Lunchtime read: Shakespeare

Bryson paints a concise picture of the world Shakespeare would have encountered when he came to London. A City within walls with gates closed at certain hours and theatres that had to pack them in and do so on a regular basis just to make a paltry profit.

Eluding nearly all of the engravers, diary keepers and official signature catchers is Shakespeare who seems to disappear for years before cropping up only in second-hand references.

The fact he is not around does not seem to matter because this is an enjoyable Elizabethan travelogue with plenty of easily digestible history. Bryson exposes various historical debates, for instance was Shakespeare a Catholic? Did he travel to Italy? Without forcing himself or the reader to commit to any of them.

More tomorrow…

In the queue for Devil May Care

Succumbed to the hype/temptation and popped out and picked up Devil May Care. Although it is being described as the literary event of the year it was all very low key in Waterstones Sutton. Walking in the book was there staring you in the face with a large half price sticker on the front but there was none of the excitement and imaginative shop decorations and point of sale stuff that had accompanied the Harry Potter launch.

Just because this is aimed at adults it seems a shame to reduce any fun to the bare minimum.

The Kindly Ones - post III

Turning back to The Dance... is like picking up an old family photographic album, the ones full of black and white photos held in with gummed triangular edges, reading about how Freddy and Charlotte enjoyed the beach at Brighton in 1921. The only place I ever remember coming across that is the cloakroom at Claridges where the old family photographs made you feel even more alienated from a five star world, but even keener to rub your nose up against the window and peer inside. The difference with Powell is that he lets you come in and sit quietly and watch.

As the threat of war moves closer the party at Sir Donners is spoilt by the arrival of Widmerpool in uniform and unlike the anticipation of 1914 there is distaste at the reminder of death and destruction.

Although Templer and Widmerpool are echoes from the Jenkins past the friendship that appears to be one of the strongest is with the musician Moreland. Although they seem to go years without seeing each other there is something very similar between them - married at toughly the same time and one a man of music with the other a man of letters. When it comes to that other original old friend Stringham there is complete silence.

But before the story can move into full-blown pre-war preparations there is a family bereavement in the form of Uncle Giles finally dying. As he picks through his belongings Nick Jenkins finds his original commission from the Queen, hence his title of Captain Jenkins. For the first time seriously he ponders on his own possible fate as a solider. Something more poignant against the background of his wife expecting a child.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Shakespeare

Having missed most of the Bill Bryson travel books the attraction of this one was not just the recommended mentions here there and everywhere but the attraction of seeing how he would tackle well trodden ground.

The first chapter reveals that barely nothing is really known about Shakespeare other than just a few scant facts and most interpretations of his life were written after his death.

That opening surprises you because it would almost be possible to close the book right now there but Bryson manages to then move on to paint a picture of the world Shakespeare was born into, using the facts he has about the Bard’s family to explain his circumstances.

Bryson then starts to paint a picture of the world in the 16th century and it is done without any of the heaviness that usually dogs history books. The fact you don’t know a great deal about Shakespeare starts to become almost irrelevant because what takes his place is the world of Elizabeth’s England.

More tomorrow…

A Void - post VII

Finally coming to the end you have to sit back and wonder at the feat and also applaud the plot. With its twists and turns it only becomes clear at the end what has happened although justice is not forthcoming.

Anton Vowl never reappears nor does any chance that the curse that has followed him and his siblings will be avoided. A twisted case of sibling rivalry means that all those that are the children of two sons that were meant to have died are destined to be murdered. Not only were Haig and Vowl brothers but also Olga was their sister and Ottivani the policeman turns out to be a brother as well.

He dies revealing that the text contained not a single

But there follows a postscript with Perec admitting that he set out on the project partly as a bet to prove he could to a friend and then because he enjoyed the discipline that having to stick to a formula gave him. He expresses a feeling that is palpable in the text that unlike other stories he had written this one really did force him to be inventive in a different way.

“Initially I found such a constraint faintly amusing, if that; but I stuck to my guns. At which point, finding that it took my imagination down so many intriguing linguistic highways and byways, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, plunging into it again and again, at last giving up all my ongoing work, much of which I was actually about to finish.”

It is a strange book that doesn’t come together until the end and the void is the missing e but it is a work of real concentration. The best description of what it is all about comes from ones of the quotes Perec chooses to print over the last two pages:

“...should we retrieve the letter which has been lost or the sign which has been effaced, should we reconstruct the dissonant scale, we shall regain our authority in the world of the mind.”
Gerard De Nerval

first chapter, first impression

This is an idea that is designed to share that first impression of what it feels like to open a new book – that coffee jar lid splitting moment. Opening a book and reading the first words is one of the most enjoyable things in life and makes reading the special activity it is. All of your attention is on those first few pages. What is this about, where is this going and who is showing me this world? All those questions get tackled to some extent in the first chapter.

Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson

1963
Kennedy has just been shot and you are introduced to two brothers, a colonel and a Vietnamese pilot milling around a US army base in the Phillipines. You are also introduced to the idea that Vietnam is already a country at war not just against the Viet Cong but also against itself with whores and US dollars already starting to corrupt the country.

But as the solider, William Houston and Lucky the Vietnamese pilot mooch around the Philippines military base the events elsewhere in South East Asia seem reasonably far away. The death of Kennedy threatens to change that.

More to come…

bookmark of the week

This was one of several bookmarks available at the For Your Eyes Only exhibition about Ian Fleming and James Bond at the Imperial War Museum. The quote on the front is from Goldfinger: "You underestimate the English. They may be slow, but they get there in the end." This is a magnetic bookmark, seems like the leather ones are going out of fashion.

Devil may care

Went to the Imperial War Museum briefly this afternoon and popped into the For Your Eyes Only exhibition about the world of Ian Fleming. The kids were playing up so it was impossible to be in there for more than five minutes. But even in that space of time it was possible to come to the conclusion that it was disappointing.

It was quite expensive to wander through and discover that Fleming came from a background of wealth and privilege. Then there was a short bit about the cold war and then the success of the films. I thought they might take it beyond Fleming a bit and do more about the real world of espionage but there just didn’t seem to be much there.

But there is going to be plenty of opportunities to see what it was all about with the large amount of activity on the Bond front. The Times used up a fairly large chunk of its magazine yesterday to give an extract to Sebastian Faulks new take on the world of Bond, Devil May Care. It had the Fleming style, cool clipped sentences that show Bond is in control.

As the Imperial War Museum exhibition showed, graphically with a wall of translated Bond paperbacks, the market for Fleming's world was wide and presumably Penguin will be hoping for the same again as it publishes Devil May Care.

A Void - post VI

Wikipedia can be great but it can also plant ideas and thoughts in your mind that might not have been there and as a result it clouds your thinking. For example the reference to A Void quotes from an article by an academic that argues that the void is the absence of the letter e, which in turn means that key words like mother and father in French cannot be uttered.

But there is a point at which two of Vowl’s friends realise they have the same father and refer to him as papa making you wonder. It also gets you thinking about how the absence of the letter in itself would become the void. There seem to be other issues here about hereditary curses and the coincidence of blood ties.

It has now entered the territory of an Agatha Christie novel in terms of there just being a few characters left standing, with one dropping dead with almost every other chapter. The police have arrived but they don’t seem to be getting anywhere and if anything face being sucked into the void along with everyone else. The only one who seems to be above the fray is Squaw the housekeeper and my money is on the key to the mystery being with her.

Tomorrow should tell…

book review - Vile Bodies

There is a distinct moment in this book where the mood changes quite dramatically. After reading the introduction you realise that was the point at which Evelyn Waugh had to cope with his wife walking out on him.

Up to that point in the book it has been a story following Adam as he returns from France with the dream of having his book published to finance his marriage. But the book is burnt by customs and then for a while it is a question of will he manage to get the money he needs to make his bride financially secure. Against a background of 'The Bright Young Things' a world where money is casually given away, but never to Adam, a generation seems intent on upsetting the establishment.

At the heart of the story there is a hollowness that comes to the fore once the mood of the book changes. Everything seems to have been cheapened by the bright young things with life and death something lost without comment, fame and fortune lost overnight and loyalty not worth anything if it could be turned to financial advantage.

Adam doesn't get his girl and the group he has been part of keeps chasing its own tale gossiping in newspapers about each other while the rest of the real world passes them by. These people are shown to be sad and often desperate people that end up challenging the status quo but never having the real stature to carry out any change.

You wonder though how it might have turned out had Waugh’\s wife not run off because there are some amusing moments when he tries to convince his possible future father-in-law that he should give him money to fund the wedding with his daughter. But that humour changes and disappears towards the end.

It is replaced with a sense of futility – easy come and easy go – and of betrayal. Adam is left out of the world of the gossips and his girl runs off with someone with money. The laughter, that never really was, finally stops for good with the outbreak of war.

Where this book tries to provoke reactions it does so almost effortlessly. So the moment when the Prime Minister wakes to find his home has been used for a party and as a result is embroiled in scandal shows the rigid inflexibility of the generation the bright young things were reacting against.

But likewise the moments when a failed gossip columnist decides to gas himself in an oven or when a girl who has suffered a motor crash goes downhill and dies their lives are just footnotes in a gossip column.

In some respects it makes you think of the likes of Amy Winehouse and company who might be so shocking to certain sections of the establishment but would be just another celebrity page entry if they died of their drug abuse.

In Waugh’s day the drugs were alcohol and freedom from the strict expectations of a society that had featured debutantes and a strict society calendar. But the shallow and instantly forgettable nature of the bright young things was there in the 1920s and 30s and is there again now. There are still vile bodies being caught on camera and filling columns of newspapers.

“…Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting parties in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity…Those vile bodies…”

Version read – Penguin paperback

book review - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other stories

Just as with Frankenstein the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is well know, mainly through film adaptations. The first thing that strikes you is the length of the story, which is firmly a novella. Robert Louis Stevenson was someone interested in the line between life and death and the possibilities of pushing the boundaries.

This collection of stories reminds you of Poe in terms of its darkness and tendency to the horrific but it also shows a writer using his craft to raise questions. The title tale is of course about the battle in us all between good and evil. The worrying conclusions seem to be that given the chance evil will win and Hyde finally consumes the respectable Jekyll. The horror of the transformation is the extent to which the evil personality will go to split away from goodness. In the case of Hyde it starts as rudeness but becomes murder.

The reader knows long before the friends of Jekyll what is happening but the twist at the end of the story is not clear until you get to it and the conclusions like Frankenstein are not just about good versus bad but also about the consequences of man playing God. Both stories have in common that feeling that those men who find they can master nature will ultimately become victims of their arrogance.

Other stories that stand out from this collection that is really well put together in Barnes & Noble edition that has am introduction and plenty of other material to extend the reading experience are also touching on the consequences of playing with nature.

The young doctors who murder to gather dissection specimens are confronted after digging a grave with one of their victims. Thrawn Janet has a vicar facing the devil possessing his housekeeper and the suicide club is again about murder.

Bear in mind the period when these stories were written and the strides that were being taken in science and the way that man’s knowledge of nature was rapidly advancing and you can imagine these stories not only being received by a grateful audience but one that shared Stevenson’s fears about the future. It is also hard to mentally split the Jekyll and Hyde story away from the Jack the Ripper events in Whitechapel. It is almost as if the fictional character stepped off the pages and into the streets of East London. It would have been even uncannier had Hyde been based in the East End rather than Soho but the similarities are startling.

Just as was the case with Frankenstein this is a book that is worth reading because it is the original and not altered by modern interpretation.

Version read – Barnes & Noble Classics paperback

A Void - post V

Although I am not going to pretend I know exactly what is going on this is starting to grip you because the mystery deepens and more people start dying.

As each character tells their stories the links between them start to unravel and family feuds and curses appear to be the driving force behind the deaths and disappearances. There are some mystical references that to be honest would require a little bit more reading around the subject to get to grips with.

But you can safely say that 200 pages in to the 285 page novel and you want to find out what happened to the mysterious Anton Vowl and just where he is and what became of him. Did he escape the curse following him, which had already claimed his brother Douglas Haig or did he fail? His friends are starting to think he failed but it is not yet clear.

More tomorrow…

A Void - post IV

A couple of things to declare before we get into this:

I am drunk

I am tired

Tonight has been the awards night for my magazine and playing the role of the host has been taxing.

Before the awards started read a bit of A Void and another character died after discovering that the past si interlinked with the present. Nothing more can be said because it is too mysterious and I haven't got the energy to write more.

More tomorrow...

A Void - post III

As you read A Void you can’t help but think of Perec scratching his head doing the research. A great example is the pieces of evidence that are presented by Anton Vowl’s friends to try and establish where he has gone.

Among the diaries and thoughts are six excerpts from famous writers ranging from Milton to Shakespeare – without the e’s – but nowhere is there an e to be seen.

Mind you nowhere is the character of Vowl to be seen. But the other characters around him are now getting some flesh on the bones with Olga an opera singer who can be found at her father-in-laws. She was widowed after just a few days when her husband was killed in a freak accident and died without any apparent cause of death.

They are also joined by a British friend who adds to the anglophile feeling with Olga’s husband being named Douglas Haig after the famous British figures of that name.

It is still hard to know what is going on and still a challenge to stay with Perec but in the sense that it keeps you awake on the train then this book does that and makes you work a bit with the old grey cells.

More tomorrow…

The Kindly Ones - post II

Having talked about his parents and the moment when Uncle Giles turned up to announce that the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand the theme of the book becomes clear.

Just as in 1914 the threat of war is looming. There are major differences. Back then the idea of fighting was not only seen as inevitable but in some quarters was looked forward to like a sporting event. Now as the dark clouds start to loom over Czechoslovakia and the Munich agreement divides political opinion the thoughts are with money and how to make the most out of the situation.

Epitomising that awkward position is Magnus Donners who is trying to work out how war would impact his business interests. But Hitler affects other characters in different ways with Moreland unable to write his ballet because he feels so depressed. The reintroduction of Donners is as a result of an invitation to see the Moreland’s staying at a cottage he owns.

It is also a chance for Nick to meet his old friend Peter Templer who hasn’t changed much but has remarried to a poor woman, Betty, who has been driven literally mad by her husband’s adultery.

More tomorrow…