide Web. The Library of Babel is a potentially infinite library, in which all knowledge is believed to reside, yet disorganized labyrinthine, web-like in its inter-connectivity and ultimately, seductively distracting: a place where people became (literally) lost for ever.
If you think that the Internet could ever replace a librarian – you need to read that story! At the centre of the story is a mythical figure – the Man of the Book – the one person who knows how to navigate the labyrinth of knowledge.
It’s a shame and terrible waste when a library is nothing more than a roomful of books with no human guide. A child presented with this might almost be in the library of Babel. If they’re lucky they wind up with the right book at the right time. Actually it takes more than luck. It takes luck and persistence.
And a love of reading shouldn’t be something that’s only given to those kids who persist. It’s not just too important for learning – let’s put that to one side. Reading should be a human right.
C.S.Lewis says in the play ‘Shadowlands’ –We read to know we’re not alone.
When we suffer, no-one else can really know what’s going on in our brains. If loneliness is the bleakest aspect of life then anything that combats it – like reading – is pretty darn paramount.
Fiction is the means by which we learn about other people, places and experiences, by which we even learn to understand ourselves. A great librarian will know all about the stories that are being told, and enough about the readers to be able to point them to the right book.
And non-fiction is our gateway to knowledge and opportunity. I love a great fiction section but nothing impresses me quite so much as a good solid reference section; encylopedias, recent journals, accessible non-fiction with plenty of pictures.
I’m reminded of the words wrapped around the great dome inside the Central Library of Manchester:
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding
Never forget that librarians are engaged in nothing less than an amazing task: the getting of wisdom.
School librarians are essential. It’s pretty simple, really.
I emailed Junot a photo of his book-stack and we’ve been in contact since. Recently, Goodreads asked me to suggest some interview questions for a forthcoming major feature on the Goodreads site, about Junot’s forthcoming collection of short stories, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER.
If it’s anything like as good as Junot’s debut, DROWN then I will be one happy homegirl. (Dude’s narrative swagger is infectious. He’s got me outgunned with the metaphor and wordplay though, sin duda.)
It made me realise that I’d quite like Junot to answer all of my suggestions. Very kindly, he agreed to answer by email. So, here we go!
1. You must have been asked this one a zillion times but – here goes. As a former sci-fi obsessive and Dungeon Master, I recognised Oscar, but Yunior, much less. As a fellow author, I have to recognise that most authors are writing something of themselves into every character. Either the person they think they really are, or the person they either would like to be, or fear they might become. Yunior and Oscar seem to me like they could be opposing aspects of your own character. Is there any truth to that? And if so, can you give us a percentage – how much Yunior, how much Oscar? Or could it be that you’ve concealed your true self within Lola?
Hard to parse oneself, especially when we’re talking about our fictional creations. Characters like Lola and Oscar took all my heart to write but does that mean they’re half of me? Hard to say. Though it’s true: what made Oscar and Yunior interesting is that they represent opposite sides of something that they’re each fascinated and tormented by. Yunior is incapable of dropping his social masks – he’s always putting on a persona, always passing for a male, always playing the role, never really letting anyone know who he is.
Throughout the novel we meet many of his various guises but we never truly meet the man himself. One cannot find love unless one drops all masks, all pretenses, unless one reveals oneself and makes oneself totally vulnerable to the person they seek to love. Love after all requires intimacy and intimacy is only possible when you expose yourself utterly. Like many boys of his time and place and upbringing Yunior wants to be able to find love but was raised to avoid vulnerability at all costs. He has many lifelike masks with which he tricks the women he’s with, so many masks in fact he has forgotten that he even has a real face. Oscar on the other hand is never anything but Oscar. He has no masks and therefor cannot adjust himself to a given social situation just to get a girl, which is what Yunior can do all the time. Oscar can play no ‘roles’
and Yunior can never show himself. They each have what the other wants and so they circle each other and this is why Yunior is drawn to Oscar. In him he can see what he’s missing though he’d never admit it openly.
