Where The Children of Húrin, the “first” (the order doesn’t really matter) of the Great Tales, is a long, consistent novel about Túr71st book of 2024.
Where The Children of Húrin, the “first” (the order doesn’t really matter) of the Great Tales, is a long, consistent novel about Túrin Turambar, Beren and Lúthien is a tapestry of bits and pieces, some more incomplete than others, but collaboratively make a repetitive and multifaceted look at one such tale from The Silmarillion. There is a longish (100 pages or so) prose telling of the story which I guess you could call the main body of the text, then the next 200 pages are Christopher Tolkien’s attempts at structuring, organising, and making sense of his father’s versions and drafts of the story. Some in prose, some in poetry. The second largest, around 100 pages again, maybe, is the same story told again (with slight differences) in poetry. The drafts are early Tolkien work, where the Noldor are still called Gnomes and Morgoth has the same Melko/Melkor. I’d be tempted to say that without having read The Silmarillion, you’d find little enjoyment (perhaps even sense!) in this collaborative work.
Of course, if you’ve read The Lord of the Rings, you will have read Strider’s version of the story he tells the hobbits at Weathertop; he and Arwen are a sort of reflection of the story, after all.
The Sundering Seas between them lay, And yet at last they met once more, And long ago they passed away In the forest singing sorrowless.
In 1981, Christopher Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin to say he had a book totally 1,968 pages long. This book was, as he writes in the Preface, his attempt at ‘know[ing] how the whole conception did in reality evolve from the earliest origins . . .’ His father, in a famous 1951 letter, called this story the ‘chief of the stories of The Silmarillion'. I would be tempted to agree with him, for my rating here does not reflect my rating of the story itself but the content of this book. As JRRT rightly calls it: a ‘heroic-fairy-romance’, and thought it ‘beautiful and powerful’. After all, on his wife’s grave the name Lúthien appears, and on his own, Beren.
For those intrigued: be warned, most of the book is the story told again and again, sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, and with slight differences. Even Fingolfin’s stand against Morgoth appears in one such draft, with the wording very similar to how it appears in The Silmarillion. Though a little frustrating and tiring, reading all the drafts and rehashes, one can’t help but feel a deep respect for Christopher Tolkien and the love and respect he likewise poured into his father’s work.
Next up is The Fall of Gondolin, and then the Great Tales are done. I’ve finished a few of the random extra Middle-earth tales and poems, so I am drawing ever closer to the 12-volume History of Middle-earth, which I can’t decide whether I’m brave enough for....more
Taking a short break from the Great Tales, I dove into this strange little collection. Tom Bombadil is a funny part of Middle-earth.70th book of 2024.
Taking a short break from the Great Tales, I dove into this strange little collection. Tom Bombadil is a funny part of Middle-earth. In a way, he seems very disjointed from the rest of the world, and yet, at the same time, an ancient and powerful part of it. He was inspired by a doll Michael, Tolkien's son, played with as a child. In my introduction, the letters are quoted, where Tolkien himself answered some questions by saying he preferred to leave Tom as a mystery. To Peter Hastings, 'I don't think Tom needs philosophising about, and is not improved by it. But many have found him an odd or indeed discordant ingredient.' My feelings about him are paradoxical. On the one hand, I am enamored with the early bits of The Lord of the Rings, where everything feels more playful, before the adventure truly begins. The Shire is a place of contentment and whimsy.
I returned to my copy of The Lord of the Rings to consider Tom Bombadil in the light of this first poem, which predates the trilogy. Bombadil is introduced the same in both, only with a tense change. In the poem:
Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow; bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow
And in LOTR (bk.i, ch. vii):
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow; bright blue his jacket was, and his boots are yellow
It is here that Frodo questions Goldberry.
'Fair lady!' said Frodo again after a while. 'Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?' 'He is,' said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling.
It is easy to see Bombadil as God, though Tolkien himself denies such claim. And later, Frodo, questions again, but this time Bombadil himself.
'Who are you, Master?' he asked. 'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. 'Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees: Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless—before the Dark Lord came from outside.'
Once again, it puts us in mind of God. But Bombdail in the poem, though there is Old Man Willow, Goldberry, Barrow-wights, etc., everything (perhaps because of the rhyme?) feels happy and childlike. 'You let me out again, Old Man Willow! / I am stiff lying here; they're no sort of pillow'.
Middle-earth appears in a few, like "The Sea-Bell" (which Auden considered Tolkien's best poem), "The Last Ship", "Oliphaunt". The latter is penned, supposedly, by Samwise Gamgee himself, along with a few others. And there are a few credited to Bilbo too. So they become stories within the Middle-earth universe. One can see, the introduction says, how many of the poems would be told and loved by hobbits. There is also "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late", penned by Bilbo and sung by Frodo in Bree in LOTR.
So once again, as I read more of Tolkien's expanded Middle-earth texts, I see how many crossovers there are. Of course, he had been working on the stories and characters for some twenty years before The Fellowship of the Ring was published. It was all gathering, overlapping. These are cute, whimsical and fun. If I had a small child (and/or hobbit) to read them too, they'd be all the sweeter. It doesn't unlock too much more, but reinforces the history of Bombadil as an old Tolkien character, reformed, repurposed, and fitted into the trilogy. I do have a soft spot for him, all things told....more
The "epilogue" of The Lord of the Rings; I never knew it existed until the other day. The song itself is small, just three stanzas, 68th book of 2024.
The "epilogue" of The Lord of the Rings; I never knew it existed until the other day. The song itself is small, just three stanzas, but this edition shows just two lines per double-page spread with plenty of illustrations (quirky, 70s style fantasy illustrations, at that). And of course a bit of extra material at the back to pad it out some more.
Tolkien wrote it originally in the 20s (so it's supposed) and it was a composition in Old Norse. He called it Vestr um haf, or "West Over Sea". In 1968, Tolkien gave it to his secretary, Joy Hill, as a gift for setting up his new office.
After Tolkien's death in 1973, she showed it to Donald Swann, who loved it, and set it to music and included it in The Road Goes Ever On in 1978. The poem was also illustrated by Pauline Baynes in 1974 and put on a poster.
[image]
Here is the poem. I will keep it neither secret nor safe.
Bilbo's Last Song (At the Grey Havens)
Day is ended, dim my eyes, but journey long before me lies. Farewell, friends! I hear the call. The ship's beside the stony wall. Foam is white and waves are grey; beyond the sunset leads my way. Foam is salt, the wind is free; I hear the rising of the Sea.
