Thursday, 27 May 2010
Launch of Hack in the Box and Part 2 of...
...THE NUMBERS GAME!
University in the morning, home for translation in the afternoon then out to The Book Hive for the launch of the book of the events. Wine at 6.30. Tom Corbett and and Juliet there, as is Luke Wright, then others arrive. Sam Jordison, and Tom Cox and Jeremy Page and D J Taylor and Rachel Hore and, and... We stand round chatting as one does. Sam Jordison looks extraordinarily, almost disgustingly, young. Does the Guardian allow its contributors to cross the street by themselves? Do the police know? Where are the ladies with signs and yellow tabards? I know - the policemen too look young. I really must get a motorised zimmer frame next year. We talk cats - naturally - with Tom Cox, but also handwriting and modern technology, then Henry Sutton joins us briefly, and finally conversing with Anjali Joseph and nice PhD novelist friend who is a fan of Krasznahorkai and wants to know when Satantango will be ready. The very thing I was working on a couple of hours before. So we discuss Krasznahorkai's very dark grey sense of humour and incidents in the book... And soon we are almost the last left standing, and drive home in time to eat a late dinner. C looks very beautiful. I can't quite believe I am married to her and have been for almost forty years. What's she doing married to an old man who is at least two months older than her? Anyway, the hack booklet sits beside me, and I think Anjali has done a remarkable job in rounding off our various jagged fragments.
But it's late now, and I am tired. So we move on with The Numbers Game:
*
Rose
And what do you think you’d do with it, Jack Grady?
Bellhop
I’d marry you. We’d live in Florida.
Rose
Sure, Florida. Why not Beverley Hills?
Bellhop
I like the sound of Florida.
Rose
......Jack, you’re a poet.
Bellhop
I send you Valentines, don’t I? Write them myself!
Rose
Talking of that, you read this article?
The guy here says some guy in Hollywood
Has written a screenplay entirely in verse.
Bellhop
That’s crazy stuff....
Rose
......The guy’s name is Polonsky.
Bellhop
Probably Polish. A crazy bunch, the Poles.
Suppose they speak in verse..
Rose
......Like you do, Jack?
Bellhop
So what’s the movie?
Rose
....... Title’s Force of Evil.
It seems the plot is all about bad money,
The numbers game in fact. Corruption,
The little guys, the big guys, banks, the lot.
Bellhop
I can’t follow the plot in stuff like that.
Money’s too complicated for a story.
Rose
I betcha the guy’s a Pinko or a Marxist.
Look out, here comes Mike Lewis…
*
So who's Mike Lewis? Continue hanging on to that cliff and let the credits thunder past you... Remember, it is on tomorrow, on a radio near you.
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5 comments:
Thank you George... The nice PhD novelist friend is Sam Byers, by the way. I'm just looking up the Melancholy of Resistance on Amazon. I don't think I would have correctly recalled the spelling of Krasznahorkai's name.
Welcome, Anjali. Thank you for Sam's name. I need to see names written down and associated with something. Once the conversation moves to anything interesting I forget a name I have just heard for the first time.
And on that subject. Should your name be pronounced with accent on first or second syllable (as in impála, or as in Ángela)?
It's kind of you to ask. There is a slight stress on the first, but it's pretty even - but both 'a's transliterate a short vowel akin to a shwa, so it's really Unjali. I ought to change it to Krasznahorkai or something else easily grasped.
It's very kind of you to say I look young too... There must have been a flattering light in the shop. (While we're exchanging compliments, I very much enjoyed the two concluding pieces of the book. Your section made me laugh a great deal George - as well being a most impressive feat of speedy versification.)
Thank you, Anjali. I asked because I had heard two versions before. In Hungarian the accent always falls on the first syllable - no exceptions at all.
Sam, there might well have been a particularly flattering patch of light. I should have tried standing in it.
I am slowly learning that I have always written fast and, in fact, have needed to write fast. Maybe I need to burst through some equivalent of the sound barrier. The discovery of slowness would really be a discovery for me, though time may change that, of course.
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