AVID by Kate Sverdlova

ISSUE 1. SUMMER 2013

AVID

SUMMER 2013. THE NIGHT ISSUE EDITOR Ekaterina Sverdlova ART DIRECTION & DESIGN Sylwia Szyszka Ekaterina Sverdlova CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Sylwia Szyszka Julia Peintner Melody Amber van Oosterom CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Anton Dolin Giacomo Lee Camac Johnson Leanne Warner

TABLE OF CONTENT BOOK CLUB Short Stories EMM, DANIEL STONE by Giacomo Lee 8 NIGHT AT THE RIVER by Camac Johnson 20 ROOM 6 by Leanne Warner 32 Writer’s Talk Giacomo Lee 18 Camac Johnson 30 Leanne Warner 42

ARTICLES BEWARE OF THE SNOB On literary snobbery 54 READ IT AT THE MOVIES What makes a good screen adaptation 60 THE ANTI-HERO OF OUR TIME On fictional sociopaths 70 THE ART OF TELLING NOT YOUR STORIES Interview with translator Victor Golyshev 76 THE CITY THAT DICKENS BUILT Charles Dickens London Walk 86 I KNOW WHAT YOU’LL READ THIS SUMMER Summer releases preview 102 Notes in the margins THE PERKS OF NON-READING How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard 58 ANNA KARENINA TAKES THE STAGE Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright 68 BULGAKOV AND THE OPERATING TABLE A Young Doctor’s Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov 84 Curiousities THE NIGHT READING LIST Ten books that give you shivers 46 BOOKS TO TAKE YOU PLACES Five books that inspire travel 96 APPS NO MORE Book Apps are failing 100 DEAD WRITERS PERFUME Scent inspired by old books 108

Dear readers, Meet Avid, the magazine for literature lovers and bookworms; for those who are curious and doesn’t abide snobbery. Avid believes that writing about books and reading should be just as diverse as books and readers are. So sometimes we are serious and sometimes silly. We think that you can like both J.K. Rowling and Leo Tolstoy, and that there are smart, funny, and informative things to say about both and that you shouldn’t have to choose. In Avid’s first issue we collected three short stories from up and coming writers about the night, where a priest is mixed up with salmon poachers, a hotel room may or may not be haunted, and a young man sees his name scribbled everywhere around the town. We reviewed some books too, but we like a good list even more – so we compiled a few of our own, including top ten books that will give you shivers. We are obsessed with screen adaptations, and we tried to figure out what make a good one. We tend to overthink our entertainment, and that is why we scrutinized our love for sociopathic TV characters. We also talked to the 75-year-old translator Victor Golyshev, went on a Charles Dickens’ London walk previewed the hot summer book releases and discovered a bookish scent with an intriguing name, Dead Writers Perfume. Avid loves printed books – new, white and crispy hardcovers and old paperbacks, that are dogeared, probably have some tea spilled all over, and has notes scribbled throughout. And the only thing we like as much as books is talking about books with other readers. So enjoy this issue – you seem like our kind of people.

Yours, Avid

BOOK CLUB *

EMM, DANIEL STONE by Giacomo Lee

ast in all its glory, something new had appeared overnight. It towered high above the traffic on the black side of a pub where GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN, a stencilled image opposite Archway station. The piece was black and white, a bag of bones guy with a platypus head sporting a samurai helmet with a pair of goggles strapped above the brim. The figure was sitting cross-legged, breathing in fumes shaded with a little purple and green. “Who the fuck did that?” thought Daniel Stone, bleary eyes popping out and all the better for it, having got up earlier than usual because of the strike in action since the night before. He wished he could have seen the artist at work, the magician”s trick explained, stumbling across a bohemian or a hoodlum in a harness during the minus hours of the morning. It would just be them two as everyone lay dead to the world, the artist perhaps wary of prying eyes until Daniel gestured enough to show he was one of the cool guys, just a kid waiting to catch Father Xmas before the Christmas tree and mince pie.

Bus 76 pulled up, but Daniel had to wait for another to arrive along with the rest who couldn’t get on. To while away the time he circled the bus shelter, four adverts on both sides, one of a swimsuit model for H&M, her eyes scribbled out by black marker. “Another one,” mumbled Dan. He took a snap. Another epidemic made him smile as he looked out of the bus window at billboards: Iphone, Lufthansa, Street Car, all advertised using Caucasian guys with Asian girlfriends, the ultimate accessory. He got off at Camden, his first point of change. It was now around a quarter past 7. He circled the bus stop. No blacked-out eyes. No Asian girls. EMM, DANIEL STONE It was a poster of Audrey Tatou for Coco Chanel, a speech bubble by her lips spelling out the above in black marker ink. Daniel cocked an eyebrow, took out an earphone. Of course he found amusement from this little coincidence, and took a snap. Bus 131 pulled in. *** His smile faded to an embarrassed squiggle when harangued by two different beggars on the walk from his stop to work, the Office Angels temp agency. He did the usual shrug to show he had no change, patting his pockets, when really he didn’t want to wench out his wallet and sift through pound coins and 50ps for ten pence coins, ever conscious of their reproachful eyes. For the second beggar he patted his pockets, conscious of a loose and pathetic penny or two dancing within, tongue-tied as always. But his tongue was silver-smooth by the time he walked through the door, winking at the receptionist he’d been recently fondling, the admin girls he got off with when he first started the job, and the ever-fuming accountant from the third floor. 8.30: time to screen the various bohemians, graduates and hoodlums signing up for work. 10 hours and over a dozen men and women later, and Dan pried for a bite before home with a couple of new numbers on his phone, wink wink. The sun was

setting, the sky settling into a cool blue... He stopped at a pole by a bus stop to remind himself of the number for his first step back home. EMM JUICY LIKE..... DANIEL STONE It was written in black marker inside of a speech-bubble, uttered by a talking 99p McDonald”s burger. “Emm juicy like,” mouthed a transfixed Daniel before the bus stop poster, taking out his ear phones. The reason this particular tag chilled his spine was because “Hot and Juicy Like” was the tag-line for his Wondaland blog, which he occasionally updated with news of occasional PAs and club nights he was putting on, alongside the odd DJ set at grimey/DnB clubs. “Daniel Stone...” he mumbled, taking a few steps back to take a snap. Luwam was the name of the girl he bumped into. A little shorter than Daniel, she looked up at the lanky black afro boy who’d just walked into her, baby-faced with an incongruously smart and mature undone suit jacket and white shirt wrapped around his frame with no tie in sight, black trousers and leather shoes to boot. Daniel looked down at the small girl with bird bones tea-cosied up in blue mittens, a green beanie and an indigo duffel coat. Her up-tilted almond puppy eyes were framed by almond frames double the size of them. “Sorry sweet.” “Well...you should be more careful.” She seemed around 25, 26, an older woman. “Sorry, it’s just...” He dared to peek over his shoulder at the taunting speech bubble. “I”m having a weird day.” “Ok. Why?” He cut himself short and peered into her eyes with a frown. “Someone’s been writing my name around the city.” Luwam peered over his shoulder. “Are you Daniel Stone?” “Yeah.” “Yeah, I”ve seen these pop up around the last couple of weeks.” Her accent was well-bred. “And you think you”re the person they mean?” Daniel cut himself short again, changed tack. “You seen more of these then?”

“Yeah. I can show you?” Luwam was a freelance designer. Very impressive thought Daniel. A uni girl. “But I’m thinking about TEFLING in Africa. Follow my roots.” “TEFLING?” “Teaching.” She led him to a poster for the Billy Elliot musical by London Bridge station, lead actor in a mid-air jump by the title, above which someone had sprayed “DANIEL STONE MEETS” in giant lettering. “Daniel Stone meets Billy Elliot. Har har” said Luwam. Daniel couldn’t bring himself to laugh. Daniel Stone meets... was a recurring tag on his blog, used for posts of photos he’d had taken with various rappers at his events. “This is getting weirder.” Who was it? Some temp or company he annoyed through work? An ex? “You’re hot and juicy” was something he’d usually text girls. “Why do you think they want you? You just work at a temp agency you said.” “I think they found me on my blog. There’s a picture of me on there...” “So?” “I dunno. I don’t get it.” Maybe some MC he’d pissed off with monies for a gig? One of the NightWild squad, maybe RedMASK? “There’s more.”

They tried to stifle their giggles waiting at another overcrowded bus stop, within feet of a madman tapping a metallic box like a bongo drum, blathering about conception and Mother Mary in a kaleidoscope of voices. The next Daniel Stone sighting was by a park with a ping pong patch, another Emm Daniel Stone but this time on a poster for the Scott Pilgrim movie, stuck to a phone box. There wasn’t much shock felt with this new discovery though, Dan finding that the girl was doing a good job quelling his qualms. “Where do you live by the way?” he asked her. “Morden.” “That’s far-off...” “Yeah, but...this is more fun.” “...Fancy a game?” And dusk fell as they played. The final tag Luwam had seen was bubbled on a Missing Cat poster, the moggy asking for “his” Daniel Stone. This time Dan laughed, but it was an uncomfortable chuckle. Did it mean he was gonna go missing himself ? The thought lingered as the two began their journeys home, armed with takeaways. “I”m loving the bus. Usually I get the tube” mused Dan, looking out at the street. “Get to see a lot of London I usually don”t.” “I always bus it.” Luwam was flicking through a copy of the morning”s Metro paper. “Andy boy, got a hot tip for you...” It was a middle aged chap in a beard and flat-cap in the seat in front of the pair. “Yeah yeah, I just did it outside the stations. Listen - the crowd loves Badly Drawn Boy mate. I sung Once Around the Block again and the coppers were rakin in. Almost ten quid for one song! Mate, that”s the magic weapon. Yeah, yeah. And keep it to yourself - Manchester can have it, but not London, get me yeah.” Luwam smiled at Dan. “You know that song?” “What song?” “Once Around the Block.” Daniel shook his head. “I”ve got it here” and she dunked an ear phone into his left ear. “Love this.” A jazz guitar wah-wahs in. Drum beats jazz-patter like the rain. A vibraphone

starts up with an aura of wonder and warmth and Daniel Stone is in love. Luwam pauses it. “Dan, look here.” A piece in the Metro”s back page “noticeboard” TO DANIEL STONE Thank you for your kindness over recent months. You don”t know it, but your soul and rhythms have kept the sunshine shining in for me and so many others day to day. This is the only way I know how to express my deep gratitude for you and all you have done. Everyone should get the chance to meet you Daniel Stone. Love and light, a friend forever “What do you think?” “I dunno. It can”t be me. I”ve never really helped anyone.” He wondered if it was meant to be sarcastic. “Maybe that”s the point...?” Dan couldn”t be bothered to think about it anymore, if there was any connection between this and his name being splashed around town like so much red paint. He pressed the Play pad to continue her song. Trying to outrun your fears... *** The strike had finished a few hours before. Hugging their goodbyes at Charing X, the pair realised they were standing before a police plea for witnesses. “Hm...” hummed Luwam as her eyes scanned the noticeboard by the ticket barriers, head resting on Dan”s chest. His eyes too scanned the messages of love written around the official typed lettering, hearts and xx kisses, all in honour of a teen killed the other week at that very station. “Hm” agreed Dan. They pecked each other on the cheek, Luwam shying her head away back into his chest before they could try anything more. Later she would regret this on the last ride back home, her train snaking slowly into its dwelling in the cold speckled dark, last stop on the Northern line. Daniel stayed awake until the minus hours, thinking of the girl. On his bed in his work clothes, he listened to the Badly Drawn track again, flicking through her Metro, brow furrowed as he tried to figure out the clues, going through the pics he took one more time. “Are they gonna come get me tonight?” he wondered, thinking of a rap at the window, a girl gang armed with scissors and cord. And

then he saw the halo and cut-out head of a smiling bearded rastaman on the second page of the notices saying MEET ME, a small grainy b&w ad for Daniel Stone: Juicy Rock, a collection of Christian reggae classics. “What?” muttered Daniel. Limited copies come with a live DVD of Daniel performing with the Lewisham All Girl Go-spell choir. “God”s teeth!” he exclaimed and laughed, lolling his head back onto his pillow, embarrassed about his actions the past day in light of this revelation, disappointed too to tell the truth, but glad of his small adventure with Luwam. And he went to sleep thinking of the girl. At the same time, a young man got his face mask and rainbow array of spray cans ready, finally about to complete his Archway masterpiece, this time planning to add a woman engulfed in the genie-puff fumes before the platypus, a Birth of a Venus in a short white t-shirt and purple jeans, standing upon a rock.

