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‘If a dark avenging angel swept away all the books of France, France would not exist. If the same angel swept away music, Brazil would not exist.’

So says writer Suzannae Vargas.  She looks like Susan Sontag and carries herself like her too. She wants to change Brazillian culture and increase respect and participation in literature. 11 years ago, she founded the nearest organisation to Arvon I have yet encountered. She is fiercely proud and passionate about what she has achieved: the Estacao das Letras – which teaches creative writing in many genres – form a tiny apple green space in a shopping centre in Rio. It had started in her own house. Now she barely has time to write her own work – she is so busy helping others and raising funds for writing. She is entrepreneurial, smart and passionate – with an administrator who looks like Gisele the Brazillian super model.

When we say goodbye, I feel as we have both spoken the same language. It’s not only that my Portuguese is getting better – I can understand most things now on day 4- - but the heart of what she is doing and the struggles and problems she faces on some level are similar.

Then lunch on a rooftop with the new young literary lion of Brazil. 29 year only Joao Paulo Cuenca, is very, very smart and very funny too. He is also very self possessed and wears the knowledge that he is doing what he was born to do with self confidence and pride. He trained as an Economist, and started working professionally as one. Then got a book published. Now two novels later, and with a weekly column in the popular newspaper O Globo, he is writing full time. He is just finishing his third novel – a love story. He presents me with his books  Corpo Presente and O Dia Mastroianni. Like everything in Brazil, they are wonderfully designed. The graphic design and the cover are impeccable – playful and distinctive, as well as beautiful.  I know that I am going to love what I read between the pages too. I must buy a Portuguese dictionary.

Joao is introducing and interviewing me tonight at the bookshop.  Again, I sense it is going to be the beginning of many conversations which have started on this trip.

Snapshots of Rio life – Rio is full of them. Glances out of cars. Peeks from the walk ways. Stares on the streets.

A girl cycles past with an orange surfboard in one hand her handlebars held in the other…golden cocker spaniels  pull on sparkling jewelled leads….a man with a barbeque in his hand walks along Copacabana beach….sushi on the beach…beer on the beach…buying anything and everything on the beach… and I suddenly realise I am staying right on Ipanema beach…HIS beach…and I remember how  it was one of his Desert Island Discs…how he came to South America on assignment and danced samba, writing to me about sneaking into a private party on a hotel roof and dancing til 5 in the morning…and how now, here I am, on his beach, present in past time, once more hearing his words on the answer machine when he  flew to  Afghanistan…I kept them for a month, spooling them  backwards and forwards like an incantation until he came back safely from the warzone…. the phonecall from Somalia when I heard birds in the background….our amazement that our lives glanced and criss-crossed each other for years but we never met…how  we had both touched down at Tirana airbase during the Kosovo crisis the same day on the same runway…only not to connect…and then this year, I am running down an escalator, late for dinner with two Italian friends, running, running along a day full of portents…finishing  reading my  now then, then now boyfriend’s novel, with its heart-freezing scene of the girl self-encased in cement… ‘Don’t lose your nerve,’ shouts a tramp as I cycle by…then a silver-slick lorry glances past me,  the words Eternity: Cement Set for All Time’ emblazoned on its side… These days…Oh these days and more…. And  then here I am, running, running…down past a girl with blonde hair, a woman with blonde hair and glasses, and then I fall into his eyes and it’s him….him…right here in the wrong country…right now on these moving stairs for  the Piccadilly line…him still and standing…and his wife and his child who both happened after we never happened… and now here I am in this  happening…me running and running and running down down down…moving past him still and there… stilly beside her and her…the they I never met until this moment…right here ….and me  running with time, and along time and  out of time for dinner, for getting where I am going and all this on this moving toothed ladder of time  whilst he stands still, stilly there. There.

The next day I email him.

Was that you on the escalator at Green Park? What are you doing here? On the other side of the world?

Yes. It was me on that  escalator. Why did you not stop? Next time stop. Stop right where you are.

STOP.

It seems right somehow I think of him here and right now. The city where he sambaed. The city whose song he loved. The beat of his heart. The skip of his words. For that moment. Just now.
This. His. Is.

