Books – Page 13 – My Own RE:public

Reading in the “Time of C_____”


Not wanting to say it out loud,
and shout it I surely will not.
Neither in a state of denial,
nor pretending to be.
And denying not the fear -
that refuses to be felt.
As an aside instead,
here then said:


To be imagined now:
this grimace not feigned.
Forced disaffection;
barely - or not even - 
restrained.

Days - each one,
and to follow fast,
to Weeks turn, to more thereof-
to this date at the very least.

Distress so rarely exposed
is creeping now near,
nearer to Fate shared.
 
Not the cholera, no love here -
no, not in this time -
not with this pest.

(This plague upon all our houses.)

Hovering, menacing -
dictating our existence now
to that which may not come.

-Anne Dromache, April 25, 2020.

Some solace: words written and lost along the way or never found, searched for or come upon by chance, may find their time again and the readers they were waiting for.

The Great Plague of London in 1665. The last major outbreak of the bubonic plague in England.

Everyone it seems has a recommended reading relevant to this time. For me, one come’s immediately to mind: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera – I loved this book years ago, but will not read it again now. My hefty flirtation with Latin American magic realism was a long time ago, and has life associations that I’d rather not disturb but confine to memory … I’ve been to Aracataca, I’ve not lived a hundred years…A fatalist would find confirmation and the inevitability of it all in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Many have mentioned Daniel Defoe’s The Journal of the Plague Year, which is freely available in many corners of the Internet – NO copyright! Hardly surprising given it was written in 1722 about the 1665 Great Plague of London! And then there is Samual Pepys’ diary version of the same plague – here is a collection of relevant extracts. Pepys is fun to dive into I must admit – in a very bawdy sort of Renaissance way, though just how much fun I’m up to in this regard at the moment I’m not at all sure. A book that I know of and for other reasons has been on my reading list for quite some time (and that I haven’t heard mentioned of late) is Year of Wonders (2001) by Geraldine Brooks, again set during 1665-66.

Thirty years of heresy, persecution, hunger, pestilence ….

Oh, and war!…Just a few of the words that come to mind of a much darker time four hundred odd years ago (1618-1648) that puts this year of ours into perspective. One could add: torture, execution, butchery, disease…You surely get the picture.

The prankster Till Eulenspiegel, depicted with *owl* and *mirror* (title page of the Strasbourg edition of 1515)

Well I do…having finished reading Daniel Kehlmann’s latest work, Tyll, (mentioned here upon its recent publication in English, though I read in German so I can not speak on the translation) which powerfully describes the devastation visited upon a continent and its peoples – brutalised as they were through all the above said … I can’t think that it would have occurred to Kehlmann just how prescient his novel would be. Not in that the grotesqueness of a pre-modern era (and the literary form chosen) is so relatable, rather that the grotesqueness told as it is with a picaresque slant and the mocking gaze of Tyll Eulenspiegel reflected through a contemporary lens portends of the potential consequences of social disharmony.

Mothering Sunday – 22nd March 2020

While half listening to BBC Radio 4 today, and being informed of a virtual service to be led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, I am reminded that today is what is known in the UK as Mothering Sunday. I have taken the time to track down Justin Welby’s sermon – it is not long and the circumstances we face from this wretched pandemic do not have to be explicitly stated to impart a warmth and nearness that contrasts with the coldness and distance that threatens to envelope us. Not surprisingly, Welby advocates seeking consolation in the Church, as a conduit to imparting the same to others, but he also suggests that loving and giving to family and friends, and commitment to our place as a member of a community will in itself offer hope and consolation.

My copy of Mothering Sunday,Graham Swift, Scribner UK, 2016

And this day reminds me of the wonderful 2016 work from Graham Swift entitled Mothering Sunday, which I liked so very much – each of the 149 pages! Best described therefore as a novella, an oft maligned and not easy to define genre but the perfect form I think for this gem from Swift.

