Moving house has had its usual effect on blogging, but I just had to put up a celebratory post for the royal prince!
Very, very thrilling – a great and momentous day in the life of our nation.
Our future king is born!
Author: StuckinaBook
Song for a Sunday
I’ve spent the past few days packing, and must have listened to this about forty times. It just gets better with every listen – ‘Losing You’ by Solange. (N.B. do not interpret this mournful title with my feelings about moving house – this time, I’m actually really excited!)
Leaving OUP (and which Jane Austen character are you?)
It feels as though it’s only just started, but my time as blog editor of OxfordWords came to an end yesterday. I was there on maternity cover, and the lovely woman who’d had her beautiful baby came back to the fore. Although I was only there for just under six months, I’ve made some very dear friends, and was incredibly touched by the leaving gifts and cards I got. As you’ll see from my selection, I certainly didn’t keep my love of the Queen (and kittens) quiet…
Notice also that my friend Fiona is feeding my Agatha Christie habit – and deliberately picked one with a dog on the cover, because of our long-running feud of cats v. dogs. (This feud manifested itself almost entirely in sending each other cute pictures of our preferred animal.)
Luckily for me, they say I can still write for OxfordWords now and then, as an external writer, and I have one in the pipeline which isn’t at all literary. Today, though, to commemorate the anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, my parting gift to OxfordWords was a ‘Which Jane Austen character are you?‘ quiz – go and take it, and let me know who you ended up as!
(I’m Mr. Darcy, it turns out. Since I wrote the quiz, I could be accused of making sure of this… but I actually would have preferred to be Mr. Bingley…)
Oh, Hastings
I seem to be experiencing a bit of reader’s block at the moment, struggling to ‘get into’ any novel I pick up (and it doesn’t help that most of them are in boxes, as I’m moving house this weekend.) One author is working for me, and I am chain-reading her… it’s Agatha Christie. I’ve read five in quick succession (Five Little Pigs, Crooked House, Cat Among the Pigeons, Lord Edgware Dies, and A Pocket Full of Rye) and I’ve just started The Secret of Chimneys. I shan’t blog about all of them, because they’ve gone back to the library, and anyway it’s very difficult to write about a detective novel properly, but I did want to share an excerpt from Lord Edgware Dies.
Is there anybody who has read an Agatha Christie novel in which he appears who does not love Captain Hastings? He is so adorable – yes, he is essentially a Watson to Poirot’s Holmes, but without Watson’s adulation of Holmes. Hastings can’t ever quite shake the feeling, during investigation, that Poirot’s best days might be behind him, or that his European ways are letting the side down. I love their dynamic, and nowhere is it better illustrated than this fantastic exchange:
“No human being should learn from another. Each individual should develop his own powers to the uttermost, not try to imitate those of someone else. I do not wish you to be a second and inferior Poirot. I wish you to be the supreme Hastings. And you are the supreme Hastings. In you, Hastings, I find the normal mind almost perfectly illustrated.”
“I’m not abnormal, I hope,” I said.
“No, no. You are beautifully and perfectly balanced. In you sanity is personified. Do you realise what that means to me? When the criminal sets out to do a crime his first effort is to deceive. Who does he seek to deceive? The image in his mind is that of the normal man. There is probably no such thing actually – it is a mathematical abstraction. But you come as near to realising it as is possible. There are moments when you have flashes of brilliance when you rise above the average, moments (I hope you will pardon me) when you descend to curious depths of obtuseness, but take it all for all, you are amazingly normal. Eh bien, how does this profit me? Simply in this way. As in a mirror, I see reflected in your mind exactly what the criminal wishes me to believe, That is terrifically helpful and suggestive.
I did not quite understand. It seemed to me that what Poirot was saying was hardly complimentary. However, he quickly disabused me of that impression.
“I have expressed myself badly,” he said quickly. “You have an insight into the criminal mind, which I myself lack. You show me what the criminal wishes me to believe. It is a great gift.”
Sketches from Year Six
I passed my sixth anniversary back in April, and since then have been intending to put together my annual collection of sketches. I always intended these to be a running part of Stuck-in-a-Book, but they come and go, depending on me remembering I do them, finding time to do them, and if anyone says nice things about them!
Clicking on the picture will, in each case, take you to the post in question… (the cartoons below include quite a few two-parters, but that should be obvious in each case…)
Song for a Sunday
My favourite singer, Kathryn Williams, is back with a lovely, lovely song – ‘Heart-Shaped Stone’. She made my all-time top two favourite albums (Old Low Light and Little Black Numbers) and this single is very promising for the next…
Young Entry – Molly Keane
I usually run a mile from Irish novels of a certain period – memories of The Last September make me shiver at the thought of Irish Troubles novels – but I was attracted by Molly Keane’s Young Entry (1928), very kindly given to me by Karyn when we met up in Oxford last year. Any sort of political upheaval seemed a distant irrelevance to the carefree heroines of Keane’s first novel (written at the sickeningly young age of 20) – a dollop of romance, high-spirited teasing, and countryside dalliances seemed a fitting antidote to the more serious or tragic end of Irish literature (for which there is, of course, a place – but that place is not on my bookshelf.)