The lecture that evening starts late. ‘We Caracoa always start late’ explains Anna Paulo the British Council’s Rio Project officer now in charge of my itinerary and language confusion with her colleague the bubbly Raquel. ‘We caracoa are always  elegantly late. Never on time. There are too many things to do. Like walk along the beach, drink, stay in the sunshine, or get stuck in the traffic.’

That explains it. I am Caracoa to the soles of my boots – a born Rio girl - even at home. Joao’s introduction is beautiful. He quotes the beginning of a book about how a trapeze artist breaks rules. We discuss about the imagination and personal freedom. At one point, I am so tired, that I pause to listen to the translation of my English into Portuguese every time it is spoken. I obviously think I am in the language labs of a previous meeting that day. This whirling has finally got to me. I explain – and the audience laughs. Ice is always broken when the human being breaks through.

That night a tropical rainstorm strikes and cracks open the sky.. I am eating tuna coated in sesame seeds on the hotel terrace. The rain roars like canon fire on the pavements. Men walk by in bathing trunks nonchantly as if they are going for a stroll in the park. A couple step out, the man carrying a yellow rose in one hand, clasping his girlfriend’s hand in another.  Everyone wears the rain as if it were a second skin.   No pace is quickened. No umbrellas flare up into the liquid night.  No sheltering is snatched.  This just is. This is  Rio. This moment. Here. Now. No other moment exists. It - just  - is. Learn from this. Walk in the rain…Be. Here.

Arvon has been spotting a lot of things vanishing over the weekend. Soon we shall have ink that vanishes after 24 hours (which will be good for saving paper, but will creative writers remember?) and the new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has dispensed with hyphens. This will save on ink, we suppose, which is vanishing anyway. Sometimes a hyphen is needed. “Twenty-odd people” means something different from “twenty odd people”.

There could be no more fitting visitors to The Hurst than members of the Mary Webb Society. It was founded in 1972 to foster an appreciation of her writings and of the Shropshire countryside which she loved. The 30 acre grounds of The Hurst were included in the Society’s annual exploration on foot of the landscape which inspired her writings.

Their walk began at St George’s churchyard, Clun, where John and Helen Osborne, the last owners of The Hurst are buried. “Everyone is intrigued to know how John Osborne made the life journey from Look Back in Anger to one of Housman’s quietest places under the sun.” explained Keith Pybus. “Although at first glance you couldn’t imagine two more different writers, Mary Webb would have understood Osborne’s love of walking these hills with the labradors and his passionate claim that he had ‘the best view in England’ down the Clun Valley from his upper lawn. The house was built in 1812, so I suppose we can also say that it is part of Mary Webb’s Shropshire. You can’t imagine a place which better combines a writer’s retreat with such an inspiring setting. John Osborne said to his wife Helen that buying The Hurst was the “Best thing we’ve ever done Marvellous!” He wrote to a friend “I still can’t get over the triumphant inspiration of coming here. Not for the ‘final years’ but as a new outburst of energy.”

“Everyone who walks these lovely grounds realises what a remarkable spot this is. I felt if the Mary Webb members didn’t tear themselves away they wouldn’t complete their walk. They seemed to have loved the place as much as we do, as we are now talking to them about hosting their Summer School at The Hurst.”

The text of Gone to Earth can be found on the Project Gutenberg site.  The complete text of her other works, including Precious Bane, are also available online .

Arvon Friends Manager, Philip Cowell, asked all the Arvon Friends on email what book they were currently reading. All in the spirit of sharing what we like to read, and why, some of the responses so far are posted here. Don’t forget, 2008 is the National Year of Reading. Be inspired. (Join Arvon Friends to have your say!). The above, beautiful photo was taken by Marco Casse.

Clarissa Henry
Richard Powers: Plowing the Dark. Last year, I ‘discovered’ his The Time of Our Singing since when I have read everything of his that I can find. If I may be allowed to add: I think he is one of the most remarkable writers writing today. I have also now read his Operation Wandering Soul, The Echo Maker, Galatea 2.2 so I feel entitled to my opinion! Hope the weather in the UK is better than here in Vienna where it is quice frankly dreadful!

Jenny Evans
I’m currently reading The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett and am thoroughly enjoying it - she is a very fine writer. I chose to read it because of an article in The Week where Erica Wagner (literary editor of The Times) selected her 6 best ever books and this was one of them - you couldn’t get a higher recommendation than that!

