a gallimaufry

catching up

Oh dear! Where did the time go? I am almost embarrassed to come back here after so long. How are you all? Did you enjoy the summer?

I have mainly been having a lovely time. International travelling rules were relaxed just in time for me to pop over to the UK in August to see my family. I fell upon the charity bookshops of Ipswich with joy and managed a small but respectable haul (I am limited by what I can carry back on the Eurostar and my suitcase also held the Folio Society edition of The Lord of the Rings which is possibly the heaviest three-volume set ever published, my arms are now six inches longer).

Here is my swag, rounded out with a few books I filched from my mother’s box of books to go to Oxfam:

But! Not a single work by Storm Jameson! It seems my dreams of second-hand bookshops stuffed with her books are indeed dreams with no basis in reality. Bother.

I have mentioned before that I decided to rearrange the majority of my fiction, poetry and plays chronologically. Dear friends, do not do this. In theory it was a wonderful plan which would reveal very clearly the development of (mainly) English literature; in practice it is difficult to sustain because you have to keep checking publication dates every time you want to shelve a book (so you don’t bother and shove books in where there’s space and then everything becomes even more chaotic) – quite apart from what to do about books published many years after they were written, collected works, etc. I had known that it would take longer to find any book I wanted but I thought this would yield pleasant rambles through my books as I sought a particular volume. In fact it’s just annoying. But I am too lazy to re-organise everything again.

Anyway, an unexpected drawback of scattering slender volumes of modern verse among novels is that you can’t really see them any more. So, when we redecorated my daughter’s bedroom and a small bookcase became surplus to requirements, I stole it for them. It’s right beside the door to the kitchen and already I’m reading more poetry than I’ve done for years. Hurrah!

At the moment I am having a Brontë fest. I reread Jane Eyre – it’s so good! And then I read Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës by Isabel Greenberg, which was fun and led me back to Juliet Barker’s The Brontës. It was abandoned half-read a couple of years ago but I am now fully absorbed in it. It is too unwieldy for the bus, so I am also rereading Wuthering Heights and loving it all over again.

And now, although I ought to be preparing a four-hour English lesson on answering the telephone and takng a message (four hours! I know! my lucky, lucky students), I will leave you with a quick list of books I’ve read recently that I recommend to you!

• The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox. (Whenever I clap eyes on the spine of this novel, in my head I hear a voice saying ‘The absolute BOOK!’ with exactly the emphasis of a Georgette Heyer heroine gasping ‘You absolute SWINE!’) This is a novel which is always changing, never quite what it seems – characters move through different worlds and we move through different genres. A mash-up of Ruth Rendell, The Shadow of the Wind and Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale, streaked with darkness and splendidly evocative, it is an enjoyable read slightly let down, I felt, by the neat ending.
• The Trick is to Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway. I’ve had this book for twenty-five years and finally its moment arrived and it was worth it. In it Joy Stone, a drama teacher, chronicles her struggle with grief and mental breakdown; this sounds grim but it is clever and witty and hopeful as well as sad. I want to read more of her work now.
• The Queen of Air and Darkness, by T.H. White. Darker and crueller than The Sword in the Stone, this is an excoriation of the chivalric code with which Arthur’s court has become associated. White depicts it as either violent or ridiculous and the novel lurches between these two extremes. I found it uncomfortable to read, I think that’s the point. Soon: The Ill-Made Knight.

Happy October, everyone!

 

my blog’s name in books

This is the latest bookish meme to be doing the rounds and never one to let a bandwagon pass by, I’ve decided to join in. The idea is that you raid your TBR and find titles whose first letters spell out your blog’s name. It is considerably more fun than what I’m supposed to be doing this morning (finalising the organising of our school’s trip to Canterbury). Karen and Faye have both done it, which is where I read about it, although it apparently originated on Fictionophile.

So I have just frittered away quite a bit of time scouring my bookshelves for unread books, since I don’t keep TBR separate from my other books (this has disadvantages as well as advantages). I abided by the Literasaurus Variation which forbids the inclusion of titles beginning ‘The’ unless under ‘T’ (thus The King of Ireland’s Son is a T not a K under this rule). I actually thought I’d have to cheat on this one when it came to the letter Y, but then I rediscovered Geoff Dyer! And to my surprise, I had several candidates for I and even U; R proved more of a challenge. A was also a little difficult as I had to find three books beginning with A and I seem to have made a concerted effort to read any possible contenders. But hurrah, I succeeded, here is A GALLIMAUFRY spelt out in unread books and featuring poorly lit photographs. Bet you can’t wait.