But to answer your question most directly: Yunior is my alter ego and has been for a while. But Oscar is also my alter ego. I grew up with roleplaying games and comic books and scifi books and like Oscar I was tormented by apocalyptic nightmares. As for Lola she was inspired by the Dominican ex girlfriend of my dreams. The woman who completely changed my life. And that means she too is a part of me. How much–hard to say.
(Ooof, fascinating answers! Especially intrigued by the revelation about Lola.)
2. You’ve been writing Yunior for a long time now. We first see him as a nine-year old in DROWN and at the end of Oscar Wao he’s about to be forty. Now, in your latest collection This Is How You Lose Her, you’re returning to Yunior. It’s common for teen and YA authors to take their characters through a coming-of-age, I totally get the appeal of that. But we tend to leave them hopeful, on the brink of adulthood. What are the challenges and the appeal of returning to a character you’ve developed for so long and taking them through the experiences of early middle-age, which in many ways have so much less sparkle and lustre?
One trades the lustre of youth for the burden of wisdom, for the weight and power that comes from confronting oneself over a longer span of years, and in the process coming to terms with the consequences of all your choices. I mean, damn, if we’re lucky we all age. And what I’m discovering is that it takes a lot of courage to face the years once youth has faded. I never knew that when I was young. Me, I’m interested in making art about the human experience and this is one confrontation, with growing older, that clearly has never ceased to fascinate artists. And it certainly fascinates me. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing about young people. But as an artist one wants to be able to write productively about all the stages of life. Having insight in your work about what it means to be 44 is as important as having insight in your work about being 14.
3. Like many of your readers I am dying to read your sci-fi, post-apocalyptic novel. Is it going to be called Monstro? How is it coming along? YA readers are somewhat obsessed with this subject matter so feel free to tell us as much as you can…
Well, I grew up on the post-apocalyptic. Before this current craze I was a part of an earlier far less commented upon generation of end-of-the-worlders. We seem always to live in apocalyptic times. MONSTRO is going OK. Still much work to do. But the work at least is forging ahead. I’m working on the hero of the book. A sixteen year old girl from a destitute background who ends up battling a series of godzilla size monsters and the horrible menace behind them. (I know, this sounds like something more suitable for a comic book but hey what can I say–it’s what’s calling me now.)
(Hey – I’m not one to argue. Comic books stories are the type I’m called to tell pretty much all the time…)
4. I read in an interview somewhere that you were inspired to put aspects of a telenovela into Oscar Wao. It made me smile because I remember the moment that my agent became really excited about the plot for Invisible City. He kept reacting with this kind of meh, until I just thought, OK, well let’s throw in something to this teen thriller, action-adventure novel, that would normally belong in a telenovela. And the agent flipped over it. It certainly helped me to get a debut book deal but on the other hand, I suspect it alienated some readers because of the unexpected mix of genres. Oscar Wao is a totally genre-mixing novel, which is why I adore it. Monstro sounds like it could be the same kind of genius-mix, again. Do you think it’s an inherent part of our immigrant-identity, to produce mestizo fiction? Could you ever see yourself writing a pure genre novel?
Hard to say. Much mestizaje often leads people to dream strongly about purity. Just check the countries from which we hail where the obsession with all forms of purities, from racial to class, is overwhelming. I think I’m a hybridmonger, not only because of my upbringing and my Caribbean-ness, but also by inclination. It’s how I think. I would love to write a purely genre novel. But I also have to learn to write faster, since at this rate I’ll be lucky to finish MONSTRO before I turn 60.
(Crumbs, let’s hope not, I won’t last that long waiting!)
5. Your top three tropical music nightclub recommendations, please? My top three are La Maraka, Mexico City, Casa de La Musica Galiano, Havana, El Grande @Club Colosseum, London.
You’re so much better at this game than I am. I don’t remember the names of any of the clubs I’ve gone to. There was a spot in Bogotá that I adored but whose name escapes me. There’s of course 809 in New York City which is simply fantastic. And in the Dominican Republic R there’s El Secreto Musical where they strictly dance Cuban son and in the days of my youth was about the most fun one could have in the DR.
