Hello! I’m back from a lovely time in London, where I attended a fantastic talk (as detailed below) and saw Elaine (Random Jottings) – also, unexpectedly, Lynne (dovegreyreader). After that, and during today, I saw many friends from uni who have made the move to London… Emily, Karina, Will, Hannah, Matt and Joy. Gosh! What a busy couple of days. Started and finished two books, too. And it won’t surprise you to learn that I bought a few books… five, in fact, but four were in a charity shop. Shall reveal all later, when I’m not too tired to get my camera… but for a little preamble I shall ask… Miss Read: yes or no?
All
The Home-Maker and The Home-Wrecker
Just to make people jealous… I’m going tomorrow to London, to the fourth Persephone Lecture. I haven’t managed to get to the others – where previous speakers have been Penelope Lively, Hermione Lee (my supervisor for my thesis!) and Salley Vickers – but shall be attending ‘The Home-Maker and The Home-Wrecker: Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Susan Glaspell, and 20th Century American Women Writers’ by Elaine Showalter. Quite a combination there – one made perfectly for Elaine from Random Jottings, who very, very kindly bought me a ticket and will be going with me. For those not in the know, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Fidelity and Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell, are novels published by Persephone Books. They’re rather good, especially The Home-Maker, which is about a ruthlessly efficient mother and wife who is forced to let her husband become a househusband when he is injured and becomes a wheelchair user. From 1924, it is very ahead of its time in gender/job ideas – even ahead of today, I’d say. While a lot has been done to level the field in gender equality at work (still some way to go, of course) there is still enormous stigma attached to a househusband, and men don’t really have the career/h
ousework and parenting choice which is becoming open to more and more women, and so often debated.
But I don’t think it’s the plight of men which Elaine Showalter will address, and that’s fine. She’s probably best known (to me, anyway) as the author of A Literature of Their Own, about British women novelists, though I’ve been using it recently in regards the South African writer Olive Schreiner.
(As an aside, I know men have dominated literary history, but I was thinking the other day… my knowledge of it is swayed completely towards female writers. Those were the choices I made both academically and recreationally… which is really good on one hand, but means I’m quite ignorant of the path for male writers through the ages! And if I had to label three genii in writing… it would be Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf. Women are winning…)
Anyway – I fully expect to have a fascinating evening, and will report back in due course – might not be until Thursday, as I’m spending Wednesday catching up with friends who’ve moved to London. And don’t they all eventually!
(Results) – Letters from Menabilly
What a nail-biter the Dickens vs. Hardy match was – and the final result was… a tie! 9 votes each, and 3 going for neither. And, what was even more interesting, most voters seemed not to have to hesitate for a moment. I wasn’t sure which way it would swing, but didn’t expect it to be so close as to be identical. Which, I suppose, means that my vote will be the decider… and I choose Dickens. Something unique in his writing, so witty but grotesque, a world which is unmistakably his. I admire Hardy a lot, but… Charles wins it.
Onto a wholly different topic, I f
inished Letters From Menabilly today. These are letters from Daphne du Maurier to Oriel Malet (Persephone author; I read the introduction ages ago, so can’t remember the reasoning behind excluding Oriel’s letters. Perhaps they weren’t saved?) Bought it in the midst of my *intended* du Maurier spree, which ended up being just The Flight of the Falcon and My Cousin Rachel, and now this. Somehow it hasn’t worked out exactly as I’d hoped… instead of building on my deep love of Rebecca, and hopeful adoration of Daphne du Maurier, she has rather faded in my estimation, both as a writer and a person. I shouldn’t have expected her to be able to match Rebecca, but I found The Flight of the Falcon fairly tedious at times, though My Cousin Rachel was rather good. It was more on the personal front…
Others have read Letters from Menabilly and loved Daphne as a result. Lynne aka dovegreyreader rather liked it, I think Becca Oxford Reader was also a fan. I enjoyed reading it, but found Daphne to be rather cold-hearted, a little selfish, and not altogether charming. I think opinion shifted irredeemably when she wrote this to Oriel Malet: “If I had never married, and hadn’t had financial success with my books, I think I’d have lived the same life you do”. I paraphrase a little, because I can’t find the quotation, but that’s more or less it. How insensitive! Yes, perhaps I can’t judge the friendship from outside, but so many of these letters seem to gloss over Oriel’s concerns and talk about Daphne’s own.
