Casting away

I’ve been having a discussion with Giuseppe today. He’s finally read The Scent of Cinnamon because a translator friend, Isabella Zani, has rendered it – superbly – into Italian. After over 22 years together (tié Ratzy!), this is the first time he’s really read anything of mine and, to my relief, he loves it. In fact, he loves it so much he wants to see it filmed. In fact, he wants to see it filmed so much he’s already decided on the director and the actors for the two main roles. 

His choices? Ang Lee (director), Tilda Swinton (Miriam), Daniel Day Lewis (Joseph). Needless to say, these three jobbing labourers in the world of cinema are twiddling their thumbs in shabby bedrooms and waiting for my call. But I’m not sure they’re the ones I want. Giuseppe says I should ask you. So that’s what I’m doing. If you’ve read the story and think you have a better idea, let us know.  

Iran, Jamaica, Vatican, Sudan….

Surprise news from the Holy See. Someone called (Father) Federico Lombardi claims that the Vatican’s refusal to endorse a proposal for the UN that homosexuality be decriminalised, signed by all EU states, presumably including Poland (!), does not mean that it approves of the death penalty for homosexuals. Phew. Its position on waterboarding hasn’t yet been announced. 

While we’re waiting, read Wendell Ricketts’ comment on the whole sordid business here.

Grooming

An interesting experience yesterday. I came across a reader’s review of Little Monsters on the Waterstones site. It starts like this:

I wasn’t sure I would like this book. A tale of a young girl setting up home with her uncle sounded terribly seedy.

Hmm. Seedy. It goes on to say:

The story is narrated, in reflective mode, by Carol Foxe, the young girl in question, whose dad has murdered her mum so is put into the ‘care’ of her selfish and hard-hearted aunt Margot and attentive Polish uncle (Joey) Jozef who live over the pub they run. HIs friendliness towards her as a child – come to the basement, come for a walk, I have something to show you, don’t tell your aunt – all smack of grooming. The intention may have been to give an air of innocent caring and concern towards the young girl but it struck me as highly inappropriate.

I’m all in favour of complex texts offering – even requiring – multiple readings, but I wonder if anyone else has seen Jozef’s behaviour as ‘inappropriate’. And I wonder, in this context, what ‘inappropriate’ means. It’s revealing, I think, that the reviewer distinguishes between what she perceives, quite rightly, as the author’s intention, to ‘give [Jozef] an air of innocent caring and concern’, although innocent doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly useful (or appropriate) word here, and what she, on the other hand, reads as a series of acts intended to set Carol up as sexual prey. What’s even more interesting is that she doesn’t notice how much more like ‘grooming’ Carol’s behaviour towards Kakuna is, although here too it would be reductive to see their relationship merely in these terms. Perhaps this kind of behaviour is more appropriate between a woman and a girl. But if novels are concerned with – and judged by their adherence to – what’s appropriate, where does that leave fiction? Reading this review made me feel that what I’d written could have been reshelved as a misery memoir if I’d only had the sense to grasp what Jozef was really up to. 

Cyclone tour: stage four

My Something Rich and Strange virtual book tour, to celebrate the publication of The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories, goes from strength to strength. This week’s event is hosted by Jim at Jockohomo Datapanik and it’s a corker. I talk about the gay aspects of the collection, something that hasn’t really been touched on before. If you want to know what turned me on as a teenager, and what turns me on now as a reader, this is the place to go. Plus you’ll get the chance to explore Jim’s many other interests, which include, in his own words: Painting, making art, music, writing, design, bodybuilding, wrestling, new media, photography, sports, architecture, computers, technology, museums, food, travel, languages, lacrosse, mountain biking, film, Warhol, pop culture, op art, biceps, books and blogs +. 

He also has a dog called Sam.

Nest week, I’ll be dropping in on Vanessa Gebbie here. Don’t miss it.

Lessons in democracy

The Honourable Maurizio Ronconi, deputy for the UDC, just can’t stomach the victory of Vladimir Luxuria on Isola dei Famosi (more information about this can be found here). He says it’s ‘simply scandalous’ that state television should transform a transsexual into a national heroine. Rather worryingly for a man who’s been elected to parliament in a country that still claims to be a democracy, he doesn’t seem to have grasped the basic democratic notion that the person who gets the most votes gets the bacon. Even if he or she is an unsuitable model for young people, as Ronconi claims. So listen up, Maurizio. It wasn’t the naughty old disrespectful diseducational RAI that chose Vladimir, it was 56% of the voters who chose to invest a euro in choosing who’d win, whether or not they also pay their TV licence. This is how democracy works in the real world, Ronky, whatever might happen in the corridors of the UDC, so get used to it. One day you might also be exposed to a genuine popular vote. I can’t wait.

The merest whiff

A very small taste of my presentation a week ago at Rome’s John Cabot University. It comes from the opening of The Scent of Cinnamon. I’m not being a tease (although I can be): this really is all that was filmed.

What I’d like to do to Berlusconi (while we still can)

You may already know this, but I’ve just discovered a whole sub-genre on YouTube of actions being filmed in slow motion. I had no idea. Some of them are intensely lyrical. Others aren’t. This one, for example, isn’t.

http://www.youtube.com/v/cWGn6_EH2gM&hl=en&fs=1

The dark side

I’m not sure how much of this, from today’s NYT, I understand, but it certainly feels exciting. Here’s an extract:

A concatenation of puzzling results from an alphabet soup of satellites and experiments has led a growing number of astronomers and physicists to suspect that they are getting signals from a shadow universe of dark matter that makes up a quarter of creation but has eluded direct detection until now.

Maybe.

Richer and stranger…

Don’t miss the third leg of my Something Rich and Strange virtual book tour, at Scott Pack’s essential blog, Me and My Big Mouth. I’m answering questions on order, sequence and, well, order again, which makes it sound a lot drier than it is. It’s actually quite lively. Go and have a look and you’ll see what I mean. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment and I’ll get right back to you…

Stop press: Luxuria wins IdF

Well, it’s not Obama, but I’m happy to report that Italy’s most famous transgender politician-cum-actor-cum-a-host-of-other-things, Vladimir Luxuria, has just won the Italian version of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, known here as Isola dei Famosi (Island of the Famous). It’s less creepy-crawly than the UK version, but lasts ten weeks instead of three, requiring massive patience from both its public and the participants. Vladimir’s victory over a strikingly attractive 24-year-old Argentinian called Belen Rodriguez, who may be famous now but certainly wasn’t when the programme started almost three months ago, is a sign that in Italy, unlike many other countries, the people are way ahead of the politicians that represent them. Voting for Martina Navratilova or even Brian Paddick is one thing. Voting for a pre-op transsexual who’s admitted to a period on the game, transformed a coconut shell into a makeshift handbag and represented Communist Refoundation in parliament is, I think you’ll agree, another. 

Over to you, Ratzinger.