1970s

Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow by Paul Gallico

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There are only four Mrs Harris books, but I’ve been gradually working my way through the series since 2012. Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow – known as Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Moscow in the US – is the final one of these, published in 1974, an impressive sixteen years after the first in the series.

Mrs Harris is a London char lady whose exploits started (in Flowers for Mrs Harris, or Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris, or indeed Mrs Harris Goes to Paris) with saving up money to buy a Dior dress in France. After that, she went to America and became an MP (in separate books, naturally). And, finally, she’s off to Moscow to reunite one of her employers with his long-lost Russian love. That’s when things start to get ridiculous.

By a series of miscommunications, mistaken identities, and misunderstandings of what ‘char lady’ could possibly mean, Mrs Harris and her friend Violet Butterfield (the wonderful Vi, who wants none of the adventures that Mrs H seems to thrive on) are believed to be spies by the KGB and believed to be aristocracy by others high up in Russia. What they actually are is two lucky women who won some sort of raffle.

I was feeling in the mood for something silly and light, and Gallico’s series is entirely reliable for that. If you liked the others, you’ll certainly like this – if you can face reading about Russian collusion in the current environment (it did feel oddly topical). I continue to be fascinated by the extraordinary range that Gallico has in his writing, from dark to frothy, poignant to funny, and (indeed) very good to not at all good. This one sits in the thoroughly-enjoyable category – completely ridiculous, but also entirely fitted the mood I was in when I picked it up.

25 Books in 25 Days: #25 Albert’s World Tour

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The end! I did it! And it was the most fun. I’ll do a bit of a round up about the experience, but first – today’s book: Albert’s World Tour (1978) by Rosemary Weir.

I suspect it’s a coincidence that it’s as the 25 days finishes, but I’ve come down with a horrible cold today – and I couldn’t face reading anything more demanding than a children’s book. Growing up, I loved the Albert the Dragon stories – or, more particularly, Further Adventures of Albert the Dragon, which is the one we read most I think. We certainly didn’t have the third, fourth, and fifth in the series – and I decided to buy them up earlier this year. Though only found the fourth and fifth cheaply – and accidentally just read the fifth (for such is Albert’s World Tour) out of order.

Albert is a vegetarian dragon who, as the series starts, is rather feared by the community – but a little boy called Tony becomes friends with him, and the villagers soon realise that Albert only sets fire to things by accident. As the books continue, he has quickly-resolved but rather lovely adventures – and in this book, they decide to fly around the world. They visit Rome, China, and generic-Africa, so job done.

What I loved (and still love) about these books is Albert’s gentle, lovable character, and Weir’s way of putting slightly awkward conversation in the mouths of dragons, unicorns, wizards, and so forth. It’s all very charming, even without the nostalgia I have for the books. And I rather suspect seaweed-eating Albert is, deep down, the reason I’m vegetarian.

So, I haven’t finished on great literature, but it certainly worked with how grotty and tired I’m feeling…

—

And the 25 Books in 25 Days project in general? I’ve loved it! It’s been surprisingly easy – I’ve been reading a bit before work, and while walking to and from the Park and Ride in Oxford (I walk for about half an hour after parking, for such is Oxford’s parking restrictions), and finding there is a lot more time for reading in the day (my day) than I usually allow.

I do recognise that only someone in my position – living alone, lots of free time – would be able to do this. Kudos to those with families and full-time jobs managing to read anything! But if you only have one or other of those, I think it’s very doable.

I deliberately didn’t plan out the books I was reading. Each night, I’d pick something for the next day that suited the sort of mood I was in – mixing up fiction and non-fiction, different periods, different genres. Similarly, I wasn’t tying it to my Century of Books intentionally – I thought it would be more fun just to see afterwards how many slots I filled, based on what I wanted to read. And it turns out that 14 of my books matched empty slots on A Century of Books – a happy bonus!