And then the in-jokes and funny neologisms. We know, from reading the Mitford letters, that these can be adorable or witty – I just found them “tarsome”, as Georgie would say, in Daphne’s letters. Tell-him and crumb and a shilling and beeding and waine and pegging and Doom… incomprehensible without a glossary and so often used, and without any noticeable charm. Am I being contrary? Perhaps. But ‘Tell-Him’ (used to describe more or less anything Daphne found dull or lecturey, to the slightest degree) was a label for almost everything she encountered, and seemed a bit cruel.
There was one exciting bit, which I’d already read about in Lynne’s review – when she writes about Frank Baker, the author of my beloved book Miss Hargreaves. He sent Daphne du Maurier a copy of his novel The Birds, which predates her short story which Alfred Hitchcock adapted so memorably – Daphne writes, ‘So I began his, rather smiling derisively, thinking it would be nonsense, and it’s frightfully good! Much more psychological politics than mine, and going into great Deep Thoughts, I was quite absorbed!’ I have The Birds but have yet to read it…
One final thing I must say – Oriel Malet comes across as a lovely, lovely person. Not only the recipient of the letters, so intersperses letters every now and then with prose for context. Usually explaining where they both were at the stage of their lives when writing, but also with such interest and charm and I looked forward to these sections the most. Her experiences living on a houseboat are especially delightful. So, though Daphne comes across as no fairy godmother, the book is worth seeking out – and I shall be turning my Daphne-fest into an Oriel hunt.
Questions for the Tired
I think I’m going to introduce a little series for the days when I’m too tired to write anything more sensible… it’ll be a simple x versus y question, and we’ll see who comes out on top! They might have something in common or they might not…
Today, a battle of the Titans: Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy?
Black Dogs
Somehow, over the years, I’ve read five novels by Ian McEwan. Not such an astonishing fact, except that he is far from being my favourite novelist – I admire quite a few of them, really like some, dislike others. And, thinking about it, four of those five have been read for book groups or similar – including Black Dogs which I finished (and, indeed, started) today.
It certainly battles out with Atonement for being my favourite McEwan – people have recommended ‘early McEwan’ to me, and I can see why. The writing here is compact, tense – so often I’d finish reading paragraphs or phrases and think “wow” – quite the opposite of Saturday.
Black Dogs centres around an incident which happened on a couple’s honeymoon, involving the dogs in question. We spend most of the novel knowing that something took place, but not knowing what, so I shan’t spoil it 
for you – the novel is filled with the impact and effects of the event. June and Bernard are the central couple – both old by the ‘present day’, both recounting their lives to the narrator, Jeremy, who is writing a sort of biography. We flit back to their youth, forward to their separate old age, to Jeremy’s life and marriage (to their daughter). Bernard is an ex-Communist whose narrow ideology cannot be made compatible with June’s spiritual ‘conversion’. I give that word inverted commas as, though June is supposed to represent ‘religion’ in the novel, she never does much other than embrace a hazy spirituality.
Nevertheless, she is the novel’s most interesting character, one with more depth than the rest. It is particularly to see her in an old people’s home; how disorientated she is: ‘In the few seconds that it took to approach slowly and set down my bag, she had to reconstruct her whole existence, who and where she was, how and why she came to be in this small white-walled room. Only when she had all that could she begin to remember me.’ Makes me want to watch Away From Her again…
Perhaps the most intriguing bit of the book is something Jeremy thinks, when researching the lives of June and Bernard: ‘Turning points are the inventions of story-tellers and dramatists, a necessary mechanism when a life is reduced to, traduced by, a plot, when a morality must be distilled from a sequence of actions, when an audience must be sent home with something unforgettable to mark a character’s growth.’ If McEwan is anything, he is the novelist of turning points. And usually very good with this technique, I must say – why is he arguing against it here, I wonder?
All in all, I thought it was very good – not much of a linear plot, more vignettes pulled together by the centring force of the Black Dogs incident. Some incredibly taut language and effective writing. I should add, however, that the majority of the group’s response at book group was middling or negative – but we all agreed it was better than Saturday!
