Summertime by JM Coetzee (2009)

 This is a different beast to its two predecessors. They were conventional autobiographical narratives, although they did kick against the pricks in terms of the disavowal of hindsight in the main - they were written from a contemporaneous viewpoint. The question raised therefore was how the author had gone about avoiding hindsight, it being possibly hidden in terms of subject choice, or other (conscious or subconscious) manipulations which may have been buried in his processing of the material. This one is bracketed by sections from notebooks, where pieces of prose have been developed as inspiration hit, covering the period of the author's return to South Africa from the United States, and the publication of his first books, in 1972-1975. These endpieces contain interesting tidbits on politics, the nag of the exile's return, and poignant discussion of relationships, particularly at the end with a focus on his father's final years. But the main part of this, sandwiched between the end parts, is a series of five 'interviews' - which are imaginative recreations. Four of them are with important women in his life - two lovers, one cousin and one unattainable love aspiration. The other is with a male colleague at an academic institution. The imaginative construct is that he has died, and the interviewer is preparing a volume on this hitherto less appreciated period of his life. There are several elephants in this room - the most conspicuous being "how did these people feel about being 'interpreted' in this way?" and "how accurate is the portrait of their attitudes, and if it's inaccurate, what does this rewriting of history do to the record?" I guess. But it's not that those questions don't come up anyway in thinking about any autobiography - it's just the standard nag of representation, and they do have the right of reply if they want it. Unless they're dead, of course, and I don't know the body count there - here's hoping it's zero. I have a complicating concern, centring on the technique: sometimes the voices here are too similar. Each of these interviews has a moment or moments where the interviewee gets a bit snaky, and sends a tart 'no' to Mr Vincent, the interviewer, accusing him of overstepping the line, being a bit uninformed, and so on. These ripostes are way too similar to be convincing, and give us an insight into how the author is forming his idea of where the pressure points in the conversation would be, and not quite perhaps finding the individuality of the voices he is recreating. Of course one needs to set that against what he does achieve, which is an interesting mixture, and does evoke a strong sense of who he thinks he was in these times, warts and all. The one which hit home the most for me was the second, a talk with his cousin Margot, known as Margie, which somehow incorporates a greater sense of the visceral ache at the base of the existences of white South Africans in the Karoo in the second half of the twentieth century, and also lends that very homed-in sense of the origins which define someone, their proto-self. By contrast, the short one with the male colleague was nowhere near as impactful. The fact that this volume is non-sequential interests me, too - why has he skipped the period in America between Youth and Summertime? Is this covered in one of his novels? Or is it still too sensitive for some reason? This one's redolence of gnawing and doubt hit me a lot more than the other two, especially housed as they are in a dried up landscape and atmosphere. Its high-stakes modus, and mixed success in it, also give it a sense of teeter, which is more absorbing. 

The Angel and the Demon and other stories by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1901)

 This is a very obscure footnote in Fowler's career. These are her first efforts at fiction writing disinterred from oblivion in the pages of the British Workman magazine, which seems to have been a very paternalistic temperance publication, leading the biddable working class to a less debauched life, typical of the late Victorian era. Her breakthrough, Concerning Isabel Carnaby, had occurred in 1898, so was fresh when Partridge, famed purveyors of Godly and improving literature, pulled this volume together. These highly moral stories of the triumph of the good and the just deserts of the evil, complete with hearty advice and admonishments, show her skill with bright plotting - and not a lot else.

Those of the Forest by Wallace Byron Grange (1953)

 I'm guessing this book lies in the wake of classic nature writers like John Muir and so on, though I haven't read them. It is painstaking, meditative, philosophic and in awe of the rhythms of the natural world. None of those things are negative for me, in fact they represent something close to my own attitudes, so I responded positively to it, but I can imagine others would become impatient with its slow unfolding. It takes the reader through a couple of years of the life of a family of rabbits, and of in fact an entire ecosystem, but it does this in the wild, and well into it. We are nowhere near human activity - we are deep in a wilderness forest area, where the landmarks are a ridge, a swampy area, a beaver pond made on a stream which runs into a lake, and the forest which mottles in various densities and species the whole landscape. Grange is interested in having us see the minutiae of animal, plant and weather activity which makes up the pulse of life there. He doesn't mind showing it in both its happy and less happy aspects - there is little or no anthropomorphism here, and death and want comes as baldly as does regeneration and plenty. In fact, these things are emanations of his mantra - "it's all just life" effectively. This is recognizable as science tinted with philosophy and soundly-based in essence. What he also does is talk a lot about "Creation" and the fact that he sees some sort of mystic grounding or First Cause for all these rhythms, which is a little less comfortable. He also is of course working from how biological science was understood in the early 50s, and some of his great questions have been answered, more or less. Most of the books I read are obviously about humans, because they are by them, so it's good to get out into this space and have a rest from their concerns to a reasonable extent - a big, long, slow, quiet sojourn in the Great Green. Well, it's red in tooth and claw often, too, so perhaps not always so quiet.

The Ingoldsby Legends, Second Series by Richard Barham (1843)

 Unlike the first series, all these are in verse. Like the first series, they are roistering, ghosty, mock-heroic, mock-antiquarian pieces that give off an unmistakable Cruikshankish air, the humour grotesque and very broadly moral, with just deserts and come-uppances vying with devilish exertions for the highest entertainment. Not a lot else to say, other than that there is in this one an occasional racist (mainly against Jewishness) stereotype and associated assumptions, which mar it. Still prefer his prose fictions, Baldwin and Some Account of My Cousin Nicholas.

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent (2017)

 This is the first novel of a new young writer. Those, at least of our current period, are not my usual fare, but it's always good to explore outside one's regular boundaries. It is expressed in the terms of the early 21st century, at least those I've come across - very immediate prose, present tense. Rightly or wrongly attributed, it has, seemingly, the air of the creative writing school about it, which all such works do. But just because the tone is fairly recognizable and overfamiliar doesn't mean the quality has to be suspect, ultimately. And in this instance there's a lot to be said for it. This harrowing story of a fourteen-year-old California girl trapped in a tight world in which she's grown up since her mother's early death when she was a young child is riddled through with tension. Her father is a controlling monster. He's also retreated into even more isolation since the two of them were left alone - aside from the presence of his despised father, the grandfather the girl has as a safety valve, who lives in a dilapidated trailer on a different part of their property. The house is unfinished, and has a decade or more's worth of invasive plants, fungus growth in the damp spots, bare wood and gaps where finishing tasks were abandoned, and so forth. The house is also laced through with firearm hardware. They are what would be seen as typical Trump types, though at one end of the spectrum; very much interested, in the expectable west coast way, in alternative forms of energy, and living surrounded by the wild, understanding animals and survival skills closely. (He also has a penchant for reading classic philosophy, which is almost believable, though he's not seemingly benefited from it that much.) But also madly obsessed, under the same survival banner, with 'personal protection', ranging from guns of all descriptions (including their dismantling and reassembly as a regular activity) to a strong interest in strategies for taking on attackers and outwitting them through superior readiness, and very bedded-in isolationist suspicions of all outside or governmental agencies and programs. Very early on, though, we are introduced to another salient fact: the father and daughter are sleeping together, and yes, that's a euphemism. The treatment of this is a little jarring - some of the language is a bit 'porny', and I almost put the book down. But I gave Tallent the benefit of the doubt, thinking it was fair enough that it would be expressed in these terms if seen from the point of view of someone in her position, and of her generation. I'm glad I kept with it. Throughout the whole first half the picture is brilliantly embellished and made finepoint. It's a hard and dark life she lives, and her mind is consistently changing and growing within the remit of the harshness; Tallent achieves moments, when he's depicting the conflict and desires in her psyche, of real insight and poetry. He also, to be strictly fair, has a slightly compulsive tic for blow-by-blow descriptions, almost as writing exercises, punctuating the flow - we consistently get action-by-action accountings of the disassembly of a gun, or the making of a particular meal, or a set of habits of theirs, which really slow the tempo unnecessarily. As the second half is breached though, I'm not sure what's happened, but the overall flow becomes a lot more episodic. There are scenes of great power, like she and a friend surviving being pulled out to sea on a much larger than usual wave while in the shallows of the nearby ocean, which feel as though they ought to have had more impact. There's been such concentrated effort put into the minutiae of her situation and development, that these experiences should have rippling, concatenating effects to which we are also party, going onward and outward in her life. But they remain islands of event, the ripples truncated. This friend also, after a couple of dangerous visits while her father is around, tells her that he loves her, as though this had been building and had finally come to the surface, but the journey isn't there, remains unpresented. And would have been huge in terms of mind-effect for her, but we are not illuminated in any way as to those impacts. So we 'lose' her, to a significant extent, and also resultingly our belief in the piece. What is there is affecting, but doesn't hang together nearly as well. I wonder why. Did an inexperienced editor get hold of this, was told by a superior that it was too long, and cut a little too much? Or see Tallent's exegesis by this stage as too minute? Or did Tallent self-edit, and strip it out over-enthusiastically? Was the pacing the culprit - "needs to be leaner and go at a swifter lick"? Whichever way it was, this piece suffers from the non-fulfilment of its early promise. But is still a powerful thing. Will be interesting to see what he does next, if he does.

