A Rebours (Against Nature) by J K Huysmans

In at the last gasp of February (good job it's a leap year!), one last Outmoded Authors read and my February My Year of Reading Dangerously book, A Rebours by Huysmans (Penguin Classics ISBN:0-140-44763-6).
I wrote the other day about why I picked this for the latter challenge, because of the profoundly depressing effect that I found La Bas by Huysmans had on me; it really made me not want to read any more by him. The description of this book - a book with basically one character locking himself away from the world and giving in to all his obsessions - led me to expect it to have the same effect. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did not.
In fact I grew very fond of Des Esseintes, the main character, despite being firmly convinced that if he were a person stood in front of me I would want to slap him for his self-obsession, but from the safety of the written page I found parts of his personality to empathise with and like. He comes across as a rather pedantic, highly intellectual man with a tendancy to be a bit whiney but not essentially dangerous or unlikeable. And despite this being a major text of the decadent movement at the end of the nineteenth century, Des Esseintes' obsessions are quite sophisticated and socially acceptable - mostly ones you could talk about with your grandmother - not at all what I was expecting from the reference to the book in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The structure of the book is deliberate and slow. Here are plot spoilers for some of the main action in the book: Des Esseintes reads a book, gets a tortoise, has a drink, is ill, remembers some stuff, rearranges his library... This is not a book for thriller lovers! Each chapter looks at a particular aspect of his personality and explores it. For example, it looks at his library: why he reads the books he does, what attracts him to them, why he has turned his back on other aspects of literature. It does it in great depth and the effect is almost hypnotic. The personality of Des Esseintes surrounds you as you read and you are drawn into the hushed world he has created for himself, looking at his obsessions in detail. You may not agree with why he likes or dislikes something but you can appreciate his thought processes, and perhaps consider you own views on the subject in response.

'He drank this liquid perfume from cups of that Oriental porcelain known as egg-shell china, it is so delicate and diaphonous; and just as he would never use any but these adorably dainty cups, so he insisted on plates and dishes of genuine silver-gilt, slightly worn so that the silver showed a little where the thin film of gold had been rubbed off, giving it a charming old-world look, a fatigued appearance, a moribund air.
After swallowing his last mouthful he went back to his study, instructing his man-servant to bring along the tortoise, which was still obstinately refusing to budge.
Outside the snow was falling. In the lamplight icy leaf-patterns could be seen glittering on the blue-black windows, and hoar-frost sparkled like melted sugar in the hollows of the bottle glass panes, all spattered with gold.'

Although Des Esseintes is the main character and the book concentrates on exploring his thoughts, beliefs and feelings there are others present, either in the action (such as it is) or in his memories so it does not become too claustrophobic. His servants, for instance and a doctor appear at times.
It was a self-indulgent book to read, I felt. I didn't feel that I learnt anything in particular from the discussions, although there are a few Latin authors mentioned I would like to get hold of. I enjoyed it though, similarly to the way I enjoy Proust; I like to immerse myself in someone else's life and mind once in a while.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

'For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as blue-birds snapped above lion-colored canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colors, fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.
"It's just a plain old carnival," said Will.
"Like heck," said Jim. "We weren't blind last night. Come on!"'

This book (my copy published by Avon Fiction, ISBN: 978-0-380-72940-1) is, quite simply, one of the most perfect books I have ever read. I had preconceptions about Bradbury's work, I thought that he wrote rather dry science fiction, based purely on the title of The Martian Chronicles. I was wrong.
This book gripped me so that it hurt to put it down, but it was beautiful too. I read it because I thought it would be light and easy but it made me think about its themes and meanings much more than many more 'literary' works. I've just seen a piece on Wikipedia (where I looked to see if it had been filmed) that said if rational people picked the list of the best 100 books in the world this would be on the list; how right they are. In case you haven't picked up on my subtlety, I loved it!
Where to start? Well, let's start with it as a piece of American gothic horror. It begins in the safe and familiar world of small town USA in the middle of the twentieth century. Into this warm and friendly place comes a dark and malevolent presence, the Carnival. The carnival is fun and attractive but there is an undercurrent of malice, of something not right that most townspeople don't even realise is there, apart from the main characters. Will Halloway and his friend Jim Nightshade, both on the cusp of their fourteenth birthdays, see the carnival for what it is but have different reactions to it: one of fear, the other of attraction.
Then there is the leader of the carnival, a classic gothic horror villain.

