Curiouser by Kon

issue 1 sep2012 gbp4

Curiouser

11 MAY 25 SEPTEMBER 2012

EDITOR'S LETTER

dear reader, This is the first issue of Curiouser magazine; please allow us to introduce ourselves. We love books. We love literature. We love stories. We love writing. We love reading. We are â&#x20AC;&#x153;curiouser and curiouserâ&#x20AC;?, like Alice in Wonderland would say. We think books are the weapons of revolution. We think they teach us how to speak and not what to say, how to think more than what to think, to imagine and create instead of living in a world created by somebody else, to ask questions and challenge answers. Follow the Cheshire Cat, turn the page, go out of the map, start a revolution. Be CuRIOuseR.

The editor

CONTENTS

Curiouser Issue 1

Features Writing Britain 18 Fifty Shades of Grey: bdsm for Dummies 22 A Curious Invitation 32 Bipolar Writers 38 Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Judge the Book from the Cover 46 Counter-lobotomy 52 The House of the Poet Soldier 56

CONTENTS

News Amaze Me 8 Matchbook 10 Wilde Workspace on Sale 12 Tea with Alice 14 Profiles The Invisible Palace of Words and Sounds 68 Kirsty Logan 72 Lynn Hatzius 76 Quaritch 80 Creative Writing White 30 The Instant Before 64 Library Allure 16 Shopping 66 Book Reviews 84 Agenda 86

NEWS

AmazeME

A human size maze of books is on display at the Southbank Centre from July 31 until August 26. The project is called aMAZEme and was created by Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo, supported by Hungry Man Projects.

About 20 volunteers assembled the 250 000 volumes constituting the labyrinth’s wall, which in its highest point reaches 2.5 metres. The books were provided by different publishers, among which Macmillan and Random House, and they will be donated to Oxfam. The underlying concepts are “art/literature, entertainment and generosity”, and the space design was modelled on Juan Luis Borges’ fingerprint. The Argentine writer, known for his short stories, is Kafka’s heir in the use of the bewildering element and his own writing is an amazing maze. He often referred to the labyrinth to symbolize life, ruled by irrationality and unpredictability. The books delineating the installation range from George Orwell to Philippa Gregory, from the Bible to theThesaurus, from volumes written in French to those written in braille. Each book is a maze within the maze, and all I should do is getting lost.

NEWS

Matchbook

Ia place f you live in the British Islands and are lucky enough to see the sun, or to book a holiday in where Summer actually bothers to show up, this is the next must: go on matchbook. nu and find a bathing suit to match your book. Or the other way round.

The idea comes from the lovely mind of Kate Imbach, Style Editor at NewlyWish. She knows something about fashion and her personal library is as big as her closet. Once at the swimming pool she noticed a woman whose bikini incidentally matched her book cover, and her imagination didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop since. You can use this website to warm up your last days at work before the holidays. It can spare you hours of pondering over which book to put in your luggage. It gives you a wonderful excuse to buy a new bikini: your reading list just doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t match your outfit. Or just pack your favourite one and consider reading something you would never pick up: sometimes you must judge a book from the cover.

NEWS

Wilde Workspace on Sale

scar Wilde Chelsea apartment is on sale. After being refurbished, it is now on the market at the price of £1.3million. The writer personalised the Victorian red brick terraced house on the model of his American lectures series “The House Beautiful” and “The Decorative Arts”. He employed architect and designer Edward William Godwin to realise his aesthetical ideas on decoration. Light colours and Oriental decorations were the writer’s statement against Victorian austerity. Only the ground floor is on sale, with the once yellow room with red-laquered woodwork where Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Grey and many of his masterpieces.Today it is a 700 sq.ft flat with high ceilings and scrubbed oak floors, and the transaction is held by estate agentJohn D Wood. In 1885 Oscar Wilde moved to then 16, now 34 Tite Street with his wife and two children, in order to be closer to his mother. Chelsea was then a bohemian borough and the Wildes often held literary salons. The House Beautiful was auctioned in 1895, after the dandy’s had been sentenced to hard labour for gross indecency and his goods were expropriated. The centenary of Wilde’s birth in 1954 was commemorated with a blue plaque on the front of the house. It is not the only one in the street: painters John Singer Sargent, James McNeil Whistler and the American Frank Miles also lived there in the same period. The house of the latter sold last year for £15million and the average price is around £5 million, so what is £1.3 million for the priceless feeling of owning the place where genius dwelled?

NEWS

Tea with Alice

Mad Book Party will be held in Oxford until September 16. The Story Museum celebrates Alice in Wonderland with an exhibition of 100 illustrations by artists, illustrators and designers. Defined by the Lewis Carroll Society as “the most significant exhibition of Alice illustrations”, it features contemporary and unpublished images from British and international authors. Particularly remarkable are the surreal photographs by Maggie Taylor, whose illustrated version of the book contains 45 digital collages and is considered a collector’s item. Different editions can be consulted in the Read Me room, and a Mad Tea Party entertains the guest in the Be It room. Tea with Alice is paired with Ted Dewan’s installation Rochester’s Extraordinary Storyloom, a machine that distils stories from children imagination. The Story Museum is a charity working with children, youngsters and families since 2003 to explore the values of stories and creativity. Other Alice related activities include the Caucus race hosted on July 8 in occasion of Alice in Wonderland 150th birthday. Oxford is the hometown of both Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, the inspirational child for whom the stories were written. If you are curiouser and curiouser, why not visit the exhibition and have a tour of Oxford Wonderland? The Story Museum, Oxford, until Sept. 16, info at storymuseum.org.uk

NEWS

Library Allure A column on being a proud bookworm and addicted writer

The Dead Marshes Effect It is different from being stuck. When you are stuck you have a (hundred) cups of tea/ watch an episode of Sex&the City/do your nails […] but eventually you start writing. Your idea is temporarily roaming in your mind, not willing to lie down in a logic position that would allow you to capture it with your pen (or keyboard).

fall, sink and die. Tolkien didn’t make things easy for Frodo. For a writer, finding himself in the Dead Marshes means that he not only has no clue about what will appear on that damn white page, he is not even certain he can see it through. He is not sure his Muse still loves him; he is not sure he should be doing that; he is mesmerized by the light coming from the computer screen and forgets he is a writer at all.

The Dead Marshes Effect is a different way of being stuck, more dangerous, overwhelming and disturbing. If you open The Lord of the Rings you will find a description of this cosy place located in lovely Mordor:

As if you could. Juvenal wrote that “many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds” and the Romans were very wise some 2000 years ago. This illness is much more powerful than any deadly light, swamp or supernatural creature whatsoever.

“Cold, clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers."

If you find yourself in the Dead Marshes, don’t look at the candle lights and follow Sam. It will take a bit more than having a cup of tea, but if you love writing, you will sort it out in the end. It is the only case outside Disney movies in which love will save you. There are already too many books around, but someone might be just waiting to read yours.

Nobody would like to stop in a similar place, not even Dracula. Kind Gollum led Frodo and Sam here on their way to destroy the Ring and accidentally forgot to mention the candle lights floating on the pool surface. They are a sort of Sirens’ song that attracts visitors towards the corpses luring under the water, with the purpose to make them 16

NEWS

FEATURE

Writing Britain

Not all those who wonder are lost.

he British Library celebrates English literature in the exhibition Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, exploring the relationship between real and literary landscapes in the British Isles. The exhibition runs until September 25 and gathers over 150 works ranging from drafts to maps and sound recordings, including loans from authors themselves. The writings belong to la creme de la creme of English literature, from Chaucer to the BrontĂŤ sisters to JG Ballard. The space design is structured according to six main themes: Rural Dreams, Dark Satanic Mills, Wild Places, Beyond the City, Cockney Visions and Waterlands. I love the concept idea of the exhibition. It is a visual introspection into the geography of Britishness (and Irishness) and a themed party where authors from different eras gathers and share their personal works. The portrayed landscape is familiar, part of collective imagination, yet seeing it in front of you makes it amazing.

FEATURE

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

One step into Writing Britain and a stream of my literary memories passes through my mind, from the afternoons of my childhood spent on the couch, mesmerised by the words on the page, to the not so far away late nights turning into dawns because of the impossibility to stop before the following chapter. The exhibition is like a train trip, where we all cross the same places, but each of us decides in which stations to get off. Besides the common knowledge, there are literary landscapes connected to our very own personal reader experience, which makes the trip different from anybody else. These are the main moments of my (long) trips in each of the six sections.

Rural Dreams This section presents the countryside of the legends and the ‘merry old England’, but also the everyday of farming life and the nostalgia towards a vanishing landscape. My rural dreams start with Robin Hood, the reason why a six-year-old girl living in Italy knows the name and location of Nottingham. After almost 20 years, I still have a crush on him. Stonehenge is the symbol of historical mystery, but to me it is also entwined with one of my favourite novels, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I realise my own English panorama goes beyond the exhibition, reaching Wodehouse Blandings castle. 19

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Dark Satanic Mills The Industrial Revolution unmercifully shaped the British environment, building a nation’s progress on the wrecking of human lives and laying out the basis of capitalism. It also gave birth to the willing-or-not-oh-so-important working class. This is not my cup of tea. I remember the opening scene of Hard Times, where circus girl Sissy is scolded by Mr Gradgrind’s facts and figures. The pearl of this section is definitely the unedited Lennon’s lyrics In My Life.