Book Club

WRITERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TALK Giacomo Lee talks pretending, mysterious tags, and his love for music

Interview: Ekaterina Sverdlova

Giacomo Leeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut novel Red Trick was published by Blank Screen in 2012. Other works by the author ca be found in Poxymash Magazine and New Asian Writing 2010 anthology. For more short stories by Giacomo Lee visit elegiacomo.tumblr.com.

t all began at uni. I joined the student paper and was writing music reviews non-stop for three years. I have a love for music and writing and together it was a potent combination! I know it’s not fiction but that’s where I started to discipline myself, and it’s how I got that first buzz, seeing my name in print, being proud of my work. I really put a lot of thought into each review - I loved that challenge of trying to put across what I was hearing through words, and trying to be entertaining while at it, concise, clear. Emm, Daniel Stone is really an ode to my first year in the capital. 2010, all over again. When I first moved to London, I kept seeing the same tag around the city, in different areas. Emm, Daniel Stone. Central London, zones 3 and 4. Everywhere. I didn’t get the joke. There was nothing on the internet. So other people had noticed, but there were only two Flickr photos out there, and their unloaders didn’t know what was going on either. The mystery continued

until one day, on my lunchtime walk around Leicester Square, the same walk I’d been doing for more than a year, I came across a bin by the station, and on it was a little square piece of paper, black and white photocopy quality. It was an advert for an album by Daniel Stone. From what I could see, he’s a reggae artist based in London. But if you try Googling him, you find the same lack of info as before. He’s a rare thing: a purely physical presence in our digitally layered world. As Flanner y O’Connor put it, “I write to discover what I know. It’s the only chance in waking life to evaluate yourself, and all around you”. It’s a chance to get all thats’s stored in your subconscious out there in a sort of recognisable form. I used to write a lot about white men pretending to be someone else, then being discovered. Maybe I’m a white man pretending to be someone else? Anyway, it’s boring to write, and to read. Now I write in other voices. Other races, and sexes. I am pretending to be someone else.

THE NIGHT AT THE RIVER by Camac Johnson

hey gathered at the river in the dead of night, three men and a boy. Only two were needed for the work. The extra hands were for later, to hasten their exit with the spoils. Kyle and Hugo stood between alders, the leafy canopy ten feet overhead. They watched the far bank, Kyle distracted by the flickering lightning and heavy rainclouds high in the glen. Cattle moved away from the trees, their farmyard smell carried on the breeze. Ahead, a distant glow marked the village. The pair waited. They were cousins: Kyle a strapping lad of fifteen, Hugo the elder by six years. He had persuaded the boy that this was something not to be missed. A flashlight shone briefly on the far bank. Hugo returned the signal. He started forward. “C’mon.” Kyle held his cousin back. “Not above the pool.” He led the way downriver through a patch of head-high balsam.

Seedpods exploded as they passed, sounding like the faraway rattle of gunfire. They forded at a fast-running shallows; inky blackness all around. Kyle wore a rugby shirt, shorts and old trainers. The muggy air drew perspiration from his upper body. The water level was above normal, the flow fast after the lashing rain. Kyle had the jitters. Normally the river held no fears – but nature had to be respected. Finn waited on the bank. The fourth man stayed back. The cousins had been warned. Kyle wondered again, who could it be? Why the mystery? It was Finn’s show; Kyle was merely the junior stagehand. The helper’s help. Hugo and Finn’s friendship surprised many. They were opposites: one city reared; the other a young farmer who rarely left this coastal valley. One Catholic; one Presbyterian. The cousins summered in the glen and, against the odds, had bonded with Finn. They helped on the farm, relishing the work, the change from city life. Words were unnecessary. Earlier, Finn had talked them through it. Now he and Mystery Man unfolded the net. The selected pool had easy access from a stony shore; no snags. Kyle’s unease had mounted to the point where he had to act. He was a first-timer and his conscience troubled him – but of greater concern was the threat from the elements. He jumped down onto the shore as the two men waded in. “Water’s high, Finn.” The poacher turned on him. ‘No names! Eejit!’ The rebuke stung. As if the bailiff would be about in the wee hours, Kyle thought. The fourth man maintained a ghost-like silence. He wore some kind of hooded top, maybe an anorak, and was thickset. From his stance and movement Kyle guessed he was the oldest by some way. Who the hell . . . ? Finn knew and Finn wasn’t telling. Upriver, the lightning flashes continued. Finn’s grandfather had achieved lasting fame – some called it infamy – by taking the heaviest fish anyone could recall coming out of the Antrim glens. Half a

hundredweight. A few years after Miss Ballantyne’s record sixty-four pounder from the Tay. Finn carried on the tradition: it was common knowledge. Hugo had pleaded with Finn. His cousin’s enthusiasm had swept Kyle along. Deep down though, Kyle felt uncomfortable. He loved to fish. The fish had a choice: to take the bait or not. With the net, only small stuff escaped. Several times he’d come close to pulling out. Hugo would have called him a sissy. The poachers moved along the pool, the net held between them. Finn worked the difficult end in deep water. Earlier, he had admitted conditions were not ideal. But his sister’s wedding was a few days hence and he had an agreement with the caterer to supply salmon. Surplus fish would go to local hotels and restaurants, no questions asked. Apart from the music of the water and the intermittent rumble of thunder, the night was silent. Kyle imagined he was in Africa. Wild Africa. He had an insatiable appetite for wildlife films and books; and if they pertained to Africa, so much the better. In his daydreams he had fought a Zulu impi, dug through blue clay for diamonds and faced all the dangerous beasts. A cacophony of frog and insect sounds started up . . .The water was around Finn’s upper chest. Another few minutes and he would be in position to come ashore, closing the net. On the bank Kyle shivered from the wet cold of his lower body. His thoughts drifted off to the Serengeti . . . Mystery Man’s cry shattered the silence. A moment later he was gone. Deep in Africa, Kyle’s first thought: crocodile attack! *** A wave of floodwater had entered the pool, silently, without warning. Kyle snapped out of his reverie. He shouted to his cousin to look to Finn, then sprinted along the bank. The surface was sheep pasture, the grass cropped. The way was clear to the fence two hundred yards ahead. The moon remained hidden and the water resembled a vast black sheet. Ahead, past the fence, lay a copse of ash and sycamore. To maintain his sprint through the trees would be impossible. Kyle feared his race along the bank had been in vain. With trees looming ahead, he spotted something in mid-river; pale, indistinct against the dark water. The anorak? Kyle heard a sound. It could have been the wind in the trees; it could have been Mystery Man’s stifled cry. Vaulting the fence, he landed awkwardly on a tree root. He swore and scrambled to his feet. The way seemed clear to the river, a passage through the trees.

Kyle went for it. He dashed through unscathed and long-jumped into the river. Rocks made a dive too risky. He hit without mishap, surfaced tasting peat from the storm-ravaged heights. The water was chill, but less cold than the sea waiting a mile downriver. All around him was black. The force of the floodwater, tugging him this way and that, felt like a living thing – Kyle its prey in the throes of a life or death struggle. Lifting his head, he gulped a long draught of air. Was that a raised arm – or a floating branch? Since hitting the water, Kyle had let himself be carried. Now he used his arms and legs to power forward. His shoes hindered him. He tried not to think of them. His aim was out and he took another sighting, another power swim. They bumped and Kyle grabbed a hold. Feeling the heavy bulk of the man, Kyle realized the hard work was just beginning. “Kick for the bank,” he shouted. “Kick!” Most of the man’s kicks landed as blows on Kyle’s legs which nullified the boy’s efforts. They seemed to be making no headway. A bend took them closer to the bank. Kyle summoned what remained of his strength and side-swam clutching his heavy burden. His senses shut down, swamped by the surging torrent. Mystery Man coughed and struggled. Kyle’s shoulder struck a rock. He snatched at it but they were past in a trice. As his grip weakened so his worries increased. Where was the bank? Had he become disorientated? Weakness was about to force him to abandon the man to the river. The sky seemed to change. Kyle realized it was a tree overhead. With renewed hope he struggled on until at last his feet touched solid ground. It took several minutes to haul his prize from the river’s grasp. Barely pausing to draw breath, Kyle laid Mystery Man on his stomach and straddled him. He pressed down on the well-fleshed back, trying to remember the life-saver drill he had read on the internet. Out of the darkness a hissing ghost attacked, a pale flapping demon intent on ridding its riparian realm of their unwanted presence. Kyle stood weakly and met the swan’s onslaught, forcing it back along the bank. After a fit of coughing and retching, the man managed a few words. “Jaysus . . . I thought t’was the divil himself come to welcome me to hell . . . what a carry on . . .” Another bout of coughing gripped him. “Ah . . . sure, I’m not dead yet.” That voice . . . not the local accent. Kyle had an inkling of the man’s identity. He was having trouble believing what his ears were telling him. He stood and pulled

the man to his feet. With propitious timing the moon chose that moment to break free of its shroud. Kyle stared into the river-soaked, bedraggled face of the parish priest. Mystery Man no longer. “God bless you, son.” “I . . . I’m not Catholic, Father.” “I know your people. God bless you.” The priest made the sign of the cross and his lips moved in a whispered prayer. He crossed himself again and wrapped Kyle in a bear hug. When he was sufficiently recovered they began making their way across a field. Past the field was the road where they would go their separate ways. “Secrets of the confessional, Father?”The priest laughed, a hearty glad-to-be-alive chuckle that petered out, replaced by a spluttering cough. “There’s another angle . . . In famine times poachers kept families alive. The river’s a link to the past.”Another coughing fit seized him. It was several minutes before he could continue. Kyle stayed with him. The priest wheezed, “Jaysus, I’ll murder the brandy when I’m home and out o’ these wet togs.”Kyle found himself liking the man. “This gets out I’m in trouble,” the priest said. “Safe with me,” Kyle said. “You’re the last man I expected.” On the dark, quiet road the priest grasped Kyle’s hand. “I was a goner on a one-way ticket. You rose to the challenge, defied the odds. Just a kid with your life ahead of you. You’ll remember this night.” He pulled something from his wet clothing. “This may bring comfort at times.” Kyle felt beads and . . . a crucifix. A rosary. *** His ankle hurt from the fall over the root. He limped home and found the household awake. Hugo had raised the alarm and Kyle’s father, mother and sister were dressed and about to set off on a search. Shameful, was his father’s comment. As an ardent fly-fisherman, he saw poachers as the enemy. He could not hide his disgust that Kyle should stoop so low. Kyle deferred his defense. He sensed barely suppressed pride in his father’s angry outburst. In the celebration that had greeted Kyle’s safe return, Hugo’s joy was noticeably muted. Kyle saw that his cousin’s face wore a troubled, haunted look.

“Finn okay?” “Gone before I could react.” Kyle’s mother intervened. “Finn knows the river like nobody else. He’s probably home now. Your Da’s going over there. Kyle, get this hot soup down you and yourself into the bath. You look like a half-drowned water rat, so you do. You boys are going nowhere. You’ve caused enough trouble for one night.” Kyle’s father paused at the door. “Who was it you fished out?” Kyle had been dreading this moment. Rarely had he ever lied to his father. But he had given his word to the priest. A man of God. A flash of insight pointed the way. “It was pitch-black and he didn’t give a name.” No word of a lie. *** Finn did not return home. Neither household slept but waited impatiently for first light. Word had spread and people began scouring the riverbanks. The police were not notified. The feeling was that Finn would show up wondering what all the fuss was about. The river search proved fruitless. A few minutes before eight, the morning’s first beach-walker noticed something odd. Gulls were gathered out on the water. They screeched and flew around – herring gulls and black-backed gulls – dropping on something being carried on the incoming tide. On her return walk the woman stopped by the two black-faced ewes lying lifeless at the waterline. She recognized the paint markings: the sheep belonged to her uncle who farmed two miles upriver. Her dog had scared off the gulls. Something else out there interested them. As she watched, two hooded crows veered from their flight across the bay to investigate. The woman decided to wait before going home to phone her uncle. Looking over to the estuary she noticed the line where brown river water met grey-blue salt water was further out today, a testament to the strength of last night’s deluge. Whatever was floating in on the tide was no sheep. It was a dark mass – kelp, she imagined. She was impatient to get to the phone but this was not something seen every day. She waited on the sand. The sun peeked through the clouds and she saw it was a fishing net, white-streaked with bird doo. Probably old and abandoned. The birds were working on something within the entanglement of the

net. Curiosity kept her rooted to the spot. The dog barked. The crows and gulls squabbled and rose reluctantly. She saw that they had been feeding on something pale coloured. Perhaps a jellyfish or the belly of a flat fish. The net drifted closer. The woman screamed and her stomach heaved as she turned away from the grotesque mask, the raw, bloody, eyeless thing that had once been a human face. *** Dead men tell no tales. Finn wasn’t going to name his accomplices. The whole thing might blow over without the cousins’ involvement coming to light. But Finn’s family knew. Someone would be sure to talk . The police took statements from Hugo and Kyle. To Kyle’s disbelief he found his story questioned. A big copper said, “Sounds fishy . . .” Smiling at his word choice. “. . . this Mystery Man. Maybe you and your cousin netted the pool with Finn.” Kyle’s father exploded. “Maybe you should get up off your fat arse! You’ll find four sets of footprints, two leaving the river where he indicated.” A knock. A police officer stuck his head round the door. The questioner heaved himself up, a grateful look on his face, and left the room. They were excused a few minutes later, Kyle with the impression that the police had just learned something important.Kyle spent hours thinking it through. “It was the damned net,” he told Hugo. “Finn could have saved himself but wouldn’t let go.” *** The wedding went ahead. The bride had called for a postponement but bowed to the wishes of the majority who felt Finn would not have wanted the plans changed. Salmon was removed from the menu, to no one’s surprise. The priest conducted both services: the marriage and the funeral Mass. A month later he took an abrupt holiday, surprising his housekeeper by giving only a day’s notice. He never returned to the glen.