'His vest was the color of fresh blood. His eyebrows, his hair, his suit were licorice black, and the sun-yellow gem which stared from the tie pin thrust in his cravat was the same unblinking shade and bright crystal as his eyes. But in this instant, swiftly, and with utter clearness, it was the suit which fascinated Will. For it seemed woven of boar-bramble, clock-spring hair, bristle and a sort of ever-glistening dark hemp. The suit caught light and stirred like a bed of black tweed thorns, interminably itching, covering the man's long body with motion so it seemed he should excruciate, cry out, and tear the clothes free. Yet here he stood, moon-calm, inhabiting his itch-weed suit and watching Jim's mouth with his yellow eyes. He never looked once at Will.
"The name is Dark."'

Mr Dark is an illustrated man, covered in tattoos that seem to move and live on his skin. He is charming until baulked, when he becomes terrifying; there is more than a possibility that he is a devil, if not the.
The book is also a coming of age drama. Will and Jim are in that no man's land of time between childhood ending and adulthood beginning. They dream of being grown up and independent but are not there yet. The carnival with its wish-fulfilling promise is tempting; it could give them what they want. The story shows a lot of people who are unhappy with themselves. The carnival senses people's unfulfilled desires and regrets and feeds from them, sustaining itself on unhappiness; it finds out what people want and gives it to them but there is always a terrible price. Charlie Halloway, Will's father, is someone who is unhappy with who he is. He is the janitor at the library, fifty-four with a thirteen year old son who every day reminds him of how old he is.
It is also a thriller. Will and Jim see things they should not see and do things they should not do at the carnival; Mr Dark knows this and wants to find them. The search and chase is terrifying, as are the confrontations of the boys and Will's father with Mr Dark.

And before Charles Halloway could move, Mr Dark ran lightly forward and took the Bible. He held it in his two hands.
"Aren't you surprised? See I touch, hold, even read from it."
Mr Dark blew smoke on the pages as he riffled them.
"Do you expect me to fall away into so many Dead Sea scrolls of flesh before you? Myths, unfortunately, are just that. Life, and by life I could mean so many fascinating things, goes on, makes shift for itself, survives wildly, and I not the least wild among many. Your King James and his literary version of some rather stuffy poetic materials is worth just about this much of my time and sweat."
He hurled the Bible into a wastepaper basket and did not look at it again.'

I could go on, there is so much in this story I want to read it again and again. Throughout the writing is beautiful, the evocative descriptions put me there in the middle of this small town and in the minds of the characters. I can't believe it hasn't been filmed; I had assumed The Illustrated Man (which I've never seen) was a film version but apparently that is of some other short stories. In the right hands it could be a brilliant film.

Coraline Teaser

Just a quick post to say there's going to be a film of Coraline which I wrote about a little while ago (you probably already know this, I'm very slow to catch up on these things) and Neil Gaiman has posted a teaser trailer on his blog. It looks beautiful and eerie, which is just about right I'd say.

The Des Esseintes way of life

I've been an extraordinarily bad blogger this week, not only not blogging but not visiting other blogs which makes me feel very disconnected. I keep missing out on what people are doing and only catching up well after the event when it is too late to leave a comment. I hate that.
I can only blame work really, it has completely drained me this week; I have come home every evening, collapsed in an armchair and, surprisingly, read voraciously. But the thought of going near the computer was too much.
The upshot is I have an ever-increasing pile of books to write about (I have to write about them or I'll forget them and I am fed up of forgetting books). The pile includes Huysmans' A Rebours which I picked up again and adored, much to my surprise. The character of Des Esseintes became a comforting friend this week; I wrapped myself in his obsessions and misanthropy every evening and forgot about all the stressful things that I had been dealing with during the day.
At times like this when work is sapping my energy for real life, I dream of having a private income to take myself out of the world like Des Esseintes in this book, build myself a place to fill with my obsessions in art and literature, away from people, and live completely in my mind. It's a wonderful thought, but for now I will have to settle for just living the Des Esseintes life in stolen moments at the weekends.

The Duchess's Diary by Robin Chapman

'Nothing can stop people talking about this hideous book, about how widely it sells, about how many languages it's already been translated into, I'm a laughing stock in French, German, Italian, English, Chinese even, if the author's dedication is to be believed though he may be joking you never know with him he uses irony like a gelder's knife. My only consolation, and it's none at all really, is that he has made no profit from it. I hear he had to sell the copyright to the printers in order to finance the writing of the last chapters; he was hopeless with money, he said, good, I hope he dies in poverty as I'm sure I shall now.'