(I wanna go to El Secreto Musical!!!)
6. Your favourite salsa band?
I’m a huge fan of Eddie Palmieri’s work and of course Hector Lavoe. When they’re on a track or an album I’m in heaven.
(Let’s take a minute to absorb the genius of Hector…)
7. Salsa, merengue or reggaeton?
I prefer the one you left out–bachata!
(OK – we need no more proof that Junot is in fact a marshmallow – bachata is verrry smoochy and romantic…)
8. Mario Vargas Llosa or Gabriel Garcia Marquez?
That’s easy. GGM all the way. There’s something cold about Vargas Llosa that has never sat well with me. But that’s just me, clearly.
(I wouldn’t agree quite with ‘cold’, but calculated, maybe.)
Thanks so much, Junot! I’m sure you’ll be doing lots of interviews now that we’re all about to read THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER. Junot has promised to get a free (hopefully signed) copy of the book to one lucky reader – if you would like to enter the draw please leave a comment with the title of your favourite short story by Junot, by August 31st, and be sure to use your real name and email address so we can get that book to you.
If you’d like to know more about Junot, you can follow his unofficial (but devoted) twitter updates @JunotDiazDaily and fan-made Junot Diaz Tumblr page.
I’ll bet there aren’t many fans of the adventure genre who don’t owe a huge hunk of debt to one of the greatest fictional characters of all time – Tarzan. When it comes to strange exotic lands, jungle adventure, action, mystery and fighting the good fight, Tarzan has it all. So how great was it to hear that children’s author Andy Briggs was bringing us an authorised re-imagining of Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic character?
Here’s my reaction to the first book in the series, TARZAN – THE GREYSTOKE LEGACY:
CRACKING jungle adventure with the one and only, all-time best eco-warrior, Tarzan. It took me right back to Saturday mornings watching Jonny Weismuller. Gritty, realistic with its portrayal of the forces of guerrilla politics and greed in the heart of the African jungle. Modern, yet fully authentic Tarzan.
I’m delighted to invite Andy Briggs to be interviewed here about Tarzan, as part of his blog tour for the second book: TARZAN – JUNGLE WARRIOR. Exciting things are in store for young Lord Greystoke, who’ll be taken on some modern African adventures.
Q1. Tarzan is very much a man of his time. What made you decide to modernise the character?
Tarzan was a man of his time when he first leapt onto the pages of The All-Story magazine, 100 years ago. He was an instant icon – the perfect symbol of physical perfection and a decisive hero, meting out justice while fighting for the underdog. That was a century ago. Most characters age with time and become less appropriate, but Tarzan has bucked that trend and become the more relevant now than ever before.
Edgar Rice Burroughs created the world’s first eco-warrior. Now, I know that term comes with a lot of baggage these days, but let me explain. In 1912, you and I could travel to the Dark Continent, whip a few locals and bag an elephant or two for sport and nobody would think it unusual. Of course, attitudes have changed these days and the animals and the indigenous people that Tarzan fought to protect are now, slowly, enjoying our protection. The apes that raised Tarzan were an unknown species – no doubt Burroughs based these on the legends of the man-like apes in the jungle. Mountain Gorillas were only discovered in 1902 and when Tarzan was created nobody knew anything about them. With all these elements in play, I felt there was room to expand this into a contemporary setting.
The last Tarzan movie to hit the big-screen was in 1999 and only 2 of the 26 Tarzan books Burroughs wrote are wildly available – yet he still burns brightly in popular culture. I discovered that in a room of 100 children, 99 of them knew the name Tarzan, that he was raised by the apes and lived in the jungle. But only half of them had seen a movie, and a handful had read the Disney book tie-ins. When I asked the other half of the audience how they knew Tarzan I was met with shrugs. They just do. He’s part of our collective culture. And, since he has had a quiet decade, I thought it was time to bring him back. The audience was waiting.