Would I do it again? Definitely – if I have enough short books left on my shelves. I had to pick a period when I didn’t have other reading demands, or an enormous amount of things going on. But maybe next year I’d give it a go. And one thing I’ve really enjoyed is writing short blog posts – perhaps not as useful a resource for my own memory, but getting my thoughts across concisely and quickly.

Anybody tempted to try a similar project??

25 Books in 25 Days: #15 Offshore

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I’m going to be doing a full review of Offshore (1979) by Penelope Fitzgerald later, for a feature at Shiny New Books, but it’s nice and short so seemed a no-brainer for 25 Books in 25 Days. I’ve read quite a few Fitzgerald novels over time, but this is the one that snared her the Booker – what would I make of it?

It’s set in London, among a community of people who live on houseboats. It has Fitzgerald’s archetypal disjointed conversations and disjointed relationships – nobody ever quite answering the question that is asked them, or doing anything in quite the way you might expect them to. This is shown at its best in a wonderfully brittle, peculiar conversation between two strangers. Here’s a little bit of it…

“Well you might turn out to be a nuisance to Edward.”

She mustn’t irritate him.

“In what way?”

“Well, I didn’t care for the way you were standing there ringing the bell. Anyway, he’s out.”

“How can you tell? You’re only just coming in yourself. Do you live here?”

“Well, in a way.”

He examined her more closely. “Your hair is quite pretty.”

It had begun to rain slightly. There seemed no reason why they should not stand here for ever.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I do remember you. My name is Hodge. Gordon Hodge.”

Nenna shook her head. “I can’t help that.”

“I have met you several times with Edward.”

“And was I a nuisance then?”

The writing is bizarre and wonderful much of the time, but I did find that I was a little too disorientated by what was going on at any time. Finding the right amount of disorientation in Fitzgerald is a fine balance – and perhaps one influenced by the mood one is in when reading. So, it’s not my favourite, and it felt a little overly-confused, but it’s still Fitzgerald and thus it’s still characterful and very good nonetheless.

25 Books in 25 Days: #13 Turtle Diary

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I first heard of Turtle Diary (1975) by Russell Hoban when looking for films made in the year I was born (the adaptation was made in 1985). I didn’t watch it in the end, but it did make me pick up the book a couple of years ago – and, of course, I couldn’t resist a lovely NYRB Classics edition.

The novel is told in alternate chapters by Neaera H and William G, two middle-aged people who are feeling rather lost. Neaera writes and illustrates children’s books and has a pet water beetle; William is feeling lonely as he tries to get used to being divorced and living in a boarding house. Both are drawn to London Zoo – particularly to the turtle enclosure. And both want to set the turtles free into the ocean.

This is exactly what happens – they get a sympathetic zookeeper on side, hire a van, and take the turtles to the ocean in Cornwall. What’s so brilliant about Hoban’s novel is that this isn’t a joyful passage of discovery, or a road trip where they learn to love each other. They both remain awkward and with their unhappinesses. The moment is not as life-changing as they think – it is not the culmination of the novel; we see the anti-climax afterwards. It is a very human story of real people, who cannot shed their disillusions, however extraordinary a moment in their lives may be.

Hoban is a fantastic writer. I enjoyed how often literary and movie references were brought in, remembered or half-remembered by the respective narrators. And he has such an observational turn of phrase and clever use of simile. Not just for the human characters but, aptly enough, for the animals – so I’ll leave you with this depiction of a sandpiper:

At the Waders Aviary a little sandpiper who would never have allowed me to come that close in real life perched on a sign a foot away from me and stared. He knew that he was safe because the wire mesh of the cage was between us. He has lost his innocence. He appeared to have lost a leg as well, and for a long time stood steadfastly on the one very slender remaining member whilst looking at me through half-closed eyes. Having kept me there for nearly half an hour he revealed a second leg that matched that other perfectly, then flew down to the sand and entertained a lady sandpiper with an elegant little dance that seemed done less for the lady than for the thing itself. He made his legs even longer and thinner than they were, drew himself up quite tall in his small way, spread his wings, wound himself up and produced a noise like a tiny paddle-wheel boat whilst flapping his wings stiffly and with formal regularity. At the same time he executed some very subtle steps almost absent-mindedly, with the air of one who could be blindingly nimble if he let himself go. The lady watched attentively. At a certain point, as if by mutual agreement that the proprieties had been observed, he stopped dancing, she stopped watching. They went their separate ways like two people at a cocktail party.