Farewell, friends! The sails are set, the wind is east, the moorings fret. Shadows long before me lie, beneath the ever-bending sky, but islands lie behind the Sun that I shall raise ere all is done; lands there are to west of West, where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
Guided by the Lonely Star, beyond the utmost harbour-bar I'll find the havens fair and free, and beaches of the Starlit Sea. Ship, my ship! I seek the West, and fields and mountains ever blest. Farewell to Middle-Earth at last. I see the Star above your mast!
I won't be including this in my yearly challenge, as Christopher has only written several lines to accompany each picture; it involves more looking thI won't be including this in my yearly challenge, as Christopher has only written several lines to accompany each picture; it involves more looking than reading.
It is a beautiful book in itself, with a painting of Glaurung on the slipcase. Inside are 48 pictures by Tolkien, almost all of them illustrations of Middle-earth, save a few at the end. His watercolour work is truly beautiful, and shows great control and skill. My favourite is probably, still, his painting of Taniquetil, which you'll sometimes find on the front of copies of The Silmarillion. It is the highest mountain that guards Valinor and where Manwë puts his throne. And in the foreground, one of the white ships of the Telerin Elves.
[image]
I was in Oxford a few months ago and more than anything else, in the Bodleian Library gift shop, there were reproductions of this particular piece of Tolkien's called "Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves", from The Hobbit. Large blown up reproductions for framing, and even tote bags. I wondered at the time why this painting over all the others, but it is a nice one.
[image]
And finally, a nostalgic one for me. This painting of Smaug is on the front cover of my mother's copy of The Hobbit, the one she read to me as a child. So always a favourite.
Disappointing. Not a complete failure at all, but one of my most anticipated reads of the year has fallen partly flat. Maybe nothing67th book of 2024.
Disappointing. Not a complete failure at all, but one of my most anticipated reads of the year has fallen partly flat. Maybe nothing Cusk writes from now on will hold a candle to the Outline Trilogy. The magnum opus has passed and now we are left with what follows. The echoes, so to speak; because the best part, "The Diver" echoes the trilogy: we have characters in a restaurant talking about their lives: art, parenthood, marriage, it could be a scene from the trilogy, but it's not quite. I've always loved the sharpness of Cusk's prose, and the emotion she generates through a sort of coldness. Although that remains the same here, it feels passionless. I've been trying to finish this since last night. I could have easily finished it on yesterday's commute, when I got home, this morning on my day off, this afternoon or even earlier this evening. I've looked at it guiltily a few times today, but haven't been compelled to pick it up. Ironically, as a novel of 'ideas' as it's being regarded, the ideas feel more forced and less poignant than their natural occurrences in the trilogy. I hate to keep comparing, but it's natural. It is better than Second Place, which was a dud, even forgettable. I do think Cusk is one of the top writers working today, and still think that, but this felt like she was trying too hard. That's the most unnerving thing to read, a good writer trying too hard. A character even talks about the nature of an artist not being 'seen' in an artwork, but I saw Cusk hiding behind all the curtains here. Even the bits in the "The Spy" that felt a little meta were distracting, because Cusk was like the little boy's face in the window in the final paintings observed in the novel. I could see her there, peeking in. A little too contrived....more
I read this yesterday sitting in Waterstones in Piccadilly, with the pounding music and noise of Pride only slightly muffled by the 66th book of 2024.
I read this yesterday sitting in Waterstones in Piccadilly, with the pounding music and noise of Pride only slightly muffled by the walls. To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect, having never read any of Tolkien's non-Middle-earth stories; but I was pleasantly surprised. I can admit to looking down on Fantasy somewhat as a genre, which is hypocritical of me because it annoys me that Tolkien has been overlooked so long as a 'fantasy writer', rather than a writer of literature. If you consider Middle-earth and all its creations in a post-war context, like the writings of Hemingway, Woolf, Fitzgerald, etc., then you start to see it in a wider and more impressive scope. Tolkien's presence at the Battle of the Somme, for example, sheds light on so much of Middle-earth's scenery and philosophies.
Leaf by Niggle is a different sort of beast. It's a strange, surreal little story about Niggle, a painter. It was written when Tolkien was struggling through the writing of The Lord of the Rings; at this point, he had been working on the tales we later see in The Silmarillion for twenty years of his life and nothing had been published save a few poems and The Hobbit. The publishers were desperate for a sequel. Tolkien was at a loss. He had a dream and immediately went to write it down: this is said dream on the page. It is a story about fear, the fear of never finishing something. Towards the end, it felt Beckettian, but incredibly gentle, comic, but with just a touch of fear, the kind that all aspiring artists will be familiar with....more
4.5. Following my reading of The Silmarillion (at last!), and being a long time Tolkien fan, I've finally decided to go about readin65th book of 2024.
4.5. Following my reading of The Silmarillion (at last!), and being a long time Tolkien fan, I've finally decided to go about reading most of his Middle-earth books, and perhaps even all his books. (Alan also half-dared me.) The Children of Húrin is a darker tale of Tolkien's, one that appears in The Silmarillion at roughly 30 pages length. Here, it has been expanded into 250. For one, having already read the shortened version, I enjoyed it as if reading it anew. The expansion did not feel gratuitous at all. I've already come to understand that some of the stories throughout Tolkien's work appear in different forms. I'll be reading Beren and Lúthien soon, for example, which I've already heard Aragorn tell (on Weathertop to the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings), and read in The Silmarillion, too. This doesn't bore me at all.
But back to The Children of Húrin: it involves plenty of anguish, murder, imprisonment, even incest. It is around the time of Morgoth, before Sauron, and therefore a fitting place to move into post-Silmarillion. I'm not overly concerned about my reading order. My mother read me The Hobbit when I was a boy and I've read The Lord of the Rings twice. From that point, I'm just following my inspirations (and whatever I can get a hold of also dictates my order). Generally, the Great Tales are my ambition for now, though I am reading some other Tolkien things, and just finished one of his small non-Middle-earth books, which I'll review shortly. For those who are lost post-LOTR, I think this is a pretty good place to go. It is written much like the trilogy, unlike the drier and more historical/Biblical prose of The Silmarillion. The first few chapters of this might be off-putting as Tolkien sets everything up, but once the story starts, it's enjoyable and readable to the end.
Túrin is a tragic figure and it reads like a Greek epic. As I've said, even knowing the story, I found the sad moments powerful, as if reading for the first time. Tolkien never slips too heavily into melodrama (one of his great talents), and when he does, it feels epic and classical rather than maudlin and pathetic. His knowledge of old texts is the foundation of Middle-earth and all its tales. I imagine this to be one of the better, more thrilling reads of the posthumous tales. ...more
The short version: Midnight’s Children is way better. The long version:
I recently read Knife like lots of folks and actually found61st book of 2024.