Paul Francis
I am currently reading Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis, a patient, thoroughly documented indictment of UK foreign policy - and the failure of the media to report it fully. Yes, it confirms some prejudices, but there’s surprises there too, and it’s all backed up. Devastating.

Frank Egerton
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut — I’m not a science fiction fan but was intrigued by Vonnegut’s Times obituary – in which this book was praised — and his humanist beliefs. The book is terrific: KV has a light touch and is writing about 1950s America quite as much as ‘chrono-synclastic infundibula’ etc.

Kate Steer
The Scottish Enlightenment: the Scots’ Invention of the Modern World. Normally I don’t read much History but am enjoying this immensely. Its author (Arthur Herman, American) writes most engagingly. Irvine Welsh declared in the Guardian, “Every Scot should read it.” I agree.  p.s. In July I read, twice, a first novel, Salvage, by Gee Williams. It’s a literary thriller and “fell guid”! 

Rachel Hazell
Ice Bird, by David Lewis. I’m genning up on Antarctic adventures in anticipation for my stint working at Port Lockroy this season.

Jacqueline Gazzard
My reading comes via recommendation, the sudden realisation ‘its a classic and I only saw the movie’ or good old cover design….and cover design will frequently win out as I’m a packaging junkie. This was the case with Miss Webster and Cherif  written by Patricia Duncker. It is not great literature but I really enjoyed it as an unusual slice of escapism and easy read! Its a little cliched I guess but quite life affirming too - life isn’t a dress rehearsal so get on and enjoy it!

Emily Johnson
I am reading The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko.  It’s the second book in the night watch trilogy and I like it.  It’s about people called ‘Others’ who have magical powers and divide into the dark and the light.  Claims to be ‘JK Rowling, Russian style’ on the cover.

Kadija George
Mimi Khalvati, The Meanest Flower, Read it this morning for breakfast. Ignore the sentimental slush on the back and go straight for the poems, ‘Motherhood’, ‘Sundays’, and the first poem, ‘The Meanest Flower’.

David Lloyd
George Eliot - Middlemarch. I am re-reading this great novel after a gap of twenty years. It is a book which maps the personal journey of its heroine Dorothea but it also paints on a large canvas capturing a period of social and political change from the coming of the railway to the Reform Acts and the changing role of women.

Jane Reed
Just finished The Rossetti Stone by Kristin Phillips.  Fascinating first novel with a wealth of historic detail intertwined with a love story. Why am I reading it?   I love reading first novels and comparing them with the one to which I am forever giving birth.

Gillian Hush
Since you ask, I’m reading Half of a Yellow Sun and very good it is too!

Sarah Treco
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert. Confessional, exuberant, and wacky, a travel memoir of a surprizingly wise journey to self-discovery.

James Furber
John Le Carre’s The Mission Song. There are few bookshops on the Isles of Scilly, but I have always enjoyed Le Carre as a holiday read; the Honourable Schoolboy now appears with a reassuring freqency in his writing which is fine by me…

Fathieh Saudi
I am reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron…it seems its an international best seller..i think i need it now.. as i feel i have been a shadow artist for long time and i would like to overcome my censorship… Julia wrote: creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent….it’s a great useful book like a course you can do by yourself…

Gill Hancock
I am reading The view from Castle Rock by Alice Munro. The book starts with accounts related by members of her family who emigrated to Canada from the Scottish Borders and slips from memoirs into fiction.  In very good words  Munro conveys the particular atmosphere of relationships.

Carole Satyamurti
I’m currently reading The Iliad in Robert Fagles’ translation. It is a verse translation and wonderfully vivid and linguistically rich. He seems to manage to find an inexhaustible supply of words for sticking a spear into one’s enemy!

Kryss Brady
I have just finished reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. It is about a boy and his stutter, “Hangman”, and everything else that life throws a fifteen year-old in 1982 (the Falklands War, his parents splitting up, his sister going off to university and his own coming of age) and it is brilliant, hillarious and poignant in equal measure.  If I had another sentence I’d tell you that: I chose it for our book club because, having read Cloud Atlas and enjoyed Mitchell’s ability to switch genres, period and prose style in one book, I wanted to see how he tackled this lighter subject.

