Another Persephone publication, Miss Buncle's Book is a highly entertaining story of a rural English village in the early 1930s, with some unexpected excursions into metafiction.
Barbara Buncle, spinster, lives in a cottage in the idyllic village of Silverstream. Her income depleted following the Wall Street Crash, she turns to writing to prop up her finances, having gone into the options of fiction and chicken farming as possible money-spinners with her maid, Dorcas. Dorcas is not keen on hens' feet, so Miss Buncle writes her novel. Mr Abbott (chosen because he is the first publisher in the London phone book) knows a winner when he sees it: Miss Buncle's book, can be read both as a straightforward romance of rural life or as a satire. She has taken characters from Silverstream and depicted their unvarnished foibles and characteristics. In the second half of her book, a mysterious Golden Boy with a pipe passes through the village, and under the spell of his music, the villagers act in odd ways: a woman throws over her cruel husband for a new lover, a pair of home-loving ladies set off for Samarkand, and two long-single villagers realise their love for one another and marry.
Published as Disturber of the Peace, and under a pseudonym, Miss Buncle's book is a runaway success. Its enigmatic qualities lead to controversial reviews which stimulate sales. Once it is read in Silverstream, however, and the villagers begin to recognise themselves, it generates real controversy. A stream of villagers visit Mr Abbott and call for the book's suppression. A village meeting is held to try to discover the author, and have him or her horse-whipped. Lawyers are pestered about libel cases. But, under the spell of the book, strange things begin to happen. The bullying Stephen Bulmer is suddenly much nicer to his put-upon wife and cowed children. Major Weatherfield, enjoying the book in his bath, is inspired to visit his neighbour Dorothea Bold and propose marriage to her. Ellen King and Angela Pretty, longtime companions, are persuaded to travel to Egypt for the sake of Miss Pretty's health. Miss Buncle's book itself is Silverstream's Golden Boy.
But Miss Buncle needs to write another book, and thankfully a second Golden Boy appears in the shape of Sally, a neighbour's grand-daughter sent to the country to rest. Pretty, seventeen and self-possessed, Sally works her own magic on Silverstream: the Vicar is made to realise that his fiancée loves not him, or his charitable ways, but his money, and Barbara is much improved by a new hat and hairstyle. Barbara's second book draws on the effects of the two Golden Boys and describes the effects of Sally, and the publication of Disturber of the Peace, on Silverstream and on the book's author. Mr Abbott remarks that he "had never before read a novel about a woman who wrote a novel about a woman who wrote a novel - it was like a recurring decimal". The reader of Miss Buncle's Book can move the decimal point further back. Cleverly, Mr Abbott's criticisms of certain aspects of the plot echoed this reader's own; D E Stevenson has anticipated the claims of improbability that might be raised. In Miss Buncle's Book, we read Miss Buncle's book again and again through the eyes of different readers, creating a multiple perspective and multiple layers of fiction, and challenging and reforming our own impressions and opinions.
Aline Templeton's introduction points out the very surprising "warmly described lesbian relationship between gruff Miss King and pretty Miss Pretty" and indeed, their relationship seems to be well accepted and even admired by Miss King's old friend the village doctor, who counsels her against leaving Miss Pretty. Unfortunately he does this by explaining that, as Angela Pretty is weak and feminine and will wither unless strong, masculine Miss King is by her side, but you can't have everything. Interestingly, Miss King makes the same sort of allusion to The Well of Loneliness as appears in EMD's Challenge to Clarissa; the book caused worry to women living together, but they decided to ignore its implications. In both books, this ambiguous reference can either be read as a denial or an avowal of a lesbian relationship; but in Miss Buncle's Book there seems to be little ambiguity elsewhere.
This is a book that will bear re-reading, as Mr Abbott spots; it is funny as well as clever, describing a variety of characters effectively, and keeping them well in play. D E Stevenson was a best-seller in her day, and I hope we may see more of her work from Persephone.
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Tuesday 23 June 2009
Making Conversation by Christine Longford
This coming-of-age story, reprinted by Persephone, is both witty and touching. We meet Martha Freke, a schoolgirl during the first World War, and follow her through adolescence and on to Oxford. Martha is continually beset by the problems of making conversation: a misunderstanding of the meaning of "adultery", caused in part by her headmistress, leads to her eventual expulsion from school; it is never clear whether she should argue with adults or simply agree with everything they say. The narrative is slightly episodic, and we see Martha take up and drop religious, philosophical and romantic interests, greatly influenced by her peers. She has the advantage of a rather glamourous mother, separated from her father and taking in interesting, sometimes foreign, lodgers; the local Vicar supplies a number of camp young aesthetes and pacifists; and at Oxford she is distracted from her studies by the pleasures of new frocks and hats, and hamfisted flirtations. Unsuprisingly, this ends badly, and Martha is dispatched to Prague as an au pair, her Oxford place given to "the better woman" Martha was keeping out.
The book is slight, but funny; the scene in which Martha, parroting uncomprehendingly the hints given by her mother, suggests that her Headmistress is pursuing a lesbian affair with a fellow teacher, is highly amusing, with Martha mystified by the outrage her comment generates. The depiction of Martha's interview at Oxford will make anyone who has been through this process cringe with recognition. Martha's various useless suitors and her fellow students are wryly observed. It's not quite up there with Nancy Mitford in the humour stakes, as the introduction suggests, but it's good fun all the same.
The book is slight, but funny; the scene in which Martha, parroting uncomprehendingly the hints given by her mother, suggests that her Headmistress is pursuing a lesbian affair with a fellow teacher, is highly amusing, with Martha mystified by the outrage her comment generates. The depiction of Martha's interview at Oxford will make anyone who has been through this process cringe with recognition. Martha's various useless suitors and her fellow students are wryly observed. It's not quite up there with Nancy Mitford in the humour stakes, as the introduction suggests, but it's good fun all the same.
Sunday 21 June 2009
Happy birthday, Persephone Books
Persephone are 10 years old this year. They were celebrating at one of their London bookshops on Thursday last week, and as I happened to be in London for work, I went along. The place was thronged with readers lured by the three-for-two offer and the promise of champagne and buns. Perhaps they'd all be consumed by the time I arrived, because tepid mineral water was the order of the day, but I made good use of the special offer, and went home with:
William - an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton, playwright, suffragette and author of Marriage as a Trade and the lyrics to March of the Women, which I've had the pleasure of singing this year. This was Persephone's first book and I've been hankering after it for some time.
Plats du Jour by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd, a book that brought continental food within reach of British cooks during the late 1950s, or at least within reach of their imaginations.
and finally Miss Buncle's Book which tells of the impact on a small English village when one of their number publishes a bestseller which consists of thinly-veiled portraits of the local characters.
Despite the cock-up on the catering front at their birthday party, I can wholeheartedly recommend Persephone's output to anyone interested in women's writing and the 20th century - although there are some earlier books too for diehard Victorianists. There are some marvellous books to be found in that elegant grey livery, and Persephone are responsible for leading me to some inspiring work, particularly Leonard Woolf's The Wise Virgins which gave me the theme for my MA dissertation, the marvellous Every Eye by Isobel English, and Marghanita Laski's tense, powerful Little Boy Lost, the book that led me to Persphone after reading Nicholas Lezard's review in the Guardian. Happy birthday, Persephone, and here's to another shelf-ful of French grey spines.
William - an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton, playwright, suffragette and author of Marriage as a Trade and the lyrics to March of the Women, which I've had the pleasure of singing this year. This was Persephone's first book and I've been hankering after it for some time.
Plats du Jour by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd, a book that brought continental food within reach of British cooks during the late 1950s, or at least within reach of their imaginations.
and finally Miss Buncle's Book which tells of the impact on a small English village when one of their number publishes a bestseller which consists of thinly-veiled portraits of the local characters.
Despite the cock-up on the catering front at their birthday party, I can wholeheartedly recommend Persephone's output to anyone interested in women's writing and the 20th century - although there are some earlier books too for diehard Victorianists. There are some marvellous books to be found in that elegant grey livery, and Persephone are responsible for leading me to some inspiring work, particularly Leonard Woolf's The Wise Virgins which gave me the theme for my MA dissertation, the marvellous Every Eye by Isobel English, and Marghanita Laski's tense, powerful Little Boy Lost, the book that led me to Persphone after reading Nicholas Lezard's review in the Guardian. Happy birthday, Persephone, and here's to another shelf-ful of French grey spines.
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
Nightingale Wood uses the conventions and structures of the fairy story to narrate the lives of three women, each chafing in her own way against the restrictions of her circumstances. Romantic, superficial Viola is Cinderella, hoping that the local Prince Charming will rescue her from her excruciatingly dull life with her late husband’s family, the Withers. Tina, her sister-in-law, might be Sleeping Beauty, hoping that Saxon the handsome chauffeur will be able to cut through the thickets of social convention and be her friend and lover. Hetty could be a bookish Rapunzel, waiting to be twenty-one so she can escape the prison of middle-class social life and devote herself to literature.
If the metaphors in that paragraph seem strained, imagine them extended over the length of a novel, and you’ll get a sense of the problems with Nightingale Wood. In Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons demonstrated a mastery of the pithy character study, a light and economical touch, that is mostly absent from the later book. Instead, we get pages of exposition, of psychological explanations of characters, and very obvious setting and springing of plot traps and twists. For example, there is the local hermit. He is lavishly introduced and described, we learn of his previous married life, his current relationship with Saxon’s mother, his tendency to arrive unexpectedly at the Withers, drunk and ranting. His sole plot function is to give away the subversive lovers, Tina and Saxon, which would have happened anyway since they have secretly married by the time he bellows the news at the Withers. This would not be a problem if he were amusing, or interesting, but unfortunately he comes across only as a dull, self-indulgent bit of local rural colour.
The plot takes a good while to resolve itself, with many digressions into the little ways of other minor characters, before our three heroines get their heart's desires, or something very similar. The author even has recourse to a house fire near the end of the novel to move the plot along, always a sign of desperation. The good are, eventually, rewarded: Tina and Saxon get a handsome legacy to help their transgressive marriage along; Hetty is rescued from debutante hell by a previously undiscovered uncle who has a second-hand bookshop and a stern Communist wife; and superficial Viola, through an act of charity on behalf of an elderly friend, touches the heart of her Prince Charming at exactly the right moment - when his shrewish fiancée is throwing an impressive tantrum - leading to their eventual marriage.
Some of these happy endings are quite satisfying. Tina is an attractive character and it is pleasing to see her work her way through the difficulties of her feelings for the chauffeur, naming and owning her desire, and for the success of an inter-class marriage to be recognised and articulated. Hetty, mature beyond her twenty years in the Flora Poste manner, gets to lead the literary life she idolises. To an extent, these are women of some agency, with the courage and ability to make their own lives, although each is dependent on a male deus ex machina. Viola is more problematic. She has always dreamed of marrying Victor Spring, and eventually does. She shows plenty of spirit along the way, returning Victor's kisses ardently, rejecting Victor firmly when she realises his intentions are not honourable, but still pines after him. We are told so many times that Viola is superficial, that her dreams and affections are shallow, that perhaps we are not supposed to worry that Victor is quite dim and boorish; Viola seems unworried by his baser qualities. But the happy endings are a little bit pat, and the three of them suggest an attempt to provide a vicarious happy ending for any reader, whether she yearns for companionate marriage, intellectual stimulus or social success.
There is still good, witty writing here: I particularly liked the description of Victor's endlessly scolding fiancée as "keeping up a continual splutter like a catherine-wheel", and the description of the same person, dressed in black and yellow, as resembling a "slim, ill-tempered, handsome wasp". If it wasn't for Cold Comfort Farm, this book would seem a lot better. But then, if it wasn't for Cold Comfort Farm, it would never have been revived at all.