25 Books in 25 Days: #1 A Way of Life, Like Any Other

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After reading Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch – a reading memoir by someone who reads a book a day for a year – and then watching Madame Bibliophile do ‘Novella a Day in May‘ – I’ve decided I’m going to try something similar myself.

I’ve done a few weekends where I read as many novellas as I can, just to whittle down my tbr piles. And now I’m going try… 25 Books in 25 Days. Basically a book a day, though I may end up finishing off some I’ve got on the go. And sometimes those books will be SUPER short, depending on what else I’ve got on. But it’s a fun challenge, especially to see if I can fit it around my job etc., and will help me read some of the books I’ve got waiting for me.

And I’m going to write really quickly about all of them, as they happen, at least until I fail. OPTIMISM. I’m just going to go with where/how I got the book, a quotation, and quick general thoughts.

A Way of Life, Like Any Other (1977) by Darcy O’Brien

I bought this in April 2012, in Barter Books up in Alnwick, presumably because it’s a lovely NYRB Classics edition – though I do also seem to remember seeing it around the blogosphere.

It’s told as though a memoir by the child of Golden Age Hollywood actors (who are now a bit down on their luck). The main character negotiates a life dominated by his temperamental mother, but also filled with larger-than-life and slightly surreal other characters. The tone is heightened, but extremely engaging – and I really enjoyed it as a quirky, disruptive, often disjointed view of Hollywood. I’ve not read the introduction yet, so I don’t know how much Darcy O’Brien had to base on his own life.

“Stand there a minute,” he said. “I think I see a resemblance to your father.”

“I’m tired, Mr. Pines.”

“Please call me Peter. It’s in the mouth. You have his mouth. He was a very handsome man. You love him, don’t you.”

“Every son loves his father,” I said, getting into bed.

“You’re very young. It’s very hard on you, isn’t it? I know. I went through it myself. My father walked out when I was five.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to hear about Mr. Pine’s father. He meant well. We all do.

“I think your mother deserves better than that cretin, don’t you?”

“He’s all right,” I said. I felt like crying all of a sudden. I turned my face to the wall. Poor Mother was going to be alone again. And poor Anatol, what would he do? Go on at Disney till he dropped? I felt sorry for everybody. What was I going to do? I wished people could stay together. I thought about baseball.

 

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

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I love Milan Kundera, and I haven’t read one of his books for a while – so it was nice to revisit his writing on my recent holiday. I’ve still not read his most famous novel (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), but have read Immortality, Identity, The Joke, and The Festival of Insignificance – which is both the order I read them in and how much I liked them. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) is one of the best Kundera novels I’ve read – in a translation by Aaron Asher. And translations really matter with Kundera – he is notoriously choosy, but approved of this one. Which, interestingly enough, was translated from the French translations of the original Czech. An earlier English translation – in 1980, directly from the Czech – obviously didn’t quite cut it.

That sort of patchwork is quite appropriate for a book like The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which I hesitate to call a novel or a collection of short stories – it is something in between. It is, indeed, a book of laughter and forgetting – themes which haunt the book like characters, offering the only unity available. And why (Kundera seems to ask) should not themes be a book’s unifying thread, rather than characters, time, and place?

Structurally, the book is divided into seven sections. To emphasis the iteration of thoughts and cross-connections, two are called ‘Lost Letters’ and two are called ‘The Angels’. It’s probably best (if you want a full summary) to head over to the Wikipedia page, rather than me paraphrasing what they say. But each section looks at a slice of life in various Czech people’s lives – from a man travelling and being followed by suspicious government agents, while thinking of his past love, to a fanciful scene in which schoolgirls fly away with angels. Most are connected with sex or politics, or both – which are often the two keynotes of Kundera’s created worlds.