Book Club

WRITER’S TALK Camac Johnson talks Africa, nature and how it affected his writing

Interview: Ekaterina Sverdlova

Camac Johnson’s A Night at the River was longlisted in The Chapter One International Short Story Competition 2011, and was included in an anthology, Tales of Tremendous Tragicide, recently published by Tranquillity Publishing. His novel Hemingway Quest will soon be self-published on Amazon Kindle. Anyone wishing to follow Camac Johnson’s progress can do so at camacjohnson.blogspot.co.uk

irstly, writers have the chance to achieve immortality - to be read and discussed long after they’re gone. Secondly, to start with nothing - a blank page or screen and after an hour have filled it with an orderly sequence of words, leaves the writer in a state of euphoria. Few other things in life bring such intense satisfaction. My story is about a river tragedy, a priest, illegal netting of salmon, and a boy becoming a man. It was originally part of my novel, Hemingway Quest, then I realized it would make a short story on its own. As a boy I got to know a river intimately. I listened to countless fishing tales told before roaring fires and in pubs with people from the surrounding countryside. One tale was of a Catholic priest who became involved with salmon poachers. Following a drowning, the Church quietly removed him from the area. My story is fiction partly based on fact.

As a young man I moved from Northern Ireland to South Africa. There I was a farm manager and a salesman. I went to the nature reserves often, where I saw lions and elephants. This love of animals made me write a children’s novel Klipspringer Hill (a klipspringer is a type of small African antelope). The characters in the story are all animals. I’ve had this story checked by a literary consultant - an expert, I think - and I want to send it to publishers or agents very soon. Perhaps this year I will make a few pounds from my writing - after going for years and earning nothing! Has Africa affected my writing? Oh, yes I’m sure. I was there for fourteen years and although I’ve been away a long time I still think of it almost every day. As you know, the UK is a small country overcrowded with people. So British writers tend to write about domestic situations - family strife, jobs and friends. That’s not my thing. I would rather read and write about life outside of towns and cities.

ROOM 6 by Leanne Warner

nnaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elder sister Nina lived four hours away from her. When Nina got a new, significantly more lucrative job offer, she moved to Hawthorne, to her first apartment. At 21, living alone was new to her, though she had settled into her flat faster than, Anna recalled, anything else she had ever settled into in her life, prompting thoughts that perhaps she had grown much more mature than Nina could ever remember in a short space of time. Visiting her had been hard to make time for, and whenever Anna could scrape together the funds to drive up there for a couple of days, Nina was always working 6 day weeks, anyway, leaving little time for bonding; at least during the daytime. The drive was long and unpleasant, taking Anna along a lot of motorways but just as many narrow country lanes, and she could never make the entire trip without stopping either to use the facilities or to pump herself full of caffeine just so she could make it through the journey. Tonight was different. Tonight was a winter night, one

in which the sun fell below the horizon earlier than everybody was permitted to leave work, leaving Anna driving to Hawthorne in the dark. Sitting in the services café where one of the friendliest male workers was beginning to know her by name, it was becoming blindingly obvious to her that the coffee, loaded with extra espresso, was not working. Perhaps, after this week of staying up late at night to work on personal projects was catching up to her, or worse, had helped her grow an immunity against even coffee-shop-strength caffeine. The thought of climbing back into her silver Ford Fiesta and driving for two and a half more hours made her want to be sick. Minutes after finishing her coffee, Anna found in herself the strength to push herself to standing from her comfortable booth, wave shortly to the friendly barista and shuffle back to her car, rubbing tired eyes almost the whole walk back like she was returning to bed from the bathroom in the middle of the night. This would not do. Sitting in the car, Anna stared up at the Rest Stop Lodge sign glaring neon lights, advertising that they had vacancies available and the mere thought of slipping into a freshly cleaned hotel bed with crisp sheets and extra blankets had her toes curling in her sneakers. For nearly fifteen minutes she dreamt, ironically, of sleeping, perhaps even dozing off for a couple of minutes there in the quarter filled car park of the services station and this was when she decided that she would not finish the drive tonight. Nor would she stay at the Lodge, whose sign was beating down on her head and making it ache. No. There was a charming B&B not far from here, at the next exit on the motorway. It would likely be cheaper than the Lodge, anyway, and doubtlessly be much quieter, so much farther away from main roads. The quaint old building was much easier to find than she had been expecting, and waiting at the counter behind a well out of date newspaper was an old lady who was just as charming as the building itself, a thin rope hanging from the earpieces of her glasses around her neck. The pen laying on the desk not far from her suggested she may have been doing and either completed or given up on a crossword. “Vacancies?” Asked Anna, suddenly dreading what she would do if the old lady said there were none. “Of course, dear. There’s always a vacancy.” The old lady, smiling sweetly but not looking up from her well-thumbed paper, took a key from a drawer by her knees and placed it on the desk in front of Anna. “Number 6. Down the hall, last door on the left. Check out is at noon.”

“Don’t I have to pay before I go in?” “No, dear.” “You trust guests to do the right thing?” She asked, wondering how many people must have taken advantage of the kind old lady and skipped out on the bill, slipping past her in the morning to avoid paying for a single night here. “I have faith in the human race.” The old lady admitted, a small shrug accompanying her as she did. A knitted shawl was wrapped around her shoulders. She seemed very quiet and easily contented. “That’s rare these days.” Commented Anna, her fingers sliding over the key, pulling it off of the surface and catching it in her palm. “Thank you. I’ll see you in the morning.” “Have a good night.” The old lady wished, and Anna almost felt bad leaving her alone at the front desk while she went off to sleep in her (hopefully) comfortable hotel room. “I’m sure I will. Thank you.” Anna was already half way down the hallway when she finished the sentence, able to see room number 6 from significantly far away. The key slid into the lock like it was oiled, although turning it was a stiffer job. Opening the door made her feel she were stepping into a completely different building, one less enchanting but just as homely and infinitely more modern; modern enough to make Anna worry how much she would be paying in the morning when she checked out. Large, white, unglazed porcelain tiles panelled the floor of the main room, the open space filled by a roasted coffee coloured rug. Pushed against the side wall was the bed, dressed in white sheets with a similar coffee- coloured runner laying across the bottom. A framed mirror was hanging on the opposite wall above a television set that, the only out of the ordinary object in this room, may have been older than Anna was. “Nothing’ll be on, anyway.” She muttered, dropping her bag onto the floor beside the bed with a dull thud. The room was nice, it didn’t smell damp like the hallway and front desk, but despite having been so sleepy a short while ago, Anna did not feel ready to settle into bed just yet. Through the door into the bathroom, Anna found herself enticed by the bathtub and, spotting some cheap but pleasant smelling bubble bath waiting on the side of the tub, silently decided this to be her next action. The tub filled fast; that or Anna kept dozing off while she sat on the closed toilet seat waiting for it to fill. She dropped her clothes in a cluttered pile and lowered herself into the tub, letting the bubbles surround and envelope her.

Heavenly was too weak a word to describe the utter relaxation that overcame her body as the hot water and sweet smelling bubbles cushioned and hugged her skin, leaving her feeling supple and tranquil. This... this was exactly what a bubble bath should be. This was the bath those women in the bubble bath commercials were having. It didn’t last. Minutes after she settled in, there was a click!, the click of the door unlatching and swinging slowly open. Reflexively, Anna’s arms rushed to cover herself and she sat up, eyes watching the door, water splashing and sloshing everywhere loudly. Maybe the old woman had forgotten she was in here and was coming in to clean or something. Catching her breath after the brief shock, Anna tried to peer around the door from where she was sitting, but could see nothing but the glare from the bedroom lamp she had left on. A millisecond before blinking, she thought she noticed a shadow pass by the glare, but a further 60 seconds of watching and waiting in absolute silence proved that it was nothing but her imagination, maybe a bug flying past the light. Ignoring the now open door, grateful that it would filter out some of the steam and hot air. She laid back in the tub, closing her eyes with her head facing the ceiling. Some people cannot stand silence. Anna adored it, preferred it to any music or television noise, she sometimes wore headphones just to block out ambient noise. And the silence remained for the rest of the time she remained in the bathtub. So relaxed, her eyes did not even open until she sat up to get out. Anna was now wrapped warmly in two towels, one around her torso and the other around her shoulders as she stepped out into the main room again. She froze on doing so. The room was completely trashed. The duvet was thrown, tangled with the runner, in a wad on top of the mattress. Anna’s clothes were spilling out of her bags on the floor, the rug was pushed against the wall, deformed into a scruffy C shape on the tiles. Across the mirror was a smear, like somebody had swiped greasy fingers across it while walking past. The entire room was just upturned, like somebody had ransacked the place looking for something that Anna hoped they had found, just so they wouldn’t be back. That meant that somebody had been in here while she was soaking, there was no other explanation for how the room got like this. With a chill running very suddenly down her back, Anna grabbed some clothes from the pile on the floor that used to be in her bag, and threw them on, patches of

water soaking through from her skin, creating dark splodges. In a grey camisole and black pyjama bottoms, she rushed out into the hallway, clutching her room key and skidded to a halt as she reached the front desk. However, it was vacant. The old lady had, apparently, gone to her own room for the night. Not knowing which room that was, Anna stood in the lobby for a few minutes, making no sounds or movements, unsure how to proceed. Someone, or something, had been in her room. How that was possible was another matter entirely. Anna had laid there in the tub in utter silence. Relishing complete silence meant that her hearing was impeccable. With the door open like it was, there was just no possible way the room could have been trashed like that without her hearing something. The hotel was dead. Dead of all sound. Anna could hear nothing from any of the other rooms, of which there were 6, and she started to think she was maybe the only person in here, but she had seen notes on the board behind the counter showing at least 2 rooms occupied, her own not included. This did not make sense, it was as though she had entered a parallel universe while in the bathtub, one where hotel rooms inexplicably became messy. Maybe I fell asleep, in the tub, thought Anna, beginning to calm down now she had had the time to breathe and assess herself out here, half dressed and half crazed. She still would have to deal with the realisation that something had trashed her room, but if she had fallen asleep without recalling, that would account for her not hearing anything. Beginning a walk of shame back to her assigned room, Anna rubbed her upper arms, the cold of her still drying body getting to her out here, a draft gusting in through underneath the main, locked, entrance doors. Again, she slid the key into the lock, remember the stiff feel of trying to turn it and the door eased itself open. With her fingertips, she pushed it open quicker and was greeted to an even more startling sight.The room was immaculate again. Exactly as she had left it before taking a bath. The bed was freshly made, as before; the mirror was absolutely spotless and clean, as before; her clothes were still in her bags, as before... “I...” Began Anna aloud, very aware she was speaking to herself, “need to stop drinking coffee... and start sleeping.” She was speaking aloud in hopes it would

cement itself in her brain, that perhaps she might believe it if she heard it, like it was a simple, obvious diagnosis. It had to be the cause, though. How else could this happen? What were the chances it was suddenly back to normal once she left the room? Anna flicked on the main light, washing out the lamp like a raindrop in a puddle. Slightly more at ease now that the room was not a mess, she switched off the lamp and took a seat on the bed to gather her thoughts. Her toes sunk into the fluffy rug on the floor and she noted to herself how it also was back to how it was before, perfectly placed, not scrunched up against the wall. Before long, she was curled up in the foetal position above the covers, because this was the position she found most comfortable. She had intended just to think for a while, then shut off the light and climb underneath the covers and fall asleep; but she instead managed to fall asleep above them, with the lights still on. Hours later, she found out there was a digital clock on the beside table. This was because she woke up, realizing the light was still beating down on her, illuminating the entire room needlessly. The digital clock, a white box with red numbers, read 3:04am. Like a zombie, Anna crawled off the bed and onto her feet, lurching and shuffling and rubbing her eyes as she walked towards the door, where the switch was. She clicked it off, ignoring the very dull, very muffled thud that happened at the same time, that sounded like a purse falling from a nightstand onto a carpet. On her stagger back to the bed in the pitch black, she tripped up on a warm lump, and reminded herself mentally to pick up the towels when she woke up in the morning. After climbing under the covers, it did not take her long at all to fall asleep again. This time, she did not wake until morning. Sunlight streamed through a thin gap in the curtains, bathing the room and Anna in a healthy orange glow. Despite all that had happened last night, she felt very rested, very refreshed, and slowly began to sit up, ready to get up and get her things together. She stretched, an exaggerative stretch accompanied by a yawn and she pushed back the covers. Anna took her toothbrush and toothpaste and spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom, splashing her face with cool water, catching up on her dental hygiene and dressing herself, and was soon almost ready to go. Annaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother had worked as a hotel maid before, and it was hearing stories from her that made Anna always try to leave any hotel room she stayed in as clean as possible before she left it, so she picked the towels up from the bathroom floor and-...

