That’s right, it’s our birthday :)
Will update you with any bookish presents I receive, of course… a few book-shaped packages have arrived, so I’m hopeful…
Happy Birthday Me (and Colin!)
Month: November 2011
Home home home
Quick post to say that I’m at home with Colin and my parents and Sherpa at the moment – so posts might slow down for a few days.
But wanted to put you out of your misery, for the little test. I realised after I made it that it was basically impossible – I should have included more quotations, or synopses, or similar – but never mind! Hope you still had a bit of fun. Here are the answers:
a.) Mary sometimes heard people say: “I can’t bear to be alone.” She could never understand this.
1940: Mariana by Monica Dickens
b.) It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
1970: Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach
c.) “Get away from here, you dirty swine,” she said.
“There’s a dirty swine in every man,” he said.
1960: The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
d.) One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.
1910: Howards End by E.M. Forster
e.) On a March evening, at eight o’clock, Backhouse, the medium – a fast-rising star in the psychic world – was ushered into the study at ‘Proland,’ the Hampstead residence of Montague Faull.
1920: The Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
f.) Jem was a joyful mystery to Alice. She was something to give thanks for.
1990: Temples of Delight by Barbara Trapido
g.) I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.
1930: Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
h.) A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.
1980: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
i.) It is highly probable that the tea shop would never have started at all if Commander David Tompkins hadn’t fancied himself at being something of a dab-hand at cooking.
1950: Tea Is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex
j.) The opening chapter does not concern itself with Love—indeed that antagonist does not certainly appear until the third –
1900: Love and Mr. Lewisham by H.G. Wells
I do enjoy quoting opening lines, to see whether or not they capture people’s interest. Perhaps next time I’ll just give you some, and let you decide whether or not they sound worth pursuing…
Happy Weekend, one and all!
Can You Guess The Decade?
You know that I like to make you work for your fun, right?
A while ago I responded to V.S. Naipaul’s obnoxious comments about female authors by asking if you could tell which opening lines were by men and which by women – nobody got full marks. Have a go yourself, if you missed it back then (answers here).
This time, in further preparation for A Century of Books (for those not in the know, next year I plan to read a book from every year of the 20th century) I thought I’d test you on decades.
These are opening lines from ten novels, published in 1900, 1910, 1920… all the way to 1990. I’ve scrambled them up – and I want you to have a go and see if you can work out which quotation belongs to which century. Bonus marks if you can guess the author.
Obviously with a sample size this small, and all by different authors, this won’t prove anything conclusively. Or even vaguely. But it might be a bit of fun. Give it a go!
And, of course, I want to know which you’re immediately keen to read…
a.) Mary sometimes heard people say: “I can’t bear to be alone.” She could never understand this.
b.) It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
c.) “Get away from here, you dirty swine,” she said.
“There’s a dirty swine in every man,” he said.
d.) One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.
e.) On a March evening, at eight o’clock, Backhouse, the medium – a fast-rising star in the psychic world – was ushered into the study at ‘Proland,’ the Hampstead residence of Montague Faull.
f.) Jem was a joyful mystery to Alice. She was something to give thanks for.
g.) I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.
h.) A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.
i.) It is highly probable that the tea shop would never have started at all if Commander David Tompkins hadn’t fancied himself at being something of a dab-hand at cooking.
j.) The opening chapter does not concern itself with Love—indeed that antagonist does not certainly appear until the third –
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Like many people my age, my first encounter with John Steinbeck was when studying Of Mice and Men during my GCSEs. Unlike a lot of people, flogging out every detail of a novel (and then watching the video because we’d never quite finished reading the book) didn’t put me off reading for life – but neither was I desperate to read any more Steinbeck.
So, when my book group chose The Pearl (1947) for this month’s read, I was happy to give Steinbeck another go. I hadn’t disliked Of Mice and Men, but I’m yet to click with any of the Great American Novels (on the list which left me cold at best: The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby Dick – although I did love To Kill A Mockingbird). Well, there could scarcely be more different novels than Of Mice and Men and The Pearl – it’s difficult to believe they’re by the same author. And whatever my feelings about the former work – The Pearl is captivatingly brilliant.
