Losing Timo by Linda Baxter (2004)

During my ten years in London, there were many senseless crimes committed and reported on in the media. For some reason, one in particular stayed in my mind. Something clicked, and I cut the story out of my copy of The Independent, and filed the cutting in with loads of other documents, looking at it from time to time and wondering what happened about it. There were a few news reports about it at the time, and then, from an outsider's point of view, someone who wouldn't be dedicatedly looking for coverage, all went quiet. I got it out again a couple of months ago, and googled the name of the victim, wondering if there was fuller information on the net. Up came this book. The victim's name was Tim Baxter. He and a friend were walking home in the middle of the night after a night out (something I did all the time when I was there), reached the Hungerford Bridge near Charing Cross station, and were mugged half way across it. They were atrociously beaten and then thrown over the side of the bridge into the Thames forty feet below. His friend survived, but Tim drowned and was found at Gabriel's Wharf the following day. This book is his mother's story of the time - her numbed and then outraged reactions, her connecting with Tim's friends, her emerging celebration of her son. She combines short, reasonably cool descriptive essays with much more searing poems to build up a picture of the crime and its aftermath. Having dealt with a few grieving people in my time, I can say that there's one thing that this book leaves me wishing for. It is the story of the first period in the main (the crime was committed in 1999 and this book's last entry is 2003); I'd like to have heard how things have developed since then; to watch a greater sense of healing prevail. But even so, I can imagine the writing of this book not only helped Baxter come to terms with what happened, but that it would also help others facing that unimaginable horror.

Commonplace Book

'Now at last they were still. Foxed in the very kernel of consciousness. Like intrigued poultry they stared, all pupil, all doubt. Then they stirred uncomfortably in the vacuum where comprehension should have been.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 9)

Commonplace Book

'...The greedy, capricious "Uranian babyishness" of his pupil Oscar, with its peevish clutching at all soft and provocative and glimmering things, is mere child's play, compared with the deep, dark Vampirism with which this furtive Hermit drains the scarlet blood of the Vestals of every Sanctuary.'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Walter Pater chapter)

Commonplace Book

'...there is no such thing as the history of the human race, but only of a few names rescued from oblivion, which are called illustrious names, heedless of the fact that at certain times whole nations became illustrious under the influence of the same deed and the same idea. Who can tell us the names of all the enthusiastic, noble hearts who have thrown aside the spade or hoe to go to fight the infidel?..'

from The Piccinino by George Sand (Chapter XXXVII)

Commonplace Book

'...I could write a pamphlet on the subject of boots - they are an awful revelation of personal character. Vulgarities otherwise skilfully concealed come out in the shape of a heel; sloth leaves indelible tracks across upper leathers. In moments of illumination I have detected gluttony in a lace and profligacy in a button...'

from The Carissima by Lucas Malet (Phase Three, Chapter III)

The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones (1993)

These 11 stories are full of heart. They're also full of sweat, drugs, puke and booze, but somehow those very real substances, and the real lives of struggle and venom and pity and shards of beauty they illumine, do not feel gratuitous. Jones is clear about his characters' vision of life. In the main, they are tough people, who battle demons and each other, and the vagaries of their bodies. They are not overly intellectual, gentle dreamers, or tortured emotional artists. I like his insistence on their point of view, and the fact that they are represented by him with a full weaponry of interests, angles and obsessions. They echo his own I'm suspecting, with the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche figuring large in several instances. Part I consists of full-fight war stories from the time of Vietnam; Part II involves what I would call an exploration of the lives of very physical 'hams' of both genders; Part III covers sadness and culpability in the back lots of life; and Part IV casts up two elegies to dreamers of different kinds. Jones' prose is taut and to the point and not poetic in any obvious way. Occasionally, as in the penultimate story A White Horse, he doesn't attend sufficiently to the all-vital ending. But I guess because this collection is a long way outside my usual comfort zone, and yet enmeshes me in the lives of its people completely, I find myself fascinated and claimed by it.