Wild Places Moors, heaths and solitary lands of spiritual catharsis are the settings of Gothic novels, Romantic poems and fantasy literature. English wilderness is drenched in sad and romantic fogs, one for all appears in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Scottish and Irish landscapes of Walter Scott and W B Yeats are an important presence, together with Wordsworth’ ballad inspired by Tintern Abbey in Wales.

London: Beyond the City and Cockney Visions Each and every borough or even street in London is inhabited by fictional ghosts. Soho is Dr Jekyll’s (and Mr Hyde’s) home, while in Kensington Gardens a very young Peter Pan plays hide and seek with fairies. When I first moved to London, I lived close to King’s Cross, and from there I took my train to go to University. I didn’t check Platform 9 3/4, but certainly there are no wizards on the Victoria Line.

Waterlands The nature of islands is entwined with water. In the UK and Ireland water is not only the sea, it’s the rain, the Thames, the Shannon, the Lakes Region... Virginia Woolf finds herself in her element here. Dracula comes to England by sea, bringing something of the wild places to London. Sandymount Sand in Dublin is the most popular beach in fiction: it is the very episode of Ulysses set here that caused the book to be banned in the US for obscenity.

FEATURE

Tintern Abbey Before I moved here, my own England was first of all made by all the books I read. It is fascinating how fiction influences our opinion on reality, and the other way round, how real places inspire imaginary stories. The relationship between British geography and its literary correspondent is mutual. It is also a collaboration between the single and society, where the writer draws on common knowledge and contributes to mould it as well. When I exit Writing Britain I realise that, as many books are in my ideal library, there is still much to read. And I remember all the England Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen, never leaving my couch, and I get lost in daydream. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

FEATURE

Fifty Shades of Grey: BDSM for Dummies

Ithant’s theall themostRoyalscandalous affair in Queen Elizabeth 60 year reign. It’s more scandalous scandals combined together, even counting the future exploits of Prince

Harry. It’s the scandal that any woman is hiding in her bed… and in her kindle on the tube on her way to work. Why the hell are all the women in London staying up all night with Mr Grey?

FEATURE

park, with the disappointment of all the Dickens and Shakespeares making friend with the dust on the furthest shelves.

One thing I learnt in my bookworm experience is that, if everybody likes it, I won’t, so I simply didn’t bother wasting my time. Just because everybody is reading it, it doesn’t mean it’s good literature, it’s quite the opposite, it’s the eternal battle of quantity against quality. But if literally everybody is reading it, it means you have to read it too, at least to prove that the masses are always wrong.

Virtual bookshops follow (or lead) the trend. If we check Amazon bestselling new releases, we’ll find this kind of titles: Bared to You trilogy (Sylvia Day, published by Penguin), Destined to Play (Indigo Bloom), Eighty Days trilogy (Vina Jackson), Dark Secret (Marina Anderson) and my personal favourite The Diary of a Submissive: a True Story (Sophie Morgan, also published by Penguin). Mills & Boon created the Kindle Edition exclusive 12 Shades of Surrender, twelve stories inspired by the Fifty Shades trilogy: they multiply like Gremlins, we cannot even drown them into the swimming pool!

This decision was taken at the news that Fifty Shades of Grey had beaten Harry Potter as the most sold national bestseller ever… not even Voldemort managed to do that! I mean, shadowing Harry Potter in the UK is like drinking more than Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway combined together: it’s not a good thing, but it’s utterly impressive.

Not only new erotica is the proof that people still like reading, even the classics of the genre are enjoying a pleasant boost up. “Publishers are rushing out other novels with erotic content, styled to appeal to the same audience and, although sales are a small fraction of what Fifty Shades is achieving, they are still selling in far higher numbers than they would have before” declares Jon Howells from Waterstones.

The fact that 5.3 million people are reading the book doesn’t mean they are also enjoying it. And the majority of those 5.3 million are more easily than not post teenagers or bored housewives; they call it mommy porn for a reason, don’t they? Still, all these more than reasonable excuses don’t explain the victory of these three pieces of paper over J K Rawling’s seven tomes: this matter needs to be investigated in a sociological research.

Clandestine Classics, an imprint of online publisher Total eBound, is launching a series of masterpieces of English literature rewritten with explicit details. The book file on the website also contains a sexometer that indicates the quantity of sex present in the novel. And if this version of Jane Eyre doesn’t satisfy your curiosity about her underskirts, Jane Eyre Laid Bare is available from not less than Pan Macmillan. If this is beneficial to our national literature, is it left to be judged by literati.

Facts & Figures Facts and figures make it very clear. 40 million books sold in 37 nations, themed parties by Ann Summer, a clothing line, an upcoming moving adapted for the screen by Bret Easton Ellis and a soundtrack of the songs mentioned in the books. In the stores graphically Fifty-shadesque covers stating “If you liked Fifty Shades you’ll love this!” are selling like candies in an amusement 24

FEATURE

everyone here at Arrow Books is totally Grey-sessed!”

The reason why I dedicated my time to such trivial literature is to understand the sociological motivations of the phenomenon. One is certainly the Kindle, which gives us the possibility of looking respectable under external eyes, while our minds are shut in dark bedrooms of passion. But Kindles are still a minority, there must be something more.

We receive a similar response from Waterstones: “The marketing has been fantastic and the media have been all over it - sex and books is a perfect mix for journalists, it writes itself.” The press write what people need to hear, but also what people are talking about. “One important thing is that after a certain point things become part of a 'national conversation' - where so many people are talking about something that others feel they have to read it/see it to join in, and that is very much what is happening here” explains again Jon Howells. So, the media, the Kindle and the word of mouth. Once I have established how the novel has become so successful, I wondered why, and look for some magic spell hidden inside the contents.

Lynne Pearce, Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Lancaster, dismisses the whole buzz as a consequence of marketing strategies: “The public wants what the public gets!” This is undeniable, as demonstrated by the statement of Charlotte Bush, Director of Publicity and Media at Arrow Books, publisher of Fifty Shades: “I speak from first hand when I say the books are utterly addictive and I know I’m not alone – 25

FEATURE

Boring Has Never Been So Attractive

penis to a popsicle (or ice cream) is at least a cliché, besides revealing the childish nature of the female character. Ana is 21 and she’s more familiar with sweets than male bodies, quite so as she is a virgin, which doesn’t really convince the reader to take her seriously every single time she talks about the considerable dimensions or the extraordinary love-making abilities of Mr Grey.

Sometimes the masses can be right, take the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In the case of the adventures of Mr Grey they are not. The book is repetitive and ignores the existence of synonyms, the protagonist is a joke and frankly an insult to the readers’ intelligence, and the sex scenes are barely worth D H Lawrence and the Marquis de Sade laughing about it.

I think this hilarious sentence makes us all very curious to know more about the two protagonists, Anastasia Steel and Christian Grey. She is always blushing or biting her lip, constantly amazed by anything Mr Grey does. She ignores that women in 2012 either wax or shave… Seriously, where do you live honey? Are you a reincarnated feminist from the Seventies? Maybe; this would explain why you talk to an “inner goddess” (even though your attitude is utterly anti-feminist), but I’m afraid that her dwelling in your mind, together with your subconscious, doesn’t leave much space for the development of a brain.

It occurred to me that the average reader of the Fifty Shades’ trilogy probably doesn’t even know how to spell Marquis de Sade, and she also ignores centuries of erotic literature, of which the last 100 years have been particularly remarkable. But maybe this is the point: this product is not aimed at aficionados, but it can appeal to a wider public exactly because it isn’t that challenging. The difference between those titles and the summer trend lies not only in the intensity of the contents, but in the tastiness of the style as well. Be it a twirling of metaphors like in Kirsty Logan, or primal, animalesque fucking like in Bukowski, good erotic literature is almost as pleasant as the deed itself. Fifty Shades is pretty much impossibly amazing sex reported with poorly enjoyable sentences. Shall we let the book speak for itself? The perfect example is at page 137: “He’s my very own Christian Grey-flavored popsicle”. A metaphor that compares a

Mr Grey is described as one of the most powerful, stunning and richest man in the world. How can we explain the fact that his name refers to one of the most boring colours in the palette? I get that he can’t be Mr Red, because a red-eyed man would be more Bram Stoker than E L James; but how about a golden armoured and nonchalantly luxurious Mr Gold? Or a Brad Pitt referencing Mr Black? Even a fancy but slightly diabolic Mr Purple would be more of a turn on.

FEATURE

I can’t help but mentioning the clash between Christian’s sex bomb status and the practical thing. He has an erection merely looking at clumsy Anastasia, which is quite odd, not only for common people, but especially for someone who gets excited by violence. His sex talks are based on homemade porn movies as old as Anastasia’s inner goddess and he sounds as sexy as a hyena cleaning after the lions have eaten their meal. I hope, for his own sake, that his performances in bed last more than the descriptions of the same.