The bathroom floor? She-... Hadn’t she tripped over these same towels during the night? In the bedroom? Dropping the towels onto the closed toilet seat, she jogged out to the bedroom again and what she saw had her sprinting, grabbing all of her things and rushing out of this room once and for all. As she dashed to the front desk, she rustled in her handbag for her purse and ripped out a small wad of cash. “This should cover it, I don’t care about change or anything, just take this.” She told the old lady, who was back to reading that same damn newspaper, with those same damn glasses with the same damn string hanging around her neck, and Anna slammed approximately £60, and the key, down on the desk. “Goodbye.” She finished, ignoring the old lady’s calm protests and questions of what was wrong. Anna just threw her bags into her car, leapt into the front seat and began to drive, not caring whether she was going in the right direction or not, just as long as she was moving away from this place. *** When Anna had rushed back out to the bedroom after finding the towels in the bathroom, she had seen a clear path from the light switch to the bed. She had been unable to see anything she could have possibly tripped over during the night, not even the rug, which was a good two feet away from where she had walked. Whatever she had tripped over in the night had not been there this morning. Whatever she had tripped over in the night was warm. Whatever she had tripped over in the night had not been there before she turned out the lights... *** “No wonder.” Scoffed the old lady, opening the door to room 6 and seeing it left an absolute pig sty, covers and sheets thrown sloppily over the bed, the soft rug pushed up against the wall, various smears across the mirror and white towels laying on the floor by the bed. At least, the old lady thought, she paid £40 more than she needed to. This made having to clean the place up easier work, knowing she was being indirectly compensated for it. Still, she released a gentle sigh and switched on the lamp to illuminate the bed area, her old eyes appreciating the extra light, and she ignored the very dull, very muffled thud that happened at the same time, a foot or so behind her.

Book Club

WRITER’S TALK Leanne Warner talks horror stories and what’s so inspiring about the genre

Interview: Ekaterina Sverdlova

he amazing thing about writing to me is being able to watch the whole thing play out in my head like a movie. It’s surreal how much you can get to know your characters and watch the stories go in a direction you had no idea it would go in. All my stories usually have a dark twist or fantasy-based subplot or characters. I love most of all to write horror, because it’s so rare that I get true inspiration for this genre. I love horror stories so much because I absolutely adore the fact that something as simple as words on paper can well and truly terrify people. Myself included. It is always fun to experiment with is the notion of something seeming unimportant but then later realising that it was anything but. This story is really just about a tired girl looking for refuge and being very unlucky when she finds it. It’s about the uncertainty of whether or not your

mind is playing tricks on you and the sheer fear and aggravation that can come coupled with that uncertainty. In real life, my older sister really did move quite far away from me because of her job. So when my father and I visit her, we usually end up stopping at a services station and grabbing a coffee to wake us up for the rest of the drive. Sometimes on that drive, I think about what I would do if I were driving by myself, what I would do if I was too tired to drive for another hour or two even after having a coffee. Around the time I wrote Room 6, I was reading a lot of scary stories, and found myself favouring hotel based stories. Almost all of them are written in first person, and I started to wonder what happened when the protagonist left the hotel. Did the staff know about the goings on? Did they have to deal with them? That’s what inspired the last paragraph.

ARTICLES *

Curiousities

THE NIGHT READING LIST Celebrating the issue’s theme, Avid picks 10 eerie books that can send a chill down your spine and keep you awake until morning. Night is mysterious. Night is disturbing. All kinds if things happen at night. When it’s dark and quite, it’s easy to hear things you don’t want to hear, and see things that are not really there. Certain books – their suspense, twisted plots, wicked characters, and overall creepiness – fuel our imagination and make us sleep with lights on. If we are able to fall asleep at all, of course. Every fright-seeker probably has a special place in his heart for the genre classics: Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, Bram Stocker’s Dracula and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Avid presents its very own top nine of bloodcurdling, spine-tingling books (Stephen King excluded).

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

THE TURN OF THE SCREW (1898) by Henry James

here’s nothing quite like a classic Victorian ghost story to unset the nerves, and The Turn of the Screw is just that. And once you get used to the stiff language of the time, the unsettling tale will take shape. A young governess comes to the seclided Bly house to take care of two orphaned children, and keeps seeing ghosts of the deceased sevants. The story is full of uncertainties, and in the end you’ll keep wondering what was real and what might have been madness. The slowly building eeriness, unresolved tension and the ambiguous ending make this Victorian horror all more chilling. Well, that and the creepy kids.

BELOVED (1987) by Toni Morrison

ethe, the novel’s protagonist, was born a slave. Her new home in Ohio is haunted by the spirit of her baby, who died nameless under horrifying circumstances. Beloved is widely recognised for its straight-out, definitive exploration of the horrors of slavery, and sometimes we forget that it’s also one of the most terrifying ghost stories. Filled with bitter poetry, this novel has it all: dark secrets, vengeful baby, and suspense as taut as a rope. It also won a Pulitzer Prize. Not too shabby for a ghost story.

CHILD OF GOD (1973) by Cormac McCarthy

ormac McCarthy is always petrifying. The terror you experience reading this novel of his is primeval, the kind of terror that sinks into your stomach and jabs at your soft insides. It doesn’t have any fantasy monsters in it, but only one horrifying human being – Lester Ballard, who descends from the dregs of humanity to something below even that, progressing from cave-dwelling outcast to serial killer to necrophile.

THREATS (2012) by Amelia Grey

avid’s wife is dead. At least, he thinks she’s dead. Yet he’s finding bits and pieces of her everywhere. The little ominous notes he keeps finding in the most unusual places aroud the house say poetic and sinister things like “Curl up on my lap. Let me brush your hair with my fingers. I am testing for structural weakness in you skull.” It’s never clear who wrote them and if they are even real. In this spooky, atmospheric debut novel, readers enter a sterile, offbeat world of horror that is more David Lynch than Stephen King.

THE KILLER INSIDE ME (1952) by Jim Thompson

s a matter of fact, Jim Thompson’s novel is not a horror story, but a noir detective, still it is every bit as terrifying as any tale of unearthly creatures. It is a disturbing trip inside the mind of a cold-blooded psychopathic sadist, who is nevertheless unnervingly funny at times. Yet, it is crystal clear where Thompson stands – the antihero Lou Ford is a monster. We discover his sick nature and the reasons for his condition and watch his destructive relation with the prostitute Joyce unfold – not in a joyful voyeuristic Brett Easton Ellis way, but upsetting in its authenticity.

LULLABY (2002) by Chuck Palahniuk

huck Palahniuk’s fiction is always seeped in darkeness and also showcases the sickest humour imaginable. Lullaby is a wildly disturbing tale of magic and murder, featuring a wicked African chant that kills anyone who hears it. It follows a newspaper reporter Carl Streator; a real estate agent, specialising in haunted hauses; and a Wiccan as they set off on a journey across the States to track down the copies of the murderous rhyme. Although determined to stop anyone from using “the culling song,” the journalist puts it to use to get rid of annoying but still innocent people. A pit full of creepy, that’s how we would describe this book.

HOUSE OF LEAVES (2000) by Mark M. Danielewski

ssentially two books in one, this mind-blowing novel, on one side, is a study of a non-existent documentary about a house that constantly changes its interior and drives the residents insane; on the book’s other side the degenerate tattoo artist Johnny reads said study and frequently goes off on morbid tangents. Text in this book is often arranged in the strangest ways; numerous narrators interact with each other throughout the story; and along with the careful writing it makes House Of Leaves a brilliantly sinister read.

DROOD (2009) by Dan Simmons

rood imagines a scenario that led to the creation of Charles Dickens’ unfinished book The Mystery Of Edwin Drood. Here, after surviving the infamous train wreck that almost killed him, Dickens meets an enigmatic and ghoulish Edwin Drood, who becomes his obsession. Corpses start piling up as Dickens and his pal Wilkie Collins investigate the mysterious character. A thoroughly researched, exhaustively detailed, and uncompromisingly nightmarish read.

HEART-SHAPED BOX (2007) by Joe Hill

he set-up for the novel is simple: Jude Coyne, an aging rock star and an owner of macabre artifacts collection, buys himself a dead man’s suit. A haunted dead’s man suit. And when the malevolent spirit of the previous owner shows himself, Coyne has to fight for his life and his sanity.The debut by Joe Hill – who happens to be the son of the master of horror Stephen King – is a somewhat poetical and absolutely terrifying ghost story rooted in reality.

BEWARE OF THE SNOB As we move into the summer season of beach and hammock reading, many of us reach for guilty pleasure books. But is there a real reason to be ashamed?

Opinion: Ekaterina Sverdlova

e tend to think of books the way we often think of foods: there are those that are good for you and those that merely taste good. The literary hits of recent years clearly show that – even though we are happy to chew over Dostoyevsky and his fellow sophisticated writers – we really have a thing for light reads. Dan Brown’s historically controversial The Da Vinci Code is the number one bestseller of all times with more than five million copies sold. Twilight has an impressive sales of almost 2,5 million copies. The screen adaptation of Suzan Collins’ Hunger Games seems to have boosted the novel’s sales – last year it sold more than two million copies. And do I really need to mention the Harry Potter series? Here they are, the perfect examples of “junk food” novels that you read in one gulp, and then crave for more. They are compelling. They are fun. They are straightforward. All comers welcome. No special education required. Frankly, literary snobbery is hard to understand or abide. For how a sincere literature-lover cannot be pleased with a sight of someone devouring a book? Whether it’s Harry Potter, or Great Expectations – does it really matter? After all, Dickens too was once considered to be more of a sentimentalist and a caricaturist than a serious artist. Disdain towards popular literature is nothing new though. Back in 1713

Richards Steele of The Guardian, mocked the novel-reading audience, saying they “have no design in reading but for pleasure”. Readers simply seeking an enjoyable experience – is it really outrageous, though? When we think this way, what exactly do we mean by “enjoyment”? Arthur Krystal’s essay Easy Writers: Guilty Pleasures Without Guilt published in The New Yorker magazine suggests, isn’t it an escape from sometimes dull real life into a more enticing fictional world? And it’s up to the reader to choose who will lead the way, Thomas Mann or John Grisham. From the early days of the literary form in the eighteenth century, novels established the reputation of intelligible read, requiring from its audience simple literacy and nothing more. Its most offensive characteristic yet, to elitists like Steele, was the bawdy tabloid aspect of those first English narratives. They were fun. They were crude. They were bold. They kept readers on the edge of their seats and appealed right to the heart. Their characters constantly found themselves in quandaries and tight corners. All things that contemporary popular novels still do. But somewhere in the early twentieth century, novelists separated into two opposing camps. As popular fiction continued to please the masses, Modernists like Joyce, Woolf and

Faulkner decided the true job of the novelist was not mere storytelling. In their work plot became secondary to literary experimentations and a new emphasis on stylistic grace. The novels praised and promoted by the literati were increasingly sophisticated intellectually complex. While in the eighteenth century fiction was thought of as entertainment, it was now food for thought, worth being analysed and dissected by intellectuals. At this point exactly novels stopped being fun, thinks James W. Hall, the author of Hit Lit, an entertaining and eye-opening work on bestsellers and their appeal. Hall himself worked his way from a literary snob to an unbiased reader, who can equally appreciate popular literature and more sophisticated reads. This change occurred when he, back in 1984, was preparing for his new academic course on bestsellers. He recalls: “ I thought it would be great fun to read bunch of lousy bestsellers and show how inferior they were to the high-road literary novels. I was totally unready for Gone with the Wind and Scarlett O’Hara. I was surprised to realise that I actually loved the book full of clichés and I loved silly, stereotypical Scarlett like I hadn’t loved a literary character in decades. It put me back in touch

with my first reading experiences, that excitement of getting lost in a story.” Let’s face it, literary world is full of paradoxes. Myriad of lists tell people what are the “worthy” books they ought to want to read. Yet, you can’t argue about taste, because taste is something subjective. And it’s only after going through so many books, both great and not so great, that one is able to form a taste in literature. Literature fiction is critically acclaimed, while genre fiction is looked down on. Still, 1984 is a sci-fi and Emma is a romance novel. Both are among the ten greatest books ever written, according to the rating compiled by the likes of Stephen King and Tom Wolf. This list was published in The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, edited by the former The New Yorker authour J. Peder Zane. It is also said that one can hardly enjoy serious fiction, because it is difficult, hence boring. Nevertheless, no one denies the literary value of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a straightforward story full of thrill, an all-time favourite of ten-year olds. So let us think of light reads as a gateway drug. Once you’ve found one you love, books will forever hold a special allure. All comers welcome. No special education required.

