SassyLassy Steadfastly Stumbling Along

2021 New Year, New World and Pantone Scares Me

Last year the colour experts offered us Classic Blue and I bemoaned how boring it was.

Perhaps they knew something after all, knew that we would need the steady hand of people like Bonnie Henry, Robert Strang and Anthony Fauci to guide us through, with their quiet voices of reason an oasis in an otherwise completely off kilter world.

This year Pantone has repeated its 2016 trick of offering two colours. Then it was Rose Quartz and Serenity, otherwise known as Baby Pink and Baby Blue. At least they inhabited the same world.

This year we have Ultimate Gray and Illuminating, otherwise known as yellow. According to Pantone's executive director, The union of an enduring Ultimate Gray with the vibrant yellow Illuminating expresses a message of positivity supported by fortitude. Practical and rock solid but at the same time warming and optimistic, this is a color combination that gives us resilience and hope. We need to feel encouraged and uplifted; this is essential to the human spirit.

Well I'm all for resilience and hope, but do we really need, as ArtNews put it "a rubber ducky in a jail cell"? There is enough grey in the world right now to depress us all to the other side, where depending on your beliefs, some of us will find brilliant warm colour (remember 2019's Living Coral?), and some of us will find the sun of Illuminating.



Does this look inspiring or more like a sick day at home, which we none of us want right now?

Here is another take on it from The Independent, who mercifully introduced another colour, albeit approximating that Classic Blue:



more interesting from Condé Nast Traveller with the addition again of a third colour



and yet another world I don't see myself in



from Home Painters Toronto

Feel free to point to a cheerful combination of the two (Janis Joplin would cheer us up)

Actually, I just found some myself. These are patterns from Patternbank I would like and can see in other people's houses, but again, not feeling it. 2021 may be difficult.



_____________

Edited as someone else may not have wanted to live in that world either and removed the image, so I found it elsewhere

Okay, time to get down to business. Last year's reading, as per my yearly refrain, was down even further in terms of number of books read, but there were some very rewarding reads. There was a period when I was away helping out, and the quality went down, but by and large I am happy. The South Africa and Russians Write the Revolution quarters in Reading Globally were among the highlights. I also finished the Zolathon, which made me happy indeed.

Since I didn't get to them all in my 2020 thread here is a chronological list (T = in translation) of what I read:

Cloud by Eric McCormack
Winter by Ali Smith
Hotel Silence by Audur Olafsdóttir T
The Breakdown by B A Paris
Theft by Luke Brown
Silent Death by Volker Kutscher T
Goldstein by Volker Kutscher T
Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Praying Mantis by André Brink
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon reread
Dona Flor and her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado T
Rumors of Rain by André Brink
La Débacle by Emile Zola T
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
The Door by Magda Szabo T
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Imposter by Damon Galgut
Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
Berlin Alexanderplatz bt Alfred Doblin T
The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins
The Polyglot Lovers by Lina Wolff T
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichy T
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy T
Seven Hanged by Leonid Andreyev T
Doctor Pascal by Emile Zola T
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin T
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric T
The Night before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol reread T
Petersburg by Andrei Bely T
China Dream by Ma Jian T

Nonfiction

Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively
The Outermost House by Henry Beston
Cultivating Delight by Diane Ackerman
Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie
A Nervous Splendour: Vienna 1888 - 1889 by Frederic Morton
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others and Me by Teffi T
I am the Central Park Jogger by Trisha Meili (it's amazing what is found at inns)
Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport

This is where I guess I propose some ideas for 2021.

I would like to be more focussed, as the above mentioned Reading Globally quarters, and finishing the Rougon Macquart series reminded me of how rewarding that can be.

I would like to start reading books in French again, even if it lessens the number of books read.

I would like to go back to reading more books from and about Scotland and China.

I would like to get better at getting my thoughts down here.

That's enough for now.

I always love your Pantone thread headers as I love interiors stuff.

This year's really surprises me - it seems, well, a bit repetitive. There was a lot of grey and yellow bits and pieces in the shops a few years ago, especially in the home aisles of supermarkets, and this is what I now think of when I see this year's colours. I'm enjoying the muted, sophisticated colours in Instagram accounts I've been following for the past couple of years. This feels 10 years old and a little tasteless.

(And now you mention it, sick day at home is exactly the vibe I'm getting from those mugs in the Pantone colours. It looks like something a hot lemon drink would come packaged in.)

Happy New Year! Looking forward to following along with you again this year. Cheers!

>2 SassyLassy: Is this a cheerful lemon-grey combo? I can try to make the sweater more yellow (but first will need to upgrade my photoshop skills):

Is this cheating?

>9 lisapeet: Ugh - now I'm really going off this colour combo.

>9 lisapeet: cool search method

These colors _are_ kind of like sickness colors - covid colors a year late?

Just dropping in. Interesting on your ideas for 2021 reading. Curious where it takes you.

I love yellow (my current coffee mug is yellow - because it is fun and because one needs something colorful on their table). I like grey. But these shades are... weird... Pantone is weird.

My son chose gray to paint his room recently and it looks fantastic - I was very skeptical, but he chose a warm shade that looks great alongside the white baseboards, chair rail and window frame.

That yellow is a lot.

Yellow/grey is quite a popular combination for public transport: Berlin and Lisbon (as in >2 SassyLassy:) are the famous examples, but there are plenty more. Netherlands Railways must account for a significant proportion of the European market for yellow paint, for instance: in the 70s and 80s most of the trams and buses here were yellow as well, but that fad seems to have passed.

>13 RidgewayGirl: My friend and her husband recently sold their home and moved into a condo. They painted the walls gray, with the white trim, and it looks surprisingly nice. I was also skeptical, but the color makes an attractive backdrop for their furniture and books and etc.

Hi, Sassy! Found you amidst a lemon grove and, uh... pigeons? No, no, let's say grey pearls. :)

I'm thinking there must be shades, valeurs, where this combo works, but one better be ca-re-ful.

Hi Sassy. I for one thoroughly approve your goal of getting your thoughts down here more. I enjoy following your reading, and it looks like you read some good ones last year! I'm reading my first Andre Brink (looks like you read 2 last year) right now, A Dry White Season. You also remind me I need to get back to the Rougon Macquart. I got more than half way through many years back. I intended to get back to it last year, but read only one, The Masterpiece. Next up is Earth, which I read many, many (at least 30) years ago, but will be rereading.

>5 AlisonY: >6 AlisonY: "...ten years old and a little tasteless" It looks like something a hot lemon drink would come packaged in."

>11 dchaikin: These colors _are_ kind of like sickness colors - covid colors a year late?

>12 AnnieMod: these shades are... weird...

>8 ELiz_M: Looking pretty fierce to me!

>9 lisapeet: That's really interesting.

>14 thorold: I seem to remember a phase with yellow fire trucks which supposedly could be seen better in grey fog and snow, but that seems to have passed, as have the yellow buses.

>16 LolaWalser: Love the idea of a lemon grove, and thanks for grey pearls instead of pigeons. Pigeons to me are revolting and I flee.

>13 RidgewayGirl: >15 LadyoftheLodge: The right shade of grey with lots of white can look quite nice as you say, but it is a very urban vibe to me, and would never work in my very rural environment. Also wondering how grey walls would affect the mood when the fog rolls in.

Thanks all for the comments on colour, it was a lot of fun.

>7 rocketjk: Hello, following you too.

>17 arubabookwoman: Dry White Season is on my TBR, so will look forward to your review. I just discovered it is also a 1989 film, with Marlon Brando, Donald Sutherland and Susan Sarandon.

Earth is a brutal book, there is no way around it, but again, will be interested in your thoughts. I hope you do get back to reading the series.

Well much as I love a good colour discussion any time, it's time to get down to books. Each year I start with a mystery, or some book related to that genre; I'm not good at defining the sub genres. The purpose is to get a quick read in at the beginning of the year and make me think I have accomplished something. This year is no different, so here goes.



Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
first published 2014
finished reading January 2, 2021

Elizabeth is indeed missing, as is someone else, which will become more clear as the story progresses. It wasn't too difficult to divine what had happened to Elizabeth; the real twist here was in the telling.

The narrator is Maud. Elizabeth is her best friend. The problem is that Maud is slowly dementing. She forgets and knows that she forgets. No one will take her seriously because of this. As she obsesses about her friend, she will have flashes of insight into what may have happened and then lose them right away. Maud writes herself notes to keep track of these thoughts, and then can't remember what the note's meaning.

As the novel progresses, the other missing person's case from decades ago takes up more of Maud's time and she starts confusing the two. This gives a picture of the English town then and now. More importantly, it allows the reader to see Maud's development and who she was, and then see her decline over time.

Healey writes in a very straightforward manner, neither making Maud's situation a maudlin one, nor using her as an object of pity or derision. Instead the reader struggles along with Maud as she narrates her search for Elizabeth. Although the reader will quickly figure out the solution to both cases, following along with Maud is a thought provoking process, leading to all kinds of questions about how people in her situation are regarded and treated.

_____________________

Healey won the 2014 Costa First Novel Award for this book. This book was selected by someone in my book club as one of her best reads for 2020, which is how I discovered it.

Nice review of Elizabeth Is Missing, Sassy. Rhian (SandDune) recommended that book to me several years ago, but I haven't read it yet.

I love your Pantone reporting. Not crazy about those colours together. Grey has been very popular in home decor (esp. painted walls) for years, so making it the colour of the year feels less than inspired. And I'm a big fan of yellow, but that shade has limited uses. Certainly most people look horrible wearing that colour. I still see the weird baby pink and baby blue everywhere and think it's time to go away. That particular muddy shade of light pink makes me look like walking death. I'm not sure *who* it looks good on.

Elizabeth is Missing is in my TBR pile so I was happy to read your comments

>19 SassyLassy: >20 kidzdoc: Yes I very much enjoyed Elizabeth is Missing when I read it, although I have to admit I didn’t pick up on what had happened as quickly. (I don’t read very many mysteries and I’m not very good at it). There’s also been a very good TV adaptation recently with Glenda Jackson.

I enjoy the color of the year things as well. Pantone tends to be more responding to print graphics but I hated this years picks. It's every chevron throw pillow from 8 years ago!

>19 SassyLassy: I've picked this up a couple of times based on Betty's (bragan) review but it made me sad so I put it back. Maybe it's time for another try.

>24 rhian_of_oz: It is very sad, and definitely not one to read when you're feeling ill-equipped to deal with that, but still very much worth reading in my opinion.

And I am happy to hear that others have read and liked it! As I recall, it wasn't at all what I was expecting, and it impressed me a lot.

I can't imagine planning Elizabeth Is Missing! I am really impressed with this author. That's already on my wishlist, but mine is already so large I am sure I will not read them all before my death. It sounds like a great way to go, though, trying to read everything!

>1 SassyLassy: Agree with your comments re the gray! I'm okay with the yellow :-)

>4 SassyLassy: I like your 'I would like's. I guess those are soft goals, no pressure.

I’m not a particularly visual person, but something about those 2 colours together really disturbs me. It’s the grey mainly; I quite like the yellow.

Nice review of Elizabeth is Missing, which has reminded me to put a library hold on it.

>21 Nickelini: You were one of the people I was thinking of while I was reading it whom I thought would enjoy it.

>22 SandDune: I don't have PBS so unfortunately missed the adaptation, which would have been interesting after so recently having finished the book.

>24 rhian_of_oz: >25 bragan: Just read bragan's review - I had no idea this book had been reviewed so much. Like her, I think there is a lot more to the book than the bald facts of Elizabeth's aging process, and the sympathetic treatment lessens what would indeed otherwise be too sad.

>23 janemarieprice: >27 avaland: >28 rachbxl: Agreeing about the yellow versus grey. Perhaps if Pantone had gone with just yellow, it might have had one of those butterfly wings effects on the cosmos and we would all be happier today. Or real world not. Anyway, the yellow cheeriness is definitely needed.

>28 rachbxl: I think you nailed it with "disturbs". It is very unsettling.

>27 avaland: A friend told me that this year she is going with "intentions" rather than resolutions or goals, so as not to be defeated right out of the gate. I think that was wise, so I'm trying to follow her advice.

This next book was for my January book club meeting. I had thought it was nonfiction about the actual trait of curiosity, so was somewhat surprised when I got my hands on the book.



Curiosity by Joan Thomas
first published 2010
finished reading January 7, 2021

All children are curious. Not all children are encouraged to remain so. If you were a child living in poverty in the early nineteenth century, curiosity would probably land you in trouble; you were expected to just keep your head down and work.

Mary Anning (1799 - 1847) could have been such a child. Her father was a skilled man, a cabinet maker. Luckily for Mary, he also had an interest in the oddities to be found on the shores by Lyme Regis. He and Mary collected these strange objects, and Mary sold them to vacationers. She learned the tides, the different shapes, and the best place to find each. What they didn't know was where they came from. Mary asked "How could such a creature turn to stone?" to which her father responded "Drop by drop, the flesh washes out and stone washes in."

When her father died, young Mary and her older brother were left to provide for the family. Collecting and selling became a full time occupation for her. Luckily for Mary, this was a time of great debate as to the origins and nature of these objects. It was some forty years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Geology was a new science, and collectors were eager for samples. Many engaged in it laid the groundwork for Darwin. Among those to whom Mary sold her "curiosities" were Henry de la Beche, William Buckland, and William Conybeare. As more and more scientists came to accept the ammonites and vertebrae encased in stone as fossilized creatures, debate raged as to how to fit these findings into the rigid timelines imposed by the Book of Genesis. When Mary asked for a science book, she was given a Bible.

Like Tracy Chevalier before her*, Joan Thomas has constructed a love story for Mary, in this case with Henry de la Beche. He was a gentleman without an occupation, living on the proceeds of his sugar plantation in Jamaica. De la Beche often accompanied Mary on her expeditions, believing that her finds were fossils of once living creatures. However, how to explain the fossilized remains that resembled no known animals, creatures like Mary's great finds of an Ichthyosaurus and a Plesiosaurus?

Thomas does a good job of creating a novel around these real life characters. Along the way, she also shows just how closed off the world of science was to people like Mary; banned not only by class and lack of formal education, but most particularly by gender. Mary did not receive credit for her finds during her short lifetime, although they had generated papers presented to the Royal Society.

Other than one documented oblique reference to an unnamed unrequited love, there is no real evidence that Mary was ever romantically involved with any of the collectors. Lieutenant - Colonel Birch did sell his collection at auction in London and gave the proceeds to Mary to provide her family with the basics of life, but despite some expected gossip, it seems it was an altruistic move. Thomas says she chose de la Beche as the love interest as he was more of a contemporary of Mary's than Birch was. However, despite the novel's subtitle, A Love Story, the real love story here seemed to be between Mary and science.

________

*Remarkable Creatures

Among Mary's ideas gleaned from studying the effects of currents, tides and storms on the rock faces near Lyme Regis, was the idea of strata and eras. Henry de la Beche was know for his illustrations of these:



from Wikipedia



from Paleophilatelie.eu (who knew there was such an organization?)

>30 SassyLassy:, >31 SassyLassy:

Remarkable person. She inspired/was "in" Fowles' book, The French lieutenant's woman...

>30 SassyLassy: Sounds interesting - I'm going to note that one (or is the Chevalier novel better?).

I can't see your images in >31 SassyLassy: for some reason.

>32 LolaWalser: Yes, a book I will have to read again.

>33 AlisonY: I haven't read the Chevalier novel, but one of the people in the book club did a comparison of the two, and several others had read it. It seemed that the preference came down to the respective treatments of Anning herself. I think I will read Chevalier, as I always like to see different ideas about the same topic, fictional or otherwise.

As to the images, I made the mistake of deleting the web history and they went with it. Oops!

>31 SassyLassy: How interesting. And tempting.

>31 SassyLassy: That Mary Anning anniversary poster was on the wall in the office of the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, where I worked on and off for a few years, and it makes me happy to come across it here... those were nice times. I have the Chevalier book, but now I'm interested in the Thomas as well.

Great review of Curiosity, Sassy! Mary Anning sounds like a fascinating person, and I love the illustrations in >31 SassyLassy:. I'll be on the lookout for this book.

>30 SassyLassy: I haven't read this one, so I don't know how they compare, but I really liked Remarkable Creatures and definitely do recommend it if you find Mary Anning interesting.

>38 bragan: I loved Remarkable Creatures and listened to it on audio as well as reading it in print. They were courageous ladies!

I've been a fan of Mary Anning since childhood, but I don't remember how I heard about her. I love dinosaurs, so probably there. I hadn't read any more recent books about her, so thanks.

Mary Anning - what a life. I’d love a good biography, one that captures the era and it’s science-y mishmash. (Of course i probably should read the Darwin biographies i own...). Not sure I want these fictionalized love stories though.

I had no idea there were so many Mary Anning people out there!

>36 lisapeet: What a great place to work.

