The Challenge of Things by AC Grayling (2015)

I've just emerged from an undergraduate philosophy degree, which lends a particular flavour to this. I'm very aware of the difference between academic philosophy writing and its populist correlate - Grayling is noted in both of these shades. I haven't read any of his academic material, though he covers here subjects which were grist to our student mill, like optimism versus pessimism, nature and nurture, the place of science and the notion of scientific method, brain science and its discoveries, arguments about what constitutes the well-lived life, and so on. In a book of this popular nature, he is obliged to cover them in what might be called slightly 'reduced' terms - the broad brushstrokes of newspaper and journal pieces. He manages to include some gems (for me at least) within the more basic materials here, little neat revelatory points tucked away: one I particularly remember was about the notion of 'the soul', and how it was an early Christian construction to serve the needs of a certain stage of argument about believers "not seeing corruption", and imported from Plato. At the same time, this need for the clarity of populist prose sometimes leads him to overly clunky oppositions and blanket pronouncements. The voice in my head at these moments is that inspired by, for lack of a better term, punkish sentiments, where love of rigour meets a readiness to identify waffling middle class comfortability! His heart is almost universally in the right place, but nevertheless colourlessness is engendered. In the piece near the end entitled Optimism, he contrasts the 'bar-room talk' of so-called pessimism, and the cheery 'seeing opportunity in difficulty' of so-called optimism, where the terms of discussion have become somehow so leached of severity that blandness is the only conclusion possible. This trope is repeated relatively regularly, as is its opposite of the tang of pointed discovery. Ultimately I respect him, and see his fumblings of reduction as unfortunate dead ends on a journey (the retention of philosophically-tinted intellectual discussion as a deep value in popular culture) which is worth undertaking.

Commonplace Book

'"Children,' Millie said, 'are the world's great materialists. The great 'natural' market for tin and plastic. The great 'natural' cult of Epicureans." ... "we notice that they'd rather be outside than inside, and we attribute some glorious perception, some sixth sense to them because of it. It's not fair to them. We can't give them anything believing that. It's just that everything is new, and whatever is new is fascinating, like shoes and book-bags. If they'd rather live in the country than the city, it's not because they're ... closer to God! It's because country things are better toys than city things. And even that's pure in a way we don't quite understand; uncluttered, somehow, accepting the world at face value. I mean, look at the connoisseurs of wine, look at the perfume sniffers and the soup tasters, look at the diamond merchants, people who spend their lives dealing in the learned, subtle differences and still never get away from things. Because in a way it is a higher perception, don't you see, not to be able to tell the difference between a diamond and a piece of broken glass."'

from Descend Again by Janet Burroway (Chapter IV)

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (2017)

This was a fun read, and in some ways very familiar. I have spent large swathes of my working life in the bookshop trade, both secondhand and new. This volume's recounting of the quirks (to put it kindly) of some bookshop customers is one of its main calling cards. But what is it about south-west Scotland in terms of attraction for the insane? Because the regularity of Shaun's teeth being set on edge, or his fulminating anger being inspired, is truly epic. Most of these oddnesses are very familiar, but usually happened, in my time, at decent distances from one another. For Shaun, it's every other day. Or is there something about Shaun which inspires the incipiently mad to suddenly flower into full certifiability? The humour, which is the other calling card of this one, tended to run in waves I found, but still gave it an entertaining twist. The best of it is Nicky, a second-in-command who has a predilection for skip-jumping for grossly mashed culinary delights, a sarcastic sourness in dealing with Shaun's dourness, a delightfully whacko sense of logic, peculiar dress sense, and Latter Day Saint convictions. If the rumbles are true that this one will be filmed, I hope the producers haven't overlooked the fact that the inescapable casting for this part is Siobhan Redmond. There were some less intentional revelations tucked away here. Shaun seems to have quite straightforwardly egalitarian political convictions, but also seems to be a little in awe of greatness and goodness, and very happy to give way to the occasional bout of middle-class aspiration. I loved his stories of heading out to look at collections for sale, and the consistent excitement of 'I wonder if there'll be something rare and amazing in this lot?'. And of course the other side of that coin, when the disappointment sets in at coming face to face with a pile of tat. A few of his pronoucements on the history of the trade, and how we got to the Amazon-squashed disaster we're currently navigating, were a little bit off in some of their details, but very much on the money in their diagnosis of the problem. Great fun - 'I look forward to the sequel', I say, in that worrying way that signifies the trashy serialised crud (thus revealing my partially insupportable prejudices) of modern new bookselling, and to which Shaun has given in - it was published last year. Of course there's more to sequels than their modern sludge-instantiation, and of course, I'm sure Shaun's fits that much more classic bill.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)

By way of admission, I now recognize more formally (this is my first James) that my writing style is 'Jamesian'. Should I be ashamed? I certainly echo him in being quite happy to chase down refinements of meaning with qualifying elaboration, 'till the cows come home'. Sometimes that works exhilaratingly, and one ventures way out onto a promontory of meaning, feeling like beautiful and heady precision is being approached. Sometimes, of course, one gets dumped in a bog on the isthmus, and can only clamber out and slug home, mud-spattered and shamefaced! I'm not sure how I feel about this recognition, mainly because of how I responded to this book. It was quite grasping of my attention, but not so much because of the writing style of the author, which varied between his much-vaunted old womanishness and a kind of somewhat gothic sensuous straightforwardness. It is a book which pleases without thrilling in its first few hundred pages - there is a sense, via Isabel Archer, the youthful main character, of a life embarked upon with spirit, having dark patches well sketched but not casting enough shadow to overcome her. Then comes the time when she marries, and it falls into a slough of despond, not because of the subject matter (her marriage going wrong, psychologically) but because the book itself droops. There's always the temptation to say that it feels this way because of the subject matter. I've said this before, but it's so apt here it needs saying again: there's a difference between detailing boredom or negativity in an involving way, and not doing so. James here falls into the latter grouping. The typical first year uni student yelp of "It's supposed to feel that way!" misses the point hugely. No reader should be bored reading about boredom, or feel drab reading about drabness. My guess is that this is where this book loses the majority of those who give up on it. It is a good three hundred pages where it wilts significantly. I will concede that it does, if you stick with it, figure the airless and blocked atmosphere with some fidelity. But it really does drag upon one's patience, becoming a disinspiration. When Isabel leaves Rome to see her cousin Ralph at the end, some of that fog lifts a little. I'm sure that, like many others, I'd have been well tempted to drop this once I reached Isabel's marriage and its aftermath, apart from a strange thing which kept it going, not of itself. For some reason, I think probably trying to imagine Nicole Kidman as Isabel in Campion's film (not having seen it), and registering the wither of her inappropriateness for the part, I began a process of 'recasting'. No idea why, but this soon metamorphosed into a full-fledged scenario. My version was filmed in 1952, with the actress who, at that time, was made for the role: Elizabeth Taylor. It was probably directed by someone quite controlling and intense - Otto Preminger, Orson Welles? Every time Ralph Touchett spoke, I could hear Cary Grant. Mrs Touchett would have been categorically filled out by Katharine Hepburn. Madame Merle would have been a film-stealing revelation of a performance by Greer Garson, as would that of a toxic Hurd Hatfield as Gilbert Osmond. And so on. Imagining this interpretation took on a lot of the life of the reading process, especially when the going got tough. Thinking about how an early 50s version would look, the stillness and formality of the conversations and the stiff silence in which they took place, the carefully undercurrent sexuality, the occasional touches of humour, the highly pushy orchestral score, the echoey metallic tonal element in all the sounds and colours, all added to the prodigality. And of course the camera loving Taylor at her most luxurious and sensual in her youthful glow. Would it have been a notorious shoot? Would it have been a troubled production? Would someone have missed out on an Oscar they ought to have won? All good fun, anyway, and not something that has ever taken on such hyper-reality before in a reading experience. Why? Was my mind providing savourful interest where I could subconsciously sense it was lacking? Maybe - I will say that I don't particularly look forward to another full-length James, looking at this one without the film scenario. Now his many, many novellas - maybe they are where he won't have an opportunity to fall into a hole?

Commonplace Book

'...He peopled it with beings of his own fancy, lovely or terrific, according to his own passing humour. Granted a measure of imagination, the solitary child is often the happiest child, since the social element, with its inevitable materialism, is absent, and the dear spirit of romance is unquenched by vulgar comment.'

from The Far Horizon by Lucas Malet (Chapter I)

The Cardinal's Snuff-Box by Henry Harland (1900)

Never has a romance been a candidate for, yet in my experience, considering a reprint, literally a chocolate-box cover. Until now. This is the one. It could also take one of those hypercoloured, incredibly detailed cigar-box illustrations. That's the sort of book this is. Rich veins of deep atmosphere-accentuation, but also the sense of unreality and idealised simplicity. It's a plain-sailing story of a writer who has been captivated by a woman seen only fleetingly a few times - she has become the keystone of his imagination. His works appear under a pseudonym, Felix Wildmay, and he is so inspired by her that she becomes the central motif of one called A Man of Words, his most successful. He is a few years later holidaying in Italy and takes a cottage on a grand estate. To his astonishment, his woman is revealed as the owner. She is a widow and a duchessa. The landscape all around glows and hums in a phenomenally staged manner, mists employed to dull purple vistas, searing sunlight to sharpen intense greens, different points of the topography showing up, or dimming down, in a kind of poetic ecstasy. She reads his book, but doesn't know it's him of course. He thinks he's 'safe' from any interpretation she might put on it, and claims to be a friend of the author, explaining the background to the story as his friend's experience. She finds out secretly that he is the author, but doesn't realise that she is the main character. They try to artfully play each other, without realising what they're playing with. He feels he can never reveal that it's him and about her, because she's a 'high-up' and wouldn't have him (of course, he's a gentleman, but still well beneath her, he feels). She's also a Catholic, and he's not. She feels that he's just covering his personal skin in a game in which she's just an onlooker, and finds it amusing. Then a chance reference from a friend suggests that she may indeed be the subject, which gives her a serious jolt. So much so that she is cool with him at their next meeting, from uncertainty and apprehension, rather than dislike or surety. But he takes this badly, of course, and there is a frost, because he thinks that she may have become fond of him and then rejected the idea because he's not one of her Catholic fold. He still has no idea that she knows he is the author of the book, which she has found fascinating, so assumes her motivations are purely based on him aside from it. His comical, old-Italian-woman servant gets ill as an interlude at this time, and they are parted for a good while through the pressure of his being part of the team looking after her, and the feeling that maybe this frost is permanent. Of course, this is a romantic story, so they finally achieve a rapprochement in her garden, on a morning of suitably pointed dimmed hues and lush drama of terrain. The cardinal's snuff-box of the title is one owned by the duchessa's uncle, who stays in her castle for much of the story, on holiday from clerical duties in the Vatican. Once the cardinal loses it, and returning the lost item is an excuse for him to visit her. A second time she hides it in his garden when he's not there, in the hope that he might repeat the gesture. There is also a strain in it, not profoundly observed but patent, of 'love as a means of conversion', where his quite agnostic Protestantism is altered, through the power of the emotion, to a rich fulfilment of the Catholic right way - a clearing of the path. This is a bit awful, but not pressed. It is all decorously entertaining, with, as may be imagined, an almost fabular tincture. But one strange, caustic thing in the last chapter provides an extraordinary contrast. The duchessa utters some very strong anti-semitic statements when discussing how the castle could have been a hotel owned by Jewish people if she hadn't interceded and purchased. Now, Jew-suspecting / -accusing / -disliking statements are not that rare in literature of this time - one would need to read very carefully indeed not to come across them. So that's not surprising, or, really, unexpected in general. But to have Harland putting them into the mouths of his characters is strange indeed, given what I think was possibly his ethnicity, and his history of publishing, earlier in his life, under his pseudonym of Sidney Luska, works of particular Jewish content. I wonder whether he abjured his Jewishness? If indeed he was? And wow, it makes me wonder whether there was any self-loathing at the basis of all this. Would it have been a 'not to be discussed' subject with him? What is the history of this extraordinary turnaround? So, as a result, this chocolate-box fable can be seen as undercut radically from within, and perhaps keenly disturbed.

Lucius or, The Ass by Lucian (c125-180)

Another strange burst of oddness from long ago. A young Greek goes journeying with a letter of recommendation to a professor of rhetoric in Thessaly. When he arrives, the story is set up such that we think he is probably going to find out that the woman who seems to be the maid is actually the professor's wife. The wife is known for her 'black magic' skills, and it turns out that the maid is not unadept either! Push comes to shove, and the maid turns him into a donkey. Here we leave behind what I'm guessing was the original plan of a tale of deceptive identity, and swirl off into a picaresque story of a young man's ego being challenged by all he undergoes as a beast of burden. Robbers steal him and treat him dreadfully. He is rescued by a wealthy young girl, but her father hands him over to a groom who has an evil streak, and they trade blows. He narrowly escapes castration because his owners drown in a tidal wave, and the groom ends up appropriating him and selling him to a gay cult who worship the ancient Syrian goddess Atargatis. As Lucian was apparently Syrian, this seems a nod to his origins. The cult wander from village to village with the statue of the goddess tied up onto his back, and demand alms via dancing wildly, cutting themselves in nerved-up excitation to prove their devotion. But when they are discovered mid-pleasure with a new convert they are thrown into prison, and The Ass is sold to a baker who runs him to skin and bone servicing his mill. A market-gardener who buys him at this low ebb has a fight with a military officer and hides away with him in the house of a friend. The Ass gives them away by sticking his head out of the window of their hideout, Lucian claiming that this is the origin of the phrase 'don't stick your neck out!'. He then provides great amusement in the family of the chef that purchases him next, by eating all sorts of things that donkeys wouldn't normally like, drinking wine, and being trained to perform tricks, which of course he is only able to do because he is human inside and can understand all that's being said to him. His fame grows as a peculiar phenomenon. A foreign girl comes to see him and falls in love with him - and they are both quite happy to make love together, which is.....an interesting plot development! They are spied on by his owners, who decide THIS will be a good money-earner! Set up in a public spectacle to repeat these pleasures with a female slave for all to see, he sees an attendant walk by with yellow roses, which he has been told by the maid in the beginning are his key to transformation back into a human. He grabs them, munching them up, and duly returns to his original form. The young woman who introduced him to odd pleasures is cautious about him, but decides to give him a try as a human lover when he seeks her out, having grown 'attached' to her. But she is wildly disappointed in his little monkeyishness after his no doubt splendid asinine proportions of yore! So, he returns home thankful to the gods for surviving his strange adventure. What I haven't yet mentioned is the cruelty in this piece. Other animals' legs are hacked off and they are dumped over cliffs, he is beaten to a pulp by several of his owners, and so on. The perverse mixture of sexuality and savagery gives this short piece a sting alongside the humour. A clear window into how much has changed since the second century. Though there was novelty and a species of freedom in aberrance in this, I'm on the whole glad we don't live anymore in a world of this kind of ravening. Just have to cure ourselves of those of our times.