Of course neither of the conversations of the week is anything your correspondent herself has been involved in. No, no: there has been no conversation of the week in Baroque Mansions. Sometimes we like it that way; and last night, I’m pleased as punch to say, I slept for a dizzying* eleven hours. Even with the toddler downstairs being left to cry, scream, wail and grizzle for an hour or more when he woke up, which is how his parents (mis)manage him. It’s worse in the summer, he wakes up earlier and of course windows are open – if you’re lucky. Mine was firmly shut last night, after yesterday morning.
Anyway, I’ve been neglecting things a bit in the quotidian whirl, and one of the things I hate to admit to neglecting is a blog I like a lot: the ever-interesting New York-based Maud Newton. So I had a look this morning and what do I find but a conversation you couldn’t even make up: it’s made my day, already. (Something had to: I tried on all my summer skirts this morning and none of them do up. I have gained back all the weight I lost being sick last year – and that just isn’t right! And I have a party to go to this evening. At least my feet aren’t fat.)
Maud writes:
“Critic: [Upon introduction.] Maud Newton… Wasn’t there a novel called that this year?
Me: I don’t think so.
Critic: Yes, I think there was a novel or something.
Friend: Are you thinking of Elizabeth Costello? Or some other book with a name for a title?
Critic: No, Maud. It’s such a common name now, all of a sudden. Recently I met a Rachel Maud. And Maud Newton, yes, it’s definitely a book.
Friend: Maybe you’re thinking of a blog?
Critic: [Pulls out phone.] Let me just check Amazon.
Me: I think I’d know if there was a novel called ‘Maud Newton’.
Journalist: Yes, I think she’d know.
Critic: No, I’m not finding anything. Let me put it in Google…
There’s more! Go check it out.
In related “Never-trust-a-critic” news, a conversation elesewhere brings up this article from the Dublin Review on poet-critics by David Wheatley, the, er, poet-critic. (Takes one to know one, I say.) I enjoyed it very much, especially the how-to at the end.
Before that, though, there is this delicious paragraph which casts, perhaps, a tiny ray of light on the critic in Maud’s story above (and don’t get me wrong: a tiny ray is all he deserves):
“Dennis [O'Driscoll] is the Ulysses** of the quotation business, pursuing his quarry like a sinking star over horizons most of us never even sight. Who else would have thought to look in the Farmer’s Gazette for a reaction to Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize win? And sure enough there it was: ‘Bellaghy Celebrates as Farmer’s Son Wins Top Literary Award’. He has quoted Alan Bennett’s suggestion that, just as abandoned cars sometimes have notices slapped on them reading ‘Police Aware’, beauty spots or ‘some particularly touching vagrant’ could have an equivalent reading ‘Poet Aware’. Maybe the unread poetry books and magazines piled high in shops could have a ‘Dennis Aware’ sticker. As for trying to find something he hasn’t already seen or read before you, forget about it: a friend-who-shall-remain-nameless has tried casually dropping the name of a non-existent poet in conversation with him, only for Dennis to fall on the unknown name like a chameleon’s tongue on a passing horsefly: Who?”
Ah! Such happy days. And now, having already been out once this morning, to the pound shop to get a feather duster and some Windolene, I am now off out again to get that coffee…
* Literally: I now feel a bit dizzy.
** You know, I read this several times before I realised he probably means Ulysses the ancient character, not the book! Bloody hell. You just sort of assume everything’s about Joyce, don’t you.
