Durham University - FAQs for the Curious

Welcome to Durham. 

My third university in five years. 

I've begun to realise these past few weeks that somehow I've a tendency to live in beautiful places surrounded by history and brilliant people. 

I grew up outside of London, surrounded by fields and with a view of the night sky, then I went to school in a rather idyllic spot on Hertford Heath before I fled north for university. There, I settled into the Jekyll and Hyde wonder that is Edinburgh and after two years, I took a break to travel West. All the way to the sunny blue skies of North Carolina for a study abroad year that inspired the creation of this blog. Of course, after returning to my beloved Scottish home-away-from-home for my final year, I graduated, worked all summer and ended up moving for my postgraduate year to here. Durham. Another beautiful city swathed in history both ancient and less ancient. 

But before I tell you about any of my adventures thus far, here are some rumour-based Frequently Asked Questions that required an answer: 

DURHAM IS A SCHOOL FOR ANTS Everyone has a habit of thinking of Durham as a tiny wee town in the middle of no where, but compared to Chapel Hill, Durham is a thriving metropolis. Plus it's right next to Newcastle so when a dose of city life is needed, it's not too hard to hop a train to somewhere a little bigger. Also, when I think about how many places students used in Edinburgh, it probably averages out - only it's all in one place here... rather than a slog down Lothian Rd. 

DURHAM STUDENTS ARE OXBRIDGE REJECTS Ok so this may have a kernel of truth in it somewhere, lots of people both undergrads and postgrads seem to have at least considered either Scylla or Charybdis whilst they were applying. And 'Never Have I Ever Applied to Oxford' is a regular laugh. But then a huge number of my Edinburgh friends were also post-Oxbridge applicants. And several people I know who attended Manchester or Exeter or went overseas. Durham's not really so different from any top university in this regard.

EVERYONE MARRIES EVERYONE ELSE Admittedly, I happen to know one of the cutest examples of Durham Marriage statistics (they're currently retired and coming up to their 30th Anniversary) but I'm not sure if it's completely true what they say about marrying your Duzza boyfriend or girlfriend. As of now, I've heard that 1/10 students marry their S/O from Durham, that 1/4 marry their S/O from Durham, that 1/5, 1/25, 1/100 marry their S/O from Durham... I think we need a statistic that everyone can agree on.

Rah Rah Rah Blahblahblueblah

COLLEGES ARE LIKE GENTLEMAN CLUBS One of the questions I'm most frequently asked is whether or not the collegiate system is elitist, exclusionary, prejudiced towards certain characters etc but so far all I've really noticed as a postgrad is that I love the people I live with because we're all work hard, play hard types and that being part of a college is a little like being part of a student society with the nights out, formals, intramural sports teams (or in this case intracollegiate) etc. Perhaps this is different for undergrads.


DURHAM STUDENTS ARE ALL BLUE-BLOODED I've yet to meet a lord. Actually, I've yet to meet an heir/ess of any kind. That's not to say they're not here (I know my sister has a couple friends with lives straight out of Made In Chelsea) but they don't inundate the market square. Especially not on a Friday.  

BUT THEY ARE ALL SOUTHERN RIGHT? There are a lot Southerners here at Durham - myself included - and even those people who aren't RP-English speaking folk from the Home Counties somehow speak like they are. It took me all of three weeks to realise that one guy in halls is actually Welsh because he speaks like Prince William and no matter how many times I'm told that another boy is from Cornwall, I just can't hear it. As it turns out, despite the neutralising effect Durham Cathedral's shadow has upon dialectal differences, there are people from all over the country and all over the world. 

DURHAM IS HOGWARTS. Yes and No. The cathedral was used for various different parts of the Harry Potter films. Dumbledore fell to his death from the top of the bell tower. McGonagall's classroom is just off the cloisters. The cloisters are the setting for the famous Harry/Hedwig scene (and potentially that bit with the Grey Lady - a ghost also claimed by Durham). The Cathedral Library actually could be part of Hogwarts. And when you're walking home along Framwellgate Bridge, it's hard not to believe you're in Hogsmeade. But technically, Hogwarts actually belongs to George Percy.