I don't know why I suddenly picked this book up; it has lain neglected on the shelf for going on for twenty years, a victim to my prejudice against modern novels, but a couple of weekends ago I suddenly decided to give it a go. I think it is a positive effect of blogging and reading other people's reviews that is making me less scared of books written after 1950.
The premise of the book (published by Faber and Faber ISBN:0-571-13442-4) is that it is the modern translation of a diary of a Spanish noblewoman; this device means that certain modern phrases are acceptable as a result of the translation process rather than grating on the reader as out of place for the time, as I have found with some modern historical novels that write about English characters. Indeed, the author has included various footnotes to increase the verismilitude, some of which explain why certain things have been written as they are, such as the maid's speech which has been translated as resembling a northern English dialect to convey her class and background, rather than an accurate translation of a Spanish dialect.
Mirabel, the noblewoman in question, is being held prisoner on her husband's orders in a hunting lodge, as she has suffered a nervous breakdown. A few years previously they had played host to the author Cervantes with whom, despite being much older than her, the Duchess had fallen in love. They formed an intimate intellectual relationship that was never physical. When the second book of Don Quixote was published the Duchess recognised herself in one of the characters and feels deeply betrayed, especially by his reference to the gashes on the inside of her thighs where her doctor regularly opens her up to bleed out the black humours in her system that he says contribute to her hysteria. This betrayal, in her view, leads to her breaking down publicly and her husband quickly bundles her away to be treated both by the doctor and a priest to rid her of her terrible demons and humours and fit her for a life as a nun. The diary wanders from the present captivity back to the time when Cervantes was staying with them, then follows as the Duchess makes a break for freedom with the aim of confronting Cervantes and finding out why he felt he could treat her in this way.
The diary style was a little irritating at times; the author has written it so that conversations have no punctuation in an attempt to portray the stream of consciousness of the Duchess as she flings down her thoughts and experiences onto the page, but the lack of quotation marks and paragraphs made it a little difficult to follow which character was speaking at times. There is a lot of discussion of Don Quixote within the book which is very interesting; it is a few years since I read it, and unfortunately my sieve-like brain has retained little of the story so I can't tell how accurate the characters and episodes referred to are.
It is also an interesting book for the view it presents of the powerlessness of a woman in Mirabel's position in seventeenth century Spain. Although she brought a lot of wealth to the marriage, her husband has total control over it; the only wealth she has when she escapes is what she can make from a few jewels she had hidden in a secret compartment. Her husband has complete impunity to have her taken away and treated abominably; she belongs to him.
I enjoyed the story, more than I thought I would. The author obviously knew Don Quixote well and although a modern book, it does not grate with anything that is obviously out of place. He describes events that are written about by Cervantes as if they really happened and were used as material by the author for his book. I find I want to look through Don Quixote now to find the references to the Duchess and events written about in the story.

New books and the negative blogging row

I bought a couple of new books yesterday - both by authors still alive, which is not like me at all. Having to go into town on a Saturday afternoon is my idea of Hell on Earth, but the cat food was running low, and the little lordship's needs come first. To make it less of a chore I stopped at the remainder book stall on the market and looked around. I couldn't find anything in the history books, then I found myself in front of a row of mis-lits, so I hurried away before I inadvertently read any of the by-lines and was traumatised. Settling in front of the horror section I picked up Arabat by Clive Barker. I have a much loved DVD of Hellraiser, and adore Pinhead (who doesn't?) but have never read any of Barker's books and didn't expect to ever want to. However, I read a review of Cath's on this book a while ago and it sounded really interesting.
It had a 2 for £5 sticker on it, so another had to be found. The second was Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, an author I've read a lot about on a number of blogs, most recently on Eve's Alexandria on an earlier book in the series. The stories sound intriguing and as this had no competition for the second slot I thought I'd give it a go.
I think these two purchases are a good illustration of the row that has been raging recently about whether or not book bloggers should post negative reviews, begun by some comments from Susan Hill on the Vulpes Libris site that said book bloggers should not be negative about books and argued against passionately and eloquently by Dorothy recently. Neither Cath nor Nic's reviews were glowing, they were honest reviews and included quite a bit of negativity about both books. However, despite this I have bought these books. It's not that I don't trust the reviewers, I do in both cases, but they both wrote interesting pieces that intrigued me about the books despite the negative aspects and encouraged me to try them for myself. Neither piece was brutal; they were even-handed assessments of their opinions of the books, both positive and negative.
This is surely what book blogging is all about, a sharing of honest opinions and views about what we read and the encouragement we receive through this to expand our reading horizons. Well it is for me, anyway, and I'm pretty confident that it's the same for the book bloggers I read - and would stop reading if I felt they were no longer being honest.

