Barb has long been one of the group’s most enthusiastic participants. In fact, along with her friend Susan, she was slated to lead a discussion earlier this month. The title they chose was I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman, one of Barb’s favorite authors. In the event, Barb was unable to attend. Susan, a relatively new addition to the group, did an excellent job as solo facilitator, but she made it clear that she was greatly aided by Barb’s insights and suggestions, shared with her prior to the night in question.

We in the Usual Suspects group have always appreciated Barb’s intelligence and perceptiveness, as well as her ready wit and sense of humor. She was with us in spirit the night of the Lippman discussion; in like manner, she’ll be a presence at future  gatherings of the Usual Suspects, as the months and years unfold.

She was a good  friend and a good person, and will be missed by all of us.

Oxford World's Classics edition

I have, of late, written of my great pleasure in turning once again to the works of Jane Austen. I speak in particular of Sense and Sensibility, an early work by this  author. I had read this novel once before – indeed, had read Austen’s entire oeuvre while a besotted undergraduate many years ago. I have, since that time, revisited them numerous times as rendered in filmed versions. Due to time constraints, rereading has been undertaken a good deal less frequently.

I found that on this occasion, reading Sense and Sensibility presented me with certain challenges. In a previous post, I described the first of these, encountered by me in the novel’s opening chapter. The problem centered on Austen’s setting out of the relationships of the various members of the Dashwood family. I reread this chapter, went on to the next, and became well and truly enthralled. The riches of Jane Austen’s tale of love found, lost, and ultimately  recovered lay before me and I feasted upon them, with the greatest pleasure imaginable. That is not to say that the challenges disappeared completely….

When reading a novel published in 1811  (the initial work on which was begun even earlier, in the late 1790s), one is bound to encounter some unfamiliar and/or antiquated vocabulary.  In  the course of one conversation, for instance, Willoughby makes this comment: “Perhaps…his observations may have extended to the existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins.”

Come again?

Puzzlers like this are much easier to research now that we have Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon at our disposal. All three of the somewhat obscure terms uttered here by Willoughby relate to India. Wiktionary informs us that ‘nabob’ derives from ‘nawab.’ the term for a ruler in the Moghul Empire. Thus nabob has come to signify  a person “of great wealth or importance,” and or a person who in his style of living exhibits a ‘grandiose’ manner. (And who of my generation can forget “nattering nabobs of negativism,” that triumph of alliterative obscurity coined for Spiro Agnew in 1970 by columnist and speech writer William Safire?)

A palanquin is a litter, a conveyance born upon the (probably long suffering) shoulders of four bearers – servants, or in some instances slaves. 

‘Gold mohrs’ presented more of a challenge. I got the best result from searching inside an annotated text version of the novel on Amazon. A footnote contained the following: “Gold mohrs, or mohurs, were the principal coins used in British India.”

Jane Austen’s sentence structure can take some getting used to, as here, where Marianne’s temperament is subject to her creator’s keen analysis:

…Marianne abhorred all concealment where no real disgrace could attend unreserve; and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in themselves illaudable. appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort, but a disgraceful subjection of reason to common-place and mistaken notions.

In contemporary parlance, Marianne sees no reason to conceal or temper her feelings for Willoughby. There was no reason that the two should not form an attachment. Why should she strive for a severe comportment? She was young, high spirited, and in love, and she didn’t mind who knew of it.

At any rate, the reward for the reader in overcoming these admittedly minor obstacles is to have Jane  Austen’s richly imagined world made real. You enter that world and are filled with delight.  (Tis truly a delight, Gentle Reader, despite the presence of certain characters in the narrative whose behavior is so odious that you’d like to smack them! One has only to think of the scheming, tightfisted Mrs. John Dashwood and her milquetoast of a husband….)

I had seen the film version of Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett, and Hugh Grant when it came out in 1995. As I made my way through the novel, I realized  that I was recalling the story as told in the film rather than in the novel. Emma Thompson, who wrote the screenplay, made significant alterations in the plot and eliminated several minor characters from the narrative. Even so, her greatest challenge was in writing the dialog, as she herself explains:

The language in the novel is complex and far more arcane than in the later books. In simplifying it I’ve tried to retain the elegance and wit of the original and it’s necessarily more exacting than modern speech.

All I can say is, watch the movie and see just how brilliantly she has succeeded. (Emma Thompson is a graduate of Cambridge University, where she read English literature.)

  In the same year as the film came out, Thompson published a book containing her screenplay and also entries from the diary she kept during production. The diaries are a delight. Here are some of my favorite bits:

After screening a seemingly endless parade of potential cast members, director Ang Lee, in some amazement, asks, “Can everyone in England act?” Thompson and producer Lindsey Doran consult together on this question and decide that the answer is probably yes.

