The Score by Lucas Malet (1909)

 This is two short novels entitled Miserere Nobis and The Courage of her Convictions. They are quite disparate, aside from one aspect, that of concentration of time. Both take place over a very defined short period, where a great situation, requiring facing of the truth, is confronted. Miserere Nobis recounts the period of the dying of a soldier in an convent-infirmary in Italy. He lapses in and out of clarity whilst making his last confession to a priest. The power of the confession arises from the fact that he has been led into wickedness by his stepfather. This inwardly bitter but outwardly suave man convinces him of the wrong done by and to his dead mother. His father is the culprit in this man's twisted mind; he uses his extraordinary power of influence to lead his stepson to hatred. The stepson has benefitted enormously from the admiration and patronage of a mystery lordly benefactor who sees his prowess at a fencing school. It slowly dawns that the man could be his father and he first begins to question the story his stepfather has always promulgated. He goes through uncertainty but remains under the spell of his stepfather's charm. Stressed and burdened after another interview with his manipulative second parent, he steals into his father's house and, almost deranged, plunges a knife into his heart to avenge his mother for the abandonment she suffered at his hands. Only after his father is dead does he understand that he actually loved his mother, and that, though his father wasn't perfect, his stepfather has orchestrated the whole thing in a simple act of hatred, presumably because he detected that the mother also still loved her deserter, and had seen through the stepfather before her death. This one is marred a little by the sense of lack of basedness in the lead-up to the murder. Though the stepson is growing aware of his stepfather's double-nature and his newly discovered father's redeeming goodness, he still goes ahead with the murder, just because he's 'under baleful influence'. It doesn't quite ring true. The Courage of her Convictions takes the story of Poppy St John, from Malet's previous novel, The Far Horizon, on another step. There are several references to her thoughts about her friendship with Dominic Iglesias, detailed in the prior book, here, seeing it in terms of a benevolent force which influences her actions for the better. With Poppy is Malet's recurring worldly gentleman character, Antony Hammond, from several earlier works, now grown a little portly and middle-aged. They are staying at an elegant hotel in the south coast town of Compton Regis, and working together on rewrites for Hammond's latest play, which the now world-famous St John will bring to the stage, and make her peak starring role. But Poppy has been attracted to a young bull of a political candidate, Lucius Denier, who, having won his contest, races down to the town in his dangerous new motor car to ask Poppy to marry him, feeling that he can finally offer her the life she deserves. Thus ensues a removal from the restaurant of the place to the dense gardens above a chine by the two, with the tide coming in way below, black-purple deep night atmosphere prevailing, and the tufted tips of pine trees just visible ruffling in the wind. On a grass platform with a bench, they go through a soul-searching few hours, coming to terms with his proposal and what it might mean for each of them, he fighting to keep it alive, she wanting badly to agree but knowing in herself that it won't work. She battles with temptation sorely in various scenarios which emerge in their talk. In the end she faces the truth which she wishes wasn't the case, and which Denier can't accept - that she will lose so much status by their union, becoming a politician's wife and despised for brazenness by his wealthy family, as well as the agency in her career which sustains her, and which she would need, for his sake, to give up. She finally forces him away, dog-tired and emotionally drained. Hammond finds her the following morning, shrunken-faced, her usual shine utterly dulled. His will be the task of restoring her to herself, loving her himself a little. These two display Malet's ideas on short pieces clearly - they require foreshortening of time elapse and superintensity of wrangled emotion. Her style is profoundly elegant always, and contrastingly never quite leaves hothouse territory. But here it does feel ever so slightly overheated at times, with its richness the saving element. 

Zami by Audre Lorde (1982)

 This book feels a little 'dressed'. I wish it could have discarded this. The author's often sensuous, direct recording of experience is so striking and affecting. But sometimes she'll launch out from this brilliant space and head off into what I would call grandstanding, where the typical excesses brought about by Beat and associated movements of the mid twentieth century twist and snarl up that freeflow. Of course this would not be seen as snarling, rather as amazing poetic enhancement. Grrrrrrrr. But that part of this book, I can happily relate, is minor. Most of it is sumptuously rich with straightforward colour and feeling. Even when it discusses negative emotions or events, it tastes distinctive and is profuse with energy. It is an autobiography, tracing Lorde's life from first understanding in the 30s to the beginning of the 60s. She deals very honestly with family life in New York in the 30s and 40s, her younger self bewildered sometimes, angry sometimes, coming to terms with what it was to be a black girl in a world which felt strongly inimical, even inside her family unit. The weight of history is something to be thrown off in the case of constrictions from her mother (for example), or just felt, understood and fought in the case of the extra belabouredness of being black at that time. Her throwing off also included the realisation of her lesbianism, and a slow progress toward positive celebration of that fact, and, most importantly, a deep picturing of the delights of women, to her mind. In many ways it's a naked book, the aroused body is close by often, registering. The dressing spoken of at the beginning, for me, undercuts this exceptional plain-spokenness. And it exists even in the second subtitle - why should this be a biomythography? It's quite a simple book for almost all of its length, albeit a beautiful and major simplicity. But, despite these small niggles, it's a corker.