Louise Tondeur
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It’s a beautiful book. Dangerous, topsy-turvy, energetic, magical. What a great opening line. And he breaks every rule. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is masterful too.

Geraldine Terry
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. I’m reading this because I read an excerpt in a Costa coffee bar when it was nominated for Costa book of the year and I’m totally gripped by it – just fabulous.

Jane Stemp
This is going to sound dreadful. The book I am reading at the moment is my own title, Double Bind. Mind you it is only in Word format so far: and it does need revising - but I am finding bits of it better than I thought, so I suppose you could say I’m enjoying it ….

Simon Barraclough
As You Like It, William Shakespeare. I’m hoovering up all the Shakespeare plays I haven’t read yet and finding them uplifting, inspiring and deliciously complex. (Simon has his debut poetry collection Los Alamos Mon Amour out from Salt Publishing in March 2008.)

Andrew Lucas
I am two thirds of the way through The end of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas. I have to confess that I bought this book not through recommendation but because it has a great cover….so far the proverb is incorrect.

Linda Ewles
Julian Barnes, Arthur and George. It’s my reading group book so I will plod on with it but that’s what it feels like: a plod.

One Friend wrote to say:
I am currently reading books by C.J. Sansom.  I have read Dissolution, Sovereign and am about to start Dark Fire.  Although I don’t usually read crime novels, I am captivated by the main character, Shardlake, a lawyer in the time of Henry VIII.  But the main attraction is the way the sounds and smells of Tudor England are brought to life, so that you feel as though you are really there with the character.

Prue Skene
I’m currently reading Pat Barker’s Life Class - firstly because I’m an admirer of Pat’s and am actually studying The Ghost Road for an Open University course, and secondly because it was the choice for my book club - we’re discussing it next Monday (Sept 17).  Certainly worth a read if less multi-textured than the Regeneration trilogy.

Kaz Fairs
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. Alledgedly its going to help me keep the faith, so far so good…

Gina Walker
I’m reading The Snow Geese by William Fiennes. I’ve just returned from an Arvon Starting to Write course on which Will Fiennes was a tutor – he is a compassionate writer, who’s first book beautifully articulates his love of language as ‘a way of being in love with the world’.

Alan Buckley
I’m currently re-reading Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes - he sometimes lapses into self-pastiche, but the (many) poems that work here are utterly breathtaking. Also reading Fernado Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, a birthday present from a friend who makes Bernardo Soares look like a feelgood motivational guru…

Judith Allnatt
I’m reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This is an unusual book in almost every way, not least because it’s narrated by Death. Fascinating.

Caroline Pitcher
Abela, the girl who saw lions by Berlie Doherty. I am a children’s writer,  and Berlie’s moving, beautifully-written story is the one I have loved best this year. (Caroline Pitcher wrote The Shaman Boy.)

Pauline Smith has been relief centre-directing at our pre-Domesday house, Totleigh Barton. She was eager to promote a friend of hers - Joanna Guthrie - who has recently had published a new collection of poetry. More than happy to do so, we present below Pauline, Joanna and Billack’s Bones.

I had some great news today. My very good friend, Joanna Guthrie, e-mailed me to say her first collection of poetry has been published by The Rialto. Jo and I met as postgrad students at Exeter University. We both graduated on the same day with an MA in English Studies (Creative Writing) but were sad that our paths would no longer cross on a regular basis. As writers, we had become used to sharing our work (her poems, my short stories) and giving loving but honest criticism to each other. Fortunately, this didn’t stop when Jo moved up to Norwich and we continued to give each other encouragement via e-mail. To hear that Billack’s Bones had finally been published was brilliant - even more so when Jo generously told me I had been part of that process. Jo has close connections to Arvon and has attended a couple of poetry courses - the latest just last year with Catherine Smith and Neil Rollinson here at Totleigh. Catherine offers a fine review of Billack’s Bones along with another to be proud of from George Szirtzes. Have a read yourself! Jo’s voice stood way out as early as our first MA poetry seminar with Andy Brown, now a lifetime ago in 2004. I know it won’t go away now. You can purchase Billack’s Bones through Inpress Books.

