A little video clip.

I was looking at videos of Adam Phillips, a child psychologist and writer and was most intrigued by the title of the book 'Going Sane'. 

There was a documentary made of the writing of his book, where he is interviewed by Melvyn Bragg, who I find is pretty good at wheedling out good answers. 

Here is a clip that explains his view of what the new writer ought to be in the 21st century.

I found it interesting. (Though scratchy audio with poor sibilants).

'The true aim of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.'

Samuel Johnson

Austen's Juvenilia at the Dr Johnson reading circle.

This post starts with a confession. Previous to reading Jane Austen’s Juvenilia for the Samuel Johnson Book Club, I’d never finished an Austen novel. I’d dallied with Pride and Prejudice but starting it on the night-bus home from a drum-n-bass club underneath Leicester Square (I received some strange looks from the bouncers after they found it in my pocket).

I also have to confess that the copy I bought (containing both Austen and Bronte Juvenilia) wasn’t complete, more embarrassing because the editor of the Cambridge edition of the Juvenilia was present…I was very intrigued about diving into the unknown. He told us how the books were discovered, that various manuscripts were flogged off by impoverished members of the Austen family, finding there way into the British and Bodleian Libraries, who guard their precious works very closely.

After reading the Juvenilia (or what I had of it) I was delighted to discover how very funny I found it. As the writing grew more sophisticated, the humour was less sharp (and far less silly) but it remained throughout and I was far keener to pick up an Austen book again. These earlier works are stripped down, they are short novel parodies that especially burlesque the sentimental novel. There was something about the works that reminded me very much of ‘Modern Novel Writing,’ a work by William Beckford (of Vathek fame) who created a sentimental novel by chopping up other sentimental novels and recontextualising them. We had great fun sharing our favourite absurdities; those crying themselves to death, those running mad and those falling in love with every person they meet.

One of the highlights of the evening was a group reading of the play ‘Mystery’. (Full script here https://www.janeausten.co.uk/the-mystery-an-unfinished-play). In this short piece, the audience repeatedly finds itself just at the end of something interesting. As short as the play is, it’s a wonderfully sustained joke and there were many laughs in its short time. 

We also discussed the issues of editorship, many of us having suffered from overzealous editors who feel the need to explain even the smallest and most obvious details. We wondered about the impact of the internet on those styles of editorship, where simple details can be looked up.

The evening went by very quickly, and we again bundled off to the pizza place to surprise the waiters with our fruity choices of pizza.

Next week, we flex the biceps and carry the weight of Boswell as we discuss his meeting with Johnson.

Roy Porter on the Enlightenment

Just a teeny note here.

I was mooching around on the BBC's brilliant (and very wide ranging) series of discussion shows, 'In Our Time'. In one of them, Roy Porter is discussing his book. It is free to listen on the BBC iplayer and the link is here.

Review: The Song of Roland

This is romantic, epic and very, very silly.

Although the Eighteenth Century may be a big passion of mine, I have to admit myself interested in more things then I have time or energy to pursue. One of these interests that has been bubbling up the ranks has been in chivalry and chivalric romance.

Partly this is due to my attempt to read Don Quixote as a young teen. I never finished the book but always had a desire to - in preparation for this, I have been working myself up, reading the words that inspired that story. As part of this I read a very entertaining abridgement/translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso that made the top spot in last year’s favourite books list.I thrilled at that book’s high-jinks, daft capers and cartoon/superhero heroics and wondered about the source for such things.

Ariosto took inspiration from two great chivalric traditions, the ‘Matter of Britain’ and ‘The Matter of France’. The first is better known today, it charts the actions of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and often feature wizards and fairies. The other is the doings of Charlemagne and his knights, the key source of these stories being The Song of Roland. 

Written some time in the tenth century it tells of Roland (later Italicised as Orlando), Charlemagne’s nephew and best knight who is put at the end of the column and betrayed by Ganelon to King Marsile and the Moors of Spain. Roland, 12 great knights and the wise Olivier are attacked by hoards of Paynim (or foreigners). Instead of calling for help on the Oliphant, a war horn, Roland fights on, killing hundreds. Only at the last minute does he call for help, blowing on the horn till his lips and temples bleed and summoning Charlemagne who arrives too late to save Olivier, the bishop Turpin or Roland. Charlemagne then wages war against the Moors and has Ganelon’s body torn in four by horses - there is even a sequel teased by Gabriel telling Charlemagne to get going and fight somewhere else.