For the benefit of those who have found their way here from the book group, here are the links to other Book Group Books which I’ve written about here…. not as many as I’d thought. And, for anyone interested, this is the book group’s website. Very nice it is too.
Speaking of Love – Angela Young
Alva & Irva – Edward Carey
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Deborah Harried
The collected letters of the Mitford sisters, which I raved about here, is still my favourite book read this year – and so it was with delight that I discovered Deborah Mitford (or Deborah Devonshire – or perhaps m’lady) would be having more letters published this year. In Tearing Haste is the letters between Debo and Patrick Leigh Fermor, who share the 
unusual trait of being alive whilst having their letters published. I imagine they are writing some amusing letters to each other about it already.
What makes this new book even more exciting is that Charlotte Mosley is editing it – how she found the time after The Mitfords is beyond me, but I’m very glad she did. With so much material, especially for that previous volume, the task of the editor is (I should imagine) incredibly difficult and incredibly skilled. I even wrote to Charlotte Mosley to say how much I enjoyed (nay, loved) her work on The Mitfords, and got a nice note back.
I have only just bought it – rather quailed at the price (£25, down to £20 at Blackwells and probably discounted in a lot of places) but an online friend, Sherry, and I made a cunning plan. We both have November birthdays, so we’re buying In Tearing Haste for each other – but since I live in England and she lives in the US, we’ll collect our presents from the local bookshop. Plus, I have Blackwells vouchers from Magdalen… down to my last £10 there, actually – expect a full run-through of how I spent Magdalen’s money soon. And this book will be very useful for my writing on the middlebrow, I daresay, and thus qualifies as an ‘academic text’ (on which the vouchers had to be spent). One of the great things about studying 20th Century Lit is that fun books are also work books!
I’ve not read anything by Patrick Leigh Fermor before, but apparently his style is the opposite of Debo’s avowedly philistine writing. Will just share the opening to the first letter from the book, and you’ll understand why I love her:
Dear Paddy Leigh Fermor,
I’m beginning like that chiefly because Nancy [Mitford] says one mustn’t, but as she says I’m mental age of 9 it doesn’t signify how one begins. I’m ever so excited about you coming to Ireland. Do really come & don’t just say you are.
The Mitfords, in some circles, had become bywords for the affluent and senseless – hopefully the recent succession of published letters, and Debo’s unavoidable charm, will lead the next generation of the Mitford-curious to a different conclusion.
Challenging
I don’t usually go in for reading challenges, because I have enough demand on my reading time as it is and dea
dlines make me panic, but I loved one I saw on Books Please so much that I had to join in. I rather anticipate that I won’t *actually* read the books in 2009, but the fun will be choosing books to fit the categories…
The challenge is What’s In A Name (2) – (2) because a successful challenge was run last year with different categories. I’m going to go through my unread-but-owned books and see where I can fit them in…
A book with a “profession” in its title.
The Professor – Charlotte BronteThe Calligrapher’s Night – Yasmine Ghata
The Sailor’s Return – David Garnett
The Sailor’s Return – David Garnett
A book with a “time of day” in its title. Endless Night – Agatha ChristieAs I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – Laurie LeeA Clear Dawn – Winifred Peck
A book with a “relative” in its title. Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting – Penelope Mortimer
Good Wives? – Margaret ForsterMiss Linsey and Pa – Stella Gibbons
Good Wives? – Margaret ForsterMiss Linsey and Pa – Stella Gibbons
A book with a “body part” in its title. The Eaten Heart – Giovanni BoccaccioBy The Pricking of My Thumbs – Agatha ChristieThe Heel of Achilles – EM Delafield
A book with a “building” in its title. The Orchid House – Phyllis Shand AllfreyHotel du Lac – Anita BrooknerThe House of Dolls – Barbara Comyns
A book with a “medical condition” in its title. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
I don’t think I have any others for this category… I don’t own Love in a Time of Cholera… does ‘Death’ count as a “medical condition”…?Even if you don’t intend to carry out the challenge, have a think of books on your shelves which might slot in… we’ll see next year how many of these I’ve read.