The Truth Will Not Help Us by John Bowen (1956)

 This is an unusual book - not from the point of view of style, which is probably the more common peculiarity, but instead in the much rarer oddness of content. Bowen was one of those authors who debuted in the 1950s and seemed to be of the coming generation of notable writers in the 1960s, but who then dwindled, for lack of a better term. This was the debut. Its basis is the true story of the unfounded accusation of a ship's crew in Leith in 1704 of piracy. Just before the act of union, with tensions very high on both sides of the border, the English crew of the Worcester were falsely accused of piracy, a sham investigation was instituted, and three of them (including the captain) were hanged as a result. They were soon after discovered to be innocent (as they had all along claimed) with the discovery of two sailors from the pirated ship in London, who had been hitherto assumed dead, murdered in far-off lands. These sailors had no knowledge of the Worcester, and had never heard of Captain Green. Bowen utilizes this scenario to flesh out his main target, which is the House Un-American Activities Committee, its falsehoods and poor process. But, in the undertaking of melding one scheme into the other for allegorical purposes, he makes a strange decision: 1950s Leith, with its televisions, buses and suburban living, takes on a 1704 mantle. Fully rigged sailing ships come into the harbour as they would have done two and a half centuries before. 1950s-in-almost-every-other-respect Scotland is independent, and an ally of England in a long-running war, with a lot of tension between the two all the same, echoing the first decade of the eighteenth century. It's an odd amalgam, but somehow, I guess because the whole thing is pointedly conceptual, and the writing feels quite airy and free, it works within its curious frame. The matter-of-fact explication dives off into case histories of the crew, a maladjusted local merchant who owned the vessel which had been lost, presumed pirated, various locals who take impounded crew members in, or lambast them with prejudice. He also plays with the para-legal 'investigation' concept, and how it was used on one hand to abjure strict legality ("this is NOT a trial") and on the other to condemn the sailors with pitifully inadequate evidence, with much fuddling and double-talk, which is where the HUAC target is sighted. The 'investigation' is perhaps a little too hampered by unbelievability - shoe-horning 250-year-old process, and modern American paranoia, into 1950s Scotland is a push. Some of these addled nonsenses would not have been tolerated in that context. But the fun he has with the darkness possible in ordinary suburban worlds is entertaining, if not as subtle as it could have been. 

In the Mountains by 'Elizabeth' (1920)

 This is another concatenation of the author's engaging with Germanness in the light of the First World War. She first did so in a pseudonymous work, Christine, which incorporated the danger of the beginning of hostilities as its sad ending. Then came the long, and acknowledged, Christopher and Columbus, which delightfully made hay with the sense of hazard of having the nationality somewhere in one's mix. Now this one, originally anonymous, set just after the war, with a traumatized Englishwoman heading back to her chalet high in the Swiss mountains for the first time in five years, and encountering a wandering duo of English women, set adrift by German alliances, and keeping secrets in order to avoid unpleasantness. 'Elizabeth' sets up the emotional bedrock position as being one of inner laceration, with her central character coming to the once beloved spot in a state of almost nervous exhaustion, hearing echoes of pre-war friends and loved ones now gone in the empty house, but finding at least the possible beginning of healing in the healthy and beautiful environment. This decided lowness is a new note in her depictions, and not at all unwelcome. Of course, at the same time, she exerts wit into the mixture, and something of the typical delight of her work comes calling. Soon she is somewhat distracted by the magnificent summer weather, walks, gardening and so on, with gently pleasing comic background provided by the Antoines, a live-in husband and wife servant pair from the old days. Then two English women come on a walk up the mountain from the scalding village below, and having been welcomed by her as rare company, then are invited to stay despite reservations. They jump at the opportunity, and she gets to know Mrs Barnes, fussy, immaculately polite to the point of exhaustion, and Dolly, her younger sister, an enigmatic and relaxed silent smiler. She registers that there are secret unknowns which Mrs Barnes, who won't leave her alone with Dolly, is zealously guarding. Finally, she and Dolly manage a clearing of the air apart in the garden, where her suspicions are confirmed, and a bit more. To the suspected German husband, long dead, has been added his German uncle a little while later as second spouse! He also is now dead. Two German husbands, and the second well in contravention of the Tables of Affinity, so a double crime. She and Dolly are so deeply in concord in their attitude to life that she's not bothered at all, though initially shocked. They echo one another soundly in their sense of live and let live and love, but Mrs Barnes, who has immolated herself on Dolly's "misbehaviour", vigilantly patrolling all talk even slightly approaching the territory, and wandering Europe ever more droopingly as her self-appointed protector, would die if she thought their 'shame' had been discovered. This tension allows 'Elizabeth' to revel in the terrors of overdone politeness, and the needlessness of the prostration which keeping secrets occasions. Just before winter the narrator's uncle appears, intending to castigate her for staying away from all which concerns her in England and, as he would see it, wallowing in the sadness which the loss of so many has forced upon her. He is an ageing dean, and suits Mrs Barnes' sense of the proprieties enormously, but inflames her concern about their ignominy to fever pitch. Instead, however, of proceeding with his rebuke of the narrator, he is fully and finally distracted by Dolly, falling head over heels for her undoubted charms. Thus ensues a terrible tussle, with Mrs Barnes never letting them alone, in case Dolly spills, and the dean becoming ruder and ruder to her as he realises that he wants to marry Dolly and can't get close to her to ask. Finally this is accomplished after agonies, and all settles to a sense of relieved pressure and satisfaction. The dean, inspired by love, couldn't allow any Germans to come between him and the apple of his eye, and Dolly is never interested in anything but complete truthfulness about them. One imagines that Mrs Barnes, who is invited to live with them after the honeymoon, would retain her fervour for not mentioning these particular parts of Dolly's history, and comedy continuing to arise from her defensive forays. This is a typically standard storyline, which has undergone specialized quality-treatment with the singular fresh charm which is one of the author's most characteristic talents.

