*Disclaimer – please note that it is not my intention to cause offence in this post; this is merely a discussion of words which people find offensive. If you were offended by the first word of the title, I wouldn’t recommend reading any further.

The radio was playing in the car the other day, and Kanye West’s All of the Lights came on. It’s so rare that I listen to the radio as opposed to my own music that I was mildly surprised that one of the songs I’d been listening to frequently since getting the album a couple of weeks ago suddenly had a few words missing, most prominently the word nigger.

Nigger’s a strange word, because it’s not really a swear word, it’s not like you’d hit your thumb with a hammer and shout “argh, niggers!”, but it’s likely to cause as much, if not more, offence than, say, cunt. So why is that? Well, it’s a derogatory racially-specific term. I think that second part is the most important aspect of it; dickhead is derogatory, but not racially-specific, and would be considered much less offensive.

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There’s some things you own that you’re particularly proud of, objects that give pleasure just from being in your possession. Usually these objects are uncommon, collectors’ items, or they hold sentimental significance, or they just say something about you. I’m considering doing a series of posts on some of my favourite possessions, but I will start with a fairly recent acquisition of mine: Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson’s A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.

This book is uncommon on account of the obscurity of its subject matter; it’s a synopsis and critical discussion of James Joyce’s final and most difficult work, Finnegans Wake. Outside of literary circles I doubt it was ever widely read and the book’s been out of print for years. My copy is from 1947, making it only slightly younger than the oldest book I own, a 1944 copy of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

I like this book on two levels: Firstly, it has a very pure bookish sort of quality. The cover is blue, the pages are slightly yellowed, though still in good condition. If it ever had a dust-jacket, that’s been long-lost somewhere down the years, leaving only its plain blue hard-cover. The front and back offer no clues to the book’s identity, the title being printed on the spine only, and there in gold lettering only distinguishable from the sun-bleached fabric by its metallic sheen. It has a charming anonymity.

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You know how sometimes you get lines from songs stuck in your head? Not necessarily the music, but the lines themselves. Well I do anyway. Lines like “And still we will be here, standing like statues” or “do you believe in magic?”, though they’re much better with the music to go with them, and when they’re sung in a certain way. Lately I’ve had a few literary lines stuck in my head, two of them from James Joyce, one from Simon Armitage. Sometimes the best sentiments come from the fewest words, and some quotes are brilliant not because of what they say, whether they’re a pithy little aphorism or a well-put piece of rhetoric, but by what they suggest, and how they seem to carry a whole weight of ideas that is much greater than the sum of their parts.

Without further ado in this short, sharp little post, the three lines I have stuck in my head, that I thought I would share are:

i. Yes I said yes I will yes.

This, as everyone really ought to know, is the final, triumphant line of Joyce’s Ulysses. I love the emphatic expression of affirmation it embodies. It’s only seven words, and yet it is so enthusiastic in conveying its message. It’s so well-balanced as well, the way two words separate each of the three yeses. It’s probably even my favourite line in the whole novel.

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I was wondering, as I read a long introduction to Erich Auerbach’s critical study of reality in western literature, if other people have little techniques and quirks for keeping their place when reading. Obviously, most people use bookmarks, the sensible, purpose-built tool for reliable book navigation, although some others, horror of horrors!, actually deface books by folding over the corners of their pages. My mother does this occasionally with her second-hand thrillers; my father has at several times expressed a severe distaste for the act. Personally, I can’t bring myself to damage any book, however poor its writing may be. I remember once last year, at a private view I attended, I believe for the Visual Studies course, my heart gave a lurch when I saw an artwork involving the cultivation of cress upon the partially-shredded pages of an open book. I experienced another cardiological shudder when, after reading only a few lines between the vibrant foliage, I realised the book was none other than Richard Adams’ Watership Down, doubtlessly one of the best books about talking rabbits ever written. Fortunately, my consternation was somewhat mitigated by the relative merit of the piece, which was actually rather well executed.