>41 dchaikin: I definitely understand not wanting the fictionalized love stories, and there doesn't appear to be enough written about Mary to refute them, which is on the other hand why she makes such a great fictional subject. However, searching for biographies today, i did find a 2015 title which despite its title may be of interest: Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters. The two reviews on LT are definitely opposed, so who knows? I do see it on the NHBS site though (Natural History Book Service).

>42 SassyLassy: thanks. Ridgewaygirl girl asked me about geologists as protagonists. And I thought of Mary Anning and thought - too bad she didn’t write her own letter to us. I imagine her saying, “all you romantics are so damn silly. I just liked to get my hands dirty...”

>42 SassyLassy: It was magical. It was an internship, but I kept up with it after grad school was over because I loved the work, the people, and the place so much. When they got a little grant money I'd get paid, but otherwise it was a real labor of love, and I left once I got a real paying job. But I'll always miss those days—it was happy work.

>43 dchaikin: And I thought of Mary Anning and thought - too bad she didn’t write her own letter to us. I imagine her saying, “all you romantics are so damn silly. I just liked to get my hands dirty...”

I suspect that sums her up right there.

>44 lisapeet: Those are the kind of jobs you always remember, no matter what turns up in the future.

The Blue Book by A L Kennedy
first published 2011
finished reading January 13, 2021

A L Kennedy is a wonderfully challenging author, both in terms of style and plot. She's one of my favourite authors, and so I was surprised to find I'd missed this 2011 book entirely. However, there it was this summer, in pristine condition in the second hand books section of a local book store. I put off reading it, knowing I had read most of her other books, and so leaving it for a future treat. Then I made one of my 2021 reading intentions to read more books from Scotland, so now was the time.

Blue books are often guides, factual pieces full of information. This is a novel full of illusions. Set in the artificial world of a transatlantic cruise ship, the very setting is designed to seduce the passengers into believing they are interesting cosmopolitan people, not the bored and empty people so many of them are.

Elizabeth Barber knows this world is not for her, but here she is, trapped for the duration. A former illusionist, Elizabeth is highly skilled at both listening and lying..

Kennedy develops her story episodically, moving back and forth in time, focussing now on one protagonist, now on another. There are times when she digresses and addresses the reader directly, musing at times on the nature of writing, of reading, and even of books themselves.

Your book - it's started now, it's touched and opened, held. You could, if you wanted, heft it, wonder if it weighs more than a pigeon, or a plimsoll, or quite probably rather less than a wholemeal loaf. It offers you these possibilities.

And quite naturally, you face it. Your eyes, your lips are turned towards it - all that paleness, all those marks - and you are so close here that if it were a person you might kiss. That might be unavoidable.

Much like an illusionist herself, Kennedy reveals history and motives, seemingly from nowhere. Then you realize, of course, the rabbit was in the hat all along.

How much do we need to be deceived or to deceive ourselves? After all, it's the truth that so often hurts.

This is not a feel good book, but unlike a feel good book it will make you think, and you will remember it. That is Kennedy's huge talent.

Trapped for the duration on a Transatlantic cruise ship - enough said. This sounds a curious subject for A L Kennedy but then I see she went on to write Doctor Who: The Drosten's curse.

Kennedy does that creeping claustrophobic feeling so well. I read her Paradise at a particularly awful time in my life and let me tell you, it was just the right thing—such an unhappy book, but I couldn't have read anything where anyone cracked a single smile. That said, I'm pretty sure I won't ever read it again, and probably wouldn't pass it along to anyone either.

>47 baswood: It does seem odd for Kennedy, but then she can tackle just about anything, from Cyrano de Bergerac on. In that light, Doctor Who almost makes sense. Maybe she brought some of her comedic and screenwriter backgrounds to it. Maybe she just wanted the royalties. I suspect that book may be one I will skip though, as I would have to start at the beginning of the series. Good to know what else she is doing though!

>48 lisapeet: creeping claustrophobic is a good description of some of her writing. Paradise was an amazing book. Noting your wise decision to probably not pass it on, I did make the mistake of giving a copy of it to someone to whom I have given a lot of books. I never heard a word about that one. Just checking the LT reviews for it, I see that many had the same problem I have with discussing her writing; it's almost impossible to do without quoting her.

I think my absolute favourite so far is So I am Glad, the very first one I read. Oddly, Day, which won the Costa Book of the Year award, is much further down my list, but maybe it won the award because it was a more straight forward tale, and so more saleable for bookstores.

>46 SassyLassy: really enjoyed your review of The Blue Book. I don’t think I know much about A L Kennedy, other than what’s posted here.

What's interesting is I believe she's also a standup comedian. That makes sense, in a way—being in touch with what's funny also puts you in touch with what's most quietly tragic in life. At least in theory...

>50 dchaikin: Someone to look forward to!

>51 lisapeet: She did do standup in the early days, but I think as a genre it only appears in her scripts nowadays.
There is always humour in her books however, no matter how dark. She did once say Humour is a perfectly legitimate response to the horror of the world."

My book club selection for March, read in January because it was available. This book was a finalist for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. Tokarchuk won the Nobel prize for Literature in 2018.



Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (2018)
first published as Prowadż swój pług prezez kosci umarłyoh in 2009
finished reading January 16, 2021

Even though it was only January when I read this, already I suspected Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead would be the quirkiest book I read this year.

It is narrated by Janina Duszejko, but you can't call her Janina. She hates her first name, convinced that words have meaning and that nobody put any thought in to naming her. Accordingly, she ascribes more descriptive fitting names to others: Big Foot, Oddball, Gray Lady, Good News. She also capitalizes nouns with deeper meaning to her: Animal (and all included in the collective), Horoscope, Ailments.

Formerly a bridge construction engineer, Janina is now semi-retired. She teaches English on an occasional basis, helps a former pupil translate Blake into Polish, and in the winter looks after the summer houses of people from Warsaw. She dreams of life just across the border in the Utopia she believes Czechoslovakia to be. Most of all, she is a firm believer in Astrology, believing a person's birth horoscope combined with life actions can predict the manner and time of their Death.

When unusual deaths start happening in the village, Janina bombards all who will listen, and some like the police who will not, with her theory that animals, acting with intent, are to blame. After all, each victim had a history of some form of anti-animal behaviour. Being a reader of Blake, she also knows The Tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Amazingly, Tokarczuk is able to weave all these disparate elements into Janina's narrative and narration. It's obvious she's a little odd, but for the most part she functions. Rural areas are full of such people, many of them wondering as Janina does, why nobody will listen. Where is the dividing line between odd and unbalanced? Are such lines even definable? Are they the same for everyone, or in all circumstances? These questions and many more will come to mind as Janina completes her story.

>53 SassyLassy: I think you’ve put your finger on what makes it so compelling: Tokarczuk reassures us that we all already know someone exactly like Janina, and then she turns it all round without quite upsetting that reassurance...

>53 SassyLassy: I've read this book last year, not too long after she won the Nobel Prize, but only remotely liked it.
I enjoyed your perspective on it, agreeing to what you say and liking the way you put it, although it does not make me like the book better, unfortunatly.

>54 thorold: Maybe it's upsetting me too much and I am not ready for that.

>53 SassyLassy: I'm looking forward to this one—the strangeness really appeals.

Great review of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Sassy. I hope to get to my copy of it this summer.

Excellent review of the Tokarczuk. It's such a wonderful mix of what's expected in a mystery novel featuring an amateur sleuth, and also upending all of that and becoming something very much more interesting. I still think about that book, especially when it's cold out. I found similarities between it and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands, although the Tokarczuk is much more effective.

>54 thorold: You're absolutely right - a delicate balancing act to be sure.

>55 raton-liseur: I'm not sure it could ever be called a likeable book, but I do think it is worth reading. I can understand the upsetting part. I will never look at the marauding deer in my garden the same way again, especially as I keep chasing them, and they may harbour resentments!

>56 lisapeet: I think this is one you would find worthwhile. I'd be interested to hear what you and >57 kidzdoc: think, although I suspect it would be two different takes.

>58 RidgewayGirl: Thanks. That mix is what makes it, as you are kind of led into the plot easily, only to find it is completely different from what you were expecting. That's funny about thinking about the book when it's cold out, but apt all the same.
I haven't read Moshfegh, but she is on that endless list.

Just noting that today is my 10th Thingaversary in LT.

>60 SassyLassy:

Best wishes for the next ten! :)

I have Tokarczuk on the TBR too...

>60 SassyLassy: Congratulations, youngster! :-)

>60 SassyLassy: Congratulations--do not forget your Bookish Haul for your special day.

>60 SassyLassy: Have you got your medal from Tim?

>60 SassyLassy: Congrats :) Time to buy 10 books to celebrate? :)

>53 SassyLassy: i want to read this and this was a great review that I hope to keep in mind when i start it. Good comments too.

Congrats on ten years here. : )

I hope you are off purchasing some books to celebrate your Thingaversary. To be honest, I had forgotten about them. Mine is next month--13 years!

>60 SassyLassy: Congratulations! A lot of books have gone under that bridge.

Congratulations on your Thingaversery! Hope you're doing some good reading to celebrate.

>61 LolaWalser: Which Tokarczuk is it?

>66 dchaikin: I will be interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

>64 baswood: Tim was very prompt, much more so than I am inclined to be.

To those who asked, of course there are celebration books - this is LT! I have split them into two batches. The first is ordered and I will order the second once the first ones arrive. They are:

- Invitation to a Beheading thanks to Dan for his review
- The Innocents Crummey is one of my favourite authors
- Shuggie Bain for my resolution to read more from Scotland this year
- Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life I finished Mantel's trilogy with The Mirror and the Light during the first week of lockdown back last March, and have wanted a good biography since. Mantel has praised this one.
- Mary, Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure a new look

It was fun choosing and knowing there are more decisions to make.

>70 SassyLassy: That's a nice haul!

>70 SassyLassy:

Oh, same, Plow...

Very well deserved book haul. :) (There is no other kind.)

This is the fourth in the Gereon Rath series, one introduced to North America by the series Babylon Berlin on Netflix, and also hugely popular on Sky. The series had beautiful sets and costumes, and lots of political intrigue, so I started reading the books.



The Fatherland Files by Volker Kutscher translated from the German by Niall Sellar (2019)
first published as Die Akte Vaterland 2012
finished reading January 27, 2021

1932 was a dangerous year to live in Berlin, or anywhere else in Germany for that matter. Political tensions were rising, as was unemployment and violence. Elections were imminent. Gereon Rath, the protagonist of Volker Kutscher's series, seemed unaware of all that, wrapped up as he was in his own personal life. Although the homicide detective on call, he was unavailable when a man was found apparently drowned in an elevator. This should have triggered all kinds of interest in any self respecting detective, but Rath was at the railway station waiting for Charlotte Ritter, his main focus through the last three novels.

Once Rath focussed on the case though, the story picked up. Contaminated wine supplies, rumours of a wild man living in the woods, the police themselves; all must be investigated. Taking Rath and the reader through the Danzig Corridor to East Prussia, with its nationalist and religious tensions was a useful way to add some history to the mix, developing the plot away from Berlin, far more familiar ground for many readers of crime fiction.

If you've been reading Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series, the Berlin milieu will be familiar to you, but Rath is an outsider in Berlin, and far more remote a person. He also may not be quite as straightforward. He has a lot to learn, but doesn't seem to realize it. This makes somewhat of a change from many all knowing, push ahead detectives. While it is not a particularly endearing characteristic, it does create interest. Kutscher uses history well, for instance in making Ernest Gennat, 'Buddha', the creator of Berlin's homicide division, a recurring character in his novels.

One big difference from the Bernie Gunther novels is that Gunther is usually looking back, with the knowledge of what will happen. Rath is living in the present and has no way of knowing where things are going.

Niall Sellar, the translator of the series sums it up well, discussing the televised versions: One of the functions of the novels is to examine how the Hitler years came about, through the eyes of a politically indifferent, morally compromised hero: a trick that can only work if the reader feels involved enough to forget what history has in store. It is in the attention to period detail that the series remains truest to the books; its recreation of a doomed era seduces the viewer into oblivion. We know that when we come to our senses, it will already be too late.*

_______________

*https://www.new-books-in-german.com/babylon-berlin-a-translators-tale/

I pity the poor immigrant, who wishes he would've stayed home - Bob Dylan



The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
first published 2008
finished reading February 1, 2021

On March 2, 1908, Lazarus Averbuch was admitted to the house of Chicago police chief George Shippy. A few minutes later young Averbuch was dead on the floor, having been shot seven times. Averbuch and his sister Olga were recent immigrants, survivors of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, looking for a better life.

That much is true. Using disturbing photographs and newspaper reports from the time, Hemon reconstructs what happened that day, and its aftermath. Interspersed with Averbuch's story is the fictional but semi-autobiographical story of Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian refugee in Chicago in 1992, fleeing his hometown of Sarajevo.

The prejudice in Averbuch's time was blatant. The immediate conclusions of the investigation were ludicrous. A scrap of paper in Avebuch's hatband with five numbered sentences like 1. My shoes are big. 2. My room is small. were determined to be part of a sinister code laying out an anarchist plot. Nobody considered simple English lessons.

By Brik's time, people had learned to couch their biases in more polite language, but the underlying prejudice still came through loud and clear. As Brik says "Funny how old habits never die." His American father-in-law peppered him with questions about "your country", a denial of any idea that the US might now be his country. Brik thought

My country was this remote, mythical place for him, a remnant of the world from before America, a land of obsolescence whose people could arrive at humanity only in the United States, and belatedly.

Brik, a writer, decided to write the story of Lazarus Averbuch. After running into his boyhood friend Rora in Chicago, the idea of returning to Kishinev (Chisinau) to research the story took hold. Rora and his Canon would go too, so why not extend this grant funded trip to Sarajevo as well? The story of their trip by train and taxi from Lviv through Chernivtsi, Chisinau, Bucharest, Belgrade and finally Sarajevo is told as only someone who has lived something like that could write it, with biting insight and cutting humour. Rora, who had spent the war years trying to stay alive, turned out to be the best raconteur ever. Some stories are just to good to be fact checked, and so Brik was entranced.

Hemon, who was visiting Chicago when war broke out in his homeland in 1992, decided to stay. His Lazarus Project brings to life the horror of two different worlds, the despair of it all never ending, and so the necessary belief that somewhere out there, things will be better.

I should read that... I should read so many things... *Charlie Brown pose head against the tree* but I suck.

people could arrive at humanity only in the United States, and belatedly.

This is a tangent but I just read the article posted by berthirsch

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-cosmopolitanism-and-the-love-of-literatur...

in which that attitude is pinned down, as expressed by even such people as Harold Bloom--that is, people with supposedly vast horizons etc.

It may sound weird, it may seem a paradox, but it's something I've seen demonstrated over and over--it's the "provincials" who are cosmopolitan and rich in reference, because positions on the "margin" force one to strive to expand, to compensate one's supposed cultural inferiority with the cultures of others. Whereas those in the imagined "centres", the Very Important People, just by virtue of that distinction remain corralled and small.

>74 SassyLassy: I loved this book and so did my wife. She brought it to her reading group and they loved it, too. The multi-layered narrative is a very hard thing to pull off, I think, and Hemon did it extremely well in my view.

>73 SassyLassy: After enjoying the Netflix series, which has been good practice for my German, as well as just very well-done television, I recently picked up the first in this series to read. I'm glad it's worth reading.

>74 SassyLassy: Yes, this is such a masterful novel. I went to a talk Hemon gave about the immigrant experience that was excellent and called back to some of the themes of this book.

>74 SassyLassy: I have this one waiting ever so patiently on my shelves. I'm glad it's going to be a good read.

>75 LolaWalser: Oh those "shoulds"! Thanks for posting that article. It was well worth reading, and tangentially brought up one of my reasons for disliking references to 'America', when what is meant is the USA.

>76 rocketjk: Glad to hear of your wife's experience. I am thinking of suggesting it to my book club when it meets this week.

>77 RidgewayGirl: Good practice indeed. The first season of the Netflix series is an amalgam of the first two books. I saw the series first and then started reading, so was somewhat confused. I'll be interested to hear what you think of the translation. The same translator is used throughout, and seems to improve with each book, but I wonder why someone from Edinburgh has trouble with English idiom (no jokes here please). In The Fatherland Files the rendering that struck me most was a request to be "upstanding", when what was obviously being requested was to "stand up'. Maybe it's a mental throwback to the 'outwith' construction!

I envy you going to that talk. That is one of the few drawbacks to living on the periphery.

>78 labfs39: It appears to have been on my shelves since 2011, but my copy was patient too. It was originally tagged as American fiction, but now I'm reconsidering the nationality. He seems so not American.

Another kind of immigrant experience:



Free Day by Inès Cagnati translated from the French by Liesl Schillinger 2019
first published as Le Jour de congé 1973
read February 2, 2021 in a monster storm

Inès Cagnati has said To be a child... is to be born apart. Galla, the protagonist of Free Day is apart in so many ways. Her impoverished immigrant family try desperately to farm in the marshes. Galla's mother needed her at home, to help with the farm and the care of all her younger siblings. Galla, however, had insisted on taking up a charity scholarship to the French high school twenty miles away. In Galla's mind, she will be able to earn enough money once she has an education so that her family will be able to buy real land, land where things will actually grow.

