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Pretty Ugly

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
Englisch
Rough Trade Bookserschienen am30.05.2024
Contradictions (both real and apparent), oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges--this is the kind of material that makes a life, and is the kind of material that, in fiction, one is never quite sure of. With Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn reminds us again that she is a master of just such stuff, presenting ambiguity and complication as the essence of the storyteller's endeavour.   The sheer force of life that Gunn is able to load these stories up with is both testament to her unrivalled skill and an exercise in what she describes as 'reading and writing ugly', in order to pursue the deeper truths that lie at the heart of both the human imagination and human rationality.   So here we have all the strange and seemingly impossible dualities that make up real life--and pretty ugly it can be, as well as beautiful, hopeful, bleak, difficult, exhilarating. But never, ever dull.  

Kirsty Gunn is the author of novels, short stories and essays which have been published in over twelve territories, widely anthologised, broadcast, turned into film and dance theatre, and are the recipient of various prizes and awards, including Scottish Book of the Year and the Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. She is Research Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee, and also teaches at Oxford and Wordpath, an online international writing programme. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR18,00
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR11,99

Produkt

KlappentextContradictions (both real and apparent), oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges--this is the kind of material that makes a life, and is the kind of material that, in fiction, one is never quite sure of. With Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn reminds us again that she is a master of just such stuff, presenting ambiguity and complication as the essence of the storyteller's endeavour.   The sheer force of life that Gunn is able to load these stories up with is both testament to her unrivalled skill and an exercise in what she describes as 'reading and writing ugly', in order to pursue the deeper truths that lie at the heart of both the human imagination and human rationality.   So here we have all the strange and seemingly impossible dualities that make up real life--and pretty ugly it can be, as well as beautiful, hopeful, bleak, difficult, exhilarating. But never, ever dull.  

Kirsty Gunn is the author of novels, short stories and essays which have been published in over twelve territories, widely anthologised, broadcast, turned into film and dance theatre, and are the recipient of various prizes and awards, including Scottish Book of the Year and the Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. She is Research Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee, and also teaches at Oxford and Wordpath, an online international writing programme. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781914236433
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2024
Erscheinungsdatum30.05.2024
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1660 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.15285235
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe

Praxis, or Why Joan Collins is Important

I want to talk to you about Joan, Anne said, taking me by the arm and leading me into a corner of the room. This was two weeks ago at a party thrown by a mutual friend to celebrate the publication of her book about historic rose gardens of England. There were roses, of course, everywhere.

It´s important, Anne said.

So, past enormous china bowls filled with Dancing Ballerina, Rambling Jack and Iceberg Anne led me, the names of each arrangement written carefully on cards balanced next to them, along with dates and details of the gardens where they could be found. Whisky Galore; Sunset; Faint Hearted. She found us a spot behind an elegant high-backed sofa where we could be on our own, a large bouquet of Celebration on a table in front to shield us. These displays, each one different from the last and so carefully annotated, were clearly instructive. You might have even said they had a part to play here. My eye, for example, had been drawn to a blue and white amphora of Skip-to-my-Lou, set just to the left of Anne on a side table also crowded with glasses and bottles of champagne. First planted at Sissinghurst, 1876, cuttings taken for Blenheim, Highgate and Kew early 20th C´ I read. There was surely something significant, I remarked, about the use of all the proper nouns. Something about a rose never being just a rose.

But Anne was having none of it. I´ve made a time to see her tonight, she said, referring to the actress Joan Collins about whom she was writing a biography. She drained her glass, inured entirely to the charm of petal and scent. It´s important that a plan is put before her, she was saying, for the new direction the book is taking. It´s complicated, to explain... She let her voice drift off, as though she was uncertain, as though something really was complicated, but there was nothing uncertain or complicated about her. Her eyes were bright and her gaze direct. Joan is smart as a whip but she only stays up for half an hour at a time and there´s loads to convey, Anne said. So I need you to come with me. She set down her glass next to Skip-to-my-Lou and waited for a response. To help me tell her, I mean, she added. Now. What? At first I could say nothing. Between the large arrangement to Anne´s left and another set at my own right elbow, a modest show of Old Glory positioned next to a large and tall lamp beside the sofa as well as the sofa itself and everything Anne had just put to me by way of an opening conversational gambit... well, the whole set-up was quite crowded. I couldn´t take it all in. Go there tonight? To Joan Collins´ Mayfair home? To go soon? In fact now? Why? I don´t- I managed.

But Anne was pressing her suit. There´ve been some changes, she said, to the book, big changes. And I want you to be involved in bringing them about. I don´t know in what way yet, or what it all means. But I want you to come in on this... she paused darkly, somehow.