THE PERKS OF NON-READING In How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read Pierre Bayard touches on the forbidden subject of unread books and argues that opining on books you’ve never opened is an art. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard; translated by Jeffrey Mehlman

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

he title How to talk About Books You Haven’t Read can be misleading. Although it sounds like one of those how-to handbooks for dummies, it is less an etiquette guide for wannabe literaties, than a

witty mediation on what it means not to have read a book. Pierre Byard, University of Paris literature professor, starts with a daring, straightforward confession: he

is an expert “non-reader”, duty bound to comment on books that most of the time he hasn’t even opened. It gets to the heart of a painfully familiar and embarrassing literary bind. Everyone has at least once found himself engaged in a conversation about a book he has never opened. The situation gets even more embarrassing if the book in question is from the “must-read” list – the significant classics, one is supposed to be familiar with; the fetishised Ulysseses of the world, reluctantly halfread and promptly forgotten; the next big thing everyone’s talking about. His argument, loosely speaking, is that, given it is impossible to read everything, we should not feel ashamed about it. After all, there is reading, and then there is reading. There are books you’ve skimmed and books you’ve read from cover to cover. There are books you’ve read a few pages of, yet got its the message; and there’re books you’ve spent ages reading and still can’t say what they are about. Finally, there are books you’ve heard so much about that we think we have actually read them Non-reading is a “genuine activity”, believes Byard. It implies an engagement with literature and is different from mere “absence of reading”. It is, in its core, an act of creativity, one’s ability to draw connections between books he has and has not read; analyse the context; pay attention to others and their reaction; and create his own

narrative. However, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read isn’t permission to dismiss reading. Bayard says: the more you read, the more reference points you have, and therefore the better you become at talking about books you haven’t read. Bayard’s tone is relentlessly tongue in cheek; it rests on the supposition that what he is saying is very naughty. He playfully jiggles literary theory and theories on aesthetic response; skips nimbly between schools of thoughts; and spices it up with literary anecdotes and entreating close reading of classic novels and – surprisingly – Groundhog Day. He mischievously introduces inaccuracies into his summaries of novels by Umberto Eco, David Lodge and Graham Greene, only to confess to the deceit and explain, that reading is a creative act. Every reader brings to books a certain history, capacity, and set of interests that shape how they make sense of them. So when we talk about books, we are really talking about entirely different things: I’m talking about my book and you are talking about yours, no matter whether the words we read are the same or not. Without being highbrow, Bayard presents the reader with a funny and thought-provoking research on the place of literature in our culture. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.

READ IT AT THE MOVIES The argument for books versus films is never going to end, and many seem to agree that the film never does the book justice. Can cinema ever be as good as the original?

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

merican film director Jim Jarmusch once said: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” Looking back over the last year’s most high-profile releases, it’s striking to see how often filmmakers turn to literature in search of inspiration and good stories. 2012 has seen a great deal of book-toscreen adaptation: from classics like Anna Karenina and The Great Expectations to cult novels like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and On the Road, to everyone’s favourites like The Hobbit and The Hunger Games to less celebrated titles like Lawless or Killing Them Softly. Transferring books to screen is never easy. What a paradox: the more mediocre the novel is, the greater its adaptation may turn out. Think The Godfather, or Jaws. “No fan base, no reverence to the original, no need to stick to the text – filmmakers are free to do whatever they like with it, and the resut is brilliant,” comments independent film critic Denis Rodimin. Light reads have exactly what

a solid film needs – an explicit story. The Hunger Games, or Harry Potter, or Twilight, or any other franchise based on a bestselling original aren’t easy to work with, though. There’s an enormous amount of pressure from fans and from the studio to deliver the material as straightforwardly as possible. Otherwise, devotees will revolt; perhaps the author will distance herself from it publicly; and the wave of ill feeling will crash over the casual viewers who can become wary about seeing the film at all. The greater the source is, the trickier is the task set for filmmakers – to tell a story, without losing its meaning; to render the spirit of a book in all its complexity, without sacrificing the needs of kinetic and fast-paced cinematic language. Also, a filmmaker may feel more obliged to subordinate his vision to the author’s – and creative people are less agile when they approach a project on bended knees. Back in 1967, in conversation with François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock ultimately explained why great books rarely make equally great films. The question Truffaut specifically put to the director was whether he would ever consider making a screen adaptation of an aminent novel such as Crime and Punishment. To which Hitch answered: “Well, I shall never do that, precisely because Crime and Punishment is somebody else’s achievement. And

even if I did, it probably wouldn’t be any good.” “Why not?” Truffaut asked. “Well, in Dostoevsky’s novel there are many, many words and all of them have a function.” “You mean that theoretically,” Truffaut prompted, “a masterpiece is something that has already found its perfection of form, its definitive form.” “Exactly,” Hitchcock answered, “and to really convey that in cinematic terms, substituting the language of the camera for the written word, one would have to make a six to ten-hour film. Otherwise, it won’t be any good.” This point might seem to be obvious, but it holds good. Novels are long. Cinema doesn’t have a luxury of unlimited time to unfold the story. Any two-hour feature film which attempts to render, in cinematic terms, the full complexity of a serious novel-length work of fiction is almost certainly doomed. And often, brutal decisions have to be made: plot lines are reduced; scenes are omitted; minor characters, that seem to play the same role, are combined into one. New scenes, plot threads and even completely different endings can be written into film adaptations of books to draw in a larger audience. More sex, more violence and more tragedy can up the numbers at the box office, and it’s hard to resent this success. That’s probably why some of the most satisfying screen adaptations have been

television serials – from the definitive 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice to the monumental 1981 ITV’s Brideshead Revisited – which allowed itself a luxurious 659 minutes to cover the novel’s 350-odd pages.

re-visitings of the classic plots. Hence, the complicated relationship between cinema and its literary source exist,” says the film critic. The secret of a successful transition from book to screen, thinks screenwriter Yuri Adamov, is to address literature and cinema as independent entities. Adamov, who himself reworked novels into screenplays, probably knows what makes a good adaptation. His most recent work, the screenplay for Alexander Sokurov’s 2011 film Faust, won Cannes Festival prize for best script. “I support and find reasonable films that are ‘based on’ novels – certain variations of literary sources, revised and reinvented to suit the needs of cinema and its language,” he says. “For literature is verbal material, and cinema is both verbal and visual. These are two different modes of working with text, and I honestly can’t imagine, how you can literally transfer book to screen.”

Literary purists often groan about Hollywood adaptations, their main critisism being that the film version isn’t faithful to the original. They have all kinds of complaints: “This wasn’t in the book;” “It’s not how I imagined it;” “He is supposed to be blond;” “Why did they cut this scene? It’s so important!” However, the fidelity to the source doesn’t always guarantee film’s succes. Take Gary Ross’ 2012 adaptation of The Hunger Games. “The film hewed too closely to the source,” notes Rodimin, “and it is boring to watch, because it merely illustrates the book. It hits all the expected plot points from a novel that offers a straightforward cinematic blueprint, but it feels thinned-out as a result, because it can only deal briefly with key relationships from the book.”

Working on his script for Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago TV series, that were launched on Russian television in 2005, Adamov re-read the novel to refresh his memory, made notes of what he could possibly use in the script, and then wrote his own 700 pages without looking back at the original. “One should try and grasp not the events and how they are structured within the plot, but what meaning these events have. Pasternak wrote a story

What makes an adaptation exciting, though, is the filmmaker’s ability to engage with the material. “The postmodern culture presented us with a great gift – it allowed us to interpret works of art as we see fit. The viewer sees what he sees in a work of art, and what he sees is the right interpretation, and that’s it. Hence, we have all the re-makes, re-workings and

of an honourable man, who manages to live an honourable life in the most dishonourable circumstances. It is, essentially, a tale of how a sacrifice can change everything. And that’s exactly the idea I tried to reflect in my script,” he explains.

This summer Josh Whedon, the man behind the smash hits The Avengers and Buffy the Vampire Slayer will retell Shakespeare’s comic love story Much Ado About Nothing. This version of the classic play is low-budget, black and white and literally home-made – it was famously shot in just 12 days at Whedon’s own house.

Clearly, few people in the film business share Hitchcock’s reservations about literary adaptation, or would subscribe to Truffaut’s caveat that the safest works to adapt are “popular or light entertainment novels.”

Also, Baz Luhrmann will finally present his much-anticipated version of The Great Gatsby. The Australian director is not a novice at revamped screen adaptations of classic literature. He has already used guns for swords and gangs for feuding families in his 1996 film Romeo + Juliet. Luhrman’s bold approach was once applauded, and he decided to play the same card with The Great Gatsby. The two and a half minute first trailer looks like Moulin Rouge – the director’s previous film, flashy, high-drama musical about love – set against the world of 1920s American bohemians.

BBC, the unproclaimed master of novel-to-screen TV series, has recently announced a new rendition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace to be shown in 2015. The creators, including Pride and Prejudice screenwriter Andrew Davies, claim to fit a 1,225-page book into only six episodes. In comparison, its 1972 forerunner, starring Anthony Hopkins, was an epic twenty-part dramatisation. The new adaptation is expected to leave out the book’s lengthy philosophical and historical elements, focusing on its human relationships, and the story of its four families. Although Davies promised not to “dumb down” Tolstoy’s work, he still made comparison to the East Enders, saying that War and Peace is essentially the same good old soap opera, but with “not so much yelling and nobody on the dole”, which is a dubious statement to make in reference to a sophisticated novel that War and Peace is.

The frenetic preview promises sweeping shots of Jay Gatsby’s West Egg soirées, immaculate set design, and period-perfect costumes. It also appears to be a hyper-stylized, extended-music-video treatment of the original. The trailer opens to the Kanye West/Jay-Z collaboration No Church in the Wild against images of Jazz Age excess that could fit into any rap video: wealthy men and women clincking cockatiails in speeding convertibles,

free-flowing liquor and women swaying from chandeliers over pulsating party crowds. So maybe Luhrmann nailed the “excess” aspect of the novel, but there’s obviously more to The Great Gatsby than old-timey razzle-dazzle. Was it necessary to turn the American classic into a lavish music video? Rodimin thinks, that it can actually be the perfect treatment of the iconic novel. It is the new breed of adaptation, tailored to the needs of modern audience. “The reader of the classic literature is changing, hence the audience of its screen versions is changing too. We receive and proceed information very differently now. We are used to sharp, brief and continual stream of information, like Facebook

reposts and Twitter one-liners. So what Luhrman demonstrates, this sort of clip montage, might be exactly what we need,” he comments on the trailer that caused so much uproar. In general, grand literature rarely makes equally great films. Such adaptations are usually undone by humility, by anxious adoration of the cultural prestige of literature. However, if the filmmaker dares to make an ambitious assumption that great novels are not sacred artifacts, but rather a lump of interesting material to be played with and shaped according to his will, the result might be very diferent. After all, stealing is not really stealing, if one can take other’s idea and make it his own.

Notes in the margins

ANNA KARENINA TAKES THE STAGE Set in a fantasy theatre world, the recent adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece presents a bold interpretation of the classic novel.

Words: Anton Dolin

nna Karenina lives in St Petersburg with her son and her husband Alexei Karenin, a cold-fish official man. Anna travels to Moscow to calm a marital storm in the household of her brother, Stiva Oblonsky who has been cheating on his wife, Dolly. On the train she meets the young officer Vronsky. There is an immidiate spark between them,

and they plunge into a passionate and destructive affair, that results in Anna jumping under the train. All that follows is a literal adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel, yet it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. The cinematic version of Anna Karenina, created by the director Joe Wright and the screenwriter Tom Stoppard is all at

once and nothing in particular – it’s a film, a ballet, a play. Wright, who is not a novice screen adaptations, has always been the one that makes responsible choices. His interpretations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Ian McEwan’s Atonement are not bad; they are polished and have a certain charm, but there is nothing exciting about them. His Anna Karenina is different, though. The universe of the film is theatre stage, a nineteenth century theme park. Wright and Stoppard as if realise that it is impossible to reproduce the glorious Imperial Russia on screen. Instead, they offer the audience to use their imagination. Characters make their way around props, past painted backdrops and through catwalks, ropes and backstage rigging. Costumed extras freeze like waxworks while the principals exchange dialogue. Even the train, the ultimate symbol of Anna Karenina, is expressly fake, a gigantic copy of a toy, with which Karenina’s son played a moment ago. Nothing is real, and filmmakers are ready to to admit it. “But will it matter when the curtain falls?” they ask. It probably won’t. “Will you believe it was real?” they, ask. You probably will. By contrast with the theatrical milieu, the cast gives a delicate performance. The role of Alexei Karenin might be the finest performance of Jude Law. He starts as a passionless official man,

a robot. He even moves like one. Little by little he turns into someone else entirely – a noble betrayed husband, a man who is terribly unhappy and lonely, because he could never express his feelings. Keira Knightley is also very good as Anna. With a subtle maturity, she plays a bored wife, longing for love; a tempered, even hysterical woman who doesn’t know what she wants. After numerous cinematic interpretations of Tolstoy’s classic, someone had to step in and make a bold move. Anna Karenina revised by Wright and Stoppard is a very ambitious interpretation of the classic novel, where wow-effect and profound understanding of the literary source are in perfect balance. The theatric, hyperreal language of Anna Karenina is a clue to comprehending its idea. With a single metaphor the brilliant Wright-Stoppard duo grasps the spirit of Tolostoy’s masterpiece, its idea of misery of the pretensious and happiness of the artless. The love story of Anna and Vronsky ended in tragedy only because society forced them to play the prescribed, rigid roles, while what they really wanted was to live their own lives. The philosophy of the novel may be simplified, but the melodrama of love in all its destructive, redeeming, narcissistic, selfless guises is still there. It may not hit you with a power of a train, but you surely will be touched.

