This is a Penguin Modern Classic. The blurb calls it a "glittering cascade of sexual encounters .... Her vibrant and impassioned prose evokes the essence of female sexuality in a world where only love has meaning." It is a dirty book. The short stories cover more or less every conceivable sort of sex including necrophilia, lesbianism, homosexuality, fetishism, voyeurism, bestiality ... Basically it is pornography. I certainly didn't get a feel for character or "a world where only love has meaning". Mostly it was a boring list of bits and who did what to whom; it was rarely arousing. Sometimes there was pretentiousness: "the famous Parisian chic" that gives a "Parisian woman a trimness, an audacity, that far surpasses the seductiveness of other women."
Perhaps it was shocking and groundbreaking when it came out, revealing that women had naughty thoughts on a par with those of men, but today it is a slightly boring dirty book.
Hard to finish. April 2010; 225 pages
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Friday, 16 April 2010
"The Great Wave" by David Hackett Fischer
You wouldn't have thought that a book subtitled Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History would be a great read but I really enjoyed this. His thesis is that economics goes through periods of stability, when prices reamin stable, and periods of voltatility when prices rise. The four price revolutions are the Mediaeval (around Black death time and the Peasants' Revolt) in which prices rose by 0.5% pa, the 16th Century (English Civil war; Thirty Years war etc) when they rose by 1% pa, the 18th Century (French revolution, Napoleonic Wars etc) when they rose by 2% and the Twentieth Century (WWI, WWII etc) when they rose by 4%. These were interspersed by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Victorian period and ... we haven't got there yet. You will have noticed that periods of inflation are marked by wars and revolutions; H-F believes that they start when populations rise and commodities run short and food and fuel prices start to rise and wages fall and rents rise so that inequalities in socieities get worse and that is why it ends with revolutions. Meantime the periods of stability are times when there are great advances in learning.
Except that the time at present when there is high inflation and lots of wars but learning has improved dramatically but so has the population. Are we presently having a price revolution or are we in a period of stability? H-F believes that the fall of the communist world suggests the end of this price revolution; perhaps we have then enjoyed twenty years of stability but clearly food and fuel prices are whizzing up at the moment so perhaps another revolution is about to start. Or maybe if you look at the misery elsewhere in the world we are still in a long revolution.
Interesting points:
The monetarists are wrong. Price revolutions are not started by increases in the money supply. The post renaissance revolution is oftem blamed on the Spanish importation of Gold and Silver from the Americas but it started thirty years before the first shipments and before the discovery of the silver mountain of Potosi.
On page 84 I discover that Nicolaus Copernicus invented a monetarist model!
On page 135 the Seven Years War starts nine years before it ends when George Washington is defeated (did he ever win a battle) by the French in a scrap in western Pennsylvania.
On page 252 "the laisser-faire prescription, 'let the free market take its course' has in the past eight hundred years created human suffering on a scale that is unacceptable. It is also unnecessary. .... In economic history, equilibrium is the exception rather than the rule. A free market restores equilibrium only to break it down again .... In the full span of modern history, most free markets have been in profound disequilibrium most of the time."
On page 255 he quotes from the New York Times (Oct 4th 1995) "if government does not know what it is doing it will be tempted to meddle less with private industry .... More likely, it will still meddle, only less wisely."
Great book
April 2010, 258 pages
Except that the time at present when there is high inflation and lots of wars but learning has improved dramatically but so has the population. Are we presently having a price revolution or are we in a period of stability? H-F believes that the fall of the communist world suggests the end of this price revolution; perhaps we have then enjoyed twenty years of stability but clearly food and fuel prices are whizzing up at the moment so perhaps another revolution is about to start. Or maybe if you look at the misery elsewhere in the world we are still in a long revolution.
Interesting points:
The monetarists are wrong. Price revolutions are not started by increases in the money supply. The post renaissance revolution is oftem blamed on the Spanish importation of Gold and Silver from the Americas but it started thirty years before the first shipments and before the discovery of the silver mountain of Potosi.
On page 84 I discover that Nicolaus Copernicus invented a monetarist model!
On page 135 the Seven Years War starts nine years before it ends when George Washington is defeated (did he ever win a battle) by the French in a scrap in western Pennsylvania.
On page 252 "the laisser-faire prescription, 'let the free market take its course' has in the past eight hundred years created human suffering on a scale that is unacceptable. It is also unnecessary. .... In economic history, equilibrium is the exception rather than the rule. A free market restores equilibrium only to break it down again .... In the full span of modern history, most free markets have been in profound disequilibrium most of the time."
On page 255 he quotes from the New York Times (Oct 4th 1995) "if government does not know what it is doing it will be tempted to meddle less with private industry .... More likely, it will still meddle, only less wisely."
Great book
April 2010, 258 pages
Monday, 12 April 2010
"The World According to Garp" by John Irving
Not quite sure why there is so much hype about this novel!
This is a family saga about Jenny Fields, a nurse who wants a child without a man; she straddles a dying airman and has a son whom she brings up at a posh New England boarding school. She writes a best selling autobiography and becomes a hero of the new feminist movement; her son, Garp, becomes a minor novelist kept by his wife, and a very anxious father. He and his wife love one another and their sons but they have infidelities which (er) climax in death and mutilation. Convalescence, rehabilitation and a best-selling novel lead to a further wave of deaths and mutilations.