So there are some of the rumours and some of the truths. I will tell you adventures next time.

Je serai poète et toi poésie, 
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Look out London, the ‘Mericans are a-coming

Is it the end of the Man Booker or a fresh start?

I first wrote this for Allison & Busby's blog page - see link above - but I wanted to post it here as well because it so nicely ties into some of the books I've been reading lately.

Often considered a rather staid and sensible prize compared to others of its ilk, the Man Booker Prize has a reputation as a defender of British and Commonwealth writing. Different to its fellow literary prizes, the criteria was simply that the novel be written in the English language by a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Yet overshadowing this year’s shortlist is the latest news: that from 2014 America will be competing against Commonwealth entrants.

The award has brought worldwide acclaim to bookshelf names such as Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin 2000), Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day 1989), two-time winner Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall 2009 and Bring up the Bodies 2012) and even the divisive Salman Rushdie, who was relatively unknown before his novel Midnight’s Children won the award in 1981.

Thinking about it, therefore, it seems hardly a surprise that this years Man Booker Prize has both controversy and scepticism stalking alongside it.  

Although quibbles have arisen, such as the brevity of Colm Toibin’s one hundred and one paged novel, The Testament of Mary, which seems to rankle Will Gompertz. The focus lies on how many authors, from Melvyn Bragg to A.S. Byatt, feel that changing the rules of the Man Booker Prize, to make it a ‘truly international award’ as planned, directly undermines the writers it has historically supported.

Some, like A.S. Byatt fear that too many entrants will overwhelm judges and mean that hundreds of manuscripts and entrants will be passed over without due consideration; others believe that it’s a risk worth taking, a commercially rooted decision that will benefit the prestige and reception of the award and help them to compete against other international prizes. However, the most pressing concern remains that the American market cannot helpbut to dominate the long and short list simply because of the quantity of their entrants. This fear is only exacerbated by the shortlisted Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahiri, accused of being an American novel rather than Bengali, and for some, epitomising the way US literature will impugn the one-time bulwark of British and Commonwealth writers.

 So is this the end of the Man Booker, as Guardian blogger, Philip Hensher, puts it? Or is this a fresh start for the Prize who received incredible backlash when Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall won last year? Should we be wary of who might be nominated next year? Or should we be excited at the possibility of a wider intake? These are questions to keep in mind as the announcement for the 2013 winner approaches and also queries to think over when you next pluck a Man Booker long or shortlist from the shelf.

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
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Cult Fiction - Amity & Sorrow

"She didn’t know that preparing for the end of the world would make it that 

much more likely to come. " 

Amity & Sorrow is the most recent book to keep me up all night. 

Despite my cynical predisposition - did I really want to read a novel about 'God, sex and farming?' - something stopped me from putting it down. Every time I tried, I found myself twisting to pluck it from the shelf again and resume its journey. Because it is a journey. This debut novel from US playwright Peggy Riley, journeys across rural, middle America and dusts you off on a small rapeseed farm in Oklahoma. It quests through a young girl's coming of age and a sister's development as an individual. It plots the love of a mother for her children and her husband and herself. It is an odyssey of human emotion. A voyage through a family's life. 

It rapidly becomes more complicated then a single, wayfaring wife and her naive offspring.The novel explores a harrowing journey through emotional, spiritual and physical abuse and although Riley conveys this trauma, she never clarifies its exact nature, letting her audience interpret for themselves. Her unique style, which is probably the reason for her novel's nomination for the Guardian First Book Award as well as its peculiarities, manipulates this ambiguity. By using the often out-of-vogue present tense, Riley begins 'in the middle of things', in the heart of her characters' plight. Slowly their stories unravel, creating a constant, compelling tug that becomes a desperate rush towards the conclusion. 

 Riley weaves the plot together through moments of reflection set against the immediate present. With each flashback, another stitch in the fabric of this family's story reveals itself and elicits a little more sympathy for characters that initially seem foolish, spoilt and strange. The shadowy cloisters of their past wrestle with the beating sun of a modern, alien world, but slowly the reasons for why Amaranth has fled with her daughters, and why their car crash means they must rely on the generosity of a farmer, spins into darker, creepier territory. Looming over them is the threat of their father and his Messianic cult. 