Commonplace Book

'...The man was evidently happy, and when a man is happy I hold he may very safely be left to his own thoughts. For, next to slapping an infant to make it cease crying, or beating a cripple with his own crutches to make him hurry, I know no more brutal stupidity than awakening the happy from their dream of bliss by talking to them...'

from The Carissima by Lucas Malet (Phase Second, Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'Fly-fishing is an artificial art which has been developed since the middle of the last century with perhaps particular regard to the psychological necessities of the tired professional classes. Whoever has watched for long the weaving cast, the winnowing hand-movement, the slightly bowed devotional attention of those isolated damp doctors and businessmen, and heard, close as they do - the gurgling, guggling impassivity, the monotonous but soothing variety of the passing surface will see the whole thing as a charging of batteries, and like all charging, a long business - one amp going in all the time, and nothing apparently happening.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 7)

Commonplace Book

'"Yes, yes," he said to himself, "sing on, happy birds of the South, pure as the sky that looked down upon your birth! This merriment is the indication of a perfectly clear conscience, and laughter well befits you, who have never had an idea of evil! Ah! My old father's dear old ballads, which have allayed the anxieties of his life and lessened the fatigue of his labour - I should listen to them with respect instead of smiling at their simplicity! And my young sister's merry laughter I should welcome with affectionate delight as a proof of her courage and her innocence! Away with my selfish dreams and my unfeeling curiosity! I will go through the storm with you, and will enjoy as you do a burst of sunlight between two clouds. My careworn brow is an insult to your candour - black ingratitude for your kindness. I propose to be your staff in distress, your comrade in toil, and your boon companion in joy!"'

from The Piccinino by George Sand (Chapter XXXII)

Commonplace Book

'...It seemed that he was always seeking to kindle his passions in order to test their intensity, but that he abstained from gratifying them most of the time, fearing lest his enjoyment might fall short of the idea he had conceived of it. Certain it is that on the few occasions on which he had given way, he had been profoundly depressed afterwards, and had reproached himself for having expended so much exertion for a pleasure so soon exhausted.'

from The Piccinino by George Sand (Chapter XXIX)

Commonplace Book

'Ever since Hilde[,] Lionel had remained a self-conscious sleeper, aware of many different grades of sleep. In the mornings, he often looked back with the self-critical distance-probing eye of a golfer after driving. Because life - even the descent of the stairs to breakfast - was an act of faith powered by sleep. To sleep badly was to wake up not believing. The libido hung back unsatisfied by the mysterious cookhouse door of the unconscious. Sometimes quite clearly the terrible skinny female hand of an unidentifiable dream could be seen withholding the day's ration...'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 4)

Dear Husband, by Joyce Carol Oates (2009)

Oates' output in short stories can be extremely variable in terms of quality. This is thankfully one of the good volumes. As will be familiar to any interested reader, her style is very firm, really quite surprisingly formal. This can sometimes weigh a little heavy in her novels. Her stories can be stunning when she gets it really right; the strength and wire of the formality makes the shorter form really punch. I'm glad to say that this happens several times in this volume. In her realist vein, the gritty Landfill catalogues a life almost as an amplification of yet-another-newspaper-statistic, most categorised by its death. The confusions and Ice Storm-like story of well-heeled eroticised family secrets in Cutty Sark marks the memory. Two tales of mothers, The Heart Sutra and Dear Husband,, detail desperation, loneliness, need and abandonment in the lives of women who put too much faith in their men, and the arms' length avoidance tactics of alpha males in situations in which they find themselves trapped. Both end horrifically. In one story in particular Oates goes for something different - and it's a pleasure to hear the alteration in that firm voice. The wry, sour-mouthed humour of Suicide by Fitness Center, put into the mouth of a fascinated, cynical and nervously vulnerable older woman is a joy. This one has a fault which two others also have: a slightly damp squib ending. Endings are always critical and a good amount of the time Oates "gets" their value. Not virtually perfect, as was her 2004 collection I Am No One You Know, but still a fine entry in the Oates canon.

Commonplace Book

'"A scavenger of genius," I replied.

"A what?"

"The editor of an extremely successful weekly paper of the social variety. In his youth he produced a witty and improper novel, which everybody said it was impossible to read, and everybody read. It affected to be autobiographical. Now he has ceased to be immoral - at all events in print - having laid to heart the golden maxim that public confession of the sins of others is on the whole an even more paying speculation than public confession of sins of your own. I am afraid he has also ceased to be witty. That is a matter for regret."

from The Carissima by Lucas Malet (Phase First, Chapter III)