Well, the heroines did not disappoint – except perhaps in an unexpected name. Prudence and Peter (yes, they are both women) are described thus – first Prudence:
Her demeanour in public places was totally perfect. Had she been a boy one would have looked at her and at once said – Eton. As it was, those who knew her, if they saw the back of her head and shoulders across a crowded room, said: “Prudence Turrett – couldn’t be anyone else.” And those who did not know her asked immediately who she was.
And lest you think she’s a totally passionless society great, I rather loved this description earlier in the novel:
A ladder in a favourite silk stocking could reduce her to tears, just as a phrase of wild poetry made her drunk with ecstasy, or a witty story moved her to agonies of mirth. She did things to distraction – always.
And then, more level-headed, there is Peter (it is so strange thinking that Peter is a woman, given it is Our Vicar’s name – I’ve known a Peta or two, but are any women called Peter?):
Having long ago come to the conclusion that young men did not sparkle in her company, she very wisely restrained all impulse in herself to sparkle in theirs; and left matters at a satisfactorily comfortable companionship.
These companionships were many. Brilliant young men liked Peter, because she gave them time to make their cleverest remarks. Lazy men liked her because she never attempted to stir them to energy.
I’m usually one to value character over plot, and Keane’s characters were a joy – showing all the signs of a young writer, in both a positive and negative way. Good, that they were lively and enthusiastically drawn, and bad, that they were emotionally rather immature and over the top. And yet, above and beyond this, the plot defeated me.
Much of Young Entry I enjoyed, particularly when it concerned the friendship of Prudence and Peter, and even their budding (and unlikely) romances – but, as Diana Petre points out in her introduction to the Virago reprint, a 20 year old Molly Keane could only write about the limited world she knew, and that was the society hunting set.
And so there is a lot about hunting. I’m not just ignorant about the ins and outs and mores of hunting, I actively loathe it. I have no problem with culling foxes humanely – I am a country boy at heart, and I know that country life is not all fluffy bunnies; I trust farmers to know what needs doing on their land. What makes me shocked and angry and everything within me recoil is the idea that killing should be turned into a game or a sport. It’s not often that I demonstrate such strong feelings on this blog, and I don’t want the comment section to become and to-and-fro on the topic of hunting, but I wanted to explain why there were reams of Young Entry that I could not enjoy. Extracts like this one…
Peter was different. More of a purist than Prudence; the hounds and their work was her joy, her interest and delight. It supplied for her the poetry of existence. She rode a fast hunt well enough; but in a slow one, with hounds working out each yard of a stale and twisting line, almost walking after their fox, she was nearly as happy. While Prudence fretted and chafed, longing to get on, Peter – her eyes alight, alert for every whimper, watching, always watching – was content to see hound-work at its prettiest and most difficult. Her soul blasphemed in chorus with that of the huntsman, when his hounds were pressed upon; and was with him also in ecstasy when the line was hit off afresh after a successful cast.
There are many scenes of hunting, and many which require knowledge of hunting. They didn’t simply bore me, in the way that depictions of sporting matches would do, they upset and ired me. So when major plot points and character movements concern the social correctness (or otherwise) of hunting in certain areas, and Keane seems to think we will both know and agree with these principles, I was left rather lost.
I’m still very grateful to Karyn for giving me this novel, as it was fascinating to see where Keane’s writing career began and spot the seeds of what was to come – but, let’s just say I’m glad that she didn’t stop here.
Further poems about authors
Many of you were kind enough to say nice things about my previous little poems about authors, and so, in this hot weather, I have turned my attention to writing a few more… I hope you enjoy them!
 |
| Not relevant… but nice. |
A reductive reading of Dorothy Parker
Poems, journalism, more –
Yet you are remembered for
Advising, to the finer sex,
A total abstinence from specs.
Gentlemen
Men apparently declare
Their love based on a woman’s hair.
That is all they need, to choose
(according to Anita Loos.)
Reassurance
You’re my favourite of the three
And yet you have the faintest fame.
To generations you will be:
‘Charlotte, Emily, whatshername’.
My Problem With Alfred
Reading Dead White Men is fun,
Unless, of course, it’s Tennyson.
Among his literary powers
Is not included a respect for line length or stresses or anything so long as he can mention flowers.
Oxford by Edward Thomas
I think most book bloggers will identify with this situation: THE book we read and never got around to reviewing. Of course, there are dozens that would fit that category, but I imagine we all have one in particular which we wish we’d reviewed at the time – either because it was so good, or because we’ve wanted to link back to it on many occasions. But the memory of reading it has simply faded. That book, for me, is Oxford by Jan Morris, given to me by my father when I came up to Oxford – and read about five years later, which isn’t bad going for my reading schedule. It’s absolutely fantastic, that much I remember – but not much else.
In order for it to avoid a similar fate, I shall now write about Oxford (1903) by Edward Thomas. Imaginative titles, these fans of Oxford come up with, no? This was a gift from my friend Daphne, although I can’t remember quite when. Being published in 1903, perhaps I should have saved it for a tricky year when I do A Century of Books again in 2014 (this is still the plan!) but instead it’s come under Reading Presently (I’ll give you a proper update in due course.)
All I knew about Edward Thomas before reading this came from Helen Thomas’s excellent biographies/autobiographies, and having read one or two of his poems (i.e. ‘Adelstrop’, twice). Well, Oxford didn’t teach me a lot about him either, as – understandably – he doesn’t write very much about himself. But his sensibilities are in every line. Supposedly he writes about Oxford past and present, through the lenses of the students, the dons, and the servants – but really he is writing prose-poetry. There are anecdotes and portraits, true, but he is clearly a poet rather than an historian or chronicler, still less the creator of a guide book (although he would later write some).
Would any of those professions give space for this description of a college garden?Old and stories as it is, the garden has a whole volume of subtleties by which it avails itself of the tricks of the elements. Nothing could be more romantic than its grouping and contrasted lights when a great, tawny September moon leans – as if pensively at watch – upon the garden wall. No garden is so fortunate in retaining its splendour when summer brusquely departs, or so rich in the idiom or green leaves when the dewy charities of the south wind are at last accepted.
It’s lovely, and accordingly I love it (as mentioned before, I am much more at home with poetic prose than poetry) – but you will understand why I shan’t try to give a factual précis of the material Thomas covers, because the writing is everything here. I read Oxford very slowly, over the course of a few months, and I think that’s the best way to read it. It certainly shouldn’t be taken out on the High Street if you want to find the bus station, not least because the book is over a hundred years old.
I have lived in Oxford for nine years, but there was very little in here that I recognised as being here today – perhaps the fields in Grandpont, and the view over Port Meadow (for now…), but not the rest. The people have changed, the environment is no longer the way Thomas saw it. Things change more slowly in Oxford than elsewhere, perhaps, but the ignorant rich no longer have access to Oxford (whatever the tabloid press might suggest.) Legions of servants who know each undergraduate by time are similarly products of a bygone era.
Having said that, his portraits of personality types in ‘undergraduates of the present and past’ did hit home. Once the trappings of the 1900s were tidied away, there still exist, in outline, the figures he depicts. The mediocre student who does a bit of sport, a bit of studying, a bit of everything… the arrogant ‘intellectual’ who becomes disillusioned by the ignorance of his tutor… the man who speaks at the Oxford Union, ‘There and at afternoon teas with ladies he is known for the lucidity of his commonplaces and the length of his quotations’. I wonder which of Thomas’s portraits was I… This section of the book was probably my favourite. Not as poetic as the rest, but the only section where his aim was humour – and very amusing it was.
So, for a guide to Oxford, Oxford is hopeless. Even as an historic record, it is hugely flawed. But as a beautiful book, occasionally funny and always luxuriously written, it is a huge success, and I heartily recommend it. For a more cogent and calm history, with writing beautiful in a very different way, make sure you also pick up Jan Morris’s Oxford.
Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany
There are three people I routinely refer to as my best friend (playing fast and loose with my superlatives) – one is my lovely brother Colin, one is my dear friend Washington Wife, and the third is wonderful Mel. (Since her blog isn’t updated, I can link instead to a review she wrote for me, that was for a long time the most read page on my blog.) They’re all enormously brilliant people, and I am very blessed to know them – and only one of them is biologically predetermined to like me.
I bring this up only because today is Mel’s wedding day, and I’m off to usher (ush?), give a reading, and probably cry. I’ll leave you with a whole range of links, rather than the usual book, blog post, and link (because there are so many this week), but first of all – I’ve done the prize draw for Stephen Leacock’s Literary Lapses and the winner is Pam from Travellin’ Penguin! Email me your address, and I’ll get it in the post. I so enjoyed reading everyone’s favourite things about Canada, and it’s made me even more determined to visit one day. And how serendipitous that I chose Canada Day to hold the draw! Right – some links:
1.) You’ll love this list of ‘book titles with one letter missing‘, and accompanying illustrations.
2.) I wrote again for OxfordWords – this time, 5 Words That Are Older Than You Think. Go and be surprised!
3.) So did Hayley! She’s written all about the language of whisky.
4.) AND Washington Wife, aforementioned! A really fantastic article on ‘journalese‘.
5.) Margaret sent me this fascinating article about the letters received after Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ was first published in the New Yorker. Warning: spoilers, so make sure you read the short story (which you can do here) first.
Have a great weekend, all!