It is fair to say that the publishing industry is, if not dying, at least undergoing an unprecedented transformation. With the onset of e-books, digital media, celebrity biographies, and a general decline in reading, publishing houses are signing fewer and fewer authors and commissioning less traditional novels and nearly no collections of short stories.

Prajwal Parajuly is an answer to this trend. Currently studying a creative writing MA at Kellogg College, he has recently signed a two book deal with publisher Quercus, for a collection of short stories and a novel, the first of which is due out in December 2012.

His book of short stories, The Gurkha’s Daugher, was researched by travelling across communities in the US, Asia, and Britain and hearing the stories of refugees. Parajuly says he had not realised the extent to which the short story market was shrinking, but says ‘I am thankful that I was ignorant. Chances are I’d have never started the project had I approached it with a pragmatic attitude’. Citing Tom Wolfe as his favourite living author – a man who, using traditional forms of the novel and short story, subverted norms and blurred genres – Parajuly has faith in fiction. He says ‘I don’t think I could be happy doing journalistic writing. When you’re writing fiction, you have the power to do what you want with your characters…you can mix fact with fiction.’

He seems to ascribe to the literary theory that fiction exerts some control over a fragmented world, and admits that he grew up with ‘an identity crisis of sorts’. In the short story form, characters with different stories, the same heritage, but different lands, all co-exist in a format which both admits their disparity but also implies their inter-connectedness, as Parajuly says: ‘I thought encapsulating the lives of Nepali-speaking people spread everywhere in the world in an anthology would be wiser than doing so in a novel.’

Parajuly’s novel, tentatively titled Land Where I flee, also examines idea of nationality and place. He says the title comes ‘because the characters are constantly moving around, there’s a lot of escaping in the novel…the world has become a small village. Because I divide my time among three continents, I don’t even know how to answer ‘where are you based’ questions anymore.’

As someone who lived abroad growing up, I remember desperately trying to deny my status as an outsider and trying to fit in, shirking from questions of my heritage. Yet Parajuly revels in the interchange and dialogue that comes from discussion of our differences. He talks about moving to small-town America, where people ‘had never ventured out’ of the US, and says ‘people were always asking you questions, fascinated by you.’

He views this as a positive, saying ‘I am so glad I got to experience that part of the country…I would never have known an America like that existed.’ Parajuly’s cultural relativism is refreshing, and betrays his belief that the world is indeed a ‘small village’, where we all can benefit from sharing our stories. The process of growing up in different places and between Nepalese and Indian cultures, (something he says ‘informed my writing immensely’) seems to have been a process of accepting both your heritage and those around you: ‘With time, you learned to be proud of your roots. So what if they weren’t as conventional as those of your friends?’

Keble’s Cuppers performance of “Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness” could be described as ‘amazing’ in the way it shows how, “Every act of creativity is an amazing thing,” as the narrator Gant says at the end. It turns pimples into pearls. The main character Sanzonetta is seen with a mask covered with acne. She is tempted to pop them, wishing to get rid of them. To her surprise, at the first pop of a pimple, a pearl comes flying out, and her envious sister soon makes a business out of her previous misery.

I wish my puberty went so well, even if the wealthy teenager’s husband leaves her for an oyster. It’s her bursting pimples that attract him in the first place. That is, they attract him because they pour forth pearls, instead of “cheese.” But the girl who’s lucky enough to get the “shallow man,” also has a sister who tries to get her man by growing a pimple larger than hers, so I guess it’s fair. However, instead of pearls, nothing but brains burst forth. In a repulsive way, the themes of beauty and wealth are played with, finding the beauty in acne and the shallowness in requiring riches.

Overall, it seemed a good choice for a play that is only suppose to be around twenty minutes long, picking the best part of the actual full production. Even though the performers rushed through some scenes, the audience easily understood the simple story line and the speed just ended up increasing the humor.

However, the ensemble seemed to be confused at what their job was. It wasn’t clear if they were just people randomly pulled from the audience. If so, their confusion was slightly distracting while so much was going on, making the set up of some scenes sloppy. However, the principle players held attention in their commanding grace of the stage and the acting was strong. I believed each of the characters as they each showed their faults to the audience —from pimpled face to greediness and could both laugh and feel sick at the thought.

