Black Ink

Writer, former radio co-host and my very good friend simply known as Cimminnee sent me this great piece written by Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes:

HOW TO BE A BAD WRITER (in Ten Easy Lessons)

by Langston Hughes

1. Use all the cliches possible, such as "He had a gleam in his eye" or "Her teeth were white as pearls"

2. If you are a Negro, try very hard to write with an eye dead on the white market--use modern stereotypes of older stereotypes--big burly Negroes, criminals, low-lifers and prostitutes.

 

3. Put in a lot of profanity and as many pages as possible of near pornography and you will be so modern you pre-date Pompei in your lonely crusade toward the best seller lists. By all means, be misunderstood, unappreciated and ahead of your time in print and out, then you can be felt sorry for.

 

4. Never Characterize Characters. Just name them and then let them go for themselves. Let all of them talk the same way. If the reader hasn't imagination enough to make something out of cardboard cut-outs, shame on him!

 

5. Write about China, Greece, Tibet, or the Argentine pampas--anyplace you've never seen and know nothing about. Never write about anything you know, your hometown, or your home folks, or yourself.

6. Have nothing to say, but use a great many words, particularly high-sounding words, to say it.

 

7. If a playwright, put into your script a lot of hand-waving and spirituals, preferably the ones everybody has heard a thousand times from Marion Anderson to the Golden Gates.

 

8. If a poet, rhyme June with moon as often and in as many ways as possible. Also, use thee's and thou's and 'tis and o'er, and invert your sentences all the time. Never say "The sun rose, bright and shining." But, rather, "Bright and shining rose the sun."

 

9. Pay no attention really to spelling or grammar or the neatness of the manuscript. And in writing letters, never sign your name so anyone can read it. A rapid scrawl will better indicate how important and how busy you are.

 

10. Drink as much liquor as possible and always write under the influence of alcohol. When you can't afford alcohol yourself, or even if you can, drink on your friends, fans and the general public.

 

If you are white, there are many more things I can advise in order to be a bad writer, but since this piece is for colored writers, there are some things I know a Negro just will not do not even for writing's sake, so there is no use mentioning them.

Originally published in The Harlem Quarterly (ed. John Henrik Clarke), 1950.

I'm one of those individuals growing quite weary of the CBC lockout affair.  We Canadians have to make do and listen to old programming every week.  Now in Montreal there is updated news and events about Quebec very early in the morning and throughout the day, but around 10:00 AM I am one of those listeners that tunes in to Sounds Like Canada with Sheila Rogers.  I've been hearing nothing but previously recorded programs since the lockout began.  This is tired.  Even more shameful is that Writers and Company isn't airing new interviews either.  On the upside of this affair, it seems some people have suddenly "rediscovered" college and community radio stations.  Some CBC radio hosts are taking their on-air shows elsewhere:

There's a lot more grey hair these days at CIUT-FM than you would expect to see at a campus radio station -- and it's not all on the head of Andy Barrie.

Last week, for instance, political writer Peter C. Newman dropped by to discuss his new biography of Brian Mulroney.

And he's not the only distinguished personage to drop by the musty studios since Toronto Unlocked, a show led by the locked-out staff of CBC's Metro Morning, has taken over the morning airwaves at the University of Toronto's 89.5 FM.

Indeed, the guest list suggests that the Metro Morning staff have brought their A game to the campus station. Producer Ivan Reitman and filmmaker Deepa Mehta have been in to talk about the Toronto International Film Festival. Sportscaster Ron McLean and singer Colin James have come by. Novelist Jane Urquhart will discuss her new book next week.

(via The Globe and Mail)

In Montreal there is a campus/community radio station at McGill University called CKUT 90.3 FM, a station where I once co-hosted a show called Cypher with two very good friends of mine.  Cypher was an underground hip-hop radio show created in 1998, which went on to have a successful run of five years.  Two guys we know came along and took over for another year until the show finally came to an end in 2004.  Those five years were some of the greatest times of my life as I'm sure they were for all the hosts and deejays involved with Cypher.  For all you radioheads out there look to the right column of this site and you'll notice that I've compiled a list of my favourite radio stations and shows I like to listen to regularly.  Yes the CBC may suck, but there are alternatives.

Derek Walcott is tracing the history of the steel drum in a Trinidad and Tobago musical, while a Canuck writer is tracing the history of a female version of "Lord of the Flies". 

Canadian author Rebecca Godfrey looks like a brunette Jodie Foster.  She also has a slight resemblance to Bif Naked.  The New York Times takes a look at Godfrey's new book based on a true crime out in British Columbia that received national attention:

The killing did not occur in a forest. It took place beneath the bridge of the title and became an escalating display of hostility witnessed by a sizable group of teenagers. Reena was beaten, stomped and held under water; she died with pebbles in her mouth. A popular boy and girl were convicted of these crimes after much courtroom drama, duly replayed here. The girl stood trial more than once, but only a one-sentence postscript addresses her trial in 2005.

Ever since Truman Capote (next month's It Guy thanks to an imminent film about his writing "In Cold Blood") made the literary world safe for novelistic crime reporting, there have been cavalier killings to dissect and authors to expound on their underlying causes. Reena Virk's case advanced the debate only because there were hip-hop-besotted young girls to either assault her or tacitly sanction her killing.