Q2. What are your favourite original Tarzan books?
Tarzan of the Apes was the first book, and the one that got me hooked on Tarzan. However, most people’s perceptions of Tarzan are tainted by the movies. Few people realize that, by the end of the first book, Tarzan is a civilised man about town who drives a car to rescue Jane from a forest fire in Baltimore. A far cry from the jungle warrior we all know and love.
Burroughs only got Tarzan firmly back to his roots in the jungle with the third book, The Beasts of Tarzan, which is my favourite. After that book, Burroughs primarily kept Tarzan in the jungle because that’s where the public wanted to see him.
Now, Orion is publishing the first 6 Tarzan books together in a collected Centenary Edition, and I had the pleasure of writing the foreword. I can’t wait to re-read them again!
Q3. Who is your favourite screen Tarzan?
Now I am going to be a bore and have to say it is Johnny Weissmuller, only because those were the movies I used to watch at home during the summer holidays and they have stuck with me.
(I’d have to agree with Andy, for exactly the same reason!)
However, one of the more accurate portrayals of Tarzan comes from Christopher Lambert in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan. A great performance, and the first half of the film is probably the closest adaptation of Burroughs’ book. The second half does wonder a little off the rails though.
Q4. There can be said to be three different ‘classic’ Tarzans. There is ERB’s original character; a highly intelligent man who spoke various languages, including the language of apes. Then the movie serial Tarzan – the strong, quite simple man of few words, and finally the comicbook Tarzan, who was more like the original character from the novels. Which of these Tarzans does your 21st century character most resemble and why?
My Tarzan slices through all the previous variations. When I started writing the books I ensured they were a re-imagining of the story and characters. This is something we don’t see much of in literature, but it happens all the time in the movies – most recently with Batman and Star Trek, which had excellent reboots. I felt the key was to capture the public image of Tarzan, while keeping him grounded with Burroughs’ original intentions.
Weissmuller’s Tarzan speaks in Pidgin English, which has become something of a Tarzan trademark. However, Burroughs had a complicated arrangement for the Ape Man. Tarzan taught himself to read English using a picture book, but then was taught to speak French by D’Arnot – very confusing! I didn’t want to use either incarnation, so my Tarzan starts off speaking Pidgin English, very Weissmuller like, but slowly improves his grammar the more he speaks. My reasoning behind this was that when he meets Jane, he hasn’t spoken to another human for several years. The words are thick on his tongue and he has trouble communicating – he’s still very smart, just hamstrung by language. Over the course of the book he improves, albeit marginally. By the second book, TARZAN: THE JUNGLE WARRIOR, Tarzan’s skills improve and he eventually slowly stops referring to himself in the third person.
The movie versions of Tarzan also made him more civilised. He lived in a tree house and respected human society. I tossed all that away. Tarzan is a primal creature, raised by wild apes. He eats raw flesh and can’t stomach cook food. The world is black and white to him, he can laugh one moment and snap into a rage the next. Social structures, human laws, and manners – they’re all trappings of a world he doesn’t understand. When Jane tries to explain the concept of money to him, it’s an uphill struggle – money is a meaningless construct of our artificial world.
Q5. On translating the world of original Tarzan – to modern day. ERB’s Africa was a to a great extent fantasy version of the real Africa of the early 20th century. After all, information didn’t travel as widely and easily as it does now. How far is your novels’ Africa a fantasy-version of real Africa? It seems to me from reading the first book that you’ve attempted to ‘keep it real’, which was part of the appeal for me. However, the fantastic has a firm place in Tarzan lore, so I’d personally love to see you use that too.
When Burroughs created Tarzan he had never travelled to Africa and accurate information about the world was difficult to come by. In fact, when Tarzan of the Apes was published in The All-Story magazine, Sabor was a tiger – until somebody pointed out that there are no tigers in Africa. Burroughs’ fantasy comes from his lack of available knowledge.