Saturday 13 June 2009
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
I spotted this in a secondhand bookshop, and was inspired to give it a try because a) Nancy Mitford was in love with Robert Byron, and I thought there was a good chance that it might be amusing; and b) because Bruce Chatwin was inspired by Byron's writing. This book describes, in diary form, a haphazard journey through and around Persia and into Afghanistan. Byron and his travelling companion, Christopher Sykes, struggle against authoritarian bureacracy in imperial Persia, and no less effective state control in Afghanistan; permits are capriciously issued and withdrawn, they acquire endless state escorts who attempt to prevent them drawing, taking photographs, or indeed noticing anything that might lead to criticism of the Shah, Islam, the government. Byron is a wily traveller, however, and knows both when to accept these constraints and how to outwit them. His encounter with Herzfeld at Persepolis, during which he flouts, flagrantly, the prohibition on photography there, is typical of one of his ways of dealing with authority: ignore it and do whatever you want.
Byron is immensely knowledgable about Islamic architecture, and much of the text is given over to mouthwatering descriptions of mosques and palaces, their tiles, domes, minarets and squinches. Interestingly, he visits the massive statues of Buddha since destroyed by the Taliban; he doesn't care for them, or for Buddhist art in general. Added to the varied, beautiful but often harsh landscapes he describes, this makes the book something of a feast for the inner eye. This is contrasted with the comic encounters with minor potentates, ambassadors, the military and servants. Byron's attitudes to the locals are fairly typical of the time, and can be uncomfortable for the modern reader, but his genuine respect for some, especially their guide and chauffeur Seyid Jemal, tempers this a little. Compared to Chatwin, this is a traveller less anxious to be liked, more purposeful and less haphazard, but his abilities to take pleasure where it may be found certainly seem to have been taken as a model.
Byron is immensely knowledgable about Islamic architecture, and much of the text is given over to mouthwatering descriptions of mosques and palaces, their tiles, domes, minarets and squinches. Interestingly, he visits the massive statues of Buddha since destroyed by the Taliban; he doesn't care for them, or for Buddhist art in general. Added to the varied, beautiful but often harsh landscapes he describes, this makes the book something of a feast for the inner eye. This is contrasted with the comic encounters with minor potentates, ambassadors, the military and servants. Byron's attitudes to the locals are fairly typical of the time, and can be uncomfortable for the modern reader, but his genuine respect for some, especially their guide and chauffeur Seyid Jemal, tempers this a little. Compared to Chatwin, this is a traveller less anxious to be liked, more purposeful and less haphazard, but his abilities to take pleasure where it may be found certainly seem to have been taken as a model.
Monday 1 June 2009
Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten
No, it’s not a book, but it is definitely twentieth century and worth writing about. I was lucky enough to see the last performance of the current ENO production of Peter Grimes on Saturday. I didn’t know the piece at all, but was intrigued enough by Alex Ross’s chapter on the opera and Britten in The Rest is Noise to ask for tickets as a birthday present. I’m enormously glad that I did, because it was the best production of an opera that I have ever seen.
Director David Alden sets the opera in post-war austerity Britain; clothes are drab and grey and uniform, literally in a few cases, and the sets are austere, apparently made from cheap materials like corrugated iron. The lighting is remarkable, making expressionistic shadowplay that sometimes emphasises and sometimes subverts the action; Ellen Orford’s shadow, for example, sometimes dominates those of the chiding townspeople, while at the very end she has no shadow at all. The faces of the chorus gleam out from grey hats and coats like the glitter of the sea or of a shoal of mackerel, and sometimes they drift in and out of the stage like waves. While Mrs Sedley rouses the mob that will drive Peter Grimes to his death, they are constrained by the set in a wedge of stage, and sway and roll like a rough sea, equating the mob with other unstoppable forces of nature.
The austerity setting gave the opera an extra twist; after years of pulling together as part of the war effort, the tensions between the individual and the collective may now be at such a pitch that rupture and trauma are inevitable. This version of the opera is sympathetic to Grimes, while not masking the violent and aggressive aspects of his character; there is genuine regret and emotion as he recounts the death of his first apprentice, and John’s death is clearly indicated as an accident, caused in part by Grimes’s fright at being persecuted by the Borough. The choral repetition of “he who despises us we’ll destroy” emphasises that Grimes’s separation from his community is his crime, rather than his involvement in the death of two children. The portrayal of Auntie as a lesbian of the Radclyffe Hall type, in a rather elegant pinstriped man’s suit, problematises this. One critic suggests that her wardrobe may be due to her role as a businesswoman in a man’s world, but her rejection of one woman, and leading of another off on a lead, during the dance scene suggest to me that she’s not just coded as lesbian. A lesbian can be as antithetical to small-town life as an uppity fisherman, but Auntie is not harried to her suicide.
Perhaps this is because she knows where the bodies are buried. Auntie’s nieces, dressed most of the time in identical schoolgirl uniform, moving in a disturbed and disturbing robotic way, are harassed and assaulted by Swallow, although their status as prostitutes (which I understand is the usual interpretation) is unclear. But Auntie the innkeeper sees and knows the licentious behaviour of otherwise respectable townspeople; she helps to focus the hypocrisy of those who judge Grimes, as does the girlishness of the nieces, who can be equated with the young and vulnerable apprentice. If Grimes is an exploiter of children, he is not the only one in the Borough. Auntie is a fascinating counterpart to Grimes: both are complicit and stigmatised, but she is more powerful because of her inside knowledge and her ability to accept the townspeople.
Other commentators have seen the Ellen of this production as not caring particularly for Grimes, over-ready to reject him when she suspects he has beaten John, and suggest that this emphasises her own complicity in the eventual tragedy. I didn’t read it like this – and indeed thought she was remarkably sympathetic to Peter after he clouted her – but this idea gives another twist to her grief in the final moments. Is she crying for Grimes, or because of her own guilt and its implications for her future in the Borough? I thought the former at the time, and found Amanda Roocroft's performance very moving, but now I wonder ...
So – a hugely fascinating and thought-provoking opera. I’m not enough of an expert to criticise the singing, but I will say that I thought the choral work was excellent, although I was pleased to notice that even the ENO chorus has the same problems sounding a simultaneous final “s” as any other choir. Gerald Finley as Balstrode was particularly fine, and I feel very guilty for having failed to spot from the upper circle that he was playing the part as an amputee, with one arm strapped down. I did wonder why he always had his overcoat thrown over his shoulders. The orchestra seemed utterly marvellous to me and, judging by the applause, to the rest of the audience. The piece was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3, so those not lucky enough to make one of the nine performances can enjoy at least part of the experience.
Director David Alden sets the opera in post-war austerity Britain; clothes are drab and grey and uniform, literally in a few cases, and the sets are austere, apparently made from cheap materials like corrugated iron. The lighting is remarkable, making expressionistic shadowplay that sometimes emphasises and sometimes subverts the action; Ellen Orford’s shadow, for example, sometimes dominates those of the chiding townspeople, while at the very end she has no shadow at all. The faces of the chorus gleam out from grey hats and coats like the glitter of the sea or of a shoal of mackerel, and sometimes they drift in and out of the stage like waves. While Mrs Sedley rouses the mob that will drive Peter Grimes to his death, they are constrained by the set in a wedge of stage, and sway and roll like a rough sea, equating the mob with other unstoppable forces of nature.
The austerity setting gave the opera an extra twist; after years of pulling together as part of the war effort, the tensions between the individual and the collective may now be at such a pitch that rupture and trauma are inevitable. This version of the opera is sympathetic to Grimes, while not masking the violent and aggressive aspects of his character; there is genuine regret and emotion as he recounts the death of his first apprentice, and John’s death is clearly indicated as an accident, caused in part by Grimes’s fright at being persecuted by the Borough. The choral repetition of “he who despises us we’ll destroy” emphasises that Grimes’s separation from his community is his crime, rather than his involvement in the death of two children. The portrayal of Auntie as a lesbian of the Radclyffe Hall type, in a rather elegant pinstriped man’s suit, problematises this. One critic suggests that her wardrobe may be due to her role as a businesswoman in a man’s world, but her rejection of one woman, and leading of another off on a lead, during the dance scene suggest to me that she’s not just coded as lesbian. A lesbian can be as antithetical to small-town life as an uppity fisherman, but Auntie is not harried to her suicide.
Perhaps this is because she knows where the bodies are buried. Auntie’s nieces, dressed most of the time in identical schoolgirl uniform, moving in a disturbed and disturbing robotic way, are harassed and assaulted by Swallow, although their status as prostitutes (which I understand is the usual interpretation) is unclear. But Auntie the innkeeper sees and knows the licentious behaviour of otherwise respectable townspeople; she helps to focus the hypocrisy of those who judge Grimes, as does the girlishness of the nieces, who can be equated with the young and vulnerable apprentice. If Grimes is an exploiter of children, he is not the only one in the Borough. Auntie is a fascinating counterpart to Grimes: both are complicit and stigmatised, but she is more powerful because of her inside knowledge and her ability to accept the townspeople.
Other commentators have seen the Ellen of this production as not caring particularly for Grimes, over-ready to reject him when she suspects he has beaten John, and suggest that this emphasises her own complicity in the eventual tragedy. I didn’t read it like this – and indeed thought she was remarkably sympathetic to Peter after he clouted her – but this idea gives another twist to her grief in the final moments. Is she crying for Grimes, or because of her own guilt and its implications for her future in the Borough? I thought the former at the time, and found Amanda Roocroft's performance very moving, but now I wonder ...
So – a hugely fascinating and thought-provoking opera. I’m not enough of an expert to criticise the singing, but I will say that I thought the choral work was excellent, although I was pleased to notice that even the ENO chorus has the same problems sounding a simultaneous final “s” as any other choir. Gerald Finley as Balstrode was particularly fine, and I feel very guilty for having failed to spot from the upper circle that he was playing the part as an amputee, with one arm strapped down. I did wonder why he always had his overcoat thrown over his shoulders. The orchestra seemed utterly marvellous to me and, judging by the applause, to the rest of the audience. The piece was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3, so those not lucky enough to make one of the nine performances can enjoy at least part of the experience.
Friday 22 May 2009
Sea Legs: hitching alone around the coast of Ireland by Rosita Boland
I read, a few years ago, Rosita Boland's A Secret Map of Ireland, in which she visits a monument, oddity or spurious magical place in each county of Ireland. This is her first book, and describes a journey chosen following the purchase of a map of Ireland in Stanfords. Boland was born in Ennis, County Clare, but has lived away for enough time for the Irish people she meets on her journey to ask her where in England she is from. The real draw of the journey for Boland seems to be a need to reconnect with her Irish roots, to understand the country better, and perhaps, through her act of circumnavigation, to encircle and possess it. Lack of money makes hitching the only way to travel, and a B&B is an occasional luxury, most nights being spent in hostels of variable quality. Travelling in autumn and winter, she meets relatively few tourists, and has ample opportunities to enjoy the melancholy of off-season resorts. This is a looser, baggier book than A Secret Map; the contained nature of her individual journeys to castles and fairy trees in the latter book make for tighter, more focused writing. The pace of Sea Legs drifts and then hurries, replicating the nature of her slow-quick-slow journey rather well.
Sunday 10 May 2009
Body Parts: essays on life-writing by Hermione Lee
This is a collection of essays, mainly on the nature of biographical writing but also including some short biographical sketches. Lee discusses the biographer's approach, the relationship of the biography to history and to fiction, and emphasises the need for the biographer to
convey the physical presence of the subject, hence the title. Her essay on Shelley analyses the different descriptions of his cremation, the varying ways in which those present are said to have participated, and the adventures of his heart (or perhaps his liver), removed from his burning corpse by Trelawney. This relic symbolises the need for those who write, or attempt to control, biographies to relate their work to sensual experience, in order to establish a physical connection for the writer and reader with a subject who may be long dead. Her piece on The Hours, both book and film, their relation with the life of Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway, is amusing and trenchant, showing how the film's portrayal can distort the biographical image of Woolf, and questioning whether it matters. There are enlightening essays on Rosamund Lehmann, Penelope Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, although even Lee's entertaining piece on Angela Thirkell hasn't made me want to read Thirkell's work.