Despite some lines that were stumbled over, Keble did a fabulous job this year, making their performance come alive with painted white faces, marvelous costumes, and elaborate humor. It made me wish I could watch this performance as a full-blown staged production with the same actors and costumes. I wanted more, and that’s a good thing.

 

Giants lumbering across the Thames Valley, spitting camels in Southern Arabia and snowball fights in New York City. It is not quite what one expects from a Sunday morning rehearsal of Oxford’s upcoming Greek Play, Clytemnestra. It certainly made me sit up and take note of this production.

I should explain. I am sitting in on the first workshop with a group of about 15 volunteers playing ‘the Furies’, demonic spectral beings who chose to reveal themselves to punish Orestes for killing Aigisthos and his mother, Clytemnestra. Only Orestes can see them, and as he descends into madness even he cannot be sure whether they are real or not. To help the Furies get to grips with wearing large (and very stuffy!) masks, director Raymond Blankenhorn outlines a range of random scenarios to act out in order to practice using ones body to convey emotion, rather than relying purely facial expressions. Its exciting and creative stuff.

The Furies are a superb bunch of actresses, especially considering that this was their first rehearsal together. They have a great physicality and are already experimenting with levels and characterisation to superb and haunting effect. A word or two must go to Jack Noutch playing Orestes, who really is top notch. It is the mark of a talented actor when a performance is so rich and enthralling that on the sixth run of the same scene he can continue to surprise and intrigue. There is something infinitely cool about speaking Ancient Greek – getting attacked by staring warped individuals in masks is pretty freaky anytime, but in Ancient Greek it takes on a whole new dimension, and Noutch delivers it with just the right mix of power and subtlety, making light work of the difficult task of not only getting the lines out, but capturing the nuances and cadences as well.

As I only saw five minutes of one scene, I can’t really give Clytemnestra a star rating. I think therefore, I will have to leave the final words to the director himself. ‘It’s easy to lose yourself in the world of the mask,’ Blanckenhorn says to his cast mid rehearsal. I couldn’t agree more.

 

Part-political thriller, part-domestic drama, part-farcical comedy, The Activist is a demanding play for its audience. The play follows a terrorist cell of five environmental activists — a ‘little circle of confidantes’ – whose relationships are complicated not only by strained marriages and whispers of infidelity, but by the existence of a mole.  The premise, which mixes terrorism and family intrigue, bomb ploys and baby toys, is very ambitious. It would be easy to imagine, in the wrong hands, the story losing its way and its audience, resulting in the carnage and confusion that the play takes as its central theme. However, it must be said that, on a scene by scene level, the clarity and power of the Rob Williams’ language ensures that this piece of new writing never gets stuck in the mire, that audiences are never left behind. The intertextual relationship with Seneca’s Medea is clever and understated, adding an extra layer of interest to the script.

  There is a lot here which wouldn’t be out of place in a script written by a seasoned professional; however, the writing was far more compelling during dialogue, which was unfailingly subtle, witty and leant well to characterisation, than during the sections of monologue which, in their attempts to be somewhat lyrical and emotive, sadly ended up a bit tangled, mixing metaphors jarringly and relying on overdone alliteration at the expense of clarity. 

The characters in this play are very strong. Freddy, whose tendency to exaggerate and geeky turns of phrase produce some fantastic moments, is played by an energetic Richard O’Brien. Nouran Koriem is impressive as the stoical and absent Adele, and William Davies is particularly convincing as Mikhail. The portrayal of children, admittedly genuinely difficult, sometimes fails to convince (perhaps a fault of the occasional blip in the script — at one point an otherwise amazingly eloquent young girl talks to her mother about ‘the thing you call a… baby?’). Some performers could also be accused of occasionally getting carried away during monologues, though generally everyone found the perfect balance between humour and seriousness which seems to characterise Williams’ approach. 