(via NY Times)

I’ve been trying very hard not to overwhelm this blog with the ubiquitous Hurricane Katrina aftermath, but I thought this story was worthy of posting.  Not simply because it is related to the art of writing, but because I think there are great stories lurking beneath a place like New Orleans.  Before the hurricane struck, a project was already underway to give life to the young voices of the city: 

Hurricane Katrina has made an inner-city book project an even greater story of defying the odds. A year ago, New Orleans high school teachers Abram Himelstein and Rachel Breunlin started the Neighborhood Story Project, a way for students to write about where and how they live. The idea came after a 2003 shooting at their school, John McDonogh Senior High, killed one student and injured three others…

 

The manuscripts are preserved on computer, but Himelstein cannot afford to print and distribute them himself. An acquaintance of his, Brooklyn-based publisher Richard Nash, is trying to help. But Nash, too, says he cannot handle it alone.

"We're trying to find someone who can print up the books for free, because we do not have the cash flow to do that ourselves," said Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press, which publishes a wide range of books, including poetry, art and graphic novels. "Our sales rep is running around to all the printing plants, trying to find someone."

The project's motto is "Our stories, told by us," a comment on the shallow headlines of the present and on the neglected side of the city's past, Himelstein said.

(via Yahoo)

It will be my birthday in a little over a month.  Here's a gift I want desperately.  There's one little problem: it is not available for purchase on DVD or VHS.  I won't explain the methods in which you can get this movie, but I will be forever grateful to the man, woman, child, animal, alien or what have you who is willing to use their brain and technological skills to get this movie into my hands. 
Now go forth my Jedi Knights.  And may the force be with you!

I've read a few weblogs from various writers that claim Zadie Smith is a real bitch.  Frankly, I don't give a shit what kind of person she is.  Sir V.S. Naipaul is not my most favourite person in the world, especially when he goes on his egocentric and racist rants, but damn that man can write.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I am eager to read Smith's latest novel On Beauty.  I don't want to end up reading it and make comparative references to her debut novel White Teeth, because some literary critics are already starting to do so.  But I must admit that I'm holding up the same standards for this latest book, as her second novel The Autograph Man was an unfulfilling mess, in my opinion.  That novel lacked so much soul it's not even funny.
Below are two book reviews, and an in-depth profile of the author, respectively.  Apparently, her novel is a reworking of EM Forster's Howards End:

At the centre of the novel is the Belsey family. Howard, 57, is a world-weary, liberal academic whose work, a deconstruction of the myth of Rembrandt's genius, has never quite had the impact on the wider world that he might have wished. Married to Kiki, a warm-hearted, generously proportioned black woman from Florida, middle class in her own right but without his academic education, he is the father of three children, earnest Jerome, 20, insecure Zora, 19, and Levi, who, at 16, is rebelling against his background and will only speak in the cadences of gangsta rap.
(Via The Guardian)

Despite its commandeering of the framework of Howards End, On Beauty isn't any more successful than its predecessors, White Teeth, 2000 (which borrowed plentifully from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses) and The Autograph Man, 2002 (which was sizeably indebted to Martin Amis's Money), in curbing Smith's taste for meandering as her whimsy takes her.
(Via Sunday Times UK)

The new novel arrived fully-formed: Zadie Smith woke up one morning, and On Beauty was all there, in her head. She wanted to write a long marriage - she'd just got married herself, was curious what 30 years of it would be like - and she had a plot. When she described it to her new husband, poet and novelist Nick Laird, however, he pointed out she was simply rewriting Howards End.
(Via The Guardian)

You'd think that in tragic times one would be willing to put his/her differences aside.  Think again:

Castro, a longtime adversary of the United States, initially offered to send 1,100 doctors and at least 26 tons of supplies and equipment, but the Communist leader announced Sunday during a televised speech that he had increased the number of physicians to 1,586. Each doctor would carry about 27 pounds of medicine...
Besides Cuba, several other countries and international agencies have offered money and supplies to the hurricane victims.
In the past, Cuba has refused U.S. offers of aid, the most recent following Hurricane Dennis. That storm killed more than 10 people in the Caribbean island nation in July.
At that time, Castro said he would not accept help from Washington because of the U.S. trade embargo against his country. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Cuba.

(Via CNN)

Two days into the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans Canada already offered aid to the US.  The American government waited before giving our federal government the go-ahead.  Now not only has an aid package been accepted, but Canadian universities are also stepping up:

In addition to the University of Ottawa, McGill University and the University of Windsor have offered to accept displaced students. The schools have also agreed to work with federal immigration authorities to help fast-track applications that allow U.S. students to study in Canada.
The Association of American Universities has issued a request for Canadian universities to take in some of the 100,000 students affected by the hurricane disaster in Louisiana.
Thousands of students affected by Katrina have been forced to revise their fall semester plans, and many have been inquiring about taking classes elsewhere.
Dozens of universities and colleges across the United States have offered to help students find spaces, while others, such as the University of Arkansas, are offering free or reduced tuition. The U.S. Education Department has also pledged to relax student-loan guidelines to help students who transfer to other schools.

(Via Ottawa Citizen)

"It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you."

James Baldwin

Mistake No. 1: Ignorance is bliss.
Mistake No. 2: Just too damn occupied.
Mistake No. 3: Discrimination knows no end.
Mistake No. 4: Hurricane Victims are 'Displaced Persons' Not Refugees
Mistake No. 5: Wonkette shows us the proof: The love of money Haliburton is the root of all evil.