Saturday, March 28, 2009

Tripping Part III - Craic Addict

You can almost hear the patter of little leprechaun feet dancing around you wherever you are in the Emerald Isle. The magic in that country is undeniable being it's wrapped in ghost stories, legends, myths and abduction clubs...

The first of these special places I encountered in my travels was Blarney in County Cork, and given that I now posses blarney (eloquence, to the uninitiated), I will do my best to convince you of a visit.

Walking through the lushest greenest grounds you will ever see, Blarney Castle peaks into view showing itself a magnificent, towering middle age structure. King Cormac MacCarthy of Munster is the monarch behind the the castle, built over 600 hundred years ago, which is now basically hollow inside bar the smallest, narrowest and steepest staircase I have ever encountered which leads to the Blarney Stone at they very top. Neither the castle or the town has always been referred to as Blarney, a term which came about thanks to Elizabeth I, who told the Earl of Leicester at the time he was speaking a load of old 'blarney' when reporting back on the status on his delayed take over of the castle form MacCarthy. These days we might say he was simply talking bulls**t, but blarney is definitely more 'eloquent'.

The stone itself, which is placed in such a way that you must lay flat and lean back, dangling your upper body from a parapet in order to kiss it, is said to bestow the kisser with the gift of eloquence. Legend says the stone was a gift from the Scots in 1314 when MacCarthy sent thousands of soldiers in support of Robert the Bruce in order to defeat the English, although there are legends that go back even further to the crusades.

A fantasti
c story of mystery and intrigue isn't it, somewhat bringing you back down to earth when you spot the bottles of Tesco anti-bacterial spray sitting next to it!! ick! The town itself is adorable, the castle grounds being surrounded by the Blarney Woolen Mills and several little shops, but the castle and its grounds is the main tourist attraction around here.






North east
of Cork is the country's capital Dublin. Expecting more of an old city not unlike Edinburgh, I was surprised by its modern buildings and surrounds. Mostly due to the fact that they were unfortunately tearing down aged structures up until the late 1970's.
If the first stop for you must be a pint of Guinness, head to the Temple bar district to the right off Temple Lane. Oh, and expect a bit of a wait when you order your Guinness which must be poured bit by bit and left to settle after each fill! By my watch my first order was 15 minutes in a quiet pub.
Pubs, come to that, are abundant in Dublin and are probably the best places to get a good meal worth the euro.

'What about the Abduction Clubs' I hear you say? 'Whats that?' Back in 18th century southern Ireland, an association was formed - the Abduction Club - consisting of seconds sons, or 'squireens', of well off families. Back in the day law said it was the first born sons who inherited the family estate, while the second son had no choice but to marry an heiress or enter the church to make a living. The purpose of the Club, who rebelled this law, was basically to make googly eyes at heiresses and when they thought they were in, abduct them and persuade (not forced) them into marriage. After all, they were gentlemen, men of honor...

One such story which centres around the Kennedy girls - Catherine and Anne - who were abducted by squireens Garrett Byrne and James Strang, which was been made into a 2002 movie with dishy Matthew Rhys and Aussie Daniel Lapaine. Said to be based on true events and true characters, you can't help but to get behind these poor boys who eventually give up their quest to marry rich because they've fallen in love...sigh (the Kennedy girls revealing that their father is actually broke due to his gambling ways).

So all in all, it goes without saying (again) that the Emerald Isle is certainly a must see destination in the UK, full of wonder, magic and the black stuff. And if you manage to catch a leprechaun while you're there, you'll be laughing...

Monday, March 16, 2009

THE INTERVIEW - A Novel Idea (May 2008)

www.smh.com.au

The anticipation deepens as you raise your hands closer to your face; the eagerness to find out how it will all end makes your heart skip a beat and causes your eyes to dart even more rapidly from side to side. Finally you have approached the end, your burning curiosity has been satisfied and you ponder the final outcome as you turn over the last page.