The venue, the confidentially small Frewin Undercroft, brings a furtiveness which complements the detailed, homely set design, as well as Ashleigh Wheeler’s minimalist staging. The visuals are perfectly suited to a play which combines domestic strife with darker political machinations. Though the plot is convoluted, mature and unobtrusive staging helps the audience to negotiate its twists and turns, without patronising with flamboyant pointers. A thoroughly enjoyable, impressively written play.        

4 STARS

I saw two plays as a judge in Drama Cuppers this year: Jesus’ Cockfosters and Corpus’ James and the Giant Peach. Cockfosters was a 15 minute, two-hander piece of new writing, so a very bold choice for cuppers; the writing had a lot of potential and we tried in the feedback session to encourage them to expand it and turn it into a full-length play. At this stage, though, it was a little bit rough around the edges: it had some of the tell tales of clichéd student writing, with a few too many ‘fucks’ and some cringeworthy, unconvincing slaps, but there was a raw energy that shone through.

James and the Giant Peach was a wonderful experience, very much in the ‘Spirit of Cuppers’, full of passion and humour, with amazing performances by the insects. In the case of James the best advice that the judges had for the group was the need to tighten up the speed of some of the central sections. This was particularly true in one scene between the spider and James which tried to change the generally light-hearted tone and wasn’t quite successful.

The best thing, though, about James was the audience participation: clearly Corpus had turned out in force to support the performance – one advantage of a larger cast being the greater chance of knowing everyone in your year – and they were loving it. It really improves the feel for the judges if the audience is enthusiastic, and all four of us walked out in high spirits; moreover, a successful cuppers play tends to be one that makes us laugh, that entertains; it’s never easy to develop the emotional intensity for a darker or more serious piece in the 25-30 minutes that most cuppers plays take, and especially difficult in half that time, which definitely contributed to the slightly bewildering emotional journey that Cockfosters demanded from its audience.

One of the most enjoyable parts of being a judge at cuppers is the feedback sessions – the cast always need a bit of reassurance that they really have got potential, as both of our casts did, and it’s great fun to meet the director and writer, who often have a very different perspective on things from the cast: more cynical, exhausted and emotional, generally. I hope we’ll see much more from those involved in both these plays, and I expect great things, if their first toe-dips into the mad world of Oxford drama is anything to go by.

I was at Blackwells at nine o’clock on the release date of 1Q84, the newly translated trilogy by Haruki Murakami, the popular Japanese novelist who had the odds of 8/1 on this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, which eventually went to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.

Size matters. Long books inevitably lend themselves to being trumped out as a ‘magnum opus’ (Which raises the question: if the author is alive, how do we know that a bigger, more magnum opus won’t come along?). I have finally come to the novel conclusion that this is a publishing gimmick to make people like me flock to much-heralded books like some to the hope of apocalypse.

The narrative of 1Q84 is split between two protagonists: Aomame, a woman with a blank emotional life, a taste for vengeance, and a talent for killing, and Tengo, a maths teacher-cum-fiction writer. Aomame enters the parallel reality she calls 1Q84, characterized by two moons, by climbing down an emergency expressway stairwell. Tengo is asked by a friend to rewrite a poorly written novella called Air Chrysalis, written by a 17 year old girl for a young writers’ competition. But Fuka-Eri is not an ordinary girl; she’s the survivor of a powerful cult, Sakigake. And Air Chrysalis, with its two moons, cult setting, and malevolent and unexplained Little People, begins to look less and less like fiction.

The narrative pace alternates between the page-turning surge of a pot-boiler (perhaps the after effect of Murakami translating Raymond Chandler into Japanese) and the sort of listless uneventful narrative which only works if your prose sparkles. Unfortunately, Murakami’s prose doesn’t. From the beginning of the novel I was struck by the awkwardness and hollowness of his style. Take this excerpt:

‘How many people could recognize Janácek’s Sinfonietta? Probably somewhere between ‘very few’ and ‘almost none’. But for some reason Aomame was one of those who could.’