THE ANTI-HERO OF OUR TIME From Gregory House to Sherlock Holmes – television has seen many obnoxious, yet strangely charming characters. We adore them on screen, but probably wouldn’t want to hang out with any of them in real life. What’s the deal with fictional sociopaths?

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

very epoch has a defining hero. Humphrey Bogart was the quintessential man of the 1940s – cynical, manly fatalist with sad eyes and the collar of his coat popped up. A decade later, the stern hero of noir films was replaced with the frivolous and handsome Cary-Grant-type men, confidently striding the world. Then, the time of the troubled and wild leading figures came – James Dean rebelling without a cause, Dennis Hopper riding easily through America, Jack Nicholson flying over the cuckoo’s nest. Action hero, straightforward and masculine, forced out the rebel in 1980s. The likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone didn’t defy the system; they simply knocked it out with a mighty turning kick. The hero of 21st century is more of an anti-hero. He is self-righteous. He is often rude. He doesn’t care about

right and wrong. He beats the system and breaks the law. He lies and cheats, because he is bored. He manipulates people. He lives on the edge. He is most likely to be a genius. And we are most likely to root for him. Today, the lovable bastard – bold, charismatic, independent and audacious – seems to be the dominating figure on television. While still showing on Sky 1 in 2009, the American TV series House M.D. had the average of 2.17 million viewers, according to BARB, the official source of television viewing figures in UK. Another US show Dexter, which is on Fox UK now, secures 2.4 million viewers in average with each episode. The first episode of the BBC’s Sherlock, aired in 2010, glued the impressive 9.23 million viewers to the screens. The word “sociopath” is often heard on these shows, and always in regard to the protagonist. Sociopathy is an antisocial personality disorder. People who are diagnosed with it are bereft of all human connection. Real-life sociopaths are pathological liars, cunning manipulators and lack in conscience. They view others as instruments and victims for their own use. They also have a grandiose sense of what they deserve and are entitled to, and nothing will stop them from getting what they want. Their lifestyle is also very specific. Prone to boredom, they tend to take huge risks – breaking the law is only a game for them.

There is Dr House, a brilliant, but grumpy medic, who is constantly high on painkillers and seeks diagnosis with complete indifference towards his patients’ feelings. There is Dexter Morgan, a bashful forensic bloodspatter analyst by day, and a callous serial killer by night. There is the modern reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes, a cold and calculating consulting detective, who primarily solves crimes out of boredom, and cannot – and most Importantly doesn’t want to – abide any social norms. In Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch’s title character responds to a taunt from a police officer: Psychopath! “Do your research,” his Holmes snaps. “Don’t call a person a psychopath when what he really is is a sociopath.” And while the exchange work perfectly for the character – it sounds sharp; it makes Holmes look witty and intelligent – the statement is not entirely true. Social psychologist Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., who also co-edited a Dexter study The Psychology of Dexter, notes: “First of all, there is no difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. Psychopathy is the term used in modern clinical literature, while sociopathy is a term that was coined by G. E. Partridge in 1930 to emphasize the disorder’s social transgressions. It has fallen out of use since then, though. Second, no actual sociopath would ever admit to his disorder.”

The contemporary fantasy of sociopathy only picks and chooses from the characteristics of a clinical sociopath. Film critic Anton Dolin suggests labeling this quasi-sociopathic hero a “magnificent bastard.” “People tend to like him, sometimes even when they know he isn’t on their side, and even those who hate his guts have to admit respect. Even when at his darkest, he has traits which one can’t help but admire,” he describes the type.

will never understand, how one can seriously call Sherlock, or House a ‘high-functioning sociopath’. Clearly, These men are misanthropes, their behaviour is antisocial most of the time, but the only real problem they have is that they are smart, and everyone around them is not so much. And, frankly, this sort of behaviour borders on being a jerk – strangely lovable in their case, of course, – rather than a sociopath,” concludes DePaulo.

No matter how obnoxious the modernday antihero is, we will probably think not “I hate this guy,” but “I want to be that guy.” The sociopaths we watch on TV allow us to indulge in a fantasy, based on a question: “What if I didn’t have to give a damn about anyone?” And an answer suggests itself: “Then I would be powerful and free.” We project our own desires onto the characters and on some level, wish we could be as manipulative and guilt-free as they are.What is usually considered as an obstacle in the real life, the sociopath, created by the popular culture, turns into his main asset. “The fantasy sociopath is somehow outside social norms, and generally amoral – and yet is simultaneously a master manipulator, who can instrumentalise social norms to get what he wants,” observes the psychologist.

The central trait of sociopathy is a complete lack of conscience. However, the fictional sociopath actually has it. In the world of entertainment, there seems to be a pretty successful formula for creating the perfect antihero. All it takes is one complex character with a few redeeming qualities and at least one foil character to highlight these qualities. And that soft side of their personality is exactly what makes them lovable, allows the audience to relate to them, and prevent show from lapsing totally into cynicism.

What is seen on TV is not an accurate portrayal of a sociopath, but a mere teelvision trope, a pop sociopath. “I

There seems to be hope for Dr Gregory House. He knows he’s a jerk. He knows that’s not the best thing to be. So sometimes we see him make an effort not to be so nasty. And when Wilson, the Watson to House’s Holmes, is faced with cancer, House is there for his friend. Dexter is everyone’s favourite serial killer, and his murderous nature has

an explanation – at a very young age he witnessed his mother being slaughtered. His moral code – kill only those who hurt the innocent – prevents him from falling the victim to his urge to kill, his Dark Passenger. And over and over again he acts like a loving sibling to his foster sister Deb. In the last episode of season two Sherlock Holmes sacrafices himself for people, who he considers to be his friends. It proves that Sherlock s is not a cold, calculating, selfgratifying machine. He cares. Holmes has emotions—and attachments— like the rest of us. What he’s better at is controlling them—and only letting them show under very specific circumstances. If there was nothing to compensate for their obnoxious behaviour, we wouldn’t be able to root for them. “The sense of right and wrong is an integral part of our psyche, that it is impossible for us to accept how

someone can lack in it. That is why we are so desperate to be proved that that charismatic character actually has a conscience, that he can empathise – even if his conscience is somewhat distorted,” explains DePaulo. “I am rooting for a psychopath” is a strange confession to make. Still, many of fellow TV watchers will probably relate. Does it say anything alarming about us? Probably not. Perhaps our obsession with sociopaths indicates not so much a lament of the broken social order but a more morally ambiguous age, and a more sophisticated — or jaded — television audience. Comedians must always become more shocking and vulgar to get a rise out of their audience, while the dramas must wade thornier and thornier moral territory. Morality is relative, but up to what point? Can I sympathize with a serial killer? Can I like a complete jerk? When it comes to their ethics and worldview, TV viewers want to be challenged.

THE ART OF TELLING NOT YOUR STORIES Turning 75 this year, Victor Golyshev has dedicated his life to translating English and American literature for Russian literature-lovers. Praised by poet Josef Brodsky, but unknown to the common reader, Golyshev talks the peculiarities of his profession.

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova Illustrations: Melody Amber van Oosterom, Julia Peintner

ictor Golyshev is the man who introduced the Russian readers to the leading lights of anglophone literature – William Faulkner, George Orwell, Truman Capote to name a few. His recent work – the translation of Susan Sontag’s On Photography – won Golyshev Master award, Oscar of literary translations. He is believed to be one of the greatest in his field. His translations are iconic. However, Golyshev himself believes that there is no such thing as an iconic translation. Straightforward and self-critical, he never wanted fame or recognition. Answering to all the praise, he says that being talented means nothing for a translator. Being good at what he does requires more than a natural flair. It requires discipline and certain modesty, an ability to forget one’s ego and become a mere reflection of writer’s voice. This is what he is all about – sober view of life and his work. Having a degree in Engineering, he admits that he started translating by accident. It all began with his love for literature and his Anglomania, that later transformed into vivid interest in everything American. His first ever translating job – J. D. Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish – Golyshev completed in only two days back in 1961, and from that moment his hobby became his profession. Half a decade later he has no illusions about it. It’s hard, and one never gets paid enough for all this hard work. Why is he still doing it? Because he believes that there is a certain honour in being involved with literature.

- Do you think that translator is a special profession? - It’s just a job, and it’s just as special as any other job. I know for sure, many won’t agree with me, and people, especially those of intellectual work, tend to overestimate their significance. I know that because I used to be like that myself when I was younger. But know I think that my significance is pretty small. Writers are different. They created a text once, and no one else can ever do what they did. But someone else can always translate a text instead of me. I’m not

trying to sound proud or humble. I’m just saying that my job is no different to driving a bus, for example. There are people who are too focused in what they do, and they start thinking that they are very special. And to tell the truth, such an attitude is very, very harmful for a translator, when the process of translation becomes more important to them than the original text. I believe that being obsessed with oneself is bad, and harmful, and just wrong. One always needs to be aware of his place in the world, and understand that probably he’s not that big or important

. - Do you need to be inspired to translate? - Honestly, I don’t know what an inspiration is. It’s not like I’m writing a poem. If I like the book I’m working, I’m constantly excited and driven, and I just don’t need inspiration.

count. You need to be able to relate the story to your life too. It’s not like you need to agree with the writer or you had the very same thought. Some books just feel right, because that’s exactly what you would write a novel about if you were smart enough to be a writer.

- What about your job makes you happy?

- Have you ever wanted to write a novel?

- I am the happiest when I get to choose what to translate. Choosing the right author to translate is as important as marrying someone. You can, you even have to say “no”, if you fell that it’s not your writer. Because, you are going to spend two, three, four years with this novel, you are going to work on it everyday, and you need to be sure you can bear it being in your life for so long. Never even try to translate the text written by writer that doesn’t feel right. It’s just not going to work.

- When you’re young and still learning things about life, everyone’s writing something. Later, when you get old and tired, only those who really wants to do it keep writing things. You need to crave it to be a writer, and your talent doesn’t really matter. It’s even overrated. Tolstoy used to say this about his brother: “he may be more talented, but he doesn’t crave it”. I personally don’t have this in me, and I don’t have this urge to express myself..

- How do you choose authors?

- What’s the difference between being a writer and a translator in your opinion?

Maybe, it’s the author who chooses you. Sometimes you take a new book, read the first paragraph, and it just clicks. The first and most important touchstone is the rhythm. The idea behind the words is important too, of course. Still, what gets you hooked is the tone of the novel, because that’s what makes the words and ideas

- As translator, I work twice as hard as a novelist does. An author can always skip things he doesn’t want to write about. He can skip ten years in a life of his character, if he wants to. But I can’t do that. I have no right to skip anything. I have to translate every single thing, even if doesn’t make any sense.

- Are there any things that can’t be translated at all?

better how to write and what to say. So, just stick to the text and do your best, reflecting his words. However, no matter how hard you try you can never make a good translation of a crappy novel. Again, because translation is nothing more than reflecting the original text.

- There are no untranslatable languages, this I can tell you for sure. Some texts and some languages just need special treatment. The question here is: can a certain text be translated into another culture? Some books can’t be translated, because they are deeply emerged into certain cultural and historical context. You can translate words, but the meaning will be lost, because it is impossible to translate culture. Translating, you cut the cords that link a book and a country where this book was born, you separate text and its culture, its world, the readers who would understand, because it was written especially for them. It’s all abstract, but very important. And for translator it is important not to ruin this connection between a book and it culture.

- Why do you think there are so many bad translations? - The explanation is obvious. There are to many books to translate, and too few professionals who can do it well. You can only be taught how to be grammatically correct, all the techniques. The rest is natural, you are either capable of translating or not. Also, bad translations exist because they are done in a hurry. - How has literary translation changed over the years?

- What makes a good translation in your opinion? - If you’re translating an author that is right for you, if you can feel him and understand him, than you are most likely to do a good job. There’s nothing more important than this authortranslator relationship. And you also need to be modest, never try to show off. You’re not the main character here, the writer is, he probably knew

- I want to believe that translations got more cultured and less flamboyant and flippant, but I’m afraid I’m just making this up. I wish it was more cultured, because that’s what readers needs nowadays. This generation is really smart, you know. Sadly for me, the tendency is that literary translation is just not so necessary nowadays. People travel a lot, they learn languages, they learn new things. They don’t need books to be translated anymore.

Notes in the margins

BULGAKOV AND THE OPERATING TABLE A Young Doctor’s Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov; translated by Hugh Alpin A Young Doctor’s Notebook is an amusing collection of hospital tales, that also happens to be Mikhail Bulgakov’s quasi-memoir.

