2000s

Jane

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Yes, I know I have lots of other books to read, but I couldn’t avoid buying and devouring Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman (who also wrote the Sylvia Townsend Warner book I just bought – the woman has taste.) Anybody remotely interested in Jane Austen will already have heard the premise of this book – about Austen’s evolving reputation and fame through the years, with especial focus on the peaks of the First World War and the post-Colin-Firth-in-a-lake interest. Harman starts off with a biography, focusing on the response given by Austen’s family and acquaintances to her writing, and the road to being published, involving the infamous publishers who paid her for the book which would become Northanger Abbey, advertised it for publication, and never actually released it. Tut tut. The book then documents her literary reputation after her death, and how this was created by her family – basically a portrait of a woman who cared not for fame, never let writing get in the way of domesticity, and who hadn’t a mean word to say about anyone. Which, of course, isn’t the witty, slightly sarky and very talented Jane we all know and love.

On the book goes, through the Janeites of the trenches to the 21st Century fascination with her, and even a mention of Stuck-in-a-Book favourite Lost in Austen (though she says it is an adaptation of a book Lost in Austen, which I don’t think is true… the book is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure, published in England with the title Being Elizabeth Bennett). Harman’s style isn’t particularly academic, which is nice when she throws a personal twist to certain aspects of Austen’s posthumous career – of the 1940 Pride and Prejudice film and it’s elaborate and anachronistic costumes: ‘when Darcy and Elizabeth sit together on a bench, it is not pride nor prejudice which seems to keep them apart, so much as their clothes.’

The idea of the book is great. There’s a wealth of fascinating material – where different possessions of Jane’s went, who bought them, who was responsible for Chawton being bought back or her books being reissued etc. etc. I was especially interested in her evolving reputation in the nineteenth century, and the amazingly prescient 1818 anonymous review in Blackwoods Magazine which predicted that Austen’s ‘familiar cabinet pictures’ would outstrip in interest even ‘the greatest historical pieces of our more eminent modern masters’. How right he or she was. The section on the search for a portrait of Jane Austen is also very interesting.

Yes, the idea was great… but somehow the book overall lacked *something* for me. I think it was the lengthy and pervasive strand of biography – which is all well and good if you haven’t already read a biography of Jane Austen, but I (like many of us) have read Claire Tomalin’s excellent and comprehensive biography, and I felt like Harman’s biographical details were clogging up the book. Perhaps she’d leave Austen newbies stranded without these bits, but I’d rather she’d gone whole hog on the reputation angle, and taken some bits of Austen’s life as read. And, despite a wealth of really great material, there was – how shall I put it – something a little lacklustre about the book as a whole. Can’t put my finger on it, but the style was occasionally dry and footnote-y, without being really scholarly. Again, kind of falls between two stools.

That sounds very negative, and I did very much enjoy reading Jane’s Fame. It’s just that, with such a fascinating potential, investigating why Jane Austen is idolised and ‘befriended’ in a way that no other author, not even Shakespeare, is… I’d still recommend this book to any Austen fan, or even anyone slightly interested in Austen, but I know that a better book could have been written. And now it won’t be able to be for at least a decade.

One other thing – Harman suggests that Jane Austen is the *only* author who can be identified just be their first name. I’m sure that’s not true… and was hoping you’d help me think of some others. In fact, just put their first names in the comments, that would be a good test… I offer Virginia as an example. And, in the right circles, Vita. Hmm. I’ll keep thinking…

A Shot in the Dark

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The other day I mentioned, amongst my goods from Liverpool, A Shot in the Dark by Saki. This is a beautiful Hesperus edition, which initially I bought just because my collected Saki is unwieldly, and I wanted to have some in a pocket edition. (I should add that it’s actually Mum and Dad’s collected Saki, which I’ve ‘borrowed’… call it short-circuiting my inheritance) But then I discovered, upon reading the introduction, that A Shot in the Dark is a collection of works discovered after the Complete Ed. was published – i.e. they’re not in there.

A few are familiar. ‘The Miracle Merchant’ is essentially Clovis story ‘The Hen’ dramatised; an earlier published version of ‘Tobermory’ is included; ‘A Sacrifice to Necessity’ is very, very similar to ‘The Stake’. But A Shot in the Dark isn’t just for Saki completists – some stories have lain undiscovered. ‘Dogged’, which was published in St. Paul’s magazine in February 1899, is thought to be the very first story Saki had published – and has never been anthologised or collected before. And, what’s more, it’s probably the best one in this collection. To be quite so witty and brilliant from the off is a little astonishing, not to say irritating to us lesser mortals.