First thing was, I was surprised at how short it was. My copy of the unabridged Song is 121 pages as opposed to the abridged Furioso’s 500. The other surprise was the lack of supernatural elements, that very lack making the over-the-top actions of the ordinary people all the more strange and cartoonish. It makes the reasons behind character’s actions seem completely daft… Ganelon betrays a huge chunk of his army in order to get back at Roland for a perceived plot. Roland chooses not send for re-enforcement (and destroy the Muslim army) because it would insult his heightened dignity. Roland’s wife just ups and dies as soon as she hears Roland is dead. All sort of actions make no sense.

The goofiness of the text is not helped by Leonard Bacon’s translation. There is an old fashioned, rather camp quality to the writing. A knight’s armour is described as ‘becoming him well’, and the Muslims shout the frightening ‘What ho, ye Frankish villains, ye shall joust with us this day’ and another time explaining that they fight ‘right fiercely’. A number of times people are also ‘beat nobly in the face’. 

My absolute favourite, which made me laugh out loud is when Roland’s friend has been killed and he described it as something which, ‘sore irketh me’. Another time a knight rides to a friend with four lances stuck in him, and the other knight says, ‘I deem thou hast been in a fight’.

There are many people who are killed by having a sword driven through their helmet, hat, ‘mighty hair’, body, saddle and horse….. there must be about twelve people being spit in half in this way. Some eyeballs are burst out, a few brains ooze from helmets and many people are struck through with banners. 

Another strange detail is the extremely ornate description of swords and armour. There are named swords, ‘Joyeuse’ - belonging to Charlemagne and ‘Durendal’ - Rolands’ sword which contains half a cathedral’s worth of reliquaries in it. Another odd detail is how many helmets are gem encrusted, or made of gold. Gold swords would seem daft to me, but almost everyone in this has one.

Finally in the funny stuff is Charlemagne. He does quite little and is always described in the same way, namely - he has a white beard. Almost every action of Charlemagne is playing with his beard in some way. It is often described as a flower for some reason. I can’t work out how a flower resembles a beard at all. Very close to the beginning of the text we get this quote,

‘Aye plucked he with his fingers at the beard on lip and chin; 

And the tears came into his eyes, he could not keep them in.’

I understand that he's supposed to be playing with his beard in sadness, but to me it just sounds like he is plucking his beard and nose hairs, and it’s making him teary - just as you would be if you picked your nose hair.

I have to say that mostly this book made me laugh. There is no wonder that this leads to Don Quixote, it’s a farce to begin with, but there were some lovely lines in the poem, and I’ll leave you with those.

‘High were the peaks about them, and dark the vale and black,

Sombre the rocks about them, and terrible the track.’

‘The sun broke on them splendid, and fair the morning came;

There was no bit of armour but was blazing in a flame;

And to make it more glorious a thousand horns blew clear,’

‘Mighty was the battle and furious the fight.

Fiercely the Franks stuck into it in their anger and their might.’

‘Darkling are all the summits and very great and high,

And deep are all the valleys and the streams run swift thereby.’

Roy Porter's Enlightenment, at the Samuel Johnson Reading Circle

On Tuesday the 19th of January the intrepid souls of the Dr Johnson’s House Reading Circle sat down to talk about The Enlightenment. Luckily they were aided in this mammoth task by Roy Porter’s mammoth book Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. 

The book is an expansive look through the long eighteenth century, focussing on the scientists, writers, talkers and doers of the period to make an argument that there was an English Enlightenment, even if it didn’t look much like the version spread by continental philosophes.