The short version: Midnight’s Children is way better. The long version:
I recently read Knife like lots of folks and actually found it made me like Rushdie less. Not that I don’t respect him and everything he has gone through: he is the epitome of resilience and a champion of literature vs ignorance. And it’s no surprise that this book’s reputation proceeds it. I’ve read a few times over the years that it’s a shame this one got so much press and attention, because it’s actually one of his weaker books. Obviously, other people say it’s a masterpiece. Page 1,
"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die. Hoji! Hoji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again . . ." Just before dawn one winter's morning, New Year's Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky. "I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you," and thusly and so beneath a moon of alabaster until a loud cry crossed the night, "To the devil with your tunes," the words hanging crystalline in the iced white night, "in the movies you only mimed to playback singers, so spare me these infernal noises now." Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. "Ohé, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch." At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's face. "Hey, Spoono," Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, "Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won't know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. _Dharrraaammm!_ Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar. I swear: splat."
It's got all the ingredients of other postmodern beasts. I was surprised how much it reminded me of Pynchon, actually (Rushdie has had the honour of meeting Pynchon, and didn’t say much: “[I] found him very satisfyingly Pynchonesque”. Interestingly, too, Rushdie said once in an interview the book that influenced him the most was Gravity’s Rainbow and he wrote an entire draft of a novel called The Antagonist which was so obviously a copy of TP that it wasn’t publishable — it now resides in the archives of Emory University in Atlanta). And this is not to say Rushdie is a bad writer, but no sentences or passages blew me away like those ones you stumble across in Pynchon out of nowhere that remind you, however frustrating he is, he is very good. Rushdie’s prose is dense, sometimes humorous. I didn’t care for the whole parallel vision plot going on, though I am sure it is chockfull of symbolism that went over my puny head. The magical realism, compared to other writers, didn’t have the depth or awe to it, though I did like certain ideas; I presume there was more symbolism hidden in all the inexplicable details. I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of the novel and a good portion in the middle, but the bits around it and the ending were disappointing. At times it felt aimless, and Rushdie was excitably leading me on by the hand when I just wanted to slow down or even stop.
But I’m glad I read it, after owning it for so many years. What gave me the kick to do it was something he said in Knife about his books being able to ‘look after themselves’; I like this idea, and think it holds truth. Some books can look after themselves, and I guess I wouldn’t jump to say this isn’t capable of handling itself. It clearly is. ...more
I'm slightly behind with my Fitzcarraldo subscription, but I'll try and catch up in the coming weeks. I'm sort of drowning in pages 58th book of 2024.
I'm slightly behind with my Fitzcarraldo subscription, but I'll try and catch up in the coming weeks. I'm sort of drowning in pages at the moment (in reality: at all moments). This was the joint winner, with It Lasts Forever Then It's Over, of the Fitzcarraldo 2022 Novel Prize. Winners are published simultaneously by Fitzcarraldo in the UK and Ireland, New Directions in the US, and Giramondo in Australia and New Zealand. There were over 1,000 entries, and these two winners came out on top, which is amazing to me as I gave It Lasts Forever Then It's Over 3-stars and here I am with 2-stars for Tell.
It's a short novel but has some very long paragraphs. The book is a transcript of a gardener talking about her employer, a rich art collector, Curtis Doyle, who has gone missing. There are also lots of references to the 'crash', that slowly reveals itself too. It reminded me of Henry Green's Loving, which I half-slogged through earlier this year. I just don't go for the small politics of country manors and staff. Green's novel was the original inspiration for the English show Downton Abbey, supposedly, that was all the craze however many years ago now. I guess today's equivalent is the popular series, Bridgerton, on Netflix. I've watched none of these, but this is the sort of thing it reminds me of.
The problem with having a novel like this is it all falls on the voice. The narrator's voice just isn't strong enough to support the novel. It's colloquial and mostly dull. I kept comparing it to books like Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, which is carried along by Portnoy's outlandish voice, humour and, well, frankly, all the sex talk. I was never that interested in what the gardener here was saying about her colleagues and Curtis, and without that, the novel just falls flat of anything it wants to achieve. According to the blurb, it examines 'wealth, the art world [...] social classes [...] the ways in which we make stories of our own lives and of other people's'; none of this is particularly realised. Class comes up from time to time, the art world mostly fades from the text. I feel a lot wasn't delivered. A shame, because the transcript thing might have been brilliant, if handled better. The only breaks in the text are comprised of things like '[Pause]' or '[Indistinct]'. The novel starts,
FIRST SESSION
I can talk for as long as you like, no problem. You'll just have to tell me when to stop. How far back do you want to take it? Because Lily is what it's about, in my opinion. And the mother is part of the story too. Father too. Goes without saying. But maybe better to pick them up later. Shall we start with the crash? Seems an obvious place.
I was a sluggard in college and studied Psychology for a single year before getting an E and dropping it. This came as no surprise;54th book of 2024.
I was a sluggard in college and studied Psychology for a single year before getting an E and dropping it. This came as no surprise; the night before my exams, my parents asked me about my progress, and I admitted to them that I hadn’t started revising. However, since then, I’ve always had a vague interest in Psychology, that subject I fluffed. Coincidentally, it’s like imagining the life I didn’t lead where I revised, did well, and perhaps succeeded in my exams. Not just for Psychology, but all of my A-Levels (I didn’t try particularly hard in any of them). I saw this book on the shelf the other day and it sounded like it was somewhere between philosophy and psychology, with smatterings of literary criticism. What more could a reformed sluggard want?
For this book is marketed as such. It’s subtitle is “In Praise of the Unlived Life”, and the blurb says things like, ‘But it is the life unlived — the person we have failed to be — that can trouble and even haunt us.’ This I know too well: I’ve lived my life with my hyperactive imagination barring me from happiness at many turns. I’ve lived with my fair share of regret and jealousy, and self-loathing. Phillips starts his Prologue,
The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining? It seems a strange question until one realises how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not.
And ends the Prologue with this idea: ‘But the worst thing we can be frustrated of is frustration itself; to be deprived of frustration is to be deprived of the possibilities of satisfaction.’ Which isn’t so different from the idea that life has to be hard so we then appreciate the good. Rather empty sentiments in the wake of grief, heartbreak, etc., but repeated often enough all the same. The Prologue, actually, delivers the book’s fatal wound. It explores everything the book promises to explore, and then fails to deliver. The most focussed writing can be found in the first five pages. So, the short conclusion to this review is: it’s a failed promise. Phillips hardly writes a book on what is promised or expected, and for that, as with many other reviewers, it seems, he fails me as a reader.
Instead? Literary criticism. Mostly Shakespeare. The chapters are as follows, “On Frustration”, “On Not Getting It”, “On Getting Away With It”, “On Getting Out of It”, and “On Satisfaction”; and running through all of these chapters, are the plays: King Lear, Hamlet, Othello. He explores several novels too. The chapter “On Not Getting It” (‘it’ being anything, the poem, the joke, etc.) rambles on about Freudian ideas around childhood. As humans, we don’t like to ‘not get it’; so I was pleased (and amused), that the novels Phillips explores, I’ve read, such as Greene’s The End of the Affair and Huxley’s Antic Hay [1]. It was somehow hard to, well, get, what these ideas (getting it, getting away with it, getting out of it) had to do with the unlived life, which takes me back to the main gripe of the book. Phillips writes lots of maddening, long, digressionary sentences, like,
Knowing too exactly what we want is what we do when we know what we want, or when we don’t know what we want.
So when I found myself in the wrong mood, the book made me grumpy. Then, after talking about Shakespeare for 10 seemingly aimless pages, he explores an interesting idea (albeit still mostly unconnected from the book’s focus) and redeems himself. For example, in “On Getting Away With It” (which is more about artists and writers than unlived lives [2]):
The reason that believers don’t think of God as ‘getting away with it’ is that the phrase itself implies the existence of a higher authority. If it means breaking the rules with impunity — eluding the expected consequences, the usual constraints — it also acknowledges that there are rules […] Which is why, as we shall see, getting away with things is among our most confounding experiences. If, as Freud remarks, the child’s first successful lie against the parents is his first moment of independence — the moment when he proves to himself that his parents cannot read his mind, and so are not omniscient deities — then it is also the first moment in which he recognises his abandonment.
And I suppose Phillips’s conclusion to this idea, jumping from Nietzsche, is,
If God is dead it is not that everything is permitted — which would simply be his reappearance as the permitter rather than the forbidder — but that there will be no more getting away with it. I think it is worth wondering, if we can imagine such a thing, what kind of loss that might be.
So the book certainly gave me food for thought, and plenty of things to wonder about on long walks. And the psychoanalyst rears his head at times, for sentences like ‘we live as if we know more about the experiences we haven’t had than about the experiences we have had’, which sounds more like what the blurb promises us. Though Phillips hardly gives us guidance; perhaps that’s not his job? He, Phillips, enters the narrative properly only once, to describe a scene from one of his therapy sessions. A teacher came to see him, and for the first ten minutes sat in silence, like a scene in Good Will Hunting. Then,
‘If you look after me who will look after you?’ I asked, ‘Did you have to do a lot of looking after when you were growing up?’ And he replied, as though we were in the middle of a long conversation, ‘Yes, my mother was sick a lot and my dad was away.’ And I said, for no apparent reason, ‘When you were looking after your mother did anything really strange ever happen, anything you just didn’t get?’ There was a pause, and he said, ‘Often, very often, when I was getting up to fill the coal scuttle downstairs, my mother would shout down from her bedroom, “Can you fill the coal scuttle” . . . so I never know whether I’m doing it because I want to or because she’s telling me to.’ I remarked, ‘You said “know” as if it’s still happening now,’ and he replied, ‘It is happening now because I never really know if I’m doing what I want or whether I’m acting under instruction.’ I asked, ‘Is coming to see me an example of this?’ and he smiled and said, ‘Yes, and I think I’ll go now.’ He got up, walked towards the door, and as he opened it he said to me, ‘I am going back to my bean-field’; and I had this tremendously powerful feeling of affection for him, as if he had understood me, ‘Walden’ having been an important book in my life, though he had no way of knowing this.
Phillips then quotes from Walden and the idea of the bean-field. Doing something and why we do something. He gets close to unpacking, but seems to be generally opposed to it. After all, he calls a quote of Joseph Sandler’s (‘Suffering is a consequence of the distance between the ego and the ego-ideal, the distance between who I feel myself to be, and who I want to be’) ‘too neat’.
I instead engorged on the literary meat and tried to forget what I was promised. In the “On Not Getting It” chapter, Phillips uses a wide range of sources to discuss the concept behind art and ‘not getting it’. ‘When Ashbery was asked in an interview why his poetry was so difficult he replied that when you talk to other people they eventually lose interest but that when you talk to yourself people want to listen in. No one, other perhaps than Ashbery, talks to themselves in the way he writes poetry; but what Ashbery is suggesting in his whimsically shrewd way is that the wish to communicate estranges people from each other. If you talk to people, he suggests, they lose interest, if you ignore them — or, rather, if you ignore them by talking to yourself — they are engaged. As though curiosity might sometimes be preferred to consolation, listening in or overhearing preferred to communication or comprehension. And ideas that so many readers on Goodreads will understand: ‘the pleasures of resistance’; but like me, you may ask what this has to do with an unlived life. Even after reading the book, I’d say, I don’t know. That, like the Buddhist expression, the obstacle is the path. That frustration, failure, not getting ‘it’, are all key aspects of living a full life. Phillips doesn’t give us a ‘neat’ answer for that other parallel, or in my case certainly, many parallel lives we imagine.
The other day, I was talking to P. about a mutual friend who had thrown his whole relationship away because he was constantly imagining relationships with girls he knew. They, in turn, rejected him, turned their backs, and he has been left with nothing. I made a facetious remark about how our friend doesn’t seem to realise these are intrusive thoughts, like seeing a girl in the airport and imagining, for three minutes, living your entire life with her, even though you know nothing about her and will never see her again. P., one of the most happily married men I know, surprisingly agreed with me. He said, Ted, that sort of thing never goes away. So, Phillips, whatever you write about Shakespeare, we have to live with that unlived life. _________________________________
[1] This is something I was discussing the other day, too; the more you read, especially of the ‘canon’, the more you are drawn into its web. You begin to pick up on allusions more often. You are slowly drawn into the clique, the ‘know’. This writer is quoting this writer, referencing this writer, answering this writer. I’ve argued before that this has something to do with the pompousness of readers. They can’t help but flaunt how in the know they are. They are in the elite, the imaginary (but very real!) group. It’s like having a hundred inside jokes. What is Goodreads, then, but the sharing and bragging of inside jokes?
[2] Swann, my mentor, used to say to me, ‘Writing is about what you can get away with.’ He often pointed out a plot-hole in The Great Gatsby, and said, ‘Fitzgerald gets away with it, because he’s so good!’ Whilst I was reading Phillips, I was reminded of something from Ellmann’s biography of Joyce. After Ulysses was published, he supposedly got very drunk and was half-carried to a carriage by Nora. The very inebriated Joyce yelled into the street, “I made them take it,' presumably an angry brag that he had foisted 'Ulysses' upon the public’; this to me sounds akin to yelling, ‘I got away with it!’...more
At quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a yo
50th book of 2024.
At quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.
Begins, Knife, somewhat with a false promise. I don't know what I expected, exactly, but it wasn't quite this; but I don't want to unfairly hound him. I am very interested in violence as a subject, especially since I taught martial arts for many years and had my own school. The concept of a man who had been attacked (I have been 'attacked' a few times myself, but never with a weapon) and nearly died, only to turn over and write, put me in a state of awe. The pen is mightier than the sword, indeed.
But what most of the book is dedicated to is writing about how amazing his wife is and how much he loves her. I'm not one for declarations of love, really, so this already puts me cold. And secondly, Rushdie is now on his fifth wife, so I'm sceptical of any grand declarations of such after so many marriages. I understand these are personal reflections, but they hold true to my experience with the book. I actually rolled my eyes at points, like when he records his wife saying, "And what we have is the greatest story, which is love." Vomit.
I also found the writing disarmingly simple, even poor. Rushdie is a skilled writer, I believe that, but I guess he dropped all the style and just went for honesty. I can't, really, fault him for that. With that in mind, the most interesting part of the book is when he turns to fiction: he has an imaginary conversation with his attacker, which spans for quite a few pages. I'll quote a chunk of it below because I found the discussion particularly interesting. This is part way through the imagined conversation, and it is Rushdie speaking first in this extract, which you can probably guess by what is said.
I'd like to talk about books.
There's only one book worth talking about.
Let me tell you about a book about a book. It's written by the Turkish author Pamuk, and called "The New Life". In this book there's a book that has no name, and we do not know anything about what's written on its pages. But everyone who opens this book has their whole life changed. After they read the book they are not the same as they were before. Do you know a book like that?
Of course. It is the book containing the Word of God, as given by the Archangel to the Prophet.
Did the Prophet write it down immediately?
He came down from the mountain and recited, and whoever was nearby wrote it down on whatever came to hand.
And he recited with complete accuracy. What the Archangel said: word for word. And then they wrote it down with complete accuracy also. Word for word.
That is obvious.
And what happened to these pages?
After the Prophet's life ended, his Companions put them in order, and that is the Book.
And they put them in order with complete accuracy.
Every true believer knows this. Only the godless would question this, and they don't matter.
Can I ask you a question about the nature of God?
He is all-encompassing. All-knowing. He is All.
It is in your tradition, is it not, that there is a difference between your God and the God of the other People of the Book, the Jews and the Christians. They believe, as it says in their books, that God created Man in His own image.
They are wrong.
Because, if they were right, then God might have some resemblance to men? He might look like a man? He might have a mouth, and a voice, and be able to use it to speak to us?
But this is not correct.
Because, in your tradition, the idea of God is that He is so far superior to Man, so much more exalted, that He shares no human qualities.
Exactly. For once you are not talking garbage.
What would you say were human qualities?
Our bodies. How we look and how we are.
Is love a human quality? Is the desire for justice? Is mercy? Does God have those?
I am not a scholar. Imam Yutubi [the YouTube star the attacker supposedly watched] is a scholar. He is many-headed and many-voiced. I follow him. I have learned everything from him.
I don't mean to ask for your scholarship. You agree that your God has no human qualities, according to your own tradition. Let me just ask this. Isn't language a human quality? To have a language, God would have to have a mouth, a tongue, vocal chords, a voice. He would have to look like a man. In his own image. But you agree that God is not like that.
So what?
So if God is above language—so far above it as He is so far above all that is merely human—then how did the words of your Book come into being?
The Angel understood God and brought the Message in a way that the Messenger could understand, and the Messenger received it.
Was the Message in Arabic?
That's how the Messenger received it and how his Companions wrote it down.
Can I ask you something about translation?
You do this too much. We are going in one direction and then you swerve across the road and start driving the other way. Not only a butterfly but a bad driver.
I only want to suggest that when the Archangel understood the Word of God and brought it to the Messenger in a way that the Messenger could understand, he was translating it. God communicated it the way that God communicates, which is so far above human understanding that we cannot even begin to comprehend it, and the Angel made it comprehensible to the Messenger, by delivering it in human speech, which is not the speech of God.
The Book is the uncreated Word of God.
But we agreed that God has no words. In which case, what we read is an interpretation of God. And so maybe there could be other interpretations? Maybe your way, your Yutubi's way, is not the only way? Maybe there is no one correct way?
You are a snake.
Can I ask what language you read the Book? In the first language or another?
I read it in this inferior tongue in which we are speaking now.
Another translation.
One could easily say, as people say about Plato, that the Socratic dialogue lends itself to the writer talking rings around his adversary, especially since the latter is imagined. But I found it the most interesting part of the book around lovey-dovey remarks and the breakdowns of his recovery and the processes he went through.
Other than that, strange Mandalorian references, quotes from writers you wouldn't expect, like Jodi Picoult, and bits about Martin Amis and Paul Auster, both of whom were alive but struggling, and the former then dying. We lost Auster, obviously, after this was published....more
In the beginning Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great M
49th book of 2024.
In the beginning Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great Music before him. In this Music the World was begun; for Ilúvatar made visible the song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as light in the darkness.
So starts Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which is comprised of several parts (“Quenta Silmarillion” (The History of the Silmarils), “Ainulindalë” (The Music of the Ainur), “Valaquenta” (Account of the Valar), “Akallabêth” (The Downfall of Númenor) and “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”). The majority of the book is given to the story of the Silmarils, jewels that are stolen from the Elves by Morgoth, the Dark Lord who ruled before Sauron eventually took his place. I’ve seen some people attack The Silmarillion for its lack of story. I’ve seen it likened to reading the Bible [1], or a history textbook; but as I’ve said in the first footnote, within the many names Tolkien introduces, many of them are immediately important for the story. Fëanor is the creator of the Silmarils and is vital for the story, as are Fingolfin and Finarfin. The former of whom I particularly liked.
Entwined into the overarching narrative of the Silmarils and the wars fought over them, is Tolkien’s famous (and sometimes infamous) worldbuilding and history. What begins with the creation of the world tracks to the Third Age at the end of the book. We see the coming of Men, the dawn of the Dúnedain (another particular favourite), and even the coming of the Istari. Take this passage from the chapter “Of Men”, which compares Men to Elves:
But Men were more frail, more easily slain by weapon or mischance, and less easily healed; subject to sickness and many ills; and they grew old and died. What may befall their spirits after death the Elves know not. Some say that they too go to the halls of Mandos; but their place of waiting there is not that of the Elves, and Mandos under Ilúvatar alone save Manwë knows whither they go after the time of recollection in those silent halls beside the Outer Sea.
Tolkien’s power has always rested in his supreme imagination and what is often called now, ‘world-building’; but as I’ve said in my reviews of The Lord of the Rings, his skills as a prose-writer are often overlooked because of this. The Silmarillion, for all its infamous depth, is, at countless points, wonderful to read. Tolkien conjures mystical islands wreathed in mist, rolling mountains, lakes, forests, and hills. As I’ve said, one of my favourite stories is about the Dúnedain [2] and the fall of Númenórë/Elenna/Westernesse. From the “Akallabêth”,
Then the Edain set sail upon the deep waters, following the Star; and the Valar laid a peace upon the sea for many days, and sent sunlight and a sailing wind, so that the waters glittered before the eyes of the Edain like rippling glass, and the foam flew like snow before the stems of their ships.
I studied a literature module at university which was all about fairy-tales/stories and their place in literature. As a Tolkien fan-boy, of course, I frequently called upon Tolkien’s essay on fairy-stories for my own essays. You can see the deep knowledge of myth, legend and fairy stories here in The Silmarillion, perhaps more so than anywhere else. He references a mystical place called ‘Avallóne’, for example. The story of Beren and Lúthien (one of the more famous stories from The Silmarillion, because it is also one of the three Tales from Middle-Earth, along with The Children of Húrin and The Fall of Gondolin), reads like a tragic myth, something like the story of Orpheus and Eurydice; because despite all the winding descriptions of the world and its creations, The Silmarillion is filled with murder, obsession, war and tragedy. For any doubt about the action-sequences in the book, take this passage from “Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin”, where Fingolfin calls upon Morgoth for single combat.
Therefore Morgoth came, climbing slowly from his subterranean throne, and the rumour of his feet was like thunder underground. And he issued forth clad in black armour; and he stood before the King like a tower, iron-crowned, and his vast shield, sable unblazoned, cast a shadow over him like a stormcloud. But Fingolfin gleamed beneath it as a star; for his mail was overlaid with silver, and his blue shield was set with crystals; and he drew his sword Ringil, that glittered like ice.
And I’ll save the description of their combat for those who read it.
The final chapter, regarding the Rings of Power [3] and the Third Age, is like a sweet reward from Tolkien. We read about the coming of the Istari, otherwise known as the wizards. We are introduced to Mithrandir, or as we later know him as, Gandalf, and Curunír, later known as Saruman.
In the likeness of Men they appeared, old but vigorous, and they changed little with the years, and aged but slowly, though great cares lay on them; great wisdom they had, and many powers of mind and hand […] Radagast was the friend of all beasts and birds; but Curunír went most among Men, and he was subtle in speech and skilled in all the devices of smithcraft. Mithrandir was closest in council with Elrond and the Elves. He wandered far in the North and West and made never in any land any lasting abode; but Curunír journeyed into the East, and when he returned he dwelt at Orthanc in the Ring of Isengard, which the Númenóreans made in the days of their Power.
I won’t spoil for those who embark on the journey through The Silmarillion where Tolkien ends it and what he says of the Istari and their coming to Middle-Earth. It has taken me just over a week to read this book. I spent many mornings in the Palace Gardens near my workplace reading this. There are big trees, little paths through flowers and plenty of birds and squirrels darting about; it felt like the perfect place to descend into the richness of Tolkien’s mind. If you love the world of Middle-Earth, the ideas of religion, spirituality, and goodness that Tolkien has, then I would recommend The Silmarillion. It is, in a way, the apex of his passion. The story guides you, but it is everything else around it that makes it. Frankly, one cannot read it without awe. ___________________________
[1] Though, anyone who has read parts of the Bible will know the sentences that run and run about who begat whom. The Silmarillion sometimes has similarities on that front:
Finwë was King of the Noldor. The sons of Finwë were Fëanor, and Fingolfin, and Finarfin; but the mother of Fëanor was Miriel Serindë, whereas the mother of Fingolfin and Finarfin was Indis of the Vanyar.
This continues on for the rest of the page, outlining the sons of the sons, and so on. However, these names listed by Tolkien are the leading characters in the History of the Silmarils. It is shown in the appendices as below. Looking at the family tree, one can also see how it tumbles down to other familiar names, such as Elrond, Galadriel, and Celebrimbor.
[image]
[2] I have many favourite characters, as many do, but I’ve always loved Aragorn since I was a boy, and as I’ve grown older, only liked him more. When I turned to rock music as a teenager and realised Led Zeppelin had countless songs about Tolkien’s world, I was amazed; it seemed like the most unlikely place to hear about Middle-Earth. So I began to listen to “Ramble On”, “The Battle of Evermore”, and “Misty Mountain Hop”. Then, fell deeper in love, when I learnt that Robert Plant’s dog was called Strider after Aragorn.
[image]
[3] One of my colleagues at work is currently doing a PhD in linguistics, and is, as one can imagine, a Tolkien super-fan. She has already The Silmarillion many times, all the unfinished tales, etc. Her brother works in TV, and was part of The Rings of Power TV show they released on Prime. She often wears a hoodie with some eagles on it, taken from the set. All that being said, I didn’t like the show myself, and found by the halfway mark, I had lost all interest. The portion of The Silmarillion that shares the same name has almost nothing in common with it. As a sidenote, though, I was surprised to read some of the passages in the Third Age section and find, scene for scene, bits that open Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, regarding Isildur and his refusal to throw the Ring into the fire, and his later death by arrows in a river — that’s all straight from this text....more
Once upon a day an old butler called Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid, Miss Agatha Burch. From time to
41st book of 2024.
Once upon a day an old butler called Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid, Miss Agatha Burch. From time to time the other servants separately or in chorus gave expression to proper sentiments and then went on with what they had been doing. One name he uttered over and over, ‘Ellen.’
So starts Loving, a book that has that strange paradox some books can have: being well-loved and, equally, somewhat 'forgotten'. It's a 2.5, really, because I found myself marvelling at certain bits and realising Green is a good writer. It's a shame that this novel is almost entirely made up of dialogue as some of the few bits of writing that aren't dialogue are written like this:
They were wheeling wheeling in each other’s arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above from a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of distant day, again and again red velvet paneled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.
This novel supposedly inspired shows like Downton Abbey, and you can see why; it's mostly comprised of the servants in a big country house in Ireland getting on each other's nerves, gossiping and thinking about their own futures (mostly involving the IRA or the imminent invasion of Germans, which they all feel is coming). Despite all this, I just didn't massively care. A missing ring. A dead peacock. I never found myself fully invested in any of the characters, especially as it's only through dialogue we experience them. Akin to reading a play rather than seeing it performed, in some ways. Without a doubt, masterfully subtle. Maybe when I'm older I'll read it again and see all the nuance in it and love it for it. For now, as an impatient 20-something year old, I wanted a bit more meat on the bone. ...more
Clarke writes a short, lucid introduction about this ancient poem/song. She explains that the writer attributed to the text, Aneirin35th book of 2024.
Clarke writes a short, lucid introduction about this ancient poem/song. She explains that the writer attributed to the text, Aneirin, is one of the earliest British poets we can name. (The other being Taliesin.) This piece is a lament for fallen of the Gododdin tribe, at the battle of Catraeth, somewhere in the late sixth century. The original language is early Welsh. It has been remembered, sung, passed down, sung some more. ‘The Welsh word cerdd means both ‘song’ and ‘poem’. For seven centuries, in this way, ‘singer to listener’, Y Gododdin passed, until a medieval scribe put it to paper.
‘The Gododdin were a tribe from what we now think of as southern Scot-land, or Yr Hên Ogledd, ‘The Old North’, as it is known in the Welsh tradition. Aneirin’s poem elegises three hundred men of the war-band Mynyddog Mwynfawr, who feasted on mead for a year before marching from the court of Dyn Eidyn, now Edinburgh, to the battle of Catraeth, probably Catterick in North Yorkshire.’
As Clarke reminds us, Welsh is the oldest literary language in Europe still being written and spoken today, and claims Y Gododdin as being one of the greatest treasures from the islands of Britain. There is one small and very particular reason I read this, but I will come to it later on, because despite reading this for such a small purpose, I found the whole lament to be surprisingly moving. I’ll quote some of my favourite passages below. Clarke has rendered the laments so each falls under the subject’s name. I couldn’t help but imagine a lament, in this way, for each man who died at the Somme, for example. The size of the book, the words for each and every man. For the first elegy, I’ve also penned the Welsh, just so I can later goggle at its beauty.
2
Greddf gŵr, oed gwas, Gwryd amddias; Meirch mwth myngfras O dan forddwyd mygrwas; Ysgwyd ysgafn lydan Ar bedrain main fuan; Cleddyfawr glas glân, Eddi aur affan. Ni bu ef a fi Cas y rhof a thi: Gwell gweneif â thi Ar wawd dy foli. Cynt i waedlawr Nogyd i neithiawr, Cynt i fwyd brain Nog i argyfrain, Cu gyfaill Ywain, Cŵl ei fod o dan fain. Marth im pa fro Lladd un mab Marro.
Owain 2
A boy with a man’s heart, on fire for the front, restless for war, lush-manned, fleet-hoofed stallion between young thighs, shield laid on the horse’s flank, his sword a blue-bright blade, his armour burnished gold.
As the singer of this song I lay no blame but only praise for him sooner gone to the battlefield than to his marriage-bed; sooner carrion for the crow, sooner flesh to feed the raven. I mourn him, laid in his grave.
Dear friend, Owain. Marro’s Only son. Slain.
I even found the smaller elegies moving, for how humanising they were. It reminded me of the sentiments I read earlier this year in Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, that our great ancestors were not simian-people devoid of brains, but almost exactly as we are today.
Ceredig 30
Ceredig, celebrated, famed, loved life dearly, as his name tells — favoured, favourite, till his day came.
Quiet and courteous, may he who loved song find his place at home in Paradise.
And no doubt Clarke has done a wonderful job of translating it, too. From ‘Mynyddog 68’:
On Tuesday, they put on dark blue armour. On Wednesday, white-limed their shields for war. On Thursday, agreed their battle plan. On Friday, they counted the dead. On Saturday they fought as one. On Sunday they raised red blades. On Monday they waded in blood.
And to return to the main reason I wanted to read this ancient text (as well as it being one of the great treasures of my homeland): one single line in the whole one-hundred odd verses, from 99 of 100:
Gwawrddur 99
Charging ahead of the three hundred he cut down the centre and the wing.
Blazing ahead of the finest army, he gave horses from his winter herd.
He fed ravens on the fortress wall though he was no Arthur.
Among the strongest in the war, Gwawrddur, citadel.
That singular line: ‘though he was no Arthur’ has fascinated people for generations. If original, it is the earliest mention of the mythical King Arthur, as early as the sixth century. Some say it is an interpolation, but the mystery continues....more
A thoroughly enjoyable read. Allen takes us from the beginning of paper and notebooks and explores, through the centuries, how writ24th book of 2024.
A thoroughly enjoyable read. Allen takes us from the beginning of paper and notebooks and explores, through the centuries, how writers, scientists, philosophers, travellers, and regular people have used and been shaped by notebooks and how they, in turn, have helped shape humanity. Countless names appear from the expected and beyond: Pepys, Darwin, Anne Frank, Henry James, Woolf, etc. He also explores some found notebooks from men travelling at sea, which I found fascinating. My favourite being the notebooks of Michael from Rhodes, as he came to be called. Someone mocked me at work for taking this, "You've really surpassed yourself with this one!" But it wasn't boring at all; Allen keeps the investigation lively, and it's no surprise that he is a self-proclaimed avid notebook-user.
The most exciting part about the stories and digressions is what keeps history being one of my favourite subjects. The sailor who wrote the notebook full of seafaring and fish drawings would never imagine that in the 21st century, another book was written about his own private musings. And that humanity has always been the same, for all our flaws, we are curious, obsessive, endlessly learning. It's comforting, in a way. ...more
4.5. Brilliant. I can see how this is often compared with 1984, particularly as some of the interrogations felt very Room 101. Koes25th book of 2024.
4.5. Brilliant. I can see how this is often compared with 1984, particularly as some of the interrogations felt very Room 101. Koestler has written a readable and stark political novel about Stalinist Russia (he goes by Number One). Rubashov was a fascinating protagonist, his political intentions and choices, I felt, were layered enough to feel real. The bits in the prison itself were reminiscent of all great prisoner literature, in this case, The Count of Monte Cristo the most. There were almost moments of great tension, written with Koestler's deceptively simple but effective prose. Loyalty to the party and its ideologies in the face of everything? Rubashov is of an older generation to some of the younger interrogators, so Koestler explores some old vs new in a Fathers and Sons way. Like all great literature does, this reminded me of other greats. I think when there is a rich cobweb like this, it feels part of the canon. I did toy with giving this the full five but I'll have to mull it for a few days, for now I'll keep it at an incredibly strong and high 4. ...more
I finished this on the way to Bournemouth, where Stevenson wrote it. I was never that impressed with Treasure Island, having read it18th book of 2024.
I finished this on the way to Bournemouth, where Stevenson wrote it. I was never that impressed with Treasure Island, having read it later in life, and didn't think that much of Jekyll and Hyde, either, which I studied at university. But, Kidnapped was considerably more enjoyable, mature and well-written. Stevenson evokes a dreary and mythical Scotland. David Balfour is a good protagonist that I felt for, an issue I had with Scott's Rob Roy: none of his characters were even likeable. So this one comes out on top from our neighbouring Scottish writers so far. I also loved that Stevenson blended fact and fiction with Alan Breck, Rob Roy and many other real historical characters. A good romp layered with Scotland's violent history. ...more
Oborne has certainly been keeping receipts. The second chapter alone outlines a number of Johnson lies* with relevant footnotes to b15th book of 2024.
Oborne has certainly been keeping receipts. The second chapter alone outlines a number of Johnson lies* with relevant footnotes to backup his claims. Several of them, he writes, he researched himself to get to the truth (which, at every count, was the opposite to what Johnson had said). Of course, Oborne also attacks Tony Blair and the lies he and the Labour party told to drag Britain into a war with Iraq. He, Oborne writes, began the path that led to Johnson and his lies. He does compare Johnson as Prime Minister to the Johnson he knew writing for The Spectator decades ago and wonders what changed. It’s no secret to anyone that Johnson was fired from two journalist posts for lying, and yet, he made it into No. 10 regardless. Oborne compares Johnson to Trump (both liars, though he points out Johnson’s aloofness compared to Trump’s outright revelling in it), and to Merkel on the pandemic front, just to prove how competent she was in steering Germany through that period. Oborne does show his arrogance and self-importance in the conclusion when he starts talking about how he is sending the manuscript of this book to the House of Commons and that people have to call out lies they hear as soon as they do. And if they are accused of lying by anyone in politics, to immediately sue them, even if it’s Boris Johnson himself. Clearly written but slightly outdated in that we know much of the content already. Now we have Rishi to talk about, Johnson is almost forgotten in the media. For now.
_______________________
*Here are some: that Johnson’s government was building forty new hospitals: untrue; that Corbyn had a £1,2 trillion spending plan: untrue, that Corbyn ‘thinks home ownership is a bad idea and is opposed to it’: untrue, and that Corbyn wanted to abolish the British armed forces: very untrue; Johnson once claimed on a hospital visit he had given up drink: untrue (he had been photographed drinking the day before and the day after); ‘‘There was a [baby boom] after the Olympics, as I prophesied in a speech in 2012’’: untrue (Oborne checked this himself); Johnson told activists he was building a new hospital ‘in the marginal seat of Canterbury’: untrue; ‘‘we will certainly make sure that the A&E in Telford is kept open’’: untrue; he claimed NHS funding would go up to £34 billion: untrue: ‘Adjusted for inflation, the £34 million comes down to £20.5 billion. Not even close to the £24 billion a year spent on average by the Labour government up to 2009’; on the Andrew Marr show Johnson said Corbyn wanted to ‘‘disband MI5’’: untrue; he also claimed Corybn had a ‘plan for unlimited and uncontrolled immigration’: untrue; he also said Corbyn would ‘‘whack corporation tax up to the highest in Europe’’: untrue, Labour said they would up to 26 per cent (France was 31 per cent at this time and Belgium was 29 per cent); he claimed Britain corporation tax was ‘‘already the lowest in Europe’’: untrue; Johnson likened Corbyn to Stalin: obviously untrue and, as Oborne says, this comment was to ‘trash history and language, and insult all of Stalin’s victims’; he continually promised there would be no customs checks or controls for good moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland: untrue; he claimed that Britain’s membership in the EU cost ‘an extra £1 billion a month’: untrue; the Tory social media altered a video of Sir Keir Starmer (then shadow Brexit secretary) replying to Piers Morgan about Labour’s Brexit position: they cut Starmer’s silence as he listened to the question and moved it to after Morgan had asked the question so he appeared to be flummoxed when in actuality, he answered ‘immediately, confidently and fluently’; the lies he told throughout the pandemic, causing Britain to be one of the worst sufferers, despite being one of the most capable. ...more
Even though I knew this book was a metafiction, it surprised me by its form. Fowles is proving his mettle here, that even by having 17th book of 2024.
Even though I knew this book was a metafiction, it surprised me by its form. Fowles is proving his mettle here, that even by having a narrator in the 20th century writing a book about the 19th century, a pastiche of Hardy, we could say, full of interruptions and modern-day similes and metaphors, he managed to sweep me into the story regardless. At one point, in Chapter 13, no less, he [the narrator] remarks again that everything we are reading is made-up. All the characters and all the action is simply in his imagination. We are literally pulled out of the story, lifted into the clouds and shown that what we are looking at is not life itself but a facsimile, a board game with little plastic figurines. In this respect, the narrator can muse on the nature of creation and writing. And yet, when Chapter 14 begins and we are dropped back into the world, within the span of a few pages, I'd forgotten all this fourth-wall breaking and was absorbed once more. In truth, it annoyed me, not because I found the interruptions distracting (well, they are), but because I found Fowles's talents annoying. How is he pulling this off? And as the novel goes on, that question only grows larger. Eventually, his modern-day similes didn't even strike a funny note with me. I read his comparisons to Nazis, atomic bombs, computers and whatever else in the 1800s setting as if it was commonplace.
So, if you like your postmodern books, this is for you. The story itself is a serious bit of fiction but it's wrapped up in a game. It doesn't lack emotion, or heart. It becomes a rumination on Victorians and their values, writing and the idea of 'reality' and how we look at history and the past. Humans have always been the same but their external worlds have been very different. The Victorians on the page in this novel are so real despite being constantly reminded they are fake because Fowles shows how full of repressed sexual desire they are, how they wish to break the chains of their conventions and class. Who knew the Victorians wanted to have as much sex as we do now?
But all in all, I think I prefer The Magus; there's something magnificent about that novel, its Greek setting, the mythical prose, and the plot that borders on the psychedelic. In the first fifty pages I was convinced I wouldn't like this, but Fowles swayed me in the end. It gets off to a slow start and it takes time to realise the game, but once you know the rules, it's enjoyable. ...more
A cute new collection of Cope poems. I know "The Orange" by heart, anyway. It's one of those poems that did nothing for me for a lon8th book of 2024.
A cute new collection of Cope poems. I know "The Orange" by heart, anyway. It's one of those poems that did nothing for me for a long time until I then read it at a certain point in time and it just clicked for me. Now it always reminds me of that door opening and revealing solace. After all, it's about finding beauty and peace in the small things.
The Orange At lunchtime I bought a huge orange— The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I’m glad I exist.
The rest, as ever with Cope: sweet, sad and sometimes poignant. Some really tiny ones in here like,
Two Cures for Love
1. Don't see him. Don't phone or write a letter. 2. The easy way: get to know him better.
I like that in the universe of Cope's poetry, things are simple, they work out, and only need a bit of tending to, like a garden....more
Matthew Ted
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