tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68098928665749391892024-02-18T21:52:40.166-08:00BlogbookA verbal and occasionally visual confection of all things literary.davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.comBlogger114125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-91896766147066231512014-12-30T15:00:00.000-08:002014-12-30T15:09:23.343-08:00Driving Rhythm<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
previous work situation (aka ‘job’) obliged me – for the first time in my life –
to drive a considerable distance several times a week. The subsequent enforced intimacy with the
A1(M) entailed by this necessity was made far less tedious by the repeated playing
of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Narrative-Verse-Vol-Spoken-Word/dp/1901297926" target="_blank">a double cd of narrative verse,</a> featuring, among others, Goblin Market, The
Wreck of the Hesperus and The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Nestled alongside the tremendous pleasure
these poems gave me, (powerful enough to counteract the malign influence of The
Black Cat Roundabout) was a sense of embarrassment over how little I knew some
of these literary landmarks, my ignorance including being unaware of the origin
of the phrase, taken by H.E. Bates as the title for a Larkin novel, ‘Fair
stood the wind for France’ in the poem Agincourt by Michael Drayton (1563–1631).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
of the selected poems with which I at least used to be reasonably familiar was The
Eve of St Agnes, and I began to pay particular attention - as Peterborough
alternately reeled me in and flung me back home – to the themes of music and
sound in this stunning work. I offer below
a few observations (which I certainly would not dignify by presenting as
anything like cogent analysis) that may stimulate you to re-read the poem, and responses
to which I’d be delighted to see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let’s
start with the owl who (to purloin and entirely misuse a Keatsian phrase) practices
a little negative capability, in that it is described at the poem’s opening as
being ‘a-cold’ despite ‘all his feathers’.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> As l</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">iterature in general and poetry in particular usually dwell upon the
sound rather than appearance of owls, Keats’ unusual perspective emphases the
eerie silence of his scene, which is also expressed in the mute sheep which next take the
stage: ‘And silent was the flock in woolly fold’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
little later, when the wretched Beadsman, having already demonstrated his
chronically inflated sense of empathy by imagining how cold ‘the sculptur’d
dead’ must be feeling, is ‘Flatter'd to tears’ by the sound of music, an
invitation to gaiety which he must ignore, in order to pursue his literally mortifying
ascetic vocation. ‘Music’s golden tongue’
is therefore an at least equivocal phrase here, and the negative connotations of
music and sound are reinforced by Keats observing of the poor deranged chap
that: ‘already had his deathbell rung; The joys of all his life were <i>said</i> and <i>sung</i>.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
‘golden tongue’ is nicely echoed in what I think is one of Keats’ most powerful
and successful lines. ‘The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide’ is extraordinary.
The precision of ‘snarling’, to both evoke the timbre of the trumpets and
enhance the ominous quality of the setting, is hugely pleasing. If medieval trumpets were not literally
silver, the line also contains an excellent piece of synaesthesia. If they
were, I apologise. A subsequent simile that never fails to send voluptuous
chills through my soul occurs as Keats describes how Madeline does not hear ‘The
music, yearning like a God in pain’, another matchless evocation of how music
(and all art) is most powerful when expressing suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
a somewhat lighter note (ahem), Keats drops in a cosy piece of self-reference
when he describes the song that Madeline’s suitor plays to the former while she
sleeps as: ‘an ancient ditty, long since mute, In Provence call'd, "La
belle dame sans mercy”’. But even this has a mournful undertone, with the assertion
that the weight of time and history have buried the song.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
is, I am sure, a lot more to observe, and better joined-up-thinking to be done.
I’m sure there are racks-full of brilliant theses on the use of music in this
poem and Keats’ poetry as a whole, but the joys of this little contribution are
said and sung.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-71745640097835318672014-04-02T00:29:00.000-07:002014-04-02T06:37:56.694-07:00A loan again<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I need to define a new literary genre, so if anyone has the postal address of the executive in charge of such matters, I'd be grateful if they would share this information; (I'm quite sure this is too sombre a procedure to be conducted by e-mail). The genre in question is - and, yes, I fully realise it is in need of somewhat snappier nomenclature - '<i>Quite Short Books About Libraries</i>'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've already mentioned in these blog pages, albeit in passing, the excellent <a href="http://bit.ly/1ojjDll">The Uncommon Reader</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Bennett">Alan Bennett</a>, in which Her Majesty is stirred to bibliophilia by the accidental discovery of a mobile library van in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. To swell the genre by 100%, I've just finished reading <a href="http://bit.ly/1ghUmxO">The Library of Unrequited Love</a>, by Sophie Divry, which comprises a monologue by a disaffected, hopelessly lovelorn female French librarian (in France), delivered to a library user who has (apparently) been locked into the library overnight. This is a charming and piquant amouse-bouche, 'though not without a pleasing insight into and compassion for the human spirit when it is shackled by the routine frustrations of work and love. The narrator offers us various descriptions, eulogies and diatribes - some of which directly contradict others - concerning, among other subjects: the Dewey Decimal system; the internal politics of provincial French libraries and the major figures in French military and political history. The Librarian's mixture of irascibility and erudition is beautifully captured (by the translator and, I assume, the author before that) and - when she turns to the titular theme (represented by an attractive young male student) - comically poignant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Running through the Librarian's delivery is a passionate love for books and libraries, often comically couched in her own very Gallic brand of hyperbole and metaphor...</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The reader is a virgin. . . And I like to see people losing their library virginity. . If the librarian comes charging at you like a bull, no kindness, no foreplay, that's it. You'll never come back. Divorced from culture. Lifelong abstinence. and one could certainly find worse rallying-calls for the defence of libraries, as places of cultural and social necessity, than this little book and its quirky protagonist.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This first novel is a surprising, unusual and satisfying read, like many I've collected from, and returned to my local library (the quite splendid Hitchin public lending emporium), whose staff I may never see in quite the same light again. In the meantime, your suggestions for additions to this genre of two would be most welcome.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recommended for: Librarians; Francophiles; people with very limited leisure time and dislikers of crowd scenes.</span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-48376129609737659612014-01-27T08:07:00.004-08:002014-01-27T08:07:36.609-08:00Another Twisted Spoonful<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.twistedspoon.com/">Twisted Spoon Press</a> not only heads the league table of publishers named after transformed cutlery, but is a fine house of letters by any measure. They kindly sent me for review their recent publication <a href="http://www.twistedspoon.com/miruna.html">Miruna, a Tale</a>, a Romanian novella by Bogdan Suceavă which continues the mission of the press to introduce Anglophone readers to excellent and overlooked literature from Central and Eastern Europe.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQpkTH0DKAFrv6cYxFfGSXxKs49egq8ro_8JkEh-5mZe7ut84Iv-Wt1udm6-uRxCyhBkQMbnZ4p6P81lsfz4TUpgeCz5mhS7pOTO5Dq4uPyVKMa5bo_JK9ygq9kMGvLmFz5GOmg65b98/s1600/Miruna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQpkTH0DKAFrv6cYxFfGSXxKs49egq8ro_8JkEh-5mZe7ut84Iv-Wt1udm6-uRxCyhBkQMbnZ4p6P81lsfz4TUpgeCz5mhS7pOTO5Dq4uPyVKMa5bo_JK9ygq9kMGvLmFz5GOmg65b98/s1600/Miruna.jpg" height="200" width="158" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hesitate to say </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Miruna</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is a story about stories, because that description can invoke notions of a rather dry, smugly self-regarding kind of writing which does not engage on any personal or emotional levels. Perhaps I should offer it as a beautifully-drawn map, which describes the borders where stories meet people and which charts some of the phenomena that arise </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from those encounters. The most basic description of the book would be that it is a collection of autobiographical and folk tales told by a grandparent to two young children (a brother and the titular sister), but the layering of the stories, of the different chronologies and histories involved and of the effects that story-telling and stories have on people and society is so beautifully and subtly executed that any such bare outline would be an injustice. The soft blurring of memory, legend and fact begins early, when we are told that the grandfather with whom the children are being sent to stay was prone to cursing:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">so fiercely that little tornadoes would whirl the object of his curse up into the air and cast him ten paces yonder.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a passage which typifies the humour and elegance of the book's prose. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Miruna</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> deals with mysticism and magic very deftly, as rich Romanian legends are interwoven with and blend into factual matter, and the local priest struggles to stem the flow of superstition and spell-casting which pervade his flock. This conflation of the quotidian and the fabulous is symbolised by the description of the entrance to a secret, miraculous underground chamber which is central to the book; it is guarded by</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This sentence, not uniquely in the book, sent shivers of pleasure through me and lay fresh and vivid in my mind for some time after reading it. Another prism through which Suceavă blends fact and fiction and the responses to them is the political - when, for instance, the grandfather wonders about the legitimacy and relevance of stories in the official communist newspaper and when the commander of an occupying army unit is harried to distraction by the search for a bandit leader who is either long dead, or legendary, or both.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The people of the Carpathian village in which the book is set are beautifully evoked, and the relationship between the grandparents and the children tenderly and well-observed, with an especially moving and mystical denouement which involves a harmonious and transcendent summation of the book's themes without ever straying into pretentiousness or mawkishness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This may not be the most conventionally reliable guide to Carpathian history and culture, but I suspect it is one of the truest you are likely ever to read.</span></div>
davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-32773642357234675682013-12-27T11:00:00.001-08:002013-12-27T11:00:05.200-08:00Clue dunnit<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspired by years of grappling with cryptic crosswords, I've fashioned a few literary questions in this mode, which I offer in the spirit of end-of-year festivity. Each answer is either (a) the title of a well-known work of fiction or (b) the name of a character within an (a) or (c) an author who would be recognised in most households whose inhabitants would have read or heard of any or all of the foregoing. There are no prizes, excepting that warm glow of satisfaction derived from reaching solutions, which is beyond monetary value, but not declarable against tax.</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The dynasty, the hills - the ring's between for romance (9,7)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Short actor my whole dove follows crookedly for thriller (3,3,3,5,2)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Scribe made Iran's lush arrangement (6,7)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moor poor outside poor mat's a fearful novelist (4, 6)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sounds like a horse? The circle's back for children's favourite (6,3,4)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wishing you all a happy and interesting new year, (despite the Chinese blessing) - David</span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-50635560697816702532013-12-15T12:07:00.000-08:002013-12-15T12:13:33.233-08:00Yule blog<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our advent calendar this year was selected by my wife, and very thoughtfully so, as it is based on a book of which she knows I am very fond, Tolkien's charming <a href="http://www.tolkien.co.uk/product/9780007463374/Letters+from+Father+Christmas+">Letters from Father Christmas</a>. The eponymous epistles describe, in the author's own understated comic prose and accomplished illustrations, the trials and triumphs of Mr. Christmas as he prepares for his annual quest while beset by, among other phenomena, accident-prone guests (principally a polar bear with very limited spatial awareness) natural disasters and ill-intentioned goblins. The book blends slapstick, gentle morality, myth, folk-tale and humour expertly, and is compiled from the letters which Tolkien contrived to arrive in his children's bedrooms each Christmas. It would make, as they almost say, an ideal gift for a child of all ages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Branching away from books for a moment, although words are certainly involved, I've just unearthed a festive CD that we have relatively neglected, and am as I write being very pleasantly reminded of how excellent it is, and of how many points for being self-consciously esoteric in one's cultural choices it confers. It's called </span><a href="http://www.wyastone.co.uk/a-celtic-christmas.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Celtic Christmas</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, and contains many interesting noises from Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales and Scotland. It illustrates the cheerfully diverse ways in which Ye Ancient Celtic Types droned, danced, sang and celebrated in this sacred season. My wife and I forbid, during the month of December, the reproduction of any music which is not in some way related to Christmas. Imbued with the generosity of spirit which characterises this time of year, however, we graciously confine this prohibition to our house.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This post leaves you with a few more books (see <a href="http://dlbbookblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/puns-in-royal-davids-city.html">Puns in Royal David's City</a>) which, alas, will not grace bookshop tables and annual best-read round-ups this Christmas:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>Sleigh Misérables</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>Antlers Shrugged</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>Stocking Lear</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>The Noel-Shaped Room</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Kane and Stable</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wishing you a peaceful Christmas - David.</span><br />
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-15233636892898075782013-12-03T00:48:00.002-08:002013-12-03T00:48:58.985-08:00Games people don't play<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It may not have escaped the attention of those of you possessing antennae tuned to popular culture that there exists a phenomenon called <i>FIFA Manager</i>. For those not so calibrated, let me inform you that this is a series of electronic games which have modelled and reproduced the experience of managing a football team, and that such is the level of detail and accuracy that has been accreted to the product as the years have passed, that it is now possible to incur several forms of stress-related illness while playing the game, all of which are recognised by the medical establishment as legitimate reasons for being unable to work and receiving full sick pay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This has naturally caused me to puzzle over why, among the plethora of scenarios and settings against which console games are placed, the world of publishing and books is not present. Where is <i>Librarian's Creed IV</i>, for example, or <i>Grand Copyright Theft VI</i> (in which a band of plucky literary agents plunge themselves into the murky and dangerous underworld of pirated texts). My latest cast-iron, guaranteed fortune-earner, is, therefore, <i>Independent Bookshop Manager (I)</i>, soon to be available on the Y-Cube, Joy Platform and in many other formats. Among other features, the game will:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Allocate you a budget</b> to divide between overheads, stock and staff - (do you pay out big money for the brilliant but unpredictable Senior Bookseller who will either earn you a fortune with their mercurial sales technique and encyclopedic literary knowledge, or will alienate your customers by staring haughtily at anyone who asks for insufficiently- challenging books?)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Present you with tantalisingly fiendish puzzles</b> - (can you solve <i>The Christmas Rota</i> without causing most of your staff to feel disaffected and exploited; is your mind prepared for balancing reductions from the recommended retail price against gross profit margins?)</span></li>
</ul>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Require you to predict</b> the surprise seasonal best-sellers - (will it be the autobiography of the three-legged juggling cat, or the compendium of obscure facts about medieval armour-polishing? The wrong choice could see sales plummet and the January sale tables tortured by tottering piles of un-returnable, ruinously-reduced stock)</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also featured will be pseudo-randomly-generated events, which will challenge your mental agility and literary awareness:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>A local author</b> arrives unannounced offering stock of their books - are they a nuisance peddling a badly-photocopied and stapled guide to their own kitchen, or do they offer an undiscovered jewel of local history?</span></li>
</ul>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Thanks to an obscure satellite TV channel</b>, Macrame suddenly seizes hold of the popular imagination: do you order in every book you can obtain on the subject, at minimal discount from obscure publishers, or decide it's a temporary phenomenon and remain loyal to baking?</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All this and more, including a special <b>Battle Extension Module</b>, in which you go to war against a new branch of a national chain, will enable the feeling that YOU are at the helm of that glorious but precarious vessel that is The Independent Bookshop.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>***** Special offer on pre-orders for Christmas 2014 *****</b></span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-31678833743820974982013-11-18T11:16:00.001-08:002013-11-18T11:28:01.511-08:00Fabulously beastly<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've just finished reading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._H._White">T.H. White's</a> translation of and commentary on a medieval bestiary, <a href="http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=10298268929&searchurl=an%3Dwhite%2Bt%2Bh%26amp%3Bbsi%3D0%26amp%3Bds%3D30%26amp%3Bsortby%3D3%26amp%3Btn%3Dthe%2Bbook%2Bof%2Bbeasts">The Book of Beasts</a>, which pleased and charmed on many levels. There is, most obviously, the accidental humour of historical mistakes, as what - to modern readers - are obviously bizarre and fantastical behaviours and creatures are described with a deadpan certainty in their existence, with frequent appeals made to apparently unimpeachable eye-witness or documentary accounts. For example, of stags:</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>When they feel themselves to be weighed down by illness, they suck snakes from their holes with a snort of the nostrils and the danger of their venom having been survived, the stags are restored to health by a meal of them.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and furthermore: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>We read that many people who have been accustomed to eat venison from their early days have been immortal, and immune to fevers, but it fails them in the end if they happen to get killed by a single wound.</i></span></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd4AwlVtSXcBznBUa_vRJYMbOUYxDAKOsyduCe1x-RnZvaPBnPp3jKuq9xpMp6fsStZMt7gfOBD-hqZZelkaYt3lF40sNuL-pP1UZ-UlZRzx43ogYyBQvTcES7akBYrOpcYyS-SGZF9xo/s1600/Beasties.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd4AwlVtSXcBznBUa_vRJYMbOUYxDAKOsyduCe1x-RnZvaPBnPp3jKuq9xpMp6fsStZMt7gfOBD-hqZZelkaYt3lF40sNuL-pP1UZ-UlZRzx43ogYyBQvTcES7akBYrOpcYyS-SGZF9xo/s1600/Beasties.