For the second time that evening I had no response. I seemed altogether unable to proceed. Somehow? was all I could come up with. Somehow? I said again.

It had been quite hard for us both to squeeze in. The space behind the sofa was narrow and the thing itself high backed and stiffly upholstered, the tables set around it jam crammed with roses and champagne, glasses and bottles full and empty. Then there was the matter of the enormous lamp, stage lighting the entire effect. Altogether I was feeling constrained. On show. On the spot, even. It was clear I had been given, by Anne, some sort of role. An involvement of some sort that she had designed, some conversation already determined that was to take place in the service of implementing upon the manuscript she had in hand these big changes´ so mentioned. And to learn that my part had been so allocated here? In this corner? At Marjorie´s party about roses and her book? To be talking instead about another book, the book Anne was writing about Joan Collins, and about some already organised visit to the actress´ Mayfair home? How was I to feel? Off the back of our being surrounded by the heady blooms of Whisky and Celebration and all the rest of it? What was I to do? Didn´t I need to do something?

Of course none of this, my sense of uncertainty and uncertainty´s sister, imperative, seemed to affect Anne in the slightest. She was already telling me in great detail about where she was with her research and about how the meeting she had lined up for us both with the subject of the biography she´d been working on for some time-spending months in libraries and film archives, interviewing friends and associates and all who could be contacted to speak about the starlet turned actress´ as Anne kept saying-was pivotal. We needed to go to Joan Collins´ house now´ she said, that very evening, if the book was to be the book it needs to be.´ The project had undergone a seismic shift´ she went on, in purpose and construction, somehow all related to that same phrase, starlet turned actress.´ Joan would need to know, Anne went on to explain, about the mighty overturn of paradigm that occurs when one disrupts the concept of personality´ and replaces it instead with the idea of player´.´

Whew! Pivotal, alright. This happened two weeks ago and my own life has changed, it has, as a result of that particular discussion. Joan Collins´ biography has had that effect-a piece of work that might have been straightforward yet become, through the force of Anne´s formidable intellect and robust education in postmodern literary theory, a very different sort of publication. For I think of things differently now, I do, all life seen through the experience of that same seismic shift.´ So I find I might want to describe Marjorie´s party in more definite terms, say, than those that I find I have used here; I think about how I might parse and reimagine the role all of us played there, not just by Anne and me but everyone in that room. Certainly I would ask, in any future piece of writing I might undertake: Who were we, really? These people I´ve positioned amongst the roses? I would include in any text this question: What did our actions show? But back then, behind the sofa, I was still onlooker, you might say, spectator to Anne´s game. I was a person engaged but not directly involved in the story she was telling me about why Joan Collins was important and so necessary, how her actress life showed all of us the parts we ourselves might learn to come to play.

Listen, I was able to get a word in at last. There´d been much talk by then of Joan´s immaculate mask´, her use of wigs, props, costumes, make-up and so on. Anne had been filling me in with the kind of back-to-back personal detail that left no room for pause. There was Joan´s knowledge of lighting, of stage position, sound. Her authority around the selection of a particular gown, long or short, backless or full sleeve. You´re going to need to slow down, I said. If I´m to help in any way, if I´m to come with you, Anne, to Joan Collins´ house this evening, without, as far as I can see, a formal invitation. You´re going to need to give me more information. I thought you´d signed that book contract ages ago? I thought you were about to deliver?

Anne sighed, somewhat theatrically. Alright then, here- she turned and in one deft movement removed Skip-to-my-Lou from the table beside her and used the space to spread out a range of pages and photographs taken out of the satchel she´d been wearing over her shoulder all the while. Why hadn´t I noticed it? That even at this party Anne had come prepared with a satchel full of Joan? But there she was, the actress, all over the table. Anne pointed out from the pile of images and pages certain papers for my attention, this photo here, notes on the manuscript there. Each print-out was heavily scored over with handwritten scribble, exclamation marks and Post-its; the images, full colour and black and white, taken of the Hollywood star at different stages of her long-acting career, also densely marked up with instruction and ideas for cropping and extrusion. The sense of industry, the sheer amount of recalibration that had been involved in transforming at speed the project from one kind of undertaking-a glossy coffee table bio-into another-a densely worded treatise on representation and personality as represented by an actress regarded as both English and American, from both old world and new-was impressive. Anne plucked two fresh glasses from the twinkling choir of flutes that seemed to be in attendance, if you like, to all her hard work. She poured champagne into both of them at great speed, as if it was water, and handed me one of them. Have this, she said. I´ll tell you everything.

It turned out that the book she had been working on about Joan´, as she familiarly referred to her subject, had taken much longer to put together than I´d thought. Something that had started as a simple ghosting exercise-A Player´s Life-In her own Words, something like...
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