A book about anxieties in which your worst fears really do come through; a book about feminism, rape, mutilation and death. Lots of horror and occasional humour.
April 2010; 570 pages
This is a family saga about Jenny Fields, a nurse who wants a child without a man; she straddles a dying airman and has a son whom she brings up at a posh New England boarding school. She writes a best selling autobiography and becomes a hero of the new feminist movement; her son, Garp, becomes a minor novelist kept by his wife, and a very anxious father. He and his wife love one another and their sons but they have infidelities which (er) climax in death and mutilation. Convalescence, rehabilitation and a best-selling novel lead to a further wave of deaths and mutilations.
A book about anxieties in which your worst fears really do come through; a book about feminism, rape, mutilation and death. Lots of horror and occasional humour.
April 2010; 570 pages
Friday, 2 April 2010
"Summer of Blood" by Dan Jones
This is the history of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
Richard II was the son of the Black Prince and only a boy when his grandfather Edward III dies and he came to the throne. The country was facing bankruptcy as the Hundred Years War dragged on (the French were raiding the South coast and the Scots were raiding the north of England) and government was haphazard and dominated by John of Gaunt, the young king's uncle. The social order had been seriously weakened by the Black Death; labour was scarce but the law forbade labourers from charging too much for their services whilst compelling them to work. During a parliament in Northampton (when King Richard stayed at a manor in nearby Moulton) a poll tax was declared: even the poorest labourers had to pay. The scene was set for rebellion.
The revolt seems to have started in Essex around Brentwood or possibly Fobbing where poll tax collectors were said to have looked up a young girl's skirts to see if she was a virgin (and thus exempt from paying). But the unrest soon spread to Kent; Abel Ker lead the rioters to sieze Rochester Castle and march on Maidstone; at Maidstone Wat Tyler took charge. Inspired by the Lollard preacher John Ball the Kentishmen marched on London. H
ere they confronted the boy King Richard on three separate occasions: first at Rotherhithe where he refused to get out of his barge. After this the rebels stormed across London Bridge (the Londoners let the drawbridge down), destroyed the Savoy Palace and beseiged the Tower.
Then Richard rode to Mile End where the Essex rebels had encamped to talk to them in the hope of providing a diversion so that the most hated people in the Tower could escape. This failed but at Mile End he was presented with a charter requesting that all men should become free (ie not bound serfs), that there should be a land rent limit and that no one should be required to work. He granted this, and then said they could catch and punish traitors.
They spilled across London "catching traitors". They entered the Tower (some one let the drawbridge down) and killed the Treasurer and the Archbishop of Canterbury; Henry of Derby, later Henry IV, was saved by being hidden by a guard. One man was dragged from sanctuary at Westminster Abbey and killed. There was rioting and looting.
Finally Richard met the rebels at Smithfield. Wat Tyler rode out to meet him; the Mayor of London accused Wat of insulting the King by his coarse manners and stabbed him. The boy King then took charge, riding out to the stunned commoners and leading them away from Smithfield while the Mayor and his men found enough armed men to force the Kentishmen to leave London.
The rebellion continued across Britain for a fortnight, largely in the South East (including Cambridge, St Albans and Huntingdon) but as far afield as Bridgwater and York. John Ball fled north, writing letters as he went, until he was captured at Coventry. One of his letters mentions Piers the Plowman!
This book was an absolutely gripping read.
April 2010; 211 pages
Richard II was the son of the Black Prince and only a boy when his grandfather Edward III dies and he came to the throne. The country was facing bankruptcy as the Hundred Years War dragged on (the French were raiding the South coast and the Scots were raiding the north of England) and government was haphazard and dominated by John of Gaunt, the young king's uncle. The social order had been seriously weakened by the Black Death; labour was scarce but the law forbade labourers from charging too much for their services whilst compelling them to work. During a parliament in Northampton (when King Richard stayed at a manor in nearby Moulton) a poll tax was declared: even the poorest labourers had to pay. The scene was set for rebellion.
The revolt seems to have started in Essex around Brentwood or possibly Fobbing where poll tax collectors were said to have looked up a young girl's skirts to see if she was a virgin (and thus exempt from paying). But the unrest soon spread to Kent; Abel Ker lead the rioters to sieze Rochester Castle and march on Maidstone; at Maidstone Wat Tyler took charge. Inspired by the Lollard preacher John Ball the Kentishmen marched on London. H
ere they confronted the boy King Richard on three separate occasions: first at Rotherhithe where he refused to get out of his barge. After this the rebels stormed across London Bridge (the Londoners let the drawbridge down), destroyed the Savoy Palace and beseiged the Tower.
Then Richard rode to Mile End where the Essex rebels had encamped to talk to them in the hope of providing a diversion so that the most hated people in the Tower could escape. This failed but at Mile End he was presented with a charter requesting that all men should become free (ie not bound serfs), that there should be a land rent limit and that no one should be required to work. He granted this, and then said they could catch and punish traitors.
They spilled across London "catching traitors". They entered the Tower (some one let the drawbridge down) and killed the Treasurer and the Archbishop of Canterbury; Henry of Derby, later Henry IV, was saved by being hidden by a guard. One man was dragged from sanctuary at Westminster Abbey and killed. There was rioting and looting.
Finally Richard met the rebels at Smithfield. Wat Tyler rode out to meet him; the Mayor of London accused Wat of insulting the King by his coarse manners and stabbed him. The boy King then took charge, riding out to the stunned commoners and leading them away from Smithfield while the Mayor and his men found enough armed men to force the Kentishmen to leave London.
The rebellion continued across Britain for a fortnight, largely in the South East (including Cambridge, St Albans and Huntingdon) but as far afield as Bridgwater and York. John Ball fled north, writing letters as he went, until he was captured at Coventry. One of his letters mentions Piers the Plowman!
This book was an absolutely gripping read.
April 2010; 211 pages
"The Decisive Moment" by Jonah Lehrer
Lehrer is a neuroscientist who wrote Proust was a neuroscientist. He also writes a blog called The Frontal Cortext.
His essential thesis in this book is that we are not the rational beings that we like to think we are, nor can we be. Our emotions are essential to us being able to make decisions and to make the right decisions. Many micro decisions are made faster than we can think (for example a batsman hitting a cricket ball that was bowled at a speed that makes it impossible to react by thinking. These decisions are made by our subconscious which has learnt how to make the right decisions based on long practise. He gives the example of a radar operator during the Gulf War who spotted a blip on his screen moving towards an aircraft carrier. The blip was moving in the same place and at the same speed as a friendly plane; nevertheless he took the decision to shoot it down. Later it was found to have ben a missile. No analysis of the tapes could provide evidence of why his hunch had been correct; his decision was made essentially on his gut feeling. But later it was realised that the blip had first appeared 3 sweeps of the radar later than a normal plane and it had been this (and the hours of staring at radar screens) that had aroused the fearful feelings in his subconscious.
But Lehrer also provides examples of situations where rationality has conquered emotions (thank goodness), for example the firefighter who, realising that he couldn't outrun a fire, decided to set the hillside in front of him alight and then lie down on the smouldering remains, thereby creating his own firebreak. Then there was the pilot whose plane lost all hydraulic control to ailerons, flaps, undercarriage, everything. The only way he could steer the plane was to fire the two engines at differential rates. He worked this out by a process of careful rational thought while the plane was falling through the air.
Things I learned and linked with:
April 2010; 247 pages
His essential thesis in this book is that we are not the rational beings that we like to think we are, nor can we be. Our emotions are essential to us being able to make decisions and to make the right decisions. Many micro decisions are made faster than we can think (for example a batsman hitting a cricket ball that was bowled at a speed that makes it impossible to react by thinking. These decisions are made by our subconscious which has learnt how to make the right decisions based on long practise. He gives the example of a radar operator during the Gulf War who spotted a blip on his screen moving towards an aircraft carrier. The blip was moving in the same place and at the same speed as a friendly plane; nevertheless he took the decision to shoot it down. Later it was found to have ben a missile. No analysis of the tapes could provide evidence of why his hunch had been correct; his decision was made essentially on his gut feeling. But later it was realised that the blip had first appeared 3 sweeps of the radar later than a normal plane and it had been this (and the hours of staring at radar screens) that had aroused the fearful feelings in his subconscious.
But Lehrer also provides examples of situations where rationality has conquered emotions (thank goodness), for example the firefighter who, realising that he couldn't outrun a fire, decided to set the hillside in front of him alight and then lie down on the smouldering remains, thereby creating his own firebreak. Then there was the pilot whose plane lost all hydraulic control to ailerons, flaps, undercarriage, everything. The only way he could steer the plane was to fire the two engines at differential rates. He worked this out by a process of careful rational thought while the plane was falling through the air.
Things I learned and linked with:
- The Dweck experiments in which students praised for their intelligence on a first test chose easier subsequent tests and scored worse on a final test than matched students praised for the efforts on the first test who chose harder intervening tests and therefore challenged themselves and learned faster. (p5-57)
- A quote from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics: "Anyone can become angry, that is easy. But to become angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy." (p107)
- ADHD as a manifestion of the retarded development of the pre-frontal cortex which renders the sufferer unable to resist the temptation for immediate gratification. During adolescence the pre-frontal cortex of an ADHD sufferer can be 3.5 years behind 'normal'; however they usually catch up by the end of adolesence. Teenagers find it hard to resist temptation if the consequences are delayed; the solution may be to make the consequences immediate. "When West Virginia revoked driving permits for for students who were under the age of 18 and who dropped out of school, the dropout rate fell by one-third in the first year." p113
- 'Choking' happens when you start to think about an action that has moved into the unconscious competence arena, like a golf player who starts thinking about the swing that has become natural to him. Moving something back from unconscious competence into conscious competence means that the rational mind starts to interfere with processes that have been filed away into the subconscious; this causes mistakes. p135
- Too much information can distract and confuse experts who have learned to act using instinct. "College counselors were given a vast array of information about a group of high school students. The counselors were then asked to predict the grades of these kids during their freshmen year in college. The counselors had access to high school transcripts, test scores, the results of personality and vocational tests and application essays from the students. They were even granted personal interviews .... The counselors were competing against a rudimentary mathematical formula composed of only two variables: the high school grade point average of the student and his or her score on a single standardized test .... the predictions made by the formula were far more accurate than the predictions made by the counselors .... While the extra information considered by the counselors made them extremely confident, it actually led to worse predictions." p155 This makes me think of our sixth form interviews!
- "Being certain means that you aren't worried about being wrong." p202
- There are two types of thinkers: hedgehogs and foxes (there is a Greek saying that the fox knows many thinfs but the hedgehog knows one big thing). Hedgehogs are certain. They ignore contrary information. "The fox relies on the solvent of doubt. He is skeptical of grand strategies and unifying theories." p231
- CRM (Cockpit Resource Management) is the training programme that tries to convince air cockpit crew to dissent from the view of the pilot. p242-3. Using it during cardiac surgery at Nebraska Medical Centre has raised the percentage of 'uneventful' surgeries from 21% to 62%.
April 2010; 247 pages
Saturday, 27 March 2010
"Fifty Mathematical Ideas you really need to know" by Tony Crilly
This book starts simple and interesting with stuff about zero and prime numbers and rapidly becomes challenging (Bayes theory) and then incomprehensible (the Riemann hypothesis). It left me with an appreciation of G. H. Hardy, the more or less utterly unknown mathematician who features in "The Indian Clerk" as the bloke who invited the fantastic mathematician Rananujan to England. In fact Hardy was a tremendous mathematician who work went from primes to genetics.
But the book was a disappointment. I suppose the problem was that the ideas, presented in their four page format, were either too easy or, if they were interesting and challenging, contained too little information for me to truly appreciate what they were about. It sort of skimmed the surface and left me either confused or wanted much more.
March 2010; 203 pages
But the book was a disappointment. I suppose the problem was that the ideas, presented in their four page format, were either too easy or, if they were interesting and challenging, contained too little information for me to truly appreciate what they were about. It sort of skimmed the surface and left me either confused or wanted much more.
March 2010; 203 pages
"Found Wanting" by Robert Goddard
I love Robert Goddard books. I think I have read them all. His classic story revolves around a man whose life is somehow in crisis who is thrust into a mystery which harks back into the past and who finds a new life through the adventures he experiences on his quest. I love the historical aspect and his heroes are classic examples of shabby disenchantment.
But I was the disenchanted one with this book.
His hero is a foreign office bureaucrat who is neither convincingly shabby and fed up with life nor has he any particular FO skills or connections. He agrees to take a locked briefcase to Amsterdam to meet an old friend who used to be a drug dealer (without thinking of looking in the briefcase). From this unconvincing start he gradually becomes more and more the thriller hero, rescuing people, shooting guns, risking his life because he is too dogged to give up, and falling in love at first sight.
The mystery itself alternates between the obvious (the bloke who bleeds to death is obviously a haemophiliac and therefore descended from the last Tsar of Russia) and the downright stupid: why on Earth is the bloke in charge of a massively profitable organisation prepared to spend millions and kill many to retrieve some letters??? The explanation is far from satisfactory.
Cardboard characters and a formulaic plot: this is decidedly not one of Goddard's best. However, his best is very, very good and even this carries you along.
March 2010; 474 pages
But I was the disenchanted one with this book.
His hero is a foreign office bureaucrat who is neither convincingly shabby and fed up with life nor has he any particular FO skills or connections. He agrees to take a locked briefcase to Amsterdam to meet an old friend who used to be a drug dealer (without thinking of looking in the briefcase). From this unconvincing start he gradually becomes more and more the thriller hero, rescuing people, shooting guns, risking his life because he is too dogged to give up, and falling in love at first sight.
The mystery itself alternates between the obvious (the bloke who bleeds to death is obviously a haemophiliac and therefore descended from the last Tsar of Russia) and the downright stupid: why on Earth is the bloke in charge of a massively profitable organisation prepared to spend millions and kill many to retrieve some letters??? The explanation is far from satisfactory.
Cardboard characters and a formulaic plot: this is decidedly not one of Goddard's best. However, his best is very, very good and even this carries you along.
March 2010; 474 pages
Monday, 22 March 2010
"A most wanted man" by John le Carre
This book reminded me of another le Carre book The Mission Song because it so humanises the characters. Some of his Smiley books are games and the characters are pompous public school chessmasters. Yet in this book, with its background of the war against terror, the main protagonists all seem to be decent people. Even the spies have ideals and are trying to gently persuade people to cooperate with them whilst setting up their target. The cynicism of the old le Carre books seems to have disappeared. All the characters are human from the lawyer Annabel to the banker Tommy to the mysterious Christ figure Issa.
An easy read; probably not one of le Carre's best.
March 2010; 416 pages
An easy read; probably not one of le Carre's best.
March 2010; 416 pages
Saturday, 27 February 2010
"A Room with a View" by E M Forster
This was a great book!
I though for the first 100 pages that it was an elegantly written light comedy. There were some delightful characters; chiefly the unbearable Miss Bartlett who is Lucy's chaperone and is that sort of spinster who sets more store on respectability than life and who manages to selfishly control everyone and get her own way all the time by the device of always insisting that she lives her life for the benefit of others.
The book is written as a two act play: the first act is Florence and the second act is the Surrey village of Summer Street where all the main characters coincidentally meet. Here Lucy, who encountered and was kissed by George near the end of act 1, is engaged to the hideous Cecil who sneers at the humble considerations of the simple folk of Summer Street because they are not so prententious as he is.
Charlotte Bartlett and Cecil Vyse are wonderfully written characters; perhaps it is easier to write bad people than it is to write good. Certainly the muddling clergyman Mr Beebe, Lucy's mother Mrs Honeychurch, Lucy's nemesis George, her brother Freddy, and George's father are all less well written.
There are a number of wonderful passages:
"George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice." (Chapter Two)
"Mr Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather than enthralled." (Chapter Three) is a beautifully discreet way of saying that Reverend Beebe is gay. Later Mr Beebe suggests that Cecil, Lucy's erstwhile fiance, is also gay; he is quoted by Freddy as saying "Mr Vyse is an ideal bachelor ... He is like me - better detached." (Chapter Eight). Still later, George (Lucy's squeeze) himself says of Cecil: "He should know no one intimately, least of all a woman." Forster, a gay man when to be so was illegal, writes a pivotal scene of Freddy and George, "radiant and personable" young men, and Reverend Beebe, bathing naked in a pool and being surprised by the women: at least Mr Darcy kept his breeches on!
"For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it" (Chapter Seventeen, beautifully misquoted from Macbeth).
Another aspect of Forster's craft is his ability to show the substance behind the stereotype. Both Mr Vyse and Miss Bartlett, though never engaging the reader's sympathy, redeem themselves by actions which show their essential humanity. Thus they escape being caricatures. And the whole scenario of the careful manners in the Florentine pension and the bloodlessness of the Edwardian village Anglican scene is mitigated by the boys who do not want to go to church (nor does the parson's neice) and the vicar whose passion is tea, and Lucy's mother who transcends the 'silly little mother' character by being quite forthright when she detects cruelty and pomposity, and the details such as the 'horrid' little cottages that are constructed by a builder who makes them ugly because he is following the dictates of Ruskin and the ugly house that Lucy's father built on the proceeds of being a solicitor and the fact that George works as a clerk in a railway office (at least he isn't a porter!).
But after the elegant writing and the delicate characterisation and the tres amusante drawing room comedy I was suddenly gripped by the apprehension that Lucy, having chucked one fellow, would NOT go on to marry her true love but allow society's manners to make her into an old maid. The last sentence of Chapter Eighteen states "The night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thrity years before." That I was so distraught at the possibility of a sad ending to the novel shows how much I had entered into the life of these characters.
And in a lovely endpiece written fifty years after the publication of the novel, Forster speculates about his characters as they progress through World Wars One and two in which George discovers that "away from his wife he did not remain chaste." This is the glory of Forster, he understands the weaknesses that are human beings.
Brilliant
Also read Howards End and Where Angels Fear To Tread and Maurice.
February 2010; 230 pages
I though for the first 100 pages that it was an elegantly written light comedy. There were some delightful characters; chiefly the unbearable Miss Bartlett who is Lucy's chaperone and is that sort of spinster who sets more store on respectability than life and who manages to selfishly control everyone and get her own way all the time by the device of always insisting that she lives her life for the benefit of others.
The book is written as a two act play: the first act is Florence and the second act is the Surrey village of Summer Street where all the main characters coincidentally meet. Here Lucy, who encountered and was kissed by George near the end of act 1, is engaged to the hideous Cecil who sneers at the humble considerations of the simple folk of Summer Street because they are not so prententious as he is.
Charlotte Bartlett and Cecil Vyse are wonderfully written characters; perhaps it is easier to write bad people than it is to write good. Certainly the muddling clergyman Mr Beebe, Lucy's mother Mrs Honeychurch, Lucy's nemesis George, her brother Freddy, and George's father are all less well written.
There are a number of wonderful passages:
"George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice." (Chapter Two)
"Mr Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather than enthralled." (Chapter Three) is a beautifully discreet way of saying that Reverend Beebe is gay. Later Mr Beebe suggests that Cecil, Lucy's erstwhile fiance, is also gay; he is quoted by Freddy as saying "Mr Vyse is an ideal bachelor ... He is like me - better detached." (Chapter Eight). Still later, George (Lucy's squeeze) himself says of Cecil: "He should know no one intimately, least of all a woman." Forster, a gay man when to be so was illegal, writes a pivotal scene of Freddy and George, "radiant and personable" young men, and Reverend Beebe, bathing naked in a pool and being surprised by the women: at least Mr Darcy kept his breeches on!
"For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it" (Chapter Seventeen, beautifully misquoted from Macbeth).
Another aspect of Forster's craft is his ability to show the substance behind the stereotype. Both Mr Vyse and Miss Bartlett, though never engaging the reader's sympathy, redeem themselves by actions which show their essential humanity. Thus they escape being caricatures. And the whole scenario of the careful manners in the Florentine pension and the bloodlessness of the Edwardian village Anglican scene is mitigated by the boys who do not want to go to church (nor does the parson's neice) and the vicar whose passion is tea, and Lucy's mother who transcends the 'silly little mother' character by being quite forthright when she detects cruelty and pomposity, and the details such as the 'horrid' little cottages that are constructed by a builder who makes them ugly because he is following the dictates of Ruskin and the ugly house that Lucy's father built on the proceeds of being a solicitor and the fact that George works as a clerk in a railway office (at least he isn't a porter!).
But after the elegant writing and the delicate characterisation and the tres amusante drawing room comedy I was suddenly gripped by the apprehension that Lucy, having chucked one fellow, would NOT go on to marry her true love but allow society's manners to make her into an old maid. The last sentence of Chapter Eighteen states "The night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thrity years before." That I was so distraught at the possibility of a sad ending to the novel shows how much I had entered into the life of these characters.
And in a lovely endpiece written fifty years after the publication of the novel, Forster speculates about his characters as they progress through World Wars One and two in which George discovers that "away from his wife he did not remain chaste." This is the glory of Forster, he understands the weaknesses that are human beings.
Brilliant
Also read Howards End and Where Angels Fear To Tread and Maurice.
February 2010; 230 pages
Thursday, 25 February 2010
"Dickens" by Peter Ackroyd
This is the paperback, abridged version of Ackroyd's biography of Charles Dickens and there were times when I was grateful for the free flow of the prose and there were times when I wanted a little more detail. So I suppose that means that Ackroyd got the mix about right.
I don't know which was most interesting: the childhood; the early working life when, all at once, he became a household name; the early novels when he was writing two at the same time whilst simoutaneously editing magazines; the later novels when he had developed his craft much more highly.
Books like Pickwick, Twist and Nickleby (the last Ackroyd describes as Dickens funniest book) were written as monthly serials. Dickens wrote prodigious amounts each day. He wrote using a quill!!! He was writing comedy and tragedy simultaneously (it seemed to help him) and he was writing even when he was in rooms with other people. His energy was fantastic. He did not seem to need a plan to his writing; he relied on his invention.
For the later books he had established a writing routine and he was massively well organised and disciplined, usually knowing exactly how many words he had to write. He would write for hours in the morning and then do other things in the evening. As well as writing a lot of massive novels he also edited (and contributed to) magazines for most of his working life. Some of the later books were serialised in weekly, rather than monthly, parts; this was the way he wrote; he never seems to have indulged in the liuxury of writing a novel entire and then publishing it, even when he was getting massive advances. He always seems to have been desperate for money.
One of his themes was clearly the virgin: little Nell, little Dorrit etc. Having married his wife he went into an extended morbid mourning when her 17 year old sister died. Much later, having separated from his wife, he seems to have had a Platonic affair with an actress called Ellen Ternan. He was a bit weird about young women.
He also saw life a s a perpetual battle against illness and time and ... He struggled with obsessive energy (in this he reminded me a little of myself) to escape his poverty stricken background.
His speciality was always creating characters. It was only in the later books that he learned to plan and his fiction began to mature.
I have never read Our Mutual Friend or Martin Chuzzlewit (or the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood). I must.
A superb biography. I wish I had the energy and drive (and the organisation) of Dickens.
February 2010; 578 pages
Peter Ackroyd is a prolific author: he writes both fiction and non-fiction; he specialises in London. I adore some of his books such as the brilliant Hawksmoor and I have found others (such as Thames) very tedious. If you enjoy Dickens then I recommend his biography of another great Victorian novelist and friend of Dickens: Wilkie Collins. Alternatively you could read Claire Tomalin's excellent biography of Dickens.
I don't know which was most interesting: the childhood; the early working life when, all at once, he became a household name; the early novels when he was writing two at the same time whilst simoutaneously editing magazines; the later novels when he had developed his craft much more highly.
Books like Pickwick, Twist and Nickleby (the last Ackroyd describes as Dickens funniest book) were written as monthly serials. Dickens wrote prodigious amounts each day. He wrote using a quill!!! He was writing comedy and tragedy simultaneously (it seemed to help him) and he was writing even when he was in rooms with other people. His energy was fantastic. He did not seem to need a plan to his writing; he relied on his invention.
For the later books he had established a writing routine and he was massively well organised and disciplined, usually knowing exactly how many words he had to write. He would write for hours in the morning and then do other things in the evening. As well as writing a lot of massive novels he also edited (and contributed to) magazines for most of his working life. Some of the later books were serialised in weekly, rather than monthly, parts; this was the way he wrote; he never seems to have indulged in the liuxury of writing a novel entire and then publishing it, even when he was getting massive advances. He always seems to have been desperate for money.
One of his themes was clearly the virgin: little Nell, little Dorrit etc. Having married his wife he went into an extended morbid mourning when her 17 year old sister died. Much later, having separated from his wife, he seems to have had a Platonic affair with an actress called Ellen Ternan. He was a bit weird about young women.
He also saw life a s a perpetual battle against illness and time and ... He struggled with obsessive energy (in this he reminded me a little of myself) to escape his poverty stricken background.
His speciality was always creating characters. It was only in the later books that he learned to plan and his fiction began to mature.
I have never read Our Mutual Friend or Martin Chuzzlewit (or the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood). I must.
A superb biography. I wish I had the energy and drive (and the organisation) of Dickens.
February 2010; 578 pages
Peter Ackroyd is a prolific author: he writes both fiction and non-fiction; he specialises in London. I adore some of his books such as the brilliant Hawksmoor and I have found others (such as Thames) very tedious. If you enjoy Dickens then I recommend his biography of another great Victorian novelist and friend of Dickens: Wilkie Collins. Alternatively you could read Claire Tomalin's excellent biography of Dickens.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
This is a beautiful book.
I have now read 4 Steinbecks: The Pearl, a book I read too soon at school and never appreciated; the blockbusters East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, both of which I read in my early twenties; now this. He is a wonderful writer and I should read more and more!
Lenny, big and stupid, and George, small and clever, make a most unlikely pair but George is Lenny's protector in the world, getting him out of all the trouble Lenny gets into. The other characters: self-possessed and astute Slim, the mean little feller Curly, Curly's wife (jailbait), Candy the old fellow, Crooks the crippled negro stable buck make a perfect cast. Men who have no future; men who only dreams. The writing is lean and elegant; the descriptions poignant and placed so that there are breathing places in the thriller dance. There is nothing in the plot that doesn't contribute to the terrible climax.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men) points out that every character has a dream (although as Burns said "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"). They have these dreams because they are lonely: "Candy is lonely after his dog is gone. Curley's wife is lonely because her husband is not the friend she hoped for —- she deals with her loneliness by flirting with the men on the ranch, which causes Curley to increase his abusiveness and jealousy. The companionship of George and Lennie is the result of loneliness. Crooks states the theme candidly as "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." .... The author further reinforces this theme through subtle methods by situating the story near the town of Soledad, which means "solitude" in Spanish."
Of Mice and Men reads like a play and is structured in 3 'acts' each of two 'scenes': certainly the first pages are like stage directions, first describing the scenery before the two mian characters appear on stage.
Tiny but perfect.
February 2010; 121 pages
Also reviewed on this blog the tiny but perfect, haunting and elegiac Cannery Row by the same author.
I have now read 4 Steinbecks: The Pearl, a book I read too soon at school and never appreciated; the blockbusters East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, both of which I read in my early twenties; now this. He is a wonderful writer and I should read more and more!
Lenny, big and stupid, and George, small and clever, make a most unlikely pair but George is Lenny's protector in the world, getting him out of all the trouble Lenny gets into. The other characters: self-possessed and astute Slim, the mean little feller Curly, Curly's wife (jailbait), Candy the old fellow, Crooks the crippled negro stable buck make a perfect cast. Men who have no future; men who only dreams. The writing is lean and elegant; the descriptions poignant and placed so that there are breathing places in the thriller dance. There is nothing in the plot that doesn't contribute to the terrible climax.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men) points out that every character has a dream (although as Burns said "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"). They have these dreams because they are lonely: "Candy is lonely after his dog is gone. Curley's wife is lonely because her husband is not the friend she hoped for —- she deals with her loneliness by flirting with the men on the ranch, which causes Curley to increase his abusiveness and jealousy. The companionship of George and Lennie is the result of loneliness. Crooks states the theme candidly as "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." .... The author further reinforces this theme through subtle methods by situating the story near the town of Soledad, which means "solitude" in Spanish."
Of Mice and Men reads like a play and is structured in 3 'acts' each of two 'scenes': certainly the first pages are like stage directions, first describing the scenery before the two mian characters appear on stage.
Tiny but perfect.
February 2010; 121 pages
Also reviewed on this blog the tiny but perfect, haunting and elegiac Cannery Row by the same author.
Books and plays written by Nobel Laureates that I have reviewed in this blog include:
- Thomas Mann (1929) Death in Venice
- Hermann Hesse (1946) Steppenwolf and Demian
- Andre Gide (1947) The Immoralist and Strait is the Gate and The Vatican Cellars
- William Faulkner (1949) Sanctuary and As I Lay Dying
- Albert Camus (1957) The Plague and The Outsider and The Myth of Sisyphus and The Fall
- John Steinbeck (1962) Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row
- Samuel Beckett (1969) "The Expelled; The Calmative; The End & First Love" and "Waiting for Godot"
- Heinrich Boll (1972) The Train was on Time
- Saul Bellow (1976) "The Victim"
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982) Chronicle of a Death Foretold
- Doris Lessing (2007) The Golden Notebook
- Patrick Modiano (2014) The Black Notebook
- Kazuo Ishiguro (2017) When We Were Orphans and The Buried Giant
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
"The Owl Killers" by Karen Maitland
A Norfolk village in 1321 is ruled by the church, the manor and the Owl Masters. Nearby is a beguinage (a sort of cross between a commune and a convent). The climate is poor, disease and famine destroy the village. The gay vicar and the manor and especially the owl Masters take battle against the beguinage. Who will win?
The plot is a bit predictable and a bit of a pot boiler through which I struggled but there are a host of enjoyable characters:
It was all right but I'd rather have read something else.
February 2010; 550 pages
The plot is a bit predictable and a bit of a pot boiler through which I struggled but there are a host of enjoyable characters:
- Agatha the lord of the manor's raped daughter who becomes a beguine and uses her intelligence to question even the sacrament;
- Servant Martha, the head of the beguinage, who feels the weight of her responsibilities;
- Healing Martha, the nurse; (and Kitchen Martha, the cook, and Merchant Martha, the saleswoman, and Tutor Martha, the teacher, and Shepherd Martha, the shepherdess, and another Marhta I've forgotten because there are supposed to be seven)
- Beatrice, a beguine whose married life ended after a string of still-births and whose bitterness eats away at her;
- Pega, ex trollope, now a beguine, very free with love;
- Father Ulfrid, who has been exiled to this miserable village after being caught with his boyfriend. Father U is one of the more interesting characters because he is sometimes a goody, very much on the side of the down-trodden villagers, and sometimes a pathetic weakling, besotted by his lover and scared of discovery, and sometimes the blackest of black-hearted villains;
- as opposed to Phillip, nephew of the Lord of the Manor, who is supposed to be the blackest of black-hearted villains but who is so black he is reduced to caricature.
It was all right but I'd rather have read something else.
February 2010; 550 pages
Saturday, 6 February 2010
"Engleby" by Sebastian Faulks
Wow!
The start was spooky. Mike Engleby who surname is mine except for the first three letters, went to grammar school, as I did, and then to boarding school, as I did, where he got put up a year because he was clever, as I did, and then went to Cambridge, as I did. Other items in the biography are not the same: the story is set four or five years before me, his father has died, he steals and sells drugs, he is a loner. He becomes obsessed with a girl student who disappears; he is quizzed by the police. We presume he is in some way responsible. He goes to London and becomes a journalist. Then the girl's body is discovered.
He has a phenomenal memory enabling him to recite large pieces of text (including the diary he has stolen) verbatim which is one hell of an asset for a novelist's narrator! But he is utterly lonely. The first time he talks about sex is in his late twenties. Even his intelligence serves only to isolate him from others.
He has a bleak view of humanity. He believes the speciating moment at which humans split themselves off from the apes is the arrival of consciousness. This he likens to the moment that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and became self-aware. They were expelled from paradise. Consciousness is self-awareness; that faculty which means that men cannot be blissful in ignorance like animals.
“Homo sapiens, this functional ape with the curse of consciousness – that useless gift that allows him, unlike other animals, to be aware of his own futility. The story of Adam and Eve put it with childish but brilliant clarity: Paradise until the moment of self-awareness and then … Cursed. For ever cursed. (Christians call it ‘fallen’, but it was the same thing: the Fall was the acquisition of consciousness.) …. Miguel de Unamuno …. ‘Man, because he is a man, because he possesses consciousness, is already, in comparison to the jackass or the crab, a sick animal. Consciousness is a disease.’”
chapter 10 p256
At the same time Jen, the student he stalks, enjoys life in a "funny low euphoria" brought on by just being 19 and alive and living in a Cambridge of "dirty brick of the miniature terraces and the mist from the river and the cold mornings .... and then the sudden huge vista of a great courtyard ..."(p217).
An enthralling book which took me into the mind of a very strange person and made me realise how similar I am to him.
The start was spooky. Mike Engleby who surname is mine except for the first three letters, went to grammar school, as I did, and then to boarding school, as I did, where he got put up a year because he was clever, as I did, and then went to Cambridge, as I did. Other items in the biography are not the same: the story is set four or five years before me, his father has died, he steals and sells drugs, he is a loner. He becomes obsessed with a girl student who disappears; he is quizzed by the police. We presume he is in some way responsible. He goes to London and becomes a journalist. Then the girl's body is discovered.
He has a phenomenal memory enabling him to recite large pieces of text (including the diary he has stolen) verbatim which is one hell of an asset for a novelist's narrator! But he is utterly lonely. The first time he talks about sex is in his late twenties. Even his intelligence serves only to isolate him from others.
He has a bleak view of humanity. He believes the speciating moment at which humans split themselves off from the apes is the arrival of consciousness. This he likens to the moment that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and became self-aware. They were expelled from paradise. Consciousness is self-awareness; that faculty which means that men cannot be blissful in ignorance like animals.
“Homo sapiens, this functional ape with the curse of consciousness – that useless gift that allows him, unlike other animals, to be aware of his own futility. The story of Adam and Eve put it with childish but brilliant clarity: Paradise until the moment of self-awareness and then … Cursed. For ever cursed. (Christians call it ‘fallen’, but it was the same thing: the Fall was the acquisition of consciousness.) …. Miguel de Unamuno …. ‘Man, because he is a man, because he possesses consciousness, is already, in comparison to the jackass or the crab, a sick animal. Consciousness is a disease.’”
chapter 10 p256
At the same time Jen, the student he stalks, enjoys life in a "funny low euphoria" brought on by just being 19 and alive and living in a Cambridge of "dirty brick of the miniature terraces and the mist from the river and the cold mornings .... and then the sudden huge vista of a great courtyard ..."(p217).
An enthralling book which took me into the mind of a very strange person and made me realise how similar I am to him.
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