Fear and love compel Riley's story. As one daughter waits 'for the end of the world' and the other ricochets between love for her mother and adoration of her sister, their mother struggles to release them from their shared history. For these characters, 'the world is coming apart at the seams' but they are bound together, bound by a 'thread sewing [them] down to [their father] and all' his fifty wives. The potential to escape only exists if they are willing to travel through fire, to burn, but who will brave the fire and who will survive it is left to the final, desperate conclusion. 

Whilst at times Riley's narrative style loses clarity, somehow it always regains its footing, upping the momentum as it does so. It is one of my favourite books of this year and I highly recommend it. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
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Boats against the current: Originality vs. Gatsby

Boats against the current: Originality vs. Gatsby

Google search Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Once you’ve scrolled passed IMBD and Amazon, the photos of a rather dashing Leo DiCaprio and the mighty Wikipedia, you’ll come to an area of the internet known and loved by many a student. Starting with Sparknotes, you have come to essay territory – prime ground for feckless scholars crawling home at 4am, planning to start their midterm assignments due the next day.

There are hundreds of books on the subject of The Great Gatsby, from A-Level editions to Sarah Fitzgerald’s new book, Careless People. There are study guides, synopses, online downloads and free essays. All of which are available from novelguides, scribd, antiessay, dreamessays, 123helpme and a thousand blogs determined that there’s something new to say about F. Scott and his most favoured novel.

But what if they’re wrong? Is it possible that everything about The Great Gatsby has already been said?

Early this morning I received an email informing me that a recent study at Harvard University concluded that when discussing or writing about the themes and symbols of the great American novel, there is little to nothing original left to say. In fact, it’s almost impossible to hand in an essay on either subject without being flagged for plagiarism because of the plethora of articles and essays now existing on those exact topics. No longer can essayists wax lyrical on how the glimmering, green light at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock transform into the whimsical symbol of the American Dream. Nor can they speculate freely on how Dr T.J Eckleburg and his fading gaze represent the death of Christian faith and a loss of moral certitude. It seems they might as well pluck an old article from the shelf and scratch out the words they dislike in order to create an almost new text to submit.

Ok… so maybe I’m rushing ahead of myself.

As it turned out, after reading about this study and raising the question of whether The Great Gatsby might finally be removed from curricula, I discovered that my source was the WishWashington Post. Not exactly The Washington Post as I mistakenly first thought.  And perhaps this means we need not fear that Fitzgerald’s classic will be soon be retiring or that every time you mention ‘West Egg’ and  the ‘Valley of Ashes’ you’ll be called up on charges of plagiarism.

But there is still a good question raised – how much can readers speculate before a novel is tired of interpretation? And where is the space for originality in an environment populated by readily available opinions on the exact same topics? I’m not sure that there’s one answer to this question – so I put it to you: what do you think?

Je serai poète et toi poésie, 
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The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones

 

THE TALE OF RAW HEAD & BLOODY BONES by JACK WOLF

A REVIEW

"What I did know, know for certain, was that I had wanted to cause Pain to Lady B. - I had wanted to heal her, too; but I had wanted to hear her Scream... We were Monsters, both of us; or perhaps fallen Angels"

What you need to know first about this book is not the synopsis or the ins-and-outs. No, you need to know that it took me two pots of Earl Grey to endure those ins-and-outs, and that only after a very bubbleful, relaxing, not-quite-scalding hot bath did I finally complete it. This book is horrific and bloody and terrifying. It is also addictive, beautiful and utterly unlike anything I've read before. 

The reason I first picked up this book was due to it's magnificent front cover. A sinister phantom astride his horse, the echo of a white owl sweeping between the forest's crooked fingers, the flashes of red coiling like blood in water: it fit the folktale-esq title whilst promising a story, both haunting and horrific. Like the desires affecting Tristan Hart, the novel's young protagonist, The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones was impossible to ignore.