What a week

I've had one of those weeks at work where I feel that my brain is a little burnt out mess stuck to the inside of my skull. I've been asked to be involved in an important project with a ridiculously short timescale. It's very flattering to have been asked but also extremely daunting and, being a perfectionist, I am now super-stressed at the thought of not living up to expectations. This and the pressure of having to come to grips with an entirely new area of work in a very short timescale on top of my proper job have made me less than pleasant to live with this week.
It has also meant that my head is so fuzzy that reading anything even vaguely heavy is out of the question. I had begun A Rebours by J K Huysmans (I know there should be an accent there, but I'm too tired to work out how to put one in), and it wasn't too bad. I picked this as another joint Outmoded Authors - My Year of Reading Dangerously book, because I read La Bas last year by the same author and knew I would never read another by him unless I forced myself. I bought both books at the same time as they looked like books I couldn't help but enjoy. La Bas is about a man's obsession with devil worship and Black Masses as a result of his research into the infamous Gilles de Rais, a nobleman who murdered countless children, allegedly for satanic reasons, in the fifteenth century (and is, some claim, the real Bluebeard). The main character meets a woman who introduces him to nineteenth century Paris' seedy Satanic underbelly. Sounds like my sort of story, and I read it easily but at the end I felt down in a strange way, slightly disgusted with humanity and its sordidness. It was a feeling I recognised from years ago when I read a few of Zola's books, which made me think that, however much he had tried, Huysmans had not quite successfully broken away from naturalism. It was too meticulously described, too real and too ordinary - that's the only word I can think to describe it - but in a way that made me feel the futility of life. I don't think I can articulate this feeling but I know that, however beautifully written, A Rebours will probably have the same effect on me, and at the moment I just can't face it.
So instead I have picked up a book I got in America, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury is a writer whose name I have always known but never thought his work would interest me until I read what a number of other people wrote about him for the RIP II challenge last year (I would credit everyone but can't remember where I read the reviews I'm afraid - but thank you to everyone who reviewed him!). I am a third of a way through this novel, and I am spell bound. Not only is it creepy and engaging, but it is also hauntingly beautiful. I never suspected this would be the case, especially from the pulp edition I bought. It is the perfect antidote to a stressful week.

The death of the book

This is an interesting column in today's Times about the death of the book. I know it's been discussed a lot since the Kindle came out (this is in the business section, it obviously took a while for them to catch up with the book pages) but this really made me think: could I survive without physical paper books? The answer is no, I don't think I could. At the very least I would certainly be a far less happy person than I am now. Books are not just words, they are objects that surround me every day and act as part-furniture, part-family. Their presence comforts me in a way that a list of files on a computer never could.
There is something infinitely satisfying about finishing a book and sliding it into its place on the shelf, knowing that next time I look at it I know it as an old friend. But then I'm probably a bit weird and out-dated. In a few years having shelves and shelves of book might seem as strange as people who collect outdated machinery. I saw Tom Hanks on Jonathan Ross' show the other day carrying a typewriter from his collection; he just collects them because he likes them as objects. Will my book collection be seen as a similar eccentricity?
The link I was actually looking for when I came across this was about the death of a specific book, a piece on The Opposite of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished novel that he instructed should be destroyed after his death, and the fact that his son is still considering whether to follow his father's wishes. It is an interesting argument and although I usually believe in honouring the wishes of people after they have died, I certainly wouldn't want to lose Kafka's work who, as the article pointed out, left instructions that his work should be burned. And where would my Latin lessons have been without The Aeneid to translate, another book saved from the fire? Is an author always the best judge of whether a piece of work is fit for the public or not? What a difficult decision, I don't envy Dmitri Nabokov.

Freedom from clutter

I had an amazing experience yesterday; I was working from home and was able to use my desk! Not such a big deal you may think, but this time last week you couldn't have seen the wood for the piles of papers and rubbish on top of it.
As J's computer is in its death throes he had been using mine and complaining about the state of my desk, telling me I will develop RSI from all the twisting I had to do to fit in amongst the rubbish. So a couple of days ago while I was making dinner, he cleared it. He then lectured me about what a pig I am (bit of a cheek really, as he is untidy too, although I can't post a picture of my beautiful desk as I have lost the camera battery charger - it is in a pile of stuff somewhere, I'm sure).
I must admit that it is a big improvement and it was great to have the space to spread out my papers yesterday, which the cat came and sat on at intervals - he seems to think the cleared space is a new playground for him. I would not have been able to spread out at work in the same way as my desk there is just as bad, although with fewer chocolate bar wrappers and empty crisp packets.
I didn't realise what J was doing, and am a little concerned about what he has thrown out but I just need to put it out of my mind; if I haven't needed it for the past year or two I'm unlikely to need it again. I hope. Something he did find and didn't throw out were some book tokens, hurrah! So I can add them to the ones I got at Christmas and go for a guilt-free splurge soon.
Apart from the computer, there is one thing on my lovely clear desk: a rather large book entitled Ghosts - my latest acquisition. With a title like that you couldn't really expect me not to buy it, could you? By Hans Holzer, it is subtitled 'True encounters with the world beyond; Haunted places, haunted houses, haunted people'. It is huge, and should satisfy my craving for ghostly experiences for a while at least.

