Stuck in a Book

Just a quick note – Jennifer Dee reminded me that a few people were interested in reading my essay from last term on ‘the Imperial visitor’ in Katherine Mansfield and Olive Schreiner – and you’re very welcome to! If you’d like a copy, please email me at simondavidthomas@yahoo.co.uk and I’ll email you back one.

Sorry to take a break without warning you all! I’ve spent a few days in lovely Ludlow with the rest of the Thomas clan. Ludlow, in Shropshire, is my favourite town – feels like stepping back in time. The buildings are all beautiful and old, the streets windy and the atmosphere calming. A delightful antidote to the bustle of Oxford, and some fun times with my family.

I came back to the news that I have a place at Warwick University to do my PhD! The next step is asking for funding, which is, of course, the deal-breaker – and I’m still waiting to hear from Oxford, so nothing has been sorted yet, but it is still very pleasing to have the offer on the table. Even if I have next to no time to sort out my funding application… has to be there by March 2nd. Could be tight. Fingers crossed!

Something remotely bookish should be in this post, really, shouldn’t it… well, why not return with a giveaway? I’ve managed to get two copies of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson – Persephone’s highest selling book – and so I’m going to give one away. It’s in the grey cover, rather than the Persephone Classics cover, and for those who don’t know it, it’s a charming Cinderella-esque story about a governess who gets caught up in a world of sassy young things, nightclubs and romance. Written in 1938, Miss P is perhaps a little light and frothy, but at the very top of its field – a novel which it is more or less impossible to dislike. If you’d like a copy, pop your name in the comments.

Thanks everyone for your entries in the Ernest Hemingway / Mickey Spillane experiment! It’s the only time you’re likely to see some of those words on Stuck-in-a-Book… these Nobel Prize winners need to wash their mouth out with soap, sometimes.

The results. OV was so confident that he asked for his doughnut in advance this afternoon – I wonder whether that was justified confidence… let’s see.

1. ‘She was builty with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.’
Ernie

2. ‘ “You bitch,” he said. “You rich bitch. That’s poetry.” ‘
Ernie

3. ‘In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle.’
Mickey

4. ‘ “Love is a dunghill,” said Harry. “And I’m the cock that gets on it to crow.” ‘
Ernie

5. ‘The majoy did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contract gonorrhea from a sales girl in a Loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.’
Ernie

6. ‘”They’re a funny fish,’ I told him. ‘They aren’t here until they come.”‘
Ernie

7. ‘He started to walk down the dock looking longer than a day without breakfast.’
Ernie

8. ‘ “How c-could you?” she gasped. ‘I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in. ‘ “It was easy,” I said.’
Mickey

9. ‘I got him forward onto his knees and had both thumbs well in behind his talk-box, and I bent the whole thing back until she cracked. Don’t think you can’t hear it crack either.’
Ernie

10. ‘My hand smashed into bone and flesh and with the meaty impact I could smell the blood and hear the gagging intake of his breath. He grabbed, his arms like great claws. He just held on and I knew if I couldn’t break him loose he could kill me.’
Mickey

And now for the rankings…

3/10 – Lizzy Siddal
4/10 – Me
5/10 – Harriet (interestingly, with one exception, you made the same choices as me!)
5/10 – Our Vicar
5/10 – CallMeMadam
5/10 – _lethe_
7/10 – Beatrice Starr
7/10 – rz
7/10 – Anonymous

Apparently those who score under 5 and those above 5 are usually equal. I’m going to say ‘normal distribution’ and pretend that I remember what it means.

Beatrice, rz and Anonymous – expect a third of a doughnut in the post soon. Maybe.

Do keep trying the Ernie/Mickey challenge from yesterday’s post – I’ll reveal the results on Monday, and the winner – there might even be a prize. Maybe.