With such a large topic, and each of the 22 chapters able to generate a few hours of discussion in itself, the conversation moved quickly from one place to another and rapidly switched back from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. (I apologise for the ridiculous). One of the key factors of the book is that it is lazy to say The Enlightenment, as there were many different projects all with broadly Enlightenment ideals, creating many kinds of Enlightenment. Whether this was from the rationalisation of Anglican Christianity, the hundreds of different protestant groups or the full atheism of Hume - all held a certain optimism that life, society and human nature may all be understood, and improved.

The book explored the life and thinking of many English people, focussing particularly on the influence of Locke, Bacon and Newton as opening up new vistas of thought; from the improvability of human-kind and society, techniques for exploring the material world and the simple laws of motion - then it explored lives of people like Thomas Day.

Thomas Day was a bit of an all-rounder; hanging out with Erasmus Darwin and the rest of the Lunar Society, writing a bestselling novel, campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade and … training up a wife. Day, unable to find a perfect woman, decided to create one. To do this, he adopted two young girls from orphanages, one for a wife and one as a spare, and tried to train them into the perfect woman. He tried to encourage them to be stoic by dropping hot wax on them and firing blanks at their petticoats. Unsurprisingly, the experiment didn’t work and neither became Mrs Day, lucky for them.

There was an interesting discussion about whether Day was manipulating the women, or whether they were playing him. The contract they signed allowed the women a comfortable life if the experiment didn’t work out and could it have been possible that both were holding out not to have to be his dearly beloved? 

Day’s attempts at experimentation ended in disaster when he decided to test out a theory that horses didn’t need to be broken to be ridden, he was kicked and died soon after.

In Porter’s book, Day’s story is almost played out for laughs and many sitting round the room wondered whether the book, in trying to argue his case, was rather too optimistic about the whole Enlightenment. We thought he could have included more about how individuals took on enlightenment ideas for themselves. Samuel Johnson being a very good example, a man whose Christian Humanist tendencies struggled with fully accepting the Enlightenment thoughts but whose rational nature couldn’t let him abandon them.

Afterward we all went for some pizza and discussions continued. Is the long eighteenth century a useful time period? When did people start using it? (We reckoned the 1920s) And how many of us had jaunted up to the Isle of Wight at some point? 

The waitress told me, with some element of surprise, that the Venezia was the most favoured pizza on our table. Her tone suggested that it was not a particularly popular pizza in general, what is it about Johnson-ites that are attracted to sultanas on pizza? - Now that is the big question.

Under the Glass... Five: Writerly Diligence

I’ll admit, I’ve fallen off the wagon. 

The wagon in question being writing. I’ve barely written a sausage in three months. (Indeed, the log on my computer tells me that it has been 101 days since I last had a ‘proper’ go at my Death of a Dreamonger revision.) 

Samuel Johnson, on his tour through Scotland gave some of his typically useful and kind advice.

"A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it."

Not sure why I haven’t been quite so dogged of late; it’s not been through lack of ideas, nor has it been any kind of crippling self-confidence thing - I’ve just been…lazy.

I may blame it on shorter days, or the fact I am trying to have earlier nights; or that after I have worked, cooked, cleaned and read a few chapters, I’m just not in the mood.

This causes me a bit of a problem - because I’m not sure what else I am meant to do with my life. I work, but I only do that to fund my writing life. I read, but that’s not producing anything. I go to museums and theatres, I drink with friends and eat with family - but without writing I feel I am doing nothing. I start to wonder if I am just a burden on our fragile natural resources and London’s limited cheap(er) living space.

Samuel Johnson himself went through great swathes of his life without writing anything, sometimes for years at a time, and he produced a body of work that could be described as ‘not too shabby’.

And, typically for him, Samuel Johnson also offers some genuine words of sympathy for the lazy writer.

“Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.”

I sometimes wonder what Johnson would make of our world now. I have the suspicion that he wouldn’t have made so much of himself, he was almost chronically prone to distraction in the life he led; what would he do in a world where youtube offers millions of easily digestible nuggets of information, there’s just one more personality quiz to decide ‘what kind of house-elf are you?’ and there are another 50 hilarious lists of auto-correct fails.

My own diligence may be very, very slow, but I do also persevere. Maybe I should make a resolution and drag myself back to it…after the next youtube video of course.