School is a different world for Galla, one where she didn't know the rules and was treated with contempt by all but one of the other girls. Too poor to pay for bus fare, every other weekend Galla would ride her ancient bicycle, the one she considered her true friend, the twenty miles home and then back to school again. Her mother would meet her where the road ended and the marshes began.

This particular trip was different though. It was an impromptu visit outside the regular schedule, driven by Galla's guilt over an outburst against her mother the previous weekend. No one knew Galla was coming, as there was no way to send a message. The long ride was made more difficult by cold rain and mud, but the idea of seeing her family kept Galla going.

Twenty miles leaves lots of time for thinking. Galla's thoughts revealed much about the brutality of her life at home, a life she dearly wanted to escape, even though she truly loved her family. She contemplated the futility of life, thinking if only wanted people were in the world, what a happy world it would be. Then there were the physical fears of the ride. What if her bicycle broke down? What if she encountered the predator in the woods? What is she lost her way in the dark or took a misstep in the marsh? Things happen when you're afraid. It's as if you were calling for them. These thoughts alternated with happier ideas about her little sister Antonella, her friend at school, her dog Daisy, and her mother.

It's very difficult to write convincingly from the point of view of a child. Inès Cagnati has succeeded brilliantly. The trip home and return to school are surprises for Galla and the reader.

Cagnati grew up in Lot-et-Garonne, France, the child of Italian immigrants. She never felt French, but after her parents had her naturalized, she no longer felt Italian either, despite it being the language at home. In many ways, she was Galla, with the double burden of poverty and immigration. Despite this, four of Cagnati's books won prizes in France, where she taught French literature and language.

___________________

As a complete aside, this book expanded my knowledge of the translation for congé I had always taken it to mean 'holiday'. This story was no holiday, so I looked it up. My dictionary gives 'holiday', but also other meanings as in
congé de maladie - sick leave
donner congé à un ouvrier - to dismiss or layoff a worker
donner/ signifier son congé à - to give notice to
prendre congé de - to take leave of
and then a verb form congédier

>80 SassyLassy: Great review. Un jour de congé for you too, given the snowstorm? I'll keep an eye out for it.

>80 SassyLassy: Nice review, and now I want to read this one.

(Hi, Sassy, I'm late and the convo moved on in baswood's thread, just to let you know I saw your post--YEAH, I guess, re: sex scandals and the French (media, laws, pundits etc.) etc. etc. etc. I ranted a lot about that sort of thing elsewhere over the years so don't feel particularly inspired to repeat but it keeps happening, y'know?)

>79 SassyLassy: “Be upstanding” isn’t Scottish, particularly, it exists south of the border as well. I think it’s survived mostly because it’s so deeply embedded in courtroom ritual — “Be upstanding for the Judge.” It’s become a way to mark a request to stand up as being particularly ceremonial in nature. Toastmasters at grand dinners or weddings are fond of using it. If you said it in private conversation you would be being rather quaint. It needs a gavel or a marshal’s staff to give it the proper effect.

>80 SassyLassy: There’s also “P.P.C.” (pour prendre congé) that found its way into English-speaking visiting-card etiquette in the 19th century: it had to be scrawled on the cards you dropped off when going round your acquaintances in Bath before leaving town.

The one that baffled me when I first started working for an organisation with a Francophone administration was “congé dans les foyers”, which turns out to mean “home-leave” (i.e. for returning home from abroad). Nothing to do with hanging around in lobbies.

>74 SassyLassy: & >81 labfs39: Two more onto my wish list.

>81 labfs39: Bien sûr!

>83 LolaWalser: Too depressing, but you have to keep ranting.

>84 thorold: Thanks for the "upstanding" in those contexts. I guess I don't hang out in too many courts, grand dinners, or weddings!

Interesting the P.P.C. construction and use on cards, also new to me. Bath is about to appear in my next review.

I really like “congé dans les foyers” - what a great description.
On the topic of 'foyer', my French instructor goes wild when anglophones use the word to describe entrance halls, insisting if they would only think of it as a hearth-like place, which your phrase nicely suggests, they would not embarrass themselves when speaking to francophones. In Canada, people using it to mean halls or lobbies at least give it the French pronunciation, but the American 'foy-yer' really grates.

>81 labfs39: >82 lisapeet: >85 markon: Always enjoy building others' wishlists. Do onto others...

Although there are 531 member uploaded covers for this book, mine was not among them, so I chose the closest one.



Persuasion by Jane Austen
first published 1817
reread for my bookclub February 11, 2021

What can I say? It's Jane Austen, right? When two people, formerly engaged to each other some seven years ago, meet again in the first chapter, you know what the last chapter is. However, it is all the writing in the chapters in between that makes the novel.

This idea of Jane Austen as literary saint began to bother me as I read through the book. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, and humorous to boot, but are they that much better than a lot of other authors (Susan Ferrier comes to mind) of her time? Wouldn't a surprise ending have been more satisfactory?

Then I got to wondering - is the reverence accorded to Austen's writing today due to the actual writing, or is it due to her being the first recognized for writing in this way? Other writers followed, students spend hours tracing the development of novels from Austen's time, however, here is what I wondered next - If you had never read an Austen novel, and were presented with one under an unknown author's name, would it impress nearly as much; would you seek out another by that author?

We had lots of fun at the book club with that idea.

----------------

edited for Susan Ferrier time frame

This is a novel I'd been meaning to read for some time, since a rebeccanyc review, but when I saw another excellent review by baswood, and then found it on the library shelf, I decided it was time. The cover is not particularly apt.

There are spoilers here, something I usually desperately try to avoid, but if you've read the book, please read them, as I'd really like to know what you think.



Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
first published 1951
finished reading February 19, 2021

This first Covid year has been bookended by two very different fictional explorations of their respective protagonist's mental state. Late last February I read Briefing for a Descent into Hell. Far from home at the time, the surroundings and circumstances in which I read it were such that it still has a profound effect, and I never could review it.

This February I finally read Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman. I confess to being completely perplexed, perhaps expecting a more concrete experience. Then I turned to LT reviews written by other CR readers, something I had never done before in advance of writing my own, only to discover the same feeling, although all thought well of the book. This is Jackson's skill: the ability to give each reader a different perspective and interpretation of the same story.

The novel begins matter of factly enough, with seventeen year old Natalie Waite getting ready to go off to an all female university chosen by her father, a not unusual circumstance in 1951. Natalie seems straightforward, even though there is a voice in her head, a detective questioning her about a murder. However, lots of 17 year olds have active imaginations, especially if they want to be a writer.

Right before she is to leave home, her parents hold one of her father's periodic soirées. Natalie, torn between her old childhood self helping her mother in the kitchen, and her new imagined sophistication, unwisely goes off into the forest with an unknown male guest. Here the ambiguity begins to build. Nothing its revealed by Jackson, but Natalie woke up the next morning

... and said, half-aloud, 'No, please no.
...I don't remember, nothing happened, nothing that I remember happened'.

Natalie's first weeks at university were an eye opener. Jackson describes the claustrophobia of a female world dominated by an all male faculty with an eye that makes the reader want to call in Betty Friedan, or at least Richard Yates. Here is Elizabeth Langdon, 21, married to her former professor, the one all his students adore, forced to watch as Anne, this year's model, tries out her seductive techniques on Elizabeth's husband. It is clear that Elizabeth will wind up the same unhappy and resentful alcoholic housewife that Natalie's mother is. Natalie is perceptive enough to know this, but flounders with how to avoid such a fate herself.

Alienation results. She writes letters to herself, keeps a journal in which she addresses herself as Natalie, and refers to herself as Natalie, becoming "both of us". Again, on the surface, not unusual behaviour, but in Jackson's telling there is an undercurrent of something definitely off kilter.

A brief Thanksgiving visit home signalled to Natalie that although expected and welcome, she had somehow evolved into a separate entity from her family, not only in her mind, but also in theirs. Her sense of being adrift deepened.

...suppose, actually, she were not Natalie Waite, college girl, daughter to Arnold Waite, a creature of deep lovely destiny; suppose she were someone else?

Jackson's portrayal of the downright cattiness the cruel girls in the residence exhibited in their games, the suffocation and accompanying despair of living in such a world, ramps up with Natalie's return to university. There appears to be hope at times, for like most teenagers Natalie has a certain buoyancy, apparent especially when she is with her new friend Tony.

This is where readers are most challenged to determine their own version of what is happening. Is Tony a friend, a lover, or a figment of Natalie's imagination - an alter ego of the Natalie she addresses in her diaries?

Just as she did at the beginning of the book, Natalie accompanies someone into the forest. Readers' interpretations will vary here, based on who they determined Tony to be. Once more, the forest is transformative. Natalie emerges As she had never been before, she was now alone, and grown-up, and powerful, and not at all afraid. How did this happen? The reader is no wiser.

>87 SassyLassy: Interesting questions regarding Austen. I wish I could have heard your book club discussion. Here's my two cents: Is there ever an absolute original (barring Plato's caves) that remains the epitome forever? Even as readers evolve and the idea of what constitutes the epitome evolves with them? You can probably tell that I'm comprised of a double helix of lit and history. I like to ground all works in their historical context. Austen was the best for her time because she was ground-breaking, original, and a great writer. But now, two hundred years later, how could she be these things? The context has changed, the social mores that are such an important part of her writing, even the language itself has changed. My vote? She was the absolute best at what she did when she did it. I challenge anyone to write about the landed gentry at the end of the eighteen century as well as she did. Isn't that enough? LOL. Where did you come down on the question?

I used to watch the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version of P&P when I needed a pick me up when my daughter was little. Her preschool teacher stopped me one day and asked who Mr. Collins was. Evidently my daughter had been acting out scenes from P&P with playmobile figurines!

>88 SassyLassy: Ooh, despite liking your description of the psychological play in Hangsaman, I think I would hate the ending. Ambiguity like that makes me crazy. I would torture myself trying to determine the author's intent.

>87 SassyLassy: & >89 labfs39: For whatever little it may be worth, I have only read one Austen novel, Emma, and I count that book among the five or six funniest books I've ever read. And that's not taking her era into account. Just downright hilarious, that was my take on it.

More generally, I have a hard time separating historical context (when I know it) out of my reading experience. So when somebody was the first at what they did, assuming I'm finding the reading enjoyable, that becomes a holistic part of the experience. If I know I'm reading something that was pioneering when it was written, it adds to the kick. For me (and to emphasize, that's for me, I'm not saying it should be this way for anybody else), the question is not whether Susan Ferrier (to use your example; I don't know her work) writes today as well as Austen did all those years ago. Ferrier has Austen to use as a literary role model, after all. So for me the question is: What sort of ground would Austen be breaking if she were writing today? It's obviously only a guess, but my conjecture is that trailblazing talent like Austen's would manifest itself by blazing trails in any era.

What's the difference, as we're reading, between A & B because A was the first one to do it if B is just as good now? Personally, I read with the knowledge of historical context threaded into the experience, so the difference in reading my experience between the two authors would be real, but I totally get that others might have a different take.

"Literary saint," I don't know. "Literary icon," though certainly. That's a title I think we can hand her. :)

>88 SassyLassy: I think it is a very cleverly written mystery, but a mystery that gets more mysterious as the story plunges into the woods once more. I have no idea what might go through the mind of an adolescent female, but this sounds convincing enough.

>87 SassyLassy: This idea of Jane Austen as literary saint began to bother me as I read through the book. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, and humorous to boot, but are they that much better than a lot of other authors

Okay, I'm going to go in a different direction that others, and just make an observation. I studied Jane Austen at a uni course on Romantic era British writers. At the last minute, the professor who developed the reading list had to bow out for a personal reason, and they found a last minute substitute. He wasn't even an English lit professor -- he was a crusty older South African psychology professor who had worked extensively in the film industry (don't remember what he did for them). He was one of my top favourite uni professors of my whole degree, and he taught me how to really read Jane Austen. We were scheduled to read Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Most of the class had a lot of fun delving into Mansfield Park with him. But then he said we wouldn't be reading Persuasion, because he didn't think it was a good novel. Students pressed him for more info, and I don't remember much of his answer. He just thought it was inferior. I know Persuasion is a favourite for many, but perhaps you're recognizing something my professor recognized. ??

BTW - he also scratched the Lord Byron from our reading. I can't remember for sure, but I think he thought Byron was a jerk and not worth reading. I could be misremembering.

Thanks all for your comments

>89 labfs39: I think part of what I am wondering is if since Jane Austen was set as the pinnacle of her time, other authors from that time have been ignored and consequently fallen by the subsequent publishing wayside. Perhaps they too were ground breaking in some ways. Perhaps as other areas of study are now incorporated into what used to be strictly literature studies (like your own lit and history), some of these other authors might be worth looking at as well, to see how they saw the world of their time. After all, Austen's world was incredibly conscribed, and while she wrote of it brilliantly, there were other worlds out there.

What a great Mr Collins story.

>90 rocketjk: Noting the difference between a saint and an icon - that may very well depend on the person with whom you studied a particular author!
I agree completely that you can't read a particular novel without taking the historical context into account, something too many fail to do when proscribing various writers from the past. As to what Austen would be writing today, I too like speculating on what societal topics writers from the past would address now - what cause would Wilkie Collins adopt?

Susan Ferrier was actually a contemporary of Austen. I have edited the post to reflect that. Sorry for the ambiguity. Walter Scott thought she was a better writer than Austen.

>92 Nickelini: we wouldn't be reading Persuasion, because he didn't think it was a good novel.
Interesting as there were a lot of informed readers of Austen at the meeting, and they all felt the same about Persuasion in relation to the other Austen novels. One went on to say she wouldn't be reading it again. I really like it when professors from other disciplines take a look outside their fields,
Lord Byron is someone I haven't read, but am curious to read.

>89 labfs39: >91 baswood: In real life I'm often not a fan of ambiguity, but in fiction it's often intriguing. Great phrasing a mystery that gets more mysterious as the story plunges into the woods once more

>93 SassyLassy: "As to what Austen would be writing today, I too like speculating on what societal topics writers from the past would address now - what cause would Wilkie Collins adopt? "

I've been trying to resist telling the following story but I have failed in my attempt at resistance. It's my favorite story on this topic of relevance based on era. Back in the 1980s, I was listening to a radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic that the station I used to work for broadcast on Sunday nights. They were offering a program called "Bach to Bach." First, the Early Music Ensemble called The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields would play a Bach piece in its original, and then the NY Philharmonic would play a transcription of the same piece for modern orchestra. It was fun. During the intermission feature, the program's regular interviewer, a classical music snob named Martin Bookspan, asked, Neville Mariner, the director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, whether he thought Bach would approve of the modern transcriptions of his works. I thought Bookspan was going to choke to death when Mariner replied . . .

"If Bach were alive today, he'd be Dave Brubeck."

>93 SassyLassy: I'm really enjoying this discussion of Austen; everyone has such interesting perspectives. I was thinking more about how she stands up over time, that I find it hard to believe an author today could write about landed gentry as well as she did, not necessarily vis a vis her contemporaries. I have not read other female regency authors. The era itself is not one I'm particularly interested in, it's Austen's wit and characters that make her a favorite of mine. Have you read Ferrier? What was you opinion?

>94 rocketjk: If Bach were alive today, he'd be Dave Brubeck. I love that!

>90 rocketjk: Surely you have to be on the list of official saints before anyone is allowed to paint an icon of you? :-)

I don’t suppose it is ever really going to be possible to be objective about Jane Austen, because so many of our ideas about literature have been shaped by writers and teachers who grew up with her as their ideal of the perfect novelist. When you read someone in that position there’s always a risk that you find yourself thinking of it as a second-rate parody of herself.

I have a feeling that Austen might have been lucky with the critics because the things that made her writing stand out, like her self-assured authority, precision and conciseness, could all be read as “masculine” virtues, without there being any hint of dangerous straying into gender-unsuitable subject-matter. But also because so many people simply really enjoyed her books and refused to let them fade away out of sight as 99% of the other circulating-library triple-deckers of the time did.

>96 thorold: "When you read someone in that position there’s always a risk that you find yourself thinking of it as a second-rate parody of herself."

I remember once several years ago having a conversation about Frank Sinatra with someone with very little historical perspective. This person told me that he didn't understand what the big deal about Sinatra was, because he just seemed like one more copycat lounge singer. Happily, I was able to get it across to this fellow that all the copycat lounge singers were copying (or trying to, anyway) Sinatra!

>97 rocketjk: The curse of the original. :) I’ve had similar conversations with people about early science fiction authors and novels - yes, this indeed sounds like a cliche but that’s only because everyone stole from this one novel. Now, admittedly, unlike Sinatra’s wannabes, some of the newer novels may actually be better objectively. But they still came later and used the ideas and the now cliches of the original. :)

I am having fun with the Austen discussion here - while she may be always taught in the English speaking world, she is just mentioned in passing in the Bulgarian literature classes - as part of the history of the world literature but none of her books made the recommended list, let alone the 20 or so books discussed in that year in class (as one of my high school majors was English, I got a dose of it from there (in English), but not by a teacher who was taught she can do no wrong and just as excerpts (language study and not literature study basically) unless you wanted to read a full novel on your own).