Despite the lack of originality and credibility and not rare ridiculous circumstances, the narration is rather addictive. This is the surprising part of the investigation: I would enjoy Oscar Wilde million times more, I can criticize any single comma, but I cannot deny that I really wanted to read it, from the moment I first saw the then anonymous cover in a tube station to the very last page. And I haven’t been through an electroshock recently, so there must be some deep psychological explanations.

FEATURE

Psychopathology of a Book

charge, as backed up by Mireille MillerYoung, Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California.

Books always tell more than a story. Fifty Shades gives a lot of information about contemporary society in a metropolis in the Western world. It says that media has an incredible power, that kindles are getting more and more popular and that masses still own some potential, in matter of tastes and trends. But what does it say about the psychology of the readers?

“It’s many women’s fantasy to be submissive, as in our everyday lives we are expected to be in control, balancing a job and family. Fantasies that feature a woman giving up her power to a man appeal because it is an experience most modern women do not have.” It is much more humiliating that Ana accepts his decisions regarding her whole life, from diet to outfit, including masturbation in the absence of the partner. The only act of free will is her signing the contract with which she gives up her free will.

The novel definitely raises more issues than it was meant to. Sex, love, gender, power, morality, free will, violence, culture appear in the narration like sphinxes asking stone questions, destined to rest in the back of our mind until we are face to face with the back cover.

Romance and sex are different, and I assume it is possible to have consensual BDSM within a love relationship. What disappoints and irritates me in a creepy way is the fact that the inexpert Anastasia, who has never been with a man, has never had a boyfriend, and has been kissed literally twice in her life, cannot tell love and instinct apart. Sweetheart, vanilla sex doesn’t automatically means love; his physical excitement towards you is a chemical reaction, not a feeling; and the fact that your er relationship is based on a contract (which is not marriage) doesn’t suit the definition of romantic.

Looking at it from a feminist perspective some observations are due. Anastasia is anti-feminist, stranger to the concept of self-consciousness, incapable of discovering her own beauty (and also her own pleasure) without a man. Are we talking about a woman that develops her adult personality only as a consequence of a relationship with a man? Certainly we are dealing with a female figure that surrenders to the male one for the first orgasm of her life, or even earlier, for a long craved kiss, and before that for a glimpse at beauty, underpinned by power.

Ana naively ignores the universe of love and relationships. At the age of 21 this means that she is dying to get laid and to find someone that creates some butterflies in her stomach. No surprise, considering the boredom of her life… And after all, isn’t that what women want?

BDSM could look like the most misogynist part of the picture, since Anastasia is the Submissive and Mr Grey is the Dominant, but it isn’t. It can be argued that, in a condition of nearly equality between genders, where women are expected to manage career, housekeeping and children, it can be a relief not being in 28

FEATURE

What Women Want

charmed by the guy, if he was a librarian? Nein!

Of course they want someone that loves, supports, and understands them, but they don’t mind someone that makes them orgasm each single time, someone so captivating that you can’t help surrendering logic and self-control to him. Christian Grey demonstrates that a man that remembers our favourite blend of tea is sweet, but one that gives us first editions of our favourite book worth $ 14 000 is mind-blowing. Money and power cover beauty of a diamond dust that sends thousands of reflections in fifty shades of lights.

As an Italian, my reception of the infamous work begs to differ from the British one. I was driven to read by my curiosity in ascertaining how far it would go: not much the oh-so-glamorous inner obscurity of Mr Grey, as much as the self-denying of Anastasia’s intelligence and most of all the amusingly banal expressions of the author. If the novel itself is mediocre literature, the Italian reviews are masterpieces of mockery. Why are the Italians so harsh? Do they have better literature? Not really, the journalists in fact refer to English or American comparisons; but they do have better sex. Aren’t we a bit too overwhelmed by reading and writing and virtualising sex, when we could actually have sex? My last word on this, which was also my first thought before getting started with the whole thing is: why fancy a paper Christian Grey, when you can have sex with a real John Smith?

“Why should you buy this for me?” “Because I can” is the best dialogue to express the fascination exercised by money. Anastasia isn’t primarily attracted by Christian’s wealth, but imagine the mesmerizing effect this must have on a girl that has never seen cupboards without handles or that thinks black jeans are elegant. And to be honest, would the reader herself be equally 29

CREATIVE WRITING

White

Her skirt rustled against the chair when she sat at the little round table on the porch. The table and the chairs were made out of white wood, as were the porch and the house behind her. Her dress was white as well. It was very graceful indeed, a silk dress with short puff sleeves, a black ribbon around her waist and a tulle underskirt, which was barely visible from under the hemline. The wind was gently blowing fiddle notes on her face. A sweet scent surrounded the table. The smoking teapot in the middle spread an Indian flavour which definitely suited that English morning atmosphere. The sky wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bright yet, it was very early and a strange hour for tea. The whiteness of the porcelain and of the house stood against the sky like a diamond in a coal mine. This thought along with a light breeze made her quiver, almost imperceptibly. A fruity fragrance blended with the tea, coming from the white bowl full of red strawberries. And strawberries were also on the white cake which lay untouched behind the teapot, between the bowl and a white plate covered with hot biscuits, a flavour of butter and sugar mixing with the rest in a harmonious symphony of tea party. Something blinked not far from the biscuits and turning her head she realized that a white rabbit was sitting on the chair next to hers. Or was it a hare maybe? In the pale light she couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell, but its presence felt natural, after all. On the side of the table opposite to the animal two clean empty tea cups lay next to two white embroidered napkins and two silver tea spoons. In between them and in front of the teapot was milk in a white porcelain jug, slices of white bread on a little white plate, white butter, a jar of jam and a little knife. A pensive look at the other cup reminded her she was waiting for someone and she smiled with genuine happiness.

CREATIVE WRITING

Her eyes followed the music looking for the solitary player at the end of the garden in the pink-blue light. The band of silver paleness along the east horizon made even the distant part of the garden appear dark and near. The bushes of white roses and the bushes of red roses stood up blackly against the light, and the great fountain-shaped willow in the corner, and the stone bench midway. The fading night unveiled a male figure in a white shirt standing up from the bench and laying down the fiddle. The music stopped. It was peculiar that he was playing the fiddle, since he usually played the harp. The figure came straight towards the porch where they were sitting. A smile appeared on his earnest face as he saw the shining beauty of her young face. When he was a few steps away from the white stairs of the white porch she greeted him, “Good morning Angel”, and then yawned; it was too early. “Sleepy are you dear? I think you are sitting on an altar”. What a strange compliment, yet the table did look like an altar full of food sacrifices for the rising sun. Angel took off his hat and put it on the fourth empty chair in front of her. He sat on the free chair next to her and bent over her, to kiss her red lips on her white face, holding one poor little hand. The sun had slowly entered the happy little garden and the cold morning almost materialized in a hard wall close in her face. Now she could clearly see that the rabbit was not white, but black. Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her. “What is it, Angel?”, she said, starting up. “Have they come for me?” “Yes, dearest,” he said. “They have come.” She stood up, shook herself, and went forward. “I am ready” she said quietly.

All quotes from Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

FEATURE

A Curious Invitation

he Last Tuesday Society is not a mere balls organizer and fine, old curiosity shop and fine art dealer, with its branch Viktor Wynd gallery. It is a niche of taste, culture and bons vivants. In October co-founder Suzette Fields will see her book A Curious Invitation published by Picador. Subtitle: the forty greatest parties in literature. The book will launch with a two day of Halloween masquerade. How fun would it be to sneak into a novel right when the party starts, to leave after a few pages and enter another one, and then another, and another one more. I suppose we could at least try a few, starting from English literatureâ&#x20AC;Ś shall we?

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The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." The Twenties were pretty much about partying: Charleston, embedded dress, no financial crash on sight and Prohibition Laws, which just made drinking even more fun. Gatsby embraces all of this by throwing all night long parties in his luxurious villa. I honestly think this is what makes the book: who the hell cares about the fact that he did all of this to get close to his beloved Daisy, that she doesn’t leave her cheating husband and that he dies more or less as a consequence of protecting her? Nobody really, but we all remember the champagne, the tux and the Rolls-Royce as if we were there. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me” Elizabeth Bennett meets Mr Darcy at a ball, and it is dislike at first sight. This is actually due to the pride and prejudice of the title, because in the end they will end up together. If they had rejoiced more in drinking instead of insulting each other, they would have loved each other since their first meeting, but this would have cut out the rest of the book and three chapters can’t become a masterpiece, can they? The Master and Margarita by Mihail Bulgakov

“ 'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently. 'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!’ ” The most fascinating host in the history of literature is the Devil, here disguised as Professor Woland; which counts as a costume and makes him even cooler. The guests are of course dead, they don’t show up before midnight and the feast is called The Spring Ball of the Full Moon. Devilish figures are protagonists of the most entertaining literature, from Paradise Lost to Faust, Bulgakov’s model. What is very very wicked is the fact that this scene was inspired by a real Spring Festival held at the residence of the US Ambassador in Moscow. Literally a hell of a party.