I don’t think I have any others for this category… I don’t own Love in a Time of Cholera… does ‘Death’ count as a “medical condition”…?Even if you don’t intend to carry out the challenge, have a think of books on your shelves which might slot in… we’ll see next year how many of these I’ve read.
Happy Birthday To Me!
I had coffee with Becca (aka Oxford Reader) today, and she pointed out that I hadn’t put any new sketches up on here for ages… and she is right. That was one of the things I wanted to do from the beginning, to make my blog a little different, and I apologise for the slackness. I shall use today (November 7th, although this post will claim to have been published in the final minutes of November 6th), as the birthday of me and the Carbon Copy, to put up a new one. If you want to know how old I am, just count the candles…
Homage to Catalonia
As promised, today I’m going to write about Homage to Catalonia. Perhaps I should start by acknowledging Obama and everything – but since I know less than nothing about the whole thing, I’ll just say that I was rather hoping he’d win (in an unfounded sort of way) and always imagined he would.
Right. To the Spanish Civil War. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell was one of two works (the other being an Auden poem) which were chosen by our tutor to represent ‘Literature of the 1930s’. If I had to choose a decade about which I knew the most, I’d plump for the 1930s, but nothing like either of these texts. My knowledge centres around the novel, perhaps with a little drama thrown in – I’d hoped to do my presentation this week (I’m now doing Theatre and Revolution next week) and I’m quite glad I was too late. Interesting as I found Homage to Catalonia, I feel completely unqualified to present a paper on it.
For those who don’t know – and I’d like to point out that Our Vicar did know – Homage to Catalonia is non-fiction. It’s more or less autobiography, military autobiography if you will, of George Orwell’s experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It’s one of those events which wasn’t taught much in school – it was wheeled in every now and then to explain certain reactions towards World War Two, but has been rather overshadowed by it. The only thing I knew about it, really, was that Julian Bell (Virginia Woolf’s nephew) died there, bombed whilst in an ambulance. So Orwell’s text really informed me, and what is more it was written in the six months after he returned to England. WW2 hadn’t started, and all the events were fresh in his mind.
Despite not being hugley interested in military history, I found Homage to Catalonia absolutely fascinating and incredibly engagingly written. My only experiences with Orwell before were, like a lot of people, 1984 and Animal Farm. Although they both have evident left-wing morals, I hadn’t realised quite how active Orwell had been for the left-wing cause – and the same great writing that he uses in these novels is transferred to discussing life ‘at the front’.
I say ‘at the front’. Some of it is, and he describes the unreality, frequent tedium, and unexpected priorities: ‘In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco candles and the enemy. In winter on the Saragossa front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last.’ After a spate there, he is back in Barcelona, once more faced with frustrating inactivity and boredom. And later he is shocked by the fact that the voluntary militia he joined, the POUM, is being used as a scapegoat by the government to blame for all ills – even while they are fighting for the cause.
Perhaps I should pin my colours to the mast. I am more or less a pacifist, probably through inclination as much as ideology; I find the concept of warfare sickening, and also find it unfathomable that Orwell cannot connect the danger, indignity and pain he experiences with that of the men on the other side of No Man’s Land. I recommend Homage to Catalonia – and I certainly recommend it – for Orwell’s exceptional writing and for interest, definitely not as a how-to manual or political treatise!
My copy is from the 1986 Complete Works – most editions after this have moved two chapters to be appendices, supposedly based on notes Orwell left – these are the two most overly political chapters, and what is left is more his personal experience. The tutor leading discussion was rather scandalised by this, but it makes the book much more captivating for me. And captivating it certainly is – if you’re intrigued to find out more about the Spanish Civil War, or if you are simply interested by the 1930s as a period, I think Homage to Catalonia would be an excellent starting point.
Sleep, perchance to dream…
I was going to write about George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia this evening, but I’m just too sleepy… something to do with an enormous fancy dinner at Magdalen, I think. So those who’ve read it can hurriedly gather their thoughts to throw in opinions when I (hopefully) write about the book tomorrow!
Will also be discussing my dissertation title for Literatures of Empire and Nation course, so might be able to give you a nearly-final idea about what that will be…