Books of 2015

I enjoyed compiling my best 15 reads of last year, so I thought I would do it again. Like last year’s list, this is a compilation of my favourite books I have read, rather than books that have come out.

Reading this back to myself, I seem rather down on many of these books but I promise each one of the books on this list gave me a great deal of pleasure. So, here we are...

In at number 15…

The London Spy - Ned Ward

It started off brilliantly, Ned Ward can whip a character sketch and tell a dirty joke with great vivacity and pleasure. His delight in jotting down every disgusting thing Londoners in 1700 did and said to each other in various low-down, dirty dives was initially fascinating. It’s just that 300-odd pages of people throwing ‘sir reverence’ at each other and putting things up each other’s bottoms did get a little dull. 

Full review coming shortly-ish.

Number 14

The Sound of Coaches - Leon Garfield

Set in the world of coachman and coaches, this novel shed light on an area of eighteenth century life that I had never read anything about. Halfway through this became the more usual Garfield trope of the travelling performer, this was saved from being boring due to his very interesting reflections on the nature of performance and identity - especially as it pertained to the protagonist’s inner turmoil between the sturdy coachman part of his life and the flibbertigibbet actor side.

This conflict was resolved in a surprisingly low key and mature way, which endeared the book to me more. While it is good to have mad axe-murderers running rampage around London, sometimes it is also good to end up with compromise and growing up.

At number 13…

The Book of Werewolves - Sabine Baring Gould.

I did pick up this book with the hope that it was going to start with the assumption that werewolves were real and that werewolf stories were indeed history but it was a more layered work than all that.

Baring-Gould’s position is that werewolf (and other shape-changing animal) stories point to a certain mental illness, or even demonic possession, in common. The book was a mish-mash, taking in legends from all around Northern Europe, comparing and contrasting them. The book finishes off with a tour-de-force description of Gilles de Retz, a 15th century French nobleman who did horrible things to small children.

One of the most interesting elements of the book was a reflection on how much the werewolf myth has changed in the hundred-odd years since its publication. There is no mention of silver bullets, no war with vampires and no full moon. Werewolf transformations are the result of potions, curses, magic animal pelts and other witch-like magics. The older werewolf stories in this book are more vicious and more earthy. Most often the werewolf chooses to be that way in order to feel the thrill, the bloodiness of the wolf state is just a reflection on the bloodiness of humanity in its own pure form.

This was the kind of book I like, it told me slightly more than I wanted to know about a topic I hadn’t much considered. 

In at number 12…

Grub St Stripped Bare - Phillip Pinkus.

I bought this the same time as Pat Rogers book ‘Grub Street’. I read that a few years ago and now finally got around to this. The two could hardly be more different.

Rogers’ book is a painstakingly scholarly description of how a real street was used as a term of denigration for hack-writers, and the social and critical ways this metaphor was used to despair of the direction literature was taking. Phillip Pinkus’ book is more a miscellany of vibrant Grub street writings put into broad context by some pretty perfunctory text in-between.

Though I respect the Rogers’ text more, and learnt more from it, the Pinkus book was far more enjoyable. His selection of texts focus on the vicious, bitchy and endearing aspects of the Grub Street Persona. There was a lot of life and the texts themselves and the sketchy biographies that surround them and I had a good ol’ time.

Definitely less incisive or authoritative than Pat Roger’s book but more entertaining and probably more in line with the rough and tumble spirit of Grub Street.

Number 11…

Anatomy of Melancholy (Third Partition) - Robert Burton

I finally did it! Got to the end of this beast. 

The third partition was the most entertaining of the three. 

Burton is very funny talking about love, he is obviously a man of affections and humour and it shines through very well. Like Johnson, I prefer it when he writes in his own voice because you get a true sense that Burton would have been a great person to spend a bit of time with.

One thing that struck me was his tolerance of women. In the love melancholy section, he made use of a great many misogynistic texts, damning woman in every conceivable way. He merely laughs at the pettiness of those writers, points out that most of them changed their mind eventually and says that everything said about women could just as easily be applied to men. The conclusion to the love melancholy section was that while marriage could cause unhappiness, if the match was sensible, not too guided by money or looks, then it was the best route for happiness there was.

