No Fly Zone

In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies and fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea. ... The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.

A delightfully whimsical piece by philospher/author Alain de Botton, A World Without Planes, on the BBC website. Sometimes one does just want to turn the clock back to a time when things were simpler ...

Postscript :

And Carol Ann Duffy also sees a silver lining in an ash-cloud.

Just Girls for Short Story Prize

The BBC announced an all-female line-up for its National Short Story Prize :

• Naomi Alderman's Other People's Gods
• Kate Clanchy's The Not-Dead and The Saved
• Sara Maitland's Moss Witch
• Jane Rogers's Hitting Trees with Sticks
• Lionel Shriver's Exchange Rates

Each story will be broadcast, starting December 4th, and you can sign up to be informed when the downloadable podcast is available so you can listen to it on the gadget of your choice.

More at The Guardian.

Somewhere To Send Your Work

A couple of writing competitions for you to enter. (And thanks again to British Council for forwarding this information) :

CAN YOU TELL A GOOD STORY?

The BBC World Service - British Council International Radio Playwriting Competition is closing on 31 March 2009. If you’ve got the knack of telling a good story and want a challenge, try your hand at writing radio drama! The winner will receive £2500 and a trip to London to see their play being recorded.

THE BRIDPORT PRIZE

The Bridport Prize is one of the top open writing prizes worldwide - in both prestige and prize money. Submit your poems and short stories by 30 June 2009 to stand a chance to win!

(Well, a Malaysian won the Bridport last year! Lightning can't strike twice in the same place ... can it?)

Books as Ballast

Some more very good reasons (because we need these touchstones from time to time) - this time from John Updike why physical books will not become obsolete. He looks at the book as furniture, as sensual pleasure, as souvenir ... and as ballast (one category I hadn't thought of) :

As movers and the moved both know, books are heavy freight, the weight of refrigerators and sofas broken up into cardboard boxes. They make us think twice about changing addresses. How many ageing couples have decided to stay put because they can't imagine what to do with the books? How many divorces have been forestalled by love of the same jointly acquired library? Books hold our beams down; they act as counterweight to our fickle and flighty natures. In comparison, any electronic text-delivery device lacks substance. Further, speaking of obsolescence, it would be outdated in a year and within 15 as inoperable as my formerly cutting-edge Wang word-processor from the mid-Eighties. Electronic equals (e-quals, if you will) immaterial, Ariel to our earthy Caliban. Without books, we might melt into the airwaves, and be just another set of blips.

The essay appears in his collction Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism.

Talking about Updike, the BBC is repeating a Hard Talk interview with him today recorded in 2004. I caught half of it earlier (thanks to messages from friends) and hope to catch a repeat later.

Write for BBC Radio!

This from the British council e-newsletter and thought you'd all like to know :

If you’ve got the knack of telling a good story and want a challenge, you might want to try your hand at writing radio drama for the BBC World Service - British Council International Radio Playwriting Competition. The winner will receive £2500 and a trip to London to see their play being recorded! Closing date: 31 March 2009.

Am I Bovvered?

I don't feel in a position to give advice about writing because, technically, I don't consider myself a writer. I've just fallen into bad habits, habits that have now become the way I work and so far no one's asked for their money back. But if I can offer up a few random things it's these: Trust yourself. You have to start with what you think is funny before you can have the confidence to write to anyone else's brief Give a gag three chances to work, if after three (separate) attempts they're still not laughing, bin it. It's not them. It's you. Don't take criticism personally, take from it what's useful. Apply it and move on to something better. And be brave. No one got anywhere by being too scared to open their mouth in case nobody laughed.

Comediene Catherine Tate is going to be talking about her own experiences of writing the funny stuff in the Guardian over the next seven days. (Love her show on the BBC especially when she plays Lauren, as below.)

Isabel and the Family Saga

I was sad that I missed Isabel Allende being interviewed on the BBC's Hardtalk by Sarah Montegue the other day about her new memoir The Sum Of Our Days. It isn't possible to watch the programmes on the BBC website anymore now that they are changing to a new system (the BBC i-Player) which we can't subscribe to here (yet?). But some kind soul put a fair chunk of the interview on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2).

Allende talks about how she draws on her family for inspiration, how this is the second memoir written to Paula, her daughter who died, and also about how she writes.

