Accepted

I've been accepted into Birkbeck College's MA Creative Writing Programme. As that great contemporary philosopher Frederick Flintstone would say. YABBADABBADOO!!! Perhaps it's as well I don't quote Groucho Marx on a similar theme.

Short stories

I've been reading short fiction this weekend: an excellent collection from the alumni of Birkbeck College, University of London, The Mechanic's Institute's Review no 5 (No. 6 will be published later this week) and a short story, "Land of the Living" by Sam Shepard in the current issue of The New Yorker with a peach of an ending. The MIR includes contributions from guest authors Ali Smith, Toby Litt - a lecturer on the Birkbeck MA CW programme - and Sarah Salway.

Creationist

Priests get up to strange things these days - but attending a top creative writing programme and then receiving the blessing from the Great One tops it all.

Don't Go There

Don't even go there,
She said.
Why?

Don't go there.
Where?
I replied,

Don't

go

there;

Do you hear what
I'm saying to you?

Don't go there.
Huh?
Don't GO there.

But I'm only...
You're not list'ning to me,
She said

Tipperary,
I said.
Don't go there.
It's a...
long way,
I said.
DO NOT...
GO...
THERE...

So I didn't
Go there.

Copyright David O'Rourke 2007

John Updike

I'm half-way through the 'Rabbit' Quartet. John Updike certainly wrote beautifully. It can be quite raw; and certainly his protagonist Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is a difficult character to stomach at times. Rabbit displays deeply sexist and racist tendancies. Attitudes that would be regarded as politically incorrect nowadays - including his unwavering support for the Vietnam War. The sex is raw. Yet the humanity and honesty of the narrative is transcendant. I wonder how black readers view his depiction of the character "Skeeter", a Vietnam vet who has distinctly 'Black Panther' and messianic leanings and appears to supply the eighteen year-old feral preppy, Jill with chemicals that hastens her downfall. As the author says in the Afterword '...the trip to the moon is the central metaphor. "Trip" in the Sixties parlance meant an inner journey of some strangeness.' Far out!

I spent the summer of 1970 working as a student in the United States (near Woodstock in Upstate New York). The zeitgeist depicted in 'Rabbit Redux' and Philip Roth's 'American Pastoral' has a familiar if dream-like resonance.

Creative Writing

Applied for admission to an MA in creative writing with an eminent university. Would be ecstatic to be offered a place. Feel I could excel in such a place. Haven't stopped scribbling: learn by doing, what? Reading a fair amount of good stuff too.

I heard Germaine Greer - last night describe "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" as a great book. Haven't got round to it yet, though I love the device of 'the unreliable narrator'. Must find the time...It's written that Professor Greer can be 'barking' at times. I believe such comments are penned by sexist journos in the night-time.

An aspect of the writing of the late David Foster Wallace is well covered in this piece. It's given me pause for thought. The Stanford link on Wittgenstein's thesis is illuminating - if a bit heavy going.