Reading it was challenging. It's written in the first person but it's all in the style of the eighteenth century. Wolf, on being asked why he chose to do this, said that it was this decision to mimic the archaic, idiosyncratic grammar and style of Enlightenment writers that unleashed the character of Tristan Hart. However, it did mean that navigating the first few pages was a little like trying to read Shakespeare or Milton when you're out of practice. Initially, this threw me - I wasn't expecting it - but once you've conquered those first pages this use of language emphasises the story. It's easy to forget that Wolf is the author rather than Hart himself.

This is only exacerbated by the way the novel patterns fact and fiction. On one hand, we have Tristan, unreliable in the extreme, the epitome of a 'character' as his story is one of self-creation. He compiles his own narrative story, his social facard, by dwelling in a myriad of fictions. Beginning with his bucolic childhood full of faerie stories, fantasy eventually encompasses his narrative and blurs the distinction between reality and dreams. The uncanny cleverness of this disjunction between what is real to Tristan and what is true for other characters, is further emphasised by the way his life intertwines with the preeminent Enlightenment surgeon: Dr William Fielding. Fielding, a real doctor whose real history and clients populate Tristan's world, creates a startling counterpoint to the novel's psychological content. Without realising questions arise: how can anything be real or unreal, true or untrue? The novel demands that the darkest points of human nature are assessed: where sanity and insanity collide, whether pain and pleasure are exclusive, or how morality and sin intertwine.

For me, this created a yin-yang effect. Polarised are superstition and science, the worlds before and after the Enlightenment, the factual and the fictional, madness and genius. 

Throughout, I was struck by how similar his condition was to Jekyll and Hyde, whilst remaining startled and strained by the realisation of how different they were. His predilections conjured up fiendish spectres such as Jack the Ripper or le Sade, but also evoked memories of our own doctors, own families and friends. What goes on in the heads of those around us? How easily are we deceived? How simple is it to convince ourselves of false truths? 

Thus, an an idyllic moment in the Book Festival became strange. Uncanny. Unreal. As the Charlotte Square gardens filled with a rare shard of blue sky sunshine and the square hummed with visiting voices and rustled as the wind whispers down the tents... it was lovely. And set back from this sat the Writer's Retreat, a quiet space resting beneath colourful Chinese lanterns and flush green trees. And inside, Jack Wolf discussed his novel: how its unique, unsettling tale is both brutal and beautiful. I shivered and I listened. 

Admittedly, I didn't enjoy every moment. There were times when I couldn't keep reading it, had to put it down and pause, make sure my stomach was settled before I continued. Because even those moments of intense revulsion were quashed by curiousity and morbid fascination. Similarly, moments of the novel bewildered me - the whys and hows didn't always persuade me to believe in Hart's journey. But somehow, even that didn't deter me - perhaps because I enjoyed the literary aspects of an unreliable narrator musing on deeply philosophical conundrums. 

It is a book that both grips and reviles you. Worth a read - if you have a strong constitution. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

In Love of Literature, Reading & Words

 IN LOVE OF LITERATURE, READING & WORDS

Here we are. Another year on. And it's August. Any of you that have kept track of me will remember last August and my Fringe Festival escapades. 

This year is a little different. Graduation done, my flat packed up in anticipation of my absconding to Durham, I started a new role with the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Described (in genuine feedback) as 'the Heart of the August Festival', it's been quite the whirligig experience. 

Right now, of course, it's crazy. People from all over the world populate Charlotte Square. Writers great and small have come to share their work and their thoughts. Books are shipped into the square in their hundreds, ready for eager hands and hungry eyes. It puts the quiet months of ticket sales and seller smiles squarely in the past participle. 

Hoping to make this post short and sweet, I simply wanted to introduce my little project of the next couple days: to edit and post reviews of the books I've been reading in my time here. Some I'll recommend, some I'll flag with a warning, some I might have to critique. But the point behind these reviews is simple: I've loved having the time to read again. Whilst I've avoided the 'heavy duty' biographies and the politics thus far, I've finally had the hours here and there to spend reading fiction not on a school list. 