>98 AnnieMod: Hmm, I don't think I have ever had to read Austen for a class either, and I was an English major here in the States

>99 labfs39: Same here.

>98 AnnieMod: >99 labfs39: >100 rocketjk: Scandalous neglect! But I don’t remember having to read any for my degree courses either, except for some excerpts from Mansfield Park in connection with Edward Said...
We did read at least one at school, though. I think it was S&S.

>101 thorold: et al, I'm thinking back to my 1960s/70s New Jersey public school education. We read a Shakespeare play just about every year starting in 8th grade. In 8th grade also we read My Antonia by Willa Cather. Also around that time there was The Jungle Book and Treasure Island. Otherwise, everything I can think of through high school graduation was 20th Century. And, now that I think about it, written by male authors. I could be forgetting a book or two, certainly.

Really enjoying everyone's thought on Jane.

>94 rocketjk: Another good story. Or he may have sounded like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70wr9nHgvPM&t=3654s (in at about 1:05:30)

>95 labfs39: I have read Ferrier, and I did really like her, finding her quite humorous, debating the upbringing of young ladies in Scotland as compared to that den of iniquity, London. I reviewed it here, and see that the review below mine offers some support for my theory, saying Like an even funnier jane austen, while the review above mine disagrees entirely: https://www.librarything.com/work/177947/reviews/125937939

>96 thorold: Good point about the "masculine" virtues in Austen's writing. If I'm ever in another group of people discussing her, I'll try that out!

>98 AnnieMod: >99 labfs39: >100 rocketjk: >101 thorold: My first go round with Austen was when my grandmother gave me a matching set of six of her novels for my 10th birthday. I started with Pride and Predjudice and worked my way through. I have reread them at various times since. In university, Emma and Northanger Abbey were in courses I took (non English major), one of which was a 19th century English literature survey course designed to show how far writing had come from Austen to Hardy. Lots of reading for one semester, but it was a great course. I haven't read Sanditon.

Mansfield Park and Edward Said - I'll have to think about that one.

I do wonder how the recent spate of films around Austen will shape people's ideas of her writing, that is people who weren't exposed to her before. There is an older 1984 Faye Weldon novel, Letters to Alice on first Reading Jane Austen, wherein the narrator tries to explain to her teen age niece, who rebels against reading Austen, that Austen isn't old and fusty, but in her way quite revolutionary, but I'm not sure it would convince many.

Nobody has mentioned Maria Edgeworth or Ann Radcliffe as comparators.

>103 SassyLassy: Nobody has mentioned Maria Edgeworth or Ann Radcliffe as comparators.

See The madwoman in the attic, there’s a lot there on that topic.

>103 SassyLassy: Nice!

One more Jane Austen story, then. As I mentioned above, the one and only Austen novel I've read is Emma, which I picked up on my own way past school days. This was while I was still living in San Francisco. I happened to be flying somewhere from SF and I was reading the book on the plane. I was sitting next to a woman who was a decade or two older than I was (most likely she was the same age I am now, or thereabouts). She was interested when she saw what I was reading and asked me about what class I might be reading it for. When I told her I was just reading it on my own, she was so tickled to find a "young man these days reading Jane Austen just for enjoyment," that we proceeded to get into a long friendly conversation. She was a lifelong San Francisco resident and told me lots of stories about the old days in SF, including the fact that, "When I was a young woman, even though my friends and I were secretaries and had jobs like that, we wouldn't dream of even going down the street to buy a loaf of bread with putting on our gloves and our hats. San Francisco was so elegant, then."

Back in the day, I used to tell folks that my philosophy for meeting people was "walk softly and carry a good book."

>103 SassyLassy:
Mansfield Park and Edward Said - I'll have to think about that one.

I may be misremembering, but does this pertain to slave trade? I heard about this before I read Mansfield Park at uni, so I watched out for it, but really, it's overblown. Clearly Mr Bertram is involved in business that would now be illegal, but JA was no abolitionist. (Happy to be shown otherwise)

>106 Nickelini: I looked it up — it turns out that my copy of Culture and imperialism still has a faded Post-It in it marked "Jane Austen"...

It's not really fair to try to summarise Said, his analysis is subtle and a lot less "hostile" than I remembered it. The gist of it seems to be that Mansfield Park describes a world in which good order depends on the benevolent, male, English authority and discipline exercised by Sir Thomas Bertram, at home just as much as it does abroad on the plantations in Antigua, whether he is putting down slave-risings or the am-dram antics of irresponsible females. So Austen is encoding a kind of pre-imperialist model of how society should be organised, which arguably had an influence on later generations. But he's not accusing her of being indifferent to slavery as such.

>94 rocketjk:

"If Bach were alive today, he'd be Dave Brubeck."

Could you explain this reference please? Does it mean Bach would be more or less experimental?

>108 lilisin: Sure. Mariner was saying that Bach was on the cutting edge of the music of his day, and that to be similarly positioned in the 1980s, he would have to be a jazz musician, not a classical musician.

Mariner went on to mention the direct comparison between the two that both had children who followed in their footsteps. Bach had sons who became composers, and Brubeck, by the time Mariner made this comment, had already toured and recorded with a band that was mostly comprised of his sons.

The offspring aspect notwithstanding, Mariner's selection of Brubeck as his example does bring up a question or two. There were certainly more cutting edge and, as you perhaps meant to point out, more experimental musicians than Brubeck to name at that point. I've told the anecdote to fellow jazz fans whose first reaction was to scoff, "Brubeck? That's who he came up with?"

But for me, the main point Mariner was making was that jazz, not classical music, was the primary music of the day in terms of the sort of musical innovation and adventure that Bach was known for. Since at that time I was a jazz radio producer working at a radio station that was 2/3 classical and 1/3 jazz, I thought the comment was great. As I said, I thought the interview host was going to choke.

>109 rocketjk:

That was my understanding of your comment as well. I'd add that both Bach and Brubeck had some commercial appeal, unlike some of the more innovative jazz composers. Also, there's the nice alliteration of the Bs. Sounds snazzier than "Bach and Davis"

Um. Not to start a mega-Bachian thing or anything... but there are many things to take issue with here.

First, the whole perspective is somehow off. "Cutting edge" is a term that's hard to apply to the 18th century (or maybe any century)... People didn't think of music like that. Bach didn't think of music like that. In his lifetime he was barely known as a composer, and by the time we get to modern adulation, he's absolutely classical.

He didn't sound, to his contemporaries, as radically different, and I don't think (but among the gazillion musicologists one no doubt can find people claiming anything) anyone today thinks of him as radically different to his contemporaries. He was BETTER. He was a better musician, more competent and more inventive. He had a musical imagination of titanic proportions. But his style is firmly that of his time; in fact today we see that time as Bach's time.

I think the idea is a simpler one--just that every period has its own dominant style and that a musician of genius like Bach would (presumably) choose to express himself in the dominant style.

Now there are several questions around that. First, was jazz the dominant style in the 20th century? Classical styles had a much longer "heyday" than jazz. If Bach could have cast a look fifty years before and after his own lifetime, he'd have heard music very much like that of his own era, the same musical language.

So the choice of jazz for Bach as THE modern music would have had to occur in a narrow time frame, a few decades at most.

Second, and related to the first question, which jazz? Styles in jazz changed very fast--there are gulfs between early, traditional, and free jazz. And, jazz stopped being a real popular music around the middle of the 20th century, so a jazz Bach would, unlike the 18th century one, find himself "outdated" in his own lifetime.

Third, would jazz have suited the sort of musician Bach was? It's important to recall that Bach was a builder of structures, an architectural, mathematical composer--and an organist. Without counterpoint there is no Bach. Assuming the same person is transplanted from the 18th to the 20th century, with the same tastes, there is no reason to suppose that Bach would have preferred jazz (any form) to other modern musics that employed, or could employ, classical composition. I.e. why would he be drawn to one and not the other?

Fourth, Bach was white and jazz is very much black. I'd say there HAVE been "Bachs" in jazz, and they were black. There have been some very good white jazz musicians but I can't see that where a white jazz "Bach" would have come from. Hardly from Thuringia.

Aaaand so on...

>111 LolaWalser: "Um. Not to start a mega-Bachian thing or anything... but there are many things to take issue with here."

Of course. It was just a throwaway line offered for humor and to make the point that a modern inventive popular musician would be more likely to be a jazz musician than a classical musician in 1980 in reaction to Bookspan's question about whether Bach would approve of modern transcriptions of his pieces. I don't know that it bears much analysis.

The white/black aspect is, I think, baked into the ""Brubeck? That's who he came up with?" reactions I noted. Possibly Mariner was simply intrigued by the "offspring who also played/composed music" connection. Or maybe he didn't really know that much about jazz but had read about Brubeck in Time Magazine, a publication that would certainly have been most likely to offer a feature about a white musician. Or maybe he really loved Dave Brubeck's music. Who knows how much Mariner knew or really thought about jazz? Not me. I would think, though, that, being the co-founder and longtime conductor of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, he probably knew something about Bach.

>112 rocketjk:

To be sure, I get that it was casual, but it's still interesting to pursue that train of thought because it's a cliché I've heard often enough. The offspring angle actually provides another hint that styles aren't interchangeable. At this point Bach has had hundreds of descendants (thousands? It's hard to guess which cutoff to pick) so the logical thing would be to check how many have had great (or any) careers in jazz. I know of a few living musical Bachs but none are jazz musicians. As for Bach's descendants that HAVE had notable musical careers, all have been his sons, so, only those closest to him--not just in time but in style.

whether Bach would approve of modern transcriptions of his pieces

That's a different question. He wouldn't need to be a jazz musician to approve of transcriptions, he was making them himself. As other people did of his music--transcriptions were first a necessity and then, in the 19th century, became an art form in their own right.

The "Bach as radical innovator" thing isn't completely silly, but it focuses on very technical aspects of his music that most people would have said were too abstruse for anyone except a trained musician to make sense of — until the cult of Glenn Gould came along and we all started humming the Goldberg Variations in the shower. But, as Lola said, thinking of Bach as in any modern sense a radical personality is ridiculous. He was as conservative as you had to be to survive and prosper as a municipal employee in Saxony ca. 1700.

Maybe what Marriner really meant listeners to take from his comment was that he — the clever young conductor who had made baroque music fashionable again and sold piles of records — was not an inch less hip than his near-contemporary in the world of modern jazz. But, of course, just like Brubeck, he was beset by a younger generation of musicians who turned out to be even more relevant and radical. Who would listen to Marriner nowadays when they can get Eliot Gardiner or Ton Koopman...?

But but .............. I can hear Bach in Brubeck's music that would probably be enough to make sense of Marriner's quote.

>114 thorold:

Maybe what Marriner really meant listeners to take from his comment was that he — the clever young conductor who had made baroque music fashionable again and sold piles of records — was not an inch less hip than his near-contemporary in the world of modern jazz. (etc.)

Very much agreed--it's a joke, it's not a serious reflection about music, but a chatty gesture toward music as a "hip" thing.

>113 LolaWalser: "The offspring angle actually provides another hint that styles aren't interchangeable. At this point Bach has had hundreds of descendants (thousands? It's hard to guess which cutoff to pick) so the logical thing would be to check how many have had great (or any) careers in jazz. I know of a few living musical Bachs but none are jazz musicians. As for Bach's descendants that HAVE had notable musical careers, all have been his sons, so, only those closest to him--not just in time but in style."

I don't think Marriner or anyone else was/is suggesting that jazz and classical music are "interchangeable styles." I think Mariner's point was that Bach was a musician of his time, and that if he were alive in the mid-1980s, he would still be a musician of his time. Mariner's way of expressing that was to say that he'd be a jazz musician. I don't think it's particularly useful to take the comment as being any deeper than that. But to each their own, certainly.

As for the "descendants" question, searching down the generations to see how many of Bach's descendant might have become jazz musicians is, to me, really beside the point. Bach had sons who were composers and musicians and Brubeck had sons who were composers and musicians. That, I feel reasonably sure, is as far as Marriner meant his comparison to go.

"whether Bach would approve of modern transcriptions of his pieces

That's a different question. He wouldn't need to be a jazz musician to approve of transcriptions, he was making them himself."

Well, it's not really a "different question," it's the question that Marriner was asked. Of course Bach wouldn't have needed to be a jazz musician to approve of transcriptions, and I don't think Marriner was suggesting that. Bookspan's question was inane to begin with. (Bookspan was one of those insufferable classical music snobs who referred to classical music as "serious music" and to every other musical genre as "popular music.") Which is what I think Mariner was getting at with his comment.

>114 thorold: "He was as conservative as you had to be to survive and prosper as a municipal employee in Saxony ca. 1700."

Sure. Hence, a musician of his day.

"Maybe what Marriner really meant listeners to take from his comment was that he — the clever young conductor who had made baroque music fashionable again and sold piles of records — was not an inch less hip than his near-contemporary in the world of modern jazz. But, of course, just like Brubeck, he was beset by a younger generation of musicians who turned out to be even more relevant and radical."

On the wikipedia page dedicated to Marriner we're told that he was in a jazz band in high school (Well, wikipedia says it was a "grammar school." I still have only a dim idea of the details of British school nomenclature). So maybe he just actually liked jazz. Maybe he wanted to make the point to classical music snobs like Bookspan that jazz was as relevant a musical form as classical, with musicians and composers equally skillful, suitable even for an imaginary present-day Bach, even in the eyes of a famous, sales-engendering Baroque conductor. (My name is Jerry and I approve of this message. :) ) Or maybe you're right and there was some cynical image manipulation going on. I don't know enough about the guy to have an opinion on that. It wasn't my impression at the time, and the choking noise that Bookspan made in response to the comment was all I needed to hear to make me a fan of Marriner for life.

At any rate, Brubeck wasn't just "beset by a younger generation of musicians who turned out to be even more relevant and radical." He worked amidst an army of contemporaries, and came after scores of predecessors, who were all more radical and more relevant, at least musically (record sales is another question), than he was. For my conjecture as to why Marriner chose Brubeck to use for his comparison (other than the "sons" angle), see my post above. But by the mid-80s, Brubeck was really no longer in the forefront of anything. His heyday had come and gone with the 1960s. Marriner, in using Brubeck as an example was (again, other than the "sons" angle) showing himself to be not particularly hip at all (at least to anyone familiar with jazz). Maybe it was just a line he'd been using for the past 20 years. However, he was choosing a musician whom the listeners to the NY Philharmonic Broadcast he was being interviewed for had a fair chance to at least have heard of.

Thanks for the explanation and the following discussion was equally interesting!

>111 LolaWalser: It's important to recall that Bach was a builder of structures, an architectural, mathematical composer--and an organist. Without counterpoint there is no Bach. Assuming the same person is transplanted from the 18th to the 20th century, with the same tastes, there is no reason to suppose that Bach would have preferred jazz (any form) to other modern musics that employed, or could employ, classical composition.

Good point.

I've really enjoyed these Austen and Bach discussions.

>120 SassyLassy: "It's important to recall that Bach was a builder of structures, an architectural, mathematical composer"

This describes jazz quite well, though.

"--and an organist. "

I can give you quite a long list. :)

More difficult childhoods here. Thanks to soupdragon in the Virago Modern Classics group for sending me this book.



Where the Apple Ripens by Jessie Kesson
this anthology of short stories first published in 1985, some stories published earlier
finished reading February 28, 2021

There comes a moment of realization in every child's life when the veil separating childhood and adulthood is punctured. Sometimes it's a gradual process, a small tear, other times that tear is a huge rent. Most of the stories in Where the Apple Ripens are about just such realizations.

The title story takes place over two days in 1932. Friday was fifteen year old Isabel's last day of school. The funeral of a slightly older girl that same day diverted much of the attention that would otherwise have been Isabel's, making it somewhat of an anticlimax after all the anticipation. Isabel was destined for domestic service in town on the Monday, something she felt would lend her an air of sophistication, of knowing the world in a way the girls who remained in the village could not. The next day, she would feel differently.

"The Gowk" has appeared in other anthologies and is probably the best known story here. As in all the others, it manages to convey the many differing points of view held by various villagers on a single topic. Its unexpected conclusion is sudden and raw. It never diminishes with time or rereading.

"Until Such Times" again captures a young girl's longing for the future, in this case until such times as her aunt will take her from her grandmother's cottage off to live with her in town.

In these and other stories, Kesson captures village life in rural Scotland, the lessons hard learned, and the difficulty of preparing children for an often hostile world, without robbing them of their innocence and hope. There is the inevitable awakening to reality, that reality usually determined by class.

There are two stories here at the other end of life. In one, Miss Cresswell has just died in the Home for Elderly Indigent Ladies. It's important in this class based world to note that this home is for 'ladies', not 'women', despite the fact that they are indigent. While the matron and her assistant cleared out the room for the next occupant, they discussed 'Old Cresswell', revealing their take on her in their comments, while in a series of letters written by Cresswell but never mailed, the reader sees an entirely different person.

