From its opening line, ‘Wit’ took me by the jugular and never really let go. It is a compact and wickedly funny tour de force – both intellectually engaging and emotionally immediate. But make no mistake: its bite is really a kiss; an essentiality which somehow atomizes the world, so that it may reconstruct itself in a slightly improved way.

It asks the most compelling question I find, of whether the quest for humanity in mortality is best cerebral-led or compassion-driven. Having this inquiry into Cartesian dualism occur amidst a highly-rationalized medical system challenges the reader to continually dissect the many sides to what the human ‘condition’ entails, to no real end.

Medical or interactional, lines of offense and defense are often drawn up by the hearts and minds. These lines keep our emotions and rationality at bay, but collisions will still happen. There will be times when we apply them inadequately, and in wrong doses. All these while in the stream of life, death, life. Mortality (towards immortality) continues to happen. ‘Wit’ is one of the most humanistic plays ever written to so elegantly surface these almost-taboo issues, without being self-important. And as a first play, Edson’s achievements are quite awe-inspiring.

PS: There is a HBO film adaptation of the play directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson.

Contributed by: s.t.

The allure of this beloved book is that it keeps our empathy for the children at bay. They are not sympathetic victims, but if you ask me, mere irritating mice. Through imaginative anthropomorphism, Dahl makes cruelty to children at times, justifiable. Characters here defy their traditional (read: man-made) stereotypes. The witches are enigmatic creatures of wondrous powers, speech and nature. They are not really women, don’t you find? Strangers are not necessarily always dangerous especially when silly obnoxious (grand)parents are more shackles than saviors. So forget about Dahl the misogynist or pessimist. Dahl was a magician, an illusionist; every child’s best mate. Last I checked, I do not have square ends for toes or purple irises. Like any child mesmerized, I went wherever my instincts wanted to go: to the delightful transformations Dahl conjured. And what shimmering smoke and mirrors!

PS: Quentin Blake’s penchant for fuzz in his lines enhances the crookedness of the tale, and adds that extra “kazaam”.

Contributed by: s.t.

There are unfinished books, both written and read.

Then there are books that are meant to be unfinished. By “unfinished”, think of a dog chasing after its tail. In a time of headlines, bottomlines and overstatements, we all still need some kind of footnoting. Postponements in our reading experience shave an inch off the dog’s tail: beyond reach, it becomes the perfect incomplete circle. Even if language is an archetypical structure, it must still navigate the formless unpredictability of communication. The art of giving and receiving, writing and reading, is the art of ‘unfinished businesses’. The circle is an open one. Total immersion in the enjoyment of a book, a painting, a song, someone’s company, a situation or an emotion will always face premature or premeditated departure. It is not that nothing lasts forever. Rather, it is because everything can last forever, that we must seek to postpone the interaction between writer and work; book and reader, in order for us to have another go at it. This goes on, because we go on.

In the end, every book will remain unfinished.

Contributed by: s.t.

If there were an activity I love more than reading, it would be eating. And if there is any activity that combines the both together so very well, it’ll be reading about food. Lucky for me, so many people have ventured into writing about food: from the preparation of it, to the stories behind it, from the cooking of it and right down to the eating of it. 

Before I talk about Jay Rayner’s “ The Man Who Ate the World”, let me first state that food writing is an art, and it is an art that not many people do well. So what if you are JK Rowling? You can’t depend on an excellent word bank or good amount of imagination to write about food. It takes a skilled writer with plenty of guts to write about food in the most glorified detail without sounding like Nigella Lawson. You can’t be so explicit that your reader gets too hungry to go on reading, and you also can’t be too cursory that your writing becomes something you find in the lifestyle and cooking section of the newspaper.

Which is why I quite enjoyed Rayner’s book. I gravitated to the book when I saw it in a book sale because from the cover I figured it would make me laugh. It did, at the preface, when he warned me to read this in a café with no obstructing glassware and snacks within reach. As a food critic, you would think he might be pretty adept about all things food, but then he gets himself in strange places (Sushi in Moscow?), eating even stranger food (lamb cooked in sour milk?) and meeting the strangest people (descendents of Stalin’s chefs?). I liked that he didn’t make me that hungry – I wanted to relish the next story as much as I wanted to savour the garlicky escargot and the foie gras terrine buried beneath a leaf-fall of summer truffle shavings.