But sections are not simple, discrete tales. Within each, Kundera shifts from image to image, thought to thought – in the first, for instance, he includes a description of a 1948 photograph of Vladimir Clementis and Klement Gottwald, from which Clementis was erased when he was no longer acceptable to the politicians’ propaganda. This is one of the senses of forgetting in the book. He also includes himself – or, at least, an author called Milan Kundera – and each section incorporates tangents, anecdotes, fables, parables. There is a section held together by the concept of litost – a Czech word without direct translation, which Kundera describes as ‘a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery’. The book is all a patchwork that requires astonishing deftness, and Kundera is astonishingly deft.

He is very good on the significance of gesture, or of stereotyped movements and how they can be interpreted – it is, after all, the wave of an arm that kicks off the stream of connected images at the beginning of Immortality. Here he is on one of the varieties of laughter in the book:

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of bad films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running, and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theatres: “We’re happy, we’re glad to be in the world, we’re in agreement with being!” It’s a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter ‘beyond joking’.

All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on their billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.

Kundera has a level of control, and imagination, that makes these patchworks succeed. Indeed, his novels that try to follow a traditional narrative structure are the least successful, to my mind. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is such a triumph because he seems to throw out all the rules, and start from scratch with what a book can be. The characters and their paths, as they appear, are still vivid and vital – and there is a pain and hope throughout that can only come one whose homeland has been political hell. And there is, indeed, much humour – sometimes cynical, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes almost naively joyful.

It’s a brilliant mixture that I (at least) have to be in the right mood for, or it doesn’t click. Luckily I was in exactly the right mood when I picked up The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – and I very much recommend you give him a try.

I Want To Be A Christian by J.I. Packer – #1977Club

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Sneaking into the final day of the 1977 Club with my second review. And it’s been another great bunch of reviews from everyone – amazing variety, and lots of authors I know very little about. News about the next club soon, but do keep any 1977 Club reviews coming for the next few hours!

I’ve had I Want To Be A Christian (since republished as Growing in Christ) by J.I. Packer since 2004 – it was one of the books my Dad gave me when I went to university. I’ve read bits and pieces of it over the years, finding the bits that were most necessary at any point, but this was the first time I read it all the way through. It is perhaps not particularly relevant to 1977 specifically – its themes are literally eternal – but they do draw a line from to my Dad in 1977, or thereabouts, reading it for the first time.

As the title suggests, this is a book for people looking to find out more about the Christian faith, or perhaps very early in it, and it explores the central tenets of knowing Christ and being part of His church. I’ve been a Christian for my entire adult life, so there wasn’t anything in here that came as a surprise to me – but Packer writes it very well, phrasing it neatly and concisely, as well as bringing out the joy and wonder of what he explains.

The book is in four sections. The Apostles’ Creed, baptism and conversion, the Lord’s prayer, and the ten commandments. For the first, third, and fourth sections, Packer can take the words one by one – explaining what they mean, how they relate to the Bible, and what they mean for a life walked with God. The second section is necessarily a little more abstract, but is backed up with scripture, and gives an overview of some of the discussions theologians have had. But this book isn’t about deep debates and minute interpretations – it’s all about the essentials.

Packer has a great way of summarising the essential truths of something well known, and illuminating them further. I liked this on the Lord’s Prayer:

We need to see that the Lord’s Prayer is offering us model answers to the series of questions God puts to us to shape our conversation with him. Thus:  “Who do you take me for, and what am I to you?” (Our Father in heaven.) “That being so, what is it that you really want most?” (The hallowing of your name; the coming of your kingdom; to see your will known and done.) “So what are you asking for right now, as a means to that end?” (Provision, pardon, protection.) Then the “praise ending” answers the question, “How can you be so bold and confident in asking for these things?” (Because we know you can do it, and when you do it, it will bring you glory!) Spiritually, this set of questions sorts us out in a most salutary way.