I particularly liked his ‘cure’ for a man wracked by sexual jealousy, marry a strumpet and at least he’d know he was being cheated on.

The religious melancholy bit was very interesting, a lot of the comments he makes that were directed to the extremes of the christian factions in the run up to the civil war could just as easily be applied to the extremists that abound now. On a historical note, it was interesting to see how knowledgeable he was about Islam, more than Donald Trump certainly.

The very last bit on despair dragged though - too Bible heavy for me and even more repetitive than usual. I could read about melancholy for page after page but despair, which is the particularly biting sense of melancholy that leads to suicide, is not an easy subject to read much on.

At number 10…

The Recollections of Rifleman Harris - Benjamin Harris (sort of).

This was a vivid, exciting and authentic account of one rifleman’s peninsular campaign as dictated to a local writer. 

We get the personal details, the weight of the backpack, the petty worries of the solders and most strangely, the causal and blasé attitude to the carnage. I imagine part of this tone was the time that had elapsed since the war and its telling and Benjamin Harris’s wish to look brave and cool in the face of danger but part of it did also seem to be a general acceptance of the blood and guts of fighting in an era that had powerful firearms but very little personal defence. 

His account of the retreat after Vigo and the Walcheran sickness was very moving and really painted the picture of a desperate march. It also revealed a little about the soldiers, that they were happiest fighting. 

The description is plain and clear and it is very easy to put yourself in his position and to ask that most pointless but interesting question. ‘what would I do?’

In at number 9…

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert C O’Brien.

You may have seen the film, I hadn’t but did straight after - it’s a good adaption. This book is probably the American equivalent of Watership Down. Decidedly more domestic, Mrs Frisby is a widower who would go to any lengths to save her children, especially her sickly youngest.

It’s a moving story of the strength she finds in herself and there is also an interesting mystery in there about the titular rats of NIMH and their relation to her husband. I recommend this as a very involving and emotional journey played a little more subtly than the film.

(Just after this I read ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’, that would be the top of my ‘worst of’ list if I had one).

At number 8…

Updike Willow - Christopher Soul.

I almost wasn’t going to put this book on the list as it was written by a friend of mine but I did anyway. It’s about the rocky and peculiar life of Updike Willow in the first 20-odd years of life.

I was utterly gripped for the first half of the book, there was so much in it I could connect with. I recognised characters from life, I knew many of the locations and some of the events had a deep resonance within me. 

It also revealed the difference between myself and the author - in this book, every drunken episode is followed by a hangover, there is a punishingly grittiness to the book that makes the moments of sweetness shine all the better.

In at number 7…

Unspeakable Curll - Ralph Strauss.

Wonderfully written, it presents Curll as a pretty loveable rogue with a definite sense of principles - even if pretty twisted ones. The tone is fantastic, full of brash love for its brash hero. I have reviewed it in full so read more there, or find a copy of the book.

Number 6…

Marginalia: Readers writing in Books - HJ Jackson.

Fascinating book about writing notes in books. It included history, the psychology and purposes of writing and gave examples of cases.

One of the things that most thrilled me were the number of marginalia from the notes of people I am interested in, writing in the books of other people I am interested in. It really opened my eyes to why people mark in books, those who use it as dialogue, as argument or even as a way to chat someone else up.

 It made me think of why I mark books when I do and what I’m trying to say. Any book that opens a new thing to think about suits me.

At Number 5…

Cloudstreet - Tim Winton.

I was challenged to read this as it is relatively modern. It’s an Australian, broadly magical realist tale of the life of two families who share a large haunted house in Perth.

At first I was irritated by the style. There was a little too much of the modern writer’s malady - trying to sound clever. The writer tried a little too hard at times, the obsfucation in the writing was sometimes off-putting. He also had a way of conjoining words that seemed irritatingly mannered. Like pointing out a ‘skyblue boat’ or someones ‘hammy crotchstink’.

Though as I read it, I began to be taken out of the text less and less, I started rooting for the characters, longing them to be happy and to find a place. Much like ‘A Hundered Years of Solitude’, the book used the magical elements (a ghost, an aboriginal man, the air of luck) to illustrate the character’s inner lives.

It’s a book about belonging to something. It frequently makes you feel very gloomy or smile out loud. Ultimately it makes you long for a Cloudstreet of your own. The moments were always well chosen, the main characters winning and the texture and emotion of the book kept you flowing.

Number 4…

Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery.

Written in a brilliantly Fielding-esque style but darker, more sinister and generally sourer. Too sour sometimes. 

I liked Becky and Amelia at first but as the book carried on and their positions in it were set, they became less interesting and my focus pulled over to the secondary characters. I grew to like. the Crawley lot especially, particularly the cantankerous old woman who held the purse strings. It was noticeable that by her death, she had withered away and become pathetic, which was sort of the case with all the characters in the book. It really does make you feel the time that is passing and the changes to everyone in that time in a way books very rarely do.

I would have put it even higher were it not for the fact that the last 50 pages seemed completely extraneous.

At number 3…

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.

Strange and full of passions, this book really hooked me. I was lost in the characters and the deep dark and moody atmosphere of the piece, it had me galloping through it.

Although, every now and then a little voice in my head would complain that no characters in the book acted like real life people. Most of the time I was too engrossed in the driving emotion of it all for this to really bother me but if kept niggling.

I came to the conclusion that had I read this book when I was about 15, I would have utterly adored it and would regard Wuthering Heights as one of my favourite books ever. That was the problem with it - the characters didn’t think, act or feel like ‘real’ people but like teenagers. 

I would heartily recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read it yet, it’s deep and involving read.

In at number 2…

Black Jack - Leon Garfield.

I read so much Garfield this year that it was statistically likely he would turn up more than once, but had this been the only Garfield book I read, it would be up here. This book marries Garfield’s goofy set-pieces, vivd description and skilful wordplay with his best characters and most intriguing plot.

I’ve written more about it in my Leon Garfield reviews, so no need to blether now and get onto - 

Number 1….

Orlando Furioso - Ludovico Ariosto, translated and abridged by David Slavitt.

This translation really asks questions about the nature of the art. How much of this book is Slavitt’s and how much Ariosto’s?

Slavic takes a Princess Bride approach, chopping out whole cantos to make a ‘good bits’ version. The comparison to Princess Bride is furthered by his fondness for bad puns, silly rhymes and some anachronistic humour.

In some ways it doesn’t matter who’s book it is, as long as I enjoyed it. Which I did enormously. It is such an epic, daft story with sea monsters and hermits and fair maidens and knights who care more for the rules of chivalry then their lives.

Each knight is described as unbeatable, each horse is the fastest, each weapon or piece of armour is enchanted and each maiden is the most beautiful than all the rest. 

We have four main hero knights. On the Christian side is Orlando and Rinaldo and on the Muslim side is Rodomonte and Ruggerio. 

Then there are the lesser knights, Astolfo, Gryphon, Sacripant, Marisa and Bradamante - the last two being women.

Rugger was my favourite, and he was probably the main character. This was because out of all the hero knights, he was the least likely to succeed. His girlfriend had to save him from at least three enchanted castles; he lost battles with dog-faced men, giants and a sea monster - but he came through at the end and killed Rodomonte.

Rodomonte was a prick. He killed most of Paris single handed and then did some weird thing with the bridge. Rinaldo was a tad boring and Orlando netted a sea monster and then went mad, stripping naked, punching donkeys and tearing people in two.

When the book is full of action or silliness, Slavitt delivers. He loves the coincidences, the improbable action and the ‘boys toys’ element of the knightly adventure.

The translation really does get questionable when he translated Ariosto’s views on chivalry, or Christianity, or the virtue of pure womanhood. Those medieval sentiments do not work with his modern tone.

If the aim of the book was to entertain and introduce me to the world of Orlando Furioso, then the translation did very well. But if it was supposed to be an authentic translation (rather then retelling) then I am very sceptical. 

The shish-kabab jokes were funny, but ultimately unsettle the authority of the piece.