by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Ross Raisin

Ross Raisin appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #229. Raisin is the author of God’s Own Country (UK title)/Out Backward (US title).

(Please note: This discussion deals at length with many of the Yorkshire terms that Mr. Raisin uses within his novel. Please consult this lexicon if you’d like to know more.)

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Abdicating to a helium-impaired fill-in host.

Author: Ross Raisin

Subjects Discussed: Schizophrenia, designing a particular voice and the relationship to environment, talking in a peculiar way, reference books, snickets, the relationship between topography, reference books, and reality, looking through books, cookbooks, foreshadowing, talking with animals, verbs transferred to nouns, subconscious immersion into language, the third-person origins of God’s Own Country, the rhythmic origins of the lexical voice, “gleg” vs. “gawp,” the frequency of words for specific meaning, the Yorkshire vernacular, working as a waiter vs. working as a writer, nouns from specific regions in England, trunklements, the etymology of “bogtrotter,” crammocky creel, jarp and Easter, Nobbut a Lad, ferntickles, “upskittled” and ninepins, nouns transferred to verbs, “normaltimes,” “gleg,” and “chuntering” — the most frequent words in the book, snitter, references to Dracula, the concern for backsides within the book, The Butcher Boy, literary attempts to understand the monster, being ransacked by Raisin, Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, separation between style and content, tankards and chalices, the historical cycle of gentrification within bars and restaurants, and stools vs. metal buffets.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: There are a number of Yorkshire terms in which you take a verb meaning and you transfer it into a noun. And so everything is inverted. Even his communicative methods with the animals, as well as his particular idiosyncratic way of talking to the reader, which is presumably the only person he has to talk with aside from his parents and the like. And how this notion of inversion essentially announced itself. Was this more of a subconscious immersion in language on your part? Or a conscious decision to take a verb and transfer it to noun form and the like?

Raisin: The whole thing with the language being in that peculiar idiomatic language didn’t come about immediately. It came about as a result of thinking about character and wanting to think about a character who was very much inside their own strange little world. And one of the main ways you can achieve that is through language. And so I started experimenting with different ways of working with language. And that’s how it turned into a first-person book. Actually, it was initially third-person. Okay, some of the language in it. Most of it is a real Yorkshire language. Sort of a different melange of different parts of Yorkshire, to be honest. And a lot of it is invented. It actually came more out of rhythm — it began with rhythm — more than actual lexicon. And so I got a real feel for this rhythm of the landscape, and the way that transposed into the voice. And then through the second draft, I suppose, I started inserting all these words. And a lot of them are verbs actually. Like glegging and blathering and all these kind of blunt Yorkshire, quite masculinized words that he peppers his language with.

Correspondent: But “gleg” comes from the Scottish noun. Alert and quick to respond.

Raisin: Is that right?

Correspondent: That’s at least what I discovered. And I’m wondering where you transformed it into more of a verb. And also the difference between “gleg” and “gawp” as well. Because he gawps at some points and glegs at others.

Raisin: Well, a gleg is more of a brief look. It’s more of a glance, I suppose. And a gawp is a more of staring. But that’s quite an interesting point actually. Because when you’re writing the book, you become so observed with it. And I’m convinced that these words that I’ve researched, they’re Yorkshire words. And I hold them very preciously. They’re Yorkshire words. And then you tell them to somebody else, and they say, “Oh yeah. We use that word.”

