Saturday, May 31, 2014

Commonplace Book

'...it is seldom that life approves our exacter calculations, every hour she leaps capriciously across them, led by her own laws, and a wise man follows her caprice.'

from The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig (Book One, Chapter III)

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Commonplace Book

'...When we consider, that, in our churches in general, we breathe a gross stagnated air, surcharged with damps from vaults, tombs, and charnel-houses, may we not term them so many magazines of rheums, created for the benefit of the medical faculty, and safely aver that more bodies are lost than souls saved by going to church, in the winter especially, which may be said to engross eight months in the year[?] I should be glad to know what offence it would give to tender consciences, if the house of God was made more comfortable, or less dangerous to the health of valetudinarians; and whether it would not be an encouragement to piety, as well as the salvation of many lives, if the place of worship was well-floored, wainscoted, warmed, and ventilated, and its area kept sacred from the pollution of the dead...'

from Matt Bramble's letter to Dr Lewis, dated July 4, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett

Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Gift by H.D. (1982)

Usual story - I was quite ready to hate this. Modernism in its worst incarnation (As a Wife Has a Cow by Gertrude Stein etc) is a pet bugbear. But often I find that the less overt pieces in that slipstream, often just slightly tinctured with experimentation, charm me. This impressed me. Hilda Doolittle's style (this is my first exposure to it) is most likenable to impressionism I think, underpinned with psychoanalytic theory. This is the story of her childhood from a child's minds'-eye-view. It encompasses her brothers, their parents, their wider family group in Pennsylvania around the turn of last century. It retails all the usual unusual tics of these people, but attempts to remain within the unknowing of a child as it does so. So they are not necessarily 'explained' - they are observed, and some explanations that may have been around from a whole variety of sources, are canvassed. Some things are left unexplained entirely. Others the reader can pretty well gauge from other hints in the background, or from the author speaking rarely as her later self. Much of this causation has the fascinating elements of childhood in it - superstition, fears, sublimated wishes...But this book delves back on another plane. The Doolittles came from Moravian stock on her mother's side: the 'middle bit' of Czechoslovakia (as it became) sandwiched between Bohemia and Slovakia. The original immigrants to the States, escaping forms of persecution in Europe, according to this, approached the Native Americans in their push west with kindness, and found much in common; their mysticisms met, and there was some sort of combined idealist push toward a new North American spirit of the brotherhood of humanity. But there are hints here that a treaty was made and then dishonoured. Accompanying this is yet another plane where 'the gift' itself comes in - it is a kind of deeply luminous power of recreating and re-feeling the distant past to which you are connected. HD seems to have experienced a lot of this in her childhood but then felt that she lost it. The last section brings us onto yet another level - she comes into the 'now' of the piece in Blitz London, right in the middle of an attack, with she and Bryher holed up in their lofty flat, and all this matter of childhood flooding back in the extremity and fear of the bombardment. Very glad this was saved and published 40 years later, and like having my prejudices confounded with such style.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Commonplace Book

'In my last I mentioned my having spent an evening with a society of authors, who seemed to be jealous and afraid of one another. My uncle was not at all surprised to hear me say I was disappointed in their conversation. "A man may be very entertaining and instructive upon paper," said he, "and exceedingly dull in common discourse. I have observed that those who shine most in private company are but secondary stars in the constellation of genius. A small stock of ideas is more easily managed and sooner displayed, than a great quantity crowded together. There is very seldom anything extraordinary in the appearance and address of a good writer; whereas, a dull author generally distinguishes himself by some oddity or extravagance..."'

from Jerry Melford's letter to Sir Watkin Phillips, dated June 10, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Welou, My Brother by Faith Bandler (1984)