Not long ago I was contemplating the single day narrative, but I did forget this one, and essentially it is just that, and that day is Mothering Day, 30th March, 1924; diverging only to explain the situation and the perspective from which the narrator speaks. The mood of that day is so beautifully described that it is almost tangible. And startling is Swift’s first person narration – unafraid as he is to choose a woman’s voice; the language, the measure he brings is, to my mind, truly brilliant. To me his work is put together as a Matryoshka doll – a literary form within a literary form, and is illustrative of how a historical moment can define the trajectory of a life, can define literature, can define life, lives …

Subtitled “A romance”; that it is, but more, for it also is a snapshot of British society at that time, when, exacerbated by the trauma and losses of war, the stringent class structures were being stretched and opportunities being created, such that a young woman with brains and ambition had alternatives, places to go beyond servitude.

First reflections

“The Mirror & The Light” by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & The Light is out today! Welcomed by Wolf Hall fans everywhere, and in London with long queues – though why that should be necessary in this day and age I really wouldn’t know – and with various degrees of mostly ecstatic reviews. Ms. Mantel it seems has survived the hype – alone that, a feat! At almost 900 pages I will need some time, but time that will absolutely be found, and sooner I hope rather than later. I had pondered some time last year returning to the first two of the trilogy in preparation, unfortunately…! Perhaps a browse back is in order, and the hope that knowing we are rid (to put it crudely!) of More and Boleyn and approximately how we got there is enough! Maybe a little more than a browse.

Here is a NY Times review, and also an informative magazine piece on Mantel. Should you have access, The Time Literary Supplement review by Edmund Gordon will surely persuade the unpersuaded.

*Portrait of Thomas Cromwell*,
Hans Holbein the Younger (1532–1533), The Frick Collection.

By the way, Holbein, whose portrait of Th. Cromwell is perhaps the most recognisable reproduction, and whose rising star in the Tudor court was courtesy of the patronage of Cromwell, has again a recurring presence in this final novel of the series and with psychological dimensions beyond the historical or purely narrative; another NY Times review (this time from Thomas Mallon) makes the interesting observation:

“…For all its political and literary plotting, “The Mirror and the Light” is most memorable for its portraiture, with Cromwell acting as our Holbein, challenging us to weigh his interpretive assessments against our enormous accumulated knowledge of his concerns, biases and kinks.”
The New York Times, Book Review, Feb. 25 2020

So much more than an economical life

“Economics” as a discipline may ring dry and so,well… economical; that which remains once the human is removed from capital – a once succulent fruit; peeled, shredded, cut to the core. And the practitioners? The stars of any day seem often to be forgot, the theoretical paths taken rarely crossing and the enmity great. I actually do read some here and there, that is, somewhat economically – for instance, Krugman (because he is cranky and often says what I like) and other pieces of NY Times reporting and opinion, and Duflo & Banerjee. The Economist, I rather loathe – but it sometimes comes my way and I attempt to take what I can from stuff written by god knows who (they don’t tell you!), and in a language decipherable to but a few. Fairly regularly I browse the “Wirtschaft” pages of German media; the Suddeutsche Zeitung and sometimes the Frankfurter Allgemeine which is big on business (thankfully, not only) in a big way.

This is all to say, whilst I am not an absolute duffer, economics, and especially the business side, is not my thing. But John Maynard Keynes I do know, and I know him by way of the company he kept, and a piece by Jonathan Kirshner in The New York Times last December reminding of the publication one hundred years before of Keynes’ seminal work written in the aftermath of the Versailles peace conference, brings this back to mind.