BSS #229: Ross Raisin

This text will be replaced

Listen: Play in new window | Download

by Edward Champion

Responding to Orwell: August 11

George: Good to hear from you. No mist here, but some rain. Windows closed, so no mist inside. But I do wonder what kind of snuff-box you’re using and whether I should be using one. Surfaces of desk are laden with books and papers. On deadline and all. Also damned lazy. What have you been reading these days? Can you at least spill this much to us? Not as hot here as it was last week. There was rain in the morning and there may be rain in the afternoon. The super here cowers at grass snakes, doubt he has even seen one, but is braver when it comes to catching mice and cockroaches. Even though he seems to leave these duties to the tenants. I wonder what you’d think of the early 21st century American class system. Suspect there’s some beauty here in New York, although there are many glum faces. Spoke to a man in the elevator yesterday. Both of us agreed that it was the economy that was making it hard for both of us, but we planned to carry on surviving. Georgia’s on my mind. Saved a cabbie last night from a possible accident when I shouted at him to turn on his lights as he was driving. Was he absent-minded or as glum as the guy in the elevator? You tell me, George. By now, I suspect you may be coming up for air.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes died over the weekend. It’s particularly creepy that both men appeared in a film called Soul Men with Samuel L. Jackson. It’s bad enough that these two men are gone. But in considering the old adage that these things happen in threes, let us hope that Mr. Jackson is somewhere safe drinking carrot juice.
  • Pretty Fakes quite wisely calls out J.G. Jones on his inept Final Crisis #3 cover. And, yes, let’s be clear on this. There is no sense of wonder on Supergirl’s face. Supergirl’s eyes roll upwards as if she is a mere bimbo who has just spent thirty minutes trying to compose a text message to send to Comet. Her left hand appears to be hiding a cell phone. Her right hand seems to be waiting for a tube of lipstick. Of course, J.G. Jones’s upcoming cover for Final Crisis #5 isn’t exactly respectful to Wonder Woman. Jones is more interested in depicting Wonder Woman’s star-strewn ass than her golden lasso (conveniently hidden behind her right thigh). The upshot is that J.G. Jones seems to think it’s 1958, not 2008, and has a major problem depicting women in a position of power. But then when Jones is busy joking with Newsarama about having his groceries “delivered by a really cute girl” with this “date” getting to sit and watch him draw, and fumbling about in another interview about how great it might be to hear a beautiful woman like Angelina Jolie beg over the phone, it isn’t much of a surprise to see his work reflecting his perceptive limitations. Why Feministing or Feministe aren’t all over this is a mystery to me.
  • Why is dwelling upon DC’s actions in the present so important? Well, consider how Jones’s indiscretions mirror troublesome sexism in the past. Jeff Trexler offers a summary of some fascinating correspondence between DC and Superman artist Jerry Siegel. Among some of the startling Golden Age sexism: “[W]hy it is necessary to shade Lois’ breasts and the underside of her tummy with vertical pen-lines we can’t understand. She looks pregnant. Murray suggests that you arrange for her to have an abortion or the baby and get it over with so that her figure can return to something a little more like the tasty dish she is supposed to be.” (via The Beat)
  • The Orwell Diaries are now being distributed in blog form. Sunday’s entry: “Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.” Okay, so he’s just warming up.
  • The New York Review of Books has jumped into the podcasting game. The podcasts are very rusty at this point. Interviewer Sasha Weiss sounds like a humorless human resources manager incapable of loosening up. But maybe they’ll work out the kinks in this operation as the podcast continues.
  • One fifth of American television viewers are watching online. What’s more, the largest group of online television watchers were well-educated, affluent women between the ages of 25 and 44. I have a feeling that they also buy books. Given that demographic, perhaps the time has come for those who complain about the paucity of literary programming on television to begin setting up their hitching posts on the new media frontier. It also means that publicists of all stripes really need to start paying attention to where and how the audiences are shifting.
  • This year’s Hugo winners. With her eleventh Hugo Award win, Connie Willis has now beat out Harlan Ellison for multiple Hugo wins.
  • The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles George Lakoff.
  • Ira Glass on storytelling and taste. Once you get past Glass’s regrettable tendency to use “like” in every other sentence, he does have some insightful things to say about constant production and dissects an old clip produced when he was 28. (via Booklist)
  • Quiet Bubble offers the latest annual open letter to Woody Allen.
  • Playgirl couldn’t make it in today’s economy. Here’s a postmortem from an editor, which is more interesting than you might expect.
  • Jonathan Raban on Neil Entwistle.
  • A list of SF pornography. (via Locus)
  • Steve Wasserman and Ray Bradbury. This is an utterly bizarre interviewing dynamic that must be seen to be believed.
  • And it’s good to know that Kafka was as red-blooded as the rest of us. No word yet on whether any unusual stains have been located.
by Edward Champion

The Art of Self Defense

RELATED: Bas Rutten’s Lethal Self-Defense System. The whole thing appears to be available on YouTube and it’s even better than the above self-defense video. Rutten prides himself on his resourcefulness: “This thing? Very violent. Pick up the cap. This is metal, ladies and gentleman. That’s a great weapon right there.” Witness also the way that Rutten tells the audience to never underestimate the kick in the groin, followed by Rutten kicking his imaginary opponent with intensity, only for this moment to be repeated for the audience in case they didn’t understand how serious Rutten is. And what other figure but Rutten would urge the audience to smack the opponent “into the ambience of the place.” I also want to know who composed the music.

by Edward Champion

While the Rest of You Dwell on the Olympics and John Edwards…

Times: “More than a thousand civilians were reported to have been killed and large parts of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, were reduced to ruins as a conflict with potentially global repercussions erupted after months of rising tension. Georgia announced last night that it was withdrawing half of its 2,000 troops from Iraq as it ordered an all-out military mobilisation.”