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

This book (edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley, and published by Harper Press ISBN: 978-0-00-724759-2) contains letters written by Conan Doyle to, for the most part, his mother from when he was a small child away at school until shortly before his death. It does exactly as the title suggests, it lays his life out in front of you and, as a result, I feel that I know the writer intimately. And that word is very important, as these are intimate letters. These are not grandstanding letters written for publication in newspapers to express some important point about the events of the times, although Conan Doyle had strong views about a number of things and was not shy about expressing them publicly, at one point leading to a bit of a telling off from the army. These letters are the constant stream of communication between a mother and son at different ends of the country in the years before the telephone became common. Indeed, at times they reminded me more than anything of the weekly telephone conversations I have with my own mother.
Conan Doyle had an extraordinary life, which he appeared to live at the gallop. His writing is immensely important to him and you realise how much he wanted for it and how disappointed he was when, although commercially very successful, his books were not treated critically as he would have liked. His historical novels such as The White Company were treated as adventures, when he put a lot of research and wrote them, partially at least, with pedagogical intentions. Sherlock Holmes was an idea he enjoyed for a few stories but then wanted to move on. His mother persuaded him not to kill Sherlock off after about six stories, which was his original intention. However, as I have mentioned before, you do not get the impression that Holmes was a millstone around his neck; at times he would get an idea for a story and be completely wrapped up in it such as when he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles and visited Dartmoor for inspiration. This was just not the area of his work that he cared about the most. He did appreciate the money it brought him and was happy to write Sherlock Holmes plays to ensure a tidy income for the year.
Conan Doyle's personal life was complicated by the fact that he married relatively young to a woman who developed tuberculosis, lingering on in illness for many years. One telling comment was when he wrote that he felt he had spent the past six years in a sickroom. During his wife's long illness he met Jean Leckie; the two fell in love, and had a platonic but very close relationship for the next few years. When his wife eventually died they married just over a year later. Some critics have apparently cast doubt on Conan Doyle's assertions that the affair was platonic, but his letters show that although he is always trying to engineer times when he and Jean could meet and spend a few days together in a hotel, they always had a chaperone with them (such as his mother). I don't see the value in enquiring further - does it matter? Conan Doyle was a strong supporter of divorce law reform for the rest of his life, though.
The letters from his childhood were interesting from the point of view of what they showed of a Victorian Catholic childhood. Then he moves to his life as a struggling young medic and the hardship of getting anywhere in the profession. At one point he mentions that people would rather be killed by an old man with a beard than cured by a clean-shaven young man. (Shortly afterwards he grew his moustache!) For a while, as he started his own practice, he had his younger brother living with him who was about eleven. They were very close and appeared to remain so through their lives.
Family relationships are very important to Conan Doyle; he has a bad patch near the start of his relationship with Jean when his sister Connie and her husband Willie (E W Hornung, the creator of the Raffles stories, which were inspired partly by his brother-in-law's success with Sherlock Holmes) do not approve of the situation. However, they come around and there are many stories of family gatherings.
The letters also give a good account from a personal point of view of the major events of the times in which, after he becomes a successful and influential writer, Conan Doyle often plays a part. Conan Doyle's mother was an intelligent and opinionated woman with whom Arthur was able to discuss his ideas, and often had to justify his position to her. There are a number of times when he writes in response to what was obviously an angry letter from his mother - I wish we could have seen more of the other side of the correspondence. One of their fiercest disagreements, though, appeared to be about a personal matter: whether Arthur should accept the knighthood that it was rumoured he was to be offered. He felt it would make him look ridiculous in the eyes of the literary world, but his mother was appalled that he should even contemplate turning down such an honour. She later castigates him for publishing a book as A C Doyle when he had been Sir A C for ten years.
He was very keen on being involved in military life, publishing pamphlets justifying Britain's position during the Boer War and even volunteering for duty as a medic. The view of the First World War near the end of the book is quite harrowing. At first there are cheery statements that it will not be a long war and there is the slightly ridiculous discussion about whether Conan Doyle should volunteer (as a man well into his fifties). Despite being advised by all his family, including his brother who was a successful career soldier, not to volunteer, he does - and is turned down. Then his nephews and eldest son quickly join up and are sent out to war.
As the war continues the view of it becomes bleaker and bleaker and the family suffers personal loss, as close family members are killed both during the fighting and as a result of the 'flu epidemic that followed it. This is the power of having a collection of such intimate letters, you clearly see the human effect of this terrible war.
Although he is very open about most things with his mother, there is one large part of his life which does not receive much discussion in the letters, although it is mentioned slightly in later letters after the War, and that is Conan Doyle's belief in spiritualism. His mother did not agree with his views and so there is little discussion of it until Conan Doyle is engaged in a touring lecture series on the subject. It is a shame, as it would have been very interesting to see how his beliefs developed and to hear more about the people he met. I think his autobiography may be a place to look for a fuller discussion of this aspect of his life.
Overall, at the end of the book I feel that I got very close to Conan Doyle, in a way that just reading his fiction would never have allowed, and know what he was like as a person.