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

Young Doctor’s Notebook has been treated kindly recently. It was first relesed in 1975 in Michael Glenny’s translation. Years later, in 2011, Bulgakov’s short stories collection was republished as a part of the Neversink Library – a book series by Melville House, embracing novels around the world, that have been unwisely overlooked and underappreciated. It also has been translated anew – now by Hugh Alpin, and recieved a slightly new title – before the book went under the name of A Country Doctor’s Notebook.

Last year Sky Arts premiered its miniseries based on Bulgakov’s short stories. It is a macabre medical gagshow: the green doctor with a first class diploma and no field experience runs a hospital in the Russian middle of nowhere. He struggles to pull out a patient’s tooth; runs off to his study to check on a textbook while delivering a baby; and wearily explains to peasants that drops don’t cure syphilis. Mikhail Bulgakov was a doctor before he was a writer. In 1916, Bulgakov, 25 years old and fresh from medical

school, was posted to a remote rural clinic in northwestern Russia. Bulgakov’s A Young’s Doctor Notebook is a meditation on his own memories. He turned that experience into series of harrowing and hilarious short stories, an account of a nameless doctor, facing the brutal reality and sort of coming of age. Although written in late 1920s, it doesn’t read outdated. The nature of the doctor’s predicament is universal. The feeling of self-doubt goes with any first ever and sudden responsibility – even if your honest mistake doesn’t result in someone’s death. It is terrifying in the moment – but it can also be funny in retrospect. The young hero frets about how young he looks, and unsuccessfully tries to grow a beard. He feels intimidated by his predecessor’s vast library. He worries he will have to treat a hernia and won’t know what to do. The numerous neuroses of the young country doctor, his mildly pompous naiveté, and his pessimism about his work are running jokes in the book. A young girl with a shredded leg is bleeding out on his table, and he, scared to death and reluctant to perform his first amputation, can only think to himself: “Die. Hurry up and die. Die. Or else what ever am I going to do with you?” Another never-ending

source of comedy are the ignorant and superstitious patients. They apply medicine to their clothing rather than their skin. They believe that a herbal ointmnet can cure anything. They resist treatment – and the young doctor ends up cursing them until they stay long enough to receive proper care. The book is built on a harsh contrast: the cultured city boy and the wild, medieval world of peasantry he was thrown into. Beneath the medical anecdotes and self-deprecating humour dwells certain darkness. Bulgakov’s protagonist is surrounded by self-doubt and hopelessness as dark as Egypt’s night. Perpetual blizzard is raging around him, and he feels isolated. In the closing story of the series, Morphine, he dispenses with the humor and sticks to artless narration, which leaves it all more bitter and desperate. A Young Doctor’s Notebook is a raw and realistic piece of writing. It is Bulgakov before Master and Margarita and A Heart of a Dog. It is Bulgakov sans grotesque, fantasies and sharp satire. The notes of his best works are still here: wry humour and an unfailing compassion for human folly. It’s a quieter book worth appreciating for its craft. It stands both on its own and as a reminder of why Bulgakov’s still spoken about, again and again.

THE CITY THAT DICKENS BUILT The Charles Dickens’ London walk promises to take you to all the Dickens’ spots. But is the writer’s spirit still there?

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

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Honey, couldn’t we pick another day to go?” a grumpy old gentleman in suede shoes – very expensive by the look of them – asks his spouse, a mellow greyhaired lady in an elegant beret. His frustration is easy to empathise with. It’s pouring with rain, the wind is freezing, and one couldn’t imagine less suitable weather conditions for a walking tour. “Oh, darling, don’t be so cranky!” his companion replies. “Don’t you see? It’s so very Dickensian!” Dickensian is a funny word. Usually, it makes us think of poverty, filth, dreary environment, and anything else that is reminiscent of the city Charles Dickens portrayed in his novels – Victorian London with its soot, cobblestones, gas lamps, pickpockets and comically repulsive inhabitants. But when we say “Dickensian Christmas”, a different picture comes to one’s mind – one thinks of a lavish winter festivity, and a warm glow of a fireplace, and a table crammed with mouthwatering dishes. This ambiguity of the adjective invented after the

Chatham-born London-based writer is the first thing the walk’s guide Richard – Richard the Third, as he introduced himself – remarks. The walk starts at Temple tube station. People are hiding under the roof. There’s a touristy group of four in their fifties – North Pole jackets, backpacks and massive cameras. A shy girl in glasses is emerged in a book; I notice she’s reading The Tale of Two Cities. A young couple is chatting in French; the woman is holding a London map and a Lonely Planet guide. Despite the dreadful weather, a serious young man is having a cigarette outside the station. He impatiently strolls the pavement, checks his watch and is clearly waiting for someone. At 2.30 am sharp the guide appears. The four tourists, the french couple, the girl with the book, and the serious young man, all hurry to meet him. “Who would even want to go on a walk on such a day?” I thought earlier to myself. Well, here they are, the Dickens-loving enthusiasts. The guide, tall and slim, bearing a vague resemblance to Bill Nighy, is definitely an eloquent speaker with an undeniable theatrical bent. However, one of the walkers, a plump woman, wisely wearing a PVC coat, doesn’t seem to be quite satisfied. “Excuse me,” she says when Richard makes a pause after his little introductory speech. “I thought you would be wearing a costume.” “A costume?” he asks, at first startled.

“Oh, you mean a Victorian costume? I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t do costumes.” Richard’s forerunner, Jean, was fond of dressing up, and to every walk she would wear a period dress, and a bonnet. Richard, on contrary, has never been a fan of this idea. “A top hat definitely wouldn’t save me from rain,” he smiles. This particular detail – a guide dressed in accordance with the Victorian fashion – was stuck in my head too, and I was dreading a fancy dresser to lead the walk. Colosseum, for example, is swarming with “gladiators”, but they do nothing to enhance one’s experience, and simply look ridiculous. A guide in a Victorian dress would look ridiculous too – a stray period drama extra. Dickens in our eyes would become an institution, when what we want is what is gone, or what survives only in the texts: the energy, the aura, the spirit. The idea of pursuing abstractions has become staples of literary tourism, a tradition that has been around for at least a couple of centuries. A literary tour is essentially a cultural pilgrimage. The hope is the same as with saints’ relics: that some residue of genius will survive in the physical objects that once belonged to an author, that the secret to his mind will turn out to be hidden in the places he himself passed through. Literature is an abstract transaction: a reader gives time and attention; an author gives patterns of words that call

up vivid people and landscapes that — mystifyingly — are not physically there. It seems like a natural human response to try to plug that gap — to look for solid, real-world corollaries for those interior landscapes, whether it’s walking the route of Ulysses on Bloomsday or wizard-spotting on Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross station. It’s the brain’s attempt to anchor an abstraction, to make the spirit world and the reality finally align. It is probably one of the cheapest, easiest forms of magic available.

tradition. Dickens was the first author to earn what we’d think of as a mass readership, and visiting places from his fiction was a way for individual readers to make an intimate connection with a sometimes distressingly public figure. When Dickens visited New York in 1842, Tiffany’s sold copies of his bust, a barber reportedly sold scraps of his hair and crowds followed him through the streets; in Boston, ladies with scissors tried to cut off pieces of his coat. Dickens’ work seemed to lend itself especially well to literary tourism. Its characters walked on real English streets and spoke in real English accents, so — despite all of the cartoonish exaggerations — its

In England, literary tourism took off at the end of the 18th century, just before Dickens was born. By the time his books exploded into popularity, in the 1830s, literary tourism was an established

atmosphere felt strangely real. As G. K. Chesterton put it: “It is well to be able to realize that contact with the Dickens world is almost like a physical contact; it is like stepping suddenly into the hot smells of a greenhouse, or into the bleak smell of the sea. We know that we are there.” Of all the characters Dickens wrote about, none played as important a role in his work as London itself: its hustle and bustle, its glittering promise and grimy streets, and the extremes of poverty and wealth experienced by those who lived there. It triggered his imagination. He called it his “magic lantern”, and would spend hours pacing the streets, drawing inspiration from what he saw around him. During Dickens’ lifetime, readers often visited the settings of his stories, and in the decades after his death, a number of books were published to guide Dickens readers to Dickens spots: A Pickwickian Pilgrimage, About England With Dickens, A Week’s Tramp in Dickens-Land. A century and a half of modernisation has meant that some of the Dickens’ spots no longer exist. Temple, however, seems to have changed little, if at all, since Dickens wrote that one can read on its gates: “Who enters here leaves noise behind.” Away from the noisy traffic, Temple courtyards still seem like an oasis of tranquility in the hullabaloo of a big city. We are in Fountain Court, the place the author romanticised

in his novel Martin Chuzzleweit. The fountain itself has suffered some modernising changes since Dickens, but basically it’s the same fountain which the writer chose as a setting for the sweet romance between Ruth and John Westlock. Inns of Temple is as close as it gets to London that Dickens knew; it changed very little since the author wrote of it. But the magic just isn’t there. Maybe my love for Dickens isn’t strong enough. Maybe I’m just not sentimental. Maybe, the weather isn’t right and simply disconcerting. After all, according to Dickens, the fountain is supposed to sparkle in the sun, and dance, and play its liquid music. And I can only hear rain drumming on my umbrella. Maybe, there are too many people around for the magic to happen. We are crowding around the fountain; someone’s umbrella and wide back are blocking the view; men in suits are scurrying about, speaking loudly on their phones. “And now we may or may not go inside the Dining Hall. Don’t raise your hopes high, folks, they don’t like letting groups in,” announces our guide. We are lucky this time. Inside a waiter in an immaculately starched shirt busily gets tables ready for dinner, and pays no attention to the touristy group. Looking at the interior, intimidating in its grandness, it’s hard to believe that the Hall is not a mere historic relic – someone actually dines at the table, gifted to the Inn by Queen Elizabeth

I. Richard, as if in reverence to the place, lowers his voice, and talks about Dickens and his career as legal clerk, his first steps in journalism, and how he wrote under the pen name of Boz. Yet I’m more interested in a chance to actually get in touch with history – I can’t help myself but sheepishly stroke the cupboard, the massive table made out of the hatch cover of Sir Francis Drake’s ship The Golden Hind.

all of us to stand comfortably. The grumpy gentleman, clearly irritated and not enjoying himself, steps aside and lights a cigarette. One of the North Pole jackets reaches for his camera, but changes his mind almost immediately. After all, he pub has been rebuilt since Dickens’ days and looks like any other old-timey London pub. Two steps away is the Old Curiousity Shop; built in 1567, it’s a fine example of sixteenth century architecture, though its roof is more Disney than Elizabethan. Despite the cartoony roof, this place feels very real, very Dickensian. “The place through which he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust,” Dickens described the shop in his novel. And somehow, two hundred years later, it looks and feels the same way, although now they sell shoes in here, not old curiousities.

The Dinning Hall of Middle Temple is truly striking, and this time the magic happens. And it has nothing to do with Dickens. Maybe it’s the effect the dim lighting has on me; maybe it’s the impressive hammerbeam roof; maybe it’s the fact that the Dining Hall is a place not everyone has access to – but when we finally are back on the street I am awed without a question. Dickens London has always been the city of nooks and crannies, and that’s exactly how one gets to experience it during this walk. The guide leads us through the narrow alleyways of Temple to Fleet Street. Then we turn to some backstreet right off The Royal Courts of Justice, and now we are on the London School of Economics estate, heading to Holborn. And it’s actually LSE that dominates the area, not the Dickens’ spirit.

I peek inside through a small barred window – the doorways are tiny, the floors creak incessantly, the shelves are all crooked so much so that you find it hard to discern what is in fact a correct vertical or horizontal. Although attuned to modern standards, it has in many ways stubbornly retained its kooky character. Sandwiched snuggly between much taller and

We stop at George IV pub, the original of the Magpie and Stump of Pickwick Papers. The sidewalk is too narrow for

perfect structures it stands defiant in its modesty. Dickens really was the champion of the wretched and the downtrodden, and it feels like he would still find great comfort from the place if he could see it today.

at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where his dear friend and biographer John Foster lived, and also the residence of the menacing Mr Tulkinnghorn of Bleak House. We stop at Rules restaurant, which Dickens would regularly visit, the kingdom of Victorian kitsch. We stop at 26 Wellington Street, right on the corner with Tavistock Street – there were the offices of Dickens’ magazine All The Year Round, now it’s a coffeshop under the obsequious name of Charles Dickens Coffee House. We stop at Lyceum theatre, where Dickens’ young and charming mistress

Guided by Richard, with hundreds of citations and anecdotes up his sleeve to fit any occasion, the excursion traces the landmarks of Dickens’ life and work, blurring the boundaries between the writer’s life and fiction. He leads us through Temple and Fleet Street, Holborn and Covent Garden. We stop

Nelly Ternan played Lucie Manette in the stage adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. Right around the corner from Theatre Royal are Drury Lane Gardens, the exact spot where Esther of Bleak House found the dead body of Lady Dedlock. Once it used to be the burial ground for the church of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, the original of Jo’s Churchyard, where Captain Hawdon, Lady Dedlock’s long-lost lover, was buried. It’s hard to imagine that this peaceful little garden once was a sinister churchyard, “pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed.” The excursion ends at Chandos Place – once there were the showrooms of Warren’s blacking warehouse, where young Charles Dickens had to work to support his family, while his father was in the debtors prison. Now the building houses T.G.I. Friday’s, and the blue plaque is the only reminder of its connection to the writer. Because it was so dark, the boys worked in the window for some extra light, which meant that passers-by could see them working. One day his father happened to pass by the window, and on seeing his son, he made up his mind to take him out of the factory. Dickens was able to resume his education – and later become a writer.