Nobody writes like Kesson, with both her concision and ear for dialogue. Her stories, novels, and plays were peopled by those whom others of her era scorned, yet they ring more true and more immediately than those of many of her contemporaries. Kesson herself lived the life she wrote, growing up in a workhouse and an orphanage, and later going into domestic service before developing her writing.

>121 rocketjk:

This describes jazz quite well, though.

I don't want to argue in another's thread, so, as bluntly as you: no. It doesn't.

>123 LolaWalser: I honestly didn't mean to be blunt in the way you understood. I actually meant to be breezy, but obviously I missed the mark, so apologies for that.

As to the finale of your comment, obviously I disagree. I come to my thoughts on that by way of approximately 20 years in the jazz field, as a radio producer, a freelance journalist and a PR rep, conducting dozens, really hundreds, of interviews with musicians about their creative processes, sitting in on rehearsals, classes and recording sessions, doing a lot of research and just talking. I am far from an expert, but my thoughts on the topic are not entirely uninformed.

I agree with your opinion that we should take this off of SassyLassy's thread, so I am happy to move to mine if you'd like to continue the conversation. But under one condition, and that is that we not move to my thread to argue, but to have a conversation. I feel like the bulk of the fault for the fact that our conversation got contentious falls on my shoulders, and I apologize for that, too. Talking about music should be fun, even if we're both passionate about it and we are coming at if from different directions.

So if you are at all curious about what my ideas about jazz composing are such that I've come to think that "a builder of structures, an architectural, mathematical composer" would describe that activity, then by all means, let's do that. And of course you'd tell me why you disagree. We can talk about how we disagree on terms, certainly. If that doesn't seem desirable, for whatever reason, that's fine, too.

>122 SassyLassy: Great review. I've never heard of this author - off to have a look on Amazon at her work.

>124 rocketjk:

No, I won't argue this further with you, but I will explain why not, without malice.

You started off saying that Marriner's quip was a joke, which is how I understood it because it couldn't have possibly been proffered as fact, but obviously playing further with that joke, analysing the premises and suppositions around it as I did, was not welcome. You didn't just refuse to so much as acknowledge the points I brought up (a thing, btw, which reminded me unpleasantly of the conversation about Conrad), you pulled the "argument from authority" thing--as if Marriner actually did believe that a 20th century Bach would have "been Dave Brubeck" and we had to kowtow to that quietly because, alert! he's an authority. And now you've piled on assertions about YOUR authority, as if any of that materially, seriously strengthens the notion that in the 20th century Bach would have been a jazz musician.

So I take it this is not really a "joke" to you at all, that you are actually invested in believing that a composer of Bach's type would have turned to jazz in the 20th century, and since I'm not similarly invested in the argument, I'm happy to end the conversation with you.

***

I'll finish my thought here, really should have said everything at once immediately but THEN that post would have been not mega but giga! It's that, as I said, the 20th century was rich in musics; from a European point of view, rich without precedent--and the wildest, most explorative, most experimental domain of music was that of composers and musicians who were formally heirs of the classical period. This domain had been getting enriched since before the turn of the century with a myriad styles and elements from traditional, popular and classical musics from around the world, instruments, scales, keys, rhythms etc.--the whole global instrumentarium of music-making, including things no musical tradition imagined before (quartets for a string ensemble and balloon, anyone?) In 1980 "contemporary classical" had been using jazz styles, for instance, for almost a century for a loose definition of "jazz", or more pedantically, over sixty years.

Of course, this was not popular music, music that masses listened to--but as it turned out, neither was jazz the music of the masses for long. Certainly not by 1980. In 1980 jazz and "classical" were both long dead, from the point of view of mass appeal, and dead in the same manner--a corpus of traditional works and styles maintaining interest among a larger set of fans, with a much smaller set following the new trends. In fact, today, ironically, it's not easy to tell where is the border between contemporary classical and avant-garde jazz--one has to reach for sociological markers to separate them conclusively.

So given this situation, what is interesting to me about Marriner's quip is that he ignored all the numerous musicians of the contemporary classical domain (many of whom employed jazz idioms). Not that the answer would have had to be profound--given his specialty, it's possible he never listened to them... Mind you, this hinges on the premise that he saw Brubeck as a jazz musician, which I'm not sure is clear anymore.

And, the whole social aspect to the question remains very problematic and bothersome. Music is more than notes and sounds. But that's a very long discussion too and I imagine I used up my time here and then some. Sorry, Sassy!

Catching up, Sassy. Quite the conversations you have inspired. Of course, I have to add my little story. I've read one...single...Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice, in 2005, and it stands as one of my favorite all time experiences with reading. The story was fine, but it was her language and style (and humor and cleverness) that I had never encountered before and have not since. But the 19th-century is kind of missing in my reading (still today).

Really enjoyed all your reviews.

>74 SassyLassy: fascinated by The Lazarus Project.

>88 SassyLassy: now i really want to read Hangsaman. Shirley Jackson wouldn't be herself if it wasn't ambiguous. I really enjoyed her two most famous novels (The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle). They are famously, joyfully, ambiguous.

A lot of Scotland here and I enjoyed your review of Where the Apple Ripens (>122 SassyLassy:)

>126 LolaWalser: I always enjoy your posts.

>127 dchaikin: Thanks. I was thinking as I read The Lazarus Project that it would be a book you would be interested in.
I have to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle based on so many people's positive reviews. famously, joyfully, ambiguous is a great description.

This year I resolved to read more from Scotland, so more will be appearing as the year goes on. It's a pity Jessie Kesson isn't better known, as there is an inner strength there that stands up to her world without any antics.

Well it's April, so time / past time to look at March's reading.



A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan
first published 1997
finished reading March 1, 2021

Michael Pollan was standing in the window of his almost completed second story addition, when he had a revelation. The garden path, so carefully constructed, the one that gave him such pride, no longer made sense. Seen from above, it didn't seem to have a purpose. What to do?

As someone who spends a lot of time looking out at gardens and working out plans, I was delighted that Pollan recognized this as a deficit. Luckily for him, his architect was with him. Charlie Myer suggested an outbuilding. All paths need a destination, and for Pollan it could be the place of his own he had been dreaming of: a place to work, and a sanctuary.

Where would the path lead in the future? Where to put this new building? Myer won me over immediately with his suggestion: " You've been hiking all day, it's getting late, and you're looking for a good campsite - just a comfortable, safe-feeling place to spend the night. That's your site." Accordingly, the site was selected up the hill and partially hidden behind a huge boulder, but with a view of the pond in the middle distance, and the house beyond, all to be connected by the hugely expanded path

Pollan, a man who loves to delve into ideas, had been reading everyone one from Vitruvius to Thoreau in his search for some kind of ideal shelter structure. He had reached the point of a paralysis of indecision. Myer, coming to his rescue once more, had him draw up a list of what he wanted and then whittle it down. Having agreed on the essentials, the plan was drawn up. Pollan, with no previous indication of a handy bent, announced he was going to build it himself.

Somehow, without seeming scattered, Pollan manages to fit so much into this book. Naturally there is the siting and building, but there is discovery here too. Pollan found Joe Benney, "... at twenty-seven, a master of the material world, equally at home in the realms of steel, wood, soil, plants, concrete and machinery." Joe would work with Pollan, teaching him building skills along the way. Pollan describes the build process in detail from the footings up, but right from the very beginning he realized he would be the mediator between Joe's practical skills - "My building, I'd do it differently. But it's up to you."- and Charlie's design. This led him to another lengthy reading project through twentieth century architectural design theory: Christopher Alexander, Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenman, Louis Kahn, Vincent Scully, on and on.

Pollan discusses the rise of the architect in the twentieth century, and the inherent tension between the designer and the craftsperson who actually builds the house, the person who a mere fifty years earlier had been the housewright, the source of knowledge for the building. Linguistics, architecture as language, and deconstruction feature here too; deconstruction as Pollan said an odd concept for something as real as a building. He saw architecture as moving into an entirely theoretical realm as a communications medium, and losing its traditional role as a shaper of culture and ideas.

History and theory are balanced with the actual building process in each chapter. My two favourites were "The Site", discussed above, and "Windows", a subject dear to my heart. Having read this book, I also now understand, if only in theory, how the framing of a roof is done, as once Pollan came to realize that sometimes diagrams work better than words, he started to include some.

Project realized, Pollan said

...what it helped me to understand is that space is not mute, that it does in fact speak to us, and that we respond to it more directly, more viscerally, than all the cerebral left-brained talk about signs and conventions would have us think.

Book finished, I ordered his Second Nature: A Gardener's Education.

Michael Pollan's finished project





Trying these images again as my first ones disappeared.

>129 SassyLassy: How cool is that! I love the idea as well as the product. It struck me as I read your review that he would make a wonderful homeschooler. He incorporates so many subjects into the project.

>129 SassyLassy:
I just adore Michael Pollan. I went to hear him speak about psychedelics a couple of years ago

>129 SassyLassy: Another Michael Pollan fan here though I've only discovered him quite recently, initially though his Netflix series "Cooked", which a friend recommended. I quite envy the way he goes from subject to subject, going so deep with his research (and meeting such interesting people along the way), and then rolling his sleeves up and actually DOING whatever it is. He must be fascinating to talk to.

I've had a lot of catching up to do with everyone's threads - I've just added Inès Cagnati to my wishlist.

>131 labfs39: Great idea about the home schooling, but I'm not sure the children would ever get a word in edgewise! On the other hand, it could make a great topic for him to write about.

>132 Nickelini: Well that would have been really interesting! Sometimes I envy people in large cities who get to see people speak, and this would be one of those times.

>133 rachbxl: Although I have a couple of his books, this was the first one I read, and the most recent I bought. It just seemed like such a great topic. As noted above, I then ordered another, which has now arrived, and it won't be long until I read it.

I think you will like Cagnati. Free Day would fit in well to this quarter's theme for RG.

Just checking in. Hope you are doing well.

>135 labfs39: Thanks for waking me up!

I said above that since it was April it was past time to look at March's reading. Well here it is May, so March really does have to be accounted for!

I was busy with a big project for a good part of March, so much of my reading wasn't that exciting.

This first book I saw on nickelini's thread and then in a bookstore very soon thereafter.



The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
first published 2019
finished reading March 3, 2021

Every New Year's, a group of eight university friends from Oxford would book a holiday together and celebrate, every year in a different place. Now in their thirties, the friends had less and less in common each passing year, while the locales got more and more exclusive with time and an evermore upward climb. This year they were meeting at a lodge in the Highlands. The remote setting makes a good start for this novel's take on the house party murder scenario.

Early on, a blizzard set in, cutting off road access and communication. Three days in, a body was found by the gamekeeper. Cleverly, Foley doesn't reveal the identity of the victim. The story is told from the points of view of three of the holidayers. Interspersed with these accounts are real time narrations of the lodge's two onsite staff members.

It didn't take much to figure out the victim's identity, leaving only the who and why. Foley does a good job of letting these unappealing self-centred, largely vapid guests reveal themselves. If you love to despair over backstabbing and petty jealousy, this is a good wallow, an afternoon escape. Otherwise, it won't matter if you never read it.

>136 SassyLassy: If you love to despair over backstabbing and petty jealousy, this is a good wallow, an afternoon escape. Otherwise, it won't matter if you never read it.

Exactly. I find these books are a wonderful palate cleanser between the meatier books I read. I always promise myself more of these, but rarely listen to myself. So when I do read them, I have lots of fun.

Greeks Bearing Gifts by Philip Kerr
first published 2018
finished reading March 13, 2021

Bernie Gunther has been through a lot over the past 12 books. With each passing year and book he gets a little more worn, threadbare even, a little more trapped in the past.

Like David Downing with his central character John Russell, Philip Kerr with Bernie has used espionage and crime in the Third Reich and its aftermath as a backdrop. Since the end of WWII though, Bernie has been floundering, moving from one job to another, hoping no one will recognize him and bring up his past in Berlin.

Greeks Bearing Gifts finds Bernie a new job, working as an insurance claims inspector, looking for fraud in the case of a sunken Greek yacht supposed to be filled with museum quality artefacts.

As usual, Kerr does well with the background politics: the Greek generals and their links to Germany. Unfortunately there's less setting as the series goes on and more of Bernie degenerating into a caricature of himself, with ever more squirm worthy utterances. This is a shame, as the early books were definitely good reads. Greeks Bearing Gifts is the penultimate Bernie Gunther book, written when Kerr knew he was dying, and published shortly thereafter. Given the circumstances and the standard of the earlier books, I will read the final one. However, had this been my introduction to Bernie, I wouldn't read any more.

>137 Nickelini: Exactly.
I see Foley has another book coming out, which looks like much the same format.

>139 SassyLassy: Interesting. I hear her other book, The Guest List is basically the same plot. Sounds like she's a one-note author?

>138 SassyLassy: "As usual, Kerr does well with the background politics: the Greek generals and their links to Germany. Unfortunately there's less setting as the series goes on and more of Bernie degenerating into a caricature of himself, with ever more squirm worthy utterances."

I have been absolutely loving this series, though I'm not as far along as you are. I remember that there were one or two of the novels about four and/or five books in that were really heavy on cliched noir patter which, despite the overall quality of the plot and character, took away from the experience somewhat. These flaws have not been as evident in the last one or two of the books I've read. Sorry to see that the flaw returns. But, like you, I will finish out the series, regardless, and I'll be sad when I've reached the end.

>140 Nickelini: More than likely. I guess title three, should it happen, will tell the tale, as it were.

>141 rocketjk: I do wonder why it is laid on so heavily. It doesn't even seem to fit with Bernie's fundamentally decent character. When someone like James Elroy does the same thing, it is much more convincing, although much more repellent.

In My Garden by Christopher Lloyd
first published 1994
finished reading March 14, 2021

Christopher Lloyd, best known for his garden Great Dixter, was among other things a garden columnist writing in Country Life for some forty-two years. In My Garden is a collection of these columns selected to represent a calendar year. Since there is a sameness to columns after awhile, making it difficult to read more than a few back to back, these columns were read over the past year as it progressed.

Garden columns are of interest for how they deliver their message. The writer cannot preach to the readers, who would resent the implication that they might not know what they are doing. At the same time, the readers want new information and ideas, so these have to be presented in a way that makes the readers feel they are discovering something new. Complacency has to be managed, so sometimes the readers should be challenged. Lloyd's usual gambit was to bemoan the anonymous garden visitors, the ones with 'helpful' suggestions. There is a protocol to visiting gardens. Pointing out weeds, or taking surreptitious cutting doesn't comply. Lloyd's take on such activities:

If you must pinch cuttings from my garden, please take them neatly and not where it shows and don't let me catch you, particularly if the plant is on sale in my nursery. That's plain mean.

Like other authors, garden writers often write from a personal perspective, one reflecting their own spaces and those of their friends. This too is tricky territory, for too chatty and the writer risks losing the role of guide, too austere and the reader decides the writer is too aloof and doesn't belong in their garden. Lloyd balanced these challenges well. His readers were a generally well off and fairly knowledgeable cross section of a group he referred to elsewhere as "cottage garden gentry", and also included those who aspired to this rather disparaging title.

Lloyd didn't fear change though. He was not committed to the designs and ideas of the past. However, Country Life and columns in general don't allow much room to develop theory. So although this book is entertaining in the way it was meant to be, it won't provide inspiration.

Big day today. Image from BBC Scotland. Farr, near Inverness

>144 SassyLassy:

Oh, right, that is happening... again...

But I think I best reserve comment on the whole Brexitannian saga...

>138 SassyLassy:

HMMM... I have something by this dude--ahh, looks like the first three titles, so that should be all right then... for whatever reason I have not been getting on well with crime dramas in that setting, which is a bit puzzling. I never warmed up to the Babylon Berlin series, ditched the first one past 50%.

>145 LolaWalser: I was tempted to ditch the first Babylon Berlin book too, especially with its clunky translation. As for Bernie, be prepared for a lot of off the cuff remarks which may lead you to ditching him too!

Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure by James West Davidson and John Rugge
first published 1988, this edition 1996 with an Afterward
finished reading March 14, 2021

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have a certain way they pronounce the word "harsh"; a way which encompasses all the many meanings of that word and more. Leonidas Hubbard and Dillon Wallace should perhaps have spoken to a few of them before they began their ill fated 1903 expedition in Labrador, one of the harshest places on earth.

Hubbard was a junior editor at Outing magazine, a periodical devoted to the outdoors, publishing writers of the stature of Robert Peary and Theodore Roosevelt. Hubbard was desperately in need of a story. He pitched the idea to his editor of an expedition to cross Labrador by canoe through "the last blank spot on the map of North America". The proposed trip would see him paddle from North West River Post five hundred miles north along the Naskapi and George Rivers to Ungava Bay. There were no maps for this route, only rumours that it could be done. Even today, it is a land of

virtually uninhabited taiga and barren lands... a domain of thundering whitewater rivers, vast windswept lakes, and unbroken evergreen forests...
The moss and the spruce stretch on beyond the horizon without end. In low places, the land is broken by swamps and quaking bogs and pitcher plants; on higher hills, the scouring of wind, rain, and snow leaves only the boulders heaped across the fields.

