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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Locating ourselves in literature and life: A New Sublime & Wayfinding #nonfiction

25/2/2020

12 Comments

 
As these might be the only non-fiction books I read this year, I was keen to link them. So following on from two novels about dislocation, I’m delighted to share reviews about the opposite. Unfortunately I got myself lost in the first, aimed at readers with a more solid grounding in Greek and Roman antiquities, but managed to navigate better through the second, which is about literally and metaphorically finding and losing our way.

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A New Sublime: Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics by Piero Boitani translated by Ann Goldstein

Ever eager to plug a gap in my literary and cultural education, I’m a risk of deluding myself there’s a quick fix. Like trying to repair a rotten window frame with Polyfilla, I don’t appreciate the depth of my ignorance until I start trying to fill the hole. So it’s not the fault of the author, the translator or the publisher Europa Compass, who furnished me with a review copy, that I have little to tell you about A New Sublime: I needed a ten-year-old’s introduction to Greek and Roman mythology (which I once had, and desperately miss) but found myself with a classical scholar’s holiday reading in my hands. Rather than embarrassing everyone with my ignorance, perhaps it’s best to start with the publisher’s blurb:
 
Boitani’s presentation of the classics is as entertaining and unexpected as it is informative. He invites the reader to discover the timeless beauty and wisdom of ancient literature, highlighting its profound and surprising connections to the present. With their emphasis on the mutability and fluidity of identity and matter, their examination of the power and position of women in society, and their enduring treatments of force and subjugation, fate and free will, the ethical life, hospitality, love, compassion, and mysticism, the classics play active roles in our lives and can help us refine our opinions and our values. Ranging from Homer to Tacitus, with Thucydides, Aristotle, Sophocles, Cicero, and many others in between, Boitani’s A New Sublime is a fresh, inspiring reminder of the enduring importance and beauty of the classics of the Western canon.
 
Of course, I found flashes of connection, particularly regarding morality when there’s a conflict between conscience and the laws of the state. But I struggled to conceptualise that alongside cultures were slave-owning goes unquestioned, ditto an empire with a founding myth based on rape.


Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way by Michael Bond

We are all navigators: whether scouring the aisles in a supermarket or forging a path across the moors, we need to find our way. How do we do this? What happens when we can’t? What factors make an environment easier to navigate? What makes some people better navigators than others? With a mixture of science and speculation, this book goes some way to providing an answer, or at least the tools for navigating the questions.
 
We begin with the first wayfinders: homo sapiens who travelled thousands of miles from their origins in Africa without the aid of a compass, never mind GPS. We move to our individual beginnings in childhood, and how the loss of the freedom to explore their neighbourhoods unsupervised risks diminishing millennials’ ability to construct the mind maps that enable us to move around. (As an over reliance on GPS systems might also be doing.)
 
Neuroscience (admittedly mostly derived from research on rats and mice) has recently isolated the specific brain cells associated with spatial awareness from which we might build our mental maps: cells firing for place, head direction, grid (marking our position in space) and boundary (indicating our distance and direction from walls and other edges). Interestingly, an earlier study identifying the elements of urban design enabling city-dwellers to form a clear mental picture of their surroundings provides real-world support for these factors (p186). If our physical surroundings lack paths, edges, connection points and landmarks, it’s harder to get around. Step inside a building and it’s even harder, as anyone who has ever shopped in IKEA can testify.
 
As a walker who frequently seesaws between the anxiety and excitement of getting lost, I was particularly interested in the chapters on navigation in rural settings and how search and rescue report data shows that, when lost, we often compound the problem. Instead of staying put and waiting to be found, or at least taking a breather in order to plan our next move, anxiety drives us forward, either walking in circles (the consequence of us all having one leg slightly longer than the other) or tramping further away from our intended goal. This chapter on the psychology of lost almost gave me palpitations, even though I would never stray as far from the path for a toilet break as a woman who died of this on the Appalachian Trail (eighty paces is way too far), I often fail to look back to check the lie of the land for the return journey, despite having been trained to do so. (I have been lost going to the toilet, but that was in rural Zimbabwe in the middle of the night.)
 
Perhaps I’m not a very proficient navigator? Reading the chapter on individual differences, I kept changing my mind. I was unimpressed with the self-report sense-of-direction scale reproduced in the book, but would love to try the visual simulations if I ever got the chance. On the plus side, I was able to explore in childhood and still delight in constructing and extending my mental maps. On the other hand, as an introvert, I don’t observe my surroundings as much as I ought to and, although I passed a navigation exam as part of my ranger training, my skills might have atrophied through an overreliance on familiar routes. But I can’t blame any navigational weakness on gender: having read Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine, I didn’t need Michael Bond to debunk the myth that women are worse wayfinders than men.
 
Has this book motivated me to put in more practice? The chapter on Alzheimer’s might have done. There’s a reasonable, but unproven, suggestion that finding our way through constructing cognitive maps of an area, as opposed to passively following a route (as with GPS, for example) might afford some protection against the ultimate disorientation. I was heartened to read of a project to fit Alzheimer’s sufferers with GPS trackers so they could wander at will in relative safety, and saddened also that it was discontinued due to funding issues. Tragic that the tendency to walk (often in a straight line, apparently) so common among Alzheimer’s patients (perhaps, like people lost in a forest, instinctively trying to find themselves) should be suppressed.
 
My final reflections stem from the observation that our memories are intertwined with the places in which the event occurred. Nothing happens nowhere, which is why setting, even if only lightly sketched, is fundamental to telling convincing stories. As readers we need those details to ground us in fictional space; as writers we need to provide it (and where our characters are is much more important than what those characters look like). Thanks to publishers Picador for my proof copy.
 
My short story “Tobacco and Testosterone” combines the geographical and psychological experience of being lost when a man, struggling to come to terms with the changing dynamics of his family, becomes disorientated in Morocco. You can hear me read the opening in the video, or read it for yourself in my collection, Becoming Someone. Or you can get it for free, along with four other stories, if you register for my email newsletter. Click on either of the images for more information.


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I received this flash fiction challenge after posting these reviews but my 99 words couldn’t go anywhere else but here. I hope this character isn’t a future version of me. Meanwhile, regarding ageing, I’m with Caroline Lodge today discussing older women writers.

Just. Keep. Walking.

Planed wood. Woven fabric. Sheeted glass. Makes? Not her place. Not her clothes. Not her smell.

So she walks. She walks and she walks. Away from this nowhere. To a? To find.
A white painted line guides her. A white line smack in the middle of the road ahead. It centres her. Keeps her straight. Until.

It swings. The lovely road swings away. Curves. If she follows she’ll topple. Off the edge of the earth.

She walks. Straight. Wall-grazed knees. Bush-scratched arms. Pool-wet feet.
Through his kitchen window, Mike spots her in his fishpond. Calls the care home. Again.
 

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
12 Comments
D. Avery link
28/2/2020 03:37:19 pm

The Bond book sounds like my kind of book. However, in navigating this machine all I found was a bear named Paddington. I will continue the search later. You might enjoy yet another nonfiction book (perhaps with the dog snuzzled at your feet) called Landmarks, by Robert Macfarlane.(Underland author) I've just started it but it shows the role of language in navigating landscapes and in bringing them to life. Or is it the land that breathes life into language? Every culture has songlines.
Was there a discussion here earlier on human geography or was that just in my head? Anyhow, I shall try to find my way to this book, it will be a good follow up to Landmarks.
Hone your navigational skills, Ranger, or consider getting a dog with a good nose for getting home. Though it is good to be lost (my people say 'turned around') now and again.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
2/3/2020 03:04:20 pm

Oh no, I thought I'd fulfilled my quarter of non-fiction books for the year! But a book about linking language and landscape does appeal – and of course I'm much more receptive to this recommendation than the one pertaining to domestic pets.
Wayfinding isn't out in the UK yet Thursday this week so might be a bit later in the US but the name does make it even more difficult – I tried to find it on Goodreads but got taken to books about the bear.
I like your expression "turned around", and I do appreciate getting a little lost as it's a great opportunity for practising/improving navigation skills. Fortunately we've no real wilderness around here.
I'm off to read the story my review inspired.

Reply
D. Avery link
28/2/2020 06:23:31 pm

Hello Anne, I've made my way back to tell you your remarks on the first book prompted this: https://shiftnshake.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/roads-that-lead-flashbackfriday/
FYI
You're like a bird dog, flushing ideas to wing. (You should get a bird dog)

Reply
Anne Goodwin
2/3/2020 03:19:30 pm

Love this – as commented on your blog. And sorry for the delay in response to both your comments. Yes indeed, it was a reference to the Sabine women, casualties of war and forced to stimulate. Some things don't change.

Reply
D. Avery link
3/3/2020 02:21:18 am

I'm gratified that you like it, and thinking you told your machine 'simulate', not 'stimulate'.
I'm sorry that so much is still relevant, so much unchanged. I read just one thing this morning before heading off to work; an article about Charlottesville, Virginia and their struggles with their (our) history/present. Thomas Jefferson's town. A founding father with so many talents and accomplishments; a lot to admire. And he, like many of the founding fathers, was a slave owner; didn't see fit in 1776 to include all people in "we the people". He was an unapologetic slaver and he was a rapist; Sally Hemmings was only 14 when she went to France with Jefferson. The term "concubine" is euphemistic. Her life and that of her children were not as hard as other slaves, but they were still slaves. Her children were eventually emancipated but she never was. I don't know where I'm headed with this. I was rattled by the conundrum of my reading; but Charlottesville and Everytown can battle over the historical monuments that stay, go, or get rewritten, but we'd be better off aying close attention to the present day atrocities and our current rapists flying under the myth of democracy and liberty "for all".
(So you see, I'll likely not read A New Sublime, but I am thinking on lessons old and new and old and... yeah, timeless, but maybe not what that book was about) You should get a dog, a classic dog, like Cyberus, with three heads, maybe teach it to read, have three books going at once)

Anne Goodwin
6/3/2020 07:46:47 am

But weren’t they forced to stimulate (sexually)? I told my machine assimilate, but it often knows better than I do, such as putting winning for women.
Where are you going with this? I think you’re gearing up for writing your novel.

Charli Mills
1/3/2020 03:32:31 am

Greek mythology lost its luster for me in college as I became aware of misogyny. But Wayfinding is right up my alley, or road, or path least traveled. The mental map making is an interesting concept, and it also makes me wonder about veterans (like the Hub) who feel this need to self-deploy on a "mission." Maybe they can't find their way home. We had the mother of a friend (who has Alzheimer's) go missing over night last fall, having wandered off. I'll have to ask if the straight path featured in her situation. Sadly, they had to put her in a facility last week because they couldn't keep her at home. We all feel sad about it, but she's evidently walking the halls and seems content with it. Better than ending up in a fish pond (repeatedly)!

Reply
Anne Goodwin
2/3/2020 03:31:34 pm

As I understand it, it's an emotional state triggering a familiar response even if it's not the best one for the particular circumstances. I think we see it in a milder form with the travel bug which, based on my own experience of a complete turnaround in my perception of travel, I touched on in my novel Underneath. As I've become more secure in myself I'm less inclined to expose myself to the un-belongingness I used to enjoy.

Reply
Susan Zutautas link
1/3/2020 06:30:38 pm

I liked where you went with this prompt Anne. It is a scary subject however and one I hope none of us will have to go through.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
2/3/2020 03:33:29 pm

Thanks, Susan, much less scary to write about than experience, I'm sure.

Reply
Norah Colvin
6/3/2020 11:57:30 am

So, I hadn't read you story when we previously conversed, but I have now.
As for you and your other commenters, A New Sublime holds no interest for me. I couldn't even finish the blurb. I had thought, like you, to try to fill in some gaps in my education but found nothing of interest so the gaps remain.
Wayfinding does interest me though, on the metaphorical as well as physical level. I think I'm usually pretty good at navigating but I dislike being lost so do tend to notice my surroundings and take note of where I've parked my car in relation to which entry etc. It is unnerving when it's not where I think it should be, which happened recently when we returned to the level on which we were parked from a different angle. I soon figured it out though.
Your flash was very well done. I didn't predict the ending. It came as a surprise. Although stories often have a twist in the tail, I can usually predict them. Not this time, so well done. It's not Matilda?

Reply
Anne Goodwin
6/3/2020 05:11:08 pm

As I understand the book, taking notice of your surroundings is the basics of navigation, so you're a winner on that one.
No, it's not Matilda, and I'm trying to clarify why. I think she's quicker to intuit some meaning from her observations, even if she's wrong. But I think we can all make mistakes when we tried to fill in the gaps.

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