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Still from the upcoming movie The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrman

The Dead in The Dubliners by James Joyce

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” The final short story in the collection follows Mr and Mrs Conroy on their way to Misses’ Morkans’ annual dance and back. It stretches among hams and waltz and pianos and it ends with the snow falling on the living and the dead. Despite the apparent intensity of the social gatherings, the immobility of Irish society and the dependence on Europe hurt Joyce so much that he moved away. If the ball gets boring, it’s only fair to leave.

FEATURE

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,

mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody

”

goes "Awww!

Denver is probably the most epic party in the book. The whole Mexican part can seriously compete with that, because nothing says party more than tequila, and because it is so stereotypically American to go to another country, make a mess and have a laugh about that. The whole book is a street party, careless of who will have to do the cleaning afterwards or if it will ever end. It is a real story written by a notorious alcoholic: it just writes itself. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thakeray

I have heard from ladies who were in the town at the period, that the talk and interest of persons of their own sex regarding the ball was much greater even than in respect of the enemy in their front.

What should you do if you live in Brussels and it is the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Get wasted and dance! This is what the Duchess of Richmond thought, and Thackeray can’t but tailoring this to the story of socialite Becky Sharp. Too bad the party was crashed by news of battle. Macbeth by Shakespeare

“Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Showed like a rebel's whore.” It could be written a whole article only mentioning parties in Shakespeare. It is quite logic, since he wrote more than the average person could possibly read in a lifetime. My all times Shakespeare’s favourite is Macbeth and I’d like to call this episode ‘dinner with the murderer’. What is worse than an uninvited guest? A dead uninvited guest, whose assassination you ordered. So when Macbeth joins the banquet, he finds sitting at his place Banquo’s ghost. The play also constitutes the first written record of the word ‘assassination’ in the English language. The devil’s in the detail.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“It’s always tea time!” Madness, a nice hat and nonsense conversations: the Mad Tea Party is the party. Timeless is the best of times.

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Bipolar writers Deep Darkness and Blinding Light

IAdventures ’ve always thought that the phrase “mad as a hatter” referred to the Mad Hatter in Alice’s in Wonderland and to that amusing charming madness that stimulates our

curiosity. Apparently the story is another. Between the 18th and the 19th century felt hats were very popular in England, and their production involved the use of mercury. After a lifelong exposure to the metal, people developed dementia. So much for the romantic image of the Mad Hatter alternating cups of tea to handmade works of art. I know the image quite fits the bewildering universe created by Lewis Carroll, but I couldn’t help but wondering if his inspiration was derived by real life in 19th century England. Was the Hatter an example of artistic genius or merely victim of an illness?

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If we shift from mercury poisoning to mental disease, the question becomes almost a cliché. Artists’ madness gained credibility in popular culture, so much that it is the basic requirement expected from a person involved with creativity. Musicians, painters, poets since the antiquity were deemed the beloved of folly, an inspiring yet whimsical muse that could drag her followers down the abyss or elevate them on the Mount Olympus as divinities. What do ‘sane’ people think about that? Shrinks, literature experts, doctors, art historians and geniuses themselves tried to answer this question, made more prominent by social ostracism, seclusion and the evolution of the role of the artist.

From Myth to History In ancient Greece Dionysus, son of Zeus and a mortal woman, was the god of wine and alcoholic ecstasy, which would inevitably climax into madness and even violence during the feasts organised in his honour. Besides these overwhelming celebrations, to him were dedicated much more poems than to the other gods. Plato, Seneca and Aristotle report of an altered consciousness as a state associated to priests and poets as well, to distinguish them from common people. Seneca’s words are “If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will

make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection”. The tolerant attitude of the antiques didn’t survive the collapse of the Roman Empire and the extreme religiosity of the Middle Ages believed insane people to be literally damned. In a world dominated by wars between Christians and Muslims, heresy was a death sentence. The artistic ferment of the Renaissance fuelled again the interest into the nature of inspiration, distinguishing the insanity that makes a work exceptional from the one that prevents it from being at all. The perfect example is 16th century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, author of the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered and model for Edmund Spenser, John Donne and Lord Byron. His intellect made him famous since the age of 8, but his mental disorder, probably schizophrenia, made his life impossible and unproductive for the twenty years preceding his death at the age of 51. Asylums and medical treatment for mental disease originated during the Enlightenment, which considered rational thought the only source of genius. The idea was soon turned upside down by preRomantics like Robert Burns, William Blake and Thomas Gray (all posthumously diagnosed with depression) and by the new leading roles of men of letters following the French Revolution.

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The Romantics stressed the concept of génie and exceptionality of the artists, and offer also many examples of mad writers: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Shelley were all affected by some kind of psychological disorders. Basically the greatest British authors were all mad as hatters. After the publication of The Origin of Species and the circulation of the theory of hereditability, often biased investigations researched the genetic origins of mental disorders. The 20th century altogether presents an impartial idea similar to that of the Renaissance, enriched by progresses in psychology and psychiatry, such as the standardisation of diagnosis criteria in the 1970s. In the past century both biographical studies on past authors and psychological investigations on living artists tried to trace the thin line between madness and creativity. The most outstanding product, on which later books are based, is Touched with Fire, written in 1993 by Key Redfield Jamison, American clinical psychologist who suffers of bipolarism.

What the Doctors Say What all the researchers tend to agree on is that “many but not all creative artists have been found in rigorously conducted research, including our own, the Paris

and Memphis studies, to meet the criteria of temperaments within the bipolar spectrum”, explains Dr Hagop Akiskal, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego and Director of International Mood Center. At the end of the past century, Dr Nancy Andreasen and the University of Iowa conducted the first scientific study on living writers. It evidenced that 80% of writers, against an average level of only 30%, were affected by some kind of affective disorder. 43% of them suffered of a bipolar disorder, 37% had experienced at least an episode of depression, 30% were alcoholic and 7% were addicted to a drug. The same data relative to non-writers were 10%, 17%, 7% and 7%. Only the data regarding drug abuse is the same, the other percentage are more than doubled in the case of writers. What exactly is the bipolar disorder and why does it register more cases within the arts field? The bipolar spectrum encompasses different temperaments based on the alternation between episodes of depression and episodes of mania, hence the name manic-depressive disease. Mania is characterised by increased energy levels, less need for sleep, faster thinking and inflated self-esteem. Depression is the opposite: slower movements and mental processes, apathy and lack of pleasure, sleep disturbance, hopelessness and at the extreme suicidal thinking.

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Depression gives the possibility of a deeper introspection, while mania on the other hand fosters productivity. “To me, the depression provides the story, and the high provides the means to get that story out there. I have noticed when the mind is calm and happy, I don't create, because there is no need. When thoughts are as heavy as clay then I need them sculpt it into something beautiful or turn them into something that has meaning, something that will save me” says Dolly Sen, manic-depressive writer and public speaker for the Mental Health Foundation.

owed far more to her lucid intellect and knowledge of avant-garde movements such as post-impressionist art and the advances in understanding of the human self that came with the work of Sigmund Freud.” It could be claimed that writing becomes a necessity for people affected by psychological disturbances, as Dolly Sen explains. “When I had my first psychotic episode aged 14, my creativity did not immediately follow. I was lost in psychosis, self-harm, self-hatred, paranoia and depression for years after. I needed a map back to myself and no one could give that to me. I found the map in a blank piece of paper in my early twenties because there I realised I could recreate myself. It showed me that I am not completely lost, my creativity is there to make this sometimes arid soulland beautiful. Madness gave me the mind to hurt me and save me, all at the same time.”

Manic-depression expands the individual’s perception by giving him different thinking patterns. “In a sense depression is a view of the world through a glass darkly, and mania is a shattered pattern of views seen through a prism or a kaleidoscope: often brilliant but generally fractured” writes Kay Jameson. It can be said that a mercurial eclectic nature is proper both of bipolar individuals and artists. How much they are responsible of the creative product is debatable though.

What is certain is the genetic origin of the disease. The ‘mad gene’ is present in some families and absent from others, as “I would say that Virginia Woolf wrote demonstrated by studies on family trees of despite suffering periods of debilitating remarkable authors. Famous cases are those illness in her life”, claims Susan Sellers, of the sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Professor of English and Related Literature Bell, Henry James and his brother the at St Andrews University. “I would argue psychologist William, Mary Wollstonecraft that her pioneering experiments in prose and her daughter Mary Shelley.

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mental perceptivity, see for example the Beat poets. Both William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg went to South America in search of Yagé, a psychoactive infusion traditionally used for divinatory purposes.

If we look at the clinical history of a whole family, and not only at siblings, even more striking coincidences support the genetic theory. In two generations of Hemingways there were four suicides and in three generations at least a member of the family was affected by bipolar disorder.

From the ‘green fairy’ inspiring the bohemians in 18th century Paris, to the Confessions of an English Opium Eater a century later in England, to Aldous Huxley and R L Stevenson, until 20th century popularisers Hunter S Thompson, Truman Capote and Stephen King: that of addiction and artists has been a prolific marriage.