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In terms of mythical beasts, the usual and some lower-profile suspects leap, fly and swim through the pages (it is a very busy and noisy book), but the level of detail provided against the entries of creatures like the phoenix go far beyond (for this reader, at least) the commonly-known register.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The range of reference and allusion brought to bear by the original writers and White himself provide another layer of fascination, as etymologies, myths and legends are slotted in to wider perspectives. Adding another attraction, White's writing oozes with the same humour, compassion and erudition which characterise his other work (much of which is animal-focused). In fact White's Appendix, in which he defends and explains the bestiarists' approach, is a superb example of the sympathetic understanding of history and past beliefs and cultures, of getting away from thinking that past generations were simply 'wrong' or somehow not blessed with the same faculties for thought and reason as we are (Larkin summarises this attitude beautifully with <i><span style="color: red;">fools in old-style hats and coats</span></i>). This includes a very positive commentary on the extended sections in the bestiary where the behaviours of the creatures are said to symbolise various aspects of Christian behaviour and belief.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those who know and love the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King"> Arthurian books</a>, <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-goshawk/">The Goshawk</a>, and others, this is a very worthwhile extension to the House of White. For first-time buyers, it would be an eccentric but nonetheless rewarding place to begin.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-9637700740266330002013-11-02T16:56:00.002-07:002013-11-02T17:08:59.719-07:00Paws for thought<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The feline creature who previously graced this blog has left us mourning her passing, having attained the upper limits of cat longevity and brought us untold pleasure and invaluable companionship in doing so. Following but by no means replacing Sally have come two new household deities. Splodge, 10 years old, is a handsome but frankly curmudgeonly rescue cat who is (literally) a poster boy for the Cat Protection League and who can turn (because, we fondly believe, of a challenging life including a period as a stray, not to mention arthritis in both forelegs, but, our more cynical selves suspect, possibly due to innate orneriness) from affectionate to violent behaviour in an instant. Bramble, who is nearly new, is a kind of furry junior whirlwind, whose speed, excitability and curiosity send her ricocheting around the house in a bewildering blur of calico fur. She has also recently and precociously taken to charades, as illustrated here. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KB5FhUEuuXtuLfngWItA1OBaq9impqMYYdTFvb9EzX0aECDqc-qb6FalaoEBpRtnF5NRP27uhEcj3QT7Ezo8A0Po3YA5tRNIlZT7_g4e-_ZTT-vdXh1dpxrsF9682g5lgAhruR64Pw0/s1600/DSCF2352.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KB5FhUEuuXtuLfngWItA1OBaq9impqMYYdTFvb9EzX0aECDqc-qb6FalaoEBpRtnF5NRP27uhEcj3QT7Ezo8A0Po3YA5tRNIlZT7_g4e-_ZTT-vdXh1dpxrsF9682g5lgAhruR64Pw0/s400/DSCF2352.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was a particularly cunning selection on her part, because she obviously knew I would immediately plump for<i> back cat-alogue</i> and then <i>Grimm's Furry Tails</i>, whereas she had in mind the much more ingenious </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our Mutual Fur-End. </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You should see her do films.</span></span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-49566277449895522542013-09-21T09:12:00.001-07:002013-09-21T09:24:20.443-07:00Things ain't what they used to be<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have a fondness for literary movements - be they critical or creative - as a kind of book world equivalent to football teams. I want to see gangs of adherents to rival schools, eyeing each nervously across the floor of The British Library, vicious metaphors and sharpened similes waiting to be launched with ruthless accuracy, with the Cultural Materialists chanting:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>You're a bourgeois product of the class dynamic</i>'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the Deconstructionists replying, a little smugly:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>Hah!</i> <i>That statement negates its own attempt at meaning</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There could be scarves, t-shirts, and a whole range of associated paraphernalia; I think, in fact, this could be my route to entrepreneurial glory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The point is, I was recently expanding my meagre knowledge about the <a href="http://www.nous.org.uk/oulipo.html">Oulipo</a> movement </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(from </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ouvroir de littérature potentielle</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">; or workshop of possible literature)</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">; that merry band of (originally) French pranksters </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who imposed a range of unusual rules and restrictions on their writing, in order to bother the envelope of form a bit and see what emerged; (that was a rough distillation of a few slightly more technical explanations). Perhaps the best-known example is Georges Perec's </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">La disparition; </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a novel written without the benefit of a single letter 'e', and translated into English (by Gilbert Adair) likewise, as </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Void</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of Oulipo's recipes for making poetry was to start with an existing piece of verse, select a dictionary and substitute the major nouns in the original piece with those seven nouns along from them in said lexicon. This technique is called, with insouciant Gallic mysticism, N+7 (or, S+7 for 'substantive'). Using this simple formula, you can create brand new poetry in the comfort of your own garret (no glue or nails required). Here's one I prepared earlier; I used <i>Collins Concise Dictionary Plus</i>, and took the liberty of modifying one verb to agree with the respective arriving noun. The result, I am obliged by truth to declare, is less elegant but much more hilarious than the original first stanza of <i>Ode to Autumn.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">Seatbelt
of mistress and mellow frump, <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">Close
botany-frigate-bird of the maturing sundae;
<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">Conspiring
with him how to load and bless <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">With
fruit salad the vino that round the theatre-ecclesiasticism runs; <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">To bend with
applicator the moss'd cotter-tree-lines<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">And
fill all fruit-machines with ripple-marks to the coriander; <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">To
swell the governor, and plump the headboard shelters <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">With
a sweet ketone; to set budding more,
<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">And
still more, later flue-pipes for the beef burgers, <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="color: red;">Until
they think warm daydreams will never cease<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: red;">For
summer time has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cellphones</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Do please Comment or Facebook with your own; hey! we can build an anthology.</span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-66593717089165682542013-08-26T14:29:00.001-07:002013-08-26T14:29:51.354-07:00Leaves in the lines<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite being designed, conceived and manufactured in Malta, I have a profound physical aversion to extreme heat. By 'extreme' I mean, of course, anything over 15°c, so to say this Summer has been a challenge is an understatement of subterranean profundity. I am reminded, in literary terms, of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_World">J.G. Ballard's The Burning World</a> and that sequence in <a href="http://www.stephenrdonaldson.com/">Stephen Donaldson's</a> Thomas Covenant cycle where The Despiser has hacked into the planetary weather system so that each season is exaggerated to acquire deadly characteristics. It is, therefore, with undignified eagerness that I have embraced each slightly cooler day, and am panting for Autumn to begin in earnest. One of my ambitions this year is to read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_MacNeice#Poetry_collections">Louis MacNeice's</a> Autumn Journal, which is one of the many yawning gaps in my literary CV. A few years ago, giddy with the excitement of having purchased an Acme © Home Poetry Kit, I lobbed a lump of Autumnal words into the Sonnet stencil, cranked the attractively-bright plastic starting-handle and produced the following. I sincerely hope MacNeices's effort is better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OWED TO AUTUMN</span></div>
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<div>
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The sunlight is soft with hospitable mystery;</div>
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In August it scorched us, expected and bland.</div>
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The pavements are crunchy with Natural History,</div>
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Where trees are dismissing their leaves out of hand.</div>
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It’s scruffy and vague, this shaggy brown season</div>
<div>
Each morning arrives with a mist that depletes</div>
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All edges and borders – it was for good reason</div>
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That autumn inspired some reasonable Keats.</div>
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White winter is death, and all of us harbour</div>
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Suspicions of picture-book summers and springs,</div>
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A frisson of something amiss in the arbour</div>
<div>
Is what this benevolent avalanche brings.</div>
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So wrap up in autumn, and heap praise upon it,</div>
<div>
Season of almost compulsory sonnet.</div>
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<br /></div>
</span></div>
davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-68582228278186023582013-08-12T15:24:00.002-07:002013-08-13T02:46:34.274-07:00Bloggin' the Nog<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If all the biographies I have ever read were vertically stacked atop each other, the resulting structure would be far from an impediment to even very low-flying aircraft, or, for that matter, most wasps. This lack of engagement with the genre may be to do with my Reality allergy, or may be the result of a more amorphous blend of aesthetic and intellectual proclivities. I'm hoping it's the latter. Whatever the reason, I was recently reminded of a book of this class which I had not only read but which also gave me an enormous amount of pleasure, namely <a href="http://www.canongate.tv/seeing-things-1.html">Seeing Things,</a> the autobiography of the remarkable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Postgate">Oliver Postgate</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Along with legions of others of all ages, I had been charmed, beguiled and not infrequently disturbed by Postgate's (and his partner Peter Firmin's) menagerie of <a href="http://www.clangers.co.uk/">whistling, knitted aliens, </a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagpuss">soporific talking cats</a> and, of course, their own characteristic interpretation of Norse history and legend, namely Noggin and the Nogs Knowing nothing about Postgate the person, the biography was a gradual, warming affirmation of a sensitive, ingenious human being who bore vicissitude with courageous stoicism, espoused all that is admirable in humanity and whose creative energies, sometimes diverted by restrained resources and facilities into wondrously ingenious channels, refused to be stifled.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was reminded of this book last week as I worked (never was a verb less appropriate) my way through a <a href="http://www.dragons-friendly-society.co.uk/main.htm">delicious boxed set of Noggin the Nog books</a>. These 12 books, beautifully produced and illustrated, are charming fables in which characters and themes recur in a variety of 'Nordic' settings and themes, from The Hot Water Valley to the mechanical Island, from prejudice and fear to the misuse of technology. There is a great deal of pleasure to be had in Postgate's putting the Vikings through a blender set on 'whimsy' (the foremost warrior, for example, Thor Nogson, is often strongly drawn towards discretion rather than valour), but there are also lovely jokes:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'With a crash and a slop like barrels of water breaking on the roof, the barrels of water on the roof broke asunder'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wonderful imaginary proper nouns, such as Troldeskow and Graculus, and delightful variations on well-known stories and legends.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.dragons-friendly-society.co.uk/images/noggin_catalogue/CubeNoggin.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://www.dragons-friendly-society.co.uk/images/noggin_catalogue/CubeNoggin.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without over-egging the Nog, I can't help but think that Olaf, the ingenious court inventor who is constantly threatening the end of civilisation through the development of unpredictable machines, is Postgate wryly observing his own insatiable desire to create brilliant television out of two pipe-cleaners and a reel of Sellotape, while the ever-present Nogbad the Bad, lurking like an unpleasant odour in each tale, is a reminder that evil is never far from even the most innocent-seeming scenario (or even interwoven into it - Nogbad is, after all, Noggin's uncle). To end on a jollier note, however, why not visit the lovely <a href="http://www.dragons-friendly-society.co.uk/">Dragons' Friendly Society website</a>, and order the books.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-71247463638726187222013-07-22T14:11:00.000-07:002013-07-26T02:40:40.923-07:00Paradise glossed<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is a consolation to me that the lateness with which I came to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost">Paradise Lost</a> has been matched by the fervency of my recommendation of it since that time when, a mere few years ago, I walked alongside our first parents out of Eden. I am now not unlike the Ancient Mariner, with my short grey stubble and smudged spectacle lenses, accosting guests en route to weddings, bar mitzvahs and other formal occasions and quothing 'There is a jolly long poem', and then driveling on about Milton's neologisms, his technical skill and my delighted surprise in encountering an explicit description of sex between angels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was, therefore, delighted to be introduced to a booklet in a series called <a href="http://www.connellguides.com/">Connell Guides</a>, which offers many interesting insights into how the poem works and how Milton's life and beliefs are reflected in the subject matter, style and tone. Unlike the undoubtedly useful but somewhat brash tourist guides that are the standard revision guides to Great Works of Literature, my Connell is a chic, urbane, well-dressed and highly articulate escort - more like being conducted around an unfamiliar city by a bi-lingual native as opposed to a slightly inebriated package holiday courier.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Caroline Moore is that person in this case, viewing the poem from a number of perspectives, posed as fundamental questions, many of which are archetypal responses to the poem, e.g.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.connellguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/paradise_lost-400x400.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.connellguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/paradise_lost-400x400.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<ul><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<li>Is Milton’s handling of Satan flawed?</li>
<li>What makes Eve finally choose wrong?</li>
<li>Is Eve inferior to Adam?</li>
<li>Why have so many critics misread Paradise Lost?</li>
<li>How does Paradise Lost fit into the tradition of epic poetry?</li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moore's responses are intelligent, perceptive and full of excellent close reading, often teasing out nuances of word or phrase which demonstrate the subtlety and wit of Milton's writing. Moore expertly defuses much of the bafflement and inhibition that can surround a work like, this, the structure and scope of which are so unfamiliar to modern sensibilities. Accompanying the main text are shaded sections offering information on, among other aspects, the historical, literary and personal background to the poem, and the package is further graced by a number of very well-reproduced paintings, engravings and drawings related to this inexhaustibly inspiring story. Your Connell also comes equipped with further reading and author chronology, as standard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If, like that slightly younger version of me, you have yet to clamber into Milton's Garden, get thee to a copy immediately, and then buy the Connell's guide.</span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-86461127133977291492013-07-10T15:12:00.001-07:002013-07-10T15:58:53.873-07:00Thirkells within Thirkells<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a strong and enigmatic appeal to the human mind in the paradoxical and the self-referential. From Russian dolls, through novels within novels, to the more mind-endangering philosophical instances such as whether the set of non-self-membered sets belongs to itself,<b>** </b>we are drawn towards a range of cultural and mental phenomena that, as it were, double-back on themselves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am probably not a bear of sufficiently large brain to speculate usefully on the reasons for this strange attraction, but, if taxed, I might suggest it has something to do with the aesthetic and structural appeal of reflection and repetition, and if further pressed and supplied with spirituous liquor of sufficient strength and likewise volume, I may become pretentious enough to speculate upon how the nature of consciousness and the structure of the brain are linked to the matter. I don't think I'd believe myself in the morning, however.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The phenomenon was recently re-presented to my attention by reading <a href="http://www.angelathirkell.org/">Angela Thirkell's</a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16284239-high-rising">High Rising</a> (<a href="http://dlbbookblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/literary-thirkells.html">see my blog review</a>). That's three hyperlinks in a row - is there not a large, cuddly toy now? In this charming amuse-bouche of a novel, there is a great deal of writing going on, including serious historical biography, the main character's own light fiction (which sounds remarkably similar to the book we're reading) and her son's sudden outpouring of accidentally hilarious poetry, viz:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fern and glen.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Went they then.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The moorhen</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Went she then.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow</i></span></span><br />
<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;">When, ah then,</span></i><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>A hunter sallow</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Shot that moorhen.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fern and glen.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>By marsh and mallow,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ne'er again.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writing in writing is used in many ways, of course, from such satire of precious teenage bathos to highly erudite pastiche, as in AS Byatt's <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41219.Possession">Possession</a>, wherein we can joyfully play 'spot the poet' as we skip through the pages. One example that has tireless appeal for me is <a href="http://www.vonnegut.com/">Kurt Vonnegut's</a> hapless ego Kilgore Trout, the hack science-fiction writer who shuffles, dishevelled in appearance and fortune, through many of the late, great author's novels. Vonnegut presents short summaries of Trout's writing to great comic and emotional effect, partly to satirise science fiction and people's attitudes to science fiction, and also undermining the whole notion that writing needs to have 'meaning' or 'secrets' picked out of it like nits from a scalp. As a former marginalised 'science-fiction writer' himself, Vonnegut is also taking a swipe at himself, in a clear case of having your cake, eating it, then deriding the whole notion of cake-eating as a legitimate endeavour. Vonnegut's terse summaries of Trout's work are always going to be more entertaining than the actual works would have been, had they really existed, which is part of the whole, very Vonnegutian, multi-layered joke:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;">'</span><i><span style="color: blue;">As for the story itself, it was entitled "The Dancing Fool." Like so many Trout stories, it was about a tragic failure to communicate. Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub</span></i><span style="color: blue;">'.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This particular stream of self-reference took an even wilder course when a real science-fiction writer produced a full-length novel by </span>Kilgore<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Trout, these being </span><a href="http://pjfarmer.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Philip José Farmer</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/171066.Venus_on_the_Half_Shell" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Venus on the Half-Shell</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, respectively.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I shall leave you to hunt down your own second-hand copy of the only surviving Trout novel, and I haven't even mentioned <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984100.At_Swim_Two_Birds">At Swim-Two-Birds</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>**</b>if it doesn't, then it must, and vice-versa; this realisation apparently gave Bertrand Russell quite a turn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-89241678824754860512013-06-19T10:07:00.000-07:002013-06-19T10:10:09.285-07:00An exceeding amount of poetry<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspiration can be a phenomenon which is slightly short on details. When, moved by reading <a href="http://mary-hamer.com/">Mary Hamer's</a> excellent fictional rendition of Kipling's and his sister's life (<a href="http://tinyurl.com/mzykpuc">Kipling & Trix</a>), to read the man's poetry, I was unprepared for the sheer size of the task. A few days ago, the equally excellent <a href="http://www.hertsdirect.org/services/libraries/">Herts Library service</a> procured for me <a href="http://www.kylebooks.com/display.asp?K=9781856269520">Kyle Cathie's edition</a> of the complete verse, which proved to comprise over 600 pages of closely-set rhyming stuff. Where did people from previous generations derive their literary energy, and what happened to its source? Was there a secret River of Prolificity, which has long since been stifled by some kind of cultural alluvium? Nothing daunted, I levered myself into my poetry climbing-boots, whittled a fresh ballad-stick and set off for the foothills.</span><br />
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<a href="http://mary-hamer.com/images/kipnew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://mary-hamer.com/images/kipnew.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The journey begins with - to further strain the metaphor to creaking-point - some outlying scree and minor ascents, which are of largely academic interest. <i>The</i> <i>Departmental Ditties</i> are technically highly proficient light verse, documenting and satirising the British and (to some extent) native cultures and behaviours that defined the British Indian Imperial period. Many of the themes that Kipling went on to elaborate and become notorious for are present here, such as the blasé</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> cynicism regarding the hardships of the colonial life (and especially the climate) among those who had not experienced it; the corruption and bribery that oiled the imperial wheels and the often torrid love affairs that distracted The White Men from their Burden. The poem that stood out for me, like a significant preliminary peak, was </span><a href="http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/last_department.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Last Department</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, in which Kipling brilliantly diverts the language and culture of British India to describe the inevitability and nature of death. The link will disclose the whole poem, but here's a taste:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When leave, long overdue, none can deny;</span></div>
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When idleness of all Eternity</div>
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Becomes our furlough, and the marigold</div>
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Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury</div>
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Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,</div>
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Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,</div>
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No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals,</div>
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Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.</div>
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<i>And One, long since a pillar of the Court,</i></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><i>As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><i> And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><i>Is subject-matter of his own Report.</i></span></div>
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This is macabre, satirical verse at its best, and well worth engraving above your own office cubicle.</div>
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Look out for further dispatches from Mount Kipling, as I inch towards the summit, without the benefit of oxygen. In the meantime, those reasonably adjacent to the Borough of Sutton near London may wish to attend a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/485689538168035/">talk being given by Mary and the acclaimed literary biographer Andrew Lycett</a>, at Sutton Central Library on the evening of July 3. <a href="http://www.andrewlycett.co.uk/">Andrew's</a> biography of Kipling was rapturously reviewed, and won the accolade of being selected as a <i>TLS International Book of the Year </i>by Terry Eagleton. It should be fascinating to hear the fictional and biographical approaches compared.</div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-10950842402861001342013-06-14T11:20:00.000-07:002013-06-14T11:20:24.347-07:00Telephone lines<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have previously discussed, in this blog environment, literature inspired by or related to work (see <a href="http://dlbbookblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/working-titles.html">Working Titles</a>, among others). During the hours I am obliged to devote to my market research call centre work (employment for which I am grateful, but which I would never encumber with the label of 'inspiring' ) a refrain from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden">WH Auden's</a> lovely <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15546">The Fall of Rome</a> runs incessantly through my mind: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/AudenVanVechten1939.jpg/220px-AudenVanVechten1939.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/AudenVanVechten1939.jpg/220px-AudenVanVechten1939.jpg" width="187" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Caesar's double-bed is warm </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>As an unimportant clerk </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>On a pink official form.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hereby offer an embarrassingly trite poetic work response of my own, in the form of three limericks bemoaning the lot of a telephone market researcher which, if nothing else, may have rarity value in their combination of form and subject.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The request, which we make to a tranche</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Of companies, (Head Office or branch)</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>To ask them some questions,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Provokes some suggestions</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That would make a contortionist blanch.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>A Market Researcher from Herts</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Conducted his surveys in farts,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>(Although he used wheezes</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And belches and sneezes</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>To convey the more technical parts).</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I'm sorry, she can't take your call;</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>She's recently had a great fall,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Been kidnapped by Cossacks,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Has eloped to the Trossachs</i></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And is trekking through deepest Nepal.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I humbly invite you to render your own work into limerick form, and thereby make the publication of a quirky Christmas best-seller a virtual inevitability. Huzzah! We shall be rich.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-87301997909331767442013-06-09T13:51:00.001-07:002013-06-09T13:51:10.218-07:00Literary Thirkells<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A quirky ripple of literary synchronicity is running through our household at present. We suspect it's to do with the Victorian wainscoting. The phenomenon began with my reading <a href="http://mary-hamer.com/">Mary Hamer's</a> deftly-imagined novel depicting the lives and travails of Kipling and his sister, <a href="http://dlbbookblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/conjuring-trix.html">Kipling & Trix</a>, then developed into my wife discovering and then bequeathing to me the novelist <a href="http://www.angelathirkellsociety.co.uk/">Angela Thirkell</a> (the Kiplings' cousin) and has most recently manifested itself in a reference to Thirkell's novels in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Jane_Howard">Elizabeth Jane Howard</a> novel my wife is reading, <i>The Light Years</i>. Cue X-files theme.