My Tarzan is set in the real world, amid real situations, but I don’t feel that lessens the fantasy aspects of the stories. I am still a firm believer that, even with all our modern technology, the world still has its secrets waiting to be discovered.
In the third Tarzan book I am bringing back the lost city of Opar, which lies deep in the jungles of Africa. Our modern understanding tells us that there are no lost civilisations in Africa – yet just a year ago a new tribe was discovered in the Amazon who had never made “civilised” contact. Mountain Gorillas were only just shaking their image as a cryptozoological species when Burroughs’ wrote about his apes. There is a lot we don’t know, and plenty of things are still waiting to pass from the realm of fantasy to reality.
A few weeks back I received some very sad news that MaryD, the mother of a close childhood friend, had died. This post is dedicated to Mary and all the memories I share with her son Eoin of our years growing up in Manchester.
Mary and Eoin moved into the street, almost exactly opposite to our house in Didsbury. Like many of the other kids in the road, they were Irish and Catholic, so we would often troop off to Mass together. Eoin and I played football with a family of three boys from Cavan who were also neighbours. Mary was immediately an influence on me, in that she was an adult who loved football and Manchester United, and also TV. In my musician household of Southern England and Mexican interlopers to Manchester, neither football or TV were thought to be fit subjects for interest. But Mary was the TV critic for a major national newspaper. Supporting Manchester United was a long family tradition – she knew all the history of the club and was a season ticket holder at Old Trafford. I was immediately drawn to the company of Eoin and his mother.
I can honestly say that I spent most of my happiest days of childhood at MaryD’s house. Watching TV with someone who actually worked in the media was an amazing thing. Mary would often bake us delicious lemon or orange buttercream Victoria sandwich cakes and we’d eat them watching Doctor Who. Mary told Eoin and I, ahead of time, that the Star Wars phenomenon was about to be overshadowed by a huge new film called ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. We watched ‘Dallas’ from the very first episode, informed by Mary’s audience interaction of exclaiming at the TV comments like ‘God help you Sue Ellen, but you’re an eejit!’
They would be trips to the local book shops to buy Eoin the latest Asterix books, and on Saturday afternoons when United didn’t play at home, we’d sit upstairs and read Roy of The Rovers and 2000AD comics. Mary was always handy with unsolicited advice when we started making home movies. (Exactly like in ‘Super 8’.)
Mary’s job sometimes gave Eoin and I rare opportunities, like the time that she took us to watch the new ‘Seaside Special’ show being recorded and we went to lunch with our heroes, The Goodies and a friendly man called Bill Cotton. Later, Mary told us that Bill was in charge of BBC1. My ten-year old daughter was in awe when I recently told her that at her age, I’d met The Goodies!
When my mother went through horrible marital problems, it was Mary who cooked for her and made sure that she didn’t waste away. Both Mary and my mother suffered from quite serious depression during the early 1980s and even if we couldn’t always be enough support for our mothers, Eoin and I were able, in some sort of gruff, unexpressed teenage way to support each other. Not so much ‘hugging and learning’ as blowing off steam writing spoof rock songs and obsessing over Blake’s 7, Dallas and Manchester United.
From the age of eleven, both Eoin and I were the children of single mothers. We saw at close hand how much stress it put on our mums. I was always impressed with how positive Mary managed to be in front of me, even if it was an effort. I don’t know if she realised how much of a haven their home was for me. To be able to escape from a pressure cooker environment across the road was sometimes the main thing that made life bearable. Not that it was always a picnic at Eoin and Mary’s either – we all had our problems.
When Mary and Eoin moved back to Ireland, I was devastated. Mary had always encouraged both of us to write (stories, screenplays), so Eoin and I kept in touch. I remember those letters as pretty melancholy. If Eoin and I were angsty teens when together, we suffered even more when apart.
In 1993 my husband and I took our one-year old daughter to visit Mary and Eoin in their home in West Ireland. Eoin’s daughter was seven then. This is the only video footage I have of Mary, and it’s a typical scene – Mary cooking one of her classic Irish breakfasts. Sunday breakfast with Eoin and Mary was my favourite way to spend the day after Mass. It’s a fitting memory.