This one shares the quiet spirit of its predecessor, Wacvie, but has considerably less dramatic arc. Bandler delights in coolly celebrating domestic detail, in a straightforward way, emphasizing whatever is uppermost in her characters' minds and most important to them. It is fictionalised in a specific sense, that of being formed to read like a novel. My feeling is that it is not fictionalised in the sense of being an invention of facts. It is the story of Bandler's brother over a few years of his childhood in country northern New South Wales, living with his Islander father, Wacvie, his mixed race mother, Ivy, several brothers and his new little sister Lefan - I'm wondering if she may be the author. Bandler speaks lovingly of the family and their community and their interactions, helping each other, lending each other horses and workers so as to keep their farms running; children staying with other families to pursue education or work, or to provide the childless with company and assistance. There is a feeling to this one that it may have originally been intended to be part of something longer; it ends oddly and unimpactfully at a point where so much more could have continued happening. Perhaps Bandler tired of it, and it was seen to be complete enough as it stood to publish? And there is the issue of the lack of dramatic arc - really the small domestic details are all there is of this - but I would contend they are all there needs to be, they are strangely satisfying in themselves. My criticism of Wacvie stands for this one too, though - there is an emphasis on dignity in these characters which means that the salty bloodrush of life, our human equivocation, is not deeply pictured, though some small nips of it are there.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Commonplace Book

'...He has not gall enough in his constitution to be inflamed with the rancour of party, so as to deal in scurrilous invectives: but, since he obtained a place, he is become a warm partisan of the ministry, and sees everything through such an exaggerated medium, as to me, who am happily of no party, is altogether incomprehensible. Without all doubt, the fumes of faction not only disturb the faculty of reason, but also pervert the organs of sense...'

from Jerry Melford's letter to Sir Watkin Phillips, dated June 2, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett

Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Right Place by CE Montague (1924)

Though this book is subtitled 'A Book of Pleasures' to me it is more of a meditation on place. These fourteen essays, called chapters, speak of location from many angles: where you are on the surface of the planet architecturally, culturally, or naturally; that last group covering landforms and geology and what they cause in human terms. Montague's style is cool and poetic, sculpturally and referentially rich without too much in the way of emotion. I'm guessing this is because of his earning a good part of his spurs on war reporting, where an objective head would seem to be critical: emotion, if one let it out, would explode in such circumstances. Early on, his focus is the central muscle-knot of Europe, the Alps. Britain is seen in contrast to this, occasionally coming into focus. As the book progresses Britain becomes the main concern. His point of view is loosely conservative, in the sense of his seeing value in clean air, work, a good life, some aspects of the country house system, but not at all in dilettantism, modern education, the 'silly' upper class - one gets the sense that he was a man of decided opinions which had thorough grounding in his mind in a sense of the value of effort and connectedness to nature and her rhythms. Any sort of 'superstructural' or 'fatty layer' stuff, whether it be left or right wing, was unnecessary nonsense! Thus useful country squires were OK, their hard-working tenants were OK, jibbering society types were not, as was not anyone who didn't contribute in a 'worthwhile' manner. He had the same sort of ideas when it came to writers, reading between the lines: there were those who were essential, and those who were dribblers. His enthusiasm for the wide sweep of the landscape is inspiring. He describes a Britain which was a lot cleaner and less stultifyingly and dangerously urbanised than the one of today, imagining bicycle journeys through it to sense the lie of the land for example, with gentle runs into towns that would be death-defying today. It leaves one with the usual sense of something lost. His meditations on architecture know nothing of post-war concrete gloom, either. But as a poetic, strong-toned, cool-brained examination of the landmass of Europe and Britain from a nature's-eye view, as well as an early twentieth-century human's-eye view, capturing that moment, it is deeply enjoyable.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Commonplace Book

'It was indeed a compound of villanous smells, in which the most violent stinks and the most powerful perfumes contended for the mastery. Imagine to yourself a high exalted essence of mingled odours arising from putrid gums, imposthumated lungs, sour flatulencies, rank arm-pits, sweating feet, running sores and issues; plasters, ointments, and embrocations, Hungary water, spirit of lavender, assafoetida drops, musk, hartshorn, and sal volatile; besides a thousand frowzy steams which I could not analyse. Such, O Dick!, is the fragrant ether we breathe in the polite assemblies of Bath...'

from Matt Bramble's letter to Dr Lewis, dated May 8, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett

Commonplace Book

'"I know so few Americans," I said. "Do you like them, Philip?"

"Yes, I'm paid to."

"In your heart of hearts?"

"Oh, poor things, you can't dislike them. I feel intensely sorry for them, especially the ones in America - they are so mad and ill and frightened."'

from Don't Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford (Chapter 3)