Books – Page 6 – My Own RE:public

House and Garden

Reading (and looking at: some terrific photos!) in this delightful NYT magazine piece about Olivia Laing’s country home in Suffolk, I find myself reminded of many things. Firstly, it prompted a childhood reminiscence of what a wonderful gardener my father was and how much I loved helping him, and how a long ago birthday gift of a simple plastic yellow watering-can is still before my inner eye, and how life then got complicated and time did its own thing with little regard for me, and it came to be that I’ve never had the opportunity to have a garden that I could call my own. And that makes me sad. And, and, and … Secondly, the Derek Jarman journal, Modern Nature, that Laing refers to has been asking to be read by me for a long time – in the UK at least it has a sort of legendary status. And, thirdly (but not really lastly), Laing’s own 2011 book – and her first – To the River, as a “rumination”, inspired by Virginia Woolf and which has her wandering the length of the River Ouse. What that rumination entails I could guess at – but need to know. Two more books.

But this is all a bit by the bye, what really diverted me – as so often happens – was an internal link to the NYT “By the Book” segment from earlier this year in which Olivia Laing was guest and her mention there of Alison Light’s 2007 book Mrs. Woolf and the Servants that she had read while writing her latest book Everybody (2021), saying: “[…it] is astonishing on the complex interrelations between bodies and class, bodies and gender…”. Light’s original work has come to my attention previously, and Virginia Woolf’s erratic behaviour towards her domestics is well known, and has often been a topic in academia and beyond. And something I have often contemplated.

But my interest at this moment has added intensity because, while reflecting on the mutual dependencies and alternating dynamics at play between Myriam and Louise in the Leïla Slimani novel just read, I was immediately struck by similarities with what I had discerned previously about Woolf’s fraught relationship with her servants, especially Nellie with whom she was in constant struggle; and perhaps encouraged in my thinking having shortly before read an “address as essay” by Slimani in which she quotes from a Woolf essay contrasting the status of the Victorian woman of a certain class – the so-called “Angel in the House” – with the (then) modern woman; the possibilities now open to her, but also the obstacles, sometimes invisible, that remain in her search for fulfillment, and especially when that reach is beyond the sacred bounds of home and garden, of family and servants.

I have downloaded Light’s book (Kindle link below), and have to say the prologue and the early pages – here, the “angel in the house” is Julia Stephen and the cook, Sophie Farrell, the “family treasure”- are a knockout. Already I can say, obviously a labor of love; written with verve and with respect for the subjects and their successes – large or small, celebrated or rarely noted – and an understanding for their failures and the prevailing circumstances – personal or societal or both.

I am, then, as I write, feeling madly indebted to Olivia Laing – and it is hardly to be wondered; to the question of what was the best book she has received as a gift comes the response:

[…] For my 40th birthday my mother gave me first editions of Woolf’s diaries. That was a magical present. I remember being entranced by the bindings as a child — the pale pink and duck egg blue spines with Bloomsbury crosshatching. Those would be my desert island books: the best possible mind to be accompanied by.
The New York Times “By the Book: Olivia Laing’s Reading Piles Are Far From Organized”

Mine are not nearly so fine, but Olivia Laing would surely with me agree: it’s all there to be found in the mind – and Virginia Woolf would add: words, words, words.

When the bough breaks

As mentioned here, Leïla Slimani’s Chanson douce (The Perfect Nanny in the US and Lullaby in the UK), in German translation as Dann schlaf auch du, did become available in my local library, and sooner than expected, and has now been read by me in the last day or so.

With a narrative that traverses the terrains of crime, suspense and underpinned by what could be interpreted as a social criticism of some aspects of modern family politics, and written in Slimani’s cool and precise style (I actually had the opportunity to browse the French original as I read the German edition), the novel makes for a rapid and compelling read. But, it is anything other than a comforting one. Not the butler, the nanny dun it – that much we know. When from the opening pages one is confronted with such a monstrous conclusion, the reader can not help but become engrossed in the quest to know the whole damned course of getting there.

Welcome into the hyper-stressed sphere of the restless Parisian middle class of young professionals; trying to organize careers and families, to keep up with …whoever are the French version of the Joneses, and ever alert to the social order and codes of their cohort. Such a couple are Paul and Myriam Massé, and they are much more of course, and Slimani develops them well; giving them contour – and contradiction. They interest me these thirty-somethings – juggling their ambitions with mounting insecurities seemingly at odds with their privileges. But with the family perfection of little girl Mila and baby boy Adam complete, Paul, who had found some favor and convenience in the one-partner-at-home model (in this case, the woman – surprise, surprise!), reluctantly acquiesces to the stressed and dissatisfied Myriam’s desire to return to her interrupted legal profession – so, the perfect nanny it must be; and it seems that Louise is just that.