Such is the thrill of devouring a beautifully written novel for many Australian book worms. The characters, the plots and the settings give your imagination an opportunity to stretch itself and escape the mundane busy nothings that can fill our lives.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed
and digested,” Sir Francis Bacon, English Renaissance philosopher and author, couldn’t have put it better.

The popularity of the novel doesn’t seem to have ever wavered. From the much loved classics to the latest Bryce Courtney, no matter how much technology advances, it seems that Australians just can’t put down their books.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics books sales to Australian consumers totaled over $300 million last year, with just over 8,500 new Australian titles published in this time.

Australian book publisher Penguin, home to some of Australia’s best selling writers such as Bryce Courtenay, Maggie Alderson and Kaz Cooke, sell around 30,000 titles in total and boast on their website an annual turnover last year of $120 million; a far cry from the company’s humble beginnings in a tin shed in South Melbourne in 1946.


My Favorite Book, a television program which aired on the ABC in 2004 revealed Australia
’s top 100 favorite books as voted by the Australian public. Taking pride of place was JRR Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings followed by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and the first five novels in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling made appearances in the top 100 beginning at number six. A host of Australian writers also made the list including Tim Winton, Bryce Courtenay, John Marsden and Norman Lindsay.

An interesting pattern of this top 100 is the number of classic novels Australian’s voted as their favorites including more works by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Charles Dickens.

Associate Professor William Christie from the University of Sydney, who specialises in English Romantic literature, offers an explanation as to why the classics seem to be so relevant even today:

“It’s a combination of things. Part aesthetic, part ethical, part commercial conspiracy. No text is inherently attractive to all audiences, they need to be constantly rediscovered and kept alive in the imagination of a culture,” he says.

“This is done through adoption, through a teaching syllabus, through publishing and promotion. Having said that, however, only certain texts will repay the investment of time and attention that this involves.

“As Coleridge said,” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, philosopher and founder of the Romantic movement in England), “it is not the poem we read with pleasure, so much as the poem to which we return with pleasure that we value the most!”

Professor Christie pauses thoughtfully before speaking; you can almost hear his mind
carefully sifting through his wealth of knowledge of eighteenth century literature. So detailed and eager is he sharing what he knows it is obvious that he is someone who not only loves their job but also considers it their passion.

In May this year Christie was a recipient of the NSW Premier’s Prize for Literary Scholarship for his biography Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a Literary Life after entering the competition with the encouragement of a colleague at the University of Sydney.

He has been an expert in his field since the early 1980s and has been based at the University of Sydney for the past five months.

Christie believes for a novel to become a classic, it needs to “satisfy the new and different demands an individual makes of it on the occasion of returning to it and beyond the demands that each generation makes of it”.


He cites a dozen classics when asked to reveal his favorite novel, but admits his top two to be Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and George Elliot’s Middlemarch, the name being the pen name of true author Mary Anne Evans.

So much so have the classics captured the modern day audience, that cinema and television screens have been flooded with adaptations such as Oliver Twist and Vanity Fair, and virtually all of Jane Austen’s novels; most recently Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightly and Matthew McFadden, and BBC television’s adaptations of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey to be broadcast on the ABC in June this year.

Professor Christie focuses part of his teachings on novels into film, focusing on the adaptation of the classics to the big screen:


“I don’t think any adaptations are inherently more successful than others, though some are more successful per se, some more ingenious and some more imaginative than others,” he says.

Novel to film adaptations cannot be spoken of without mentioning the Darcymania phenomenon that gripped many a nation after the BBC aired the 1995 television miniseries Pride and Prejudice in the United Kingdom.

British website Icons of England explains the term Darcymania as being the “near-hysterical adulation” of Colin Firth’s portrayal of Mr Darcy in the BBC adaptation.

Icons of England has reported that the series was watched by more than 11 million viewers when first aired, a figure the website states is greater than the UK’s entire population in Jane Austen’s lifetime, with around 100 million viewers worldwide. When released on video it sold out in two hours.
www.telegraph.co.uk












Female fans went into a spin over the broody and haughty Darcy whose appeal was attributed as the likely reason for the adaptation’s extraordinary success according to an article printed in British publication The Independent after the miniseries was aired.


