Dr Who: Vincent and the Doctor

I’m not sure how to begin this blog entry. I’m not sure how to write the middle or how to conclude either, so it could be interesting.

I’ve never blogged about Dr Who before. However, I found the recent Van Gogh episode profoundly moving. I know – it was written by Richard Curtis; it consequently contained more cheese than the story of The Stinky Cheese Man, I ought to feel manipulated etc etc, but I don’t.

I agree with Dan Martin’s review in The Guardian: the episode would have been even better without the monster, however the krafayis entertained my children who remained startlingly unmoved by the subsequent scene in the gallery. As I watched Van Gogh's (Tony Curran) speechless appraisal of his paintngs on display to the public, tears were trailing down my face and dripping onto the floor. Alice fetched a tissue and rubbed my face with it. Sam said, ‘you’re not crying are you mum?’ Cue snorts and eye rolling from all three of the boys.

The Athlete track in the background: take all your chances while you can – you’ll never know when they’ll pass you by really finished me off. It made me want to say to the kids, 'I hope you’re listening – take all your chances while you can.' But nothing would have been more likely to discourage them from taking all their chances, so I remained silent as Alice sandpapered my face and the boys sniggered.

As Gerard McGarry writes: 'The fact that they didn't prevent Van Gogh's suicide was quite poignant. Bittersweet in that there aren't always happy endings, and difficult for Amy to hear because she'd literally seen the man alive a few minutes before. Despite their attempts to raise Van Gogh's mood, the effect was only temporary. It provided a great moral counterpoint to the "nobody dies today" cries we've heard in Doctor Who - you can't save everybody, but you can at least make a positive difference.'

I’m not all that keen on happy endings. Endings should, by nature, be sad because they conclude, finish what we greedily wish would go on. Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Cell’ makes this point better than I can:

                                        All it wants is more
amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. To take
more. To eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on
doing these things forever. Such desires
are not unknown. Look in the mirror.
(Atwood, Eating Fire, p.319)

Thumbs up to Dr Who for providing bow tie jokes and aliens while simultaneously depicting the beauty and sadness of life.

Atwood's Poetry

I've read a lot of Margaret Atwood's poetry this week. I've even written some poetry myself, something I haven't really done properly since the second year of my BA. Atwood's poetry is the sort of poetry I enjoy, it's both transparent and opaque, she uses language in original and interesting ways, a first reading of each poem makes sense; a second reading makes sensation - a feeling of yes, I wish I'd thought of that.
Here is a poem that I particuarly like:

My daughter crackles paper, blows
on the tree to make it live, festoons
herself with silver.
So far she has no use
for gifts.

           What can I give her,
what armor, invincible
sword or magic trick, when that year comes?

How can I teach her
some way of being human
that won't destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love
is enough, I would like to say,
Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance
and be happy. Instead I will say
in my crone's voice, Be
ruthless when you have to, tell
the truth when you can,
when you can see it.

Iron tailsmans, and ugly, but
more loyal than mirrors.
(Eating Fire, p.231)

Negotiating with the Dead

In her book about writing, Negotiating with the Dead, Margaret Atwood writes, ‘you have never met the author of the book you have just read because too much time has elapsed between composition and publication’ (p.32). She goes on to remind the reader that ‘writer and audience are invisible to each other; the only visible thing is the book, and a reader may get hold of a book long after the writer is dead’ (p.43).

Last winter I read a book by Carol Shields. I read it by accident. It had been sitting on my bookshelf for some time, as part of a collection of books that I had bought from a discount retailer and never got around to reading. After I had finished the first chapter I told anyone who would listen that it was already the best book I had ever read. When I reached the end of the book I felt dazed. I tracked back and read my favourite passages again. Then I went on line to find out everything I could about Carol Shields. I discovered that, like me, she had five children, that in addition to novels she wrote short fiction and biography and that she had been dead for five years.

The Stone Diaries tells the life story of Daisy Goodwill, an ordinary woman, except of course, there is no such thing as an ordinary woman. It follows Daisy from her birth to her death and records her triumphs and disasters, which are all of the kind that you or I might expect to experience. Shields is quoted in this review as saying, 'none of the novels I read seemed to have anything to do with my life. So that was the kind of novel I tried to write - the novel I couldn't find.' The Stone Diaries is full of real things - lists, menus, recipes, newspaper clippings, fragments of overheard conversation, photographs, the opinions and theories of Daisy's friends and so much more. It is like a literary patchwork of life.

When The Stone Diaries was published in 1993, I was doing my A levels. When Shields died in 2003 I was pregnant with my fifth child. When I read The Stone Diaries in 2008, I was finishing my BA. I wanted to write and thank her for The Stone Diaries, for writing the kind of novel that had something to do with my life. Discovering that she had died was upsetting - I wished that I had read the book sooner, so that I could tell her how much I enjoyed it.

Margaret Atwood describes the way writers are split in two, she writes: 'the authorial part, the part that is out there in the world, the only part that may survive death - is not flesh and blood, not a real human being' (p.39). Atwood is right, of course, no-one is immortal, and yet, the very best writers create whole worlds that do survive death and while Daisy Goodwill is not flesh and blood, not a real human being, the words which Shields has used to conjure her, project a life that is as real, and full, and true as any you might watch unfolding or experience yourself.