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan (2019)

 It's great to know that the current literary world contains the wish to do something like this. It often seems quite a solemn, tamed place of too much caution, scads of humourlessness and a lack of brio. As I've been saying a lot lately about 'authors of note', this is my first McEwan. If this is any indication of the quality of the rest of his oeuvre, then I have a treat in store. It takes as a starting point a kidding reversal of The Metamorphosis, whereby a Houses of Parliament cockroach scuttles his way into Number 10 and finds himself the following morning transformed into the PM - a thinly disguised Boris Johnson. It's deftly done, with echoes of some of the crucial comments and impressions in the original about scanning unfamiliar limbs and consternation about being on one's back. But we leave Kafka behind largely at this point, instead hiving off into a satire of the Brexit period, pictured in this instance as a crazed campaign for "Reversalism", which involves paying to be at work, and shopping like mad to be given more money along with our selected goods, so that we can pay to work the next day, thus ensuring constant work and constant consumption. We discover that all the members of the cabinet are also transmogrified cockroaches, and work via their pheromonal hive mentality to get the Reversalist job done, appealing to populism, and disposing of opponents with any scheisterism necessary. Trump is canvassed as Archie Tupper, a president with the same unkenable and childish variousness of response and a party falling in with him obsequiously. There was probably scope for more here; he's limned a little lightly. There's what I think may be a complication too far toward the end, when we discover that the inhabiting cockroaches of the Reversalist period are only temporary ones, brought in to get the work completed. As they scuttle out of Downing Street in the winter gloom they miss seeing "the little creature scurrying towards Number Ten to resume its life". So, Boris is a cockroach anyway, but to get Brexit done he needed a special access of particular roachiness? But this is a lovely, heartening thing, all the same, for politics and for literature.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915)

 Some of the reviews of this edition call it "fiendishly funny" and as having "sheer mischief" in its makeup, which I find frankly puzzling. Though it has an occasional moment where one might be able to 'interpret in' a fairly vague attempt at humorous lightness, it most definitely doesn't feel majority-comedic. My overwhelming emotional response is pity. And aesthetically it feels dark and expressionist. I really don't think this is a black comedy, but it's my first Kafka, and maybe I need to learn more. The storyline is well-known, but it is interesting to note that it most definitely wasn't a cockroach that Gregor became, rather something like a louse, because he had a squishy back in which could be embedded the apple his father throws. Kafka's original language is apparently general enough simply to indicate 'vermin'. I like his attitude to detail: a particular point that serves the plot will be drawn out with an emotional specificity relating to something tangential, thereby enriching the picture. Often these embellishments go toward the further elucidation of character, so we get a subtler portrait of where someone is at, their pride or timidity or social anxieties. I haven't read around this at all, wanting the work to speak for itself, so there may be answers out there to a major question I have: how far is this allegorical? Is Kafka dramatizing a feeling of dehumanization he felt at some point of his life? Or a period of incapacitating illness? Or some sort of social pariah-hood? It's also interesting how matter of fact he is in his ending. Gregor's parents and sister experience a great relief and buzzing high when he finally dies, and seem to be selfishly concentrated on future happiness, all thought of his plight left behind happily. Is this an indictment? Or a recording of melancholic truthfulness about the pleasure that comes from lifting the weight of familial burdens? With its minority-playfulness, crabbed and fierce darkness and grey, limpid sadness, anyway, this is a splendid thing.

Anno Domini by George Steiner (1964)

 This is three novellas, and very early on in his career. In a sense, there will have always been a lot at stake, given that his reputation rested on literary criticism. "OK, buddy, let's see how you do, eh?" might be an imagined expectation from the world of fiction, which formed one of the centres of his critical work. In two instances, these feel like apprentice work, an author feeling their way into a voice. The third is incredibly fine, as mature and impactful a piece as anyone could ask for. Alongside the work of many a classic fiction writer, it could hold its own. Return No More is the story of the return to the scene of a war crime by the man who ordered it carried out. Set in 1949 in a small village in Normandy, it details a German officer, relying on the use of a stick due to a war wound, alighting on a high road from a truck which has given him a lift, and finding the place where he spent a good segment of the last part of the war. The villagers recognize him, abuse him and chase him out of town. Rattled, he seeks out the farmhouse and family where he was stationed just outside of the village. They are astonished to see him, and the atmosphere, already blunted from the emotional depredations of war, gets immediately and naturally spiky. Behind the action, and quickly revealed, is the crime - he ordered the death of the eldest son of the family, by hanging, in the yard, for resistance activity. Then follows a period of uncertainty about why he's there, and, extraordinarily, a slow defrosting. In a way which slips by real believability, though I guess it's theoretically tenable among rural people who lived by ground-level ethics when it came to marriage, he makes clear that he's come to marry the younger daughter of the family. The odd mixture of expressed hate and allowed intrusion settles unevenly. A time of back and forth over the possibility of his marrying the elder daughter, a set of conversations about what he did, and the varying reactions in the family to Jean, the son who was executed, from adoration to irritation with his radicalism, make for uncomfortable reading. Danielle, the younger daughter, comes round to the idea, seemingly thinking that her options are limited, and it's a job she needs to get done. But at the marriage feast, some villagers and the one member of the family who's never come around, brother Blaise, fall in around the officer and cause him to fall into their midst while dancing. Then they kick him to death. I think the idea with this one was a jagged atmosphere of mixed response, danger at every turn, even when things might have been improving. As it is, it's impressive if psychologically unsure. Cake is set during the war in country France, at a nursing home. An American, who has stayed beyond the invasion both to continue his research into an early playwright, and because there wasn't a lot at home to draw him back, soon realises that things are going to get very tight. He makes various alliances among the resistance, existing on its outskirts. Eventually he needs protecting, and they have found a way, through the assistance of the doctor who runs the home, to have him (and others) placed there as a resident. Then follows a period of worsening circumstances as food gets scarce, and a little black comedy as the residents' opinions come into contest - suspicions of stealing, of moral turpitude, and, more seriously, diffidence toward unmentioned Jewishness, reflect the world outside and its grim preoccupations. Our American falls for a young Jewish woman who has lost the rest of her family to 'transport'. Just after their relationship is consummated, the Gestapo arrive. The young woman is dragged away with them, and his world collapses. He returns after the war, and discovers that one of the residents has remained there, a woman he called The Owl, who was comically over the top about her social superiority and looked askance at many others as being below par. Reminded of the period by her silly talk, and a gift she gives him of an inkstand-prop from a play they all acted, he is overcome and runs. Again, this one has many fine ingredients, but feels uncertain and uneven in its slightly too consciously poetic writing. Sweet Mars drafts a close relationship between two public schoolboys and how it came to mature in the war. Duncan Reeve and Gerald Maune develop a typical schoolboy alliance, which is intensified when Gerald gets a girl pregnant right near the end of their tenure, and Duncan promises (he is much more worldly and practical) to get it sorted. Gerald never sees the girl again, and is assured by Duncan that she just wanted his money, and wasn't really pregnant at all, and scarpered when confronted. Then they grow into full adulthood, and the war comes to each separately. They have some hellish experiences and Gerald, being the more sensitive of the two, suffers a lot for his, hearing the initial screams and then unhuman noises of men who were trapped in a tank in the desert while it burnt, in nightmares long after. Well after the war, Duncan returns from the States and a failed marriage to find Gerald married a little unhappily. They form a group called the Desert Fathers with others of their North African experience and meet once a month to drink and reminisce. But one night, memories clearly playing heavily upon him, Gerald disgraces himself by harping on the theme in an impromptu speech, which goes on a long time. It is clear he needs help. Without telling Duncan, because he knows he'll disapprove, he begins to see a psychiatrist. When Duncan finds out he is profoundly troubled. One, because his ex-wife and her friends in the States had been devotees in a way which excluded him, and anyway felt unhealthy to his British sensibility, the prevalence of Jews in the profession not helping, given his prejudices, but also because it feels like Gerald is slipping away from him into the dominion of another, though this is barely acknowledged in his mind. He berates Gerald and says the doctor is most likely a fraud, as so many of them are, to his mind. To prove it, he asks Gerald to present him with fake dreams (which he will write for him) and see if the doctor can spot them. Gerald agrees with reluctance, in a lowered state. We then get a somewhat stream-of-consciousness section from the doctor's point of view - he does indeed recognize the falseness of the scenarios, and has interesting insights into Gerald's psyche and his possible homosexual fascination for Duncan from way back. Also compassed is a small week of complete happiness Gerald has felt in Cairo during the war with Jan, a Polish soldier, where their companionship did not reach sexuality, but did include sleeping together and great mutual affection, about which Gerald has told no-one, holding it as a sacred memory, not to be touched with other hands. We then see in flashback that Gerald has regretted submitting the fake dreams to the doctor, and has headed to Poland to search for Jan. He finds him, and Jan has moved on, the memory being nothing like of the same importance to him. Gerald, feeling that finally the last reasons for remaining alive have been broken, with Duncan prejudicially enjoining him to lie, and Jan not comprehending any specialness of feeling, can settle quickly and quietly to suicide. He writes the letter to the doctor explaining what has happened by which we learn of these events, makes a short friendship with a lonely and wizened student girl in Cracow for a day seeing the sights, and goes home to his hotel room to end things. The maturity in this piece compared to the others is marked. It has a sense of cleared power, Steiner's capability in recognizing balance so as not to overplay psychology or style being much more subtly poised. This full-flavoured piece fully answers the questions that might have been raised as to whether this monumental critic could write in the field he investigated. 