A Thatched Roof, by Beverley Nichols – I’ve never read this because it’s a sequel and I don’t have its predecessor, Down the Garden Path. But I know that one day I shall. It seems to be an alluring combination of autobiography, house restoration and pottering about, and it’s illustrated by Rex Whistler (which is why I originally blew £3.99 on it).

Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England, by Juliet Fleming – back in the day, I studied for an MA at the University of Kent and intended to continue and study for a PhD, in preparation for which I bought this book. But then I moved to Belgium and had a baby instead. Dusting this down I see just what a fascinating topic it discusses: graffiti, tattooing and inscriptions on jewellery, clothing and other objects in the early sixteenth century. ‘These are writing practices that invite us to imagine a world in which writing and drawing were not fully distinguishable, the page was not an important boundary, and modern assumptions as to what constitutes literacy, either in writing or in reading, were irrelevant.’ Must read it.

A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather – I couldn’t resist the title when I bought this, in Charing Cross Road I think, for a pound a very long time ago. I had also recently read The Song of the Lark and wanted to read more Cather. As yet, I haven’t read this. This description on the Penguin web page is enticing.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Age , by Dava Sobel – this was one of several little books (there was a history of cod, there was one called Nathaniel’s Nutmeg) about scientific history that were bestsellers in the 1990s. It includes ‘basic astronomy, navigation and the science of clocks’. As ever, I am amazed that I haven’t read this yet.

Love in a Bottle: Selected Short Stories and Novellas, by Antal Szerb – I love Antal Szerb but this little book and The Queen’s Necklace are the only published works of his that I haven’t read yet, and for some reason I don’t want to have read everything and have no more new Szerb to look forward to. A bit silly of me, perhaps? But since I don’t actually own a copy of The Queen’s Necklace, I could probably safely read this and still know there’s more Szerb out there.

Inferno, by Auguste Strindberg – this copy is intriguingly stamped ‘Denmark House, Long Melford, Suffolk, England’ and came from a second-hand bookshop somewhere in Suffolk, I no longer remember which one. It’s one of four autobiographical works Strindberg wrote. In this one, ‘Strindberg passed through a series of spiritual crises which took him to the verge of madness’. He started carrying out research in what he called chemistry but the jacket flap of this edition refers to as alchemy, through which he hoped to alleviate his poverty. He also believed himself to possess supernatural powers and was involved in the occult. This looks bonkers and also sad.

Make-Believe, by Elizabeth Goudge – this contains eight stories about the du Frocq family from Goudge’s novel Island Magic; I have the impression that it is not one of her greatest works but I am always happy to read her stories about or for children and there are pictures by Walter Hodges in it, what more could one ask?

Artemisia, by Anna Banti – unlike some of the other books here, I haven’t owned this one for long. ‘Written in 1947, Artemisia immediately established itself as a classic. At the centre of the book is Artemisia Gentileschi, a painter influenced by Michelangelo and Caravaggio. [...] The closer Anna Banti gets to her subject the more she is forced to reflect on the condition of women today and on her own life in German-occupied Italy. In doing so she elucidates the nature of art, femininity and the creative experience.’ I bought this on the internet; the cover is certainly not doing it any favours.

Up the Country: Letters from India, by Emily Eden – Eden’s brother George was Governor-General of India and in 1836 she went out to join him. She spent six years there, two of which were devoted to touring the country, during which time she wrote many ‘delightful’ letters to her sister. According to the back-cover blurb, she has ‘an unfailing eye for the eccentric and picturesque’.

Farmer’s Glory, by A.G. Street – all right, I bought this aeons ago principally for the illustrations, which are woodcuts by Gwen Raverat. It is dedicated to Edith Olivier, who apparently encouraged Street to write his book. Street was the son of a tenant farmer and turned to writing to supplement his income during the agricultural depression of the 1920s and 1930s. He writes in his author’s note: ‘This book is simply an attempt to give a pen picture of farming life in Southern England and Western Canada’ and it seems that it is lightly fictionalised autobiography.

Romola, by George Eliot – has any living person read this novel and actually enjoyed it? I bought it during the height of my Eliot love in the 1990s before the internets existed and were filled with people deriding it. I can’t believe she wrote a bad book. Or did she?

Yoga for People who Can’t be Bothered to Do It, by Geoff Dyer – I could not walk past a book with a title like that, though as yet I am a person who can’t be bothered to read it. From the back cover: ‘Part string of stoner anecdotes, part memoir, part travelogue, part philosophical treatise, part comic tour-de-force [...]’ ‘Reading Dyer [... is] akin to the sudden elation and optimism you feel when you make a new friend, someone as silly as you but cleverer too, in whose company you know you will travel through life more vagrantly, intensely, joyfully.’

