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Day: 9 November 2011

One Hellerva Writer

Written by michael butterworth on . Posted in Books.

Erica Heller’s revealing and engaging memoir Yossarian Slept Here tells of her life and her relationship with her father and Catch 22 (the catch being she admits to never having read it). The memoir is bursting with strong characters such as her Grandmother Dottie. I asked if she was really surrounded by such interesting people.

“In my Grandmothers case she only becomes more and more remarkable to me. She was certainly the easiest to write. She had a gift for warping reality. In terms of my parents, to any child their parents are gods. My parents were colorful people and I lived in an interesting place.”

This is certainly true. Eminent authors like Mario Puzo and other stars mingle with the memoirs colorful cast, I wondered if she felt that this affected her. “In terms of Mario he was to me just very sweet, he had written a book that he didn’t think was very good and much preferred his earlier work. He was just a nice guy, most people around weren’t famous though.”

Her response is typically grounded, I asked if it was easy to shake of her father’s extraordinary success, or if it was intimidating. “It always felt strange for me when people treated him as famous. He was a writer not a rockstar, we were not fabulously wealthy there were just certain things we could do that we couldn’t do before ”

We move to more painful aspects of her book. As well as frankly discussing subjects such as her battle with cancer it tells the story of her parents explosive divorce. “Was it cathartic to write?” I asked. “No. It was not cathartic at all, I have a feeling that if you took apart any divorce it would be more painful than people imagine.”

One of the most astounding episodes is her father’s behavior surrounding the divorce. She writes her father was intent ‘not just divorce but to annihilate’ her mother. I asked how these episodes affect her, as the book, perhaps remarkably given his actions, is free from a lasting sense of resentment. “Well he’s dead and you learn to live with it. The game is over. I’m not 12 anymore and you make peace with everybody. My basic feeling is that we’re all nuts and do the best we can, he did the best be could.”

She does admit, “Their divorce was more difficult than most, more prolonged.” We discuss the trauma surrounding the publication of Something Happened a practical assault by Joesph towards his family that contains a chapter entitled “My Daughter’s Unhappy.” I asked how she felt about it now. “Dreadful.” Though, “It’s an interesting dilemma. There were things I wanted to write about in this book, but I didn’t share his feeling that everybody is fair game.”

However, like her father she clearly writes from bitter experience and her writing contains a sharp eye for humor. I ask if she has inherited his wit. She is cautious but admits, “It would certainly make sense I guess. I think we all turn into our parents in some ways.”

I asked, “Who would you count among your literary influences?” “Good question, Edna O’Brien is someone who has meant a lot to me also J. P. Donleavy’s novel The Ginger Man” however she stopped reading fiction during this project “I didn’t want to be intimidated by others.”

I asked her if she planned to write again. “I’m lucky to survive this! I wouldn’t write fiction, that didn’t work out too well.” However she has “discovered that I do like telling stories. I see things as stories, I’ll go across the street for a cheese sandwich and I’ll come back with 19 more stories.”

We finish with Catch 22 and I asked her if she thought she would ever read it. It’s an emphatic “No.” “I could, the writing is overwhelmingly good to me, especially for the time. I suppose I’ll always have it to read.” I tell her she would enjoy it but I sense perhaps her feelings are more complex than reading for pleasure, however she did add “people have said they’re jealous of me because they wish they could read it for the first time again.”

The memoir cites Kinky Friedman in drawing the distinction between ‘important’ and‘significant’ novels placing Catch very definitely in the latter group. I finish by asking why her father’s most famous work is so enduring.

“The more time that goes by since from World War Two the more appropriate it becomes. At that time you couldn’t show a lack of respect to certain things. My father was not the first to write about the war but was the first to poke holes in the mythology. The worse we get, the better it gets. It makes me proud and makes me feel old.”

 

To heat, or not to heat

Written by Lily Howes on . Posted in Lifestyle.

For those of you with bills included within your rent, please press ALT+F4 now. I dislike you a lot. Harsh but put it down to jealousy as for the rest of us without such luxury the time has now come to discuss the annual issue of heating.

With energy prices having already risen 21% in the last year, and with the expectation that they’ll rocket even higher as winter continues, we unfortunately can’t pump out heat willy nilly. So this leaves us with the horribly awkward conversation to be had between housemates as to when the big switch on takes place.

Granted this doesn’t have to be awkward at all it just depends on who you live with. If any of your housemates fall under the following categories then, be warned, awkwardness awaits.

The heating Nazi: this person wants you to die of frostbite, or at least that’s how it seems. Either stingy or plain evil they will continue to deny the need to heat the house to plus temperatures until you’ve lost the feeling in most of your limbs.

