Bent and Unfolded

Alan Hollinghurst, The Folding Star, 1994
I found out recently that this is a perfect novel to read on the beach. It's got everything you'd want in a bonkbuster: torrid gay sex, love intrigues, tragic deaths, secrets and a pervy main character obsessed with a 17-year-old boy (to the point of stealing his underwear and stalking him). It's Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Nabokov's Lolita set in a Flamish town in the mid 90s, brought to life through carefully descriptive, gorgeous writing. The main character is Ed, an English teacher in his early 30s who moves to Belgium to work as a private tutor with some tentative plans of using his spare time on creative writing. He's unlikeable and unreliable as a narrator, but the reader still can't help but be seduced by his voice as he paints a life of untethered pursuits and regrets. Make sure to read the ending carefully because it is easy to misunderstand it.

Old Poet Gives Birth to Vampire Actress

I took a creative writing workshop with Allen Ginsberg yesterday from the comfort of my bed. It was through an audio recording made in July 24th, 1982, at the Jack Kerouac conference in Boulder, Colorado. Four days from now, that will be 27 years ago.

It was a great workshop and I highly recommend it to any of you interested in writing prose (or especially poetry - this is Ginsberg after all!) Many of his courses are available for free to download from here. (I can't wait to take William Burroughs' classes too, also available from the same site, even though Kevin says he's very monotone.)

While I was listening to Ginsberg's warm voice, the hum of his classroom in the background making it seem like I was there too, I wondered what that day had been like for the rest of the world. I found out that torrential rains and mudslides had hit Nagasaki, Japan, destroying bridges and killing 299. And that Anna Paquin was born. Just 12 hours earlier I'd watched the first episode of True Blood. (I'd decided to give it a second chance after learning the creators of Six Feet Under were behind it.)

I sometimes think coincidences are the universe's way of saying you are on the right track.