Have you read any of these? Any recommendations? Should I finally consign Romola to the charity shop?

a defence of guilty pleasures

(Rex Whistler, Ave Silvae Dornii, oil on canvas laid on panel, 1928, Dorneywood; found here)

I’ve just read this fascinating post by Desperate Reader on guilty pleasures. Both Hayley and her commenters have lots of lovely guilty pleasures; I immediately tried to think of some of my own to add and – failed rather. Here is my list:

1. Watching detective series on the television whilst scoffing slabs of cheap, mild and rubbery cheese mindlessly and without restraint. Part if this pleasure involves loudly changing my mind about who dunnit and why every ten minutes and then, when the solution is reached, claiming that I knew it anyway. The cheese must have almost no discernible taste: very young Gouda is my preferred choice but a very mild Cheddar is perfectly acceptable when in Britain.
2. Reading children’s books – I don’t mind admitting that here, but in real life I feel more judged, principally by non-readers, weirdly enough.
3. Holidaying by myself. I am a rabid and indefatigable tourist, I love visiting churches and museums and galleries and wandering about the streets, and it’s just so much easier to do this alone than when I’m having to take into account what other people want. Especially if they want to sit around drinking coffee or lunching for hours – for God’s SAKE people, we don’t have time for this!
4. Making dolls’ clothes and the odd (in every sense of the word) toy for my daughter – I don’t feel guilty about doing this as much as I feel guilty about how much I enjoy it, surely an unadult quality?

Erm – that’s it. How dull! I nearly included reading vintage detective novels, as they’re now called, which used to be a guilty pleasure twenty years ago but now seems to be too widely accepted to count. A guilty pleasure, after all, has to be something you’d feel embarrassed about if someone else discovered it, and nobody sniggers at the mention of John Dickson Carr or Margery Allingham any more. Society now seems much more tolerant of a few foibles; also, I’m middle-aged and things that would have crippled me with mortification when I was in my twenties – reading Georgette Heyer! Liking some of the pre-Raphaelite artists! – because someone might think the less of me no longer trouble me because I am just a bit less bothered about other people’s opinions of me (though not entirely unbothered by any means!).

To me, a guilty pleasure is something subversive – it’s doing something that we know or believe is disapproved of by our peers or society and enjoying it anyway. It’s that part of you which has survived from when you were a teenager, the rebel who was in bed by ten every night; it’s not truly wicked or revolutionary nor are you alone in doing it. It’s the you who puffed on shared Marlboro Lights at parties and then frantically sucked Polo mints before you went home; the you who keened along to The Smiths and drove your father nuts by declaring that Meat is Murder, who shared half a bottle of cooking sherry with your friends and then puked behind the rose bushes. You did those things because your friends did them too and you didn’t necessarily enjoy them, so they aren’t quite the same as guilty pleasures, but the enjoyment of that feeling of naughtiness and sticking it to The Authorities is what links the two.

Yet I think a guilty pleasure isn’t just doing something that society deems unworthy – I think it’s something that chips at our own image of ourselves. It’s reading romance novels when your usual fare is literary fiction, it’s buying an expensive dress when you consider yourself to be ‘above’ fashion, it’s eating a slice of cake when you normally take care to follow a healthy diet. You’re being a little cheeky to yourself, flipping the finger to the Boss You who creates your self-image and shapes who you are. Look – I can be wild and let my hair down ha ha HA! However, a guilty pleasure is an occasional treat rather than a way of life. When you pick up a Betty Neels paperback, you’re dipping your toes in the waters of deviance, but then stepping back into your normal self, the clever person who reads poetry and modernist fiction. By keeping your guilty pleasure under control, you remind yourself that, while you could read nothing but Mills & Boon, you are not that sort of person really. But you acknowledge, somewhere, that possibility. That slight loss of control is exciting.

Without the mild sense of transgressiveness, there can be no guilty pleasure (is that why I don’t read vintage detective fiction very much any more? There’s no thrill involved?). This enjoins secrecy, and that’s important too. It’s nice not to be a person who is all surface, who doesn’t have any hidden surprises, and who doesn’t tamely follow the script. So I say: let us not be surfacey and controlled! Let us rebel, even in a small way! Let there be more guilty pleasures and let us revel in them! But covertly!

What about you? Do you have any guilty pleasures? And do you think that they’re a secret gesture of defiance or deplorable self-indulgence – or something else?

(Rex Whistler, detail from The Triumph of Fancy, poster, c. 1928; found here)