What you may not know - she starts every new book on January 8th, and before that doesn't even know what the first sentence will be, let alone the plot!

Best quote from the interview :

If I had to chose between a relative and a good story, I'd chose the story.

There's more about the book on the Harper Collins website.

Kite Runner Controversy

The filming of Khaled Hosseini's best selling novel The Kite Runner has run into controversy in Afghanistan where it is set, according to a report on the BBC website.

And if you've read the book, I'm sure you can guess which scene has caused the furor.

The novel has sold more than eight million copies worldwide. In the UK where it has sold more than a million copies, it's success is largely due to it's popularity among book clubs. It was voted the best book club read of the year for the second year running by members of the public and entrants of the 2007 Penguin/Orange Broadband Readers' Group prize according to the Times.

(The photo is from the BBC website and shows Ahmad Khan who plays Hassan.)

One Disaffected Bookseller

As promised. You can listen here to a BBC World Service special on the launch of Harry Potter 7, and a certain "disaffected" bookseller from Bangsar telling it as it is!

Rowling apparently has a great deal of gratitude for independent booksellers. What a pity the marketing behemoth now excludes the very people who stood by her books in the early days.

A Date with Fate

Gift of Rain author Tan Twan Eng is in the UK at the moment to promote the book. You can listen to him talk about the book on Ian Macmillan's literary radio programme The Verb on BBC Radio 3.

Are there too many novels set during the Second World War (as some have alleged)? Why aren't there many Malaysian novelists? Does the author believe in predestination?

Have a listen to the programme and find out.

Sheddings and Beheadings

One of the National Short Story Prize finalists, Hanif Kureishi, is reportedly very angry with the BBC which has cancelled the radio broadcast of his shortlisted story.

Weddings and Beheadings describes the work of a cameraman who has been forced to take on work filming the executions that have become a feature of recent kidnaps in the Middle East. BBC officials felt that broadcasting it "would not be right" as concern grows for BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnson.

Kureishi says:

There are journalists and newspapers in peril all the time around the world. We support them by supporting freedom of speech rather than by censoring ourselves.

I agree.

Incidentally, you can read Kureishi's story on the Prospect Magazine website.

Postscript:

Maureen Freely on the Guardian blog makes the very important point that even nice censorship is censorship and therefore cannot be condoned.

... and the more we condone it, the more we wrap it up in sheepish clothing, the more we convince ourselves that it is the only way to fend off the wolves, the more of it we'll see.

(Photo nicked from the BBC website.)

Smoggier Still ...

The "haze" a.k.a. the smog from hell is worse still today. According to The Department of the Environment, the API here in Petaling Jaya is 349.

I was joking about API's over 500 yesterday ... but it has hit 529 in Klang and 531 in Kuala Selangor.

It was the first item on the BBC news broadcast just now. There was Jonathan Kent telling the world that a state of emergency has been declared.

Really?

I turned to the local TV stations. Programming as usual. No news flashes or alerts. Shouldn't they be keeping the country constantly updated? Or shouldn't there be at least a ticker thingy running across the bottom of the screen?

This news from Forbes.

The place to turn is you want breaking news is Project Petaling Street where Malaysian bloggers ping their latest entry.

Here are a few of the latest haze pings just to give those of you who live far away a taste of what living under a pall of smoke is like. (If you live in the Klang Valley you'll probably want to entertain yourselves elsewhere, I don't blame you.)

Fashion Asia invites you to see the view for yourself; PapiMami talks of panic buying in the supermarkets; Paul Tan posts a satellite picture of the plume of smoke from Sumatra heading our way; Suanie provides lyrics for some great patriotic haze songs if you've got any breath left to sing; and Perpetual Rush wants a leopardskin surgical mast (we must be gaya even as we choke to death, see?)

But the most brilliant idea comes from Haze Haters who is inviting everyone to send in their photos of the "haze" for an online photo petition. He's had some entries already.

The Malay Mail today offered some tips on how to stay healthy including

* Women should consider covering the head with a scarf.

One wonders why only women and not both sexes, unless the writer had another agenda.

But how about this as a way to beat the haze?



Photo of Erik Fearn from Jeff Ooi.

Postscript:

Some very funny haze jokes from Midnight Lily . Gotta laugh or you'd cry, innit?