An Abdication by JS Mitchell (1969)

 This forgotten book falls into the remit of the deep pocket of novels coming under the heading of 'Late 60s/Early 70s Experimental', a few of which are still celebrated, most gone like this one, but a very defined period which needs expanding for modern readers. It consists of a series of scenes in the life of a thirteen year old schoolboy: nags at school, socially among the boys, and politically with the temperaments of teachers; nags at home with parents who are perhaps a little distant and disconnected; nags more broadly in the world with angers, small bursts of sexual feeling, fears, cussedness and bewilderment. It displays a coolness, where emotions are seen without positivity or heat or need of warmth - more in the zone of curious encrustations on being. Its form is alphabetized, with each section having a heading, and arranged from "Abdication" on the first page to "Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z" on the last. None seems all that much more important than any other, which emphasizes the random quality of using alphacode as the arrangement. Many have sees and see alsos at the end, meaning that one can choose to jump ahead to another section which is somewhat related, or resist the urge and stay alpha-consecutive. Mitchell sometimes has some fun with these, sending the reader on long goose-chases through the book, back and forth until they end up back where they started. This quality of randomness makes me wonder about the intention. Could this have been another example of the novel-in-sections-in-a-box, the most notable example of which is BS Johnson's The Unfortunates? It would certainly work that way, though I don't feel it suffers from being bound together by Faber in the ordinary mode. In the end, it is enjoyable and quietly plangent, its random and overly even quality being the only (and expected) issue, where there's the feeling of a distinct lack of umbrella of arc. It has arcs - only they're tucked away within the confines of each section.

The Lady Paramount by Henry Harland (1902)

 This is the second iteration of what I call 'Harland 3'. Harland 1 was the pseudonymous works by "Sidney Luska"; Harland 2 was the early works under his own name. Harland 3 had by far the most success, being the most primary-coloured and concentrated. And the most romantic. I identified the previous iteration of this last group (The Cardinal's Snuff-Box) by saying that it had chocolate- or cigar-box brilliance of hue. This one's the same. A scion of the current ruling family of a mythical Adriatic island, which has been incorporated into the new Italy, decides she will seek out her cousin, of the denuded branch, regarded as the 'true' one. He's living the life of a gentleman in England. As with The Cardinal's Snuff-Box, in some senses, the action centres around fond deception, falling in love, the test of the other's genuineness of feeling, above and beyond the call of money and position. It also has the same concerns with the Catholic church. It clips along very brightly, the intensification of focus keeping it clear and essential. Their relationship leaps along with playfulness and some charm, until the inevitable revelation, and the melding back together of the parts of the family into a royal whole. My interest has been piqued as to how Harland suddenly 'got' that he could achieve this far greater clarity and pointedness. My suspicions lie with his wife as a potential co-writer. Aline Merriam appears to have been a sculptor, but she did apparently complete his last novel after he died. Is she the person responsible for the escalation of definition?

Lives of Houses edited by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee (2020)

 This is a themed anthology which suffers from the usual disease - the effort of compiling such disparate material is a tokenistic one. It is meant as a revelation of what houses mean in human lives, and has a very particular bent toward writers. As such, it's a slightly middling affair. The writing itself being the core of these people's lives, any talk of their houses, however influential in glancing ways, feels like an outer layer of a secret we've already penetrated. Outer layers of course retain their interest, though it doesn't feel particularly essential: one's fascination briefly flares (in some cases) and then dies down without much permanent increment. To do the volume justice, a couple of discoveries have stayed with me: the fact that Lear's nonsense wasn't always brilliant, rather drab, is a reality-check - all tikky-wikky and witchy-wee; and that the Disraelis were seen as arrivistes; and the sad story of Yeats' tower, which is the only more lasting memory associated with the subject matter. Like most subject anthologies, this is just OK. 

The Whisperer in Darkness by HP Lovecraft (2007)

 This is the first volume in a paperback reissue of all of Lovecraft's works. I'd been directed toward him many a time over many years, via the interest in him of people I knew. I finally got there, and my responses are mixed. There are nine pieces in this first volume, among them some of his most famous, like The Dunwich Horror, Dagon and At the Mountains of Madness. Initially, with short pieces like Dagon as a first exposure, I was quietly impressed; there seemed a strange place he occupied, full of landscapes empty of obvious life but which harboured it in hidden places. A fascination with archaeological records persisted, showing lost civilisations and the possible influence of vaguely hinted at others, either of a previously unknown prehistoric intelligent species, or visitors from elsewhere, surviving secretly. This was riddled with the author's queasiness at such things, which was elaborately explained. I could also see where the prejudice against him has received its energy, through the hackneyed adage "show, don't tell". There's a lot of telling here. But also a lot of showing, so that relation is an interesting one. As the volume progressed, though, that criticism gathered some weight, I will admit. It foundered in the middle of the volume in his longest piece (at least as far as I am aware) The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which really did chug back and forth in a tiring sargasso sea of blasphemous this, and stench-laden that. It would have been better if those elements had been searing, and capable of raising the ghost of Giger, but they were less horrifying by quite a way, mainly because they were so often referenced as "nameless" or  "incapable of description" or whatever. And the treatment was profoundly repetitive. Surviving behind though was a peculiar atmosphere. The depth and specificity of his imagining of these others and their alien cultures still has great underlying charm. It seems to me that his pulp origins are most betrayed in this element: these stories would be much better not read all together in omnibus volumes, but encountered periodically, at good distances from one another. He seems to me almost the paragon of a little going a long way. So I'll no doubt pick up the second volume at some point, but at the moment I'm Lovecrafted out.

