Wolinski

rien n'est trop beau pour la class ouvrière

This picture hangs in my kitchen.  The man who autographed it for me was murdered earlier today.  He was eighty years old.  He was killed during an editorial meeting along with his colleagues.  He was killed for his beliefs.  I share them.

Delayed Decoding

Ian Watt describes one of Joseph Conrad's characteristic literary techniques as 'delayed decoding'- where there is a lag between a character's sensory impression and his understanding of what is happening to him

'the end of what appeared a very long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool....my feet felt so wet and so warm that I had to look down.  The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands clutched that cane.  It was the shaft of a spear...my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still gleaming dark-red under the wheel'

Heart of Darkness

It's not my favourite of Conrad's stylistic habits by any means, partly because he seems to use it most frequently at the moments of highest drama in a story, moments when I am most likely, as a reader, to want to know what happened next.  Conrad, instead, slows the narrative down.

Movies and video games do it better.  Warner Bros has actually trademarked the term 'Bullet Time' but it's very similar, except it's in service of the story and it follows the audience's or the player's point of view. 

Here it is in The Matrix


And here it is in Max Payne 3 the videogame I'm playing at the moment, which is set in a Brazil I almost recognise

Max Payne's Sao Paulo is not Charles Gould's Costaguana but it's noticeable that Bullet Time slows narrative only to the point where reflexes can be useful, and it is quite an elegant way of shifting the focus from Max's (and the player's) point of view to that of the guy he's shooting.

There is a place for delayed decoding.  In a sense it's what fiction is about- what an event means and how its meaning is revealed- but during moments of narrative tension in a novel I just want to know what happens next. 

Being invited to play linguistic games by Conrad in order to share the state of mind of a character who is usually dying does not help this.  We gots to know where the bullets is coming from.

Oh dear

As I was taking this photo four young women walked past me.  They were very happy and one was wearing an Algerian flag.  Algeria had just beaten South Korea in the World Cup.

ya pas kelkun

One said to me 'Tu sais même pas écrire.'

While I hope this isn't true if she'd said 'T'écris même pas,' she'd have been absolutely right.

And I shall do better.