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sponge sponge lee rourke homepage a story assembled from everyday objects unassumingly and quietly that stuns and horrifies by increments the canal may look at first glance like a love story but it harnesses the power of parable john wray author of lowboy search this blog sunday 21 april 2013 it s official it seems a good time to kickstart this blog back in to existence with some rather good news i m proud to announce that 4th estate harper collins with be publishing my next novel vulgar things early next year 2014 essex odyssey for 4th estate posted by scarecrow at 15 04 labels 2014 4th estate harper collins novel vulgar things thursday 21 july 2011 start again hullo i ve decided to start blogging again i have no idea why to celebrate here s me reading from the canal over at indigest magazine posted by scarecrow at 00 33 labels readings the canal wednesday 22 december 2010 new stuff hullo i ve not been on here for a while for myriad reasons but shortly i will be posting a whole wealth of new stuff i ve mainly been trying to finish my next novel amber which should be done and dusted by the end of jan other than that i ve just been hanging around with my two cats and writing bits and bobs for newspapers so like i just said i ll be posting some new stuff on here pretty shortly in the meantime watch this check out the pylons at the beginning posted by scarecrow at 01 30 labels amber captain beefheart new stuff pylons saturday 2 october 2010 brutal myth i hope this clears up a few things it s not the symbolic beauty of the swan i find remotely interesting it s the return of the image of the swan back to butal violent myth that interests me bookslut swans form an important piece of imagery in this novel can you talk about the role they play in your book lee rourke oh i love swans so much when i see a swan on the regent s canal in london it s quite hard for me not to be affected by the stark juxtaposition of beauty and environment i mean they are just brilliantly beautiful creatures and i always want to say to them what are you doing here why here of all the places for you to live your life why the regent s canal but seriously swans figure symbolically throughout the novel i am interested in the myth of leda and the swan in its various interpretations there is much greek myth interwoven within the structure of the canal for instance and returning to your earlier question if i was to give the woman in the canal a name it would have to be cassandra apart from the beauty of the swan and leda s naked form portrayed in the hellenistic reliefs or da vinci s paintings it is a rather brutal myth and one that forewarns a major catastrophe catastrophe is something that hangs above the canal like a phantasm leda was tyndareus s wife a spartan king although this was never enough there was always the suspicion that leda wanted to transcend this position when zeus in the guise of a swan commits his despicable act upon leda she is yielded by him four eggs and is given god like status she gives birth to castor polydeukes clytemnestra and most importantly helen an act of violence not only rape but fratricide many reliefs depict the siblings attacking each other begets the bigger catastrophe the act of genocide committed in the trojan war i am interested in yeats s reading of this myth in his poem leda and the swan it is a poem that underpins the whole of my writing of the canal yeats s poem can be read as a completion of image taking in and re processing the various iterations of this myth over many epochs yeats takes the image back to antiquity back to the myth in leda and the swan yeats says a shudder in the loins engenders there the broken wall the burning roof and tower and agamemnon dead not only is he returning the image back to violence but also back to myth where it belongs away from beauty and form i wanted to repeat this completion of image in my own iteration of leda and the swan as myth within the canal there is a sense of the unknown in the canal a sense that the actions inside the novel are a signal to an impending catastrophe the woman is fully aware of this she forewarns the man right at the beginning when they first meet it takes the man right up until the dramatic conclusion to work out exactly what it is she means like cassandra she is misunderstood or more directly he refuses to believe what it is she is saying yet there is always something to reveal in messing around with this myth in the canal i am hoping to reveal to the reader a mythical past that is our continual present read more posted by scarecrow at 14 18 labels leda and the swan myth regent s canal swans the canal yeats wednesday 1 september 2010 booker not it s time for the guardian s not the booker prize again and it looks like a few people have nominated the canal i can t thank people enough for this i ll be interesting to see who makes it on to the short list this year the fun of complaining about the man booker prize has been rather spoiled by the fact that the judging panel appears to have compiled a pretty strong longlist disappointingly nearly all the books appear to be interesting and at least two on the list the slap and room are even proving excitingly divisive and controversial the talk hasn t been so much about dull worthiness and yet more irish dolour and north london angst as about abuse tangled race issues and outrage oh yes and pleasure that some fine authors are getting recognition as ever there s been plenty of comment about notable omissions but this year most of it has related to ian mcewan and martin amis and few are claiming that the current novels from the web s favourite whipping boys have suffered an injustice my money is on even the dogs by jon mcgregor posted by scarecrow at 00 33 labels booker prize jon mcgregor not the booker prize the canal the guardian tuesday 31 august 2010 logical positivism i stumbled across ned beauman s author of the highly entertaining boxer beetle musings on heidegger s being and time the other day although his approach reading stems from a rather conservative logical and staid comfort zone i still found it interesting in its honesty and i ve always admired people who can form an opinion with conviction and vim but it s still the same old logical positivist s argument something i ve often found to be quite stationary i like things including nothing to be a little bit more malleable you know but that s by the by and down to personal opinion no the thing that rankled which is nothing to do with ned beauman himself is this 1 i ve always disliked beckett then someone told me that to understand beckett you have to read being and time so i read being and time then i read some more beckett i still dislike beckett but i m glad i read being and time there is no primary evidence by the way that beckett himself had any interest in heidegger i beg your pardon did i read that correctly i know reading him requires a certain mode of patience but if you really want to understand samuel beckett then read read read dante alighieri forget heidegger immediately everything you need to know about samuel beckett is right there in the divine comedy i thought everyone knew that update actually if anyone is interested some of the best writing on beckett can be found in simon critchley s very little almost nothing posted by scarecrow at 03 49 labels dante martin heidegger samuel beckett the divine comedy friday 27 august 2010 ann quin the independent have published my book of a lifetime it s ann quin s berg which if you haven t read i suggest you give a try it s simply wonderful it s also a peek at what the british novel could have been posted by scarecrow at 00 27 labels ann quin the independent older posts home subscribe to posts atom blog archive blog archive april 1 july 1 december 1 october 1 september 1 august 3 july 2 april 3 march 4 february 13 january 18 december 5 november 6 october 17 september 11 august 6 july 2 june 18 may 12 march 2 february 5 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