As Richard finishes the walk on this very optimistic note, he recieves a round of applause – rather faint, though – and we all wander off in different directions. The beret lady is gushing about how eye-opening the walk was, and how, in just a few hours, she had come to understand Dickens on a totally new level. Her grumpy companion doesn’t seem to share her enthusiasm, and I think I can relate. Strolling around Temple and Fleet Street, Holborn and Coven Garden, I was desperately looking for traces of whatever energy Dickens left behind in the actual world, but couldn’t feel anything. And how can one meaningfully talk about stepping back in historical time or experiencing Dickens’ London? Of course, much that Dickens described is still there, but it feels different – it’s hustle and bustle is different, it’s dark, gruesome side is different. Still, it would be unfair to say that the walking tour is a mere meaningless tourist attraction. It teaches us to read the city like a book. It creates an experience of the city through Dickens: using fragments of Dickens’ works to open up the city afresh, bringing London into focus in new ways. Above all Dickens’ vision of London is about re-seeing the familiar aspects of the city that we’d typically gloss over. And for that the experience was perfectly Dickensian.

Curiousities

BOOKS TO TAKE YOU PLACES As a follow-up to the Dickensian London experience, Avid picks five books that will encourage you to go places. Some novels serve as glorious adverts for their locations. Their rich sense of place constantly fire reader’s desire to experience the described spots themselves. Thanks to James Joyce, Dublin became the place for literary pilgrimage. Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast drew the vivid portrait of 1920s Paris, making the city the place to visit for the young, romantic and hungry for life. And the obsession with Stig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy increased Stockholm’s touristic appeal. Avid’s very own top five of travel-inspiring, locale-praising books is as follows.

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

THE SUN ALSO RISES (1926) by Ernest Hemingway

eople say that you must see a bullfight to understand Spain. And we believe that might as well come from Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises, which is thought to be Hemingwayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest novel, portrays the ups and downs of 1920s expats as they travel from Paris to Pamplona. The poignant love story of Jake Barnes, a man damaged by World War I, and the promiscuous divorcĂŠe Lady Brett Ashley is set against the frenzy of fiesta, the dramatic corrida and the tranquility of Spanish nature.

THE SEX LIVES OF CANNIBALS: ADRIFT IN THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC (2004) by J. Maarten Troost

he Sex Lives of Cannibals is wickedly funny, yet elegant account of the two years Troot, restless and aged 26, spent on a remote South Pacific island of Tarawa. What at first seemed to be a life in paradise, turned out to be an encounter with the bizarre locals, alarming fauna and imperfections of tropical isolation in general. After all his absurd and at times miserable adventures, Troot nostalgically reflects on how much of a paradise he found.

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY (1962) by John Steinbeck

ear the end of his career, John Steinbeck set out to rediscover the country he had made a living writing about. With only his French poodle Charley as company, he embarked on a three-month journey across most of the continental United States. On his way, he meets the terse residents of Maine, falls in love with Montana, and watches desegregation protests in New Orleans. Although Steinbeck certainly came to his own conclusions, he respects individual experience: he saw what he saw and knows that anyone else would have seen something different.

BANGKOK 8 (2003) by John Burdett

angkok 8 is an exotic and original example of good old noir genre. Its protagonist is Thai detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a world-weary Buddhist cop. He investigates the murder of a US marine, who was bitten and strangled by deadly snakes. It is a perfect start for a novel, that paints a vivid and unsentimental picture of Bangkok’s gritty street life – with an insider’s understanding of its workings and motivations.

ISTANBUL, MEMORIES AND THE CITY (2005) by Orhan Pamuk

n this ethereal novel, that hangs between fantasy and reality Pamuk paints a portrait of himself and his city, Istanbul. As he revisits his life and childhood, Pamuk also recalls Istanbul as it once was, a city of huzun, the Arabic thoughtful melancholy. Istanbul, Memories and the City rewards its readers with a stunning perspective of the place.

Curiousities

APPS NO MORE In 2011 enhanced books shook the publishing world. Has the time come to proclaim their abrupt death?

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

indles and self-publishing have completely rewritten the formula of publishing. Ebooks continue to gain in popularity. They experienced 10% sales increase since 2010, according to Bowker Market Research, a publishing industry analyst. In this climate, interactive book apps – enhanced with audio, video, and animation – seem like the logical next step in the development of the industry. In 2011, T.S Elliot’s The Wasteland app, a release of Faber and Touch Press publishing companies, shook the industry. Not only was it innovative, but also profitable. Its special

features included a reprint of the manuscript with edits by Ezra Pound, five versions of poem reading, and a video performance by actress Fiona Shaw. It cost the publishers £75,000 and was able to earn out in just six weeks. Becoming number one iPad book bestseller, it prompted hope for augmented books. Still, the publishing community has reservations against the new medium. In fact, according to the research presented at the recent Digital Book World expo, only 15% of publishers thinks that apps are worth investing into, down from 34% a year ago. This has echoes of the statement

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Bloomsbury’s Evan Schnittman made at the London Book Fair in April 2012. Then he claimed that although enhanced ebooks might have a future in education, they are a complete waste of time and money when it comes to adult fiction. The sales numbers show that the consumer is conservative in his choices and isn’t willing to pay for extraneous features. For example, Stephen King’s recent novel 11/22/63, released as an app by Scribner, has sold humble 45,000 copies at £10.99. The more expensive hardcover, by contrast, sold close to a million copies. Most enhanced books sell in the low thousands, according to publishers. Some of the titles released by Enhanced Editions, the book-app publisher founded in 2008, sold fewer than hundred copies. The anemic sales forced its founders to shut down the production in 2011. Samantha Missingham, the co-founder of the digital publishing brand FutureBook, believes that enhanced books are aimed at solving a problem that doesn’t exists. “Consumers weren’t waking up in the morning going, ‘I really need to have Nick Cave reading his book along with a soundtrack’. Unless it was author’s initial idea to draw a picture, or film a video, extra features are unnecessary,” she says.

Experimenting with digital formats isn’t easy on most publishing companies. The new product is more of a video game than a book, and it requires appropriate resources. Yet it has to be produced on a modest book budget. The hope in enhanced books is not lost, though. Missingham says: “If the revolution in publishing really happens, the stakes are going to be high and it will be ‘the winner takes it all’ kind of situation.” After being slow to adapt to digital technology, publishers don’t want to come late to what could be the most significant transformation of books since Gutenberg. Simon & Schuster has close to 60 enhanced titles, including nonfiction books about young innovators, tap dancing and neuropsychology. Random House is publishing a digital version of Katherine Boo’s nonfiction Behind the Beautiful Forevers, about residents of a Bombay slum, which includes video of the central characters. Penguin plans to launch 50 book apps this year. Projects in the work include an enhanced biography of Malcolm X with video footage, rare photos and an interactive map of historic Harlem. Its recent release is a teenager romance novel Chopsticks. The story is told using digital scrapbooking, video clips and character’s instant messages Looks like it’s too early to write book apps off.

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I KNOW WHAT YOUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;LL READ THIS SUMMER Summer is the ultimate reading season, the perfect time to give yourself a break and settle down with a good book. Avid previews hot summer releases.

Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

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ajor film studios save their biggest, most spectacular motion pictures for summer – that is a known fact. Publishing industry has summer blockbusters too. These are the books perfect for beach-reading. Books we can’t wait to lay our hands on. Summer 2013 will be highlighted by some long-awaited comebacks. On 14 May Dan Brown returns with a new Robert Langdon novel, entitled Inferno. This time the adventures of the dauntless Harvard professor of symbology will revolve around Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy, especially its first and most captivating part Inferno. It is likely that Brown will once again misinterpret the cultural phenomenon, causing the scholarly community to tear out their hair. But, let’s face it, Inferno will probably be an ultimate page-turner.

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Stephen King also presents his new book Joyland – a retro thriller set in a small-town amusement park, where a college student taking up a summer job has to confront a legacy of a vicious murder. “I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts,” King said in the press release. “I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.” King’s homage to pulp fiction is out on 7 June. Another great news for Stephen King’s fans: Doctor Sleep – a sequel to The Shining – is to be published in late September. And although it’s not a summer release, how can one be quite about a follow-up to the cult horror classics? Neil Gaiman hasn’t come out with a new book for adults since 2005’s Anansi Boys, and his new novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane – to be released on 18 June – is poised to make a major

splash. Gaiman’s new fable is centered around the protagonist who revisits his childhood memory of a dangerous other-worldly encounter. When a family lodger committed suicide forty years ago, his actions set loose ancient dark creatures, and the boy’s only defense were three mysterious women living at the end of the street. “It’s an astonishingly personal sort of a novel”, the writer confessed in his blog. Toby Barlow, the man who wrote about werewolves before it was cool, takes on another dark myth in his new book Babayaga. His 2007 debut Sharp Teeth was a free verse novel about werwolf clans fighting for power in underbelly Los Angles. In Babayaga, coming out on 6 August, he turns his attention to spies and witches in 1950s Paris. A beautiful young woman strolling the Parisian boulevards impaled her ex on a spike hundreds of years ago. A Russian witch gets killed. Police officer investigating the murder gets turned into a flea. And that’s only half the story.

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Marisha Pessl’s firs book Special Topics in Calamity Physics was one of the mosthyped books of 2006. Critics hailed it as a literary blockbuster. Seven years later the promising newcomer breaks the silence with her second novel Night Film. The new thriller tells a story of veteran journalists who investigates the apparent suicide of a young girl. Set out to discover the truth, he comes face to face with the girl’s father – the cult horror film director, who hasn’t been seen in public in over thirty years – and his eerie secrets. Night Film will be out on 20 August. The season is indeed rich in anticipated new writings from the big names, but that’s not all. Up and coming writers have something to show too. On 2 May the Nigerian writer Chinelo Okparanta introduces her short story collection Happiness, Like Water. There, Okparanta offers a loving portrait of her native country, and tells powerful

stories of womanhood and loss. The literary critic, contributing to The New Yorker and The Paris Review and many other publications, Caleb Crain has recently turned to writing. His novel Necessary Errors is out on 6 August. It concerns the topic of youth, and is set in the Czech Republic. Young and inspired Jacob Putman comes to post-communist Prague, and the protagonist’s search for freedom resonates with the country’s new historical freedoms. Petter Mattei’s The Deep Whatsis is a harsh, yet hilarious satire of hipsters, consumerism and contemporary art, that is very likely to hit the taste of the Bret Easton Ellis fans. Though this is his first book, 10 years ago Mattei made an independent film. So, he didn’t just materialize out of thin air in a Williamsburg beard-trimming salon known for its handcrafted small-batch heirloom pickle backs. His book is to be released on 22 August.

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Curiousities

DEAD WRITERS PERFUME Seattle-based handmade perfume company Sweet Tea Apothecary creates a literature-inspired perfume. Words: Ekaterina Sverdlova

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e’ve all opened up that book with the worn spine and discolored pages, then stuck our nose in it and inhaled deeply. Sadly, the romantic old books scent has a very grounded explanation to it. The chemists of College University, London, who are now looking into smell of heritage objects, found out that it is the result of books decaying. Ink reacts to heat, moisture and light, causing the break down of organic compounds, hence the smell. Scientists concluded that old books aroma is a “combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” Sweet Tea Apothecary recent and best-selling perfume Dead Writers is exactly that. The two magic ingredients, which really give the perfume the soothing quality of worn books smell, are vetiver and vanilla. “Vetiver has got this amazing earthy scent that evokes both dirt and grass. I also added the vanilla to kind of lighten the muskiness and offset the smokier elements,” describes it J. T. Siems, the founder of the hand-made perfume company. Initially, the perfumer doubted Dead Writers’ success, feeling that it might be too dark and macabre for everyone’s taste. When Dead Writers was mentioned on BookRiot, a witty and modern blog about literature, it became a hit. In only two months after the publication, Siems received more than 600 orders on it – an impressive number for a small one-woman company. “I was not expecting that and had to close shop twice to keep up with the demand,” confesses Siems. With Sweet Tea Apothecary, Siems specialises in so-called “historical perfumes.” Her creations are inspired by the literary and historical icons, and working on perfumes she first of thinks what kind of scents they could enjoy. Now Siems is expanding her literary perfume collections. The perfumes she’s developing are Lenore, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe; Zelda named after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife; and the Jack Kerouac scent called Dharma Bum. Avid’s favourite so far is Zelda, with champagne, vegan civet, gin, and opium notes.

Dead Writers by Sweet Tea Apothecary can be purchased in its Etsy shop: http://www.etsy. com/shop/SweetTeaApothecary

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