I can’t tell whether this is what happens when colloquial Westernized Japanese is translated into English; or if Murakami is just a poor stylist. The syntax is flat, the sentences full of truisms and lazy qualifiers like ‘probably’, ‘kind of’, ‘sometimes’. The dialogue is forced and blank, with the exception, perhaps, of Tengo’s cynical publisher, and Sakigake’s Leader, who spins his own web  around Aomame. Aomame betrays the familiar Murakamiesque gullibility and has ‘no choice but to believe fundamentally in what he had said. He was no fanatic, and dying people do not lie.’

Magical realism is too strong a term for the gentle defamiliarisation of Murakami’s worlds. His characters are loners who see reality aslant and are startled by its strangeness. This is one of his fiction’s greatest strengths: the bizarre and unsettling elements of narrative which unite reader and character in trying to decipher the strange cryptograms embedded in the mildly surrealistic world and the oddity of being a part of it.

Murakami is known for studding his fiction with Western references. Lois Sage, a Japanologist from Harris Manchester College, told me that when Murakami was first published in Japan, the page – with kanji (Japanese characters) interrupted by katakana (phoneticized representations of Western loan words) – looked like a ‘quilt’. 1Q84‘s allusions are unsettlingly profuse: to beer, baseball and coffee culture, to Dinesen, the Western Schism, Kafka, Bach, Proust, Copernicus, Sibelius, and Orwell. One wonders if Japanese readers resent these constant references.

The readers and critics of Tengo and Fuka-Eri’s Air Chrysalis are as ‘a bunch of dismayed-looking people clutching at colourful flotation rings…in a large pool full of question marks.’ This is not unlike my experience of 1Q84: anticipating a modern masterpiece I found instead an uneven work that was both thrilling and boring. It ends with a painfully conventional conclusion that also leaves the door vaguely open to the possibility of more of the world of Air Chrysalis. On balance, I would probably stand in line for that one too.

What can I say about Catch-22? Well first off, it’s clever. Very clever. This book has one of the most complex, confusing, but ultimately satisfying plot structures of anything that I’ve ever read. The story is told out of sequence from multiple perspectives, with more plot and meaning gradually imparted as the novel progresses – it seems random at first, like an iPod audiobook on shuffle, but that makes sticking with it all the more rewarding. A naked man mentioned offhand in one chapter may not be explained for another hundred pages, but when he is the payoff is all the better due to the build-up from its repeated mentions on previous pages.

Each perspective offers a fresh angle on events, leading to greater understanding, different points of view or even just a really good punchline. This brings up another great thing about this book – it’s hilarious. Honestly, before I read Catch-22 I didn’t realise that literature could be funny, but this book had me cracking up in almost every chapter. The surreal and satirical style is fantastic and often quite pythonesque, but even if that’s not your cup of tea there are some great gags in there. Quite often, the jokes are used to make a serious point, like the ‘Catch-22’ of the title – the circular logic that binds the men to the military (which I won’t ruin here for anyone who hasn’t read the book).

Catch-22 does have a serious side – major themes of sanity, religion, heroism, death, personal integrity, the absurdity and bureaucracy of war and greed are all explored and often skewered within its pages. Take mess officer Milo Minderbinder – his pursuit of profit leads him to run missions (through his business) for the Germans as well as the US military, culminating in a bizarre sequence where he organizes a bombing of his own airbase, resulting in the deaths of many of his colleagues. This black humour continues through the rest of the book, the story becoming noticeably darker as it progresses. The horrors and deaths inherent to war are shown quite starkly, and this is all the more affecting due to the playful style of the book. These characters are ridiculous and funny, yet their deaths are tragic and seem real. This could undo the cheerful nature of the humour, but the narrative does end with a kind of joyful optimism that offers great relief, leaving the reader enriched rather than depressed.

Reading Catch-22 was a turning point for me: it was one of the first books I ever read that was written for adults, having assumed that any kind of sophisticated literature would be boring. If it wasn’t for this book then I wouldn’t have started reading more widely, wouldn’t have applied to do English at Oxford and wouldn’t be writing this article. Honestly, you should read it. Come for the laughs, but stay for the meaning. No catch.

This week has been hectic to say the least and today was no exception to what is beginning to look like the rule of chaos that is running through my life. 