</span></div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Collier-Angela_McInnes.jpg/220px-Collier-Angela_McInnes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Collier-Angela_McInnes.jpg/220px-Collier-Angela_McInnes.jpg" width="180" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">So I must add Ms Thirkell's literary work to the already overflowing basket of blessings with which my wife has presented me (where it nestles cosily alongside a regally ancient cat and a fiendishly ingenious domestic budgeting spreadsheet, among other articles). We have both started our Thirkular tour with <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16284239-high-rising">High Rising</a>, an inter-war tale of family, love (largely camouflaged beneath bushels of shyness or circumstance) and society. The introduction - by Alexander McCall Smith - to the recently reissued <a href="http://www.viragobooks.net/">Virago</a> edition makes comparisons to P.G. Wodehouse, a resemblance one can see in the playfully imaginative comedic language. For example, the headmaster of the school attended by the principal character's son barks: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="color: red;">'in the voice of a sergeant-major who had been educated among sea-lions'</span><i style="color: red;">. </i>I</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">ndeed much of the book's charm and humour derives from Laura's (said leading personage) robustly cynical utterances to, and descriptions of, her youngest son: </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">'Laura had once offered to edit a book called </span><i style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">Why I Hate my Children'</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">There are echoes, too, of Barbara Pym, Nancy Mitford and Jane Austen which combine, as the book simmers slowly and its ingredients blend, into a delicious concoction of social and character observation and the attempts of Angela and Fate to weave together kindred souls into a knot of romance. There is a good deal of clever suspense established as to who will end up with whom and how, and a sublimely-drawn villain in the form of the manipulative, scheming secretary, Miss Grey. Thirkell also offers some excellent writing about writing, as the popular novels Angela produces to keep her son in clothes (in which he can rapidly make mysterious holes) are contrasted with the more conventionally respected history books written by the irascible, curmudgeonly but much-loved Master of the Big House, George Knox, suspected amorous target of '</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">The Incubus</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">', Miss Grey. The link in the first paragraph will waft you towards the UK Thirkell Society, a journey I recommend that you make.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;">Taking the connections off in a slightly different direction, Kipling & Trix has inspired me to borrow Kipling's complete verse from the library, in order that I can extend my knowledge beyond scattered portions of '<i>If</i>' and a couple of well-known refrains. All I need now is a sponsored two-month holiday to get through this book. Lazy, he wasn't.</span></div>
davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-3233926382860334612013-05-31T15:10:00.003-07:002013-06-12T02:54:34.255-07:00Conjuring Trix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://mary-hamer.com/images/kipnew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://mary-hamer.com/images/kipnew.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every novel which features characters who vocalise (internally or externally) is an act of literary ventriloquism. As readers, we expect such inhabitants of books to project a sense of credibility (whether as 'realistic' people or creatures, or as fabulous ones) through their mental and vocal utterances, unless a novel is striving for effects created by deliberate deviation from such an approach. As has often been observed, this does not mean that fictional monologue or dialogue can be mined directly from the real world, as most transcripts of real-life conversations would neither be replete with literary merit nor hold a reader's attention. Fiction writers who choose to populate their pages with 'real' historical characters (I hear there's a certain Ms Mantel who shows promise in this regard) must face the additional discipline of securing a secondary level of plausibility within their particular framework, which involves considerable challenges in terms of vocabulary and register as well as in describing their characters' psychologies and thoughts. Even if an author does not attempt to replicate historically authentic speech patterns and vocabulary, the system of utterances employed by each character still must convey an appropriate identity, and bear an accurate relationship to those of the other characters. The test of how successfully all this is done is, I suppose, whether we can see the author's lips moving. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://mary-hamer.com/">Mary Hamer</a> hurdles these obstacles beautifully in the<a href="http://www.aurorametro.org/Fictionprize.html"> Virginia Prize-winning</a> <a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/kipling&trix.html">Kipling & Trix</a>, which is based on the lives of, and relationship between the creator of '</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">', Mowgli, etc. and his sister.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the joys of the book lies in being reintroduced to a life and body of work (Kipling's) from unusual perspectives, especially that of his familial concerns and his complex, rich and troubled relationship with Trix. Another source of pleasure is the skilful portrayal of characters who, although relatively minor in the book, have left a significant footprint in history. Edward Burne-Jones, for example, produces a pleasurable frisson as he walks these pages, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">grappling</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> not so much with weighty matters of Art and Culture as how to keep his family healthy and happy (Kipling was his nephew by marriage). Another very successful aspect of the book for me was the rendering of the kaleidoscope of locations through which the characters' lives are twirled, including India, Britain, America and a richly-recreated South Africa.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The character and story of Trix are engagingly-drawn, especially in the observation of how her psychology and development are warped as her fierce, instinctive desire to write (the book is very good on writing) is confronted by the conventions and restrictions of her culture and society. Hamer handles this minefield of cliche with deftness and ingenuity, producing a convincing but never sentimental portrait of a beleaguered, intelligent woman, and vividly conjuring the atmosphere and preoccupations of the time. Hamer uses her embodiment of Trix to examine the conflict, jealousy and guilt that characterise families, as well as to celebrate the profound, transfiguring joy that family relationships can bring. If, as was the case for me, Kipling, his world and his family are little more than indistinct cliches, <a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/kipling&trix.html">Kipling & Trix</a> will provide very absorbing education.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I should not neglect to praise the quality of Hamer's writing. An expertise with dialogue is obviously a prerequisite for this kind of novel, but Hamer supplements this skill with some fine turns of phrase:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>Alice spoke from the wooden embrace of the old Windsor chair</i>'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and some excellent comic observation, such as of:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>A dark tower of a town house where, Trix suspected, the air was haunted by the steam of suet puddings</i>'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and there are some very well-wrought set pieces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In conclusion, I ought to say that (a) I am working part-time for the publisher, but that I wrote this post while intimately connected to a lie-detector and (b) on finishing the book I reserved Kipling's complete verse from the library. On seeing the size of this tome, I realised that the world prolific needs upgrading. Whatever negative epithets you feel may justly adorn the work and character of 'Ruddy', slothfulness cannot be among them.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-66385724972572508902013-05-22T15:35:00.000-07:002013-05-22T15:35:07.083-07:00Arable parables<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had reason to thank anew the tiny electronic post-person who delivers the Bookseller's e-bulletin recently. The May 20th edition carried a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/chick-lit-is-dead-long-live-farm-lit/275643/">link to a feature</a> in <i>The Atlantic</i> on the surge in popularity of what to me was a newly-defined genre, namely <span style="color: red;">Farm Lit.</span>, which is raking in sheaves of female readers, to the detriment of Chick and other varieties. This school of writing substitutes brawny farm workers and rural female entrepreneurs for silk-suited city slickers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regular visitors to this blog will fail to swoon with surprise when I say that this news had me reaching immediately for my literary toolbox, from which I deployed my Genre Torque Spanner (with ergonomic grip design and flange swivel plate) and applied it to a few well-known literary works, so that they could claim their place in the ranks of this mode of fiction. The results are as follows:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Silage Marner</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Farms and the Man</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Fifty Shades of Grazing</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Kane and Stable</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>The Rape of the Flock</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Hay wain and the Green Knight</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Goats from a Small Island</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Born Friesian</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Udder Milk Wood</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These works and similar others would, of course, be feted at the annual <i>Hay Festival</i>.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-83013344133461715862013-05-16T11:40:00.002-07:002013-05-16T11:50:59.960-07:00A few news musings<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a packed blog tonight, a crop of current bookish news stories is presented for your edutainment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was amused to read a snippet, in one of the free papers that decorate our train carriages, concerning the flood of '<i>Fifty Shades</i>' volumes into charity shops. This is, of course, due to their former owners having realised that they had not in fact purchased the definitive treatise on minimalist interior decor. If this influx grows too voluminous, i suppose we may see one of our best-known charity chains altering its name to (Bond)age UK. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have striven mightily, but failed, to resist observing that the proud new owners of these tomes will be literally paying money for old rope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspired by the phenomenal success of the <a href="http://shortbooks.co.uk/book/the-fast-diet">fasting diet book</a> which took Christmas by surprise and shows no signs of loosening its grip on the population, I have conducted some modest private research to transfer the concepts involved into the literary arena. It transpires that, given a properly and finely calculated regime, it is perfectly possible to read any number of populist, superficial novels containing no grain of improving content nor any challenge to traditional narrative structures and <i>not suffer any decrease in aesthetic or intellectual trimness</i>, provided<i> </i>that, for two days in each week only, you adhere strictly to ingesting the approved canon of Difficult, Serious (and preferably Foreign) Books. This may seem counter-intuitive, but, with the aid of my new series of books and related products, including my patent <i>Literary Calorie </i></span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Counter </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">© (which will, once fed some basic information about a novel's tone, protagonists and vocabulary, assess it's </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Literary Purity</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) remarkable results will be in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> grasp. Pre-order now for my special introductory offer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The annual </span><a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/random-house-and-foyles-triumph-bookseller-industry-awards.