…The book, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” turned out to be a phenomenon. It swiftly went through six printings, was translated into a dozen languages, sold over 100,000 copies, and brought world fame to its 36-year-old author, John Maynard Keynes…
…“Economic Consequences” is majestically written — Keynes was close to the iconoclastic Bloomsbury cohort of artists and writers, and his incisive, candid portrayals of the peacemakers (Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson) reflected the no-holds-barred influence of Lytton Strachey’s recently celebrated “Eminent Victorians.” The book was also wildly controversial for its assessments of the capacity of Germany to pay the reparations demanded by the victorious Allied powers…
Opinion, The New York Times, Dec. 7 2019

Bertrand Russell; John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes; Lytton Strachey
by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, 1915 NPG Ax140438
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Without having (yet) read the book, it seems clear Keynes prophesied that which would later be agreed by many in hindsight; the aggravating role the Treaty would play in creating an economic and social environment that would lead, and alone in the interests of satisfying extreme French reparation demands, to very bad places. And they did; a brief period of recovery was followed by political uncertainties, the market crash, a worldwide depression with all the accompanying societal and personal catastrophes, and which would ultimately facilitate the rise of tyranny and fascism in Germany and elsewhere.

I have just been writing a little about Lytton Strachey in my meanderings through Virginia Woolf’s daily life, as recorded by herself, and as it happens I am in the midst of a time (July, 1919) in which Eminent Victorians (various copies available at the Internet Archive) is being lauded as a resounding success, so Kirshner’s observation in respect to this book attracts my attention. Whether this attraction will run to reading either or both only time will tell, but in terms of the preoccupations of this extraordinary group of friends, where the lines are often blurred between (auto)biography and literature, and memoir-writing practiced with fervor as the true repository of truth, that, beyond the situational, theoretical and factual world of politics and finance, Keynes application of colorful brush strokes to his portraits of the movers and shakers of the time would hardly surprise. More determinedly then I now say: yes, two works, both a century old, that should be read.

The Mirror & the Light – a taster …

The Mirror & the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy) by Hilary Mantel, Fourth Estate, 2020.

…to titillate or torment or both, The Guardian today has published an extract from the opening chapter of Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Thomas Cromwell Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, that is to be published in the UK on March 5 – beginning just as Bring up the Bodies ended with the spectacular execution of Anne Boleyn; in all its grotesqueness and nobility.

A reading by Ben Miles from the audio book is there to! And here is a video clip from the opening scene of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2014 production of Wolf Hall, with Miles as Cromwell.

Act 1 Scene 1 | Wolf Hall | Royal Shakespeare Company

Jack’s story

“Jack” by Marilynne Robinson, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Expected, but still thrilled by the formal announcement of Marilynne Robinson’s new Gilead novel – the fourth. Finally (and is this the final word?), we are going to hear Jack’s side of things – at least the St. Louis story, for I recall Robinson stating last year that the new instalment would go to Gilead; though in some respects the place “Gilead” – real and mythical – and its effect on the characters, is always present.

stories that move & shape

Writing about Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire the other day, I remembered that it was on a list from the BBC of so-called “Novels That Shaped Our World” that turned up at the end of last year. Returning to look at this list again now, it seems to me that it is an interesting resource. They are all English language novels, that in itself minimising the selection, and the choices (from a group of literary sorts – writers, critics, etc.) are as idiosyncratic as one would expect, but certainly well worth perusing just the same. The books are organised thematically – for instance, identity, society, romance – and there are also lots of internal links to related media.

On reflection, I must also say that it was often not the absolute classic that meant so much to me at a particular time in life and that I remember still, so that perhaps explains some choices that I see as somewhat abstruse. There are a also a few selections that surprise and delight me.

My Picador paperback copy of “Cloudstreet”

For instance, Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, chosen by someone (whom?) and included in the “family” section. Should I be asked to name my favourite books, or those having had a profound effect on me, I would not have immediately thought of it. But now prompted, it occurs to me that long ago it having been sent to me from the opposite end of the world somewhere, reading Cloudstreet was a little like carrying all the grandeur and smallness, all the cruelties and generosities of a whole continent around in my pocket. I loved it. It positively reeked of Australia, and maybe it didn’t “shape my world” exactly but it certainly gave me good company when that was sorely needed. And what more can one ask from a good read?