Wednesday, November 28, 2007

 

interviews

recently a book was published locally to a more or less great acclaim (locally) called 'politicians say the darnest things', or is it the damnest thing ? i can't recall too well because i haven't got round to buying it yet. it is by one amir hafizi or is it amir muhammad or could be by amir cosby since i recalled one amir cosby or was it bing or was it bill who had a treacly tv programme many years ago called kids say the darnest thing, and i figured the book and the tv program -apart from having similar title- may also be of somewhat the same format namely collections of (in)famous statements by or excerpts from interviews with politicians in the case of the book and jabberings of kids in case of the tv program, which is basically the same thing as politicians -especially umno assholes- are not much better ( and probably worse) than kids anyway.

and i love interviews of just about anybody - except umno assholes. these politicians are damned tedious because every two minutes or so they will start jabbering about projects and how malaysia will go to the dogs if not for umno. what fucking tripes they can come up with you'll never believe. the wonder of it all is that how come malaysians are so fucking stupid and keep on voting these assholes year in and year out so much so that these umno fuckers think malaysia belongs to them and they just do any damn thing they please. (and i hear some idiots say, do we have any alternative? i don't need to bother answering this retarded question ).

oh my, didn't i get a bit worked up there for a moment eh? but as i was saying i love interviews. and some of the best interviews are those of writers. make perfect sense since words are their tool of trade- so to speak- they are the ones capable of expressing themselves best and in general the most articulate (with the exceptions of politicians of course... but most politicians are liars - especially umno assholes... but enough of that)...

and so, one of my favorite kind of reading is to read interviews of writers in literary pages of newspapers -guardian unlimited, herald tribune, NYT and such like- and not those owned by umno assholes- or magazines such as paris review but these days there's something even better. just google your favorite writer on youtube and more likely than not you'll get some very illuminating and surprising interviews and this is much better than reading - because with videos you can glean a bit more of their personalities from their speech, reading style , body language, nuance , that sort of things. a very illuminating and perhaps a perfect writely pair is this interview of martin amis and norman mailer. A whole 56 minutes of it! and quite a contrast is this rather funny but slightly sad and befuddled kurt vonnegut (one of my favorite writers) with a bad hair day that looked a bit like rod stewart's hair on his bad hair day. the start is classic. when asked how's life ? his answer is 'practically over ,thank god' (he was 83 during this interview) and calling george W a twit and at one stage claiming that you couldn't trust a president that has oral sex in the oval office - obviously confusing bush with clinton. befuddled but hilarious as you can see here. such a lovable man. Rest in peace my friend. i wish there are more writers like you.

a little aside. when i went to indianapolis (kurt vonnegut's hometown) last february one of my expressed goals (expected result -as they say here) was to look for his readings but i was told that he was living in new york and it so happened that despite his claim that he would not write anymore books much to everybody's delight he broke his promise and wrote another book and when i was there his last book was just published. and it so happened that i also went to NY but i didn't see any readings advertised anywhere so i did not get to meet my favorite author when he was alive.

there are so many good interviews out there. and here's another one. a brief but quite illuminating excerpt of orhan pamuk's interview mentioning his favorite authors and here an interview with his translator maureen freely which created quite a ripple recently for translating orhan's books well, rather freely.

but nothing gets my blood boiling more than this sir dick head. here he is reading an excerpt from the satanic verses and the cheek of it is he chose the very passage that riled up my muslim extremists brothers most. the passage about him making fun and denigrating the writing of the Quran as you can see here. and what is worse is the listeners were happily laughing and sniggering along when the fool is making an ass of himsalf. the bastard. it's lucky that my fellow talibans are not the literary sort and never go to readings by him (or anyone else). otherwise...well, things can turn ugly for the fucker.

to give some idea of how despicable his act is to good muslims , it's like how the christians would feel if you were to piss on the bible i suppose.

but in truth i have this love hate relationship with sir dick head. i love his writings and collect all his books, i even love satanic verses from literary point of view but at the same time i can't forgive his despicable act of insulting my religion. what he did was not like say 'life of brian' which is benign and lovable but his satanic verses is pure derision of islam. there is no humour in it. reading sir dickhead is like how people feel banging prostitutes. they love it and hate it at the same time. i'm sure some of you know exactly the feeling i mean.

Comments:
thanks so much for pointing the way to such good stuff, greenbottle. interesting what you say about your feelings for sir dick head ...
 
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