Youth by JM Coetzee (2002)

 The thing that strikes me about this, like the first volume of the trilogy, Boyhood, is the blankness of some parts of the narrator's personality. I say 'narrator', just to acknowledge the fact that a narrative has been created here, we're not in some world of immediate reportage in-the-real. I think many of us have that friend we can think of who seems to exhibit a kind of carefulness and hesitancy, a lack of spontaneity and love of cautious order, who holds back and seems inhibited, to the point of slightly unresponsive blankness. I think Coetzee in these times may well have been one of these people. Alongside this impassivity, he is enormously well-armed with information. The level of detail here about his life in London in the early 60s indicates that he had a penchant for diary-writing and the retention of correspondence. That has had one good result, if my supposition about this is correct - he has had such access to who he was in that time that he has been able, at least in part, to send himself up a little. At least I hope that's what he's doing. There is the faintest sense, deep in the weave, of the fact that, while representing as exactly as he can the workings of his youthful mind, and making sure that they add up to a 'complete' picture (albeit hamstrung by personality) which does not comment on the action from posterity's haughty hindsight, he is also smiling slightly at how obsessed or self-defeating he was, however quietly. He is making sure we know which subjects were important to this guy, and raising an important point in the process: this is an autobiography without that hindsight, meant as a record from exclusively within its times, not benefiting from the wisdom that came later. This is an interesting experiment; fundamentally, I don't know how successful it can be, mainly because he is looking back from a much later standpoint, and even if he's scrupulous about retaining the contemporaneous perspective, it seems likely that the now of the writing will impinge in some fashion, perhaps with regard to choice of matter, perhaps having reference to some wider view of what this book was 'designed' in the less conscious sense to achieve. Coetzee here is a mildly interesting fellow, with a young man's love of poetry, and quests into sex, love and the writing art. A man very much like so many, self included, that I suppose it can function as an everyman-portrait. But the straining after art is still at this point quite ordinary. I'll be interested to read (in the next volume?) of the time when things began to change up. Not bowled over by this at all, but just patiently interested.

Commonplace Book

 '"No. I often felt like that in America. They've had a war. But it's theirs. Not like ours at all."

Gerald's voice thickened. "That's exactly it, chum. And if everyone is going to act as if it hadn't happened, as if we'd dreamt it up on a bad stomach, I'm going to start believing them. But it's a lie. A lot of spivs who don't know what it was like and don't have any use for us." His arm was on Reeve's shoulder: "Mustn't let the buggers steal a man's shadow...."'

from Sweet Mars (Chapter 3), a piece in Anno Domini by George Steiner

The Book of Months by EF Benson (1903)

 This one is well-known as a contributor to the story of Benson as a bad author. My interest lies in how accurate that story is. It's certainly a mixed affair. This purports to be a record of a recent year in Benson's life, presented in twelve essays, one for each month. These have a personal-philosophical musing quality, where the author recounts experiences which challenge him, or contrastingly confirm his beliefs. The early part of the year conforms to this prospectus; but when, during the summer months, he is taken up by recent memories of the love of a woman, her marriage to one of his closest friends, that friend's death in the Boer War, and her subsequent death in childbirth, the focus narrows greatly. And then as the year closes he meets a relative of hers who looks a lot like her, and love comes to him again, this time returned. December figures its bliss. By modern standards, this last piece is mawkish indeed, though that criticism is too easy to dash off. Of course, the elephant in the room is the now-current story of Benson's homosexuality. My exposure to this in any detail came from a reading, long ago, of Brian Masters' biography. I only remember it vaguely, but there was a suggestion of the fact that it was a tendency upon which Benson never acted, regarding the sexual act as "beastly". I wonder whether his sexual history was quite complicated, with internal conflict seething - he was still a young man when he wrote this. And all this fed through a classicist mindscape, whereby war raged in the image of the chaste love of beauty at odds with its potential physical results. And of course the times and Benson's upper middle class milieu of boarding schools and single-sex education, and what no doubt that will have exposed him to, even further snarling the picture. What the literary world needs, dare I say it (!), is a proper psychological study of Benson. The style and content here is the other issue, and I can see why first-past-the-post types have seen this very simply as a bad book, typifying the weaknesses inherent in the author. I think it's a bit more complicated than that. It does have a somewhat self-satisfied air, where he breezily dismisses subtle explanations, and opts for homespun moralities. At other times, though, he begins to push at the envelope a little, and sees himself as much less certain, and subject to bad impulses. It is carefully kept anodyne, in the spirit of his age, where decorousness is vital. What's interesting is examining the account-book of this piece in the light of its times and the personality of its author - given when it was written, and by whom, how much is that envelope pushed? How self-critical is it? And the conclusion one can come to is 'a little'. It's not the atrocious book some claim it to be, but neither is it markedly revealing. It's a cautious book, which, by its own faulty internal compass, claims much more challenging territory than it discovers. 