In Pursuit of the White Rabbit Hemingway was also a notorious drunkard, like many of his fellow writers. Alcohol and other mind-altering substances have been used by artists to expand their

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“I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I’m homosexual. I’m a genius.” writes Truman Capote, and though illogic, we couldn’t but agree with this sequence. Jack Kerouac, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce particularly enjoyed excessive drinking. But what would On the Road be without the alcoholic parties in Denver and Mexico? What would be the jazz age, portrayed in many of Fitzgerald’s novels, without some fizz of champagne? And Joyce is Irish, we can’t expect him not to drink.

each other, but they are not the same thing. This is widely proved by the existence of geniuses outside the artistic field, and the presence of completely sane writers. Diagnoses of mental disorders are not as clear and precise as other diseases; bipolar can often esteemed to be only unipolar depression, and often multiple disturbances interact together. In time, illnesses come and go in and out the pathological dictionary. Homosexuality was considered both as a crime and a disease; a woman’s emotional turmoil was labelled hysteria and used as a sexist weapon; black slaves fleeing cotton plantations were thought to be afflicted by driptomania.

Vice, as mental illness, can have dangerous consequences, at last suicide, but can also be exploited to foster creativity. Though the first one doesn’t bear any genetic feature, it can be considered a mind-altering device. And despite the consequences of depression, the positive side of such state can be so beneficial that the patient refuses or interrupts medical treatment.

In the Victorian Age, criminality, homosexuality and alcoholism were considered hereditary and ‘cured’ with measures as harsh as sterilization or seclusion; ask Oscar Wilde.

To Be or Not To Be (Mad)

The Colours of the Soul

We’ve come a long way since electroconvulsive therapy and mental asylums, but psychotropic drugs still have side effects. Dolly Sen explains “I can’t tell you what I did in my twenties, I don’t remember. I lost my youth to medication”. The dilemma here is between personality, with annexed disease, and sanity, deprived of personality.

Eccentricity has many shades; on one side of the spectrum it is called manicdepression, and on the other side is mere artistic spirit. Let’s consider for example this anecdote occurred during Byron’s first year in Cambridge. The college regulations forbid him to keep his dog, thus he bought a tame bear, since there was no rule in this regard. Now, sharing a dorm room with a mammal of the dimension of a closet is very unusual, but is it sign of madness?

Despite the overlapping between artistic and bipolar temperament, they are two different part of the character; they attract

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in clothing but not in ideas, madness is still more scary or appalling than accepted and appreciated. Anybody gives himself the label of artist, and feels free to peel other artist’ labels from their art. Art and madness are, after all, a matter of perspective.

Harold Nicolson made a point when commenting the fact that, during his time at Eaton, Shelley was known as “Mad Shelley”: “The facility with which English schoolboys attribute insanity to anyone who is not perfectly attuned to their own herd behaviour has always struck me as curious and distressing.”

I’ll leave the last word to Dolly Sen, whose precious help so much contributed to this article: “And what is unconventionality at its most basic core? It is saying I want to be the person that I am, not what people wanting to control me want me to be. It is not being unquestioningly obedient to authority. If unconventionality didn't exist, we would still be living in caves. Because it takes the unconventional person to say: 'Let's try something new.' I say: subvert the world and insist it be beautiful.”

Similarly Michel Foucault, in his essay Madness and Civilization, pointed out how, during the Middle Ages, the practice of interning a person considered mentally unstable had derived from the same practice used towards lepers. Leprosy was disappearing and society needed new outsiders. In a world that needs to catalogue and label everything, where extravagance is allowed

VISUAL FEATURE

(Don’t) judge the book from the cover

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA

VISUAL FEATURE

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counter-Lobotomy

Isugary f the writer is a round-faced 60 year old woman, you expect a novel dealing with cupcakes, love stories and happy endings, right? This particular round-faced 60 year old woman instead decided to write about vampires, sex and tons of blood Quentin Tarantino style. The amazing thing is that this is actually brilliant.

Author Charlaine Harris confirmed the thirteenth novel of the Southern Vampires Mysteries will be published in May 2013 and it will be the last one. The books are better known as the Sookie Stackhouse series, and for seven years they were known only to fantasy porn geeks. Then in 2008 HBO made them into a TV series called True Blood, which at the moment has covered the first six books and aired the fifth season this summer. Today True Blood is a most seen on the channel, and it is watched not only by fantasy porn geeks. How the hell did this happen?

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Don’t get me wrong, this is not a teenage vampire story like Twilight et al. The protagonist Sookie Stackhouse is sexually and sentimentally involved with vampires, but she is nothing like the shy, cute, clumsy Bella Swan. She might be a blonde, depthless, braless waitress, but she is a blonde with guts.

bar talks, affected religious prissiness and scorn of anything a bit out of the ordinary. In this world, vampires coexist with humans thanks to the invention of a synthetic liquid called Tru Blood. This doesn’t mean the undead completely stopped feeding on people, or that the latter consider vampires their equals: they either despise them as nature abominations, (illegally) sell their blood as drug or aim at their überhuman sexual skills.

The setting is the small fictional town of Bon Temps in Lousiana, which implies terrible accent, square minded people devoted to

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Discrimination is a constant towards vampires, and it is further explored when other supernatural creatures are introduced. Werewolves and other wereanimals, fairies and witches disguise their identity for fear of human judgement, and after a while you start wondering if there are ‘normal’ people at all and what normal is. Sookie herself is considered crazy because she can read people’s mind, and not acceptance makes her see her gift as a disability. Also, all the characters, the main ones as the minor ones, have secrets to hide, which makes the whole scenario a big fat lie. There’s no such thing as a simple trouble-free life, even for rural Southern flowers.

Vampires’ lack of conscience and cruelty are driven by nature, yet some of them oppose to this nonsense. Werewolves embody mob mentality, with the pack master ruling and expecting loyalty from his pack members. Fairies symbolise the evil rotting the insides of a beautiful creature. There are no heroes, many villains, and a lot of shades in between. During all this turmoil and the unhappy incidents, all the characters deal with family, love and friendships, showing the hypocrisy but also the strength of bonds. These types of relationships are almost unified in that between a vampire and his maker, also implying that procreation is an act of love and not of selfishness. The human side of humans and not humans is as prominent as their dishuman side.

The Southern Vampires Mysteries portrays a society very similar to ours and implicitly criticises it through the literary strategy of dislocation, in this case reached through the fantastic element. Since the first chapters of the first novel Dead Until Dark, the casual observations of the narrator protagonist hint at drug, sexual disease, the power of media and religion, violence, conscience and ignorance. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Between the end of a love and the start of a new war there is also time for a laugh. And when you don’t laugh with the characters you laugh at them: sometimes they are so silly, it is too easy to mock them. And probably this is how clever critique attracts the average reader through light-hearted adventurous stories you dedicate yourself to non to think too much. Charlaine Harris sweetened the medicine of social criticism with the honey of sex, thriller and fantasy.

The concept of authority comes up in many different variants, from the influence of religious and political institutions, to the monarchic order of the vampire world, more similar to feudal Middle Ages than 2012 America. Or, is it there any difference? Fear, control of the masses, manipulation of laws make men miserable, not fantastic creatures.

But maybe I’m overthinking this, I see conspiracy where there is only food for the masses, this is just entertaining fantasy to distract people’s mind from real life. To quote the fifth book of the series, Dead as a Doornail, “Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring.”

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Stills from True Blood opening credits

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the house of the poet soldier

hey say Mussolini had to wait for two hours in the Masks Maker Room, dominated by a dark green marble engraved with these words: To the guest: Are you carrying Narcissusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mirror? This is leaded glass, oh masks maker. Adjust your masks to your faces But think that you are glass against steel.

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The person that found such delight in keeping Mussolini waiting was Gabriele d’Annunzio, eclectic writer, decadent aesthete and political rebel. He scorned the dictator, who instead admired him, and called Hitler a vicious clown in the handnotes to his Divine Comedy, showing more subtlety than his national and international contemporaries, who either praised or feared the despicable couple.

Literature, he became a journalist and, thanks to his taste and eloquence, entered the salons of the high society. Fame came with the groundbreaking novel The Pleasure, a masterpiece of Decadence, Aestheticism and psychological introspection, so different from the realism of the period. It was also the affirmation of his luxurious lifestyle; he was a selfmade celebrity before celebrity existed. In England he would be called Oscar Wilde.

The marble warning was made specifically in occasion of this visit, to remind the guest of his inferiority in that place, and collocated in the Annoyers’ Waiting Room. This is at the end of a staircase divided by a pillar topped with a basket full of pomegranates, symbol of prosperity present almost in every room of the house and referenced in the title of d’Annunzio’s last work. Welcome visitor, to the surreal realm of the most fascinating Italian writer; you are warned you might get lost, mad or blinded by the beauty of what you will see.

The most important part of his life and career began with a love letter to actress Eleonora Duse, for whom he moved to Florence. He travelled to Greece, like Byron before him, he founded a university, became a member of the free masonry and a MP, proving his Italianess by switching party short after the election. D’Annunzio was a man of the Belle Époque, heir to Nietzsche’s übermensch and to the Roman ars horatoria, friend with Hyusman, Debussy and Maupassant. He used his literary skills to fight real wars in name of his beloved Italy, and protected art from politics when Fascism came into power. He was made Prince of Montenevoso by the King, but his most noble throne was imaginary, the golden seat he forged into the history of the Italian literature, spirit and politics. He was called Vate, prophet poet, a title given only to the Roman authors before the Empire Age and Dante.

Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poeta Vate D’Annunzio was born in 1863, in an Italy recently unified under one king for the first time after the Roman Empire. His intellect was evident since the publication at the age of 16 of his first novel, when he spread the news of his death in order to boost up the sales. He moved to Rome to study Italian

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The success of his novels, poems and tragedies wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough to support his lifestyle, and in 1910 he was forced to sell his Florence house and moved to Paris, maze of writers and artists, where he was already famous. He went back to Italy in 1915, followed his nationalist temperament and fought in World War I, when he showed his proud humour by spreading flyers while flying over Vienna. After the

war he organised the occupation of the city of Fiume, which was annexed to Italy in 1921, nevertheless with many human losses. From this moment the poet retired to a less wordly environment, without losing his admirers among ex-soldiers, politicians and readers, and he moved to the Prioria, where he died in 1938 for intracranial haemorrhage, while writing on his desk.

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The Prioria

space to the memorabilia, or the poet (accidentally?) falling from the window two days before yet another meeting with Mussolini. That alabaster glass was the realization of the one he described in The Pleasure: fiction becomes reality, exactly like Oscar Wilde creates the “House Beautiful” from the ideal one he theorised in his lectures.

In the village of Gardone Riviera on the Garda Lake, between the mountain and the water, there was once, and there still is the Prioria, “house of the prior”, so baptised by d’Annunzio himself, to indicate the leading role of art. It belonged to the deceased German art critic Henry Thode, who owned a remarkable library, the only original thing d’Annunzio didn’t eliminate. He wanted to make the Prioria an exteriorization of his personality and a museum, which he left to his compatriots, both for love of the country and to save it from heirs and creditors. He called the property, comprehensive of the house and the garden, Vittoriale degli Italiani, “Italians’ museum to victory”.

Books are the real inhabitants of the house. A 8 000 item library, consultable under appointment, further enriched by donations. From the lilies decorating the homonym room, a reference to his series The Novels of the Lily, to the luxurious exemplars of the Divine Comedy in the Globe Room, even Napoleon’s tobacco case surrenders to the yet more eternal fame of words. Dante was considered by d’Annunzio his artistic relative, together with Michelangelo, to whom is dedicated a whole porch in the court at the centre of the Prioria.

The Eighteenth Century building was refurbished with the help of the architect Giancarlo Maroni and filled up to the ceiling with art. Contemporary Italian artists, Roman pillars, Oriental vases, Renaissance statues and antiquarian books rest in peace under the eyes of daily visitors, between blue, gold, crimson and black walls of art déco. The house can be viewed only with a guide and a group of maximum ten people, in a supernatural tour in the dim light recreated to protect the poet’s damaged eyes.

His sculptures are reproduced in almost each single room, together with other classical bodies, silent wardens of the multitude of objects drenched in the owner’s personality. There are 600 of them only in the Blue Bath, a very posh item for the beginning of the century, with a cobalt blue tub and a matching sink. Holy and unholy mingle without merging, as witnessed by the crystal Buddhas statute in such a blaspheme temple.

From the Masks Maker Room we get access to the Music Room. We can imagine d’Annunzio personal quartet eroding

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says an embroidered tapestry. Of course luxury and lavishness are virtues in this dandyish realm.

D’Annunzio didn’t believe in gods, only in men. His relics room contains idola from various religions, and displays samples of nationalistic beliefs and the “Religion of Speed”, Italian inheritance of the avantgarde of Futurism . These are the wheel of Sir Henry Segrave’s speedboat, died in Windenmere Lake trying to beat a speed record, and the banner of the Regency of Carnaro, which he founded in the occupied Fiume. One thing is inventing stories of far away Kingdoms, another is living them. “Five the fingers, five the sins”

The Latin words ‘genius and pleasure’ welcomes us to the bedroom. The knowledge he was more interested in mastering was that of women, one of his most remarkable success. The secrets hidden in this room could easily fill the volumes present in the house: one thing that could compete with d’Annunzio’s genius was definitely his love for pleasure.

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Italian history inspired also the Mausoleum, a monument to the War heroes and later crypt of d’Annunzio, built on the model of Roman and Etruscan tombs. The Mausoleum is the higher spot in the garden, as if the master was still watching over his treasures.

Two rooms are entwined with his death: one is the small study where he died, under the still eyes of Fidia’s Parthenon horses, next to his hypochondriac pharmacy. The other one is the Leper’s Room, his personal ashram, where his body rested during the private vigil in the bed of the two ages, built to resemble a cradle and a coffin.

Nationalistic ardour and the religion of speed escape the house walls and dwell in the cars, the submarine motorboat MAS 96, and a howitzer obice Ansaldo, contrastive presence in front of the Dolphin Fountain. But all of this lies in the eccentric shadow of the ship Puglia, studded in the acclivity of the garden. A bronze winged victory leads the ship and ideally projects it into the lake underneath in the distance.

The official vigil was held in the modern part of the building, called the Schifamondo, an invented word that means “in scorn of the world”. His costume of tamer and juggler was getting old and torn, and he aspired to a more solitary life, which was never to be due to his death. The never used bedroom is surrounded by the Hero Museum, a document of d’Annunzio’s and Italian military enterprises. The winged angel guarding upon this is a SVA aeroplane hanging on the ceiling.

What was yet hidden in the drawers and closets is now on display in the Secret d’Annunzio Museum: tailored suits, shoes, dog collars, jewellery, hatboxes, lavish witnesses of a golden age created around its creator. Sitting on the ceiling of the museum is the Roman style amphitheatre, which d’Annunzio called “the marble hollow under the stars”. Clouds are gathering, threatening tonight’s event. The artist is an aficionado of the Vittoriale and, like d’Annunzio, a rebel, an inspiration for the masses, and a fine poet. Under the authoritarian winking presence of the poet soldier, the poet soldier of rock enters the stage: visitors and wanderers of this castlemaze, here’s Patti Smith.

The Garden The garden is more of a map for a treasure hunt than a nymph’s playground. The entrance to the estate is a double arch, welcoming the visitor with the motto “I have what I donated”. An orchard studded with statues and almost hidden behind the perfumed beauty of lavender bushes is quite ordinary, compared to the Stonehenge-like circle of pillars surrounded by magnolias and devoted to the rituals in memoriam of War glories.

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CREATIVE WRITING

The Instant Before

Thirty minutes before, he closed his door behind him and lit a cigarette. He smoked it in the few minutes it took him to reach the second hand bookshop. First he took a glimpse at his favourite photography books; then he briefly looked up some last curiosities about the city he would visit in a couple of days; finally he faced the English classics shelf. Thirteen minutes before, he went out of the bookshop with his travel companion: a cheap Penguin version of Ulysses. He had always wanted to read it and it had been some time since he had closed The Dubliners. He sat at the little café next to the shop and ordered coffee and a muffin. Seven minutes before, he headed to the station with a taste of blueberries on his tongue and a sweet scent of patisserie in his nostrils. He had peeked at the first lines of the novel and was happy it had been spent some words on it back at school. He smiled at the mastery of James Joyce. Just a minute before, he had his tickets in his hands and was about to leave when he saw her: a pretty girl dressed with extraordinary taste and with an ethereal yet familiar allure in her graceful pace. He quickly thought of something he could say to approach her, but she was quicker; she jumped on the tracks just a second before the 10 o'clock train passed. In the story “A Painful Case” in The Dubliners by James Joyce a woman dies killed by the 10 o’clock train.

CREATIVE WRITING

SHOPPING

Paper Passion Karl Lagerfeld personal library is a thick jacket that coats walls and tables. What to expect from such a classy bookworm visionaire, if not a book fragrance? It’s called Paper Passion and it is inspired by the scent of a freshly printed page. Geza Schoen is the perfumer that helped realising the idea, commissioned by Wallpaper* magazine for its Handmade exhibition in Milan.

The packaging and the concept belong to Lagerfeld and Gerhard Steidl, publisher of art, fashion and photography volumes. The perfume lies inside a book-shaped box, accompanied by texts from Karl Lagerfeld, Günter Grass, Geza Schoen and Tony Chambers. And what are the main notes in Paper Passion? Imagination, luxury and secrecy.Availableat steidlville.com (£68)

SHOPPING

Twinings Literary Gifts "There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea" said Ralph Waldo Emerson.Twinings took it literally and paired literature and tea in a small collection of literary tea gifts. Each gift consists of a mug and a blank ruled notebook with a quote from one of our favourite English classics and a free 50 bag box of Traditional Afternoon, Earl Grey or

Sunshine Grey (Earl Grey with a zest of lemon). The Twinings library includes: The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Aliceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Adventures in Wonderland, To Kill a Mockingbird and Little Women. For writers and readers, uncompromising tea drinkers and occasional coffee rebels.Available at shop.twinings.co.uk (ÂŁ18.50)

PROFILE

The Invisible Palace of Words and Sounds

ou can browse pages or scroll them down on an ebook, you can listen to an audiobook or to your mum when you are a child: a story can be approached in many forms. Does it really matter which one we choose?