I can well conjure a Paul and Myriam (perhaps I have known enough like them, or at least been informed of), but Louise remains to the very end a mystery to me, a mass of contradictions – her awkwardness in manner and speech; still, secretive, stubborn; a petite stature belying her vigor and strength; her plain, dated attire (peter pan collars we are told!) offset by cheap make-up – worn upon a face often described by the author as “moon face” or “doll face”. It irritated me that I was unable to form in my mind’s eye a more complete image of her. But perhaps that was the writer’s intent or at least an accident of the writer’s imagination: Dear reader, Slimani may be saying, think of Louise as an apparition blurred under the pale light of a full moon or some malleable figure with features painted upon china or plastic; garishly exact and without blemish. Neither are real, both an illusion. A mother’s worst nightmare.

For some readers, without proximity or at least awareness of the particular young, urban, professional milieu in which one is being drawn, the sociological aspects that may be read into the novel are somewhat elusive, and perhaps even inadequate as an explanation for the development of the plot; which I interpreted more as being psychologically driven. But deep seated norms are there to be extricated, and ultimately play an important role in the tragic human consequences. Parental choices made in modern societies are clearly complex – professional, financial, emotional considerations aplenty. But before that comes the choice to be a parent, and especially Myriam wonders at that; wonders at her own inadequacy and ineptitude – so conditioned is she in the absoluteness of the maternal role. Myriam thought she could have it all, failed to recognize the obstacles in her way, that cared not for her education, her abilities, saw only her sex. And wrong choices can be made, and most do not end with such a monstrous crime. (It should be said, Leïla Slimani based her novel on a 2012 murder in Manhattan; keeping some of the personal and class characteristics that were reported but transporting the situational to Paris.)

Expectations of a mutually beneficial alliance are negligible and the potential for conflict are high; for those (predominately) women who work in child care in some form or other – women like Louise and all those other nounous in the Parisian playgrounds – are often employed under precarious circumstances and for low wages. They may be immigrants or foreigners, students perhaps, and in this, Louise, as a white middle-aged French woman, differs; here, Slimani may have been deliberately making a character choice that defies the delusions of a society entrenched in its belief that all dangers come from without. Paul and Myriam could barely hide their satisfaction at not having to navigate the hurdles (as some of their friends must) brought into their home by a foreign custom or language.

In passing…

may I remind myself to reactivate my paused Netflix account! My morning peruse of The New York Times alerts me to the coming soon (Nov. 10) of Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing which I wrote about at the beginning of the year.

In her excellent NYT piece, Alexandra Kleeman not only offers a wonderful portrait of Rebecca Hall – the privileged and complicated biography that so informed her film making, the difficulties of financing and maintaining her artistic integrity – but also revisits her own first encounters with Larsen’s novel and reflects upon her own multi-racial heritage. Kleeman’s appreciation of the monochromatic aesthetic and the grey areas in-between where truth resides is about the best thing about film I have read in a long time.

Unbeknownst to me in the months since the film was previewed at Sundance, there has been an enormous amount of banter, especially surrounding the social and historical phenomena of “passing” and how it should be portrayed, and the various degrees of “colorism” that remain prevalent in society and reflected in Hollywood (or vice versa!), and the casting choices that are (or are not) made accordingly.

Surely, I will have more to say after seeing Hall’s film.

Amartya Sen

Enjoyed very much this long read (a couple of months old) by the great Amartya Sen at The Guardian; adapted from his memoir, Home in the World: A Memoir , that was published in the UK this summer by Allen Lane. This particular extract, which is memoir only in that it harks back to the India of his youth, resembles more a miniature lesson in post-colonial imperatives, and one in which Sen refutes some of the spurious arguments in defense of the Raj that regularly do the rounds.

For example, the oft spun notion of the inherent isolationism of the sub-continent, regional kingdoms and ethnic and religious fragmentation; purportedly to be solved only through imperialism. Sen offers instead alternative narratives of what might have been from which follows an imagined history, but nevertheless one that inspires a more thoughtful awareness of how India’s long history was (and still is, he would suggest) embellished and appropriated to fit a particular world view. Contrary to the social and economic arguments that show British rule in a good light, Amartya Sen emphasizes the two centuries of, amongst other things, economic stagnation and low literacy rates that all the virtues of parliamentary governance and public service can not recast. Of course, the East India Company can not help but make its ugly presence known, and this reminds me of William Dalrymple’s 2019 book The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, reviewed here at The Guardian. (Dalrymple also contributed a very worthy long read on the aforesaid in 2015.)