Commonplace Book

 "...Love is asking. All the time. For more than anyone ever dreamt of giving."

from Return No More, a piece in Anno Domini by George Steiner

Commonplace Book

 "...The poor souls whom the Will of God caused to be made - have they not a right to resent their birth, if they are born to pain only and hopeless struggling? And if for a while they forget the evil plight into which they by no fault of theirs have been born, by tasting pleasures which a code - to them merely arbitrary - has labelled sinful, by what justice shall they be punished? Human justice at least would be less merciless. Is it just to make a frail thing like a man, place him in the midst of temptation, and then punish him because he falls? Supposing I buy a doll at a toy shop, and place it insecurely on the edge of a table and it falls off, is it just that I should then whip it?..."

from October, a piece in The Book of Months by EF Benson

Race Rock by Peter Matthiessen (1954)

 As a bookseller, I had become used to the idea of Peter Matthiessen as a writer, apparently, of stirring books on nature, with an ecological bent, it seemed. Thus it was a surprise to discover that the beginning of his career was so far back, and in fiction. And, wow, is this a novel of the fifties. The major takeaway for me is its quality of being a potential vehicle for a hothouse film, typical sultriness of the period. If Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra, Mercedes McCambridge and James Dean were not considered for roles in a film of this, I'd be surprised. It sits well in the wake of From Here to Eternity and Edna Ferber, right through to Hemingway and the like. It is the story of four young people who grew up in a wealthy coastal corner of New England, their parents and those who served on their estates. There are the tropes of shooting, both in parties and alone, family secrets, some agitation over class. Kids who have bad starts are 'taken over' by other families, and resentments are stricken up by some of the kids lording it, others being destructive and attention-seeking. Their lives are so circumscribed that the ripples caused by these 'small' things carry on undulating through into adulthood as remembered slights, avatars for judgements of behaviour, and mature into conflict. Then comes the war, and their ways separate. They all grow up into the postwar world, and have lost something in the process, becoming world-weary and dislocated. There are three main male characters: George McConville, very controlled wealthy son of the big house on the point, but still a little childlike in some ways; Sam Rubicam, adopted into the McConville clan, weedier, but clever, and always a little more witty and caustic; and Cady Shipman, tough and spiky illegitimate son of a poorer family, who knocked around with George and Sam, who is dangerous even when young, showing signs of psychological cruelty, and who butts heads with Sam continuously. The only major female character is Eve Murray, daughter of another established family, who tomboys around with the older boys when young, and then, as she grows older, has relationships with both George and Sam, even a first kiss with Cady. Her marriage to Sam is unsuccessful, and she and George are, in the contemporary world of the novel, trying to see if they can return to their former love, and make something work. All of the stories of what happened in their childhoods together are looked back upon from this stage, and occupy large parts of the novel. Everything comes to a head in a short period in New York, followed by a weekend in the old stomping ground. Eve thinks she's pregnant to George. George is freaked out by this, and runs back 'home' after a wild night drinking with Sam. Sam, having got steaming drunk with George without knowing why George is nervous and depressed, is dealing with the outflow of his failed marriage to Eve, and a general sense of meaninglessness and despair, though he is quite happy for George and Eve to give things a try. Back at Shipman's Crossing, George and Sam meet Cady, and the usual fireworks between them all explode, except that they're a bit older, a bit more tired, their personal philosophies presumably altered by their war experiences. A crisis is reached, where Cady yet again bests Sam, in a game of Russian roulette which turns out not to be through a trick, who leaves a note saying that he's had enough and is heading out to drown himself. George finds this, but then sees Sam return (the trope of his unsuccess is unremitting) and stumble off into the woods in the direction of the town. George, for a reason best known to himself, allows a Native American, Daniel, who looks after the house, and who has a peculiar and wary half-friend, half-servant relationship with them all, to find the note without enlightening him to the fact that Sam has survived. Daniel, panic-stricken, sets out to try to save Sam, and drowns himself in the attempt. Eve then turns up at the end of this 'boys' weekend', thinking that she'll end it with George, who has seemed childish and disengaged, but finds herself in a bind, torn between her new strong feeling of needing to leave all this history behind for fresh pastures, and a nagging care for George. The fact that the last part of the book is all about Eve and George's relationship, and leaves behind Daniel dead and his girlfriend traumatised, is notable in a negative way. Finally, Eve and George reach an exhausted sense of amity in a downbeat roadside motel on the way back to New York, having given each other hell. Thus the novel ends as it begins, in an atmosphere of storm, with the steel-grey colouring and sense of buffet which shades it throughout. The writing is often quite quietly impressive, though there is a sense of the psychology not being fully followed through - the reader would like to know more about why they're all so weary and alienated. Also intriguing is the question of how much of this, like many a first novel, is autobiographical - was Matthiessen's youth anything like this? Daniel's demise being made somehow secondary is a key issue, not fully addressed, as is Sam's nickname from childhood of Sam Sissypants - there's just a feeling that there may be something more there that Matthiessen either didn't feel he could investigate, or just didn't want to. It feels like unexplored territory, possibly meaningful in its original autobiographic space and not translated into the fiction here, assuming this story had that genesis. A career beginning which is very much of its time, seemingly well-exceeded later, but still striking.

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (1887)

 This is an interesting one. It's my third major Hardy, after The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I've also read some of the poetry, and a few short pieces. And there is a difference to report, and I wonder if it's the reason why this novel doesn't have quite the same cachet as those two mentioned. It was important to the author, mind. He apparently stated, while preparing the Wessex edition not long before the First World War, that it was the one of which he was most fond, though he qualified that with "as a story". Not sure what he meant - the plot? Or this novel seen through the simple lens of entertainment? Or a sense of completeness in the structure? Anyway...... The thing I feel the need to report is a sense of by-numbers-ness. It feels like a deeply pre-determined plot, ticking away, with little chimes at key points numbering off the staging posts. And perspective can be gained by imagining the process of adaptation for film as you read. Having the screen in mind as a big conversation or event comes up, and considering what impact each one would have as written. Too often this droops a little: talk is somewhat stilted, psychology a bit too unfounded, plot a shade too convenient. The ultimate feeling is of a work which hasn't the blazing passion of those others. Now, there are of course significant compensations - times when his writing takes flight and has the signature of complete statement, in the way that is familiar and typifying. The locale, always so important in Hardy, is a delight, resplendent with green-shaded lanes, paths through dense woods, clearings where the forest-economy is practised, from bark-stripping to cider-making, valleys pelted with orchard trees, and two local tiny villages tucked into the milieu. The identifying trope of all this aspect is an unusual one - the drip-zone under and around trees, mentioned many times, where rain or condensation makes its way to the lowest leaves, its final precipitation forming a delineated tract. So, the journey is an alloyed pleasure through these means. The destination is, without giving anything away, a bit neither here nor there, but has a lovely sting with a subsidiary character's lonely vigil in a graveyard. This highlights the slightly hidden tragedy inherent here, and it's a powerful one for all its camouflage under flashier plotlines. The story of unfulfilled lives, which then coils back as you look across what you've read, and see that it applies across the board amongst the major characters. That's not nothing, and proves the worth of this flawed book.

