HOWARD JACOBSON WINS THE BOOKER PRIZE

Howard Jacobson is the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Finkler Question.
The Finkler Question is a novel about love, loss and male friendship, and explores what it means to be Jewish today.
Said to have ‘some of the wittiest, most poignant and sharply intelligent comic prose in the English language', The Finkler Question has been described as ‘wonderful' and ‘richly satisfying' and as a novel of ‘full of wit, warmth, intelligence, human feeling and understanding'.
Sir Andrew Motion, Chair of the judges, made the announcement yesterday, 12th of October, from the awards dinner at London's Guildhall.

Andrew Motion comments "The Finkler Question is a marvellous book: very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize.'
Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for the prize, in 2006 for Kalooki Nights and in 2002 for Who's Sorry Now, but has never before been shortlisted.

FRANK KERMODE DIED LAST AUGUST

Acclaimed British literary critic Sir Frank Kermode, the author of Shakespeare’s Language, died last august at the age of 90 in Cambridge.
Prominent in literary criticism since the 1950s, Kermode held "virtually every endowed chair worth having in the British Isles", according to his former colleague John Sutherland, from King Edward VII professor of English literature at Cambridge to Lord Northcliffe professor of modern English literature at University College London and professor of poetry at Harvard, along with honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He was knighted in 1991.
A renowned Shakespearean, publishing Shakespeare's Language in 2001, Kermode's books range from works on Spenser and Donne and the memoir Not Entitled to last year's Concerning EM Forster.
Another two of his books that will be probably well remembered are The Sense of An Ending, his collection of lectures on the relationship of fiction to concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis, first published in 1967, and Romantic Image, a study of the Romantic movement up until WB Yeats.
The range of Kermode's gaze is shown by his book Pleasing Myself, which pulls together his literary journalism, reviewing everything from Seamus Heaney's new translation of Beowulf to Philip Roth's "splendidly wicked" Sabbath's Theater.
He fundamentally changed the study of English literature in the 1960s by introducing French theory by post-structuralists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, and post-Freudians such as Jacques Lacan, into what Sutherland described as "the torpid bloodstream of British academic discourse".

CAREY HEADS UP BOOKER SHORTLIST

Australian author Peter Carey, who has won the Man Booker prize twice, has been shortlisted again for this year's award. If victorious, Carey will be the first author to win three Man Bookers.

He is joined in this shortlist by Andrea Levy, Emma Donoghue, Damon Galgut, Howard Jacobson and Tom McCarthy.

Carey is nominated for Parrot and Olivier in America.
He previously picked up the prestigious literary prize in 1998 for Oscar and Lucinda and again in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang.
Parrot and Olivier in America is set during the 19th century - Olivier is a French aristocrat sent to the New World, ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to save his neck in a future revolution.Parrot is the son of an itinerant English printer, who must spy on and protect him.
The other titles to make the shortlist are Levy's The Long Song, Donoghue's Room, Galgut's In a Strange Room, Jacobson's The Finkler Question and McCarthy's C.

Insulting in English

David Crystal writes about insults in English in his blog post On Insulting Brits. In it he mentions flyting, a type of contest based on insult exchange, and Shakespeare's work as sources of inspiration for unimaginative angry heated people. The Web facilitates this second task by providing lists of Shakespeare's expressions. These are some examples:

Shakespeare's insults sorted out by plays.

A Shakespearean Insulter presenting one sentence at a time.

Shakespearean Insults Generator produces new insults by combining Shakespeare's words and expressions at random.

LITERARY LANDSCAPES

In London it is not difficult to come across some reference to writers studied in the literature subjects of English Philology through nameplates indicating the relationship of a particular writer with a building, exhibits in museums and libraries, statues, etc. In my last visit to this city the “familiar encounter” took the shape of a sculptured John Betjeman looking up at St Pancras Station roof. The reason for this honour is the fact that Betjeman fought against the plans for the demolition of St Pancras Station in the 1960's.

EL LIBRO TOTAL

El libro total ofrece acceso a textos clásicos, principalmente de la literatura española e hispanoamericana, en un formato interactivo (permite pasar hojas, escuchar audiciones, comparar algunas traducciones...) con apariencia de libro antiguo. En cuanto a literatura inglesa incluye las obras de Shakespeare y alguna de Carrol.

ON THE USEFULNESS OF LITERARY CRITICISM

Yesterday I attended a book club session on The Art of Fiction, by David Lodge. Apart from commenting on several novel excerpts and literary devices, we discussed the convenience, usefulness or even influence of previous study on the act of reading. To what extent does acquaintance with literary criticism and text analysis help us enjoy a book?

Probably understanding and therefore appreciating some kinds of works requires prior or subsequent access to guides and essays but most readings can be better 'digested' if we allow ourselves discovery and personal interpretation without feeling prejudiced in some way by brainy pieces of literary criticism.

Related to this issue, I found amusing a short essay by Juan Marsé in which he mocks the triviality of some studies by imagining titles of theses.

“ Por un breve instante, horribles fantasmas de posibles tesinas pasadas y futuras desfilan por mi mente con extravagantes títulos: El significado de los toros y de la humilde patata en la poesía de Miguel Hernández - Estructura, calor y sabor de las magdalenas en la obra de Proust - El Pijoaparte hijo natural semiótico de Henry James, con permiso de Félix de Azúa - Los silencios de Moby Dick y su relación metalingüística con la pata de palo de John Silver y con el mezcal y los barrancos de la prosa de Malcolm Lowry - Madame Flaubert soy yo, dijo Federico García Lorca”.

From “La isla del libro y el día del tesoro”

LANGUAGES

The Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (Southampton University) includes in its website different kinds of resources, among them a list of 700 reasons for studying languages, all of them quoted from diverse sources such as linguists' works, surveys done to sixth form students, EU documents, and many more. After a bit of browsing, I have chosen this reason in order to provide an example:

"Languages give us access to other "countries of the mind", and help us to look back at our own country and culture from a different and more healthily critical perspective"

Reference:

Footitt, H. (2001) 'Lost for words' in the Guardian, Tuesday October 23 2001

Another section of this website contains the Power Point presentation Why Study Linguistics?, an informative and entertaining slide show aimed at encouraging people to study linguistics.

I've stopped at the following slide:

"What makes a word beautiful?" When reading it I have recalled an evening among friends when someone proposed us to say our favourite words. I found it curious the possible reasons that could make us select words. I'm not saying them here before inviting readers -anyone around here?- to share their favourite word in any language.