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bookseller Industry Awards</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> were announced recently, and congratulations are due to Sainsbury's for having come away from the event with the children's bookseller of the year prize in their basket. This set me to thinking about some possible supermarket-oriented reworkings of literary classics, and to inflict the following upon you:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Morrison's and Lovers</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Tesco of the D'Urbervilles</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Asda You Like it</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Lidls of the King</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">etc....</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-14632929473640136052013-05-11T13:52:00.001-07:002013-08-27T03:50:04.027-07:00A jolly good Falla<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Powerfully-evoked locations are often said to function as characters in their own right within works of fiction. This being the case, Patagonia in Jonathan Falla's remarkable novel <a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/physiciansanlucar.html">The Physician of Sanlucar</a> is not one you would wish to invite round for dinner. The Patagonian landscape and environment, and the lives of those dwelling therein during the second decade of the twentieth century, as described with unflinching accuracy by Falla, are grim and precarious. The novel opens, in fact, with a forensic description of both the '<i>astonishing</i>' venereal diseases to which the farming colonists are prey, and the ingenious device which the titular character has developed to treat them. It is a highly arresting first chapter, and typical of the author's lack of inhibition to be bold with content and imagery.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/images/THE%20PHYSICIAN%20OF%20SANLUCAR%20cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.aurorametro.com/images/THE%20PHYSICIAN%20OF%20SANLUCAR%20cover.jpg" width="208" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The initially disclosed reason for Matthieu Macanan's having secreted himself in this obscure part of the world is to minister medicinally to the immigrant farmers and the indigenous population, and he comes to espouse the cause of the latter more forcefully and dramatically as the novel progresses. But there is clearly something deeper and darker in his personal history, the revelation of which is cleverly interwoven into his contretemps with a particularly amoral and loathsome representative of insensitive colonialism, Lovell. Into Macanan's world come a married Austrian couple (Silke and Theo) who hope to bring the new miracle of aeronautic transport to the region by establishing a flying postal service. There is an immediate and obvious attraction between the physician and the wife, which becomes one of the main engines of the plot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The subsequent love affair functions, (as does the aircraft which sits awaiting repair in a stockade as the husband sails off to find spare parts) as a beacon of redemption and hope in the physical and moral gloom of the setting. Without wishing to divulge too much of the plot, however, it is safe to say that there is no unalloyed escape from the toxic effects of the Patagonian environment, and the situations of those caught up in this period and place. Falla particularly excels in describing how Patagonia invades the souls and bodies of its inhabitants. At one point, during a dramatic and life-threatening journey to a new location, a character's head wobbles '<i>with what might have been agreement, or hypothermia</i>', demonstrating that his identity and volition have become indistinguishable from the effects of the extreme climate. The aeroplane (which is called a dove by its creator and also described in angelic terms) is observed late in the novel to have accumulated '<i>a lot of dust; it was filling with Patagonia</i>'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not to say that the book's overall effect is gloomy or depressing - there is a pervasive and effective wry humour at play and, decorating the elegant and efficient prose which propels the plot, passages of very fine, lyrical descriptive writing: Macanan, for example, hauling a mess of wet canvas, is said to be</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>dragging it behind him like a bride with an impossibly heavy train</i>'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and Silke's hair being</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>like cobwebs tied back by an orderly spider</i>'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Additionally, the book's handling of the colonial issues is deft and never sentimental; Falla makes good play of symbols and motifs (the plane being angelic and dove-like, it's creator being called after the prefix for divinity), and there are absorbing insights into and descriptions of human character and behaviour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All the elements of the plot and setting, including a crucial guest appearance by a German naval crew smuggling gold for the war effort, swirl into a dramatic kaleidoscope of a denouement that brings a satisfying and surprising ending to a riveting book which excavates one of the murkier periods of modern colonialism and in which, most often, the characters' best intentions are warped into tragedy by circumstance and fate.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-30936180308965280922013-05-06T15:07:00.000-07:002013-05-06T15:13:11.893-07:00Crimeliks<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another imaginary poetry anthology (see <a href="http://dlbbookblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/write-to-reply.html">Write to Reply</a>) comprises a series of definitions of literary genres and themes in limerick form. This is a similar but humbler path to that already lain by the frighteningly talented <a href="http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=59">Martin Rowson in his Limerickiad books</a>. For some reason, the only two entries I have so far constructed pertain to crime, but more may follow later. If so, the Land of Blog will be among the first to know. Watch this space, by the way for a Proper Grown-up Book Review of the excellent <a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/physiciansanlucar.html">Physician of Sanlucar</a>, a tale of colonialism, love, flight and sexual disease in Patagonia. I think this has also been a prog rock concept album.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>The Traditional English Village Murder</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span>
<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The scene is quite bloody and grim,</i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And clues are confusing and slim;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That apparently meek</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And retiring geek</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Who won't hurt a fly? It was him!</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>Crime Noir (Nordic and otherwise)</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span>
<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The hero's divorce is a bitch</i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And his cravings are making him itch.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>In a plotline whose forking</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Would stump Stephen Hawking,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The shot and garroted will twitch.</i></span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-13609274738611707982013-05-01T15:03:00.000-07:002013-05-01T15:05:34.269-07:00Balancing the books<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a widespread assumption that the world of Letters and Arts is exclusively populated by raving, left-of-centre liberal progressives who will launch into a polemic about neo-fascist government policies at the drop of a stylish beret, probably because they are insulated from the harsh realities of the world by not having to do proper jobs. As a counterblast to this view, and to prove that we in Bookland are as capable as any decent Briton of recognising the need for frugality and economic good sense during a period when the economy (thanks to a few Bolshevite ne'er do wells having snuck into government while no-one was looking) is taking more dips than a swimming addict, I present my Reduced Classics Canon, in which the previous extravagances of some literary products are suitably curtailed. Without further ado, may I recommend:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Reasonably Tolerable Lightness of Being</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Kitten, the Conjuror and the Bedside Table</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>A History of Neasden in 10 and a half Chapters</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>More than a few of the President's Men</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Acting Assistant Administrator of the Flies</i></span><br />
