And he's apparently finally writing something new. We can but wait.
I will blow my own horn a bit: Michael Ondaatje (Twayne 1993) covers
most everything up to The English Patient (an afterward, so not much).
He tends not to repeat himself, & yes, I think he works from image, &
in fragments, so that the collage thereof (which began in Collected
Works) is an important part of the 'writing.'
A postmodern Romantic I think, but he brings it off brilliantly.
Doug
On 14-Jan-05, at 6:02 PM, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
>> I am in awe of Ondaatje's creative journey ... I've only recently
>> read Billy
>> the Kid and found it brilliant ... I've read everything else of his.
>> A poet
>> in novels like Coming through Slaughter and Skin of the Lion ... Ah,
>> I would
>> love my novel to be like Billy the Kid, but sadly it is turning into
>> a plain
>> ordinary chronological narrative.
>
> Not to chime in on your conversation with Alison, but I like Ondaatje
> very much
> too and was glad to see you mentioning _Billy the Kid_ Ondaatje's a
> very good
> poet, I read with him at the Key West Literary Seminar and would have
> liked to
> hear more. He doesn't talk a great deal about his work, he moves
> around like a
> restless lion, though he was quite patient in trying to have a
> conversation with
> Annie Proulx on stage at the seminar, she's very sparse of words, a
> true
> Wyomingite in that sense, and it was almost excruciating to watch him
> try and
> open the conversation and have her monosyllable it closed. Though I
> remember
> something about his beginning _The English Patient_ with an image in
> his mind
> of a plane crashing into the desert and horribly burned man within it
> and
> everything developed from his questions. He does seem a most poetic
> novelist
> in that the narrative always develops associatively,
>
> best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:22:10 +0800
>> From: Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Novel writing
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Alison - I hit the 'delete' button instead of the reply button, and I
>> would
>> have replied b/c but I seem to have your email address under some
>> mysterious
>> combination ...
>>
>> So, I wanted to say I sympathise with you 100%, but would offer the
>> virtual
>> grapes and chocolate ... I need mouth food when I write, or at least a
>> healthy willing woman afterwards ... Both is pleasant. In your case,
>> you can
>> change the healthy woman to a healthy man, if this be your pleasure.
>>
>> For some reason, writing poems is almost a secular version of a
>> sacred act
>> for me, and I go into a different state. That is why I have to banish
>> such
>> states while I am writing a novel. Do you find this? (Perhaps I see
>> novel
>> writing in a classical sense and poems in a romantic way - that'd
>> explain
>> it.)
>>
>> I am in awe of Ondaatje's creative journey ... I've only recently
>> read Billy
>> the Kid and found it brilliant ... I've read everything else of his.
>> A poet
>> in novels like Coming through Slaughter and Skin of the Lion ... Ah,
>> I would
>> love my novel to be like Billy the Kid, but sadly it is turning into
>> a plain
>> ordinary chronological narrative.
>>
>> More grapes! More chocolate! (Can you get decafeinated chocolate?)
>>
>> Andrew
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
The poet is ecstatic, having dreamt of this visit for weeks.
He takes Erato’s face, dribbling and wild, between his hands
and kisses her gently as if she were a runaway teenager.
Diana Hartog
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