Hubbard and Wallace were singularly unprepared for this trip. Hubbard had done some snowshoeing in Québec previously, and Wallace had camped in New York state. Nevertheless, on July 15, 1903, they set out from the post, far too late in the season. They had hired a Métis guide, George Elson. Elson was well qualified, but he had never been to this part of the world before, and had just met the two Americans.

Within five days of setting out they were discussing what to jettison. Three men with 500 pounds of supplies in an 18 foot canoe was difficult enough, but the frequent portages were gruesome. Hubbard was able to carry just over half the weight he had planned, necessitating more trips each portage. By mid September, starving and ill, they made the decision to turn back. Early on Hubbard had made a decision which unbeknownst to the three set them on the wrong river, although heading in the right direction. Now he made the fatal decision to hike back through snow, rather than follow the river. In October, Wallace and Elson left a dying Hubbard with some meagre supplies and headed out the remaining thirty miles for help. Wallace was now down to 95 pounds from his usual 170. By the time searchers got back to Hubbard, he was dead.

Enter Mina Hubbard, now a widow. She was determined to finish her husband's journey, as was Wallace. Wallace had published an account of the trip, distressing Mina. In 1905, they each set out in separate parties to complete the trip. Mina had engaged George Elson on what she saw as a race to Ungava Bay.

Using diaries, letter, and other primary sources, the authors track Hubbard's journey, the planning for 1905, and that year's two trips. The source material and the authors' narration, presenting the material from each participant's point of view, are absorbing. However, the authors chose to insert imagined conversations . While this adds a certain ease of reading, it detracts from the true voices of the participants revealed in their own writing, especially as the authors annoyingly try to capture local pronunciation for any speaker from Newfoundland or Labrador.

Quibbles aside, including the authors' use of deer, moose, and caribou interchangeably, Great Heart does bring exploration and discovery to life. Most of all, it brings to life that beautiful and harsh place known as Labrador.

The courses of the Nascaupee and George Rivers as surveyed and Mapped 1905
created by Mina Hubbard

image from Memorial University of Newfoundland - Digital Archives Initiative



image from Anakalian Whims

>147 SassyLassy: What a fascinating story. Is it a spoiler to tell me if the 1905 expeditions made it? I assume so given the maps. Mina was in a similar situation as Nina Fawcett, who's husband when missing in the Amazon in 1925, but Mina had a very spunky response. I like that.

Did you read River of Doubt about Theodore Roosevelt's river trip in the Amazon? I thought both the story and writing superb.

>147 SassyLassy: Wow, that looks great. My wife and I visited Newfoundland on vacation several years ago and had a great time, though we did not make it to Labrador. I've read a few memoirs about life in those places but haven't seen this book. Thanks!

>149 labfs39: Not a spoiler at all - both expeditions made it.

I didn't know about Nina Fawcett and will have to follow that up. River of Doubt and Teddy Roosevelt really looks interesting. I love these kinds of tales.

>150 rocketjk: It's no wonder you didn't make it. Getting to Labrador from Newfoundland is tricky by car. You have to go up the Great Northern Peninsula a considerable way and take a ferry to Blanc Sablon, which is actually in Québec, and then drive into Labrador.



The ferry should take anywhere from just under two hours to who knows how long, depending on the ice in the Strait of Belle Isle

>151 SassyLassy: "The ferry should take anywhere from just under two hours to who knows how long, . . . "

We were considering the ferry, in fact, but in the end just didn't feel like we had the time to do Labrador any sort of justice at all, so stuck with seeing as much of Newfoundland as we could.

Regarding . . . "the authors' use of deer, moose, and caribou interchangeably," here's a story I hope you will find amusing. Of course, there are reindeer all over the place, most of them with ear tags denoting human ownership. Caribou it seems have been hunted just about to extinction in Newfoundland. Once while we were on a hike, though, we saw something flash through the woods. It was a reindeer, but very light colored! Steph (my wife) got a picture of it on her cell phone. We thought we'd seen an albino reindeer. We showed the photo to several people here and there along our route, asking, "Could this be an albino reindeer?" "Oh, yes, an albino reindeer," we were told. "They're very rare. You're lucky to see one." This went on for a couple of days when finally, one day, we showed the photo to an older fellow who started laughing. What was funny? "There's no such thing as an albino reindeer that I ever heard of," he said. "That's a caribou." Well, we laughed, too. Why not? It was a good one on us. Everyone had been having us on, joshing the tourists about albino reindeer. I have a picture in my mind of some of those folks sitting around in bars and telling their friends, "So I said, 'Oh, sure. That's an albino reindeer, all right!'" "Tourists!" "Ah, yes. Tourists. Always good for a laugh, God love 'em."

Still have the photo on my hard drive:

>151 SassyLassy: I highly recommend River of Doubt. As for Nina Fawcett, I learned about her in the book The Lost City of Z. The author is a journalist who investigated the story of Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who on his last expedition was looking for the Amazonian El Dorado, which he called Z. Neither he nor his remains were ever found. Nina was supportive of her husband, despite his never remaining long between trips and their poverty. Also interesting, but I liked River of Doubt more.

>152 rocketjk: I love the story of the albino reindeer!

>152 rocketjk: Having lived in Newfoundland I was getting this sort of leprechaun idea in the back of my mind as I read your story, so yes, I can entirely see that scene around the kitchen table.
Good on you for taking it so well!

>153 labfs39: And so the list grows! Thanks for that Fawcett recommendation. Are Nina and Percy related? I love these true accounts with ambiguous endings that make them novel like.

I love those maps. (Enjoyed the fascinating review too ... and Jerry’s albino deer story.)

>154 SassyLassy: Yes, Nina was Percy's husband, hence the comparison with Mina and Leonidas.

As for confusing hooved animals in the book, I am very surprised that an author and editor of history with a PhD from Yale would make such mistakes. And where was the editor?

>156 labfs39: Yes, you did say that in >149 labfs39: and I picked up on it there, but missed it later. Sorry.

Where was the editor indeed. It floored me that most of the research was done in the US for an expedition in Canada, and it was only after publication that the authors discovered the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University, which I would have thought would have been one of the best places to start. The American research certainly was necessary for that part of the book, but surely not for all. I think in Canada they had only done research before that at the National Archives in Ottawa, and at McGill University in Montreal.

>155 dchaikin: I am a real sucker for maps, particularly old ones.

>147 SassyLassy:, >148Oh, that looks like a good one. I love expedition tales, though I have less tolerance for their distress as I get older. I love those maps too, just thinking about people sailing those rocky coasts recording every little inlet.

>152 rocketjk: Aside from the fact that that's a great story, what an awesome photo to have snapped!

>158 lisapeet: Thanks! And, yes, my wife was thinking quickly!

Loving all the chat about this part of the world. I'd like to go back to Newfoundland some time, but next time not in the crash landing position!

>160 AlisonY: ...but next time not in the crash landing position! That sounds like a story that needs telling!

There used to be a regional airline that was famous for flying into Newfoundland's various airports on nights when other airlines would cancel their flights. I was flying back and forth several times a year then. Unfortunately the flights often had four stops before they got to mine, the fifth, and it was white knuckle all the way. The plane would just get over one takeoff when it was time to land again, then repeat. I have been on flights there where people were praying out loud, telling the rosary in groups, and otherwise just preparing for death, but your flight sounds even more intriguing.

Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three by David Plante
first published 1983, reissued 2017
finished reading March 15, 2021

This was a disturbing book. The subtitle indicates it is a memoir, but that suggests a higher tone than Plante delivers. Instead, it reads in many places like a bitchy diary, in other places like a self serving narrative. David Plante is an American writer. In the late 1970s, he was living in London. He was in his late thirties at the time and had published five works, so he was no dewy eyed ingenue.

His difficult women are Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, and Germaine Greer. Plante's role in their lives is difficult to determine, as the reader has only his side of the story. Rhys and Orwell were both dead by the time the book was published.

Jean Rhys was 76 when The Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966, reviving an interest in her earlier novels from the 1920s and '30s. She was once more someone to know. Ten years later, she would come to London for the winters, and was visited regularly by Plante. He suggested that if she wanted to dictate her autobiography, he would transcribe it for her.

The elderly Rhys was frail and confused. Her chronic alcoholism meant

Helping her became difficult. She needed a drink to start, a drink to continue, and yet another, and after two hours she was muddled, couldn't remember what she'd been saying, and she'd repeat, over and over...

He describes Rhys's deterioration in excruciating detail, all the while nipping out to buy her yet more alcohol, and badgering her for more details of her life.

Sonia Orwell had dinner with Plante the night he found out Rhys had died. Orwell told him in no uncertain terms of the reservations Rhys had had about him writing of her. Orwell was a self described snob, famous for being the widow of George Orwell, whom she had married a mere fourteen weeks before his death. She knew many in the artistic and literary circles, and introduced Plante around. His social life at the time seems to have consisted largely of being what he calls the 'Extra Man', the one you can call at the last minute to fill in an empty chair or pour the drinks. Not a very rewarding title, but Plante would do just about anything for an invite to certain London parties.

Plante had a summer place just outside Cortona. He invited Orwell there one summer. It didn't work well. Orwell would drink and rage. She hated the house and put all her energy into making it presentable to her eyes. Not the best guest behaviour, but Plante at least had some insight into it:

Sonia was difficult, but she was difficult for a reason. She wanted, demanded so much from herself and from others, and it made her rage that she and others couldn't ever match what was done to what was aspired to. I admired her for being difficult. I could admire her like this when I wasn't with her.

Plante drove back to London with Germaine Greer. Greer appears as another driven compulsive person, but also an expert, someone who could take on anything, having acquired the knowledge and done the planning to complete it successfully. He said of her

Her only secret was this: she would not reveal how she had become Germaine Greer, how she had learned everything she had had to learn to become the person she was. She would reveal everything about the Germaine Greer who actually was, who was entirely public, and about whom she kept no secrets.

In 1980, Plante and Greer were both in residence at the University of Tulsa. Greer said she wanted respect from her peers, but felt only a certain suspicion from them. Perhaps because she was living at the time of publication, Plante is easiest on Germaine Greer, who nevertheless comes across as unbearable bossy, opinionated, and pedantic, capable only of lecturing, never of conversing.

Their time there gave Plante more insight into his dealings with women, thinking it was he who made them difficult. This may certainly have been true on a one on one level, but all three of these women were notoriously difficult, and Plante did not make them that way.

What is one to make of someone who lets himself be treated time after time in the ways he describes, indeed seeks out these people, and then, seeming to lack any modicum of self respect, writes of his abasement? While this book is about the women, not Plante, he seems to exist in a void when not in their respective realms. Plante was then in what would turn out to be a forty year relationship with Nikos Stangos, yet he makes no mention of a domestic life, and brushes off the women's veiled anti-gay comments.

It might reasonably be asked why read such a book. It's something I've pondered, and I have no answer. Worse, I feel complicit.

>162 SassyLassy: Ick!

>162 SassyLassy:

I have that, in some old edition, haven't read it. What slant does the NYRB intro take?

I go back and forth on the voyeurism of personal writings. Mostly I dislike the idea of prying, and nowadays with the slew of discoveries how awful everyone is, I'd frankly rather not know in 99% of the cases. But then there are a few of my idols, obsessions and whatnot, and I'm ready to dive into the laundry basket. But all are dead...

>162 SassyLassy: Wonderful review of a difficult book. Reading books like that always make me feel like a rubbernecker. Fascinated, yet at the same time uncomfortable with the knowledge that I'm fascinated.

You have to wonder what was going through the minds of the NYRB publishing committee. I'm guessing they thought it would be an oddity that people would be interested in, but who knows. Thanks for taking one for the team—I guess I'll pass on it, but that was a really solid review.

>162 SassyLassy: Intriguing review for what seems a strange book! I'm not familiar with Sonia Orwell.

Difficult Women: A memoir of three Amazing that he could only find three! At least you know what you are getting from the title of the book.

>162 SassyLassy: you left me curious.

>168 baswood: maybe title is incomplete and should mention, “as told by a kind of weird extra man who sought them out”

>169 dchaikin: as told by a kind of weird extra man who sought them out LOL. It does make you wonder

>164 LolaWalser: >165 labfs39: >166 lisapeet: The introduction to the NYRB reissue is by Scott Spencer, whom I had to look up, but am still no further ahead. Some of his remarks in the introduction around your thoughts

There is certainly something startling about the almost childlike frankness with which Plante depicts his three subjects....
Doubtless,my initial pleasure in reading this book was in part voyeuristic...

He goes on to say in regard to Plante's reaction to verbal abuse from Orwell at a dinner party

In moments like this, one can feel both the affront and the social claustrophobia of the moment, and an understanding is reached between both memoirist and reader: how not to cheer on the Extra Man who is treated harshly? The diary becomes a refuge where wounded pride is offered succor

While that may be true of diaries, even the best writers don't usually think to publish them as a means of salving the spirit, or even seeking support. Spencer then goes on to wonder if the publication was meant as a kind of ambush, but not very successful, as by then two of its subjects were dead. There was a lot of reaction in Plante's circle to the initial publication, and Spencer goes on to say

Plante is too expert a writer not to know what kind of attention these pages were going to draw, and too perceptive about human motivations and vulnerabilities not to know that in exposing others he is simultaneously exposing himself. He doubtlessly knew that by publishing his diaries he was courting stern criticism. He may have been courting social ostracism as well--

Spencer then muses whether this was a form of exorcism for Plante. He concludes

...by virtue of not explaining himself, and making no excuses, Plante succeeds too in adding to the portraits of his three subjects a self-portrait that is no less compelling and puzzling....Plante's willingess to make his relationship to us more important than his relationship to his friends forges a powerful bond between writer and reader....We make of it what we will

I think that part of the ease with which Plante discards his relationships to his "friends" is mediated by these people not really being friends, but rather people with whom he had transactional relationships. One of the things that struck me in this book was people's need to have others around them, to be socially busy as opposed to socially involved. It seemed an odd need for people for whom more periods of solitude would be more productive.

>167 avaland: It seems that Sonia Orwell wanted to be a writer, but wound up as an editor instead. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/19/georgeorwell.biography

This next was read for my book club.



White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo
first published 2018
finished reading March 18, 2021

Robin DiAngelo, or as she would have it, Dr Robin DiAngelo, is a white person who conducts workshops on racism, diversity, and inclusivity. Her audiences are mostly white. DiAngelo found over time that the attendees had great difficulty with the the central idea of her workshops, that being that they are complicit in a racist system. The more liberal participants feel themselves to be, the greater the difficulty they have with being challenged like this. Their self proclaimed "colour blindness" negates the idea of race, and prevents any discussion of it. This allows people to think "I'm not racist", and so no further action is required.

Di Angelo is a skilled presenter. She is able to challenge participants in her workshops in such a way that it handily leads on to her next example, which once again takes ideas we should all be thinking about, and then belabours them into a repetitive harangue. This was really disappointing.

This is not a prescriptive book though. It is too bent on diagnosing the disease, and that disease is shared by all white people. Her idea that whites are racist and that's that made me think of a sort of primitive Calvinist idea of predestination - you're doomed and there's nothing you can do about it no matter how hard you try.

There is an inflexibility in DiAngelo's thought. Asked by a first nations person to apply her theory to indigenous groups, DiAngelo refused, setting up a hierarchy of oppression. This seemed like a very American book in its examples and references, which is unfortunate, since the ideas could be abstracted to encompass racism in other contexts, as the indigenous woman requested.

This is a good book for a book club discussion. I did notice, however, that although our book club is about 35% American, only one showed up. This was unfortunate, given the events of the past year in the US. It would have been useful to hear what her target audience thought.

>172 SassyLassy:

I had a significantly more positive reaction. I've also seen a couple interview videos with her where she comes across, at least to me, as quite likable. I haven't noticed inflexibility of thought in either the book or those interviews.

But I guess I was already "sold" on all her premises so, upsetting as they may be, they didn't come as a shock or something like that. The parallel that runs between sexism and racism prepared me long ago to accept the major concepts (privilege, micro-aggressions etc.)

I have seen snide criticisms of her work as an example of "corporate" anti-racism, but I must say I don't get it. Corporations exist, most people actually work in some kind of "corporate" i.e. office setting, and her work, while it doesn't "solve" racism (whose does?) at least presents people with ideas they may not have encountered before, and hopefully sensitises them to the problems black people and PoC face even in interactions with the most "well-meaning" whites.

>173 LolaWalser: Interesting about your reaction. I've been thinking about this, and maybe part of my reaction is that I too already believed her premises. However, I felt white people couldn't be all bad all of the time. It seemed I was reading someone who would never concede that anyone could feel as strongly as she, that it was 'her subject'. I think this may partially explain her resistance to considering other groups.

I will add that while the group all agreed on the US focus of the book, I was perhaps harder on the author than most others, apart from one woman who had done all the things that DiAngelo cites in her "don't tell me..." list (see John McWhorter here: https: //www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/ ) She also felt there was an intransigence there.

_________
edited to add missing "however" in the second sentence

The Largess of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
first published 2018
finished reading March 25, 2021

Denis Johnson is well up on my list of favourite authors. This winter, during a brief interlude from lockdown, I saw The Largesse of the Sea Maiden on a bookstore shelf and bought it without looking at more than the front cover. When I got home and started looking further, a sinking feeling started to overwhelm me. All the accolades at the front of the book referred to Johnson in the past tense. Could he be dead? It turned out yes indeed he is. Then a sort of guilt overtook me; how could I have missed the death of someone whose writing I truly admired?

All this may seem like an odd beginning to a review, but it links to the reading of the book. These short stories feature Johnson's usual concerns. The difference between this and his earlier works is that Johnson knew he was dying. Just as he had known the worlds of his earlier books, off-kilter worlds with imperfect people, worlds with addiction and disease, now he was writing of death encountered at a deeply personal level.

The title story has a series of loosely linked anecdotes mostly dealing with the deaths of people known to the narrator: ghosts from the past and people from the present. Ginny, a wife divorced forty years ago calls to say she is dying and that after all this time she wanted to talk and forgive. Listening to her, the narrator's mind wanders until suddenly he is gripped by the thought he doesn't know whether the person speaking is his first wife or his second. After all, the litany of sins committed against each is the same.

As the narrator goes through these vignettes, there's the knowledge that life could have turned out differently. There is a difference though "... between repentance and regret. You repent the things you've done and regret the chances you let get away"

'The Starlight on Idaho' is a series of letters written as therapy in a rehab clinic. The protagonist apologizes, cajoles, and rages against fate, depending upon the intended recipient. Some more diary like letters will never be mailed, others will. Johnson's own time in rehab and recovery comes through.

I'm getting depressed. Depressed. I think this Antabuse is wrong on me. You said we'd feel run down or sleepy two or three days to start with, but you forgot to say prepare to fall down through a trap door in the bottom of your soul. Also I've heard people talking right outside my window who aren't there when I go look. Around other folks, folks who are really there, I feel absolutely fine. They talk, I talk, everything appears as normal. Get in this room and shut the door behind me and I'm alone with somebody who's not there.

The idea of our potential other selves is explored further in 'Doppelganger: Poltergeist', a story of one man's obsession with Elvis Presley's twin brother who died at birth. However, Mark Ahearn didn't believe this version and spent much of his adult life trying to prove otherwise. A reasonable person would have wondered what happened to the twin if he were really alive, but Ahearn had a theory for that too. There's a certain joy and quirkiness in this story as Ahearn spins out his progress in establishing the "real" scoop to the narrator.

These are stories to make the reader reflect, written in Johnson's distinct style. There is humour here too. Who else could make Strangler Bob an oracle to the newly jailed transients? It is however, a humour that brings the reader up short.

'Triumph over Death' brings home the reality that as we age, there are fewer and fewer people in our lives. Much of the remaining time will be spent with others who are dying, and with dying ourselves. Rushing to accompany a friend to emergency, the narrator says

...in my pajamas, with the coffee, looking back, I see that the Parkland Community Hospital's emergency room doors opened onto a new phase in my own life, one I can expect to continue until all expectations cease, the phase in which these visits to emergency rooms and clinics increased in frequency and by now have become commonplace: trips with my mother, my father, my friend Joe... - and eventually me too - the tests, forms, interviews, exams, the journeys into the machines.

Johnson's message: It doesn't matter. The world keeps turning. It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it.

He was.

Denis Johnson in better times. Image from the New York Times

>175 SassyLassy: Terrific review. I don’t usually enjoy short story collections, but this sounds interesting. Onto the wishlist it goes.

>175 SassyLassy: I agree with Colleen, wonderful review. Thank you for typing in all the excerpts, it gives me the flavor of his writing, which I've never read. I like the cadence of the bits you shared. One sentence is lines long (...in my pajamas) and others are three or four words, but they share a rhythm.

>174 SassyLassy:

Thanks for the link to the McWhorter's article. I can't recognise the book I read from that review and I think the review--and presumably the author--are problematic in itself. (The Atlantic gives platform to all sorts of right wingers--it even employed the guy who wrote that women who had abortions ought to be hanged.)

First, I couldn't disagree more with the religious metaphors he's pushing--original sin, expiation etc. (I noticed and was puzzled by your description of DiAngelo as a "Calvinist" etc.) I can only say I don't get that sort of zealotry from her book at all nor does she seem to me to oppress whites and secretly despise blacks. (If I can't decide on the latter because I'm white, I'll note that her book was prefaced by Michael Eric Dyson, who presumably doesn't think she's being condescending to black people.)

I thought the theory in her book unexceptional and pretty much recognised as standard anti-racist ideas (and as far as I noticed she doesn't claim she invented anything), the interest lying, beyond that introduction to general anti-racist ideas if one hasn't thought about this before, in the application to practical problems in the workplace.

McWhorter reproaches her with sounding like a "diversity seminar" and wanting "to instruct". Um, yes--that's exactly what it is and what she does. Moreover, it's a book squarely with a white audience in mind, because it tries to make whites aware of their unconscious bias, internalized racist notions.

To be sure, there's no special reason to read this book and not one of the dozens of other on the market, if one were choosing only one.

As for McWhorter, take note of what he says here:

In my life, racism has affected me now and then at the margins, in very occasional social ways, but has had no effect on my access to societal resources; if anything, it has made them more available to me than they would have been otherwise. Nor should anyone dismiss me as a rara avis. Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence since the mid-1960s, and to deny this is to assert that affirmative action for Black people did not work.

In 2020—as opposed to 1920—I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me. Nor do I need wider society to undergo teachings in how to be exquisitely sensitive about my feelings. I see no connection between DiAngelo’s brand of reeducation and vigorous, constructive activism in the real world on issues of import to the Black community.

He's actually said he profited from racism. One might wish for a linguist with a better way with words. And then he goes on to say stop talking about privilege, everybody. Well, talking about privilege, and, (I'm so sorry, white people everywhere who'd rather not), talking about racism is part of activism, can't be avoided.

Look, obviously there are everywhere people like this, whose personal advantage and good life insulates them from the worst. But I'm not going to take his word on racism and how to deal with it over that of Dyson, or Coates, or Kendi, or, yes, even a white consciousness-raiser like Robin DiAngelo who at a minimum at least doesn't brush off the whole problem like this.

Went to see who is this McWhorter fella, found this:

https://replicationindex.com/2020/06/12/when-right-wing-news-talk-about-race-and...

>179 LolaWalser: Yikes! I wasn't agreeing with McWhorter - I just mentioned him as a convenient way to list the objections DiAngelo hears in her seminars rather then listing them. Lesson learned - I should not rely on my shortcuts for clarity.

>177 NanaCC: Short stories really appeal to me. There is a real skill in being able to reduce and yet deliver a whole piece in a condensed form.

>178 labfs39: I like your idea about the rhythm of the language, and read it aloud to myself, which really brought it out. That long "pajamas" sentence really brought home that endless cycle of this new phase of life.

>180 SassyLassy:

I'm glad you're not agreeing with him! I looked some more and he really is as problematic as that article demonstrates. Just for reference, for a critical view of him and a few others of that stripe, see for example this article and accompanying comments in The Root:
Candace Owens, Jason Whitlock, John McWhorter, Sage Steele and the Myth of 'Questioning Blackness'

Other "Black Conservatives" besides those named in the headline come up in the comments--Thomas William Chatterton, Coleman Hughes...

Btw, I personally don't mean to label McWhorter or anyone, that's just how the commentators describe them (among other things). It's worth mentioning that seven-eight years ago McWhorter contributed some articles to The Root. I searched after a comment mentioned that, but I didn't read those articles. Since The Root was from its inception a lefty website, I conclude that at that time, at least, McWhorter wasn't publishing opinions that would have made him unacceptable to The Root.

Sorry for the length, and thanks for the opportunity to learn something new.

The second quarter is almost over, so it's probably time to finish off my notes on the first quarter's reading.

This next, like >80 SassyLassy: above is a story of the struggle for education, but in this case it continues into adulthood.



The Quarry Wood by Nan Shepherd
first published 1928
finished reading March 31, 2021

Martha Ironside was nine when her Aunt Josephine Leggatt came to take her home with her. It meant no school, to Martha's horror, but it taught her there was another world: a world with warmth, clean sheets and plenty to eat. Ten days later she was home again, only to find her old home had three new children in its two rooms. Martha's mother had a habit of excusing the squalor of her house by attributing it to the ever changing collection of children she took in to augment the family's income. Somehow this financial strategy never seemed to work. This was a family ...where a penny saved had a trick of turning into a penny squandered.

This was the reader's brief introduction to Martha and her family. Next met at age eighteen, she was fiercely determined to escape this life and get to university. School and study had been her focus all these years; a way to withdraw from the chaos at home. However, life can't be learned from books, and Martha had little to prepare her for the outside world. Her real education was only just beginning.

The Quarry Wood takes its title from the small wood between the the Ironsides' cottage and Aunt Josephine's home at Crannochie. It was the place that separated the two worlds and the path that linked them. It was a real place near Aberdeen, important to Shepherd. This is the first of Shepherd's three novels, all written within a five year period. She continued to write poetry and about poetry throughout her life, and wrote too of the natural world, so close to her. Her insights into rural life in 1920s and '30s rural Scotland read just as well now as ever. Similarly, her world from a child's point of view is equally convincing. Seeing the Aurora Borealis with her father one night, Martha believed for many years afterward that

Scotland is bounded on the south by England, on the east by the rising sun, on the north by the Arory-bory-Alice, and on the west by Eternity.
Eternity did not seem to be on any of her maps: but neither was the Aurora. She accepted that negligence of the map-makers as she accepted so much else in life. She had enough to occupy her meanwhile in discovering what life held, without concerning herself as to what it lacked.

Going out into the world would cure that.

Anna Shepherd on a Bank of Scotland £5 note.

Shepherd and the Bank of Scotland

>182 SassyLassy: Arory-bory-Alice is a much better name for it than “north wind dawn”, whatever Galileo might say.

>182 SassyLassy: Nice review of The Quarry Wood, Sassy.

>183 SassyLassy: I just looked in my passport holder, and one of the £5 polymer Scottish banknotes in it, from the Royal Bank of Scotland, is the one with Nan Shepherd on its front. I received it during my last visit to Edinburgh in 2018. The other £5 banknote is from the Clydesdale Bank, and it features a different person, Sir William Arrol, whose civil engineering firm constructed the Forth Bridge in Edinburgh and the Tower Bridge in London.

All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski translated from the German by Anthea Bell 2015
first published as Alles Umsonst in 2006
finished reading April 3, 2021

Peter von Globig, "hair all over the place, mind all over the place too", lived an odd but relatively contented existence for a twelve year old boy in wartime. True, his father was posted to Italy, and the family's income had certainly decreased what with international funds curtailed, but life had continued largely unchanged for Peter. The main exception was that visiting family and friends, who used to come with full sacks and leave with empty ones, now arrived carrying empty sacks and left with full. Life was hard in East Prussia in January 1945, and was becoming increasingly harder.

A string of people started travelling the road in front of the von Globig estate: a scattered few at first, soon turning into a steady stream, all heading west. Most of them passed right by the estate, but a few made the trip down the drive to Peter's home. The first of these called himself a "political economist". By no means an academic, he studied the households contents with an educated eye for value.

The economist was followed by a succession of characters, all novel to Peter. There was the violinist and the one armed piano player, the painter, the refugee hidden from all by Peter's mother, the baron, and the schoolteacher with his family. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the two Ukrainian women in the kitchen, and Vladimir the Pole who was in charge of the animals, were becoming more and more agitated, as was Auntie who ran the household. Peter's mother on the other hand withdrew more and more into her own world.

The time finally came for the household to join the throngs heading west. Kempowski does a superb job of portraying the disintegration into shambles of the most careful planning, and the subsequent chaos of flight. Skilfully he shows this new world through Peter's eyes, with brief vignettes along the road, each one clarifying or complicating what Peter had thought he knew. He learned how people's true natures emerge in crisis. Some are lost to him in the maelstrom and never heard of by him again, but the reader learns their fate.

This is more than the story of one child though. It is the universal story of war and upheaval, of refugees on the road, a place where fate appears to be the only determinant in life. Can there be redemption at the end, or is it truly all for nothing?

>186 SassyLassy: That must have been one of the last books Anthea Bell translated.

I still haven’t got to Kempowski. My mother keeps telling me to read him. He does sound very interesting.

>186 SassyLassy: All for Nothing sounds like a book I would enjoy. Onto the list...which teeters and groans...

>186 SassyLassy: I read All for Nothing a couple of years back. I found it extremely powerful, especially towards the end.

>187 thorold: Always listen to your mother!
I hadn't realized Anthea Bell was no longer in the land of the living, nor that she was a cat breeder: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/16/anthea-bell-asterix-translator-int...

The translation flows really well, starting in fairly simple language, imperceptibly becoming more complex as the novel unfolds. I can only trust it is accurate, but you can read it in German. This is also Kempowski's last book.

>188 labfs39: I think you would enjoy it. Put it close to the top of the list!

>189 rocketjk: It was a powerful book, made all the more so by Peter's point of view. I have reread the last fifty pages or so several times.

Definitely out of chronological reading order, as there are other books between this one and All for Nothing above, but it was being posted on Reading Globally for the current quarter on the Lusophone world:



An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector (Chaya Pinkhasovna Lispector) translated from the Portuguese by Stefan Tobler 2021
first published as Uma Aprendizagm ou O Livro dos Prazeres in 1969
finished reading July 22, 2021

What to make of a book that begins with a comma and ends with a colon? Is it a meditation, an interrupted narrative, a lengthy stream of consciousness perhaps? Lispector uses all these techniques. Her skill is such that she is able to not only use them singly, but frequently all at the same time.

Lóri, the protagonist, has a "condition", one that is at first unclear. It could be physical; it could be psychological. It is actually both, but Lóri has rolled them together. Ulisses, her suitor in this still platonic relationship, is able to separate them out. Regarding her limp, her tells her The condition can't be cured but the fear of the condition is curable.

The psychological condition he regards as curable, but this can only be done by Lóri, from within. Psychic pain pervades her life; to avoid it she has removed herself from emotional life. As she put it to Ulisses, I'm an insurmountable mountain along my own path.

Although Lóri often seems lost, this is actually a battle of control. Ulisses has told her they will not become lovers until she overcomes her self-doubt, her fear of life, and not only becomes acquainted with herself, but knows herself. Lóri has demanded nothing in return, passively accepting these conditions, yet paradoxically she is in control. Ulisses has said he will wait for her. The timing is all hers. This puts Ulisses in a position of passively waiting for Lóri to come to him, while at the same time allowing Lóri to tease Ulisses with each psychological breakthrough.

Lispector produces a real tension here as the reader wonders with Lóri whether she will be able to achieve self-realization. However, the idea that this process was an apprenticeship, with the goal to earn Ulisses, rather than to know herself for herself, was difficult. The novel is told from Lóri's point of view. Lispector charts her discoveries in a series of what could be called progressive ellipses. She makes some progress, regresses a bit, incorporates new ideas, and moves a bit further forward, while the language circles around on itself.

We know very little about Ulisses, other than the fact that he is a philosophy professor. Why is he worth this inner struggle and turmoil? Why does he put up with Lóri bowing out time after time?

A brief note by Lispector before the novel begins may give a clue. She says, This book demanded a greater liberty that I was afraid to give. It is far above me... She has said of it elsewhere I humanized myself. Lispector, whom the Guardian has called "One of the very great writers of the last century", was a mystic. Much of Lóri's quest involves the presence she calls 'the God', an entity she struggled to comprehend. She realized though "Not understanding" was so vast that it surpassed all understanding - understanding was always limited. But not-understanding had no frontiers and led to the infinite, to the God. This made it easier. Later she discovered Because it's in the Impossible that you find reality. Perhaps Lispector's message is that the apprenticeship is life itself; to arrive at complete self knowledge would leave nothing.

________________
From The New York Times Overlooked obituaries series

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/obituaries/clarice-lispector-overlooked.html

I have not read anything by Clarice Lispector, but this sounds interesting

>191 SassyLassy: A very enticing review, Sassy. I think I might find the structure a bit off-putting, as is (as you say), the premise of "earning" a man through self-realization, but the psychology/philosophy aspects are interesting.

ETA: I went to give your review a thumb, but the icon no longer turns green when I click it. How do I know if I've successfully thumbed it?

>192 baswood: I think you would like her. Here is a link Reading Globally 2013 4th quarter, South America, to an excellent review by StevenTX of another of her books - direct post link isn't working, so scroll to post 110:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/158806#unread

>193 labfs39: From what I've read about her, psychology/philosophy is her forte.

I've never notice the thumb icon turning green, as I always look for the thumb number to increase by 1. I'll look for a colour change next time. Always learning here on LT!
Thanks too.