The book ends with a fascinating survey on how biographers deal with death. Do you record your subject's death as a simple fact, unrelated to his or her life? Or do you make the death symbolic of the life? Do you make use of the convention of a summary of the life in the closing paragraphs, allowing the subject's life to flash before the reader's eyes? Most biographers cannot simply allow death to happen without further interpretation, without connecting it somehow to the subject; Lee has rarely found it treated as a simple inevitability, although I can think of one or two examples from my reading (Claire Harman's biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner, for example). I think this question relates back to biography's relationship to either fiction or history. In both forms (if indeed they are separate forms) it is hard for events to be random and without significance. Everything, including death, must have meaning that relates to the whole subject.
convey the physical presence of the subject, hence the title. Her essay on Shelley analyses the different descriptions of his cremation, the varying ways in which those present are said to have participated, and the adventures of his heart (or perhaps his liver), removed from his burning corpse by Trelawney. This relic symbolises the need for those who write, or attempt to control, biographies to relate their work to sensual experience, in order to establish a physical connection for the writer and reader with a subject who may be long dead. Her piece on The Hours, both book and film, their relation with the life of Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway, is amusing and trenchant, showing how the film's portrayal can distort the biographical image of Woolf, and questioning whether it matters. There are enlightening essays on Rosamund Lehmann, Penelope Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, although even Lee's entertaining piece on Angela Thirkell hasn't made me want to read Thirkell's work.
The book ends with a fascinating survey on how biographers deal with death. Do you record your subject's death as a simple fact, unrelated to his or her life? Or do you make the death symbolic of the life? Do you make use of the convention of a summary of the life in the closing paragraphs, allowing the subject's life to flash before the reader's eyes? Most biographers cannot simply allow death to happen without further interpretation, without connecting it somehow to the subject; Lee has rarely found it treated as a simple inevitability, although I can think of one or two examples from my reading (Claire Harman's biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner, for example). I think this question relates back to biography's relationship to either fiction or history. In both forms (if indeed they are separate forms) it is hard for events to be random and without significance. Everything, including death, must have meaning that relates to the whole subject.
Saturday 9 May 2009
Our Hidden Lives edited by Simon Garfield
Derived from Mass-Observation diaries, this book comprises entries from five writers in post-war Britain, and records their thoughts and reactions to the protracted end of the war, the Labour landslide, the beginnings of the welfare state, and to the austerity period. Having recently read Austerity Britain, I was prepared for negative views on Atlee's government, Utility furniture and continued rationing. However, the vigorous antisemitism expressed or recorded by the correspondents was surprising for a group of people who must all have seen the newsreels of the death camps. One correspondent's husband only regrets that the "Nuremburg thugs were not able to finish the job". This prejudice, and other illiberal tendencies, can make some of the authors hard to like. However, they remain fascinating. B Charles, a gay antiques dealer and superlative snob, gives glimpses of the lives of gay men in provincial cities; his opaque tone when discussing sexuality and attraction to others (the latest object of desire is always described as having "possibilities") is evocative of a strictly closeted life. We never learn his first name. Maggie Joy Blunt is a more attractive character and her diaries explore the opportunities and risks for a single woman trying to make a living as a writer. Best of all is pensioner Herbert Brush, labouring on his allotment, creosoting his fence, tolerating neighbourhood bores and composing really awful poetry to amuse the Mass-Observation readers.
I was interested in the number of Germans, mainly refugees or former prisoners of war, that several of the correspondents seemed to know and like; one correspondent seems to have many German neighbours and records their efforts to trace their relatives. She meets the mother of a German friend, miraculously retrieved from post-war Berlin and brought to Sheffield. These encounters seem to be without rancour, and POWs are received sympathetically. I have Don't Mention the War in my to-be-read pile, and hope that this will provide more insight into this facet of post-war life.
I was interested in the number of Germans, mainly refugees or former prisoners of war, that several of the correspondents seemed to know and like; one correspondent seems to have many German neighbours and records their efforts to trace their relatives. She meets the mother of a German friend, miraculously retrieved from post-war Berlin and brought to Sheffield. These encounters seem to be without rancour, and POWs are received sympathetically. I have Don't Mention the War in my to-be-read pile, and hope that this will provide more insight into this facet of post-war life.
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
I'm a longstanding fan of Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For, and a regular reader of her blog. I'd been meaning to read this for ages, and finally treated myself to a copy from Amazon Marketplace. Needless to say, when it arrived I gulped it down in a matter of hours.
Fun Home (the title is derived from the family abbreviation for Funeral Home, Bechdel's father being a part-time funeral director as well as an English teacher) is a memoir, examining Bechdel's childhood and adolescence and in particular her relationship with her father, who died when Bechdel was 19. Bechdel presents his death first as a suicide, then as an accident, and the evidence for either is inconclusive. His death follows swiftly after Alison comes out to her parents as lesbian; before he dies, she learns from her mother that her father has had affairs from men. The memoir, then, deals lucidly with issues of sexuality, of what might be viewed as her father's expression of a gay persona through gardening and obsessive interior design, and with her father's (and her own) relationships with literature, especially the works of Proust, Joyce and F Scott Fitzgerald.
In a fairly short book, Bechdel achieves an astonishing compression of detail, complex ideas, doubt and family history. This is supported by the wonderful drawings, which fill in the backstory and the period detail, but cannot be separated from the narrative itself. This is a rich, satisfying first read and I can see it's going to be an addictive re-read, as the detail will yield new rewards each time. I think I'm about to spend an Amazon voucher on Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.
Fun Home (the title is derived from the family abbreviation for Funeral Home, Bechdel's father being a part-time funeral director as well as an English teacher) is a memoir, examining Bechdel's childhood and adolescence and in particular her relationship with her father, who died when Bechdel was 19. Bechdel presents his death first as a suicide, then as an accident, and the evidence for either is inconclusive. His death follows swiftly after Alison comes out to her parents as lesbian; before he dies, she learns from her mother that her father has had affairs from men. The memoir, then, deals lucidly with issues of sexuality, of what might be viewed as her father's expression of a gay persona through gardening and obsessive interior design, and with her father's (and her own) relationships with literature, especially the works of Proust, Joyce and F Scott Fitzgerald.
In a fairly short book, Bechdel achieves an astonishing compression of detail, complex ideas, doubt and family history. This is supported by the wonderful drawings, which fill in the backstory and the period detail, but cannot be separated from the narrative itself. This is a rich, satisfying first read and I can see it's going to be an addictive re-read, as the detail will yield new rewards each time. I think I'm about to spend an Amazon voucher on Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.
Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives by Katharine Cockin
Edith Craig was one of the two children of the actress Ellen Terry and the architect William Godwin. Terry never married Godwin, and decided on the surname Craig for her children. Edith was known by her middle name, Ailsa, in her childhood and it was her stage name for her brief career as an actress. Looking at the real Ailsa Craig, you have to wonder what Terry was about in naming her daughter.
Both Edith and her brother Edward Gordon Craig went on to work in the theatre, both mainly offstage in the role of director or producer. Edward Gordon Craig became immensely celebrated, his innovations in staging and lighting making him a familiar figure in the history of modernist theatre. Terry, of course, was one of the most famous actresses and the most famous women of her generation. Edith, although probably equally talented and innovative, has been rather eclipsed by her mother and brother, and this book seeks to reclaim her life and restore her reputation.
Craig's story is interesting: she was an eminent director of pageants, that forgotten art form; she campaigned for women's suffrage and lent her skills to this campaign; she developed private theatre societies that were able to evade the censor; and she worked for many years to develop amateur theatre to a high standard. She lived for many years in a lesbian menage à trois with Tony (or Clare) Atwood and Christopher St John; the success of this relationship is not much explored by Cockin, who focuses more on Craig's career and its limitations. There is some effort to consider whether Edith's career was limited because she was a woman, or a lesbian, or a lesbian in a complex three-way relationship; personally I wondered if her (admittedly limited) private income meant that she did not have to press for professional, paid work. There's considerable food for thought in Craig's choice of artistic medium, her work in middlebrow genres such as amateur theatre, pageants and nativity plays.
Cockin has, however, set herself a hard task. Original archival material is limited, having been selectively destroyed. Consequently, the history and impact of Edith's career have to be reconstructed from other contemporary sources and press archives. This leads to a slight surfeit of biographer's tricks, the "must haves" and "may haves" that allow a narrative to be constructed out of a small amount of evidence, and gives the book a strenuous quality that doesn't make for easy reading. There's a also quite a significant amount of repetition; we're told twice in the space of ten pages, for example, that Craig's arthritis in later life meant that she sometimes used a wheelchair. This gave the impression that the book wasn't really meant to be read, but used as a reference tool, and that Cockin has tried to make sure the facts are available to the casual browser of the index. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this book is the result of commendable scholarship and its efforts to retrieve Craig from historical oblivion, existing only as a footnote in biographies of her mother and brother, are laudable.
Both Edith and her brother Edward Gordon Craig went on to work in the theatre, both mainly offstage in the role of director or producer. Edward Gordon Craig became immensely celebrated, his innovations in staging and lighting making him a familiar figure in the history of modernist theatre. Terry, of course, was one of the most famous actresses and the most famous women of her generation. Edith, although probably equally talented and innovative, has been rather eclipsed by her mother and brother, and this book seeks to reclaim her life and restore her reputation.
Craig's story is interesting: she was an eminent director of pageants, that forgotten art form; she campaigned for women's suffrage and lent her skills to this campaign; she developed private theatre societies that were able to evade the censor; and she worked for many years to develop amateur theatre to a high standard. She lived for many years in a lesbian menage à trois with Tony (or Clare) Atwood and Christopher St John; the success of this relationship is not much explored by Cockin, who focuses more on Craig's career and its limitations. There is some effort to consider whether Edith's career was limited because she was a woman, or a lesbian, or a lesbian in a complex three-way relationship; personally I wondered if her (admittedly limited) private income meant that she did not have to press for professional, paid work. There's considerable food for thought in Craig's choice of artistic medium, her work in middlebrow genres such as amateur theatre, pageants and nativity plays.
Cockin has, however, set herself a hard task. Original archival material is limited, having been selectively destroyed. Consequently, the history and impact of Edith's career have to be reconstructed from other contemporary sources and press archives. This leads to a slight surfeit of biographer's tricks, the "must haves" and "may haves" that allow a narrative to be constructed out of a small amount of evidence, and gives the book a strenuous quality that doesn't make for easy reading. There's a also quite a significant amount of repetition; we're told twice in the space of ten pages, for example, that Craig's arthritis in later life meant that she sometimes used a wheelchair. This gave the impression that the book wasn't really meant to be read, but used as a reference tool, and that Cockin has tried to make sure the facts are available to the casual browser of the index. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this book is the result of commendable scholarship and its efforts to retrieve Craig from historical oblivion, existing only as a footnote in biographies of her mother and brother, are laudable.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Barry's story of the life of a beautiful woman in Sligo makes use of two narrative voices. We have Roseanne Clear (or McNulty, her surname is elusive and problematic), now very old, a longstanding inmate of the local asylum, who is writing the secret scripture of the title, her memories captured on hoarded scraps of paper and hidden beneath the floorboards of her room. Roseanne's narrative is episodic and impressionistic, punctuated with her descriptions of incredible, often very visual, happenings; the flight of the German bombers across the coast being the obvious example. Roseanne is aware of her frailty as a narrator, the fallibility of her memories, and reminds us of this. Dr Grene, Roseanne's psychiatrist, has a more scientific and objective approach in his narrative of Roseanne, which weighs the evidence and tries to achieve some form of truth. There is a third narrative of Roseanne's life which we cannot read in its entirety: Father Gaunt's testimony, found by Dr Grene in ancient medical records, which has shaped the course of Roseanne's life and led directly to her long incarceration. This narrative contradicts Roseanne's own words, and provides alternative readings for some of the more inexplicable events of her childhood, but serves eventually to reinforce the view of Roseanne as a victim of a deeply conservative society and the pervasive power of the clergy.