Commonplace Book

 "...There is nothing in the world which, if I got, would make me happy. There are a million things in the world which the desire to get and the hope of getting make me happy. And it is this which a man sets out to seek when he falls in love, which is the best form of happiness devised in the world at large, and, thank God! the commonest. If man or woman knew all of the man or woman each sought, would either be content? On the contrary, the world would be full of spinsters and bachelors...."

from July, a piece in The Book of Months by EF Benson

Commonplace Book

 'Because there is nothing to us. Life was a wasteland between hope and dream, and where it overlapped them lay reality.'

from Race Rock by Peter Matthiessen (Chapter Five)

Jules and Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche (1953)

I've come to this not having seen Truffaut's film, so I'm reacting to the novel as its original self, unflavoured. The thing which most strikes me is that it's a fretwork novel. There is as much clean air as there is content. Strips of text negotiate the plot, give us in short stabs the movement of the piece. And the text is partly highly metaphoric, so the shards we have are curved away in a good few instances from the prosaic. The other parts are very direct and replete with flat statement, making altogether a curious mixture. Looking into Roché's biography brings the knowledge that he was a major player in Dada and the modernist movement - focus starts to come. The story itself is of the bohemian life from Edwardian times to the 1920s. Two young friends, one a Parisian, one seemingly a German (no idea where Truffaut got Jules' Austrianness from, if reports are right) start out on a literary life in Paris. They are womanisers in what would I guess be called the higher-minded sense: it's not just about animal attainment, it's about adventure and discovery, and appreciation of personalities as well as persons. These women all have distinct temperaments, and the power relationships are very minutely discussed in each concatenation; dominations, laxnesses, particular wants coming from either the young friends or the females involved. One odd thing is the mix and match of names and nationalities: Jules, with a name of French origin, is from Germany; Jim, English name, but from France; Odile, French name, from Scandinavia, and so on, right through this piece, and with what seems an intentional obscurity in referring to places of origin, with references to "visiting his country", "returning to her country" and the like. It's almost miasmatic, meant as a blurring, presumably to keep the psychology, rather than 'unnecessary' facts, to the fore. The early part is strangely exhilarating, its bare frets lending a contrary satisfaction. Then Kate arrives on the scene, as the female interlocutor par excellence. She's also German, and a firebrand, dominating the scene from her first entrance. Blonde, full-figured tending to plumpness, northern European in colouring - not a lot like Jeanne Moreau, let's just quietly say. She's fiercely anti-conventional, only interested in the passionate life. She ends up marrying Jules, gets bored with his quieter and more retiring personality. He and Jim have complete openness between them, and a huge amount of intimate give and take, so when Kate decides it's Jim she wants, Jules is happy to acquiesce, because he wants both of them to be happy. Jim is caught up by Kate, and fully enters the raging swirl of her forward thrust. She and Jules divorce with the idea that a child of Jim and Kate will need to have Jim's surname, and won't unless they can marry. An interesting note here of how the conventions of their time waylaid the arcane orchestrations of free spirits. The child doesn't come, as their relationship goes through the powering ups and downs of the usual jealousies, flare-ups, sanctified reunions and desperate reconfigurations that typify all of Kate's mercurial life. It's also a progress, so notions are constantly cumulating about what things mean, in the light of how things are, emotionally and by extension physically. All sorts of other erotic partners are in the mix for both of them, in a way that is about freedom to discover rather than basic carnality, though forms of revenge and retribution have a part to play. They end up parting, and Kate teams up again with Jules, but it's not that simple, loyalties and comforts tending with old jealousies, and remakings and recastings always in the offing.  Finally it gets to an insurmountable stage, with Kate's rage permanently engaged, her insistence on having the last answer coming in a final irretrievable act. The thing that niggles about the whole section with Kate, which is most of this book, is what I would call the hyper-romanticisation of passion. If, as is reported, it's quite autobiographical, and not really fantastically intended, then - wow, these people would be tiresome. So self-involved, and into 'living out loud' in a strongly destructive way. When it comes down to "well, I show how much I love you by killing you", or "I won't let you love anyone else and so I'll kill you", "your life is on the line in my scheme of revenge", the prescription's there for all to see. Is that superpassion of the nature of an eternal verity, as appears to be Roché's formulation here? I can't but think that a lot of partner-killers in our down-home miserable materiality would be delighted that their congealed notions are so seconded in art. So, not just tiresome, but dangerous, in the way of many like tales. But dangerous art can radiate a good defiance - no question about it. I don't think this quite achieves that, is all. More about an unhealthy obsessiveness than a true, good danger.

Commonplace Book

 '...It often happens that in situations of unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable from rodomontade. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth, with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected.'

from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (Chapter 18)

Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene (1969)

 Another first exposure, and one that I'm guessing may be atypical, given what I understand about the general tone of Greene's work. This edition is part of a really clutzy series called Vintage Voyages, put out by the Random Penguin behemoth - bad because what it includes is such a peculiar mixture: from the expected, given the series title, like In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin and Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron, to the ridiculous, like To the Lighthouse and this volume. Seemingly just a repackaging excuse, or someone influential's odd idea being indulged. Anyway, none of that affects the fact that this novel is splendid. It is a comedy of unknowing in the main, or perhaps a comedy of slow dawning. Henry Pullen is a retired mid-century bank manager, having had the usual preoccupations, and led a quiet life. He cultivates dahlias, is single but interested in Miss Keene in a Pymish way. But at his mother's funeral, up pops the aunt he has rarely seen, his mother's only sister, and she acts as disturber of his peace. She reveals that his mother wasn't that at all, rather his stepmother; that his sleepy father had a louche side; that she herself has had a wild life (hints at promiscuity and prostitution, touches in the direction of international criminal intrigue!). He is captivated by her despite himself and is enjoined in small journeys around Europe with her, tasting a bit more of life than he has hitherto - pot-smoking youngsters on trains, meetings with shadowy characters (arms dealers?) in Italian hotel rooms, shepherding suitcases full of money through customs, and smuggling gold ingots too. His aunt Augusta is basically an Edwardian, so all this has an enjoyably unexpected and outrageous feel. Gradually Henry comes 'alive' via her irruption into his world. It's pretty clear early on that she's likely to be his real mother, and interestingly Greene doesn't harp on that waiting discovery - it's treated quite quietly. Toward the end, things get quite hot for Augusta and some of her long-established connections, particularly a WWII-collaborator (with anyone who'll give him a deal, and the money to keep afloat) wheeler-dealer by the name of Visconti, with whom she has been in and out of love for a good part of her life, and lost touch with for periods of time, but is well in with again now. She finally calls Henry to Paraguay, where the local dictator has created a system which will afford them reasonable protection, and various threads come to a head. Henry decides to finally leave his corner of London and the possibility of Miss Keene, to embrace the excitements of life with his aunt, ultimately realised and accepted as his mother in the last chapter. The understatement in this is delicious, the implied working away with great effect. I wonder what his converted Catholic compatriot, Evelyn Waugh, would have made of it had he still been alive? Nancy Mitford too? Perhaps her response is recorded somewhere. I can't but believe they'd have relished its impropriety. As do I.

Commonplace Book

 'But to this distinctive expression which his face had taken - stamped there by lonely contemplation, by unutterable longings, by helpless chafing, by many fits of mental agony, by hope fallen sick and spiritless, by such things which do really and truly of this life make a hell without participation of conscience, as there are sufferers to swear - was super-added at this time, as he walked through busy thoroughfares, a painful anxiety so acute as to fix upon his heart the shadow of physical torment.'

from Auld Lang Syne by W. Clark Russell (Volume II, Chapter XII)

Commonplace Book

 '...her eyes bulged like a pekinese dog's, but they were pretty nonetheless. They had in them what used to be called by my generation a sexy look, but this might have been caused by short sight or constipation.'

from Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene (Chapter 11)

Commonplace Book

 'Night is the bitterest time for sorrow. Something there always is in the day ― in the activity of cloudy sunshine, or the waving of trees, or the going to and fro of men and women, and the sound of their voices ― to pluck grief as it were by the sleeve, and compel it from fixed contemplation. But the stillness of night gives subtlety to thought, and quickens the madness which despair truly is....'

from Auld Lang Syne by W. Clark Russell (Volume II, Chapter IV)

