Monday, January 30, 2006

 

Natasha

last night read a very fascinating short story in an old Harper's magazine - "Natasha" by David Bezmozgis ....i've never heard of this author before but a quick check in amazon.com have this to say about him....David Bezmozgis became an overnight star when he published stories in the holy trinity of American magazines for fiction lovers: The New Yorker, Harper's, and Zoetrope. With the publication of his first book, Natasha, he has been compared to Chekhov and Philip Roth, and the comparison is more than just promotional copy.

....the story is about the 14 yr old natasha a russian emigre (with her mother zina) to usa... the thing that struck me about this story is the description of child porn and it kinda make me understand a bit how all those child porn pictures from eastern europe are everywhere in the internet....

...and now i'm reading a funny, ascerbic and very good travel book by Evelyn Waugh..."Remote People" about the coronation of Ras Tafari ...haile salassie ...in Abyssinia ( now Ethiophia)... and about his travel around the region at that time...and also finishing an article by the gay writer Edmund White.. 'Shrink' in the literary quaterly GRANTA vol 71... this one is about his teenage years undergoing psychoanalysis trying to cure himself from homosexuality...(which didn't work)......

...this afternoon...went to TESCO to buy some groceries but ended up at the book section where they have this sales bin full of surprisingly good books...old penguin classics and some contemporary british fictions... bought "groucho" a biography of marx ( groucho) by stefan kanfer, "Riding the yellow trolley car" ...selected non fiction by william kennedy ...the only reason i bought this was because it has his pieces on gabriel garcia marquez, norman mailer , saul bellow and don de lillo among others.... Herman melville's "typee"... and Giovanni verga's Cavalleria rusticana and other stories...these last two are penguin classic publications...

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

 

Buffles

Picked up an old travel writing "Sunrise with Sea monsters" by Paul Theroux and read a couple of short essays...."memories of old afghanistan" written in 1974 and a short 3 page essay "Malaysia" written in 1973 just before going to sleep last night.

I'm quite amused by Mr Theroux's mildly condescending description of an old sultan in one of the states who 'designed his own uniforms' and goes by the nickname 'Buffles'. In one of the polo games that Paul Theroux was present he at one point asked the sultan what was the opposing team malay name meant in english and this 'buffles' remarked "i have no idea. i'll have to ask zayid.It's malay you see. i don't speak it terribly well".....

i'm sure this buffles is long dead now but i suppose there are still quite a few buffles among our many sultans now.... it's kind of sad that those that are supposed to be the most powerful and ought to play some real role in running the country are merely ornamentals at best . ... and yes being 'buffles' most of the time....

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