In other Ed Book Fest news: 

1. Superheroes are awesome. The Stripped programme is quite brilliant and I urge everyone to attend at least one event on it - even if you know nothing about comics, graphic novels or superheroes. Also... I have invented a new crazy hero and will write a book about her. Or him. Gender not specific. 
2. THERE ARE NEW MYSTERIOUS BOOK SCULPTURES. Kudos to all who guessed as much from the allusionary title.
3. The First Book Award shortlist is brilliant and I've yet to read one I haven't enjoyed on some level. More to come on that front.
4.  The other day I had to run with a Build-A-Bear Bag all the way to Waverley Stations because one of the authors forgot it (and his daughter would have been sad).
5. The box office has written a song about the Laminator. 
6. We have all gone insane.

 

RIGHT! NOW ON TO THE REVIEWS!ON Y VA! 

Je serai poète et toi poésie, 
SCRIBBLER

Strange Kind of Freedom: Post-Dissertation Fun

P.hinisheD*

DISSERTATIONS, DRINKS AND THE DDW DROOGS

* Alright! I admit it... so the pretty pieces of work you see above may not have been PhD theses but there are only so many jokes about dissertations out there... 

Oddly enough, the last week of the dissertation (aka. Dissertation Death Week) was possibly one of the most fun weeks of my university career. And I'm not the only one who thought so. High-pressure, mammoth editing circles, eyes that ache from staring at the same computer screen for hours at a time -   we existed in a sort of hysteria, the progeny of adrenalin and sleep-deprivation, and ended up laughing and laughing and laughing. 

It started with three of us: Holt, the token dude; Olivia, but you may knew her as INKA; and me - but before long we were joined by (s)he of Pigfarts: Katie. We formed a circle, passing our essays between us so that everyone had comments and criticism attached to our work, cutting excess words and colloquialisms, noting the moments of awkward phrasing, taking out the pointless additions that we just didn't need. But when it all became just a little too much, when our heads felt full of fluff and our eyeballs threatened to fall out of our faces, we tuned out together and gave our brains a break. For example, Holt showed us Christopher Walken reading 'Where the Wild Things Are' and Katie revealed Starkid's A Very Potter Musical. If you click those links, you'll probably find out just how weird and crazy we went (are) but these moments of hilarity were the tonic to our otherwise perpetual brain-ache. 

The diet of amazing home-cooked recipes certainly helped. Sweet potato risotto, green Thai curry, chill-chorizo with rice - we ate like kings. And it made up for our over-consumption of milkshake/milkbottle pick-n-mix. 

So seven bottles of Prosecco and some really bad bad bad coconut-rum/gin/orange-from-concentrate cocktails later and it's over. It's done. It's handed in and it's great. And, it feels like we've come out of it with strong, new friendships as well as stallion-strong dissertations. 

Yet I'm finding there's a weird mix of mild panic and relief. Every so often there's a peculiar tightening in my chest and stomach where I think I've discovered another error that's going to scupper the essay I spent so long on. But then there's the easy freedom of knowing that I don't have to be up until 4am writing the same essay on Milton that I've been writing all year. There's the fact that I actually have the time to update projects like this, my much neglected blog, and to start up my latest book-related venture on The Daily Scribble which is looking at publishing houses and their various imprints. I also have time to write more chapters up for Festival, Rebel Earth and update my notebooks on several other creative adventures. Going to The Earl for drinks suddenly doesn't have a time limit and having Wednesday lunches doesn't have to come with a book on classical prosody. So despite the atrocious and slightly pathetic dreams about not having it finished in time, or discovering a terrible misprint, it is a great feeling to be able to focus on the other things that had to fall by the wayside. 

And there's always more prosecco. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

Trains & Boats & Planes

A Very Merry English Christmas

And the Many Things that Followed

Good Evening Readers (or it could be morning... afternoon...),

Once again, its been a while since I updated, which seems to happen a lot. The last thing I really posted was back in very early November. So for those weirdos who actually enjoy the random little updates into my life/world/head/city/adventures, I apologise. I promise I have plenty of those to tell now that I really am adding something new. 

Holidays are the strangest time of year. They begin, everything is exciting and you're so glad for a break, even if you're only doing four hours of classes a week and your usual day composed of sitting in a cafe reading books and drinking tea. All you want is that 'well-deserved' break.Yet by the time you're meant to return to daily life, be it school or university (or work? I'm not sure yet.) it's almost like you need a holiday from your holiday. 