Jay Rayner set out on a quest to see if those fabled Michelin-starred restaurants are really something to shout out about. And he tells us what we already know, and that is the perfect meal can’t be found anywhere with Baroque fittings or a €200 degustation menu. It just can’t be found.

Contributed by: D.C

It takes a really gifted writer with the precise recipe of unabashed honesty, wicked intellectuality and sly wit to make an autobiographical memoir truly readable. De Assis (1839-1908, Brazilian) achieved this feat in 160 intentional chapters, each illuminating luminously the trials and tribulations of his (alter) ego. Reflecting an astute style-choice (he opts for the posthumous route from the get-go since the dead could always only have fun!), these disparate tracks re-create the digressive nature of consciousness-in-being by skipping lithely between life’s predominant polarities both across and within chapters: objectivism and subjectivism (or depiction and conversation; reflection and refraction, reality and philosophy). The result is an intimate reading experience facilitated through an embracive literary structure. There are many addictive and attractive things about ‘Epitaph’, the greatest of which would be the reader’s desire to eventually obtain a fragment of Assis’ bravery in his ability to reminisce a life’s worth in glee. I affirm that this is quite possibly one of the ‘greatest novels you never heard of’.

Contributed by: s.t

The Holocaust, arguably a historical individual, has always been fascinating because of its extraordinary components. It is a bizarre circumstance where incomprehensible evil is dealt a worthy opponent in the incarnation of unwavering will and mercy. Depictions of this battle swarmed with documentarian value are abundant; what are few and far between are the ones which could deliver an ease of literary accessibility during reading, while keeping the horror at arm’s length. Yes, I am talking about non-fiction literature. Impact-wise, Capote’s In Cold Blood comes close to what I consider to be Primo Levi’s opus, The Drowned and The Saved. (How about Elie Wiesel’s Night?) Levi, an Auswitch survivor, writes with such fluidity that you would think that the blood which once flowed never stopped. Yet somehow, you could feel that it had, because of his willingness to understand analytically the conditions (psychological, structural) of the rested dead and the walking ones. Through Levi’s writing style, one is able to get a sense of his personal struggle for mnemonic reconciliation: it is not about getting closer to the heart of suffering; rather, it is to manufacture and then maintain a delicate distance with that emotional core, through a beautiful mind.

Contributed by: s.t

The Hours is one of the subtlest novels you will ever pick up, yet also one of the most powerful and haunting. Nothing seems to really be happening, yet so much has already happened because everything interior is alive and well. Just as there is not much to be said about the impending grief of losing a dear friend to AIDS, why not realize the breeze and its whispers while fetching him flowers in an early spring morning full of possibility? Such is life. 

Therefore, instead of fashioning characters that hover above their banality, Michael Cunningham wisely chooses to locate personal stories amidst their everyday condition. Characters and their pasts meander in and out of their structured circumstances, showing their faces like hallowed ghosts. The choices that are revealed under such setting render the characters’ humanity, in all its shades, starker, and it is a very beautiful thing to witness. Standing tall on the shoulders of Virginia Woolf’s vision in Mrs Dalloway, The Hours is perched as a fitting postmodern companion. The durable scaffold of the former is revived as a recurrent situational text for reality referencing in the latter. However, what is borrowed are never the mere details and manners of one era (early 20th century England), but the common emotional undercurrents that echo through time, such that the years that divide them erode away, only to exist as convenient chapters of one same book. Cunningham knows this, and here, his interpretation allows a re-reading of Woolf, updating her text with an urgent contemporary relevance. This is a great personal homage that is tastefully done. The visionary is dead, long live the visionary. Unlike in Specimen Days (c.f. Walt Whitman was his muse) where this strategy was employed to a slightly contrived and inconsistent effect, the result here is an intricately-woven cross-stitch of life’s tapestry that is ‘equally poised between despair and the desire to live’ (Meryl Streep, 2002).

Contributed by: s.t

“J.D. Salinger who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.” 

To read the full article from the NYT, click here.

Go on, pepper your life with a healthy dose of storytelling sessions and workshops by MoonShadow Stories, a homegrown creation by Kamini and Verena (above). Check out their early-2010 schedule here. The Timeless Tales session looks especially inviting!

Slammers take note: there is a poetry slam event next Sunday, with attractive prizes to be won. If you are seeking adrenaline over the weekend, why not put on your performative suit and jump straight into the fray? There is also a free workshop on poetry slamming this coming Saturday, 23 Jan. More details here.