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lowerwatha....</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">....and anything by <i>Paul Austerity</i>, naturally.</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-17119011495724841042013-04-26T11:31:00.001-07:002013-04-27T13:09:59.381-07:00Gift Mooses, and others<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We care for physical books very deeply in our family, even to the extent (see figure 1) of employing a fierce Book Guardian to ward off potential literary miscreants. When the para-military E-book Enforcers teleport themselves into our house to confiscate our library and hard-wire our brains into a small silver machine, we shall hurl deeply injurious slogans at them from behind the cat. There may also be finger-wagging.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7K2zC8oXYGe9ymYTywxDBpXNyHV6xlBjC99Ae9nAcLGIttJA1kE0WjZYeQDzeDIKoYeoBzEgoq7mjPX4YsSnTCOC8qJY-VN4rYnzJ8uDVJZi7BzvXN01A59Uy4kxVr6pToxkaHailspw/s1600/Guardian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7K2zC8oXYGe9ymYTywxDBpXNyHV6xlBjC99Ae9nAcLGIttJA1kE0WjZYeQDzeDIKoYeoBzEgoq7mjPX4YsSnTCOC8qJY-VN4rYnzJ8uDVJZi7BzvXN01A59Uy4kxVr6pToxkaHailspw/s320/Guardian.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which brings me to the beastly, or probably bestial theme for today's post, namely my recent birthday. Among the generous and thoughtful gifts which were bestowed on me by friends and family (including a <a href="http://villancico.se/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44:nya-ecuador-skivan&catid=2:album&Itemid=3&lang=sv">cd of Ecuadorian Baroque music</a>, whose aural quality equals its obscurity cachet) was a trio of books with an animal theme, each as delightful as it is different from its companions.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/downloads/dl/file/id/811/two_rivers_cat_jeoffry_p2_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://tworiverspress.com/wp/">Two Rivers Press</a> produce the most exquisite edition of Christopher Smart's poem <a href="http://tworiverspress.com/wp/cat-jeoffry/">Cat Jeoffry</a>. This is a consummately well-designed book, incorporating a bold Eric Gill typeface that combines readability with a playful hint of the antique, and illustrations in lino cut and rubber stamp by Peter Hay, which capture delightfully the playful, feral and mystical aspects of this noblest of animals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/">Reaktion Books'</a> Animals series has beguiled me for many years, offering delicious portrayals of individual animals through, in each case, a single author's examining the beast in its cultural, historical and mythological contexts, as well as the natural historical. The cover design for this series uses a simple but startlingly effective two-colour approach, incorporating the appropriate animal's silhouette. <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781861893963&sf1=series_exact&st1=ANIMAL&ds=ANIMAL&sort=sort_title&m=35&dc=60">Kevin Jackson's Moose</a> now shyly awaits my approach.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, and including flora and other subjects, <a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/catalog/season-songs/9780571137039">Ted Hughes' Season Songs</a>, (Faber) written with younger readers in mind, is, along with <i>Jeoffry</i> a charming addition to our poetry section (which can be located a few feet above the cat). I'm off to tend to the literary menagerie now - by the sound of it, the mooses need feeding.</span><br />
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<a href="http://images3.ehaus2.co.uk/xmla/image-service.asp?DBM=reaktion&ISBN=9781861893963&SIZE=l&SOURCE=ehaus" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://images3.ehaus2.co.uk/xmla/image-service.asp?DBM=reaktion&ISBN=9781861893963&SIZE=l&SOURCE=ehaus" width="141" /></a><br />
<br />davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-28591870500404615342013-04-21T15:27:00.000-07:002013-04-21T15:27:09.930-07:00Fair words<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not sure what images are conjured by the words </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/">London Book Fair</a></i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to those who have never had the pleasure of meeting it in person. It's sadly unlikely that anyone's mental space is occupied by a vision of carousels, coconut shies and food stalls based on literary themes. It seems to me that this idea has potential, however, and next year I may run a '<i>pin the metaphor on the sentence</i>' stall or a roller coaster based on the varying fortunes of a Thomas Hardy character; see </span><a href="http://dlbbookblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ride-all-about-it.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this post</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> for similar scenarios (this is subtle intertextuality rather than self-plagiarism). No-one but the lowest cad would snigger cynically if the vision were more one of publishing staff exchanging erudite banter in a smartly bohemian - if not languid - environment, occasionally interrupting this activity to discover an unknown genius or two lurking in the portfolio of a Norwegian publisher. While there are elements of the foregoing, the book business (and its Fairs) are generally highly commercial, hard-nosed enterprises, with an acute awareness of profit margins (and the threats to same) driving most activities. This sense of walking a financial tightrope, especially among smaller publishers, has been sharpened in recent years by the explosion of electronic commerce and publishing, one of the effects of which has been to make one platform for book sales - the physical bookshop - a narrower and more difficult place on which to tread. There are, therefore, as many conversations littered with percentage signs and shipping tariffs as with evaluations of literary worth or promise, and it is a beleaguered but brave band of people who persist in converting ideas into words, arranging them on paper (or pasting them into the ether) and attempting to sell them; a band, moreover, constantly aware of each cost incurred while doing so, and seeking ways to reduce or eliminate it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not least among these costs is (I was reminded last week during my one day's duty at the Fair on behalf of <a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/index.html">Aurora Metro</a>) the price of a bottle of water at the London Book Fair. The careers of many a young Editor or Marketing Assistant have met untimely ends when it was discovered that they have blown an entire quarter's marketing budget on buying London Book Fair bottled water (i.e. about three bottles). Let us say nothing of the sandwiches. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was reunited with two other curious phenomena that day: The Journey to the Waterstone's Buyer and The Slow Europeans. The former entails an initial application, before the Fair, to be selected for a brief, personal interview with one of the Buyers, a process managed by the estimable<a href="http://www.ipg.uk.com/"> Independent Publishers' Guild</a>. When the appointed hour for the favoured delegates arrives, they present themselves to an IPG acolyte who conducts them along secret corridors and mysterious stairways to the Outer Chamber, in which the holy effulgence emanating from the Buyers' Inner Sanctum is palpable. After a solemn transfer of the delegates into the care of a superior acolyte who dwells in this Higher Realm, the recitation of solemn incantations and the donning of ritual, sacred clothing, the fortunate visitors are ushered into The Appropriate Presence, who, after due deference has been offered, will utter some Words of Power such as '<i>Send me the ai for that new cookery title</i>'. Enlightened and enriched, the delegates withdraw, and are escorted back into the Mundane Realms.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Actually, one or two parts of that description were tweaked with the tweezers of comic effect, and my colleague Rebecca and I had what were, in fact, two very useful sessions with the folk from the Big W.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">European Slow Walking (actually, it's French, but I was being diplomatic) is an oft-misunderstood phenomenon. To the insufficiently-trained eye, it comprises the staff of a Gallic publishing company walking, for no apparent reason, at a funereal pace across the entire width of an aisle, thus requiring any Book Fair visitor desirous of punctual arrival at a meeting to dart round them and threaten the physical integrity of neighbouring stands, not to mention the physical and mental health of those staffing same. Since conducting research into the history and development of alternative theatre, however, I now realise that these incidents are all interconnected elements in a massive and sophisticated performance artwork which explores the paradox of journey and the futility of the notion of progress in the context of modern existential emptiness. It can't be long before they win the Turner Prize.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Until next year.....</span>davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6809892866574939189.post-52030487472504481812013-04-15T12:59:00.000-07:002013-08-26T13:24:09.251-07:00Write to reply<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of my favourite literary hobbies is developing ideas for original poetry collections and then creating, at the very most, one entry before abandoning the project altogether. Relentlessness is not one of my defining characteristics, except by its absence. The latest example is a series of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">poems, which should preferably be in the appropriate forms, in which the human or otherwise sentient creatures addressed or described in canonical works, reply to the original. There now follows the first example. It is </span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">© David Birkett, but any imaginative literary editor is welcome to dangle obscene or even slightly suggestive advances before me to develop an entire book.</span></span></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ozymandias</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I met a spirit in the afterlife</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who said some arty, disaffected git</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Had given me some some fey, poetic strife</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">About my so-called despotism. It</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Behoves me to observe it's somewhat rich</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For someone who was paid to wave a quill</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To criticise my efforts, each of which</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Was made to strengthen borders, or to fill</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My people's mouths with food. The years were tough,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yes, I hold my hands up to the crime</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of being not consultative enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You try to make the camels run on time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That statue? Well, it was a P.R. thing</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For even tyrants bow to Marketing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am (emoticon denoting level of excitement inconsistent with any widely-recognised level of personal dignity) off to the London Book Fair (technically, the London International Book Fair, but I've been so many times that I can be informal) tomorrow on behalf of <a href="http://www.aurorametro.com/">Aurora Metro</a>, so a blog based on this conclave of all things literary is not entirely unlikely. Stand G855, if you're passing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Toodle-pip.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">David</span></div>
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davidreadersitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07795643652877727584noreply@blogger.com0