Years later, Mary embraced the web and put her acerbic journalistic skills to a new use. MaryD Loughrea became one of my favourite bloggers, putting the world of West Ireland to rights via her blog.
Today in Loughrea, friends and family of Mary’s will gather for a party to remember her. I’m there in spirit, Mary!
With thanks for all the good times, lots of love and prayers.
Today I’m delighted to welcome a rare blog guest post from another author who loves to craft a story around a code. With me, part of the inspiration for THE JOSHUA FILES was the real-life code-cracking story of how the Mayan hieroglyphic script was deciphered in BREAKING THE MAYA CODE.
Today, Ruth Eastham, author of new release THE MESSENGER BIRD, visits as part of her blog tour, to tell us about the code-filled influences on her writing and on her latest children’s book. THE MESSENGER BIRD is a taut, emotional story with a deadly code and secret at its heart. Who could resist?
The Messenger Bird blog tour is also a code-hunt. Each post features a special letter to collect. So keep your eyes open! Full details on Ruth’s website
Here’s how our conversation began – via Twitter, naturally.
MG to Ruth: “How about we start with me challenging you to solve a code that Anthony
Horowitz sent me.”
Ruth *gulps*: “THE Anthony Horowitz? How long did it take you then?”
MG: “About 10 minutes!”
Ruth *gulps again*
!B4R P4N S3H TKC 1RC DL5 4C1 3CR 1GH S4J
I have to say I’m worried. Worried that – like Nathan in The Messenger Bird – I won’t be able to break the code in time. I’m competitive that way. (And nobody wants to come across as a bit of a duffer on someone else’s cool blog, right?)
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always been partial to puzzles. But then there’s trivial time-filling fun code cracking, and there’s THE code cracking. I’m talking real code breaking – the SERIOUS stuff – like Josh in MG’s books. I’m talking saving lives on a GLOBAL scale. I’m talking BP (and not the petrochemical kind).
BP = Bletchley Park
Inspired early on by reading about wartime code breaking, I tried to teach myself Morse with the moving mirrors Survival Kit item my brothers got one Christmas. And I have to say, back then I felt reasonably confident that I would be able to signal SOS
when the need arose.
I was also strongly inspired by Famous Five stories…
… which are all EXACTLY like The Messenger Bird.
(Okay, okay, so Nathan, Josh and Sasha may have completely different adventures to Julian, George and the gang, but the important point is:)
A Famous Five Story = our heroes on a mission to solve a mystery
The Messenger Bird = our heroes on a mission to solve a mystery
(PLUS they both have a dog in them)
It’s a tried and tested formula for story writing.
(I know MG will appreciate this with her scientific background.)
Cracking codes is pretty much all about solving some kind of mystery, right?
Besides, I’m in love.
RE 4 BP
My love affair with Bletchley Park all started when a friend told me that a mate of her mum used to work there. Before long I was in the company of 85-year-old Beryl, telling me how she signed the Official Secrets Act at 18 and what it was like to work in Hut 7. Before much longer I was heading for Bletchley Park itself.
Now prior to this trip, I’d already goggled at my first Enigma machine at the Imperial War Museum in London. Gazing through the glass case with me was a security systems bloke from the US. Together we were smitten.
His girlfriend looked none too impressed as we chatted geekily about mechanical rotor mechanisms, and it was only after weighing up the statistical probabilities of a three versus a four rotor machine that the two of them (her with a last jealous glare through
the glass) left me to my gogglings.
But wonderful as that was, seeing the Enigma machines in the context of Bletchley Park itself was even more breathtaking than I could ever have imagined. I was hooked.
Hopelessly head-over-heels.
And by the way,
JOSH GARCIA COULD CRACK THIS NO PROB! (that’s the solution to the code sent by MG, using a cipher introduced to her by Anthony Horowitz)
(6 minutes, 47 seconds)
(But I’m worried to admit, a clever friend helped me.)