My Breton Obsession

I've just seen this article about the Surrealist Manifesto in The Guardian book pages, while catching up on my Bloglines subscriptions as my blogroll appears to be down - temporarily I hope.
I developed a minor obsession with André Breton at University while writing a paper on Modernism and it has continued ever since. In this paper I concentrated on the Surrealists, of whom I found Breton to be undoubtedly the most interesting and intellectual. A couple of years ago while in Paris we visited the Pompidou Centre where there was a Dada exhibition and although the endless succession of ready-made artworks became just a little tedious after a while (although it was great to see Duchamp's Fountain, just before some maniac hit it with a hammer) when I found the little section at the back displaying letters from various people involved in the Dada movement, and amongst them found letters by André Breton, I was in heaven. With my very poor, just-about-cope-with-a-menu, French I stood in front of the display case painstakingly translating them and bathing in his presence.
And now there is the chance to own a piece of his writing, and we're not just talking about a shopping list here but the Surrealist Manifesto itself! I spent hours reading it over and over when I wrote that essay all those years ago. According to Antiquarian Book News it is valued at between 300 and 500 thousand Euros, so all I have to do between now and May is win the lottery and it can be mine! Shouldn't be too hard...

Thank you, Anne Lamott

Yesterday was a serendipitous day. I don't often talk about my work as it is not really connected to the part of my life that I write about in this blog, other than keeping me away from my books for hours everyday. However, yesterday I went to a workshop about, among other things, critical and reflective thinking (I'm not an academic but work in an academic institution and am engaged in some research into student engagement and learning). The evening before, while scrolling down my blog to get to my blogroll and go visiting, the title of Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird caught my eye and I remembered that I was half-way through it. This book on writing was great but I found it a bit too intense to read all at once, so I broke off to read a novel, accidently knocked it down the side of the armchair (I do this a lot) and forgot I was reading it. With a couple of hours on the train the next day, I thought it would be an ideal time to fish it out and finish it.
On the the train journey I was reading Anne's views on the virtues of 'shitty first drafts', revision and the power of discussing your work with others to get constructive views, however hard it is to take criticism of this kind. I then spent the day in this workshop with academics from various institutions. When it came to a discussion of critical reflection I found I suddenly came into my own; despite not being a lecturer I understood exactly the thought processes and issues we were discussing because it was the same as the processes described by Anne Lamott that were so fresh in my mind. It is all about having the confidence to put down your thoughts, uncensored by worries about how good they are, and then going back and reflecting on them, improving them, distilling them, discussing the ideas with others, and expanding and developing them as a result. The difficulty of doing this, of allowing yourself not to be perfect, was also discussed. These are all processes I have been through in my own writing (both for work and personally) but it was great to be able to express them so articulately at this workshop because I had just been thinking about them on the train - thank you, Anne Lamott!
After the workshop I missed the train back, and spent an hour in the station reading the rest of the book, laughing and nodding like a weirdo at all the bits that rang so true. It is a very good book, I'll write my proper thoughts on it soon - I have a little pile of books that I have recently finished that I need to write about.
Last night, knowing my paranormal interests, J found some montages of video clips and photographs of ghosts on the internet, which were a mixture of the blatantly fake to the truly creepy. I thought the creepiest one was a picture of two girls smiling into the camera on a busy street, with a ghostly figure next to one of the girls holding her arm. There was also a video of a translucent figure walking across a landing which was quite strange. Anyway, these reminded me that it has been quite a while since I read any ghost stories, how terrible!
I am now remedying this by reading one of the books I brought back from Boston, Spooky New England by SE Schlosser. I quite like the writing style; rather than the plain style of British books of reported ghost sightings, this book is set up as a series of stories, complete with dialogue, so they are told as tales would be told in a gathering around a fireplace in winter or a campfire, with maximum spooky effect. She says in her introduction that her aim is to keep these folk tales alive in an age where urban myths (such as crocodiles in the sewers) are taking over, a laudable objective.
Finally, a couple of additions to the ever-increasing health and safety risk that are the book piles around this house. I don't know if it's a national promotion but the Blackwells near work is doing a 'buy one, get one free' promotion for Oxford University Press World's Classics. This was too good an offer to miss, although I did have trouble finding two books from those available that I don't already own. I picked up She by H. Rider Haggard, which sounds great fun from the blurb, including 'shipwreck, fever and cannibals'. I have never read any H. Rider Haggard before, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect.
Then I um-ed and ah-ed over Evelina by Fanny Burney for about ten minutes as I couldn't remember if I already had it. Eventually I decided that I probably did (rightly as it turns out) as it's the sort of book I would have, and instead picked up The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci as my freebie. What could be better than to spend some time in the mind of a genius?