>194 SassyLassy: Hmm, the link goes to your old thread, not to the South American one...

As for thumbs, I investigated and found that it has been brought to Tim's attention as a problem in the June update:

the new "thumb" icon (which I like) no longer differentiates between whether or not I'm included in one of the users having "thumbed" a review. The old thumb turned green when I had selected it, as well as incrementing the tally. Currently, the tally increments / decrements when I click / unclick the thumb, but it is not filled in (green or any other shade). I can only tell if I've already thumbed a review by clicking it and observing which way the tally changes, up or down.

Evidently the old thumb icon still exists in some places, but I'm not sure which have the old thumb and which the new. Hopefully the green thumb will return as it helped me tell at a glance whether I had already thumbed a review.

While this subject is open, is there a quick way to find someone's review from their thread to thumb it, or do you have to go to the book and find it there?

>196 AlisonY: You need to go to the book. (Unless a direct link to the review is posted in the thread of course - I post links to older reviews when citing them but not for new ones).

>195 labfs39: Sorry about that. I tried that link several times when posting, and it wouldn't work, and then it did, but checking it now, the ref number is incorrect. I have put in the link in a more direct fashion, it just worked, hope it continues to!

Interesting about the thumbs.

Cross posted from Reading Globally: the Lusophone World



All the Names by José Saramago translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa 1999
first published as Todes os Nomes
finished reading August 2, 2021

We've all encountered Senhor José, some of us may even know him; a man so inconsequential he has no family name. Names are his life though, for Senhor José toils five and a half days a week at the Central Registry for Births, Marriages, and Deaths, the place where all life's milestones have been recorded painstakingly on file cards by hand since time immemorial. Divorces are recorded now too in this secular age, but the institutional name remains.

Senhor José's leisure time is spent augmenting the histories of those he feels may become famous. To do this, he surreptitiously brings home records from the Central Registry and copies them onto purloined official forms, then augments these files with newspaper and magazine clippings; a harmless enough activity, but not sanctioned.

His home is little more than a stable attached to the great building. This means he can secretly enter and exit at night through a forgotten connecting door. Each morning, however, he must line up on the front steps with all the other workers, who enter by seniority with the Registrar last of all.

One day Senhor José found an ordinary woman's file card accidentally picked up with those of his chosen subjects. He made the daring decision to find out all he could about her. Once launched on this quest, José became more and more daring. He asked for a half hour off one day, his first such request in twenty-five years of working at the Registry. He created a masterful forgery, a letter identifying him and requiring all he questioned to aid him. He stumbled along, always terrified of getting caught, yet going deeper and deeper down his rabbit hole. As he went, this friendless man learned to speak with others, to realize there were areas of chaos in the world. Each night, after writing his findings in a journal, he discussed them with the ceiling above his bed, and pondered the replies.

Anyone who's ever worked in a bureaucracy will recognize the sheer silliness of so much in Senhor José's work world. Every couple of years, The Registry buillt out a new rear wall to accommodate the ever increasing number of file cards for the deceased. Should these be arranged with the most recent dead in front, as these are the cards most likely to be needed; or should they be arranged with the earlier dead in front so that the files don't all need to be moved back with each extension?

Saramago writes with a real fondness for Senhor José, an Everyman of the office. Who else could create such a delightful book around such a character, and successfully liberate him?

Great review of All the Names, Sassy. It's been nearly two decades since I read it, but your comments reminded me of how much I enjoyed it.

>200 kidzdoc: Glad to hear it - maybe worth a reread?

I know the part of the intent of the Lusophone quarter was to read more books from outside Brazil and Portugal, but this was on the TBR and so I picked it up. I'm really glad I did.

>201 SassyLassy: Yes, I think a reread will be in order, but not this year!

I'm glad that you read All the Names as well. I'll read more books set in Portugal in September, especially since I'll be in Lisbon for two weeks in the second half of the month. I plan to read Pessoa: A Biography, a new book by Richard Zenith, a greater than 1000 page work that was published last month, along with Zenith's translation of The Book of Disquiet. I'll bring both books with me, although I may purchase the Kindle version of the biography and leave the print copy here. I'll also likely read The Three Marias: New Portuguese Letters, and Journey to Portugal by José Saramago.

>199 SassyLassy: Ok, that goes right into my read-next pile. Fortunately I have a copy to hand. Your review made me think: this is what Too Loud a Solitude would be, if it had been written by Paul Auster.

>199 SassyLassy: I dare not read that one having worked for most of my life in local government offices

>204 baswood: That's exactly why you need to read it - you are best equipped to enjoy it!

Well I have finally managed to come up with some kind of comments on this book. This book has kept me from posting, as with the exception of >191 SassyLassy: and >199 SassyLassy: above, posted for a current reading quarter, I like to post in reading order. I finally decided if I was ever to move forward, I would just have to get on with it.

As an aside, I would add that there seem to be multiple "last English men" as there are several books with this title.



The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome by Roland Chambers
first published 2009
finished reading April 20, 2021
om the Cheka for Soviet agents in Reval to help fund the Comintern. Her life in England was fairlArthur Ransome (1884 - 1967) is perhaps best known today for his once wildly popular Swallows and Amazons books, detailing the adventures of the four Walker children. Some may know of him as a writer on sailing and fishing, others as a collector of fairy tales. Ransome was an incredibly prolific writer, but like so much else in his life, writing seems to be something he sort of stumbled into.

An indifferent student at Rugby, he didn't attempt the open scholarship exams for Oxford, going instead to Yorkshire College. He dropped out after only two terms, and headed for London. Even in the matter of marriage, he sort of stumbled into it.

By 1908, virtually every woman of Ransome's acquaintance had either laughed or sighed as he protested his devotion. Some were gratifyingly flustered; others offered him tea. No serious offence was taken. But it was inevitable that at some point someone would take him seriously, and when it happened, no one was more astonished than Ransome himself.

By 1913, now a husband and father, Ransome wanted out. He went to Russia on holiday, ostensibly to work on a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson This too was abandoned. He did however learn Russian, and committed to becoming an expert on Russia.

He returned there in 1914 to work on a guidebook. The outbreak of WWI a few months later sent him back to England looking for a position that would allow him to work in Russia. Nothing came of it, and he returned to Petrograd on his own to work on Old Peter's Russian Tales. In September, he started writing reports from Russia for the left leaning Daily News.

Although Russia was an ally of Britain, as the war churned on it didn't mean it was trusted. Revolutions in March and November 1917 did nothing to dispel this lack of trust. These events also heightened Whitehall's interest in Ransome. What exactly was he doing there? His newspaper reports played down revolutionary activity and initially failed to mention Lenin's return to Russia. While John Reed's coverage of the November revolution became an instant classic (Ten Days that Shook the World), Ransome's reports were positively lowkey, although both The Manchester Guardian and The New York Times picked him up as a writer. However, to those in charge back in London, Ransome's behaviour was questionable. By 1918 he was great friends with Tolstoy's lieutenant Karl Radek, and was having an affair with Evgenia Shelepina, Trotsky's secretary.

These were indeed reasons to suspect Ransome's loyalty to England. Here, in what should have been the most interesting part of the book, it starts to fall apart. Chambers was able to present the basic facts. but seemed unable to put them together into a theory or argument that Ransome was a spy for England, or a spy for Russia, or a double agent. Whatever he was, it is highly unlikely he was just a bumbling reporter. Chambers concludes Ransome had ... a facility for compromise and adroit self-transformation that made him useful to both sides. But whether he was a double agent, a peace broker, or merely a ...'useful idiot' is much harder to say.

After discussion of the Anglo Soviet Accord, Chambers rushes to end the book. There is a chapter on Ransome's beloved schooner Racundra and his time in Estonia. The books then races through the rest of Ransome's life in a mere 36 pages, from 1924 until his death in 1967. Ransome continued to write for The Manchester Guardian, this time as a weekly columnist on fishing. He wrote a wide variety of other articles and books, including the twelve books in the Swallows and Amazons category.

Evgenia had moved to England with Ransome, and married him after his divorce. She left Russia with thirty-five diamonds and three strings of pearls from the Cheka for Soviet agents in Reval to help fund the Comintern. After this, her life in England was fairly conventional.

Finally, in his 'Notes on Sources', Chambers reveals

In 2005, a bundle of papers was declassified by MI5 which proved beyond doubt that he had worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service and that he was suspected at the highest level of working for the Bolsheviks.

The book would have been much better served had Chambers announced this much earlier in his narrative instead of floundering around, lurching from one episode to another back and forth in time. Ransome deserves much better.

>206 SassyLassy: What an interesting fellow. I had no idea, knowing only the Swallows and Amazons books. Too bad the book didn't do him justice. I wonder if there is a better biography out there.

>206 SassyLassy: A shame about the Ransome book, sounds like a topic waiting for someone else to have a better go at it. Have you read the official biography from the 1980s by Hugh Brogan? (The life of Arthur Ransome) — I’ve had that on my “must read sometime” list for ages but never got to it.

>207 labfs39: See response to >208 thorold: below. Some of his other writing is still available in reprints.

>208 thorold: I did read that some time ago. My copy came from a library sale at the Mitchell Library, one of the best in my mind and a great excuse to post a picture of it:



image from lightfolio

It is a good biography, and probably works better as biography than the Chambers book. However, since Chambers had had access to more recently released government documents, I was hoping there would be more information on his Russian period, which sadly there was, but the analysis lacked Brogan's insight.

Rupert Hart-Davis was Ransome's literary executor, and in Chambers words "...supervised a final purge of his archives, a condition of his appointment agreed to in 1951" This included material from Russia.

________________

What I would really like to see after reading Chambers is a biography of Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. Her sisters in the Soviet Union survived somehow, which makes me think Evgenia must have managed to do more than a bit for her comrades. Her sister Iroida became deputy director of the Moscow Region Forced Labour Camp. Her entire family survived, including her brother Viktor, who had fought for the Whites. He escaped with only a brief period in Siberia. Evgenia was able to visit her sisters in 1972. Her edited papers are in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds, as are most of Ransome's surviving papers.

>199 SassyLassy: I missed this review somewhere along the way but spotted it on your best of Q3 list. Sounds great - I would like to try another of his novels.

>206 SassyLassy: That’s a shame. I had The Last Englishman on my wishlist, but it sounds disappointing.

Book shopping on my recent holiday produced this book (among others). West Virginia is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, yet it is dogged with such relentless nightmares. This book, unbelievable if it were fiction, documents one.



Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opiod Epidemic by Eric Eyre
first published 2020
finished reading October 28, 2021

The numbers are staggering. Kermit WV, population 382, legitimately received almost 9 million opioid pills in two years during the mid 2000s. Twenty miles away, Williamson, population 2900, received 20.8 million pills over the decade. Then there was Mount Gay, thirty miles east of Kermit, in receipt of 16.6 million pills for 1700 residents.

Drugs in the United States are delivered by distributors, who purchase them from the manufacturers, and then deliver them to hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies, the ordering entities. This makes the distributor both buyer and supplier. As distributors, they were required by the federal DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) to flag and report unusual ordering activity. This was not happening.

Sav-Rite, the only pharmacy in Kermit, processed roughly a prescription a minute, mostly for painkillers. That was more than a prescription a day, every day, for every resident in Kermit. Who was receiving these drugs? A look at the parking lot on any given day showed that many purchasers came from out of state.

Many of the prescriptions were written by Dr Donald Kiser. He had lost his West Virginia license for lying to the medical board after being charged with trading prescriptions for sex. It wasn't the charge that bothered the board; rather it was the fact that he lied about being charged. Dr Kiser moved across the state line to Ohio, and continued writing prescriptions for his patients back in West Virginia. There was even a weekly bus to take them to his clinic and home again.

In October 2005, 45 year old Bull Preece died from an oxycodone overdose. In the week before his death, Kiser had written prescriptions for Preece for 90 Valium, 60 oxycodone, and 30 Zestril, a blood pressure medication. In the six weeks before he died, Preece had also been prescribed 90 hydrocodone and 60 Xanax for anxiety at a clinic just outside Kermit, as well as another 120 hydrocodone and 90 Xanax by another doctor at the same clinic. All prescriptions had been filled by Sav-Rite.

In 2007, Preece's sister, a former addict who along with her police chief then husband had served time in a federal penitentiary for drug offences, launched a wrongful death suit against Dr Kiser and Sav-Rite with her lawyer Jim Cagle. What followed was over a decade of investigations and suits involving the DEA, a state attorney general who was suing drug distributor Cardinal Health, congressional investigations, and armies of lawyers as distributors tried to pay their way out of any responsibility.

Eric Eyre became part pf the investigation in 2013 after a tip about millions of dollars the attorney-general's wife's lobbying firm had received from Cardinal. Eyre was working for an independent newspaper the Charleston Gazette-Mail at the time, and started writing a series of articles exposing the political corruption, and the machinations of the companies, including efforts to shut down and bankrupt his employer. Eyre's work would win him the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism: For courageous reporting, performed in the face of powerful opposition, to expose the flood of opioids flowing into depressed West Virginia counties with the highest overdose death rates in the country.

His work is a strong case for supporting the disappearing independent newspapers that care about and focus on local issues often ignored by the large papers and chains until they explode into headlines with stories like a decrease in American life expectancy due to the number of deaths from overdoses.

_________
edited for spelling error

>212 SassyLassy: Really interesting review (and book). I feel like we don't have this prescription drug addiction issue in the UK to anywhere near the same level as in North America. Is this to do with differences in the mechanics of medical practice governance I wonder? Or perhaps I'm naive about the situation in the UK. Interested either way!

>212 SassyLassy: Fascinating book and great review.

>212 SassyLassy: I did not realize that he published a book on the topic - last I heard was that he was working on it. Nice review!

>212 SassyLassy: Adding my admiration for your review and interest in the book, too. Also, I really take to heart your comment about the importance of local newspapers.

>213 AlisonY: I have to confess that at first I thought "why is she putting Canadian drug use at the same level as the US?" so I went searching. Then I discovered that the death rate in Canada is estimated to be 5-7,000 per year, with that in the US about 50,000 in 2019. That is consistent with the 10x factor that is used when estimating what numbers should be in most US: Canada comparisons based on relative population sizes. Thank you for waking me up!
I will say that the problem is not as geographically widespread in Canada as in the US, being more concentrated in certain areas. Furthermore, it seems in Canada most of the problem arises from illegal imports, not from prescription drugs generated here, which may relate to your query on governance.
This week the government of British Columbia proposed decriminalizing possession of up to 4.5gm of an illegal drug in an effort to encourage users to seek help without fear of penalty: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2021MMHA0017-000706
I don't know what the situation is in Mexico.

>214 labfs39: It was indeed fascinating. I hope he writes more on his home state. Maybe he'll put together a book on coal politics!

>215 AnnieMod: I'm not sure how much the book adds to his columns, but it's good to have it all in one place.

>216 rocketjk: Apparently Eyre's paper was the smallest ever to receive the Pulitzer for investigative reporting. It is so disheartening to see these small papers disappear. I think many of them are stymied by having to amass the funds required to digital in a big way. Eyre cites an example of receiving an important file through an FOI request, and not being able to open it on his paper's system, whereas The Washington Post had no difficulty at all. Hard to get a scoop with those kind of resources!

>217 SassyLassy: Even if it does not add up much to what was in the articles/columns - I had not read all of his reporting and I had not read it ordered properly and connected. I tend to like books written based on extensive reporting published before that (which reminds me that I have a few like that to review) - as opposed to books that are a single article (or a series of 3 or something) extended to book length (these usually suck and you are better off reading the article(s)) :)

>217 SassyLassy: I will say that the problem is not as geographically widespread in Canada as in the US, being more concentrated in certain areas. Furthermore, it seems in Canada most of the problem arises from illegal imports, not from prescription drugs generated here, which may relate to your query on governance.

That sounds about right. I'm trying to remember what kind of Oxy problem we had here in BC. . . it's been a while since that drug was talked about, since it's been delisted and isn't available. I think there was more of a problem of it getting resold on the streets, and doctors and pharmacists not following protocols that prevent someone from getting 100 pills a week or whatever. But that's all in the past. For the last 5 years or so it's been Fentanyl, which is a huge problem in Vancouver. The Fentanyl that is circulating here is lethal, and our loss of life to this is much higher than our COVID death stats.

Haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, so will note that this year's winner of Canada's biggest literary prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, is Omar el Akkad for What Strange Paradise.

https://www.cbc.ca/books/omar-el-akkad-wins-100k-scotiabank-giller-prize-for-nov...

>220 SassyLassy: Thanks for mentioning What Strange Paradise, Sassy. I had heard about it earlier this year, but it dropped off my radar. I've added it to my Amazon wish list, so hopefully someone will buy it for me for Christmas.

I have caught up on your reading once again. Such interesting choices. It's very nice that we (here on LT) aren't all reading the same books.

With the exception of a couple of books for Reading Globally and Mud Lick above, I seem to be back in April with my reading posting. In a valiant but desperate effort to catch up on my year, I am moving to a new thread.