The book is beautifully written, the two narrative voices distinctive and fully realised, and the two main characters charming. Roseanne's reminiscences of her girlhood, the pleasures of being a young attractive woman with friends to laugh with, of being part of a social group, are particularly poignant given her later life. The way in which the discrepancies in Roseanne's story inform Dr Grene's understanding of his own life, especially his marriage, is touching. However, as Barry remarks in a discussion of this book in the Guardian, you may have to forgive the ending its huge coincidence and deus ex machina in order to love the book. No doubt many other readers got two-thirds of the way through, saw how the land might lie, and thought that the author surely wouldn't do that, only to have their worst fears realised. A month or so after finishing the book, I can now almost forgive it; at the time I was so cross with it that I lent it out immediately.
The book is beautifully written, the two narrative voices distinctive and fully realised, and the two main characters charming. Roseanne's reminiscences of her girlhood, the pleasures of being a young attractive woman with friends to laugh with, of being part of a social group, are particularly poignant given her later life. The way in which the discrepancies in Roseanne's story inform Dr Grene's understanding of his own life, especially his marriage, is touching. However, as Barry remarks in a discussion of this book in the Guardian, you may have to forgive the ending its huge coincidence and deus ex machina in order to love the book. No doubt many other readers got two-thirds of the way through, saw how the land might lie, and thought that the author surely wouldn't do that, only to have their worst fears realised. A month or so after finishing the book, I can now almost forgive it; at the time I was so cross with it that I lent it out immediately.
Thursday 7 May 2009
Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
I've meant to read this for a while, mainly as a companion piece to The Provincial Lady in Wartime, but also because Alison Light devotes a chapter to the work in Forever England which whetted my appetite. Like the Provincial Lady books, originally serialised in Time and Tide, Mrs Miniver first appeared as a regular newspaper column , but in the rather more conservative Times. Jan Struther already had a reputation as a writer of comic journalism and poetry, and was commissioned to create short pieces describing the life of an ordinary mother and housewife like herself. Jan Struther is describe as "unconventional" in Valerie Grove's introduction to the Virago edition and Mrs Miniver is not really all that ordinary; as well as living in bohemian 1930s Chelsea and enjoying hop-picking as a recreation, she has an expansive, worldly wisdom about social encounters, child-rearing and household management, and a vitality that drives her to wring the last drops of benefit out of any encounter or experience that happens her way. Unfortunately Mrs Miniver's harmonious domestic life and admirable sagacity make her just a little annoying and really quite smug. Reading with the Provincial Lady in mind, her children are too perfect and rather predictable - never likely to be found on the back stairs eating cheese - her management of servants too exemplary, and her social ease lacking in self-doubt. However, as a period piece, as a possible exemplar for middle-class British women in the tense times around the beginning of the second World War, Mrs Miniver retains a fascination. Perhaps the perfection and unity of her family and her life were what was required to inspire and fortify her readers. Alison Light suggests that Mrs Miniver was a utopian vision for her readers; her ability to manage life lightly leaves her acres of time for thinking in solitude, for reading, for recalling her favourite poetry. I confess to feeling quite envious of the episode in which she sits on a bench for an hour, enjoying the activities in the park around her, apparently unharried by domestic or professional duties.
I can't be the first reader to notice that the opening of Mrs Miniver is a mirror image of that of Mrs Dalloway. Mrs Dalloway leaves her home to buy flowers and takes a plunge into the vitality of "life, London" on a June day. Mrs Miniver brings her autumn chrysanthemums into her house, closing the door on London and exulting not in the diversity of the city but the sensual and tactual (a favourite Struther word) beauties of her home and its familiar security. Alison Light points to the book's celebration of domestic privacy as a key attraction for its readers; Mrs Dalloway, both character and novel, are more concerned with connections with others. It would be too simplistic to read Mrs Miniver as a simple opposite of Mrs Dalloway, however, since Mrs M is also interested in the connections, the understandings she can make with other people, including those outside her class; her search for an emergency charwoman, leading her to Mrs Burchett, a woman with a zest for life to match her own, shows an expansive interest in others that dilutes the impact of her solitary tendencies. And Mrs Dalloway shares Mrs Miniver's interest in domestic elegance, in the social oil which makes a party go well.
I've never seen the film of Mrs Miniver, but will try to track it down. I was wondering if Mrs Miniver's personal charm operates better when she is made flesh by Greer Garson; but a quick look on Google Books suggest that the film had a very mixed reception among British cinema-goers, some of whom thoughtfully recorded their views for Mass-Observation. Alison Light relates some of the abuse heaped on the character by readers of The Times, including a wish that a bomb would drop on Mrs M and her husband run off with another woman. This reminds me greatly of some of the hatred that attaches to characters from The Archers, which in itself shows that the characters have achieved a life beyond their medium. Part of Struther's achievement is to create a recognisable, individual character who nevertheless is able to stand for important, symbolic aspects of the national character and its aspirations; despite her smugness, Mrs Miniver retains this power, and that makes her, and the work that produced her, sustain our interest.
I can't be the first reader to notice that the opening of Mrs Miniver is a mirror image of that of Mrs Dalloway. Mrs Dalloway leaves her home to buy flowers and takes a plunge into the vitality of "life, London" on a June day. Mrs Miniver brings her autumn chrysanthemums into her house, closing the door on London and exulting not in the diversity of the city but the sensual and tactual (a favourite Struther word) beauties of her home and its familiar security. Alison Light points to the book's celebration of domestic privacy as a key attraction for its readers; Mrs Dalloway, both character and novel, are more concerned with connections with others. It would be too simplistic to read Mrs Miniver as a simple opposite of Mrs Dalloway, however, since Mrs M is also interested in the connections, the understandings she can make with other people, including those outside her class; her search for an emergency charwoman, leading her to Mrs Burchett, a woman with a zest for life to match her own, shows an expansive interest in others that dilutes the impact of her solitary tendencies. And Mrs Dalloway shares Mrs Miniver's interest in domestic elegance, in the social oil which makes a party go well.
I've never seen the film of Mrs Miniver, but will try to track it down. I was wondering if Mrs Miniver's personal charm operates better when she is made flesh by Greer Garson; but a quick look on Google Books suggest that the film had a very mixed reception among British cinema-goers, some of whom thoughtfully recorded their views for Mass-Observation. Alison Light relates some of the abuse heaped on the character by readers of The Times, including a wish that a bomb would drop on Mrs M and her husband run off with another woman. This reminds me greatly of some of the hatred that attaches to characters from The Archers, which in itself shows that the characters have achieved a life beyond their medium. Part of Struther's achievement is to create a recognisable, individual character who nevertheless is able to stand for important, symbolic aspects of the national character and its aspirations; despite her smugness, Mrs Miniver retains this power, and that makes her, and the work that produced her, sustain our interest.
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Convent Girls edited by Jackie Bennett and Rosemary Forgan
This is a collection of interviews and essays with former convent girls, some extremely famous (Germaine Greer, Anne Robinson, Annie Nightingale) and some not, who share the collective experience of having been educated "by a gang of mad women in flapping black habits" (thanks to Germaine for that description). We even get one male convent girl, who ended up spending a year in a girls' convent due to the date of his birthday. There's an excellent historical survey of nuns and convent educations, and a wide range of experiences: Carmen Callil was miserable, a few years earlier, at the school that Germaine recalls with acerbic fondness. Irish convent girls seem generally less positive, but that may be because of the pervasive influence of the Church in Irish society; they tend to see their nuns as repressed, out of touch with the world, and without value. Others remember inspiring teachers and eccentric role models, especially those women who are not Catholic. My mother was a secular Protestant girl at a Catholic convent, and has fond memories of most of the nuns who taught her, perhaps because religion couldn't follow her home. Marina Warner contributes a typically thoughtful essay, which will cause Alone of All Her Sex to be added to my Amazon wish list.
Saturday 25 April 2009
Somewhere towards the end by Diana Athill
Partly a memoir, partly Athill's essays on her shifting view of life as she enters her nineties, this is an elegantly written treat. Athill's awareness of her own advantages and prejudices give a clarity to her writings that make them seem like fundamental truths. Her reflections on the changes brought by old age, and her ability to accept them, are instructive, comforting and inspiring. Because she recognises the advantages of her life - a happy childhood, a secure family life, interesting and stimulating work, late literary success - she avoids the self-satisfied air that could so easily permeate this type of work. Nor is the tone self-pitying when she describes her regrets or mistakes. Athill is very interesting about the benefits of the writing process, the effect of writing on the writer, her ideas and her approaches. This is a very satisfying read; buy a copy now while Athill is still around to spend the royalties.
This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M.Homes
I finished this a couple of weeks ago, and have warmed to it during that period, having been a little underwhelmed during the actual reading of the book. Something of a bildungsroman for the middle aged, we see Richard Novak's life transformed utterly by apparently random occurences and contingent encounters. Homes is skilful in her management of the plot, allowing some circumstances to have later significance, others to simply drift away, part of the eccentric Los Angeles setting for the novel. The relationships Richard develops with Anhil, the doughnut seller, Cynthia, who he meets, happenstance, weeping in a supermarket, and Nic, his writer neighbour in Malibu, are genuine and touching, and frame the reinvention of his relationship with his teenage son Ben. Richard's transition from moneyed hermit, his only human contacts with his housekeeper Cecilia and his nutritionist, to the utterly displaced man adrift in the Pacific on a kitchen table with an acquired dog for company, but with a renewed connection to others, is a familiar narrative. However, the characterisation, the use of detail and the ironies of the novel make it a worthwhile and enjoyable one.
Thursday 16 April 2009
The Literary Note Meme
Thanks to Catherine for this.
1) What author do you own the most books by?
Sylvia Townsend Warner, with Nancy Mitford, E M Delafield, Patrick Gale and Evelyn Waugh close behind. I also have lots of Gerald Durrell who I loved as a teenager, but who will have to be pruned as EMD continues to expand.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I think I no longer have any duplicates, although I did have two or three copies of The Pursuit of Love for a while.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not really.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Claudia from Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?
Cold Comfort Farm, The Pursuit of Love, The Diary of a Provincial Lady, I Capture the Castle, and Nancy Mitford's letters.
6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Probably Little Women, although In the Fifth at Malory Towers was a persistent favourite for many years.
7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Arlington Park.
8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Waterlog for sheer pleasure, The Rest is Noise for awe-inspiring scholarship and insight.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
I read a lot of books by dead people, so I'm not best placed to judge.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
I've just finished This Book will Save Your Life, which would make an amusing film. Films of books are never as good as the pictures in my head.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
The Diary of a Provincial Lady.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I can't remember having one.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
Probably Ann Bannon's pulp lesbian novels, which are highly entertaining.
15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
Ulysses.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I've only seen those more frequently performed. I did once see a production of Antony and Cleopatra in which Cleopatra was played by a man in a green silk dressing-gown and a goatee beard. Fairly obscure for Oxford in 1983.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
No preference.
18 ) Roth or Updike?
They both sound equally vile. I love Florence King's anecdote about having her dinner catch fire, and realising she was trying to burn down the house to avoid reading John Updike for a commissioned article.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Never read either.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare.
21) Austen or Eliot?
TS or George? Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Anna Karenina.
23) What is your favorite novel?
I can't pick favourites, but I come back to Cold Comfort Farm, Pride and Prejudice, The Pursuit of Love, I Capture the Castle, Mrs Dalloway, Hardy, EMD and STW over and over again.