But is the real appeal of classic novels today a result of their modern day film adaptations. A regular visitor to the local bookshops and avid classics reader, Lisa Trethowan, believes the appeal of the novel, and the reason she reads novels, is the escapism offered:
“I guess anything is possible in a novel. You don’t have to seek facts. Fictions stories bring out a lot of emotion in the reader.”
Lisa goes onto explain why her favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice, is significant to her as well as being an appealing read:

“Because it was written in the time that it was, the story is of an old fashion romance. With the language they use you sometimes have to really think about what they say, situations and characters explain things in a roundabout way; it leaves you thinking,” she says.

“The movie does play a big part in the story for me as it helped me to imagine the characters in a different way. It helped me understand the novel more.”


A more recent phenomenon of the magical kind, the Harry Potter craze, certainly cannot be ignored. JK Rowling’s novels, widely considered as the series that inspired children to reignite their passion for reading, became an instant success with millions of readers and critics alike the world over.

According to Bloomsbury’s website, publisher of the Potter series, the seventh and final book in the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows sold over 2 million copies within 24 hours of its release in the UK alone and was the nation’s fastest selling book of all time to date. The entire series has sold around 350 millions copies worldwide and has been translated into 65 different languages.


Reading novels may not only be a pleasurable pastime and a way of escapism for the reader, but it seems it can be good for you as well.

A study published in the Journal of Research and Personality in 2006, which looks at the link between reading a novel and increased empathy. The study found that the more fiction a person reads the more empathy they have and the more social understanding and awareness they posses.

The study found that the more fiction authors a participant recognised, the higher the participant scored on tests of social awareness and empathy. An example described in the study was the participants’ ability to recognise a person’s emotions from a picture showing only theirs eyes, and the ability to see another person’s perspective.

In contrast the study found that those who read non-fiction showed the opposite characteristics. These participants failed to “simulate such experiences, and may accrue a social deficit in social skills as a result of removing themselves from the actual social world”.


An empathetic person it may be who also spares a thought for the used, or rather pre-loved, books that are quickly becoming collectable hidden gems.

Kay Craddock, an antiquarian bookseller whose store is based in Melbourne’s CBD, caters to the publics interest in collectable texts and manuscripts.

Her inspiring store in Collins Street is a wonderland for book lovers and collectors alike. Set in a stone neo-gothic assembly hall, the shelves are stacked high with antique novels, manuscripts and illustrations, with ceramic owls dotted around the shelves keeping watch over the precious stock. As you tread the wooden floorboards and pass displays of centuries old manuscripts, the wealth of knowledge and history that surrounds you is almost magical.

Sourcing most of their stock privately, the joined venture between Kay and her parents Les and Muriel Craddock first began in 1965 selling a mix of second hand books, crafts and bric-a-brac. After the passing of her father that same year, Kay was left in partnership with her mother and still is today.

In 1996 Kay was the first bookseller in the Southern Hemisphere to be elected to the committee of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. From 2000 to 2002 she was the league’s President.

The stock Kay sources for her store ranges in age from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries:

“The most precious book we have handled would be the Schoeffer Bible, printed in Mainz, in 1472,” Kay shares proudly.

“The printer of this book, Peter Schoeffer, was an apprentice to Johann Gutenberg,” who she explains was inventor of the printing press in the 1450s.

The public’s obvious fascination with antique texts and manuscripts seems to be continually growing in popularity. The State Library of Victoria is currently holding a free exhibition of illuminated antique manuscripts from Cambridge in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and many European countries.

On display are over 90 medieval and Renaissance handwritten illuminated manuscripts and books dating from the eighth to sixteenth centuries including works such as sacred texts, music, law, history, literature and science. The exhibition is being held at the state library until mid June.

It seems a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a novel, whether collectable, antique, classic or modern chic lit, hold the ultimate tool to escapism; a way to let go of the days stresses and indulge your imagination.

Jane Austen herself offers more of her wisdom in summing up the power of the novel:
“It is some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusion of wit and humor are to be conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”