Wednesday, March 11, 2009

15 minutes of fame

I've decided to allow myself 15 minutes per day to write in this blog and maybe a couple of minutes to correct spelling and typos. So there might be the odd swear word or wild thought which is probably good.

I recently finished Oryx and Crake by Magaret Atwood which I found at the Pukerua Bay 2nd hand bookshop. I read 'Shadow Debt' by her a while ago and was impressed with her insight and range. Oryx was good too, although I don't think I was enthralled as much as with her non-fiction writing. It was imaginative and revealed itself in a slow kind of way, the things that made this character (snowman) become so twisted and cynical. Written in quite a conventional and easy to read style the book highlighted the true strength, that of her imaginative characters. In a sense it was a standard apocalypse story in a similar vein to Day of the Triffids, but with more back story and wit. I found some of the science fiction technologies and jokes about bio-engineering a bit over the top. Like CD-roms, surely she must of known they would date the book? And hammering home the whole ridiculousness of corporations creating new animals and the lack of ethical control. I got a bit over that. The characters were great though and the comments on education and the elite. Nice to read some literary science fiction, that is not as dry as the old Isaac Asimov stories I read as a kid.

The MA has started now and I'll probably be reading more poetry I imagine. Which is great. I've read a few novels over the summer and now it's time to get back to the real stuff. My writing has seemed lacklustre for the last few weeks (months?), the old silly humour creeping back in. Some of it seems quite like the stuff I was writing last summer. Maybe writing goes in circles rather than straight lines (or waves even)? Last year I thought it was all straight ahead progression. Maybe I was wrong.

My 15 minutes is over.

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