Bartleby by Herman Melville

This longish short story was included in the volume with Benito Cereno (Dover ISBN:0-486-26473-4) and I thought I'd read it before I put the book back on the shelf with a gap of perhaps many years before it was picked up again, and I am glad I did.
It is a curious story. It is told in first person by an attorney who hires a group of scriveners, men who copy out the legal documents he draws up, a vital task in this age before photocopiers and printers.
He has a team of two scriveners and a messenger. Turkey, an Englishman, is an exemplary employee in the morning but after lunch (and perhaps a touch of the bottle) becomes slightly sloppier with his work and definitely more obstreporous, both with the office furniture and anyone who upsets him. Then there is Nippers, a serious young man who is always in a foul mood in the mornings (I can relate to that!) but generally mellows out in the afternoon, so, with Ginger Nut the young messenger who seems to spend most of his time eating or fetching food for the other gentlemen, the office temperaments generally balance themselves out. Finding a need for additional help, he hires Bartleby, a reserved young man who copies long and hard without displays of temper at any time of day, but also without a display of emotion of any kind.
It is when the narrator asks Bartleby to help check some legal documents, as all the scriveners are supposed to do, that the trouble starts.

'Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, "I would prefer not to."
I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume; but in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, "I would prefer not to."'

From thereon Bartleby 'would prefer not' to do most things, and the story deals with the narrator's varying emotions as he deals with this difficult young man. The variety of emotions he goes through are very recognisable, sometimes fury, sometimes compassion, most of the time bewilderment. He feels a sense of responsibility for this frustrating young man and does his best to pull his story out of him to no avail, often dealing with the repercussions of his attitude from other people, not least the other scriveners.
The story is intriguing about the mystery behind Bartleby but the story is more revealing for what it shows of human nature when faced with someone who does not comply with any of the norms, even those norms of difficult behaviour; both of the other scriveners are difficult in their own ways but they are human ways and the narrator understands them and is able to deal with them effectively. With Bartleby, he is so different, so lacking in any emotion, that he arouses strong emotions in others without doing anything in the slightest to provoke it. The scenes near the end of the story where crowds are enraged at him show this clearly. This difference is also highlighted by the fact that Bartleby is the only character in the story who is given a real name, the others are nicknames that highlight a human characteristic.
This story is a deep and thought-provoking one; I found myself affected as the characters in the story are by Bartleby; he does not do much but he leaves a deep impression.

A Question about O. Douglas

I wrote a post about O. Douglas some time ago. This is the pen name of Anna Masterton Buchan, sister of John Buchan the famous author of novels like The Thirty-nine Steps. I have great affection for her books such as The Setons and The Day of Small Things, which have not survived the test of time as well as her brother's and are sadly out of print, and the post has received a few comments from like-minded people.
There is a scarcity of information about this writer on the internet and as one of the few people to have written about her I have been contacted by a lady with a query. My correspondent used to live in Exeter in the 1940s and knew an elderly lady named Miss Buchan. She would chat to this lady and one day Miss Buchan mentioned that she was the sister of John Buchan. My correspondent has wondered ever since if she really was John Buchan's sister.
Now, I know very little about O. Douglas, other than having read her books, so I was not able to help my correspondent with much more information than is available on the internet, namely that John Buchan had only one sister, Anna, and that she died in 1948 in Peebles in Scotland where she lived most of her life.
This timing fits, although Peebles doesn't, but there is no information that I could find about whether Anna ever spent part of her later years in Exeter. I have ordered a copy of Farewell to Priorsford, a book about and by Anna published in 1950, to see if this will give me the answer; it is a book I have wanted to read for a while. In the time before it arrives, though, I wonder if anyone (as I know I get a few people visiting my pages after googling for O. Douglas) knows the definitive answer?