PROFILE

In the past, chronicles and legends were told by storytellers in the village square in front of a crowd. When books spread, stories became a private affair. The invention of the radio brought back the narrative voice

and the multiple listening, even though they werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as popular as news and music. When TV stole the spot of the radio, storytelling started to fade away.

PROFILE

Two years ago a group of volunteers started In The Dark with the aim of “creating a mini revolution in storytelling”. They organised collective listening events to “investigate how radio can be more effective in a group” and in July they opened their first record store, the Invisible Picture Palace. It is located in the garden of the Wapping Project Bankside gallery, in a glasshouse that used to host itself a bookshop. I walked there in a summer afternoon and talked to Connor Walsh, manager of the Invisible Picture Palace. The idea of the glasshouse is very suggestive; you can look outside and feel part of the garden. Besides that, a glasshouse is a place where you protect and grow flowers, which in this case are radio stories or sounds collections. Everything is pre-recorded and crafted by In The Dark and can be bought or only listened to in the shop. There are a BBC Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, The Best of Finland’s sound poet Harri Huhtamaki, a 1950′s LP of heartbeats that can only be heard with a stethoscope, birds sounds... In general the focus is on the “poetry of radio and the power of radio storytelling as opposed to news or music”.

This can be explored in a different way during an event, because you are exposed to other people reactions. “Listening is usually for one person, here you have the possibility to share that experience. For example something makes you laugh and it makes someone else laugh as well, and then everybody is laughing at the same moment.” At the end of July In The Dark toured Portugal with themed nights and the project is well known in Europe. A group of people in Australia liked the concept idea and they started their own offshoot. But In The Dark isn’t going to expand: “this is a nonprofit activity and we all have other jobs. We really just want to share this type of experience with as many people as possible, but not at the same time. A group listening is more effective in a small group of people.” I listen to Connor talking about his experience working in shortwave radio stations in England, China and New Zealand; then he plays a few vinyl to show me the different range of material they have. I must admit that in a world of image bombing, it feels nice to concentrate on an invisible voice. There are a lot of stories that need to be told again and again, like the one of a transparent palace of sounds and stories in the corner of a garden of an old waterpower station.

PROFILE

Kirsty Logan

A ll writers are either tea maniacs or coffee driven. Kirsty Logan belongs to the second category. She is 28 and lives in Glasgow with her girlfriend. She wrote a column on IdeasTap, co-edits literary magazine Fractured West and teaches creative writing courses. Her award winning fiction has been published in more than 80 anthologies and my personal favourite is Underskirts, third winner at Birdport Prize 2010. Kirsty Logan is the naked fairy sphinx of short stories.

PROFILE

What is your favourite “literary” place and why?

I love the Mitchell because it's this huge, old, elegant building with a copper dome on the roof and psychedelic carpets like the hotel in The Shining. But it's situated in the middle of a horrible tangle of streets and motorways and bridges, all criss-crossing with no apparent logic. It can take ten minutes just to cross from one side of the road to the other. That's part of what I love about it: the contrast between beauty and ugliness, knowledge and chaos. For me, it sums up Glasgow perfectly.

The Mitchell Library in Glasgow. I go there once a week to research English folklore, bereavement customs and shipbuilding for my next novel, The Gracekeeper. I still go there even if I'm not researching a specific project – I just take notes on subjects that interest me. I'm a bit of a research nerd!

PROFILE

You have graduated in Creative Writing, would you recommend a university course to aspiring writers?

The theme of the pamphlet, which won’t be surprising from the title, is sex. Each of the poems and flashes look at intimacy, the body and relationships, often from a sexual or romantic angle, but also looking at the intimacy of parenthood, the liminality of the body, and how easily relationships can be built or broken. All my writing is about intimacy, really.

I have an English Literature undergraduate degree and a Creative Writing postgraduate degree, and I hugely enjoyed them both, but I don't think either are vital for a writer. If you want to spend 4-6 years reading and discussing books, then go to university – it's brilliant fun and you'll get to read great books. But a degree won't make you a writer. Only writing can make you a writer.

What are your criteria as an editor when you decide what to publish? If a story makes me put down my cup of coffee and read it again, I know it's good. I still might not accept it for publication, though, because a story has to fit with the magazine's style and with the other stories in the issue. The best advice I can give is to be honest and unusual: tell an emotionally true story in an interesting way.

Besides publishing your first novel, Rust and Stardust, and a short stories collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales, you are working a pamphlet, You Look Good Enough to Eat Me. Can you tell me more about it; why a pamphlet and what do you want to convey with this title?

What does it mean to you being a writer and what really makes the difference to achieve this status? Writers need to do two things: read a lot and write a lot. They also need to have talent, but that's not something you can help. Some people have built careers with very little talent and a lot of hard work – but no one has ever built a career with lots of talent and no work. At some point, we all need to just sit down and write.

I love pamphlets and zines because they're the perfect size to read over a cup of tea or on a bus journey. I do enjoy poetry collections but it takes me a long time to read one, whereas a pamphlet can be read straight through in one glorious swallow of words. I love that they're bite-size.

PROFILE

mark salwowski’s illustration for Kirsty Logan’s short story Coin-Operated Boys Also, when I say talent, I mean a certain way of looking at the world: of understanding things through stories, of filtering everything through language, of knowing how to express their emotions and the things they see in fresh, unusual phrases. I think many people who grew up absorbed in books have this skill.

also satisfy my need for a perfect little gem of story, though with fairytales it’s more a desire for strangeness, wonder and a sense of a satisfactory ending. Hopefully that's what I convey with my stories too.

How do you feel about eBooks? We all love print, but it’s no good pretending it’s the 1900s. People read on their phones, like it or not, and publishers need to give readers what they want. I read a lot. I have always read a lot. Now I read more on screens than I used to, but it doesn’t really make any difference. Personally I don’t think print is going to die, but you know what? If print dies, then it dies. We’ll all still keep reading and writing. The format doesn’t really matter.

Your short stories feel like Baudelaire rewriting the Grimm brothers with a female perspective. Who or what are your inspirations? I'm inspired by fairytales and children's ghost stories. I find that a lot of adult horror goes for shock or gore, and I just don’t find those things scary. When I read horror I want a quick, strange story: a perfect little gem of creepiness. For some reason, I find children’s scary stories much more satisfying than those for adults. Fairytales

do you think art (and literature) can change the world? It already has, and it will continue to.

PROFILE

Lynn Hatzius

he cover illustration of A Curious Invitation was distilled from the lovely imagination of Lynn Hatzius. She moved from Germany to London in 1998 to study at the Chelsea College of Art, which brought to a BA in Illustration at Kingston University and an MA in Printmaking at Brighton University. Her works include illustrations, collage and prints and her clients count GQ magazine, Bloomsbury publishing and Random House.

PROFILE

How did you get your first Who or what inspires you? illustratorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job? I had placed a little comment book by my BA degree show and a couple of art directors left their contact numbers and invited me to get in touch. After I had taken my portfolio around to see them, one meeting lead to my first book cover commission with Macmillan.

I get inspired by many quite varying sources, anything from colourful fabrics in a market to old maps, charts, photographs found in charity shops, or magazine and newspaper clippings I collect feverishly. Old book illustrations and prints as well as old master paintings and modern arts and crafts all feed into an endless pool of imagery and ideas I draw from.

PROFILE

Can you tell me more about the bookcover for A Curious Invitation and the collaborations with The Last Tuesday Society/Viktor Wynd Gallery?

also helping to put together the concept and some sample pages for a book to be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t give you details, but it will include some paper craft techniques such as pop up and movables. I have been developing paper engineering skills for a while and apply them to invite designs and privately commissioned cards.

When I was approached by Picador about designing the cover for A Curious Invitation and the art director mentioned the author Suzette Field I recognized her name from The Last Tuesday Society, which is linked to the Viktor Wynd Gallery. I have had my work included in a number of their group shows, but as I found out later the connection was purely incidental. The publisher, who knew my work from other book covers, suggested me as an illustrator to Suzette. This has happened to me on a number of occasions, which I guess shows that after some years an artist finds their niche or style suitable to a particular audience.

Can you briefly describe the world of book illustration today? As with all areas of illustration, the competition is immense and it can at times be very frustrating and disheartening, as book illustrations usually donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come round as often and easily as editorial work. The advantage when you do land a cover illustration job is that it pays better than editorial work and there is more longevity and a lovely physicality and volume to an illustrated book. I have found that in a lot of cases, me included, it is a little bit of a snow ball effect, once your work is seen in a particular context it often triggers further commissions in that field.

The cover design depicts details from various parties featured in the book. I have meanwhile created a total of 40 chapter illustrations as well, which I hope will really make this fantastic collection a beautiful book.

What do you think of the advent of the kindle?

What are you working on at the moment?