After the Rain by John Bowen (1958)

 This one confirms some conclusions about Bowen that I had come to after reading his first from two years earlier. He's a great ideas-man, but shows a few faultlines in terms of execution. That earlier one had transplanted a historical situation of the 1700s into 1950s Scotland, and if the melding was a little awkward, well, the result was fascinating. This one posits the end of the current world in flood, has a group of survivors aboard a raft who are fairly typical middle-class English types of the time, has a little fun with that, but awkwardly. It has the feel of a slightly stiff black and white film starring John Mills, Shirley Eaton and Kenneth More. But it's intriguing all the same. The eight survivors cope broadly well to begin with, but dark patches begin to appear as time goes by. When they are becalmed for an extended period, the sun beating down on their raft and no discernible movement, they start to go a bit doolally. It ends up with their 'leader' Arthur declaring himself a god and withdrawing to the one bedroom aboard. Most of the group fall in with the plan in their sense of exposedness and uncertainty. The parallels with Lord of the Flies and its like are obvious - were Faber, the publishers of both, looking for another Golding? We are clearly expected to come to the conclusion that Arthur has got bored with his divinity when he declares that he's not the god, rather the high priest of the god, and comes out to interact with everyone again - it's a neat sleight. They get moving again finally after several months, encountering strange atmospheres of the sea and movements of its animals. Finally, after a terrifying encounter with a giant squid, Arthur declares that the animal was an incarnation of their god. His jumped-at next step is an "expiation" - revealed only to John, the main character - they will secretly sacrifice the as yet unborn baby of Sonya, one of the group. John believes it to be his child, and is enjoined by Arthur to take part in the coming sacrifice as punishment for his consistent questioning of Arthur's status. John spills the plan out on the deck to the bodybuilder Tony, who is a simple working class man who's kept out of most of the middle-class delusional shenanigans, as they are now confirmed to be. His ground-level morality is outraged and he engages Arthur in a fight to both their deaths overboard. The following morning the remainder of the group finally spot an island - as though there had been a pattern of lockedness which the death of Arthur has symbolically broken. The blurb mentions that Angus Wilson had called this "a satire of the first order". I have to say I'm not quite sure that's true. If it does have targets, they feel momentary and isolated, coming in minor cuts. The rest is more directly adventuresome. But it is limpid and bold, if a little silly. Funny combination, which phrase sums up Bowen for me at the moment. 

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym (1953)

 Great to return to Pym again. This one feels like a subtle progression from the previous one in one sense in particular - 'dangerous' characters are a little more foregrounded. Like her first novel (about which I remember little else) the centre of this one is a village in the country. And again like it, it involves people nearby to the church or in it, and their love affairs, tight lives and niggles with one another. But it's no I. Compton-Burnett hell-stoker; the milieu is rounded out instead with incisive wit of a more standard variety. The two titular characters are an older woman from a particular Oxford college who has since married a clergyman, and a younger one of the same college who was tutored by the older and is still on the marriage market. The older, Jane, has moved to the village with her husband as vicar. The younger, Prudence, is in London, working at a small office. Jane and Prudence have kept up their relationship, with Jane feeling almost responsible sometimes for providing Prudence with marriage options. Prudence, meanwhile, has had quite a few relationships, about some of which Jane knows nothing. We work through the process of acclimatization into the village's (and the church's) life and with its characters as it happens to Jane and her husband Nicholas. And we concurrently examine Prudence's life in the office and at her flat in London with similar attention to variances of character at work and her private aims, the main one of these an adoration of her boss which is unrequited. Shot through with humour, this is what can be seen as typical Pym territory, as it veers between gentility and pointedness, warmly familiar pokes and somewhat cooler stabs. The thing which differentiates this a little is, as aforementioned, a livelier attention to characters, two in particular, who don't quite play by the rules. Jane herself is an uncomfortable blurter on occasion, steaming in before she's really thought something through, ruffling feathers with awkward truths. And even more of this stripe is village woman Jessie Morrow - a small, mouse-like, tiny-voiced companion to dragon Miss Doggett, who is splendid and severe. Jessie is the proverbial dark horse, revealed as having steel under her featherbed exterior, as she firmly (and unexpectedly) decides to oust Prudence from the affections of a local lothario - another of Jane's plans for her younger protégé goes astray. These small harshnesses only work in the way they do, I think, because they are couched within such a reassuring frame, though it would be interesting to see what Pym could do with an entirely savage free-for-all. 

Perseus and Andromeda by Richard Le Gallienne (1902)

 This is an odd one for Gallienne in terms of its publishing history. It was published by Robert Howard Russell in New York, and as far as I can tell, never in Britain. Its subtitle is The Story Retold, and Gallienne says in a short preface that he's taken most of it from Ovid with nods to Lucian and Hesiod. It is a relatively standard retelling, weaving together strands from these various sources. One interesting element is his echoing of the terms of Christianity at the beginning in his discussion of the promulgation of the worship of Dionysus: talk of it meeting with opposition, creating many martyrs, and seeing it literally as a "gospel". From there on it takes on the form of a typical quest of ancient myth - there are very few surprises, but enough pleasure. Russell seems to have been a slightly dodgy character, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Gallienne was unhappy with this production - there are a good number of fairly obvious typos, and the illustrations are listed randomly on their contents page, meaning an internet-researched guessing game about which is which. On the other hand it has a lovely cover. A footnote really, but an enjoyable enough one.

The Contradictions by Zulfikar Ghose (1966)

 This was Ghose's first published work of extended fiction. Two years earlier, in Statement Against Corpses, a shared volume with B. S. Johnson, he had published several brilliant short stories. This is a far more unsteady affair. It's the story of a couple, newly married, he for the second time and quite a bit older, and she for the first. It's set in the period immediately after the Second World War, and plays to Ghose's knowledge in the sense that Christopher is a civil servant who is sent to India; he and Sylvia attempt to discover that country together, and hear for the first time of the plan for independence while they are there. In the end, the discoveries Sylvia makes are more about herself and her relationship, though India's rich colours do affect her, as does the jockeying for position among the British 'elite'. Christopher is sent home after an indiscretion is magnified by an unscrupulous career-climber. Their relationship remains the focus in mid-forties England; they experience a drifting apart and a recognition of different aims. Sylvia is a little disappointed by Christopher seemingly dropping the intense connection and intellectual sympathy they once had; instead he worships mammon in the City. She prefers their house, and particularly its garden, in the country. Christopher's health has been revealed to be in question - their sexual life is very curtailed, and he experiences fainting fits: his heart is failing. Sylvia gets pregnant, but loses the baby. This series of lowerings culminates in Christopher's death in London while they are apart, not fully separated, but living independent lives. The psychology is the thing here - the book is intended as a revelation of minds: a portrait of the couple mainly based in the tones of how Sylvia thinks, her inner preoccupations - it has something of the spareness of novels like The Waves. And from that point of view, it's got something - this is the part of it which is most luminous. It has a rarefied atmosphere as a result, though - some of those preoccupations seem a little precious. It seems to have been Ghose's aim to simply be true to their middle class backgrounds - 'intellectual' conversation predominates, artful impressions are struck, the ordinaries of life are almost absent, as is any presence of the just concluded, all-enveloping conflagration of the war - which makes the novel feel like it's listing a bit, could sink. There are also some drops of fidelity in the writing, where banality is approached - dialogue and description feel a little flat and forced and formal. In the end, the brightness and intensity of the psychological picture help it survive, but all the same it's a partial success. Look forward to a more whole, consistent work amongst those that follow.

Tales for Christmas Eve by Rhoda Broughton (1873)

 This is five shorter pieces - a couple classifiable as long stories, and the others novellas, broadly speaking. They also have a thematic connection with one another in that they all bar one have a supernatural bias. Positioned as they are before what signifies this genre with most modern readers, they will appear a little tame to them. The first, The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth is constructed of an exchange of letters between two society women where a new address of one of them is slowly revealed to be haunted - Broughton suffixes this one with one line: "This is a true story". The Man with the Nose is a novella of a young couple travelling in Europe, where the wife is disturbed by the constant popping up of a stranger with a pronounced nose, and an evil feeling about him, even in her dreams. The husband doesn't happen to note him, is disbelieving and leaves her in a hotel to return to Britain on business. She begs him to stay. When he returns, she is gone, never to be found. This one is prefixed with a claim of truth. Behold, it was a Dream! is a novella of a woman's journey to stay with friends, a couple recently married, to see their new home in the country. On her first night with them she has a premonitory dream about them being murdered by a farm worker with a sickle, in a grotesque sea of blood. She is horrified and makes plans to leave, completely unsettled, though the couple laugh it off and beg her to stay. On a journey to see around the farm before she goes she is startled to see a worker in the fields who is the spitting image of the man in her dream, and points him out to the couple. Despite their disbelief of her, after she has left for home, they fire him. She learns subsequently that the gruesome events of her dream have come to pass, as the disgruntled farm worker returns to the house to exact his revenge. This one has anti-Irish commentary which make it a problem. Broughton says in a last paragraph that this story is true in every respect except where it took place. Poor Pretty Bobby is the longest novella, and slightly more subtle. A young woman's sailor sweetheart returns to her in a dream, wet through, and she later discovers that this visitation occurred on the night his ship was wrecked. This is the only piece which doesn't have a claim of underlying truth attached. Under the Cloak tells the story of a wealthy woman and her maid on a train journey in Switzerland. They share a compartment with two gentlemen reading papers. The light is dim and they're not particularly visible behind their broadsheets. One of them finally lowers his paper and offers them an unknown drink from his flask. It becomes clear that it is some sort of drug, as the maid quickly falls asleep, and the woman becomes highly drowsy. She feels them attempting to remove her case of valuables from beneath her feet, and in a highly mixed and dubious state realises that the one who has never lowered his paper is in fact a dummy with fake hands, or someone rigged up in that way, wrapped in a heavy cloak. She eventually falls completely under the drug's effect, and wakes to find the man who revealed himself and her maid gone, but the strangely garbed figure still in his position. Summoning courage, she desperately scrapes at the mask she sees it has, and pulls away all the false paraphernalia, to find underneath her maid bound and gagged. This crime, she discovers later, has been perpetrated by a disaffected former servant of her husband. Again, this is suffixed with a claim of genuineness. Though these are very entertaining, they perhaps don't fully play to Broughton's strengths - in her novels she is able to probe emotion and character in a way that these don't allow. 

A Village Tragedy by Margaret L. Woods (1889)

 The most distinctive thing about this is the voice of the author. Where a lot of female authors of this period conformed to various entrenched stereotypes - the wit, the romantic, and so on - Woods has a more forthright tenor. This story of a young woman 'rescued' by family in Oxfordshire from a grim London tenement after her father dies benefits from the author's unflinching directness. She seems to me to be typifiable as a midpoint between Hardy and Kipling, to use male exemplars (as there are far fewer female ones). More stripped out than Hardy, more fated and rural than Kipling. Annie soon realises that her uncle and aunt are not going to be an easy ride, though on the whole she's still happy. A growing feeling for one of the other workers on the farm, an ex-workhouse boy named Jesse, is what brings the climax. Despite complete innocence of all wrongdoing, she is seen entering his house alone and staying a good while. The proverbial ton of bricks descends. Turfed out, she is alone in the world, and lacking all resources. In the end, with the promise of marriage at some unspecified time, she is persuaded by Jesse to come and live with him. Her indignation at the unfair accusations of misconduct has been emphasized. So it is quite a strange move on Woods' part to silently drop this angle and have her suddenly get pregnant. This hoop jumped, we are party to the difficulties Annie and Jesse face in obtaining information about the legal necessaries for marriage and permission to start the process. But things look up, and the pregnancy continues healthily. Jesse returns on the train from going to buy the ring, and is crossing the line to return home when he is wiped out by an express. From this grim point it is only a matter of time until heartbroken and undermined Annie, having just given birth, and panicking about the baby being sent to the ever-threatening workhouse, wanders away from the house in a drastically weakened state and collapses to her death on the riverbank. There are moments when Woods' strong voice shrieks a little - descriptions of characters which are too jagged or oversimplified. But on the whole this is that dangerous thing, a promising beginning. 

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany (1999)

 Delany is at pains to point out, at certain points in this, that though his stated views could be interpreted as nostalgic, they are not so. What I'm about to say could have the same quality. I feel a great sense of loss in thinking about the social sciences academic world before the Second World War (approximately), from one particular point of view. It is that of language and its correlatives. It seemed a world which had a contribution to make which was discernible by a majority in society; that, though one did have to be relatively intelligent to take on its complexities, they were not unattainable, due to the fact of being couched in standard and lively language, albeit taken to a higher level. Because the decoding (such as it was) was in the way of the capacities of a good number of us, and the concepts likewise, change was possible because readers could be energized - via accessibility. This is a book with two sections, represented by the colours in the title. The beginning is the blue one, which is mainly a recounting of his life as a frequenter of the porn theaters of old Times Square, where gay men like Delany had pleasurable sex, even when the film being shown was a straight one. He decries the loss of this outlet, and initiates a discussion of some of the reasons why the "clean up" (and wholesale re-formation) of Times Square took place, many of which had publicised moral background which was overt, and much more nefarious economic background which remained hidden. He then expands upon this in the red one. This red one is the academic one in a formal sense, though some of its terms have already been introduced with the blue. The blue is quietly entertaining and its heart is in the right place, wanting not to have too much of a conservative-run schema for how people relate; understanding the value of sexuality as a connector between people, including people of differing backgrounds, and how that feeds into understandings that underpin democracy. So far so good. The red one is meant as an academic through-threading of the concepts begun in the blue, where they are given basis and proper argument. This is where my nostalgia-that-isn't comes in. We end up with sentences like this: "Like all social practices they make/generate/create/sediment discourses, even as discourses create, individuate, and inform with value the material and social objects that facilitate and form the institutions that both support and contour these practices". I'm not saying this is unintelligible at all - it can be decoded. I think I am saying it's decidedly unoptimal communication if you're looking for change. No-one's going to be thrilled and inspired. It is this that I decry about postwar academia - the dead language and its resulting lack of effect. There is also I think an inescapable conclusion which can be reached looking at this type of talk: we are witnessing a postwar voguing-club. Any given academic's capabilities in wielding this kind of language is what gets them status in the club. I guess I want academia to be part of us all again, rather than this exclusivized and possibly over-egotistic territory, because we see the value of not only expressing things in plain language, but of conceptualizing them that way too. After all, there's nothing inherent in this subject which requires this language or conceptualization, so why is it being employed? In other circumstances this kind of unnecessary obfuscation would be highly suspect, a red warning light would go on in our heads - what are they trying to hide? I'd better say this to be fair - I don't think Delany's trying to hide anything. He's just an exemplar of current academic malaise. He's very possibly just had to play "the game", as it is so often now typified in academic circles. And this typification and state of affairs has been building for over half a century. Some of its originators appear to be people whom Delany admires: Lacan, Foucault, Barthes and so on, where perhaps the motivating factor for obscurantism was quite cloudy and trickster-like, almost the wish to perpetrate a joke. If Delany has toed the line because he wanted to get on, we can hardly blame him - we've all done it at one point or another in our lives. And those things can become habitual and ingrained. He does give the impression that he's still thinking quite independently and with reforming fervour, if one pays attention, which is heartening. But I'd like to see the goalposts shifted on this one, so that he doesn't 'need' to depower and befog, and can convince.

Commonplace Book

 "The gateway opening on the lane had once been filled with fine ironwork, but now a common wooden field gate leaned between the square stone piers. This broken-down gate and the dirty cattle-track it crossed seemed like a coarse satire on the two battered but dignified stone monsters which flanked it, each on his secular perch; each looking out over the country below with an air of haughty dominion, unconscious that the shield he superintended had been removed, and that he had absolutely nothing behind him. Ridiculous yet venerable creatures! They had much in common with the small country aristocracy to whom they owed their existence."

from A Village Tragedy by Margaret L. Woods (Chapter II)

The Charollais by Tom Mac Intyre (1969)

 I haven't read Joyce or O'Brien, except in desultory snippets. This is a major lack in my exposure, I acknowledge. My best guess is that this novel owes a debt to them, probably a huge one. But of course it's also very interesting to come at a modern replay without the background, to see how it hits without it. And, boy, does it. The fact that this is now, seemingly, largely forgotten, makes me sad, but perhaps Mac Intyre wouldn't let it be republished for some reason? I can't believe that nobody asked to. One of the obvious claims re J and O is that their language was incredible: a focusing on folk-inflection, myth, religion and cultural sediments quarried in, out, through and under, in a cornucopia of interweave. All of that jetted out in floods. To the level of my understanding, this is the same. Astounding bravura of play of concept matched with language which kiddingly soars. The plot covers the rescue of a huge Charollais bull from a shipwreck by three chancers. They attempt to realise on their opportunity by offering it as a stud to their parochial town. The plan meets a variety of obstacles, keeps falling down, all seeming lost, only to resurrect in another guise. Then suddenly they are witness to extraordinary acts - growing misty horns, whisking up signs and symbols above his head out of thin air - by the bull, which gives them the hint that he's a bit more than just a piece of useful meat. They get a local vet to examine, and he declares that the bull has the Lia Fail, the coronation stone of the Irish kings, as a testicle. From here, of course, the hitherto disapproving clergy get involved, both on-side and off, in rival factions. The Charollais becomes an emblem of revolution, causing disruption wherever it goes, and it goes some places. They are being pursued by the military, and the conservative forces of order, so there is a non-triumphal progress as the three (wise men?), a newly-converted woman to their cause (newly-sexy as well, so a Magdalen of some kind?), and a coterie of hangers on attempt an outrunning. Ultimately the Charollais is brought down by a mad nun with a poison dart. The army and, indeed, the president of the republic, known as Mr Dee La Veera, catch up with them, and all seems to have fallen in its last heap. But then the delightful inevitable occurs - the dead and buried bull rises again, mostly visible as a giant pink misty phallus in the sky (with the occasional testicle). The revolution has its completion, even though, once the bull's image in the clouds finally disappears, arguments start about it, and some believe, some don't. That's the plot, which is wild and joking and cantankerous. But of course the language in which it's couched is something else again - endless referential interplay, scabrous humour, a toying with image and symbol which would be called Herculean if it wasn't so dedicated to bursting that kind of bubble. A crazy, unmitigated joy is what results from that mixed-up matrix.

Commonplace Book

 '"He won't be able to say them for ages," she spat.

A creature quarried, not born, and the eyes in her like burnt blankets from piety gone mad.'

from The Charollais by Tom Mac Intyre (Chapter 3)

Smile Please by Jean Rhys (1979)

 I haven't read Rhys since the 90s. Then it was her short stories, and I now have almost no memory of them, apart from the feeling of being stirred. This is her unfinished autobiography, presented here in three parts: an almost finished early section (volume?) about her childhood on Dominica - the title piece. A much more 'imperfect' section on her time in London and Paris in the Edwardian period and through the First World War - It Began to Grow Cold. And then a diary excerpt, which she had hoped to either include or make use of, from the 40s, called At the Ropemakers' Arms. The early part is quietly luminous, and gives a fine impress of her sensitivity and feeling of ill-fittedness for the ordinary expectations of late Victorian (and indeed colonial) middle class life - she exhibits the classic mixture of understanding of indebtedness and resentment at it which is common to children who don't 'fit' well. The less finished second part, though, is where it really catches fire - somehow it has a more immediate quality, a riffle of more recognisable tension and what seems her typically contrary shelteredness and worldly self-deprecation winning out by turns. The last section is an attempt, which could well have become brilliant if she'd had time to work on it, to form a philosophical conversation with herself, question and answer, outlining her take on her life and love and death, with all of their contrarieties, and the unsayable far reaches positioned carefully and honed in on in their exact spaces. Through these all, she mentions exercise books and notebooks in which she has been writing, and from which some of the material here has been mined. Here's hoping that that matter has been preserved, as it also apparently includes early fictional work, alongside personal journals of various shades.

The Swoop! by PG Wodehouse (1909)

 An early jeu d'esprit. It's quite skeletal, but what there is is packed full of colour. A Boy Scout, a relatively new phenomenon when this was written, is the central character, who somehow also works at one of the London papers! I'm wondering if this journalistic element echoes Wodehouse's life at this time - know nothing of his biography. A lot of the jokes are based around the world of newspaper journalism and the music halls. The plot is a crazed one about an invasion of Britain, which reflects the sense that will already have been building about the European powers and their hunger for conflict. The author delights in the cracked notion of several different foreign armies deciding to invade Britain at the same time, their manner of doing so showing how their nationalities were perceived currently. Of course these invasions are more of a fictional device than a forceful reality, and life goes on much as usual, with armies camped in various parts of the country - very much a feeling of a boy's play-idea. He then seems to have lost steam with the original scheme and sends most of them off home for one reason or another. But Germany and Russia remain, and it is up to Boy Scout-hero Clarence Chugwater to devise a cunning plan based around their generals' rival turns at the most popular music halls! Competition over salary is Clarence's activating factor, and he succeeds in engendering such a conflict between these two boors on Hampstead Heath and its surrounds that the battle ends up decimating both armies almost to oblivion. And so pugnacious Clarence becomes "The Boy of Destiny". It's slim, occasionally mildly funny, shows what the author may become capable of in the way of conceptual hijinks. It's also occasionally xenophobic and racist, which is par for the time. 

Petrified Wood by Mary Scott (2018)

 This is part of a series called Lost Rocks, which is apparently a group of forty books produced in tranches over the last few years by a small Tasmanian publisher, and celebrating "mineralogical, metaphysical and metallurgical telling". The tenor of that kind of language tells the reader a bit about the 'artsy' nature of the project. As does the fact that, for some reason, they've decided to call the whole oeuvre a group of 'fictionellas' - there's seemingly no fiction in this one, so that for me at the moment is opaque. Horrible word, too. But that's all context, and if it is stripped away, and we look at what Scott has written, pure and simple, then there's something quietly interesting here. She has an ancestor who was a famous microscopist, who did a lot of groundbreaking work in understanding Tasmania's botanic history through the study of fossils, mainly the petrified wood of the title. This is a short record of her discoveries about him, and the thoughts they bring up. She's an artist, so these thoughts exhibit some of that bent. She takes a musing journey through his history, language and reputation. The best way to typify it is through colour. Imagine a pale colour that looks very slightly green in some lights, and very slightly bluer in others, but predominantly white. One of those colours that ostensibly doesn't yell for attention. But it has a peculiar atmosphere of its own, and radiance within a small field of observation. That is this book, for me. It has the same delicacy and subcurrent, and minor specialness. The only thing I will say agin it is that a colour of that kind has for me a vibrance and glowing tang that is overt and lasting, whereas this book doesn't leave a huge mark in the memory beyond the moment of reading. 

The Libation by Edmund Keeley (1958)

 This is an interesting novel of family secrets, embellished by its locale in Greece, and its situation across a number of dates through the early twentieth century. It delves back and forth between these, in a game of risks and consequences, and fates. Chronologically, it begins with a doomed Christian mission to Turkey by a slightly obsessive American in the years before the declaration of the sultanate in 1922. He is killed in the revolution of that year, and his adoring son, infected with the same flame, gets out of the continuing danger and heads to Greece. There he appears as a wanderer, in rags, and preaching a little madly, obviously inspired with his father's beliefs, and led on by stories of the Apostles. In the town of Kastoria in northern Greece, a young woman hears him in the market place and falls not only for the power of his words, but also for his personality. Cassandra experiences the only feeling of overwhelming love of her life. But to Thomas Gammon, the wanderer, she is a temptation - that, ultimately, he can't resist. Cassandra is married to tough, worldly and abusive Achilles, and the daughter that is born to her a while later is presented as his. Only Cassandra and Gammon know that Helen is Gammon's daughter. Two complications arise at this time: Gammon undergoes a period of compunction which sees him regard Cassandra and his relation to her as sinful, and he also succumbs to a much less vividly outlined urge to set out in business, with Achilles as partner. They are both so primary that it is a fiery combination, and Gammon has a species of western lordliness which rankles Achilles a great deal - he would probably have left if his grasping qualities had not been so fulfilled by business being good. Gammon rejects Cassandra emotionally, and she and Achilles carry on living in a cottage on the large farm property Gammon has bought, as "helpers", with Helen as she grows up. Gammon leaves for America, still agitated by his "sin", and marries there, bringing his ill wife back to Greece with him some time later. He vacillates and is clearly troubled by Cassandra's presence. Finally, he can resist no more, once again, and, with significant sleight of events, Cassandra has yet another child by him, this time a boy, who is immediately adopted as her own by the wife. It is understood between Gammon and Cassandra that she is not to regard Timothy as in any way her own, to renounce him for ever, as the two of them go through another unnerved, and, on Gammon's part, ashamed cooling, this time for good. All this takes place with no other person having any knowledge of it, which stretches credibility a little. Then Gammon's wife dies, the thirties come, and the slide down to war. Timothy and Helen become playmates, and, with no knowledge of their relation to each other, start to explore, in a childish way, what sex is, alongside a growing emotional connection. Sensing danger, but not speaking the truth about it, Gammon sends Timothy to the US to be schooled, staying in Greece himself. When the war comes, Cassandra and Helen are sent to nearby Salonika, whereas Gammon stays on the now rundown property in Kastoria. It is occupied by German troops, to whom he is insolent and anathema, resulting in his deportation with local Jews in a boxcar of a transport train north. In a disastrous escape attempt, they are lined up and shot by the track - he is exempted as he is not Jewish. He finally makes it back toward the end of the war, and occupies the property again, in a state of semi-ruin, with Achilles as caretaker and vague business associate, leaving Cassandra and Helen in Salonika in impoverished times, as Greece stutters on, exhausted. In 1949, Gammon and Achilles are out hunting when, in a struggle so common to them, Gammon is shot by the gun they're fighting over. With them is another character who has been part of the tale from the beginning, an intellectually disabled refugee on whom Cassandra has taken pity as a boy, when he appeared with a group of gypsies from the east, and named Armenian because of his nationality. He wets himself often, boy and man, and doesn't speak. He fears the eye of the sun, and all manner of creatures whose beady eyes might be discovering his secret intentions, tracing important figures in the dust, or burying things. Keeley takes us into his head in really interesting ways in short sections. Armenian has always been a source of nag to Achilles, being a favourite of Cassandra, rivalling him for attention. Now, the long intensifying animosity between them becomes, on Achilles' part, fear, as he thinks that Armenian may try to somehow reveal how Gammon died. Then, a year later, Timothy arrives back from the US at the age of 21, having been in constant letter-contact with Helen, and looking to confirm their relationship, as is she. It is now that all these secrets bound up to the forefront, as Gammon's odd keeping of them apart is remarked on, Cassandra's disbelief that they could care for one another in that way made clear. Just after Armenian and Achilles have an altercation at the house which results in Achilles being stabbed, Cassandra realises that she can hold back no longer and spills to both of them their connection to one another. The fact that they had consummated their desire for one another the night before sends Timothy into a spin. He angrily and shamefacedly leaves, and Helen follows him, blindsided herself, but able to gain a better hold on the situation. She finds him aboard a boat in Salonika harbour, and convinces him to come 'home', and make the experiment of their new kin relationship. In this, she is depicted as being of a much more malleable, Mediterranean frame than Timothy's uptight Anglo-Saxon rigidity, following in his family's sin-bedazzled footsteps. The novel ends with Armenian carefully arranging himself in an open garden bed so that he can drop a treasure, the shell-tip from the gun which killed Gammon, into a small hole and cover it over without the sun seeing him do it, or indeed the vigil of three crows atop the roof. When he's essaying the psychology of these characters in description of the stages of their thinking, Keeley can often really hit the mark. Sometimes, the dialogue feels a little obviously testy, like he's had the thought that all these people are at irritated loggerheads through having forceful personalities, and pictures this in too similar ways, a kind of "why would you / how could you say that?" shuttling back and forth crossly. The other thing is that this rich mix is presented achronologically, so the reader needs to be thinking carefully about who knew what when, as the next set of revelations at a historical juncture are revealed. A satisfying book, all the same.