Did Anna Masterton Buchan spend any time in Exeter in the 1940s?

I think this is a lovely story, either that my correspondent would pass the time of day with an old lady who was actually a novellist and sister of an even more famous novellist or, poignantly, that an elderly well-to-do and educated lady would tell a young mother something like this, perhaps to impress or perhaps she really believed it. I am intrigued to know the truth and hope it is the former.

A Snowy Saturday

It was a bright and beautiful day yesterday, with a sprinkling of snow on the garden which always makes it look pretty. It was quite cold though, so we spent a lazy Saturday indoors feeling snug and warm, admiring the snow from the safety of the kitchen window. It's not exactly blizzard conditions, however; J and I were quite shocked by the insensitivity of the BBC News 24 service yesterday, which showed pictures of the terrible effects of the snow in China and then went straight into a segment of viewers' pictures of the UK's 'extreme weather' as they called it. This consisted of a series of very pretty pictures of the countryside in, at most, a couple of inches of snow; we have a very strange idea of the definition of 'extreme' in this country.
My wisdom teeth are making one of their intermittent breaks for freedom at the moment so I felt quite justified in spending the day feeling sorry for myself and reading. I am almost at the end of the Conan Doyle letters and it has been wonderful reading. He has just serialised The Lost World, which has been very successful. Indeed, this has been one of the most eye-opening things about this book, just how successful Conan Doyle was with all his other writing, which has been overshadowed in the past eighty years by the success of Sherlock Holmes. It is generally accepted that he did not care much for Sherlock Holmes but on reading his letters it seems to me that it is more that he cares about his other writing and is put out that, firstly, critics do not take it as seriously as he would like and, secondly, that Sherlock Holmes, which he considers to be quite light and not his best, is the most sought after. Not that that stops him cashing in, as he is well aware that offering a few Holmes stories will get him out of any financial difficulties he may have and he does seem to relish writing the stories but needs breaks in between for other work.
It is fascinating but I find myself dreading the end a little. This is the problem with diaries and letters when you grow to like the writer; the end, which is often their death, can feel like you have lost a friend. For this reason Pepys' diary is one of the best to read: he ends it after ten years because he fears for his eyesight but goes on to have a long and successful life after the diary. James Woodforde's diary (an eighteenth century clergyman, one of the most fascinating of diaries published as The Diary of a Country Parson) ended in a quietly devastating way with a small note at the end written by his niece noting his death. I had grown to know and like him so much that it made me feel slightly bereaved. It is a strange reaction, as I know they are dead when I pick up the book, but I suppose it shows how closely you can get to know the writers through these literary forms.

Seafaring Challenge Round-up

The Seafaring Challenge finished yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Many thanks to I Heart Paperbacks for organising it.
I read four books and made Admiral, I am pleased to say, although it feels like a little bit of a cheat as Benito Cereno was only about seventy pages long.
I've always had a soft spot for swashbucklers but had never really indulged it that much in novels. Now I will be actively hunting them out as the perfect escapism. Captain Blood was my favourite book of the challenge, just great fun from start to finish. I also enjoyed the Horatio Hornblower book and will be keeping an eye out for the other books in that series.
The subject matter of Benito Cereno made it an uncomfortable book for this century, as I wrote a couple of days ago, and Trawler left me feeling quite sad. So it wasn't all a high seas romp.
I enjoyed reading these books though, and I am wondering about joining some more themed challenges as a way of broadening my horizons, although I am also concerned about feeling too tied down in what I read this year. I am starting to have a bit of a reaction to the lists of books that I feel I have to read (silly, when it is all self-inflicted) and think I have to give myself permission to not finish reading challenges.
However, I have found the few I have been in so far as a good way of breaking out of patterns that I hadn't even really realised that I was in, and to try something that has been lurking at the bottom of the TBR pile for a while. If I hadn't taken part in this challenge I expect I wouldn’t have read the Hornblower book for a good few years, and I am very glad I did. Also Trawler is one I have been picking up and putting down for quite a while. When deciding what to read too often I head for my comfort zone, which usually means Wilkie Collins, Scott, ghost stories or a historical non-fiction. It is nice to stray outside it on occasion and discover new enjoyments.