24) Play?
Life of Galileo by Brecht, Not I or Happy Days by Beckett
25) Poem?
The Art of Losing by Elizabeth Bishop, Snow and Entirely by Louis Macneice, The River by STW, Hardy's poem that starts "Woman much missed ..." and When I set out for Lyonnesse.
26) Essay?
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.
27) Short story?
Sylvia Townsend Warner's A Love Match
28) Work of nonfiction?
I'm not sure if Nancy Mitford's letters count as non-fiction. Clare Harman's biography of STW, or Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being.
29) Who is your favourite writer?
Too many to have one. STW, EMD, Nancy Mitford, Virginia Woolf, Sarah Waters, Salley Vickers.
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Probably Ian McEwan, who always starts so well and ends so disappointingly.
31) What is your desert island book?
STW's Collected Poems, which should provide plenty of food for thought during the long hours of lonely contemplation.
32) And… what are you reading right now?
A book called Our Hidden Lives, compiled from Mass Observation diaries and covering the austerity years.
Wednesday 15 April 2009
Bright Young People by D J Taylor
Taylor's history attempts to chart "the rise and fall of a generation", the generation who were mostly too young to have fought in World War I, but old enough to have understood its implications. Often opposed to traditional thinking, with greater independence, more opportunities to earn money, and more indulgent parents than previous generations, this particular fragment of interwar Britain rebelled against their parents through jokes, parties, and pursuing the cult of celebrity. Taylor considers the meaning of class in a frivolous society, the contribution (and sometimes the lack of it) to arts and letters made by its members, and issues of sexuality and criminality. Rather oddly, he suggests that "the real casualties of gay young Bohemia ... were women" (205), not appearing to grasp that any casualties at that time were probably caused by the illegality of homosexual behaviour rather than the behaviour itself. I can't quite believe in Nancy Mitford as a pathetic victim of her gay first love, since she seemed to have a pattern of falling for unavailable men.
Taylor has an excellent resource at his disposal: the letters and diaries of the Ponsonbys, comprising father Arthur, Labour politician and eventual leader of the House of Lords; his wife Dorothea; their conformist son Matthew; and their rebel daughter Elizabeth, who seems to have attended every party held during the 1920s, made a thoroughly unsuccessful marriage, drained her parents of money and died young from the effects of alcoholism. Taylor's sympathies are with the elder Ponsonbys, and it is fairly hard not to agree, but a little more consideration of Elizabeth's reasons for choosing a rackety way of life would have been welcome. Perhaps there simply isn't any evidence of her motivation. Elizabeth's story is a sad and touching one; this, and other similar narratives, prevent the book from being overly infected with the frivolity it depicts; it is a rich source of highly amusing stories. I particularly enjoyed Eddie Gathorne-Hardy teasing his celibate gay butler.
This book reminded me most of a book I read years ago about the Baader-Meinhof group. In both books, the author's distaste for most of his subjects, for their pointless lives, for their limitations, comes strongly off the page. For the Bright Young People, such distaste seems a little harsh. They may have led futile lives, they were certainly silly, but not really so very bad. The final chapter details the successes as well as the failures among this group, but I can't shake the feeling of Taylor's disapproval even for the successes of Robert Byron or Evelyn Waugh.
Taylor has an excellent resource at his disposal: the letters and diaries of the Ponsonbys, comprising father Arthur, Labour politician and eventual leader of the House of Lords; his wife Dorothea; their conformist son Matthew; and their rebel daughter Elizabeth, who seems to have attended every party held during the 1920s, made a thoroughly unsuccessful marriage, drained her parents of money and died young from the effects of alcoholism. Taylor's sympathies are with the elder Ponsonbys, and it is fairly hard not to agree, but a little more consideration of Elizabeth's reasons for choosing a rackety way of life would have been welcome. Perhaps there simply isn't any evidence of her motivation. Elizabeth's story is a sad and touching one; this, and other similar narratives, prevent the book from being overly infected with the frivolity it depicts; it is a rich source of highly amusing stories. I particularly enjoyed Eddie Gathorne-Hardy teasing his celibate gay butler.
This book reminded me most of a book I read years ago about the Baader-Meinhof group. In both books, the author's distaste for most of his subjects, for their pointless lives, for their limitations, comes strongly off the page. For the Bright Young People, such distaste seems a little harsh. They may have led futile lives, they were certainly silly, but not really so very bad. The final chapter details the successes as well as the failures among this group, but I can't shake the feeling of Taylor's disapproval even for the successes of Robert Byron or Evelyn Waugh.
Friday 10 April 2009
Waterlog by Roger Deakin
I have just finished the last pages of this book; the last twenty-four hours have been filled with annoying interruptions, when all I wanted was to read and savour the last few chapters in one sitting. This is an utterly marvellous book, a unique blend of memoir, travel writing, natural history, social history, written in an entrancing, poetic voice that transports the reader straight to the heart of Deakin's knowledge and experience. The book has a great deal to say about the social, physical and psychological importance of swimming, about our need for contact with the water, but is always good-humoured and never didactic; any polemic is gentle, but still has real impact. The stories and voices of the people Deakin meets on his journey, the swimmers, rowers and fishermen, ring out authentically and build a rounded portrait of the British relationship with water, and of the country itself. This book has made me want to do two things: read it again, and then go for a swim in an oxbow lake in the Windrush, as Deakins does and as I often did as a child. Brighton beach just isn't the same.
Sunday 5 April 2009
The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to 1950s by Nicola Humble
Nicola Humble's fascinating work considers the establishment of the feminine middlebrow novel as a genre, and the growth and social spread of middlebrow readers, before examining the treatment and use of the themes of class, domesticity, the family and gender roles within a wide range of middlebrow fictions from the period. Humble's contention is that middlebrow fiction's response to modernity is not only to resist change and development, but also to promote new roles and social structures. Middlebrow novels are usually set in an upper-middle-class milieu, but are read by lower-middle class readers; these novels undermine class distinction by allowing the reader from a lower social class to infiltrate this closed world, understanding its secret codes and learning its distinctive ways of life. Sometimes this subversion led to the extension of snobberies; Humble identifies the effects of Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige, which extended the knowledge of upper-class language usage to all who happened to read it, exporting its strictures on terms such as notepaper to a wider social group. These novels often act almost as self-help guides for the modern middle-class woman, identifying appropriate ways of living, of arranging a house and dealing with servants, of managing social life; this exemplary tone makes their ambiguities and subversions about the rules of life more significant, as readers might learn a variety of lessons, each amply supported by the instructive mood of the text. Humble manages a wide range of texts here, including some writers such as Rose Macaulay and Elizabeth Bowen now frequently claimed as highbrow, but undoubtedly enjoyed by a contemporary middlebrow audience. Humble came to these texts as reading for pleasure during her English degree; her taste for "girly books" as they called them was shared by her friends, who swapped second-hand bookshop finds and were an ideal market for the output of Virago in the early 1980s. Her pleasure in these books does not limit her ability to engage with the text as a clear-eyed critic, and to identify their demerits along with their achievements, and this results in a satisfying, balanced evaluation of these works, and a stimulus for my own further thought and future research in this area.
Saturday 28 March 2009
Challenge to Clarissa by E M Delafield
In this slight, but amusing, 1931 novel, Delafield creates another monstrous, controlling mother, facing the consequences when her family move beyond her control. The novel opens with Clarissa's pursuit of, and eventual marriage to, the impoverished, limp and dissipated Reggie Fitzmaurice. Clarissa has been widowed during the first World War, and has inherited her husband's property and her father's money. Fitzmaurice is already married, to the daughter of the Princess de Candi-Laquerrière, adulterous Aldegonde, but is not seriously inclined to divorce her until Clarissa forces his hand. We get an early taste of Clarissa's belief that all obstacles can be removed with a liberal application of cash when she offers to settle £5,000 on Aldegonde once the divorce is completed, an offer that is gently turned down by the Princesse. Fitzmaurice makes one condition before agreeing to the divorce: to keep in his care his daughter Sophie.
The narrative jumps ten years. Sophie is newly grown up and being circulated vigorously by Clarissa on the marriage market. Clarissa's son by her first husband, Lucien, is a year or two older than Sophie, and has been brought up to view her as his sister. During a summer house party at Mardale, their country home, Clarissa engineers a visit from a rich young lord, the hilariously named Bat Clutterthorpe, who proposes to Sophie; she obediently accepts. However, the Princesse and her retinue have arrrived in the area and meet Sophie and Lucien. Lucien quarrels with his mother, rushes from the house and immediately encounters the Princesse, who correctly diagnoses his problem: he is in love with Sophie. With his true feelings brought to light, Lucien proposes to Sophie, who accepts and immediately breaks off her engagement to Bat, who is decidedly unbothered. They announce to Clarissa that they intend to marry. Her response is to throw an impressive tantrum; refusing to countenance the marriage, she sets about arranging to send Lucien abroad and to ensure that Sophie becomes re-engaged to Bat. The Princesse, realising that Clarissa's only vulnerability is her abiding love for Fitzmaurice, bribes him to intervene. Unable to refuse the temptation of £300 a year of his own, Fitzmaurice threatens to leave Clarissa unless the marriage goes ahead. Clarissa is outraged, but defeated, and soon she is managing Lucien and Sophie's wedding plans as if it had been her idea in the first place.
The novel is based around doubles and opposites. Clarissa, the vulgar, materialist autocrat, is balanced against the Princesse, aristocratic and sensitive. Lucien's genuine love for Sophie is doubled by Bat's need for a suitable wife. The rakish and fairly useless Fitzmaurice is doubled by Cliffe Montgomery, part of the Princesse's circle, her fixer and organiser with a robust moral core. The doubles are not necessarily opposites, however; the Princesse is as controlling as Clarissa, in her way, but uses love and charm to manage her friends and family, and is not above using money to achieve her ends. The miserable household at Mardale is set opposite the happy home of Clarissa's agent, Mr King; his two children have been given the names Orlando and Rosalind, another couple eventually united after many trials and oppositions. These two minor characters echo Lucien and Sophie and point towards the happy ending.
Delafield works in a great number of minor characters, some more successfully than others. As well as the Kings, there are Olivia King (the agent's sister) and Elinor Fish, who share a house in the village; Miss Silver, who appears briefly to let her house to the Princesse and charm Cliffe Montgomery; Catiche, the Princesse's old governess who still looks after her; Alberta, the Princesse's younger daughter; and Radow, the dead Aldegonde's second husband, a violinist. Elinor Fish is a kinder satire of the Oxford-educated middle-aged feminist than is Miss Pankerton in the Diary, but of the same type. Alberta exists mainly as a warning to Sophie of how she might turn out. Radow is a distracting interruption who serves only to rouse Clarissa to greater heights of autocracy. While the characterisation of several of these is excellent, and they also allow some good jokes, a little pruning would have harmed neither the plot nor the satire.
The affectionate satire that Delafield employs for most of the characters contrasts strongly with her handling of Clarissa. We are told again and again how vulgar and domineering Clarissa is; she uses "ugly words", is over-made-up, has hard lines around her mouth and eyes. Delafield's ironic mockery is replaced by direct criticism. Social climbing seems to be the only motivation for Clarissa's behaviour, coupled with an innate taste for domination, but sometimes I wondered why she was bothering to control a family she considers stupid and useless: "I have to do everything for you, think of everything for you" is the constant refrain. Clarissa is certainly bad enough to join the ranks of Delafield's monstrous mothers, but she is something of a cardboard villain, in the end quite easily defeated.
The oversupply of minor characters, and the awkward switches between irony and excoriation, limit the effectiveness of the book, but it is still an entertaining read with well-drawn and amusing characters.