I *may* have mentioned, once or twice or fifty times, the excellent Lost in Austen TV series from last year, starring the sublime Jemima Rooper as a 21st century girl who accidentally swaps places with Lizzie Bennet. This post babbles on about why I love the series, if you need reminding. Well, there is more news – my friend Lucy emailed me the news that there is to be a film version of Lost in Austen! Here’s the news.

No word on casting as of yet. I’m torn. I think the cast of the ITV series were exceptionally good, especially Jemima, but if we have the same cast in the movie (and they already have the same brilliant scriptwriter, Guy Andrews) then what’s the point? The DVD is out there, the film could just be an abridgement. Obviously I’ll see it, and count down the days, but it does seem superfluous.

And I’m a bit worried about an American studio getting their hands on it. I’m always annoyed when American TV people remake our TV series (The Office, Dad’s Army… I’m sure there are other examples, I just can’t think of them) which would never happen when US programmes come to the US. I’m anxious, lest the deep affection for Jane Austen which the TV series has is ironed out, or the clever references removed for the sake of a wider audience… anything could go wrong. I always felt Lost in Austen triumphed despite the influence of various studio bosses and so forth – if it was a cynical meeting of Pride and Prejudice with Life on Mars the scriptwriter and actors and Jane Austen managed to override that – but will this triumph transfer itself to the big screen?

So I’m excited. With reservations.

We had a fun little ‘parlour game’ in our Bibliography class the other day (yes, parlour game, not doing much to disabuse people of the Oxford-students-are-upper-class myth, is it…) – we were discussing, amongst other things, the idea of intrinsic literary merit. Were certain books valued above others because they were, simply, better – and did this superiority reveal itself throughout every sentence of the work?

And so we were set a little test. We had 10 quotations – some are from Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway, some are from Mickey Spillane. If, like me, you’ve never heard of Mr. Spillane, he is a fairly critically savaged American crime writer – ‘sex and slaughter for a quarter’. I.e. a great writer and a poor writer – supposedly. Can you identify (WITHOUT doing a Google search or similar) which of the following are by EH and which by MS? More to the point, dare you put your answers in the comments? If it’s a comfort, I only got 4 out of 10. Having never read a word of either.

It’s not half-half (I made that mistake) but I won’t tell you which way it leans. Go! Have a go, it’ll be fun. I’ll post a doughnut to anybody who gets all 10 without cheating.

1. ‘She was builty with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.’

2. ‘ “You bitch,” he said. “You rich bitch. That’s poetry.” ‘

3. ‘In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle.’

4. ‘ “Love is a dunghill,” said Harry. “And I’m the cock that gets on it to crow.” ‘

5. ‘The majoy did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contract gonorrhea from a sales girl in a Loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.’

6. ‘”They’re a funny fish,’ I told him. ‘They aren’t here until they come.”‘

7. ‘He started to walk down the dock looking longer than a day without breakfast.’

8. ‘ “How c-could you?” she gasped.
‘I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
‘ “It was easy,” I said.’

9. ‘I got him forward onto his knees and had both thumbs well in behind his talk-box, and I bent the whole thing back until she cracked. Don’t think you can’t hear it crack either.’

10. ‘My hand smashed into bone and flesh and with the meaty impact I could smell the blood and hear the gagging intake of his breath. He grabbed, his arms like great claws. He just held on and I knew if I couldn’t break him loose he could kill me.’

Well done everyone, lots of good guesses, and mostly right.

Starting in the top left…

Epiphany (though Egypt was a good guess… OV and OVW have an Epiphany party every year)

Envelopes – not the most exciting things in the world, perhaps, but the restriction of Es made me think outside the box, and I realised how much I like tissue-lined envelopes. Well, I do have a catalogue from the gloriously named World of Envelopes somewhere.

Enid Blyton – I read little else for years

Eeyore – Shepard’s drawings just enhance this wonderful character. The meeting of Milne and Shepard make him the finest gloomy character in all of fiction.

Emperor Penguin – and ain’t this baby one adorable?

E.M. Delafield – looking remarkably like a pilot

Easter – Hallelujah!