Amartya Sen was on my mind not so long ago – well, on reflection, longer than I thought, last year actually – when he was awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade – clumsy, I know, but their English translation not mine!); usually a very big deal in Germany – lots of fanfare, sometimes controversy, and the presentation televised on the final day of the Frankfurter Buchmesse. Unfortunately, the 2020 honouring of Sen got somewhat lost in the cancellation of the Book Fair (Covid!) but, through the wonders (!) of our digital second-life, the laudatory remarks from the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeir (but delivered by Burkhart Klaußner because …you guessed it – Covid quarantine!) and Sen’s gracious acceptance speech are available here.

More than well spun…

No longer a favourite white tee for him and her (or me), but still it caught my eye; any wonder when it so cries: “Fruits of the loom: why Greek myths are relevant for all time!” And, it continues, and gets only better: “…Classicist Charlotte Higgins explores stories that weave together the fabric of our existence“. A must read, then, on The Guardian website.

And having done so – read the above said article I mean – I know this to be an introduction of sorts to coincide with the publication in the UK of Charlotte Higgins’ own new book Greek Myths: A New Retelling (Jonathon Cape, 2021), and which is to be published in the US in December. I haven’t read Higgins’ previous books, but she is known to me from her excellent and varied cultural journalism at The Guardian, and her declared rational behind her “retelling” is so compelling, that this too now a must read.

Interesting, also: drawings by Chris Ofili! What a coup by whoever, or whatever circumstance, initiated his involvement.

Silenced no longer

Next week sees the publication of The Women of Troy, Pat Barker’s sequel to her critically and popularly well-received retelling of Homer’s Iliad, The Silence of the Girls; told with a woman’s gaze and one firmly focused on Briseis. (Reviewed in 2018 here in The Guardian by Emily Wilson.)

Achilles’ surrender of **Briseis** to Agamemnon, Pompeii fresco, 1st century CE, now in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples

Barker has whetted the appetite for a timely read in this short piece she has written for The Guardian; she returns to her motivations in writing the first book, and it seems a classic ‘what came next’ is to be expected of her follow-up.

More generally, it was interesting to read Barker’s comments relating to the richness of opportunities at an author’s disposal to explore mythological characters, as opposed to the constraints imposed on fictions with historical figures and situations in their midst; burdened as they are with facts and evidence. It is any wonder, then, that the mythical narratives are returned to again and again by new generations of artists and writers seeking creative freedom; re-worked and re-imagined, made fit for contemporary reception.

Here’s to a girls night out with Briseis and friends (again) – grown up and grown old – or not – our fates shared through the ages (of man!).

A Witch’s Brew…

Madeline Miller’s 2018 novel re-telling of the mythical and minor goddess Circe came to hand, and was duly read and quickly so, and was enjoyed and deserves, therefore, a few words. And, and, and…

It had occurred to me that I was perhaps not amongst the intended readership of this book, but I was not deterred, after all, as an “Old Adult” I have read Pullman and Rowling in the interests of a younger generation (near and dear), but that is not quite the same as that peculiar hybrid mix of YA and fantasy fiction to which I discovered Miller’s Circe tended. I don’t say that dismissively, rather with some regret at my own mounting years.

Written in the first person from the point of view of Circe herself, I did succumb to the spell cast by her voice – irritable to the gods, feisty to a mere mortal as I – but found myself to be at the same time mildly irritated by the substance behind it. Miller gives her goddess a cadence that is both intimate and distanced, worldly and naive, ancient and very young; too much duality can blur the edges and obscure the essence of a character. But maybe so it must be; for this Circe has a mortal core centered within an immortal world – or the other way around. The narrative that the author spins around Circe’s far flung familial connections, that has her turning up all over the place in Greek mythology, has its attractions; for my acquaintanceship with her had been previously limited to The Odyssey and Odysseus’ sojourn on her island of exile, Aiaia. Tempting the reader with her interpretation of those ancient fragmentary tales, Miller conjures for her idiosyncratic enchantress a ‘what came before’ and ‘what came next’ that has a sort of magic, and is not without appeal. Her book may lack the complexity demanded of (and by!) the gods (and the greater myth system that has them at its foundation), but it is, nevertheless, a spirited work of imaginative fiction.