The narrative jumps ten years. Sophie is newly grown up and being circulated vigorously by Clarissa on the marriage market. Clarissa's son by her first husband, Lucien, is a year or two older than Sophie, and has been brought up to view her as his sister. During a summer house party at Mardale, their country home, Clarissa engineers a visit from a rich young lord, the hilariously named Bat Clutterthorpe, who proposes to Sophie; she obediently accepts. However, the Princesse and her retinue have arrrived in the area and meet Sophie and Lucien. Lucien quarrels with his mother, rushes from the house and immediately encounters the Princesse, who correctly diagnoses his problem: he is in love with Sophie. With his true feelings brought to light, Lucien proposes to Sophie, who accepts and immediately breaks off her engagement to Bat, who is decidedly unbothered. They announce to Clarissa that they intend to marry. Her response is to throw an impressive tantrum; refusing to countenance the marriage, she sets about arranging to send Lucien abroad and to ensure that Sophie becomes re-engaged to Bat. The Princesse, realising that Clarissa's only vulnerability is her abiding love for Fitzmaurice, bribes him to intervene. Unable to refuse the temptation of £300 a year of his own, Fitzmaurice threatens to leave Clarissa unless the marriage goes ahead. Clarissa is outraged, but defeated, and soon she is managing Lucien and Sophie's wedding plans as if it had been her idea in the first place.
The novel is based around doubles and opposites. Clarissa, the vulgar, materialist autocrat, is balanced against the Princesse, aristocratic and sensitive. Lucien's genuine love for Sophie is doubled by Bat's need for a suitable wife. The rakish and fairly useless Fitzmaurice is doubled by Cliffe Montgomery, part of the Princesse's circle, her fixer and organiser with a robust moral core. The doubles are not necessarily opposites, however; the Princesse is as controlling as Clarissa, in her way, but uses love and charm to manage her friends and family, and is not above using money to achieve her ends. The miserable household at Mardale is set opposite the happy home of Clarissa's agent, Mr King; his two children have been given the names Orlando and Rosalind, another couple eventually united after many trials and oppositions. These two minor characters echo Lucien and Sophie and point towards the happy ending.
Delafield works in a great number of minor characters, some more successfully than others. As well as the Kings, there are Olivia King (the agent's sister) and Elinor Fish, who share a house in the village; Miss Silver, who appears briefly to let her house to the Princesse and charm Cliffe Montgomery; Catiche, the Princesse's old governess who still looks after her; Alberta, the Princesse's younger daughter; and Radow, the dead Aldegonde's second husband, a violinist. Elinor Fish is a kinder satire of the Oxford-educated middle-aged feminist than is Miss Pankerton in the Diary, but of the same type. Alberta exists mainly as a warning to Sophie of how she might turn out. Radow is a distracting interruption who serves only to rouse Clarissa to greater heights of autocracy. While the characterisation of several of these is excellent, and they also allow some good jokes, a little pruning would have harmed neither the plot nor the satire.
The affectionate satire that Delafield employs for most of the characters contrasts strongly with her handling of Clarissa. We are told again and again how vulgar and domineering Clarissa is; she uses "ugly words", is over-made-up, has hard lines around her mouth and eyes. Delafield's ironic mockery is replaced by direct criticism. Social climbing seems to be the only motivation for Clarissa's behaviour, coupled with an innate taste for domination, but sometimes I wondered why she was bothering to control a family she considers stupid and useless: "I have to do everything for you, think of everything for you" is the constant refrain. Clarissa is certainly bad enough to join the ranks of Delafield's monstrous mothers, but she is something of a cardboard villain, in the end quite easily defeated.
The oversupply of minor characters, and the awkward switches between irony and excoriation, limit the effectiveness of the book, but it is still an entertaining read with well-drawn and amusing characters.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
This was a present, and I doubt I would have come to it independently, so I'm grateful to the giver for introducing me to a rewarding, if depressing, book. Grenville's story begins, after an Australian preview, with the childhood, apprenticeship and marriage of William Thornhill in impoverished nineteenth-century Borough. Thornhill is initially successful, becomes a boatman on the Thames and marries his master's daughter Sal. But through bad luck he loses his own boat and must find work as a lighterman. Lightermen do not earn enough to support a family, but the opportunities for petty theft are many, and Will and Sal make do for a while. But Will tries one job too many, and is caught in the fog stealing timber; his brother Rob dies during the ensuing scuffle leading to Will's arrest. I had rather taken to simple Rob and was sorry to see him go over the side of the boat. Will is sentenced to death, but his sentence is commuted to transportation, and his wife and child - children, by the end of the voyage - go with him to Australia.
At first, things go relatively well. William works his sentence and gains parole; Sal sets up a makeshift pub in their hut in Sydney. Will gets work as a boatman with Blackwood, who travels up the Hawkesbury River to transport goods to and from the settler farmers. On one of these journeys Will falls for a piece of land, a headland the same shape as his thumb, and, besotted with colonial lust, persuades Sal to move the family there. Once there, they live in an uneasy truce with the original residents for a while, but eventually are unable to take the advice of Blackwood to "give a little, take a little" with the Aborigines, leading to greater tension and, in the end, an act of unspeakable violence. Thornhill's subsequent bourgeois comfort is dearly bought.
Grenville's style is neutral, letting Thornill's thoughts and actions speak for themselves. The depiction of Thornhill's gradual descent into criminal or depraved activity, first in London and then in Australia, is skilfully handled. Thornhill is always human, his reactions to his circumstances often complex and ambiguous; he grows to value the Aborigines as people, to recognise their status and power, but simultaneously resents and despises them as a group. While there are obvious lessons to be learned from this colonialist's story, the book is not a moral treatise; the characterisation is strong and realistic, from the robust Sal to the enigmatic Blackwood, and Grenville has a deft touch with incidental characters that makes them real and memorable. The book is, however, immensely sad; the circumstances of Thornhill's life are difficult in the first place, his few opportunities turn bad through ill luck and bad judgement, and all parties pay a dreadful price for his eventual establishment as a landowner. Probably best read on a sunny day when things are going fairly well, or as a penitential act when enjoying a luxurious holiday.
At first, things go relatively well. William works his sentence and gains parole; Sal sets up a makeshift pub in their hut in Sydney. Will gets work as a boatman with Blackwood, who travels up the Hawkesbury River to transport goods to and from the settler farmers. On one of these journeys Will falls for a piece of land, a headland the same shape as his thumb, and, besotted with colonial lust, persuades Sal to move the family there. Once there, they live in an uneasy truce with the original residents for a while, but eventually are unable to take the advice of Blackwood to "give a little, take a little" with the Aborigines, leading to greater tension and, in the end, an act of unspeakable violence. Thornhill's subsequent bourgeois comfort is dearly bought.
Grenville's style is neutral, letting Thornill's thoughts and actions speak for themselves. The depiction of Thornhill's gradual descent into criminal or depraved activity, first in London and then in Australia, is skilfully handled. Thornhill is always human, his reactions to his circumstances often complex and ambiguous; he grows to value the Aborigines as people, to recognise their status and power, but simultaneously resents and despises them as a group. While there are obvious lessons to be learned from this colonialist's story, the book is not a moral treatise; the characterisation is strong and realistic, from the robust Sal to the enigmatic Blackwood, and Grenville has a deft touch with incidental characters that makes them real and memorable. The book is, however, immensely sad; the circumstances of Thornhill's life are difficult in the first place, his few opportunities turn bad through ill luck and bad judgement, and all parties pay a dreadful price for his eventual establishment as a landowner. Probably best read on a sunny day when things are going fairly well, or as a penitential act when enjoying a luxurious holiday.
Sunday 22 March 2009
Where Three Roads Meet by Salley Vickers
Another in the Canongate series of works inspired by myth (which gave us the marvellous Girl meets boy), this time addressing the story of Oedipus. Sigmund Freud is seriously ill with oral cancer and undergoing a series of painful operations, able to talk and eat only with the aid of a prosthesis called the Monster. In hospital and at his Hampstead home he is visited by Tiresias, who tells him the story from his perspective, from his first meeting with Oedipus at Delphi, to the end of his life. The book begins with Freud's own retelling of the story, then a short description of the diagnosis of his cancer, his move to London following the annexation of Austria by the Nazis, and his death. The remainder of the text is constructed entirely in dialogue between Tiresias and Freud, Tiresias revealing his identity slowly to the reader and to Freud. The result is a fascinating account of Tiresias's life, the stories of Oedipus and Jocasta, and of Freud's protracted final illness. Vickers has a certain amount of fun with Freud, at one point allowing him to recount a dream stuffed with phallic and Oedipal imagery, and letting Tiresias gently mock his atheism by pointing out Freud's superstiitious attachment to objects, and his affection for the goddess Athena. Vickers finds parallels like the relationship with Athena between the stories that construct the narrative, creating an intricate and expansive network of connections between mythical Greece and Europe in the 1930s. All of this adds up to a satisfyingly crunchy and thought-provoking book, that will definitely be added to the 'to be re-read' pile.
Nuns: A History of Convent Life 1450-1700 by Silvia Evangelisti
This is an excellent book, well-written and thorougly researched, on a fascinating topic. Evangelisti's central thesis is that nuns, although separated from society by the convent walls, were nevertheless integrated and connected to that society through social, policitical and economic as well as spiritual bonds. In the introduction she asserts the place of the convent as a familiar part of both urban and rural landscapes; the remainder of the book goes on to demonstrate how nuns themselves formed and contributed to the societies around them.
The main historical event of the book is the Council of Trent, which required the stricter enclosure of nuns as part of its responses the reformation. Walls were built higher, grilles installed in windows, and the nuns' choirs in their churches often screened from public sight. Convents had two doors separating them from the world, with the keys to the outer door held only by a priest. These reforms also required that convents were answerable to the Bishop, in an attempt to maintain male dominance over women and thwart women's self-governance. This met with mixed results. Some women embraced the enclosure as a spiritual opportunity; others met the Bishop's emissary, come to discuss enclosure, by attempting to drop a large lump of marble onto his head from a high point in the convent. It's hard to imagine the Bishop's authority having much sway in the governance of that particular convent.
Evangelisiti shows how nuns participated in the life of society through participation in the arts, including writing, painting, music and acting, and through the convent's position as a centre for spiritual and social support. On a saint's feast-day, a procession would carried around the convent by local people and then continued inside the convent by the nuns; people would come to the convent church, and wait outside the building, to hear the nuns singing from behind the enclosure. Many nuns wrote memoirs, often at the behest of their confessors, and their published works gave them a relationship with readers across the world. Convents were important as educators of girls, providers of save retreats for widows, and, more contentiously, as homes for unmarriageable daughters. The convent dowry was often considerably less than the marriage dowry, and consequently many women without vocations entered the convent because it was expedient for their families. Convents usually perpetuated external social divisions, recruiting choir nuns from the upper classes, servant nuns from the lower classes; social mobility within the convent seems to have been limited, with few nuns from the lower classes learning how to read and write, and only choir nuns being able to vote in chapter and be elected to senior offices.
The final chapter is devoted to orders established to working beyond the enclosure as nurses, teachers or providers of social care. Some such orders, such as the Ursulines, were obliged to submit to enclosure and limit their community activities. However, as war and increased urbanisation meant that societies had a greater need for the support provided by such orders, such orders were better tolerated and increased their membership and activities significantly. This gives force to Evangelisti's assertion that religious communities are necessary to, and integrated with, their wider society: we get the nuns that we need and want. The argument is persuasive.
The main historical event of the book is the Council of Trent, which required the stricter enclosure of nuns as part of its responses the reformation. Walls were built higher, grilles installed in windows, and the nuns' choirs in their churches often screened from public sight. Convents had two doors separating them from the world, with the keys to the outer door held only by a priest. These reforms also required that convents were answerable to the Bishop, in an attempt to maintain male dominance over women and thwart women's self-governance. This met with mixed results. Some women embraced the enclosure as a spiritual opportunity; others met the Bishop's emissary, come to discuss enclosure, by attempting to drop a large lump of marble onto his head from a high point in the convent. It's hard to imagine the Bishop's authority having much sway in the governance of that particular convent.