‘Dogged’ is about a mild-mannered man being cajouled into buying a dog at a church bazaar: ‘A rakish-looking fox terrier, stamped with the hallmark of naked and unashamed depravity, and wearing the yawningly alert air of one who has found the world is vain and likes it all the better for it’. The dog manages to take over his life, and the story is representative of Saki’s merciless style and exaggerated incident.

I’ve already eulogised about how wonderful Saki is – see this post – but I never got around to writing about Beasts and Superbeasts, which I read last year. I can’t imagine why it didn’t make my Top 15 of 2008 – I must have been feeling serious when I composed that list, as it is the funniest book I’ve read in a long time. His tales dabble in the absurd, the commonplace, the mystical, the down-to-earth – but always with a great understanding of humanity (especially children) and a fondness for hyperbole which I love. If PG Wodehouse had written short stories, and had a very slightly crueller sense of humour, these would be the result.

If you’ve never tried Saki, do so immediately. Even if you don’t like short stories usually, I can’t imagine anyone disliking these – if you’re the sort of person who keeps a book in the loo (and I am) then Saki could work a treat. If you think you’ve got a Complete Saki, then you’re missing this selection – which comes with an interesting Introduction by Adam Newell and Foreword by Jeremy Dyson. Rectify the omission as soon as possible.

Love Leonard

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I always have a collection of the letters on the go, usually several, and the other day I finished Love Letters: Leonard Woolf and Trekkie Ritchie Parsons 1941-1968, edited by Judith Adamson. (Which, incidentally, was on my list of books I intended to read soon, back in April 2007. After two years I’ve read… 12 out of 17, having started and given up on another one. Not bad.) It was catapaulted to the top of my reading pile when my friend Phoebe gave me a second copy of it.

My interest in all things Bloomsbury, especially all things Virginia Woolf, presents something of a quandry – yes, I want to find out more about their lives, but reading Leonard professing love for someone who isn’t Ginny – ‘To know you and to love you has been the best thing in my life’ – is a little disconcerting. True, this started a while after Virginia’s death – but not that long.

Leonard’s met Ian Parsons through publishing, they were colleagues somewhere or other, and through Ian met his wife Trekkie, a painter. And they fell in love. Being the wacky world of Bloomsbury, none of the three seemed to think it particularly odd to carry on as they were – eventually Leonard moved in next door to the Parsons, and Trekkie would spend some holidays with Ian, some with Leonard – basically living two separate, but close, lives.

These letters, then, made slightly odd reading. By the second half they were the sweet, attached letters of two people who loved each other going about everyday life (with Ian usually quietly not mentioned) but the first half was quite awkward – Leonard professing his love in flowery, lengthy descriptions and Trekkie replying about her vegetable patch or latest clothing purchase. Really quite embarrassing how ardent he was and how cool she is in comparison – but obviously he wore her down.

They do make a slightly odd pair, and one with some connection with Two People – Leonard being both older and more intelligent than Trekkie – though she was an independently creative person, which Sylvia was not. She doesn’t come across as being remotely like Virginia, which is probably why Leonard’s relationship with Trekkie worked and Virginia is so seldom mentioned in these letters – but, for me, her absence spoke volumes over the entire, ahem, volume. Though interesting, this collection of letters really demonstrated to me how central Virginia Woolf is to my interest in Bloomsbury, and how bizarre I found the idea that it all carried on without her.

The History Book On The Shelf…

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Sorry to start this post by setting the cultural barrier quite low… if you don’t recognise the lyric in the post title, then consider yourself much more highbrow than me.

As promised, The History Boys by Alan Bennett. I did the unthinkable and came to this play through the film first – in fact, I still haven’t seen it on stage, but I have read it. What first attracted me to the film was the shots of Magdalen in the trailer – I thought it would be fun to see my place of residence on the big screen. As it turned out, the shots from the trailer were about all you saw of Magdalen in the film. Which makes sense, as they only go to Oxford towards the end…

A bit of plot synopsis, for those who don’t know. It’s a 1980s boys’ school, and eight students are going for a place studying History at Oxford. They have a wise, quirky, lonely teacher Hector – and in is brought a savvy, slightly awkward teacher Irwin. In between is the quite wonderful feminist teacher Mrs. Lintott. The play is really about different styles of knowledge and uses of it, and the purposes of education. Hector has taught them enormous amounts of interesting facts, but focuses equally on re-enactments of famous film scenes, and practising French through rather bizarre scenarios. Irwin is all about getting them into Oxford, teaching them the way to answer interview questions which is a little edgy, a little conspicuously different. Hector thinks examinations ‘the enemy of education’, and thinks with the boys that he has ‘lined their minds with some sort of literary insulation, proof against the primacy of fact’ – Irwin sees this trivia as ‘gobbets’ to be sprinkled into any exam or interview answer.

I didn’t think much of the film. All the acting was great, but the fact that almost everyone was lusting after each other (which I missed out of the synopsis because it’s complicated and quite dull) rather ruined it. Reading the play, there are so many fascinating ideas in it – alongside genuine wit – and it isn’t all clear-cut. It seems that Hector is right to start with – but so much of the entertainment of the play comes from these ‘gobbets’, out of context, out of passionate discovery. Tricky. The depiction of Oxford is hideously out of date, even for the 1980s, but Bennett’s introduction detailing his own application experiences is worth the cover price alone.
Bennett’s major achievement is having so many distinct schoolchildren. So many in fiction are good or disruptive or clever-but-misunderstood, and so forth – these are all intelligent creations and memorably characterised. Dakin – cheeky, bright, canny – is the most impressive, perhaps, but I grew fond of vulnerable Posner and authentic Scripps. Having seen the original cast members in the film, they are inextricably linked in my mind – especially Frances de la Tour’s beautifully sardonic portrayal of Mrs. Lintott – and this helped a reading of the play.

Do seek out a copy to read, or hopefully a local theatre will put it on (is someone still touring with it? I don’t know. Obviously the original cast aren’t). And you could watch the film, but it doesn’t do The History Boys justice at all.

The Book Thief

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Thanks for all your feedback on covers yesterday – I find this sort of thing really interesting, the thought and research which must go into cover design.

Onto the contents. I had to read The Book Thief very quickly, for my book group, but I hope that didn’t affect my enjoyment of it too much. Enjoyment perhaps a strange word for a book about Nazi Germany narrated by death (I’m going to assume everyone is familiar with the plot, as I seem to be the last person in the world to read the book, but if not then the Wikipedia article gives a brief summary).

There were lots of interesting ideas in the novel – the perspective of Death; the (adoptive) family dynamics in times of great stress; how the public could accept atrocities and how they covertly battled against them. These could all form a blog post, especially Death as a character (which I thought had moments of being very moving, as when he said he always carried the dead children up in his arms) but my favourite thing about The Book Thief was the role of books. It’s evident from the title that books are significant – throughout the novel she steals six books, I think. Just over one for every hundred pages. They form the centre of her world – she learns to read with The Gravedigger’s Handbook and this sets the tone for the fairly arbitrary nature of her spoils – but her understanding of their importance is something we can all adhere to, I’m sure.

More than anything, I love her response to seeing the mayor’s wife’s room full of books. Having only held a few in her life, she suddenly sees shelves and shelves of them:

[…]She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the grey, the every-coloured books. It was one of the most beautiful thins Liesel Meminger had ever seen.

With wonder, she smiled.

That such a room existed!

Even when she tried to wipe the smile away with her forearm, she realised instantly that it was a pointless exercise[…]

Markus Zusak (as well as being the first author beginning with ‘Z’ whom I’m read) is a talented story-teller, and The Book Thief is an impressive novel. I didn’t love it abundantly, perhaps because some of the themes weren’t fully realised and a little too much time was spent on the establishing of relationships between Liesel and her friends and family for my liking – but these qualms aside, I did like the novel very much. Anything this affectionate about books can’t be bad.

Quirky

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Thanks for your advice, I’ve done something which I haven’t done in a couple of years – given up on a book. Bye bye Kevin, you’re back on the bookshelf, for the time being at least. I know a lot of you believe books should be discarded if they’re not working for you at page 50, but I can’t adopt that policy. I feel I’ve entered into some sort of contract with the author – if they’ve put months into writing it, I can put days into reading it. So I only give up in exceptional circumstances.

And what have I read instead? Well, I actually picked it up yesterday because the computer was taking ages to load and it was the nearest book to me – but got hooked and finished it today. Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives by Richard Wiseman. It’s so modern that it was a website (quirkology.com) and a YouTube channel, and that’s more than Jane Austen ever had.

It doesn’t sound usual Stuck-in-a-Book fare, and I suppose it’s not, but one of the other books I’ve enjoyed this year was Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. That was a book detailing psychological illnesses witnessed by Dr. Sacks, and his methods of treating them, in a manner which demonstrated his empathy as well as intelligence. Quirkology is rather more silly, though still keen to point out its scientific credentials – it’s all about Wiseman’s psychological experiments and what insights he has discovered into everyday lives. The psychological equivalent of Kate Fox’s anthropological Watching the English.

Amongst Wiseman’s investigations are attempts to find the world’s funniest joke; see what sort of person takes more than 10 items in a supermarket’s express line; how to tell if someone is lying; how your surname could decide your career; the trustworthiness of beards; how pretending to be a football hooligan will actually lower your IQ. Many, many interesting facts and studies, which often make you feel grateful that you weren’t a participant (many of the studies claim to be about one thing, and trick a participant into having different behaviour analysed).

Here’s one little starter. Using your forefinger, trace a capital Q on your forehead. Go on… done it? Click here to see what it says about you.

A fun, and indeed very quirky, book.

A Book by any other name…

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The book I want to write about today isn’t one I’d necessarily recommend that you rush out and buy, but more of an interesting look at what the book can now be. A lot of people say that the book is dead, or will be in a decade or two – of course, people have been saying things like that more or less since the book was invented. Whilst I don’t believe there is any truth in that prophecy, I do believe that the range of possibilities for the book might well expand. Step forward Mistakes in the Background by Laura Dockrill, which was sent to me by Rachael, who works for Borders books, to review. See their page about it here.

The publishing information in the back of Mistakes in the Background describes it as a novel, but it’s difficult to see how it could be called that – it is basically a scrapbook. Laura Dockrill’s blurb says: ‘I draw like a left-handed baby, I can hardly spell my own name and watching me use a gluestick is a bit like watching a large bear trying to ram his own head into a pocket-sized cat flap… no, really.’ She’s not far wrong – the sketches (which appear throughout) are pretty amateur and look like they were done in haste, but with an enthusiasm and sprightliness which is what Dockrill is going for, I imagine.


There is no continuity in the book, really – a page will have a little story about ice skaters, or a cartoon of a snail, or bits and pieces stuck in with sellotape. There’s the typewritten sheets of a Rolf Harris obsessive; footprints, stickers. None of the book is typed, it’s all in the scrawl of Laura Dockrill. I must confess I found the whole book rather self-indulgent, and already feel too old for it… but I was born 70 years too late anyway.


And this is where a segment of the book market is heading – it won’t replace traditional novels, of course, but – though it might not be everyone’s cup of tea – it will bring the book form to more people. That’s got to be a good thing.

More Mapp

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There was a period earlier in the year when most of my posts seemed to be about how wonderful E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books are. I might assume for this post that readers know everything about the series…(for those who don’t, and indeed those who do, I came across a wonderful Mapp and Lucia Glossary site today). My first foray into eulogising was this post, and every now and then I remark on the sheer brilliance and wit and innocent charm of these novels – I paused after re-reading the first four, and have two left unread…

And then a bit later I interviewed Guy Fraser-Sampson (read the interview here), and he told me all about the new Mapp and Lucia book he’d written – Major Benjy, who, as fans will recall, is the local blustery military man in Tilling, and eventual husband of Miss Mapp. Major Benjy isn’t a sequel (as Tom Holt’s additions to the Mapp and Lucia canon were) but slips into Tilling history between Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia – in fact, the last few pages see Lucia’s arrival at Mallards, Miss Mapp’s house. Little did we know what took place mere hours before…

I don’t want to ruin the plot, so shall skirt about that and talk about the style instead – what is obvious throughout is that Guy loves the characters, and knows them inside out. He read the books as a child and has read them many times since, and all their foibles and peculiarities are in tact. For example, this paragraph about Susan Wyse (once Susan Poppit):
It was of course their second visit to the Wyses in two days and the only change appeared to be that Susan’s M.B.E. has been inadvertently placed in an even more prominent position, this time on the hall table where it could hardly fail to be seen as people left their hats and gloves. Unfortunately Susan did not seem to notice this until after the last guest had arrived, whereupon she gave a little scream of horror and snatched it up, exclaiming “oh, what will those servants do next?” as she did so. … Miss Mapp said sweetly “dear Susan, in all the many times I have admired your medal I have never seen it looking so impressive. A pity you are not wearing your furs tonight; it would set them off so nicely.”

So the characters are all there – Miss Mapp, Major Benjy, the Wyses, Diva Plaistow, Quaint Irene… and Lucy. Like Elaine (see her lovely review here) I had only the smallest recollection of Irene’s ‘companion’ Lucy, but she is rather brought to the fore in Major Benjy – and is symptomatic of the aspect of Fraser-Sampson’s novel which I least liked. Tilling has been rather over-sexualised, sometimes quite shockingly so – yes, gentle in comparison to most novels, but still rather more than Benson’s innocent, leave-it-to-the-imagination society warranted.

This aside, the novel is a joy – the incidents don’t always have Benson’s subtle touch, but there is a little storyline concerning a cake-baking competition which would be worthy of the original series. And mostly he has got the quiet back-stabbing, social-climbing, gossipy, cheerful and insouciant style just right – I can’t see any excuse for a Mapp and Lucia fan not to own this book. If you like the series, or know anyone who likes the series, then I demand you go and get a copy – like Elaine I welcome any addition to the canon, and though not perfectly Bensonian, it’s not far off.

Humble Pie

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I mentioned briefly, in that Booking Through Thursday quiz, that I’d bought Nicola Humble’s The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to 1950s but I couldn’t just leave it at that, could I? I’ll warn you now, it’s not cheap (paperback about £28, hardback much more) so get onto your local library… because for those whose reading tastes are most aligned with mine, or at least overlap significantly, that book title must sound like manna from Heaven – and, figuratively, it is. Literally, it’s just a book title… Ahem.

I read Humble’s book when writing my thesis on the topic as an undergraduate, and got rather peeved because she’d said all sorts of things I was hoping were original to me – but don’t hold that against her. She writes about all sorts of authors close to the Stuck-in-a-Book heart: EF Benson, Elizabeth Bowen, Agatha Christie, Ivy Compton-Burnett, EM Delafield, Monica Dickens, Rachel Ferguson, Stella Gibbons, Rosamund Lehmann, Rose Macaulay, Nancy Mitford, Dodie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Thirkell, Virginia Woolf. What a list. Even if you haven’t read all those authors (I’ll confess, there are two listed whom I’ve not read), you’ll probably still be interested in their spheres and their ethos. Do see what Danielle had to say about it on her blog.

The chapter headings are:
1. ‘Books Do Furnish A Room’: Readers and Reading
2. ‘Not Our Sort’: The Re-Formation of Middle-Class Identities
3. Imagining the Home
4. The Eccentric Family
5. A Crisis of Gender?

All such fascinating topics – and Humble writes with a style and verve which makes everything completely accessible without ‘dumbing down’. All rather middlebrow, now I come to think of it. EM Delafield would be proud to be included, and I can think of no higher, nor more apposite, praise than that.

Alva & Irva

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There were two books I bought as a result of working in the Bodleian and happening upon them – one was Yellow by Janni Visman (which I reviewed earlier in the year), and the other was Alva & Irva by Edward Carey. The former drew me by its cover; the latter by its concept and the fact that it is about twins. Tonight my book group met up to discuss Alva & Irva, as I thought I probably wouldn’t get around to reading it unless I suggested it there.

Alva & Irva is a deliciously quirky novel – it takes the form of a (fake) travel guide/history to the city Entralla (fictional city, I should say) and the autobiographical writings of Alva Dapps. She describes her upbringing and closeness to Irva – and later her longings for separation and exploration. At the same time, Irva becomes more and more withdrawn, quiet and reclusive. (I’d quote some of this to you, but I let someone else borrow my copy.) As Irva refuses to leave the house, and Alva wishes both to explore and to tempt her away, they start a joint project: Alva walks through all the streets of Entralla taking measurements, photos, drawings – from which Irva makes a plasticine model of the city.

It all sounds faintly ridiculous, I daresay, but somehow the book really works – it is a novel filled with grotesque characters (in the sense of exaggerated and strange) – the father who is obsessed with stamps, for example. The novel is actually, in many ways, about obsession – whether with objects or people or tasks. Obsession and exaggeration – the events I’ve described are amongst the more normal. Wait til you find out what Alva gets tattooed on herself.

In amongst all the glorious absurdity, I discovered a very moving narrative. Perhaps my love of twin-lit made me read a little too much into it, but I found the breaking of Alva and Irva’s close bond incredibly touching, as Alva sought others and Irva couldn’t understand why, and their responses to this.

It’s so difficult to suggest which readers might like Alva & Irva because Carey’s novel is so utterly unlike anything else I’ve read. Sometimes the black humour is a little Saki-esque, and the cover quotation claims it has similarities with Kafka, but I’ve not read any. Anyone who enjoys the quirky and unusual, and of course anyone with my love of twin-lit, would enjoy a wander into Carey’s world. It’s not a journey you’ll take anywhere else.