Commonplace Book

 '...A diaryㅡeven a cruelly honest diary一is a kind of home-made lover. In the pretender's diary, though he may not be justified, he is always forgiven; though he may not be admirable, he is always visible. His diary cedes to him the right to reign unchallenged in his corner. His corner has a sufficient population―a population of One. That One may be admittedly a poor thing, but at least it is undespised一a real thing, withdrawn from a crowd of ghosts. The ghosts that pass the diarist's corner cannot shake his courage; he looks at them, but they cannot look at him; he is revenged upon smilers behind the hand, upon the cruel queer crowds outside; his accusers are gagged at last.'

from Sitting in Corners, a piece in Worlds within Worlds by Stella Benson

Commonplace Book

 '...Was religion, she wondered, given to us that we might always carry grave faces, always be quoting Holy Writ, always rebuking mirth; that we should have no forgiveness for sin, and no mercy for error which is not sin, and no tenderness for the child that had stepped out of the hard dry road of life to pluck one of the few flowers that bloom on the way-side, but must not be gathered without our leave?..'

from Auld Lang Syne by W. Clark Russell (Volume II, Chapter III)

Boyhood by JM Coetzee (1997)

 This is my first Coetzee. I know very little about the arc of his career, aside from the prizes. The first impression is of starkness, a boniness and pared-downness. But not poetry so much, though the prose sings very quietly. The feeling is that anything which was pronounced enough to be labelled 'poetic' would be a little distasteful to him. There are two things which seem critical: the depiction of himself here, and the broad fact that autobiography is reconstructed reality, has narrative structure retro-applied. It's the story of himself when young, in the South Africa of the 40s turning to the 50s. There is some talk of race, some of unthinking conservatism, some of the dryness and leachedness one might expect. Those things decorate a tale of his parents' unhappy marriage, of farms versus proto-suburbia, of family skeletons and melancholy, frustration and wondering. And there is the closer-in perspective of the child's world, dominated by school, and growing apprehension of what the adult world that impinges upon childhood might mean. Here is where both critical concerns come into play. He seems to know a great deal about his parents' crushednesses and fallibilities, seems very involved in their world and its story. This has a glimmer of reconstruction to it, and the concomitant purpose of making retro-fitted sense of what went on - would they have been intelligible in this fashion at the time in the way he portrays? Not a problem if not, if the reasons why have needed an adult mind to establish them, but then why portray himself as having agency in it at the time, and its dominance in his young world, as he does? Perhaps the situation was unusual, and he was involved to that extent. The other concern, that of the depiction of himself, is notable. The image that plays in my mind is a bit fanciful: the young Coetzee here has the resonance of a clay idol, a bit of a tiki. It has the glaring quality that goes with these, and the staring-eyed fierceness - anything could happen with this untamed demiurge, it blazes and is convex with urgency. And lacks a kind of softness and vulnerability, like he's seeing himself extra-starkly and finds engaging with the part of himself which is silly, humorous, even dear, as beyond the pale. Is this the Coetzee story, the 'thing' I need to recognize which is most typifying about his work? The potential shibboleth of extreme honesty works strongly here, with his desires, disgusts and cruelty self-mercilessly examined. Well, who ever knows how much of an autobiography is truthfully flagellatory, as against management for effect?

Tales about Temperaments by John Oliver Hobbes (1902)

 This one includes three long stories and two short plays. They originate mainly from the earlier part of her career in the 1890s. They all have the slight delusion playing in them which a regular Hobbes reader begins to identify early on. This is that her work seems at first glance hopelessly light, a frippery of aesthetic-era dandified talk. Then the subsequent realisation starts to get a little play, as the reader records the fact that tucked into these feathery sentences there is more solid material - there are tinctures and jags in Hobbes which lend the prose a sense of greater directness and sounding. In this instance, however, with that said, the airiness has a tendency to win out a bit more than usual. The overall effect is a little too sheer, let's say. The Worm that God Prepared details an illicit love, and a case of mistaken identity which leads to a stabbing, in a very sudden final change of tone whose unexpectedness is jolting, though effective. 'Tis an Ill Flight Without Wings tells of a dilettante's imagined sole serious love twisting on a simple crux which then falls to pieces as she is revealed to be engaged when finally discovered. Prince Toto was written for the author's son, and involves a bored, never-satisfied fairy prince who needs to be cured by a beautiful neighbouring fairy princess by her becoming extremely ugly through the offices of a witch - all ends well, of course. The first play, A Repentance, is set in the period of contest in Spain between the Carlists and the Christinists, and records the return of a presumed dead count to his countess, in disguise as a friar. He has swapped sides, while she has remained loyal to his old ideas, and thought him a martyr. It ends with him sacrificing himself in capture. The second play, Journeys End in Lovers Meeting (not sure about missing possessives, if there indeed are any), is about two married lovers who struggle through their recent history in a battling conversation while her visitor-who-would-like-to-be-a-lover hides in the next room. It was written for Ellen Terry and performed by her in two runs. Not a prime Hobbes volume, but not dismissable either.

To Whom She Will by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1955)

 This is her first novel. I have no experience yet of what she achieved later in her career, nothing with which to compare this, intra, only my knowledge of what the literary world was like in the mid 50s, extra. Alongside that, this looks fairly brilliant. It is a familiar-looking tale of naïve New Delhi youngsters caught up romantically in the idea of their love. Their families, true to caste and Indian convention, attempt to control the situation, which is one where he is regarded as too low for her, and she is regarded as not right for him, given that she is independent of spirit and wanting to whisk him off to England to marry. But it quickly becomes evident that neither of them have got down to brass tacks yet: Amrita is absorbed in her small rebellion, which flavours her attitude, and Hari is captivated by the idea of love, to the point of tears and the shadow side of deep emotions, but is more profoundly, but unawarely, connected to the idea of pleasing people and being comfortable. Their delusions remain unchallenged through most of the length of this book, coming into play gradually as the narrative develops. Mothers, sisters, aunts, and occasionally their menfolk, provide an exclamatory chorus of splendid stripe, tics clashing and assumptions raging, many of them to do with class and jealousy. For me it is here where Jhabvala's skill comes into full focus. Her slow unfolding, flavoured with generous doses of satire, and compensating tension, is magnificently controlled. She also dedicates herself to setting out what would have been seen then to be the intimate colours of Indian life, small detail which lends tang. The fact that she has applied these Austenish satiric flavours to an Indian subject with so much precise elan is what gives this a sense of delight. It's assured, and its confidence satisfies. But of course there's an elephant in this room: Jhabvala was of that surname by marriage. She was born in Germany to Jewish parents and (needfully) emigrated to Britain in 1939. So I am imagining that she would be touted in some circles as inauthentic, and very possibly a cultural appropriator. She must have seen a lot through living there and being married to an Indian, which experience, so closely lived, must give some sort of imprimatur. But that experience was not very old when this book was published. I can only say that the wry humour in this, which is both forgiving (broad warmth) and coldly telling (no quarter to errant conceits) is gratifyingly suave and cool-headed. 

Commonplace Book

 '"These men are so soft-headed," she reflected. "When people with money thief and build big house with the money nobody can touch them; but when poor people thief a pound of beef people throw their hands in the air and shout for he to go to prison."'

from A Man Come Home by Roy Heath (Chapter 18)

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar (2019)

 This is a meditative book, of a time when the author was between another book and this one, and took some time out after an incredibly confronting period trying to discover what had happened to his dissident father in the Libya of Qaddafi. It was apparently a fruitless search, and must have been a horrifying and dislocating time. I haven't read the book which covers it, and perhaps should. Because this one feels very thin, and in places mistaken, and I'm sure that it doesn't show the author at his best. 'Holiday' pieces can be very re-fecundating for an author, and as well enriching for the reader - here is our premise. He has had a long-term fascination for the city of Siena, and the special expression in artistic terms to which it lends its name. So it is with a feeling of the possibility of healing that he decides finally to go to Siena and experience it for real. And to sit in front of some of the key works of the Sienese school in the galleries of the city. He says that he has done this before, where these works are owned in other galleries around the world, whenever he can get the opportunity. And he says what turns out to be an odd thing: that he sits in front of them for inordinate amounts of time, coming back day after day and contemplating stilly for hours. The part of this book that feels as though it's at its best is where he wanders Siena, and allows it to sink into his consciousness, meets a few people, starts a course to learn Italian properly, rather than family-inherited Italian-colonial Libyan usage. The specialness of the city comes out, seems to come naturally. Walks in lots of directions, eventually finding the walls, and the strict demarcation with the surrounding countryside. A cemetery, which brings up thoughts that link back to his father, and a visit to fellow Muslims of a welcoming family. This material is coolly brought out, and finds its mark, the gong of recognition sounding, if fairly mutedly. But the other main strain of this book is the analysis of the art, and here we meet trouble. The issue is with accuracy - exactly how supportable do one's assertions about what an artwork means have to be? Is it a matter of 'this is what it means to me' and that's it? If, in so doing, you assert that something looks like something, gives an impression of something, do you need to be able to show what in the artwork achieves that? I'd guess there are a few modes of thought about this, including one which says that anyone contesting in the way I am is requiring exactitude where it can't be. And a slightly more relaxed opposition, Neil-voiced and hippie-ish, consisting of objections of 'bringing imaginative freedom down'. The first concerns come in early on, when he talks about various characters in Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good Government, and what their facial expressions mean. When most of these have, very much in the style of their times, extremely similar and not especially lively facial expressions, because their purpose sat at a long distance from that aim, this raises a qualm, which then reverberates as he looks at other works. But the apogee of invention comes with a discussion near the end of the book of another Lorenzetti (it's by no means reserved for this painter), Madonna del latte. He calls it outrageous and unsettling - those are not the first words which come to mind, to put it mildly. Her face is quite impassive - he calls it cunning and questioning. He calls her roped veil restricting and therefore tension-creating - it's just coiled to keep its end out of the way. A hand cradling the child's buttock is firmly splayed to support the weight of the child - he calls it doubtful. The artist's representation of the (this time) evenly splayed fingers of the other hand cradling the child are likened to the bars of an iron cage. The picturing of the boy's eyebrow is called sardonic, when it is simply curved. The child's ear being half hidden by the surrounding blanket becomes an invitation to think about certain things being hidden from the child by the mother. We are asked to think about the child "wondering what it is exactly that he is earning from us: admiration or envy" - a question which pretty well could not come up without the extraordinary coinage of the author's 'exposition'. This suppositiousness leads to the following astounding sentence: "Like any child caught in public with his mother, he is concerned about his image". Something needs outlining here - that it isn't just "this is what it means to me" and that's it. If claims are made about an artwork, they need at least to have a sense of viability, and particularly not to lead to further inaccurate thinking on the part of others, if they are made public. Think what you like privately, in response to the vagaries of your own inner world - Madonna del latte is actually about flying elephants, and the extraordinary pink-and-yellow-stripedness of the sea, if you want, just for you. But, in the meantime, in the real world, the real painting is there on a wall, not being that, to all extents and purposes. Recognizing this is not a restriction - it's a means to a freedom. And the more subtle and viable your responses, if you are sensitive and write about them, the more they may help to illuminate the work for others. It is this claim of sensitivity which ultimately disturbs me most: he sits in front of these paintings for hours. Is it that he needs to, because analysing these pieces is hard work for him? They don't come naturally? Or is it that he is unusually sensitive, to the extent that he looks "too much", and begins to enthusiastically invent things that aren't there? You would wish him wariness, and self-examining moderation, if so. And if the former, you would want him to give it up as a bad job - it's not his forte.

Sonia Married by Stephen McKenna (1919)

 The thing I want to note about reading McKenna this time is what it feels like. He's a relatively conservative author, writes what would be considered standard narratives, and that of course is conservative and standard for, in this instance, a full century ago. But there is unmistakable uplift in reading him; a feeling of basedness, steadiness and polish which sits well, and somehow nourishes. He has dealt, in all of his work thus far, with the exigencies of the lives of well-heeled people, but in a relatively non-romantic way: the beauties in their environment are incidental; his key concerns are political and in the wrangle of their contested and nagged relationships. There is a feeling of modern guilt in liking these books. But then another instinct kicks in, and tells the reader that the deep-seated feeling of pleasure in reading them is not nothing - he's doing something very well, that is registering, and to be celebrated. This one concerns, as is evident from the title, the next part of the life of Sonia Dainton after that depicted in the wildly successful, eponymous 1918 novel. Her ornery nature means that her marriage to David O'Rane soon descends from its initial heights to mistrust, misunderstanding and potential dissolution on both their parts. She thinks he's carrying on with a secretary, he thinks she's unfair to think so because he isn't, and of course he wouldn't. She jumps off from what she sees as his disloyalty to flirtation and the possibility of an affair of her own. Their relations sour almost completely. Friends try to step in, or, not daring, watch from the sidelines as what they had seems to go down the pan. This one is told from the point of view of a background character in the previous novel, Jim Stornaway. He and one of the leads of Sonia, George Oakleigh, as well as George's bluff father Bertrand, are often depicted waiting in sitting rooms, in libraries, at clubs, and so on, discussing what David and Sonia might do next in the escapade which is this contest of wills. It gets dangerous as Sonia inveigles a bloodish type, Vincent Grayle, into an affair, leaves David, disappears in her usual elusive fashion for a good few months, and is finally discovered as a driver for a general, having found that outlet available as part of the war effort. Almost all of the main male characters apart from David are members of parliament, so there is a good amount of talk, some of it quite revealing of how the period was in its more minute aspect, of the progress of the war, the political machinations which surrounded it, and the ups and downs of how it was seen from an insider perspective. Many of these quotidian elements, which say so much, are now way out of common historical understanding of the period, and thus hugely valuable. It turns out that Sonia is pregnant, and has split up with Grayle violently and finally. She tries to remain aloof from a world she no longer quite trusts, but ends up back in their old home on Millbank as her confinement comes close, deeply conflicted about this child which will remind her of an affair she now regrets, and not at all sure she wants to make up with David in the long run. It ends with the child, a boy, born, some hope of Sonia and David making it up, but, by now, the full knowledge that their natures will probably make whatever comes next the usual bumpy ride. McKenna is not responding to the modernism inherent in his times (yet, anyway) and is limited in the scope of his characters socially, and by their attitudes, which were presumably his. But, of his small slipstream, he's a fine exponent.

Commonplace Book

 '...The openness seemed strange and marvellous. In these few days since my arrival Siena had already succeeded in making my eyes unaccustomed to the horizon. I suddenly felt I understood, and could see from Siena's point of view, that infinity is a claustrophobic prospect, that it is perfectly appropriate, given the chaotic nature of life, to cordon off an area in which to interpret ourselves, where one can decide what is important, what is to be privileged and what to be left out, determine the axes of the main thoroughfares and the arrangement of streets between them...'

from a section called The Bench, in A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar