Guilt is dripping from the eaves here. There’s a pile of books and a muddle of other ideas waiting for me to write about them, but suddenly time is in short supply. I gave myself a bout of food poisoning (didn’t manage to give it to anyone else, just as well I’m not a Renaissance prince heh heh) which hasn’t helped. So here’s a little gallimaufry to salve my conscience regarding this neglected web-log, and Nostromo I promise faithfully to write about you very soon.
(Claude Cahun, Que Me Veux-Tu? [What Do You Want From Me?], 1928, from here)
- Terry Castle on two modernist couples, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, in the London Review of Books (December 2007). In her review of a catalogue of Cahun’s work and Janet Malcolm’s biography of Stein and Toklas (Two Lives), Castle touches on the question of collaboration in creative work, the two couples’ wildly different experiences of the Second World War (Cahun and Moore carried out an extraordinary two-woman Resistance in Jersey while Stein and Toklas lived in some comfort in France) and the nature of biography. (Via Lauren Elkin on Twitter.)
- ‘When did bigotry get so needy?’ – A few weeks ago a Belgian court rejected Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu’s claim that Tintin in the Congo contains racist stereotypes and should either be withdrawn from sale or prefaced with an explanation that it was written in an earlier era with different mores. I have never read the book, so I can’t comment about it, but China Miéville has written a blistering attack on the judgment: his dissection of the responsibilities free speech entails is sharp and entirely to the point.
- Five hundred German fairy tales have been ‘rediscovered’ – At around the same time as the Grimms were collecting their folk tales, another German, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, was amassing a similar horde, but after one unsuccessful edition in the 1850s his work languished in obscurity until recently, when a researcher started working on von Schönwerth’s archives. Some of the tales have been forgotten (as far as these things are forgotten) for 150 years; others are familiar but unlike the Grimms von Schönwerth appears to have resisted the urge to polish them up. The Guardian reported it here and have posted one of the tales, ‘The Turnip Princess’, here.
Merle fans: last Saturday peace and goodwill at last embraced the chicken coop. However, Merle’s clemency coincided with a bout of illness, a blocked crop. After several days of treatment (I syringed olive oil down her throat, not something to be undertaken lightly believe me, although I understand olive oil is good for the skin so Merle and I should be radiant by now, and then I massaged the lump, she did enjoy this) all was well and although she’s not laying she’s bouncing about again now. The ladies are all confined to the run now that we’re planting vegetables and they
Rhonda has revealed herself to be not at all the timid creature I’d imagined; persistent in trying to weasel past Merle to get to food which Merle did not wish to share, Rhonda further proved herself by standing up to our neighbour’s dog when he ran into the run and giving him a fright. She likes doing little sprints up and down the run and climbing on things. Rita, however, is much more shy and dreamy, hanging back when there’s food. We found that two of the toes on one of her feet are bent round as if she has severe arthritis; perhaps they were broken when she was a chick. They don’t cause her any obvious pain, but perhaps they account for her shyness. I sneak her extra treats when the others aren’t looking.
(Rhonda demonstrates how to scare off a beagle)