Evangelisiti shows how nuns participated in the life of society through participation in the arts, including writing, painting, music and acting, and through the convent's position as a centre for spiritual and social support. On a saint's feast-day, a procession would carried around the convent by local people and then continued inside the convent by the nuns; people would come to the convent church, and wait outside the building, to hear the nuns singing from behind the enclosure. Many nuns wrote memoirs, often at the behest of their confessors, and their published works gave them a relationship with readers across the world. Convents were important as educators of girls, providers of save retreats for widows, and, more contentiously, as homes for unmarriageable daughters. The convent dowry was often considerably less than the marriage dowry, and consequently many women without vocations entered the convent because it was expedient for their families. Convents usually perpetuated external social divisions, recruiting choir nuns from the upper classes, servant nuns from the lower classes; social mobility within the convent seems to have been limited, with few nuns from the lower classes learning how to read and write, and only choir nuns being able to vote in chapter and be elected to senior offices.
The final chapter is devoted to orders established to working beyond the enclosure as nurses, teachers or providers of social care. Some such orders, such as the Ursulines, were obliged to submit to enclosure and limit their community activities. However, as war and increased urbanisation meant that societies had a greater need for the support provided by such orders, such orders were better tolerated and increased their membership and activities significantly. This gives force to Evangelisti's assertion that religious communities are necessary to, and integrated with, their wider society: we get the nuns that we need and want. The argument is persuasive.
Sunday 1 March 2009
Ladies, Please Don't Smash These Windows by Maroula Joannou
Subtitled Women's writing, feminist consciousness and social change 1918-38, Joannou's book considers issues of feminism, pacifism and socialism within the work of some well-known feminist writers, such as Vera Brittain and Virginia Woolf, and some now quite obscure writers including Leonora Eyles and Katharine Burdekin. The book is arranged thematically but also traces a chronological journey from the Great War, with a critical evaluation of Vera Brittain's feminism as evinced in Testament of Youth, to the eve of the second World War and a consideration of Woolf's feminist and pacifist Three Guineas. These opening and closing chapters mirror each other to a certain extent, with Joannou identifying the class-bound and individualist nature of Brittain's experience which limits her radicalism, and opposing them with a reading of Three Guineas that draws out its greater radicalism, showing how Woolf used this book to align herself with those outside her class and removed from her Bloomsbury peers. During the journey through the inter-war period we look at the socialist-feminist works of Leonora Eyles, a new name to me and a middle-class writer who attempted to depict and critique patriarchal and industrial society; the portrayal of the spinster in works by Sylvia Townsend Warner, Winifred Holtby and F M Mayor; lesbian representation in Orlando and The Well of Loneliness; and the relationships between femininity and feminism in Bowen's The Death of the Heart and Lehmann's The Weather in the Streets. The chapter on lesbianism argues that the non-traditional narrative structure and elements of fantasy in Orlando enable Woolf to offer a much more trenchant critique of masculinity and patriarchy than is possible for the more realistic and more obvious (and, in its day, more shocking) Well of Loneliness. A similar argument is used to compare STW's Lolly Willowes, whose escape from respectable middle-class life into life as a witch in rural Bedfordshire, and FMM's Rector's Daughter, which may take a light ironic tone when describing the life of Mary Jocelyn, and show ambivalence about Mary's self-sacrifice, but cannot achieve the critical bite of Lolly Willowes; it lacks the latter book's scope and internal freedom to do so. The introduction and conclusion point to the need for socialist and Marxist analyses of the 1930s to take account of and incorporate feminist critiques if we are to gain a full understanding of the period, and also argue strongly for the study of traditional, non-modernist writers alongside the modernist interwar women writers; Joannou exemplifies this type of comparative study extremely well throughout the book. A thoughtful and provocative critique, then, that places the lesser-known and traditional writers within an expansive canon of interwar literary production.
Thursday 19 February 2009
BBC book meme
I've not quite been able to finish my current book for a while now, as life has been intervening in its tiresome way, but was tempted back to complete this, borrowed from Catherine:
2) Star (*) the ones you LOVE.
3) Italicize those you plan on reading
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (my O level novel, so love was extinguished by over-exposure)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (only part has been read, although I have sung in both Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Swingin' Samson)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I've read the first volume)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most of the plays and sonnets have been read)
15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot *
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read the first chapter and remembered why I hate Dickens)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (reading The Red Pony at school put me off Steinbeck)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame*
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (see Bleak House)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I had to have the Christian allegory explained to me at the age of 20)
34 Emma - Jane Austen*
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne *
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins *
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy *
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons * (the Higher Common Sense)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (frightful)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (half this list is school set texts, isn't it?)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (gave up half way through)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (the only tolerable Dickens)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Malory Towers is greatly superior)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
More than half, which is more than I expected, and if I ever get around to reading the italicised texts then my total will be quite respectable. Ulysses ought to get you five points rather than one.
BBC Book List
Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and make those you have read bold.2) Star (*) the ones you LOVE.
3) Italicize those you plan on reading
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (my O level novel, so love was extinguished by over-exposure)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (only part has been read, although I have sung in both Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Swingin' Samson)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I've read the first volume)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most of the plays and sonnets have been read)
15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot *
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read the first chapter and remembered why I hate Dickens)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (reading The Red Pony at school put me off Steinbeck)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame*
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (see Bleak House)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I had to have the Christian allegory explained to me at the age of 20)
34 Emma - Jane Austen*
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne *
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins *
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy *
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons * (the Higher Common Sense)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (frightful)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (half this list is school set texts, isn't it?)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (gave up half way through)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (the only tolerable Dickens)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Malory Towers is greatly superior)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
More than half, which is more than I expected, and if I ever get around to reading the italicised texts then my total will be quite respectable. Ulysses ought to get you five points rather than one.
Saturday 31 January 2009
E.M. Delafield by Maurice L McCullen
This appears to be the only critical work ever published about E.M. Delafield, and has been out of print for some time. My copy came (via Amazon) from the withdrawn stock of the South Dakota State Library; it doesn't look like anyone in South Dakota ever borrowed it.
McCullen's work begins with a short biography, then goes on to review EMD's books and some of her journalism. His analysis is strongly biographical in tone; this is reasonable, up to a point, given the autobiographical nature of much of EMD's work, and he does consider the difference between the narrative voice of the Provincial Lady, and her creator. He also offers a psychological interpretation of some of the major works, and considers EMD's approaches to form. EMD's output was large, and he argues persuasively that the standard of her achievement might have been generally higher if she had restricted this; however, he also appears convinced that her best books are very good indeed.
This is a fairly short work, which works well as an overview of EMD's work and a critical introduction to her methods and themes. McCullen notes the need for a feminist evaluation of her work, to support his claim that she deserves "a place, however small, in the Great Tradition".
McCullen's work begins with a short biography, then goes on to review EMD's books and some of her journalism. His analysis is strongly biographical in tone; this is reasonable, up to a point, given the autobiographical nature of much of EMD's work, and he does consider the difference between the narrative voice of the Provincial Lady, and her creator. He also offers a psychological interpretation of some of the major works, and considers EMD's approaches to form. EMD's output was large, and he argues persuasively that the standard of her achievement might have been generally higher if she had restricted this; however, he also appears convinced that her best books are very good indeed.
This is a fairly short work, which works well as an overview of EMD's work and a critical introduction to her methods and themes. McCullen notes the need for a feminist evaluation of her work, to support his claim that she deserves "a place, however small, in the Great Tradition".
Sunday 25 January 2009
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
I have a feeling everyone else in the world has read this, so I'll limit my comments to asserting that this is a clever and funny little fable about the redemptive power of reading, and to wondering why Alan Bennett writes so much about the Queen.
Sunday 18 January 2009
Still Here by Linda Grant
Still Here is a densely textured novel, weaving love stories into major historical events and big ideas about memory, evil and redemption. The action of the novel is compressed into a relatively short timeframe, contrasting effectively with its historical range and moral scope. The events follow the death of Lotte Rebick, mother of Alix who narrates part of the text, and her brother Sam, a successful Liverpool defence lawyer. Sam brings Alix into contact with Joseph, an American architect in Liverpool to build a hotel. Alix, single and frustrated, comes to desire Joseph soon after they meet, but Grant delays their union in a story full of twists and diversions.
The historical background in this book encompasses the development and decline of Liverpool, the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, the division of Germany and the Yom Kippur war. Grant manages this breadth expertly and convincingly. Joseph, the outsider, is often told the stories and retells them to us in his narrative; when he finally tells his own history, having kept it secret for years, this reversal intensifies the power of his revelation, and gives greater point to the sudden realisation of his attraction to Alix, the woman who can hear his story and bear it unflinchingly. The protagonists' frustrated desires echo those of Lotte's for her gemütlich Dresden childhood and for a new life in America, never to be achieved. Achieving your desire is also dangerous, as Joseph discovers when his estranged wife returns to him, so changed by cosmetic surgery and dieting that his desire for her evaporates almost instantly. One of the enjoyable aspects of this book is that Alix, the strong, powerful, argumentative woman, the feminist, is fulfilled rather than thwarted, as is so often the case for similar characters.
I'm a reader and admirer of Linda Grant's writing on fashion and beauty, and another great pleasure in this book is the importance of clothes and beauty to the narrative - and to the plot. A rewarding and satisfying read.
The historical background in this book encompasses the development and decline of Liverpool, the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, the division of Germany and the Yom Kippur war. Grant manages this breadth expertly and convincingly. Joseph, the outsider, is often told the stories and retells them to us in his narrative; when he finally tells his own history, having kept it secret for years, this reversal intensifies the power of his revelation, and gives greater point to the sudden realisation of his attraction to Alix, the woman who can hear his story and bear it unflinchingly. The protagonists' frustrated desires echo those of Lotte's for her gemütlich Dresden childhood and for a new life in America, never to be achieved. Achieving your desire is also dangerous, as Joseph discovers when his estranged wife returns to him, so changed by cosmetic surgery and dieting that his desire for her evaporates almost instantly. One of the enjoyable aspects of this book is that Alix, the strong, powerful, argumentative woman, the feminist, is fulfilled rather than thwarted, as is so often the case for similar characters.
I'm a reader and admirer of Linda Grant's writing on fashion and beauty, and another great pleasure in this book is the importance of clothes and beauty to the narrative - and to the plot. A rewarding and satisfying read.
Saturday 17 January 2009
Barbara Hepworth: a life of forms by Sally Festing
Shortly after reading Patrick Gale’s Notes from an Exhibition, in which Barbara Hepworth has a cameo role, I spotted this in a second-hand bookshop and was inspired to find out more about the real woman. I’m not entirely sure that I did discover the real Barbara Hepworth, but there was certainly a great deal of more. Festing’s biography is thorough, tracing Hepworth’s development as an artist throughout her life and emphasising how her relationship with the landscape – in Yorkshire during her childhood, in Italy as a young woman, and most enduringly in west Cornwall – fed her creative drive and the evolution of her aesthetic. In parts the book is more of a monograph, describing key Hepworth works in detail; more photographs to support these descriptions would have greatly enhanced this aspect of the book. Hepworth displayed an extraordinary singularity of purpose which enabled her to be celebrated as the first truly great female sculptor. However, she was not a monomaniac; she also pursued a personal life. Festing attributes the failure of both of Hepworth’s marriages partly to Barbara’s resolute prioritisation of her work and partly to her choices of fellow artists as husbands; more blame is perhaps attached to the failure of her relationship with her younger son. Gale’s Hepworth character is something of a monster, a capricious grande dame whose influence over the artists working around her in St Ives can be profound and malign. Festing’s Hepworth certainly plays the grande dame when it benefits her, but is also vulnerable and insecure about her work, its aesthetic and monetary value, and her status as its creator. This insecurity must underpin her reluctance to acknowledge the work of her assistants in interviews, her squabbles with critics, galleries and agents, and Festing suggests it was fostered by the endless and negative comparison she endured with her friend and contemporary, Henry Moore. There is relatively little here about her relationship with the St Ives artistic community; passing references to her involvement on the committee of the Penwith art society suggest that, like most of her relationships, it was a difficult one. Certainly the book is peppered with quarrels with other artists in St Ives and beyond.