Or maybe it's just me. I turned up at home and slept for ages, turning my light out almost four hours earlier than I had been here in bonnie Scotland. I flew back here after a weekend with Aony and her demon tiger cat and suddenly the first week of university is all about early nights and catching up on sleep. 

Christmas was wonderful this year - we had a visitor from Australia, we met the Tenth Family (the massive assortment of second(?) cousins on my uncle's side of the family, we sang plenty of carols in and out of tune, drank far too much over four days, saw my godmother in Wiltshire and had granny to stay for four days. In my case, I also read twelve non-compulsory novels and wrote another 13,000 words for Festival, which now sits at a comfortable 64K and is probably nearing first-draft completion. I also reconnected with Kate, a brilliant friend who certainly knows some tasty places to eat and WAY too many statistics about Carnaby Street. Plus there was coming back up to Edinburgh for a second awesome Hogmanay, completed by good company and an unprecedented clamber up Arthur's Seat to peer over shoulders at the fireworks. And that's before we even mention my spontaneous delivery of chocolate poptarts to Paris to satisfy Alex's craving for non-French foodstuffs. 

All this chatter is to make up for last year, when I promised an add about the 'Very English Christmas' after my 'Very American Thanksgiving' ... only I never actually wrote the post. I did start it but I thought that what's quite nice now is that I'm actually "re-acclimating" to the British Isles. Yes, you've read all about reverse culture shock, I won't bore you with it again. BUT - and that but really did need capitals - I think what Christmas really demonstrated was how everything is sort of synthesising. For one, the endless conversations about America and how it was are slowly petering out, which is strange and satisfying at the same time because it reminds me that it's over but also allows me to finally find that point where Second-Year-Me and Third-Year-Me become Fourth-Year-Me. Does that make sense? Probably not. 

Whether you quite figured out what that gibberish was about or not - let me offer some examples of how the two are coming together:

1.We had sweet potato and marshmallow mash with Christmas Dinner. As first demonstrated by the wonderful Hart family, those sweet sweet potatoes were scrumptious alongside our roast this year (admittedly the macaroni cheese hasn't quite made it but let's not ponder why).

2. I no longer have a tan but I do have better hair and people notice that instead. 

3. Americans are everywhere and now I tune into their accents the way I did with British ones in Chapel Hill. 

4. I love home and I love my family and I love my bed but a year later and yes, I think I'm quite happy to come back to university after the holidays without the sensation that made it so difficult to board the flight taking me back to Carolina (and no I don't mean sobriety in the face of an aeroplane).

5. I called American and English phone numbers on New Years. Thank Apple for FaceTime. 

6. I no longer want to put the warning (Year Abroad Not For Everyone) before telling people about my time at UNC. And I'm happy to talk to people about the differences between the UK and US without too much bias on either side.

7. Airmiles have become my lifeline. Despite a long-lived fear (read: phobia) of flying, the jetset life is probably going to kill us. My itchy feet have taken me back and forth from London and Edinburgh, to little towns with and without universities, to Paris and I have a feeling the trend will continue. Travel More is certainly big on my list of New Years Resolutions. 

Anyway, now I'm home, New Years has passed. It is officially 2013. We survived the latest vision of the apocalypse and the next one is predicted for sometime next year when the moon is meant to explode. It's hit off to a great start too with Mineta visiting us all from Paris and Jessica's fabulous 21st giving all of us excuses to dress up as pretty as peaches.

And so here is my conclusion - just to keep me writing (and to keep me doing something somewhat useful with my awesome procrastination abilities), I thought I'd do the THIRTY DAY SONG CHALLENGE - day by day, putting up a song and maybe a short post to go with it. There's no real reason why you should follow or bother reading - most of you probably have a tonne of stuff to do too. But if your bored you might find a new song you like, or find out something about me, or realise I'm referencing you, or you might just stare and go 'HUH?' - but I hope it at least it'll waste your time enjoyably. 

Here's DAY ONE: a song that makes you happy.

HUEY (PIANO) SMITH & The Clowns - Don't You Just Know It (as heard in Snatch because it's the only non-gravelled version I could find)...

Je serai poète et toi poésie,

SCRIBBLER