One of LeafSalon's favourite books at the moment is Brief Lives by Chris Price (right). It's been on the bedside table for while, and is perfect for dipping into for a few moments before surrendering to the land of nod.
The book was launched a few days ago by Stephanie de Montalk (pictured after the 'Read More' link), and she gave a wonderful speech. We thought you might like to see it, so a big thanks to Bill Manhire for passing this on.
Over to you, Stephanie:
After I opened Brief Lives, and read the first of its collection of singular biographical profiles and fictional sketches, I put the book down and buttered a slice of toast. The three line piece entitled ‘After the Party’ had said:
You call him redneck, but he may just have been embarrassed or sunburned. All those cultured heads nodding, like flowers in a French field waiting for the scythe.
I moved on to ‘The Age’, a longer observation in which a couple identified as J. and T. are fading into senescence in which, for example,
Their household, like their city, was a graveyard of good intentions. Adventures still theoretically possible, but none undertaken. Increasing silence in all mutual activities. Preoccupation with minor health defects in rehearsal for the major ones to come. Gardening.
I went back to the kitchen and buttered a second slice of toast.
I turned to the back of the book, to ‘Variable Stars’, and perused the extended meditation on eccentricity which comprises the book’s final section. As the cousin of an eccentric writer who makes an appearance here, eccentricity is a subject close to my heart.
Then, I had a third piece of toast and went to bed in the strangeness and excitement of mind that takes hold when I encounter a work so irresistible and excellent that I can’t bring myself to read on lest I finish it before I’m ready to relinquish the journey.
And what a journey Brief Lives’s deliberative, and often profound, excursion through the vagaries of human existence proved to be.
Last year, while I was beavering away in the Writer in Residence room in the IIML, upstairs Chris was completing a work she unassumingly referred to as short prose pieces about unusual lives. Admiring of Chris’s poetry, I knew something special would emerge.
That something special is a stunning distillation of lives ‘found at irregular intervals’; a poetic yet grounded, humorous yet generous, layered yet lucid examination of curbed, and uncurbed, individuals.
Whether recreating on a single page in telling outline the trial, on a charge of murder in the first degree, of 19th century visionary photographer and cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge — the man who ‘split the second’, or cogitating on ‘The Unhappiness of Holidays’ when, in the last week a ‘small cloud of melancholy hovers over the fragile island of happiness’, Brief Lives delivers a cogent and rewarding read.
Chris’s fascination with flamboyant French writer, aristocrat and eccentric, Villiers de I’Isle-Adam, revived the spell cast over me by my similarly mercurial relation, Potocki de Montalk. As I encountered de I’Isle-Adam, described as ‘possessed with a passion for what is improbable’, I was reminded how elusive the entirety of those who defy convention, and how potent the picture painted by Chris’s subjective brevity.
Brief Lives owns the premise that nothing is as fascinating as other people’s behaviour, ordinary and extra-ordinary. It enlivens diversity. It attends erudition. It suspends judgment. It elevates anecdote from sly revealer of biographical truths to elegant art form.
Moreover, it suggests a map on which we can pin point our own peculiarities and reflect on our capacity for difference. A map of which Robert Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
Brief Lives is a tour de force. It is writing at its beguiling and literary best. I’m delighted to launch it.
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Comment by Darryl ~ August 21, 2006 10:13 AM
Apart from all the eating buttered toast - no spreads? - this makes me want to look out for the book. Not the case when I finally got to see the Book Show (TV 1, Saturday 5.30pm - yeah exactly). Their 'review' section was pathetic. A chaotic conversation with lots of ill-informed opinions and bugger-all information. Who was the author of the book under discussion? What audience was she aiming for? Cheap shots and cheap laughs were the order of the day. Hate that chummy stuff between the host and the panel. Marcus Lush shouldn't be encouraged. First he should be shaved and then told to stop behaving like a naughty fourth former. The Elizabeth Knox bit was much better. Time to talk at least. The Golden Bay tourist board would have been pleased too. Cue shot of waterfall and sunlight on sea. Then back to the studio for a one-on-one but again it was frustrating. A writer says she liked the Grimm's fairy tales, so what? Does this relate to her own work in some way? Don't know. Liking Grimm's seemed to be enough.
Books on TV don't really work seems to be the message here so let's sex it up with a stupid cowboy theme and overdone jokey set and get the talky bits done super quick so no one notices them. Emily Perkins is wasted. Why can't she say what she thinks? She has a brain. Her role is to smile and find everything 'wonderful' (even Marcus Lush). I think someone should just embrace this aspect of books (that they're boring to a lot of people who watch TV) and make a boring books show. I'm serious. A bare studio, talking heads, interesting minds saying what they think, real conversation. Radical I know and a graveyard for advertisers but Emily Perkins could still be on it, only this time with a licence to say stuff.
Comment by Claire ~ August 22, 2006 8:46 AM
Darryl, you make some good points but I really like the job Emily Perkins is doing. She's warm, funny, quick and she's got some great frocks! Isn't it pleasing they got a writer to take charge too? And I think the theme music is dang catchy!
Comment by Kelly ~ August 22, 2006 8:59 AM
I haven't seen them all, because I just can't get my head around that timeslot for a book show and always seem to remember at about 5 to 6. Part of the problem, too, is that there's probably not quite enough time for them to get their teeth into the discussion. An hour on a Sunday would be a whole lot better.
But in those I have seen, I've been impressed by the hosts & interviewers, and by some guests. But why bother with people like Lush?
On the first show, when asked for his opinion on a book, he said he hadn't finished it but he'd started it "on the plane on the way up."
If we must have "celebrity" faces on the show, at least may they have the decency to do some preparation. It's an insult to both viewers and other, perfectly intelligent and thoughtful guests, to not bother even reading the book you're discussing.
Comment by stephen ~ August 22, 2006 5:04 PM
The book show ... I'd rather just hear what Emily Perkins had to say about the books reviewed than the "panel" of "experts", because, honestly, you may as well just ask the three people sitting closest to you in the pub. And speaking of Emily Perkins, why does it look like she's controlled by wires? The middle section of the show is the money shot -- a writer mostly talking about writing. And re the theme of the opening, this of course references our nation's long history of cowboy fiction. Just my sixpence worth.
Comment by Islander ~ August 22, 2006 8:24 PM
Why have book reviews on tv?
It just doesnt work: there's enough stuff in other media, web included, to make sure a lot of books are adequately covered anyway.
Tv, per se, is visual/audio - so, intervires stuff is handled well - ooops, that was supposed to be 'interview' but the other sort of works too: as viewing animals, we are not in the least interested in some forgettable academic or author-with-ax-to-grind ranting on.
But gossip, two-heads-talking whether as interview (getting a publisher or 2, and a bookseller or 3 would be a really good idea) or overview of lifework - Michael King?- or senior people (Sheila Natusch?) - is what tv is made for-
Comment by Chris ~ August 22, 2006 9:32 PM
For my two cents' worth, the Book Show guys made a reasonable fist of it. It's not their fault that they got shunted into a horrendous timeslot - that's entirely at the control of the network.
Yes, the opening sequence does make one's sphincter involuntarily tighten, but the only real crime they committed was putting Marcus Lush on air. As Warwick R says in the latest North & South, Lush should stick to the trains. (And maybe the day job too: the guy does have a good face for radio.)
I reckon the other gripes can be sorting by a bit of judicious format tweaking - more incisive interviewing, more playing to TV's strengths, and yes, as Islander notes and lead times permitting, more gossipy stuff! Fingers crossed that we see a second run.
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