Naked Lunch

Having just finished my degree, I was super excited to suddenly have time on my hand an read precisely what I want without having to worry about deadlines or (occasionally) trivial Q&A sessions on the text.  A quick trip to Waterstone's (shudder) on the way to work allowed me to spend the money I had stored on a questionable piece of plastic, and it went towards William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.


Not sure what to think.

Or how.

I'm not particularly far in, but I'm already scratching my head.  It's a million miles away from the linear escapades of say, Robinson Crusoe, but I do like it.  What I'm most interested in is the narrative style, rather than the actual content.  As mentioned in another blog, I do endeavour to write a novel of my own, and I think at some point, a few descriptions of slipping into an addictive state of mind may be necessary.  Couldn't push it as far as Burroughs though, that's top shelf stuff.  I don't think I can reach that high, and I'm not getting a stepladder to try either.

This novel also requires a few weeks in the southern states of America though, so if anybody wants to come too, please do feel free.  I reckon it could be a good trip.  Won't be for a while though, need to shape a skeleton of sorts first!

Need to start blogging about something else too I think, something slightly more structured, as this one currently reads as a bit of a jotter/diary, for my own benefit as much as anybody else really.  So I'm thinking of perhaps really dedicating one to food?  Having spent the last three years using the kitchen as a creative outlet, I reckon it might be a good idea.  There are a few recipes on here already, but they fit quite awkwardly amidst my monthly mutterings.  I'd love to do one on films, but I just don't go to the cinema often enough any more.  Might just write about films I've seen recently - regardless of production dates, or is that pretty useless?

I did, however, go and see the last instalment in the Potter series last week.  Not too bad, but not as wholesome as the book.  Considering they'd split the novel across two books, I thought they'd have been slightly truer to the text.

I tweeted that it reminded me of being back in school a little bit.  Not the buildings blowing up, or the spells being cast, or even the downright evil that lurked in the hallways - I mean in terms of the film itself, the structure and narrative of it.  You've been set the task of reading a couple of acts from King Lear, or perhaps you were meant to have finished Of Mice and Men, or The Handmaid's Tale, over the Christmas period.  In my experience, there were always more than a handful of people who never quite managed it, and failed to address the situation until minutes before the class began, leaving it to those of us who had read the texts to inform them.  This essentially led to the rushed retelling of the story back to those who'd not read it just before going in to be quizzed on it in the classroom.  Details are dropped and although the basics are there, it's not quite as you'd imagined it reading it for yourself.

But I suppose that's always what you get with film adaptations.  I just think I expected a bit more from Potter.  Did anybody see it in 3D?  I thought £9 to see it without the glasses was a bloody rip-off anyway, wasn't going to spend any more.  There were a couple of scenes I'd have been interested to see though - primarily the one where Harry and Voldemort are grappling with one another.  The close-ups of twisted faces must have look really intense in 3D? Or did the cop out on that a little bit, and just save the technology for things jumping out of the screen?  (In my opinion, Avatar's success on the 3D platform was not in it's explosions flying debris, but rather in it's layers and textures, which would not have been nearly as effective without the use of 3D.  Consider the Donkey Kong Country, which gave the impression of depth in the jungle by layering the backgrounds to scroll at different times (I think.)  The aesthetics in Avatar were outstanding, and despite the shallow plot, I do like that film.)

Also watched True Lies this morning.

Please share any thoughts of any of the above.  't'would be greatly appreciated!

Notes from Under the desk.

When you can't sleep, what better to do than Blog?!  I could be writing an essay, but that would get the cogs turning, and to be honest I'd rather get to bed before too long.  This is an exercise in unwinding.  I hope it works, otherwise it's down to one mug and four chamomile teabags.

With a little over a month to go before my university year is officially over, there is still so much work to be done.  At least I'm writing about subjects I'm interested in, or at the very least, I've curved an glance on them I can take interest in.  Getting my ideas down on paper, can sometimes feel like a chore, but I don't think that's quite the right word.  I'd like to think I'm meticulous over my work, but that isn't true either.  So what is it that makes it so hard for me to let the sentences flow?

I fear it is perhaps, my indecision in essay writing - the inability to take an idea and just bloody run with it.  As soon as I gather enough confidence to do so however, I'm away.  Until then though, it's an awful lot of procrastination.  I liked it when I minored in film as well.  Procrastination involved watch silent movies from the twenties, which would later become useful.  Still, Chaplin's City Lights has me in stitches every time!

Despite this difficulty in writing though, I have recently decided to write a novel.  Admittedly, it's not my own story, or at least, at the moment it isn't.  It's something my father was writing before he passed away just over 6 years ago, something he'd worked on for years, but never saw the light of day.  Sadly, the majority of his work and research has since disappeared, and I only remember snippets of the story he told me, from the screenplay he was writing.  Writing for screen isn't something I'm familiar with, but I don't want to give up on this narrative, and it's something I'd really love to do.  The modules I've studied over the past year have shown me how diverse and original a tale it was, and something that would speak to many people.  It's tale of emigration, and maps, but that's all I'm going to give away for now.

This may just be a really crummy idea, but I'd like to try it out, see where it gets me.  Besides, I'll have a whole year (at least) without any deadlines or essays to write, so why not take the opportunity to be creative with my research?  If my dreams of having a thesis published about Archipelagic literature, with Dr Thomas Harris on the front, don't come true, then maybe I can publish something for the Fiction department in Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights.  Lovely.

From an anthology of Welsh women's poetry, 16th century.

I'w morwyn wrth gachu


Crwciodd lle dihangodd ei dŵr-'n grychiast
           O grochan ei llawdwr;
      Ei deudwll oedd yn dadwr',
      Baw a ddaeth, a bwa o ddŵr.