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Maps of Places That Don't Exist...
May. 11th, 2010 09:45 amThere's a book sale on at Melbourne Uni at the moment.
I had a look yesterday, and picked up a hardback edition of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green for $10.
If you don't know David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian), he's very similar to Iain Banks's "literary" works: rich and highly imaginative, often tinged with sci-fi. Cloud Atlas is the one to read, if you're looking for an introduction -- a sprawling narrative-inside-narrative work that starts off in the 1850s Pacific Ocean, travels all the way to a post-apocalyptic far future, and then turns around and travels all the way back.
Anyway, the Guardian are running a series about the events that change people's lives. Mitchell writes about photocopying his Tolkien-inspired fantasy map as a 10 year old, and then meeting Angela Carter when he was 21.
It resonates because I too have spent a good deal of time bent over a photocopier reproducing maps of places that don't exist.
And I also met Angela Carter, not long before she died. Well, I heard her read at the Rowden White Library. I was far too shy to actually talk to her.
Once upon a life: David Mitchell:
I had a look yesterday, and picked up a hardback edition of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green for $10.
If you don't know David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian), he's very similar to Iain Banks's "literary" works: rich and highly imaginative, often tinged with sci-fi. Cloud Atlas is the one to read, if you're looking for an introduction -- a sprawling narrative-inside-narrative work that starts off in the 1850s Pacific Ocean, travels all the way to a post-apocalyptic far future, and then turns around and travels all the way back.
Anyway, the Guardian are running a series about the events that change people's lives. Mitchell writes about photocopying his Tolkien-inspired fantasy map as a 10 year old, and then meeting Angela Carter when he was 21.
It resonates because I too have spent a good deal of time bent over a photocopier reproducing maps of places that don't exist.
And I also met Angela Carter, not long before she died. Well, I heard her read at the Rowden White Library. I was far too shy to actually talk to her.
Once upon a life: David Mitchell:
I put my map on the glass and pressed COPY. God, it worked first time. The beam of light trundled under the big flap and a sheet of paper slid out into the side tray – and incredibly, nobody had appeared to arrest me. I folded the paper and walked casually to the Reference Room. Behind a screen of Encyclopaedia Britannica, I found my invented world had been transformed into something better: my blue Bic was a sober pen-and-brush grey, just like Tolkien's maps. Just maybe, I might one day write a real Middle-earth of my own....
Angela Carter looked like a benign witch, with long grey hair and an otherworldly serenity. I don't know for sure if she knew about her lung cancer at that date, but probably she did. As she read from a work in progress (Wise Children), two elderly guests sitting on opposite walls of the academics' common room succumbed to the wine and began snoring in out-of-sync stereo. Angela Carter stopped, looked up, and said: "Yes, my devotees follow me wherever I go." The laughter woke the snorers, which was even funnier.