There are many, many books that introduce people to the Christian faith. Many would be a lot more like storytelling than this one – there are no anecdotes, no personal testimonies. I love those sorts of books, but I think there’s also a vital place for this gentle, simple, step-by-step explanation of the tenets of faith – particularly one that you can feel recognises, in every word, the glory and wonder of what he is writing about.

Apple of My Eye by Helene Hanff – #1977Club

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Why am I always super busy during club weeks? I will do catch-ups properly towards the end of the week (yes, it is already towards the end of the week, SORRY) but I’m really excited to be getting the notifications that people are joining in. And Karen is on it like a pro.

My first 1977 Club read is one I picked up in a brilliant bookshop called J C Books in Watton, Norfolk. If you’re ever in Norfolk, make sure you get there. It’s Apple of My Eye by Helene Hanff – most famed, of course, for 84, Charing Cross Road, though I don’t hear a lot about her other books. Any fan of 84CCR should get a copy of Q’s Legacy pronto, which is sort of a sequel – but I’ve enjoyed all the books I’ve read by her, more or less.

A few years ago I read Letter From New York, which was about the apartment building she lived in, her neighbours, and generally life in the city – collected, if I remember correctly, from various articles over the years. I rather thought that Apple of My Eye would be the same thing – but it is not. Rather, Hanff had been commissioned to write the accompanying text to a book of photos of New York, designed for tourists to get the most out of the city. I don’t know quite what happened to that book, but Apple of My Eye rather wonderfully combines her recommended highlights with an account of visiting them herself and choosing what to include. It’s not a guidebook, it’s more a witty memoir of writing a guidebook – but could certainly function as an edited highlights of New York nonetheless (or, at least, New York in 1977).

Like many people who live in a touristy city, Hanff found that she had actually visited relatively few of the Must See Locations. (I, for instance, didn’t go to the Pitt Rivers for my first ten years in Oxford, and still haven’t made it to the Oxford Museum.) If you have all the time in the world to do something, then you never do – but Hanff realises she has to do all the things she hasn’t. And someone else who hasn’t is her friend Patsy – who also, apparently, has a couple of months to spare. So off they go!

Now, I’ve never been to New York, and I don’t really like travel guides even to places I have been. So my heart sank a little when I realised what sort of book this might be. But it was wrong to sink! While I couldn’t get my head around 5th Street this and 84th Street that, and have never understood how you know which two streets something like ‘6th and 8th’ might be – because surely that could be the same as 8th and 6th – I really enjoyed this anyway. And the reason is because Hanff is so funny about the experience of exploring – and about her friendship with Patsy.

Hanff is brilliant at writing about her friends. In Letter From New York it was Arlene (and Richard and Nina et al), and here it’s Patsy – she tells us enough about them to understand not only their characters, but how she relates to them and what their friendship is like. With Patsy, Hanff has clearly got to the point in the friendship where they can squabble slightly, tease each other, rely on each other, and say precisely what they mean. Patsy is enthusiastic about coming on this tour, but also openly reluctant to do many of the proposed activities (often because of her fear of heights). Her refrain is “write that down”, often for details Hanff considers irrelevant – though, self-evidently, did write them down. Much is also made of their East vs West friendly enmities.

Curiously, while I find all the south-of-the-river vs north-of-the-river chat in London quite tedious (mostly because they seem exactly the same to me), I really enjoyed the way Hanff wrote about East vs West. For example…

Generally speaking, West Siders look dowdy, scholarly and slightly down-at-heel, and the look has nothing to do with money. They look like what a great many of them are: scholars, intellectuals, dedicated professionals, all of whom regard shopping for clothes as a colossal waste of time. East Siders, on the other hand, look chic. Appearances are important to them. From which you’ll correctly deduce that East Siders are conventional and proper, part of the Establishment and in awe of it – which God knows, and God be thanks, West Siders are not.

Hanff, it should be noted, is from the East Side – though does feel like a fish out of water sometimes.