It is hard to tell, where this market will take the illustrated book. There are great possibilities of including images and even interactive illustrations in a digital format and a striking thumbnail showing the cover is important even in e-book shops. I think or would like to believe that readers might

I am currently finishing the artwork for my first childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book, which illustrates verses by a German writer and will be published in Germany later this year. I am

PROFILE

Tanzstunde

is important to develop a recognizable style, I would also advise anyone to experiment with different media and techniques. This will help to keep your work fresh and to stay inspired. Taking part in regular exhibitions and competitions is a great way to get your work noticed, yourself challenged, while creating new pieces for your portfolio. Some illustrators straight out of college are lucky and get picked up by an agent right away, I have personally enjoyed being without representation and appreciate choosing my clients personally and working with them directly. In any case it takes time to establish yourself as an illustrator, so you have to be patient, while constantly moving, changing, pushing yourself and above all enjoying the process.

start to miss the physicality of a printed book and even appreciate the design and visual content of a book even more and it becoming a desirable object rather than simply a vessel for the written word.

Do you have any advice for aspiring illustrators? I would say self-promotion, via web presence and mailers, as well as personal meetings are very important, to make sure you regularly remind art directors of your work and build up lasting relationships with individuals. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t limit yourself to working on commissions, but try and keep some personal projects on the go. While it

PROFILE

Quaritch

Iintroduction t was 1842 when a young man left Germany and arrived in the UK with a letter of addressed to Mr Henry Bohn, the leading bookseller in London. The man’s

name was Bernard Quaritch, and it is said he approached his employer with these words: “Mr Bohn, you are the first bookseller in England, I mean to become the first bookseller in Europe”. 150 years later, we know he did.

PROFILE

Quaritch antiquarian bookshop is a tidy tangle of staircases behind a black door near Grosvenor Square. The staircases join an infinity of rooms with walls made of tomes, except for the bibliographic archive, where the shelves occupy the whole volume. Each space is a small world inhabited by books on the same theme, from Architecture to Medicine and French Literature.

availability sinks” illustrates Andrea. “Books are constantly acquired by institutions, such as museums, universities and libraries, and some others simply get damaged with time; as a consequence there are fewer books on the market and the prices rise.” Libraire Sourget in Paris, in collaboration with investment bank Lazard, conducted a study analysing the prices variations of antiquarian books, gold, and New York stock exchange. Books resulted to be the most revaluated items. “Of course we are talking about certain copies of certain books, with the right origin, binding and characteristics” points out Andrea.

Andrea Mazzocchi shows me around while revealing the secrets of the art of books preservation and trading. “Ancient books are affordable to everybody, it depends what you collect” says Barbara Scalvini, who works in the Continental literature department.

Barbara adds that today the market is very polarised, and “good books are very expensive, while bad books are cheap”. Nevertheless there are a lot of privates that decide to invest in antiquarian books, mainly following a personal passion.

Ancient books are luxury goods, but they have, we could say, different carats. What are these carats? First editions (in original language!) are precious, as we all know, but sometimes it is the added value that makes an item worth buying. Illustrations, comments, a notorious owner constitute added value. Andrea explains that “there are second editions more valuable than first editions, because they are more rare or because they have been emended”.

Tastes follow national patterns, even though a general interest is displayed at an international level. Europeans are avid collectors, as Japanese and South Americans. China is a developing market, also due to historical reasons, as Andrea clarifies. “The Cultural Revolution deleted a part of history and culture, and now Chinese are trying to buy these values through ancient books written in or about China.”

Some major booksellers try to direct trends, as it happens in other art fields, but unlike art, antiquarian books follow more practical rules. “A book now very rare might have been common a hundred years ago, and consequently increases value when

PROFILE

Besides buying and selling, Quaritch also bids at auctions on clients’ behalf, and offers a consultancy and valuation service. “Ancient publications, unlike contemporary ones, have value as physical objects, independently from contents. Thus it is important to have an expert eye” reminds Barbara. Quite logically Andrea’s advice to newcomers is “to address themselves only to credited booksellers. The relationship with the client is based on mutual trust and it is still extremely important in this field”.

Quaritch is run by a sort of oligarchy, where each department pursues business within its expertise. It is also a very democratic environment, as testified by the presence of many women, a rarity in this field. “There are a few women worthy of note at the British Library and Christy’s, but not in retail” illustrates Camilla Szymanovska from the Russian Literature department, “antiquarian is still a male job”. I look at these passionate people fighting against time and dishonest booksellers to save this cultural heritage and I think of the elves working at Gringott’s bank in Harry Potter. I think antiquarian book trade is a world drenched in magic, the magic of history and stories. Each volume or manuscript is enriched by a personal story, as fascinating as the one written on it.

Quaritch commits to preserve books as works of art, and thus limits restorations to the necessary measures to protect them from dust, sunlight, and time. The writing supports were much more resistant in the past, some books that could even be washed. Since the beginning of the past century though, the quality of paper is easily affected by consumption.

When I exit the main door at the end of carpeted corridors, I almost expect it to disappear, like platform 9 3/4 in King’s Cross, where the Hogwarts express depart from. I walk towards the American embassy and I look back, and I’m almost surprised to see it is still there. Some magic is more real than what we can Imagine.

The people working at Quaritch care for books even after they exit their shop. Andrea shows me items belonged to Lawrence Olivier, including a volume signed by his wife, actress Vivien Leigh. They were refused to be sold to other booksellers, because they are meant to be owned by people who cherish them and show passion about them.

BOOK REVIEWS

I’m with the Band

Apathy for the Devil: A 1970’s Memoir

Pamela Des Barres

Nick Kent

Helter Skelter, London 2003

Faber, London 2010

If you loved Almost Famous, you’ll be dying

The life of a rock journalist in the Seventies isn’t “all champagne and blowjobs”. It means also getting stabbed and drug addiction. And most of all it implies spending a lot of time with people completely out of their mind. Which can be good or bad, you choose. Apathy for the Devil is Nick Kent’s seventies’ On the Road, an autobiographical portrait of a musically stunning decade ruled by drugs and strong impulses, with Iggy Pop and Keith Richards both playing Dean Moriarty. Nick Kent’s memoir is the ultimate non-fictional Bildungsroman, written in a sharp, honest, rock style. Compulsory reading.

to read this book. The real Penny Lane, Pamela Des Barres, tells of how it was to be with the band, and also in the band, in the Sixties and Seventies. She was in the backstage with Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison, and on the stage with girl rockband GTO. Her memoir portrays the groupie as a muse, lover and rock geisha, in a relationship of mutual inspirations with musicians. “They loved us because we dared to have a blast.” Rockstars don’t really rock without groupies.

1970s ROCK

Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk

P s y c h o t i c Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

Lester Bangs, edited by Greil Marcus

Abacus, London 1997

Heinemann, London 1988

The history and stories of punk, from MC5 till Kurt Cobain, told in first person by all its protagonists. Thousands of interviews are cut and pasted together to narrate the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of this mind-blowing phenomenon. It’s like being in hell with all the rockstars of the seventies and listen to their memories while playing poker with the devil. “Punks reminded me of armadillos: people whose attire was a kind of armor to protect themselves from the tentacles arising from the iridium to get them. […] There’s something individually apocalyptic in it, a personal apocalypse, a hardening off.”

This is a collection of articles of the greatest rock journalist of all time. It is a rock bible with less preaching and more love for the sinners, who in this case are legendary rockbands. Opinionated, brilliant and enthusiastic writing, when rock was still opinionated, brilliant and enthusiastic. His sarcasm and passion are no less responsible of the eternisation of rock than music itself. “[Concerts] are events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment.” 85

Books

1970s ROCK

Overdressed: Responsible Shopping in the Age of Cheap Fashion Elizabeth Cline, 30 August 2012 Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense Lewis Carroll, 06 September 2012 Winter of the World (Century of Giants Trilogy 2) Ken Follett, 13 September 2012 Moranthology Caitlin Moran, 13 September 2012 The Casual Vacancy J K Rowling, 27 September 2012 One Hundred Names Cecelia Ahern, 11 Oct 2012 Kate Mosse Citadel, 25 October 2012 The Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language Mark Forsyth, 01 November 2012 The Racketeer John Grisham, 8 November 2012 Shakespeare’s Local: a History of Britain Through One Pub Pete Brown, 08 November 2012

Events

1970s ROCK

Moscow International Book Fair, 05 September 2012 York National Book Fair, 14-15 September 2012 Tea with Alice The Story Museum, Oxford, until 16 September 2012 Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderland British Library, until 25 September 2012 GĂśteborg Book Fair, 27 September 2012 Bath Book Fair 29-30, September 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, 10 October 2012 Quentin Blake: As Large as Life Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, until 14 October 2012 Istanbul Book Fair 2012 17 November 2012

Movies

On the Road, 12 October 2012 The Great Gatsby, postponed to Summer 2013 The Hobbit, 14 December 2012 Anna Karenina, 7 September 2012 LĂŠs Miserables, 11 January 2013 87

MASTHEAD

sArA bellini editor followthecheshirecat.blogspot.com bellinisara@rocketmail.com

piyAchAt stitnuWAttAnA creAtive director be.net/chokobox chokobox@gmail.com 88

MASTHEAD

CATERINA BIANCHETTI freelance illustrator “white” caterinadisegna.blogspot.com caterina.bianchetti@gmail.com

MISCHA SY LEE freelance illustrator “bipolar writers” cargocollective.com/whenyellowmeetsgrey mischasylee85@gmail.com 89

Curiouser