Escalier – yes, French, but I love staircases too much to miss them out.

Eckington – this photograph is from www.eckington.info – the village I grew up in, and a very beautiful place, as well as one which will always be dear to me

Elizabeth II – I managed to offend my housemate the other day by saying I’d save the Queen’s life over hers. I am her subject…

That was quite difficult. Hopefully those I hand over to will have an easier task! Do ask for a letter if you haven’t already – here are letters picked from my Scrabble bag for those who’ve asked already. Do put a link to your blog in the comments when you’ve accepted the challenge!

Evie – you have T

Bookishnyc – D for you

OhSoVintage – joining me in the realm of vowels, with A

Overdue – so are you, as you get O

Rosie – have fun with G

Enjoy!

I spotted a fun-looking task on Harriet’s blog; come up with 10 favourite things beginning with a certain randomly selected letter. She got the quiz from Cornflower, who got it from someone else etc. etc., I don’t know where it all started. But the idea is you ask for a letter in the blog comments, and then go and do it on your blog – and I got E. Which is quite tricky! But it gave me the chance to play with Picasa 3 again (I’ve just discovered the Sepia function; be warned)

But I think I’ve managed it. I had to delve into French once. With that knowledge in hand, points for whoever can work out my 10 things beginning with E… You might have to click on the image to make it bigger, and one of them will be very tricky for non-Thomas family members. Have fun!

If you’d like to join in, ask for a letter in the comments – I’ll get my Scrabble tiles and let you know…

I’ve spent one of those days thinking about working and not really doing anything… other than demonstrate how slowly a man can walk along a road. I was much laughed at by sympathetic housemate Mel.

I haven’t been to Booking Through Thursday for a while, not for any particular reason, so I was surprised and pleased to see that this week’s question was suggested by me! I put it in the suggestion area of their website last April, and rather thought that it had been passed over – however, they must keep these things boiling under for many months, as this week’s question is:

Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse – a biography has made you love an author more?

I never know whether an author’s life and personality *should* influence a reading of their work or not, but I know for a fact that it does. Not wholly, but I can’t quite keep it out of my mind.

Having said that – Katherine Mansfield (Claire Tomalin) and Virginia Woolf (Hermione Lee) remain two of my favourite authors, despite coming across as less than pleasant in their respective biographies. I’ve forced myself to ignore their meanness (see anything KM wrote to Ida Baker) or selfishness or whatever, because their writing is amongst the best I’ve ever read. Daphne du Maurier has rather suffered after I read her Letters from Menabilly, which made her seem arrogant and callous, but I’m pre-determined to love anything I might ever read by Oriel Malet, who came across so much nicer in that book. Whatever my objective reasoning tells me, it always helps when an author turns out to be a lovely or courageous or notable person – I admire Beatrix Potter after discovering more about her; Richmal Crompton and AA Milne seem increasingly good people to invite to dinner.

So I’m all confused, basically. All Round Good Eggs benefit in my eyes – but I’ll blind myself to the nasty traits in authors I already love. It’s a case of warming to them or feeling quiet (and usually irrational) disappointment… do any of you have anything more sensible to contribute? Or, of course, any response, sensible or not…

It is a truth universally acknowledged (in the UK at least) that a single day in position of a snow fall must be in want of a photographer.

I have very mixed feelings about snow – I still have the child-like delight and desire to caper in the snow, but this motivation is combined with awful balance (I fall over most days putting on my socks. This is true.) No 90 year old could creep along the pavements as slowly as I – pensioners were comfortably outstripping me. But, still, pretty photographs…

In the hope of dragging this back to literature – portrayals of snow in books? The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney is brilliant at this. Someone here or elsewhere, possibly my friend Barbara-from-Ludlow, suggested a Jack London story for being similarly good at putting across the feeling of snow. Any other suggestions?

We built a snowman called Bernard. In the dark. Mel named him Bernard, but I like to think of him as named after the character in The Waves.