Basically, the first act of Noughts and Crosses is comprised of scenes involving the McGregor family and it has been really hard finding times when all the actors playing McGregor family members are free. Like a comet shooting through the sky, this morning was one of those rare occasions and I took full advantage of it by rehearsing every single scene in which the family are together in Act One. It was the first time that all the McGregor family were together for a rehearsal and with less than two weeks to go until opening night, my fears turned into excitement.

My nerves were not simmered down for long though: all the logistical, technical stuff that goes way over my head was brought up in the meeting with the LMH Simpkins Lee Theatre people. Along with the lack of marketing that we’ve done so far, and with only a full week to go before the performance dates, I was reminded that there is no rest for the wicked indeed. As long as everything logistical is prepared now, leaving time for any annoying nitty-gritty things to be dealt with next week, then all should be well. After the meeting, they let us look around the theatre: when I stood on the stage and looked up at the auditorium it all started to sink in- in a good butterflies-in-stomach way that is. Although the stage is a lot smaller than I anticipated, the projection screen is massive and will be great for all the pre-filmed scenes- size does matter in this instance.

G and Ds have agreed to make a special ice-cream flavour for the play: after a very short moment of deliberation with the friendly G & Ds guy Marcus, we decided on white chocolate with dark chocolate chips. I’ve never tasted white chocolate ice-cream before and anyone else who is a white-chocolate virgin should come and check out the play just for the ice-cream alone! Plus, if bad reviews and low ticket sales make the production a failure, at least I’ll have some comfort food to help ease the pain. Touch wood, fingers crossed etc. 

Thursday night, and the Sheldonian is packed out. People jostle for seats and chatter in anticipation. Suddenly, a hush descends, and an immaculately dressed man with wild, curly grey hair walks out, taking his position on a small podium.

This is not the conductor of an orchestra, about to wave his baton and stir strings and brass into life: it is Steven Pinker, the famous scientist and linguist, and the crowd have come to hear him talk about his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. In a broad American accent he presents a summary of the book, joking with the audience about the fact that the ‘do your own thing’ ethos of the 1960s probably caused an increase in murders as a large number of people’s ‘thing’ turned out to be violent crime.

Afterwards, I am surprised to see people lining up to have their photos taken with him, like a rock star. Pinker is not alone: science authors are starting to be treated like celebrities (well, c-listers), increasingly being chosen to present the television tie-ins for their own books and generally breaking out of the lecture hall and into the public domain. But is there a cost to this? How much do populist books about ‘academic’ topics actually teach us?  Like many, I am an inveterate reader of nonfiction.

The whole thing boils down to the fantastically fallacious idea that I am somehow improving myself by learning how Oppenheimer didn’t actually quote the Bhagavad Gita as he tested the first atomic bomb but instead said something along the lines of “Holy Shit!”. Or how massively dense rotating neutron stars can beam pulses of radiation in our direction that keep time better than an atomic clock.

Of course, none of this will ever be of the slightest use except as an incredibly dull replacement for actual conversation, of the sort that occurs at formal halls, awkward first (and last) dates and drinks events that you only went to because they were free. The problem is that you almost never get enough depth to be able to have an actual conversation about the topic of the book.

General knowledge is very much overrated, particularly in a place like Oxford where expressing an opinion on almost anything without actually being the world’s foremost expert on it is likely to expose you as the posing charlatan you are.

However, it is not yet time to put away A Brief History of Time and pick up the Mills & Boon. There are some books that bridge the gap between casual knowledge hunting and academic rigour; that you can read and that will actually change the way you think about the world. The Better Angels of Our Nature is one such gem. At 696 pages plus another 75 of references, it is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive source on the subject matter, which is itself both fascinating and engagingly presented.

The book describes in exhaustive detail how, contrary to the apparent glut of bloodshed we hear of daily, violence has been declining over the history of human society as we have developed progressively more powerful mechanisms to control and dissipate aggression.

We ought to accept that, most of the time, reading popular science books is as much for pleasure as is picking up a trashy paperback and should be entered into with the same gleeful sense of guilt. Just please, for the love of Dawkins, don’t bother with The God Delusion.