Luckily for me, Hanff assumes no knowledge of New York at all – up to and including telling us that theatre happens on Broadway. As she darts on buses all over the place, we see Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, Bloomingdale’s, Central Park, and all the things one would expect – with a few little-known gems thrown in for good measure. The strangest part to read about was the World Trade Center  – still having bits finalised at the time of Hanff writing. Obviously she could know nothing of its eventual fate, and to read of it as an exciting new development in the city, with the best restaurant available, felt rather surreal.

Hanff is very concise in her tour – my copy of the book was only 120 pages. Obviously volumes and volumes could be written about New York, and have been, but I think this is a wonderful little book – probably even more so for somebody familiar with New York. For me, it is a funny and charming account of friendship, which just happens to have a dizzying tour of New York as its backdrop.

The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson

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One of the more surprising choices for Persephone Books over the past few years has been The Sack of Bath (1973) by Adam Fergusson. While they have a range of titles and topics, usually they tick at least one of the boxes from ‘written by a woman’, ‘published in the first half of the 20th century’, and ‘fiction’. The Sack of Bath is none of these things – but what it is is fascinating. And – for those who care about this sort of thing – it has one of my very favourite Persephone endpapers:

Sack-of-Bath

The book was written in the 1970s as a rallying cry – it must almost immediately have become a historical piece instead – about the destruction of Bath’s beautiful Georgian architecture. The book is short in length and in its message: stop demolishing original architecture and replacing it with hideous buildings. The council of the time apparently were all about knocking stuff down if it was – or might be – in places where they wanted to put roads or businesses or anything whatsoever. Fergusson writes about it rather eloquently:

The set pieces – Royal Crescent, the Circus, Milsom Street, the Pump Room, and so on – stand glorious and glistening (some have been restored and cleaned) for tourists to come and see in their thousands every year. But now, more and more because the devastation goes on, they have become like mountains without foothills, like Old Masters without frames. The Bath of the working classes, the Bath which made Beau Nash’s fashionable resort possible, has been bodily swept away. Irreplaceable, unreproducible, serendipitous Bath, the city of period architectural vignettes with a myriad tiny alleys and corners and doorways, is either being wrenched out pocket by pocket or bulldozed in its entirety.

Isn’t ‘like Old Masters without frames’ brilliant? The initial purpose of Fergusson’s book may be over (and was, I believe, more successful than he could have hoped), but it is still extremely interesting to read. It’s hard not to get worked up and cross when one reads the nonsense that the vandal council and architects said – and see the before-and-after pictures of streets which were knocked down and replaced with architectural horrors. Indeed, much of this short book is photos – and while 21st-century books would be better produced, there is a certain poignancy to seeing 1970s photography at work.

Fergusson is not afraid to get his gloves off. This is not an academic’s careful analysis – this is impassioned. One photo caption reads ‘The redevelopment below Sion Place lurches inelegantly down the slope, like a juggernaut with a flat tyre’. All in all, it fills one with a slightly fruitless rage – because the fight has completely changed since the 70s, but also because so much of the damage had already been done. Thank goodness Fergusson wrote this book, helping stem the tide of wanton destruction – and, now, it’s a really engaging cultural document.

 

The Men’s Club by Leonard Michaels

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mens-clubA nice issue of Shiny New Books is coming out later this week, and I’ve still got a couple reviews I’ve not sent you towards. So you’ll get a couple in quick succession – tiding me over while my wrist recovers (which also accounts for how few reviews I have in Issue 13, sadly). Firstly, here’s a very strange, somehow also very good, book from 1978: The Men’s Club by Leonard Michaels. The whole review is here, and here’s the beginning of it:

There have been quite a few reprints, in recent years, from the interwar period and thereabouts. We are familiar with Golden Age detective fiction coming back into print, or the likes of Persephone, Virago Modern Classics, and others looking to the 1920s and 1930s for forgotten gems. Less often do reprints emerge from the 1970s – and so it was intriguing that Daunt Books have looked to Leonard Michaels and The Men’s Clubfor their latest offering (originally published in 1978 according to the inner flap, and 1981 according to Wikipedia – who knows?).