Like many pioneering women of her generation, Barbara’s relationship with feminism seems to be ambivalent; she strives for independence and recognition, but relies heavily on male opinion, and makes few female friends. Contemporary art critics certainly seem to have treated her unfairly because of her gender, particularly in comparison to the way in which they reviewed the work of Moore. While this biography was interesting and stimulating, it was not an enjoyable read. Festing is a poet as well as a biographer and there are frequent episodes of imaginative insights into Barbara’s state of mind expressed in poetic language; my preference is for biography more rooted in evidence. Sometimes Festing’s poetic style deserts her, resulting in such inelegant phrasing such as: “In Japan and Australia, moreover, both, as it happens, male-dominated societies, her work is most highly acclaimed of all” (293). What is that “moreover” doing in there? Why all the commas? Do Japan and Australia acclaim her work more than other countries do, or more than the work of other sculptors? Despite infelicities of prose, the book has made me want to seek out more of Hepworth’s work, and know it better. For three years, I saw a Hepworth almost every day, outside the library at the University of Nottingham; I remember it even more fondly now that I understand some of the ideas and the effort that went into its creation.
Like many pioneering women of her generation, Barbara’s relationship with feminism seems to be ambivalent; she strives for independence and recognition, but relies heavily on male opinion, and makes few female friends. Contemporary art critics certainly seem to have treated her unfairly because of her gender, particularly in comparison to the way in which they reviewed the work of Moore. While this biography was interesting and stimulating, it was not an enjoyable read. Festing is a poet as well as a biographer and there are frequent episodes of imaginative insights into Barbara’s state of mind expressed in poetic language; my preference is for biography more rooted in evidence. Sometimes Festing’s poetic style deserts her, resulting in such inelegant phrasing such as: “In Japan and Australia, moreover, both, as it happens, male-dominated societies, her work is most highly acclaimed of all” (293). What is that “moreover” doing in there? Why all the commas? Do Japan and Australia acclaim her work more than other countries do, or more than the work of other sculptors? Despite infelicities of prose, the book has made me want to seek out more of Hepworth’s work, and know it better. For three years, I saw a Hepworth almost every day, outside the library at the University of Nottingham; I remember it even more fondly now that I understand some of the ideas and the effort that went into its creation.
Monday 12 January 2009
The Rest is Noise: listening to the 20th century by Alex Ross
There are many, many reasons to praise this book. Geoff Dyer's quote on the cover calls it "a work of immense scope and ambition ... a great achievement"; inside the cover the praise is justified over and over again. Ross has linked together the stories of most of the significant composers of the last century, their lives, their work, and the interlinked nature of their work. He is particularly fascinating on Shostakovich and the ways in Soviet Russia, and Stalin, affected his work and life; on the pervasive influence of Schoenberg and twelve-tone music; and on both European and American musical responses to American modernity. There are fascinating nuggets of information: Dvorak was convinced that the first great American composer would be black; the only vaguely nasty thing anyone could be induced to say about Messiaen was that he and his wife had once eaten a whole tart without sharing it with their guest. Messiaen seems to be an exception to quite a roster of ego-driven, rather monstrous characters amongst the other composers described here, and Ross links this to Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, in which the composor Adrian Leverkühn makes the ultimate bargain in return for aesthetic and worldly success. Both Ross and Mann suggest that the creation of great music is difficult to reconcile with great humanity; ironic in view of the humanising effect of music on audience and performer.
Ross is extremely good at describing musical works so that readers without great musical knowledge (including this reader) can understand the techniques used, and their relation to other works, but also at making you want to hear the music, even at the challenging or downright noisy end of the spectrum. I hope his list of recommended recordings is much used; I know I will be making many trips to the library to broaden my own experience of this work, which is shamefully limited.
Having read a lot about modernism and the avant-garde in literature and art in recent years, it was fascinating to see similar arguments, movements, schisms and declines described here. There is much here to compete, in avant-garde terms, with the excesses of Dada. But, with the possible exception of Weimar Berlin, until the late twentieth century music remained embedded in the Academy. Work, however challenging, continued to be performed by orchestras, in concert halls, as part of programmes and festivals. Unlike other modernisms, the modernisms of music cannot separate definitively from the cultural mainstream, until music begins to make use of tape and other recorded sound which can be performed in a greater variety of places. There is no obvious equivalent of Shakespeare and Co, publisher of Ulysses, to enable the performance of avant-garde work. Rather than necessarily compromising the impact of modernist composition, perhaps this enhances the significance of modernist composers' rebellion - against conservative traditions and then against modernist orthodoxy - and accounts for the longevity of innovations and their influence throughout the last century.
Ross is extremely good at describing musical works so that readers without great musical knowledge (including this reader) can understand the techniques used, and their relation to other works, but also at making you want to hear the music, even at the challenging or downright noisy end of the spectrum. I hope his list of recommended recordings is much used; I know I will be making many trips to the library to broaden my own experience of this work, which is shamefully limited.
Having read a lot about modernism and the avant-garde in literature and art in recent years, it was fascinating to see similar arguments, movements, schisms and declines described here. There is much here to compete, in avant-garde terms, with the excesses of Dada. But, with the possible exception of Weimar Berlin, until the late twentieth century music remained embedded in the Academy. Work, however challenging, continued to be performed by orchestras, in concert halls, as part of programmes and festivals. Unlike other modernisms, the modernisms of music cannot separate definitively from the cultural mainstream, until music begins to make use of tape and other recorded sound which can be performed in a greater variety of places. There is no obvious equivalent of Shakespeare and Co, publisher of Ulysses, to enable the performance of avant-garde work. Rather than necessarily compromising the impact of modernist composition, perhaps this enhances the significance of modernist composers' rebellion - against conservative traditions and then against modernist orthodoxy - and accounts for the longevity of innovations and their influence throughout the last century.
Tuesday 6 January 2009
When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson
I really disliked Charlotte Mendelson's first novel, Love in Idleness, but was tempted to try this one by the excellent reviews. On the whole they were well deserved. Mendelson's prose is witty and sharp and she manages her host of characters and the plot well. Leo and Frances, the "bad" siblings who put themselves before family, are well-drawn and sympathetic; Frances's escape from an unhappy marriage, lurching through a series of epiphanies to the beginning of happiness, was moving and powerful, and Claudia, the matriarch who could so easily be a monstrous caricature, is instead attractive and fallible. I found Emily and Simeon, the younger children unable or unwilling to leave the family home, to be ciphers; Emily's return to the family fold to support her mother was unconvincing and seemed merely to serve as a contrast for Frances. One episode of Love in Idleness that I still remember, and that still makes me cringe, is the description of the heroine arranging her most interesting shampoos along the side of the bath, hoping to impress the object of her affections; Frances is made to do the same thing with her paperbacks in this novel, in the heat of her lust for Jay, which made me cringe all over again. Apart from that moment, and the limited expression of the minor characters, the book succeeds in dramatising and exposing the power and frailty of a family.
Saturday 3 January 2009
Sense and Nonsense in the Office by Lucy Kellaway
Inspired by a Lucy Kellaway article explaining why irritating smartypants types don't prosper at work, I bought this collection of her writing. It's all full of sound common sense, and amusing and witty too, but because it's an anthology of very short pieces, a little glib and superficial at times. I'll continue to enjoy her writing, however, which is usually provocative enough to make me ponder how irritating I must be to my managers and colleagues.
New Collected Poems by Sylvia Townsend Warner
I've dipped in and out of this over the year; some of the poems I already knew well, but there is a wealth of new material here and it is marvellous to have it all in one accessible volume. Claire Harman's editing is informative, and the presentation of the poems in chronological order of composition is fascinating when mapped against Warner's life. This will be a companion and a comfort for many years, I feel quite sure.
Book Meme 2008
Catherine tagged me to complete this:
How many books read in 2008?
37, not including a few books re-read.
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
22 fiction, 13 non-fiction and one volume of poetry. I would have guessed that I read more non-fiction than fiction; perhaps the non-fiction stays with me for longer.
Male/Female authors?
10 male, and 23 female authors.
Favourite book read?
I find it impossible to pick favourites, but highlights this year included Virgina Nicholson's Singled Out, Alison Light's Mrs Woolf and the Servants, and Every Eye by Isobel English.
Least favourite?
Definitely The Diary of a Provincial Lesbian, with Arlington Park a close runner-up.
Oldest book read?
The oldest book read for the first time is Maud Pember Reeves's Round About a Pound a Week, originally published in 1913, although I also re-read The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Newest?
I think that is Ali Smith's Girl meets Boy, first published November 2007, although I can't quite motivate myself to check the bibliographic information for everything I've read.
Longest book title?
The Mitfords: letters between six sisters, provided words after a colon can count.
Shortest title?
A tie (and a rhyme) between Every Eye and Roger Fry.
How many re-reads?
As well as the Hardy noted above, I've re-read most of The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Love from Nancy: the letters of Nancy Mitford, and also the letters between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. And the Round the Horne scripts. I usually re-read Cold Comfort Farm at least once a year, but my partner doesn't remember me doing so this year. What was I thinking?
Most books read by one author this year?
Three by STW, and three by EMD if you count the Diary, which I re-read every year.
Any in translation?
Four: Fattypuffs and Thinifers, Suite Francaise, Nomad's Hotel and The Master and Margarita
And how many of this year’s books were from the library?
Oh dear. None at all. I must get out of the habit of buying odd books because they are a penny second-hand on Amazon, when I could get them from the library. I have a good local library and my employer's library at my disposal, so there's really no excuse.
How many books read in 2008?
37, not including a few books re-read.
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
22 fiction, 13 non-fiction and one volume of poetry. I would have guessed that I read more non-fiction than fiction; perhaps the non-fiction stays with me for longer.
Male/Female authors?
10 male, and 23 female authors.
Favourite book read?
I find it impossible to pick favourites, but highlights this year included Virgina Nicholson's Singled Out, Alison Light's Mrs Woolf and the Servants, and Every Eye by Isobel English.
Least favourite?
Definitely The Diary of a Provincial Lesbian, with Arlington Park a close runner-up.
Oldest book read?
The oldest book read for the first time is Maud Pember Reeves's Round About a Pound a Week, originally published in 1913, although I also re-read The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Newest?
I think that is Ali Smith's Girl meets Boy, first published November 2007, although I can't quite motivate myself to check the bibliographic information for everything I've read.
Longest book title?
The Mitfords: letters between six sisters, provided words after a colon can count.
Shortest title?
A tie (and a rhyme) between Every Eye and Roger Fry.
How many re-reads?
As well as the Hardy noted above, I've re-read most of The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Love from Nancy: the letters of Nancy Mitford, and also the letters between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. And the Round the Horne scripts. I usually re-read Cold Comfort Farm at least once a year, but my partner doesn't remember me doing so this year. What was I thinking?
Most books read by one author this year?
Three by STW, and three by EMD if you count the Diary, which I re-read every year.
Any in translation?
Four: Fattypuffs and Thinifers, Suite Francaise, Nomad's Hotel and The Master and Margarita
And how many of this year’s books were from the library?
Oh dear. None at all. I must get out of the habit of buying odd books because they are a penny second-hand on Amazon, when I could get them from the library. I have a good local library and my employer's library at my disposal, so there's really no excuse.
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