At only ninety pages long, The Pearl is barely a novella – the blurb of my copy labels it a short story, but I think it is most fitting to call it a fable. That is certainly reflective of its tone and atmosphere. It tells of Kino, his wife Juana, and their baby Coyotito. They are Mexican pearlers, living in La Paz in extreme poverty – but a close, kind community. That is, those of their race (which I think is Mexican-Indian) care for one another – the rich townsfolk are selfish colonisers who refer to Kino and his people as ‘animals’.
What I loved most about the book was its style and tone, which felt authentically as though it were an inherited folk-tale, told through the generations. I daresay there’s all sorts that could be said about an outsider imposing a fable on this community, ya-dah-ya-dah, but that’s not really the point – Steinbeck has crafted something which never feels forced or voyeuristic, but as though it were part of the lifeblood of people like Kino. Folk-tales tend to present the world in an unexpected way – in The Pearl, the Mexican-Indians experience events through melodies. Not simply singing about them, but sensing them – Kino can hear the Song of Evil approaching; he can hear the Song of Family. He can hear many interweaving melodies, and trusts them.
Now, Kino’s people had sung of everything that happened or existed. They had made songs to the fishes, to the sea in anger and to the sea in calm, to the light and the dark and the sun and the moon, and the songs were all in Kino and in his people – every song that had ever been made, even the ones forgotten. And as he filled his basket the song was in Kino, and the beat of the song was his pounding heart as it ate the oxygen from his held breath, and the melody of the song was the grey-green water and the little scuttling animals and the clouds of fish that flitted by and were gone. But in the song there was a secret little inner song, hardly perceptible, but always there, sweet and secret and clinging, almost hiding in the counter-melody, and this was the Song of the Peal That Might Be, for every shell thrown in the basket might contain a pearl.
It will come as no surprise that Kino finds a pearl – and it is enormous. It is, he believes, The Pearl of the World. What follows is akin to a parable – unsurprisingly the arrival of wealth does not bring happiness; rather, it brings complications and anguish.
I shan’t give you all the details. Although they are somewhat predictable, as with all stories (and especially folk-tales) the importance lies in the way in which they are told. I was very impressed by Steinbeck’s technique in mounting tension (a trait he also uses, of course, in Of Mice and Men) – he manages to make a very simple tale extremely gripping. If I knew how he did, I’d be a great writer myself.
The Pearl isn’t simply a morality tale. That wealth doesn’t equate happiness is both true and a truism. Steinbeck’s use of a straightforward tale is much more sophisticated – an incredibly engaging, beautiful narrative. It isn’t the sort of book I could love in a fond, intimate manner – in feeling like a folk-tale passed down through generations, it keeps the reader at a distance – but this story of Kino and his family is still captivating, and a masterpiece of simplicity and authorial economy.
Things to get Stuck into:
The Blue Fox by Sjon – this sparse Icelandic tale kept coming to my mind whilst I was reading – perhaps because Sjon, like Steinbeck, envelops the reader entirely in the atmosphere of his tale.
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono – for another well-told fable, with beautiful woodcut illustrations, you could do no better.
Happy All Hallows!
Happy All Saints’ Day! Also known as All Hallows’ Day, you might have celebrated HallowE[v]en[ing], but that’s a bit like celebrating Christmas Eve without celebrating Christmas, in my opinion.
Gotta say, there are a lot of reasons I don’t like Hallowe’en – from its rather unpleasant origins to the decorations in *every* shop window which are not good for those of us who suffer from arachnophobia – so I’m pleased it’s out of the way and I can get behind a nicer day to celebrate!
Lots of people read spooky books for Hallowe’en (I don’t have a problem with the bookish part of the day!) but I’d like to read something which fits the theme of All Hallows’ Day – any suggestions? Anything with a saint or a church or similar – but no ghost stories or Gothic graveyards!
Barbara Pym, perhaps? Hmm… my mind is rather a blank…
A couple recommendations which I’ve already read, if you want to celebrate a saintly day – you could do a lot worse than Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield or Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.
Over to you!