This is the inspirational story of one mother and daughter - Rachel and Clemmy - who attended an Arvon writing course at the Hurst together, sharing a bedroom, contributing to the creative writing classes together, being inspired by and learning from each other. Rachel, the mother, writes…

Signing up for an Arvon course as mother and daughter felt both rather brave and pleasurably cosy.  At least we would each know one other person, we said on the long and beautiful drive to The Hurst, and would be familiar with our room-mate’s bad habits before we arrived - and it would be a treat for us to spend a few days together without the other children.  (Clemmy, 16, is the oldest of five.)  In fact I think we had both given more thought to that perspective than to the one which struck our fellow participants, but as the week went on I felt increasingly conscious of how lucky I was that Clemmy had been prepared to come with me, to spend five days sharing not only a bedroom but her creative space as well.

I was very touched by the way the tutors, staff and other course members responded to Clemmy.  Everyone treated her exactly like another writer, listening with respect to her contributions to discussion and including her in mealtime conversations and activities.  I was also immensely proud of her for throwing herself into the course - she read a story she had written during the week on the last night, along with everyone else, and won joint first prize in the story slam we organised with her piece on the Seven Deadly Sins.  I loved watching her blossom in the unique Arvon atmosphere of encouragement and stimulation, and seeing her through other people’s eyes - and it was great to have her there to try my own drafts and ideas out on, too.

We both got a huge amount out of the course, not least acquiring a network of new friends and fellow writers to share ideas, resources and frustrations with.  One of our wonderful tutors told us the week was about fermenting our ideas, skills and talents, and Clemmy and I certainly came away bubbling over with excitement about our writing.  On the drive home we plotted out a series of four children’s books which we plan to write together - though so far, while Clemmy has been hard at work on a project of her own (10,000 words and counting) I have been rather more subsumed by domestic life, as the younger children have reclaimed their share of me!

Having Clemmy there certainly enhanced my own pleasure and satisfaction in the course, and I, for one, will cherish the memory of a very special shared experience with my daughter.  

The Arvon Blog has been visiting some interesting web pages of late. We sat in on A N Wilson fuming about smoking and books. Then there’s the latest YouGov research that reveals we all want to become writers. Well, Arvon knew that forty years ago. There’s a couple of articles of interest on this topic: Visit Michelle Pauli at the Guardian for the facts (it turns out under-35s want to become sports personalities) and read John Crace for slightly more cynicism and regret. What are the 100 top books of all time? It’s old news, but in 2002 a list was compiled that told us just now. Do you know your Knut Hamsun from your Alfred Doblin? Check out how many you have read! Faces & Places is British Council’s new literature programme to introduce Polish readers to a range of British authors and artists - not only those well-known and established, but also emerging talents like Tash Aw or Gautam Malkani. Sounds good to us. The good people at The Book Depository have linked to us (well, we did ask them to) so it’s a big thank you from us to them. The Book Depository are interesting, and tantalising, the online book world - with their meaningful slogan, All Books Available To All, and new technologies to help find our books in the most speedy and cost-effective way. But let’s not always buy books, let’s use our libraries! How to use a library. Though it’s worrying where our libraries are going. Rachel Cooke sums up the latest political machinations. Tim Coates helped set up Waterstones, back in the day, and now writes a very impassioned blog about libraries. Please note: some people are reclaiming the bookshelves.

This very excellent photo of a book held against sunlight was taken by Netherlands photographer Marc van Agteren. See more of his photos at www.shotsbyme.com. The photo sums up summer reading, so we asked Arvon staff what books they were reading this summer. Here’s what some of them said:

Cynthia Rogerson (Moniack Mhor) is reading Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Ariane Koek (Arvon London) is reading Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates 

Emma Johnson (Arvon London) is reading Alis by Naomi Rich

Rachel Humphries (Moniack Mhor) is reading Under the Skin by Michel Faber

Kerry Watson (the Hurst) is reading London Orbital by Iain Sinclair 

Philip Cowell (Arvon London) is reading Land’s End by Michael Cunningham 

Pauline Smith (Totleigh Barton) is reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

Julia Wheadon (Totleigh Barton) is reading Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

Stephen May (Lumb Bank) is reading Marilyn and Me by Shanta Everington

Nick Murza (Arvon London) is reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome