Lately I’ve been feeling the urge to immerse myself completely in a writer’s work. Possibly the aftereffects of my most recent Carson McCullers binge, or even the Woolf in Winter event, but I want to comprehensively read an author. Not just the big name novels, the ones that make the best of lists and populate well-stocked bookshelves everywhere, but everything that has been published in their name – novels, short stories, letters – or at the very least everything that I can get my hands on. I’m not sure if I’d want to read everything in chronological order or just slowly work at what I can find. Potential candidates so far are Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner. Before I jump in the deep end of the classic American literature, I’m starting off by reading all three novels by John Green (A collaborative title with David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, due out in April, so the comprehensive reading will only be temporary, but hey, it’s a start.)

In other news I got a CAVAL card the other day, which means I can borrow from every academic library in Victoria. C’mon, that is exciting news! Every university library in the state! This newly gained access to (probably) the best library facilities in the state will help me with my comprehensive reading goal. Who knows how far I will actually go with this endeavour, but maybe speaking about it in a public forum will be just the motivation I need to stick to it.

Otherwise, I’m really enjoying the Penguin Book of American Short Stories – who would have thought I’d be so taken with and kept awake at night by Nathaniel Hawthorne? Or happily read Herman Melville over lunch? Seems that the random choice from the limited literature section at my school library was a good one. I’m only a few stories in so imagine what further treasures are to be found!

So, until I determine how I’m going to tackle this comprehensive reading project, I’m going to take to curling up and watching the wild weather with some good books.

[image credit: a Library Project poster from 1941,  from Work Projects Administration Poster Collection of the Library of Congress.]

Can you believe February is already over? It feels like only yesterday I was ringing in the new year with some bad singing and even worse dancing. The summer is over, March is upon us. This past week has been insanely busy, with live music protests, Wheeler Centre events, a music festival and associated sideshows, and, possibly my favourite, seeing the fabulous and funny film director John Waters deliver a monologue last night at Hamer Hall about all things filthy. He has a book due out later this year, Role Models, and excerpts are already available online. Waters spoke all too briefly about his extensive book collection – art books and film novelizations his specialty – and offered his sage and perennial advice:

If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em.

This week another of the Carson McCullers‘ set I’ve started collecting arrived from France, this week it was Clock Without Hands, which of course I reviewed a few weeks ago. As I mentioned, the covers are of a simple typographical design, with a large black and white photograph of McCullers on the back flap of the dust jacket. Along with the most recent Penguin Modern Classic editions of her works, these hardcovers are probably the most appealing I’ve seen, I’ll be sure to post more photos of them once the collection expands.

It seems a fitting end to Carson McCullers Week 2010 that this week’s loot includes a McCullers book. I’ve discovered a British publisher that re-released her novels with the release of the Mortgaged Heart in the early 1970s, and they all have classic typographical hardcovers. And so, in typical obsessive mode, I’m working on collecting myself a complete set, starting with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, with Clock Without Hands [review] making its way to me from France, and pining for the rest of them.

I even had the first pick of a huge box full of outdated trade proofs at work and only came home with E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley. I think my attitude to book buying/hoarding has shifted, I’m just not sure when/why/how this shift occurred. Working in the bookstore hasn’t weakened my resolve, the only books I’ve bought there so far have been as presents for others. Although I do have my eye and heart eagerly set on a delicious looking Penguin reference box set.

Simon Caterson’s Hoax Nation: Australian Fakes and Frauds, from Plato to Norma Khouri is a review copy kindly sent from Arcade Publications, and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into it. They also sent me their Melbourne by the Book pamphlet of “Literary Hot Spots, Bookstores, Festivals and More” which is going to give me a lot of new bookish places to explore around town, giving me approximately 451283 more reasons to love Melbourne.

In addition to these new reads, I’ve also been borrowing from the library a lot. And I really mean a lot. I’m too embarrassed to post a photo of exactly what I have borrowed over the past week or so because it displays the sheer audacity of my ambitious approach to reading. I’ve got some young adult fiction, a lot of books by authors from the Gala Night last week, and some books I’ve just haven’t yet gotten around to reading or have found impossible  to find elsewhere. It’s almost daunting, it would be impossible for anyone to read the stupid amounts of books I have out on loan, but goddamnit if I’m not going to try.

In lieu of a grossly indulgent stacks of newly acquired books – yes, yet again! Has it really been over a month since I bought a book? – here are a few interesting articles that caught my eye during the week, in between continuing frustrations with library school administration, starting back at school for the year, work, and glittering literary events. The picture to the left is Ernest Hemingway kicking a can and I’m posting it because it is Ernest Hemingway kicking a can.

The Book Depository’s announcement of the winners of their recent bookmark design competition could having me placing several orders in the hopes of receiving one. I’d be hoping for Myles Egan’s effort “Bob was so stuck into his book he didn’t realize he was in SPACE”. Well, I think we’ve all been there Bob.

From The Guardian we have a look at literature’s most mind-blowing drugs. Following a failed attempt to read Burroughs The Naked Lunch, Darragh McManus considers a number of fictional drugs. I believe there was also a heavily fictionalized version of adrenochrome in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, though existing as a pigment, it’s extraction and effects as a psychotropic drug were in the novel highly exaggerated. Any particularly lethal literary concoction that you’d be interested in dabbling in?

The Guardian also revealed Britain’s top 250 most borrowed books in their library system in 2009, in both raw data and again with a bit of analysis. Popular fiction wins out over non-fiction in the libraries. I wonder if there is similar evidence for Australian libraries available anywhere online.

The posthumous discussion of J.D. Salinger’s work continues, with Michael Greenberg of the New York Review of Books blog looking at conformity and authenticity in Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye. I think Greenberg, without even explicitly stating it, taps into why Salinger speaks so much to young people – his characters feel like they are outsiders while appearing to the world as insiders.

And finally, I really love this piece on the discovery of a 19th century plantation ledger which may have inspired William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels. It’s always the most unlikely sources that serve as inspiration, and it is encouraging that that was true of Faulkner as well. (And I also really love the badass photo of Faulkner with a pipe on the article.)

The next week on Start Narrative Here is devoted to the life and work of Carson McCullers, February 19th marks the 93rd anniversary of her birth and while I do like my original idea of cooking up some ‘Spuds Carson’ as outlined in Illumination & Night Glare (and let’s face it, I might do it anyway), a week long celebration of her writing is probably a lot easier to share with you. There will be some poetry, some love letters, some reviews, and as always a lot of McCullers love.

No, no dangerously leaning piles of new books this week either. My continuing level of self-restraint surprises you all, doesn’t it?

The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas officially opens next week with A Gala Night of Storytelling. I’m very excited to be attending so many wonderful – and mostly free – events over the coming months, as I’ve never really gone to any sort of literary events before. A combination of not really being interested, seeing reading as a solely solitary pursuit, and an illogical presumption that I wouldn’t fit in. This year I’ve decided to throw all self-doubt aside and just go for it, and hopefully I’ll enjoy myself.

Speaking of events, in preparation for a little festivity I am planning for the anniversary of a certain author’s birth in a few weeks, I discovered this photograph of Carson McCullers by Louise Dahl-Wolfe on flickr that I hadn’t seen before. I really haven’t changed all that much from when I was twelve and hunting out new pictures of Hanson, only now it’s with Southern gothic writers from the 1940s.

Painting: “The Bath” (1867) by Alfred Stevens.

Another week passes, and no new books. I am, surprisingly, still being so responsible! Standing outside of bookstores, looking longingly through the windows, but otherwise well behaved. The purse remains safely in my handbag.

And don’t even get me started on the reason I’m trying to save my dollars – my Library Services course. I am suffering from the most frustrating and stressful enrolment based angst ever. How hard is it to reply to a.) an email (admittedly, more than one email) or b.) a phone call? Semester starts, oh only tomorrow, and while all my on-campus subjects are, or at least seem to be, organized, my one remaining subject spot remains blank no matter how hard I try to get in contact with the powers that be. Their system is so unprofessional and disorganized. I like to be prepared weeks if not MONTHS in advance, none of this last minute stuff. Argh.

As someone who went through a stage of reading The Catcher in the Rye at least once a year, the news of J.D. Salinger’s death this week made me pause and reflect on the special place that he held in my reading life for such a long time. I know that you have to be of a particular disposition to connect with Holden Caulfield, but it is a bond that once forged seems to be unbreakable. I think for many people it is the first book that lets them know, in the words of Mr. Antolini, that:

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

And hearing that can be such a powerful thing when you’re a teenager, it’s just too easy to dismiss (or forget?) the urgency of that emotion when we’re all old, jaded and desperately trying to shed anything that remains of our adolescence.

[photo credit: "Independent Study" by flickr user eflon]

I’ve been scrimping and saving to pay school fees and buy new textbooks over the next couple of weeks, which sadly means no money to spend on books. In lieu of spending money, I tend to spend more time perusing bookstore websites, compiling elaborate wishlists of all the books I would buy if I had unlimited funds. That, and looking at bookstores and other peoples bookshelves and books on flickr or tumblr. Here are a few visual delights to cap off your relaxing, productive, eventful weekend: One, two, three, and my favourite, four.

On the reading front, I’ve been snuggling in with Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth at night time, I love how he writes about science in way that makes it accessible to those, yours truly included, who aren’t scientifically minded. I’m going to one of Dawkins’ lectures in March, which I trust will be equally illuminating. I started reading Australia’s favourite literary son (?) Tim Winton’s for the first time, but I wasn’t much impressed. I stuck with Cloudstreet for about forty pages or so, but decided against slogging through another 400 pages. Maybe I just picked the wrong Winton to start off with?

I’ve had to move a whole shelf of books this week as my library, ahem, sister’s old bedroom/spare room gets repainted – all those tomes read, reread and unread. And every book has a particular memory attached to it, either where and who I was when I read it, where I bought a book, why I bought it and so on. I like the idea of creating a personal history through my book collection, and I suppose that now this blog plays a large part in that too.

[photo now attached. I was having some issues with my wordpress image uploader, which I dealt with in a mature way, no yelling at inanimate objects, throwing things or tiny pinprick tears of frustration. No, really.]

• After the Fireworks by Aldous Huxley
• Carson McCullers: A Life by Josyane Savigneau
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

I won After the Fireworks through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program, it’s a lovely edition of Huxley’s novella from Hesperus Press. Savigneau’s McCullers biography was bought on eBay over a month ago and once I sent the seller an email about its whereabouts, of course it arrived the next day.

In terms of reading, I think I’ve burnt myself out on contemporary fiction for the time being, everything I’ve read so far this year was only published in the last couple of years and I’m ready for something a bit older now. I’ve been eyeing off my stacks of Penguin and Vintage paperbacks with something approaching licentiousness. Contemporary fiction is good for a while, but there is no way I could only read the latest releases. Like wine, whiskey or cheese, good literature only gets better with age.

Here’s a bit of an audio treat for the end of week: Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, reading and discussing Carson McCullers‘ short story “The Jockey” for the New Yorker fiction podcast.

Nothing to report this week. No new books, no second-hand bargains picked up on a whim, no online shopping. Could it be the ridiculous summer heat – 43°C/110°F tomorrow. I’m really much too pale and fragile for such extreme conditions. Thank goodness for fans and air-conditioning, manages to convert the discomfort into an ideal reading environment.

“They had made a movie about us.”

This is, apparently, the first line in Bret Easton Ellis’ new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, due out in May 2010. Not only is it a new Easton Ellis novel, but a sequel to his debut Less Than Zero. Time to revisit Clay and the gang before catching up with their middle-aged incarnations. I’m very much anticipating this release, but from browsing The Millions preview of the Most Anticipated Books of 2010 there is a lot to look forward to in 2010. Anything on their list get your bibliophilic heart racing?

I have been reading so much lately, mainly because my work hours are considerably reduced compared to my last job and I figure I may as well take advantage of the extra free reading time before university starts back. I’ve been dipping into more of Arcade Publications‘ small books of Melbourne history which is leading me to other books about Melbourne’s history and it’s really enjoyable getting to know some of the stories behind my beloved city. And making me into a “oh my God! Did you know [insert Melbourne fact]” annoyance to all around me.

Now that the abominable 2009 (did anyone have a good year in 2009?) is behind us, it’s time to start anew with fresh resolutions to stick to, goals and challenges to work toward and a new layout for Start Narrative Here. Here is to 2010, a year which is destined to offer more sparkle than the last. Only a few days in and it seems to already be delivering. And, just to keep the ch-ch-ch-changes happening for 2010, I’ve finally succumbed to the twitterbug.

Some of the books I ordered before Christmas – including some intended as Christmas gifts (no, really, thank you for striking at the busiest mailing time of year Australia Post workers) – have arrived this week, fresh from their bubble-wrapped jackets. A bookseller enthusiastically recommended the Bolaño to me, and he’s been spot on with all of his other recommendations.

• A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
• Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• The U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos
• Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

I’ve been enjoying my time off from work and my reading has taken a prolific turn. In the next week I’ll be posting my reviews of a heartbreaking work about Hurricane Katrina, a salacious biography of a notorious figure from Melbourne’s seedy history and 2009’s most controversial novel.