This Circe deserves her release from the incessant mobbing in the mythical playground of the gods, from the abusive father, Helios – the Sun, the Son – and from all the nasties – mother, siblings, relos however many times removed, and marauding mortal men. Circe’s tribulations are a godly version of the veritable tick box of the abuse and belittlement faced by women at home and abroad – misogyny, humiliation, violence, dependency. Miller’s Circe, though, defies victim-hood and her presumed fate, proves herself to be more than a song and a refrain in The Odyssey, more than a supporting character in the myths of god and man. Cast out as a failed daughter, as a rejected and vengeful nymph, she re-invents herself, explores her talents, builds a home of her own. Seeking the company of man, she is maltreated again – understated! to say it plainly: she is raped. Be assured they got their just rewards – and not they alone, generations will pay for the sins of the fathers. But she never gives up on them; they, who she sees (unlike her Olympian tormentors!), as more than foolish mortals with foolish ways, easy fodder for the next divertissement. This Circe is a searcher, a survivor, a self-made woman. She is a lover and a mother and a forgiver – for those few who pass muster, she will risk all.

As Penelope once weaved and deceived, so Circe concocts and conceives – with purpose and with patience. In the end – can it be? – the gods! they misread the Fates, got it wrong! They underestimated, made presumptions, and a troublesome witch blew them off course. Having dared to turn a man into a god and coming to grief, they thought her fate sealed, now what will they have to say about a goddess craving mortality?

The novel, Circe, is not quite a cauldron full, not a potent witch’s brew reeking of entrails and god knows what, rather one with just a tantalizing whiff of the dark; a refreshing light draught, its ingredients drawn from fields, ancient and fertile. To extend the metaphor: an airy romp for the young and young of heart. Maybe, at least, I still retain a little of the latter; because I did appreciate this read.

le 14 juillet

That is today. La fête nationale française. The 14^th of July, or Bastille Day as I have always called it.

Coming just after the 15o^th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Proust , on 10^th July, 1871, I use this proximity and this day to rekindle a too long dormant fascination with the great French writer. See it as my own personal gesture of admiration for La Grande Nation (as the Germans call it – and not always with affection!).

In the arts pages of a German newspaper last week (FAZ); a collection of snippets from those who have, at some time or other, turned to Proust – and, with various degrees of success. One, Louis Begley, succeeded as a young man where others failed, and later was enriched not only in a literary sense but also in that Proust led him to the love of his life. Begley took the opportunity to do a little promotion in this regard for his wife, Anka Muhlstein. In celebration of Proust’s anniversary, Penguin Random House have released a special paperback edition of her 2012 book Monsieur Proust’s Library which explores the literary influences of one who was to on and so profoundly influence other writers, and up to this day. The synopsis on the publisher’s website insinuates this to be a light – and encouraging – read, for those who persist in their struggle.

My copy of the Penguin Classics six volume edition of “In Search of Lost Time”

And I am in need of some encouragement, for as you may have guessed, as Begley succeeded so have I failed. It is to be clearly discerned from the condition of the spines of the paperback volumes of In Search of Lost Time (or perhaps I should use the French title À la Recherche du temps perdu; as I remember even the translation of the title is forever a matter of heated debate) standing on my bookshelf that, generously speaking, I made it half way through – though I am relatively sure I didn’t make it to the end of The Guermantes Way. When? Twenty years ago? Is that possible? What precisely happened I don’t know; distracted, presumably put to one side, then packed away – as life, and my place in it, moved on.

Also, a few days ago I caught a very nice discussion on the Times Literary Supplement’s weekly podcast (always informative listening) with Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter and Proust expert, Adam Watt. Embedded below, and to be found about 4 minutes in or, in Spotify reckoning, at approximately -48:00.

The TLS Podcast – July 7th, 2021.

Watt’s essay for the TLS July 9, 2021, issue, can be found here. Take note, though; access is only granted to a very limited amount of articles in any one month, so good luck!

Now, then, Monsieur Proust, you have my attention! At least, I have taken you again to hand or, to be precise, the first volume of your monumental work, which, in this translation by Lydia Davis, is titled The Way by Swann’s as opposed to Swann’s Way; also a matter of contention. (Whilst all under the aegis of Christopher Prendergast, each volume has a different translator.) On Lydia Davis. I must say, after reading some terrific flash fiction stuff by the so named a few years ago, I had to check whether this was in fact the same person whose name I remembered from the Proust translation. And indeed it was. A New Yorker profile in 2014 explained the French connection and much more (including an American literary first marriage of the highest order – of which I was probably one of the few to be ignorant of).

As an aside, some words of encouragement: a way once lost remains to be found!

Let the search begin, one may be tempted to say; if it wasn’t for that complicated pas de deux of Being and Time – that illusive intangible that constrains and dictates; that essence which he and his accomplice – that other with the name Marcel just as he, and much more than a reflection of each self – sought with word to tame; to make palpable; just like the most famous little cake of all time – soaked in tea, not once but three times, melting into involuntary memory.