The cotton-wooled mummy’s girl or boy: this person has been begging to have the heating on since Fresher’s week and clearly has more money than sense. It’s also quite probable that they spend most of their time in hot pant pyjamas or boxers. Put on a hoody.

Now different households have different milestones indicating when the big day occurs. Some do this by date, for example Halloween or the first week of November. Others wait until there is snow on the ground, frost on the cars or you can see your own breath.

Whatever your signpost may be and whenever you reach it there are further discussions to be had. Namely, when specifically on a daily basis the boiler starts up and how long for. Such a conundrum can lead to a somewhat heated debate, and even some icy behaviour, between humanities students and those on “real courses” (i.e. those with lectures before midday and for more than four hours a week).

Medics, mathematicians, engineers I’ll have you know it’s still pretty chilly when we rise from our pits to switch on E4 at gone 11am, don’t deprive us of the heat.

In the end it’s all about compromise – timers, fitting to everyone schedule and basically not taking the piss. Crack out the hot water bottles, slippers and the infamous onesie but if your teeth are still chattering do the deed and switch it on; then quickly put the hefty incoming bill right to the back of your mind.

Time to end this firework farce

Written by Nick Stopard on . Posted in Lifestyle.

In the days of Face Time, 3D TV and other such intense visual technologies, the practise of fireworks and bonfire night just seem increasingly pathetic. Other than the feeling of a communal embracing of winter; wrapping up in the scarf and bobble hat and congregating on the local village green or field, there really is nothing to ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ any more.

The history seems almost redundant today. Yes, the story of Guy Fawkes is exciting and holds some esteem in the important past of sectarian conflict in this country, but it has more or less been confined to the bracket of mythology through its recent, more commercial perception. Guy Fawkes has proudly infiltrated his way into the realm of historical inaccuracy and speculation. If we are going to teach kids about a terrorist plot, surely we might as well make it relevant to current affairs rather than the events four centuries ago.

Why teach burning Guy Fawkes on a bonfire when you can teach them to co-operate and understand the crucial dimensions of a peaceful cosmopolitan British society?

As for practises of November 5th itself (and the increasing number of days either side), fireworks are becoming far more trouble than they are worth. I am by no means a ‘November Scrooge’, but people must surely not be blind to the trouble fireworks have caused.

The horrific M5 crash was supposedly strongly affected by smoke firework display at a nearby rugby club. Nobody can warrant a desire for fireworks in the face of such tragedy. On top of this many have again been injured nationwide including 170, 22 hospitalised, in Lewes, Kent. Though these nights may be ‘incredibly popular’, it’s not like we are short of reasons to celebrate in modern life.

It just seems like the tag of ‘any excuse’, which is often attached to students, is one which can be attached to the vast and anonymous ‘middle-class’ in the case of November 5th.

Britain too blows it’s frequently used trumpet over the idea of being an animal loving nation. But bonfire night would seem a plot in itself to undermine this boast. For a period of at least ten days (some say even continually until New Year), intensifying around 5th November, farmyard animals are tormented and household pets are left cowering in corners from a series of loud and unexplainable bangs.

Unexplainable. Even between two species that speak human. Can you explain why you watch fireworks? ‘They are pretty.’ But are they? Once you have seen one, you have you not seen them all? If an alien came down to earth, saw the immense technological innovations made, and then saw one of our firework displays, we would have one bemused and probably fairly amused alien on our hands.

Fireworkswere supposedly invented in 7th Century China. Undoubtedly, in 7th Century China, a fireworks display would have been phenomenal, even in Victorian time a display would have provided stark contrast to the gloom of the industrial city. But now, fireworks have no place.

What relevance does November 5th actually hold anymore? It’s not tied into religious belief, nor has it truly ingrained itself within British culture. It just seems like an excuse to gather and gaze, challenge the incoming winter and the night that draws in, whilst dusting away the Halloween cobwebs. But surely this cannot be done in another manner? Do people genuinely go out just to a field just for the fireworks, with Guy Fawkes in mind? Maybe the warmth of the bonfire is necessary nectar, but fireworks as a feature just become more and more of a trying and troublesome anti-climax.

If it is communal gatherings that people subconsciously crave, surely Armistice Day could more a modern poignancy for gathering, and perhaps lighting a bonfire into which people can gaze and think of those who have died or been injured in wars across the world?

Ironically, as it stands, it may in fact say a lot about the lack of cohesion in Britain’s communities that we currently rely on an aging and irrelevant ‘festival’ to bring us all together.