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I just updated the About page quite significantly, including a longer contact section and an analysis of what my work is about and why.

Go check it out and tell me what you think, either through email or in the comment box on this post.

I’ve also recently added to the Highlights section and, if you hadn’t noticed yet, added some more icons to my blog‘s sidebar, linking you directly to my RSS feed, Facebook page, Twitter and Email.

Hope everyone’s enjoying the site and, as ever, leave me feedback on anything and I shall respond in an appropriate manner,

Henry.

If you’re reading this, you’ll have noticed that The Aspiring Writer is now on a new domain, and is no longer called The Aspiring Writer. This wasn’t entirely planned.

You may recall that in my last post I briefly mentioned how the Aspiring Writer’s first birthday was coming up, and would be missed because I would be in Yorkshire (which was fun by the way, and I may upload some pictures at some point). Well that day came and with it brought the expiration of my original domain registration with HostGator, which should not have been a problem because it should have been transferred to Fast Hosting Direct. However, it turns out there was some problem with the transfer, meaning that it was left to expire with HostGator. I’m not sure exactly who was to blame, but after an exchange of emails between myself and the two companies I decided it would just be easier to swap to a new domain than go through all the hassle of sorting out my old one.

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In a further act of promoting sites other than my own, and eliciting an even more specialist interest than the New Yorker’s literary podcasts, I would like to share 8bit Peoples with anyone who cares since, like all great things on the web, it’s free, and free music no less. Whether this music appeals or not is a different matter. As the title suggests it’s one of the geekiest genres of music: 8 bit music AKA chip-tunes, bitpop, Nintencore, Gameboy Music – Music made partly or entirely by modifying and sampling old videogame consoles to create a kind of beepy Electronica that occasionally blends into other genres such as pop or folk. The artists featured on this site are surprisingly diverse.

But you’ve already decided whether or not this is of interest to you. If you’re curious though, head on over to 8bitpeoples.com and check out the discography section. Like I said, the artists have put all there work on there for free. Personally I would recommend anything by Trash80, Random, Firebrand Boy or Mark DeNardo. And that’s all I have to say. I’ll write and post a story or something soon.

After a week away in rainy Derby I return with something that is a must for anyone who aspires to be a writer, and of interest to anyone who enjoys a good story:

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

This is a monthly podcast presented by the New Yorker’s fiction editor where, every week, a writer is invited to read and discuss a short story which they admire. So not only is it a free short audio book, but it’s a light critical analysis of the story. The value of this for any writer of fiction speaks for itself, since the constant advice to budding writers, after ‘write as much as you can’ is ‘read as much as you can’. And outside of quality anthologies, which are relatively scarce, it can be hard to find really good professional short stories, on the web or anywhere else, so it’s great that there’s a place where they can not only be picked out for you, but read to you.

Since the benefits of a free audio story and discussion are so immediately obvious, there’s really nothing more I can say about it, except go there now and download some. Hopefully by the time you get back, I’ll have some new original content on here. (Also, I’m not done updating the aesthetics of the site, I’ve just been busy and it takes time).

Four days into my week of cheap food, I’m starting to run out of ideas and am left with little more than rice, pasta, potatoes and eggs, apart from the leftovers of the cheap curry from a couple of nights ago. So I thought, maybe some sort of omelette with a side of potatoes? Before embarking on this I typed ‘potatoes and eggs’ into google, which lead me here. Apparently, you can combine the two; it’s called a Spanish omelette.

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I had the second of my cheap meals yesterday as part of this exciting ‘living on ten pounds for a week’ blogging venture, and it actually wasn’t that bad, at least in comparison to the previous night’s pasta. It was a chicken curry with sauce analogous to the curry sauce you get in chip shops, only with sultanas. It reminded me a lot of something similar we used to have for school dinner at primary school sometimes, back when they were like proper old-fashioned school dinners in metal trays on proper plates, before the school changed catering contractors and started serving turkey drummers on plastic trays.

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