———————-

Jane Gibson, whom Thompson describes as “movement duenna and and expert on all matters historical,” served as a consultant. Cast members learned a great deal from her:

The bow is the gift of the head and heart. The curtsy (which is of course a bastardisation of the word ‘courtesy’) a lowering of status for a moment, followed by recovery. [Gibson] speaks of the simplicity and grace of the time, the lack of archness. The muscularity of their physique, the strength beneath the ease of movement.

There’s more. Jane Gibson’s insights exert a subtle but crucial influence on the actors, on how they move and carry themselves.

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The possibility is raised that Emma Thompson’s script might be novelized, i.e. made into a book which would constitute another version of Sense and Sensibility. Her reaction to this suggestion: “I’ve said that if this happens I will hang myself.” She adds: “Revolting notion. Beyond revolting.”

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The sheep in this film were numerous and photogenic:  “Very bolshie ‘period’ sheep with horns and perms and too much wool….Ang wants sheep in every exterior shot and dogs in every interior shot.”  To which Thompson added the helpful suggestion that sheep be included in some of the interior shots as well.

——————–

In one of the film’s final scenes, Edward Ferrars, played by Hugh Grant, finally declares his love for Elinor (Emma Thomson). Ang Lee’s command to Grant: “‘This is your big moment. I want to see your insides.’” To which Grant replied, “Ah. Right-o. No pressure then….’”

Both Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant played that scene beautifully. I’ve watched it over and over again and I cry every time. In fact, the entire film is ravishing. The costumes are gorgeous; likewise, the magnificent stately homes.*  The English countryside, with its breathtaking beauty, seems a veritable Eden. And finally, and most importantly, the acting is superb. I see I have run out of superlatives. How can I help myself? Sense and Sensibility is now my favorite film in the whole universe!

There is one more thing I want to say about The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries, and that is, that Emma Thompson’s book provides a fascinating glimpse into everyday life on a film set. It was not until I perused the diary that I realized just how little I knew about the process. Thompson makes it sound exhilarating, exasperating, and utterly exhausting – but never boring!

Here’s the trailer for Sense and Sensibility:

Emma Thompson won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for her screenplay. She was also nominated for best actress in both venues. In my opinion, she richly deserved that accolade as well.

In her acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Award ceremony, Emma Thompson paid very special homage to Jane Austen:

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For a list of the locations where Sense and Sensibility was filmed, see the “Filming” section in the Wikipedia entry .

One of my favorite authors of crime fiction has passed away.

Reginald Hill was the author of the Dalziel and Pascoe procedurals as well as a number of standalones, and as of 1993,  a series featuring private investigator Joe Sixsmith. He also wrote seven thrillers under the name Patrick Ruell. Here’s the complete list.

It’s a large body of work, and its quality was consistently high. I’ve always looked to Hill’s novels for elegant prose, prodigious erudition, ingenious plots, and that wry, biting wit that we Anglophiles so cherish in British writers.

My reading of Reginald Hill’s oeuvre has been pretty much confined to the Dalziel and Pascoe novels. My favorites among them are The Wood Beyond, On Beulah Height,  Dialogues of the Dead, Death’s Jest Book, Good morning, Midnight…well, as you can see, I’m having trouble choosing. If I had to pick a masterpiece from the  lot, I’d choose On Beulah Height, a crime story which possesses an added dimension of urgency because of a dire situation involving one of the main characters in the series. The psychological acuity at work in this novel took my breath away. In her New York Times review of On Beulah Height, Marilyn Stasio called Reginald Hill “ever the master of form and sorcerer of style.”  Click here for an appreciation of Hill’s work that I wrote in 2008.

For the 2007 Smithsonian Tour “Mystery Lovers’ England and Scotland,” Recalled To Life was on our list of suggested reading. This is my brief review, including a lengthy quoted passage:

I had deliberately saved Recalled To Life, a nicely compact mass market paperback, to read on the plane. What I didn’t anticipate was that I would still be reading it on the way back! I am a dedicated reader of Reginald Hill’s Dalziel/Pascoe novels, but I found this one, published here in 1992 and located about half way through the series, to be exceptionally dense and complex. It’s a country house murder, all right, but with an enormous cast of characters; I had trouble keeping track of who was who. Nevertheless, it has all the trademarks of Hill’s wonderful writing. Dalziel in particular is in exceptionally fine fettle here: pushy, coarse, low class – sometimes rather deliberately so – but also capable of compassion and insight. He’s a real brawler, too when the occasion calls for it, which it does several times in this book.

Recalled to Life is named for the title of the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities. Quotes at the head of each chapter are taken from the Dickens work. Hill’s novel is indeed about people being “recalled to life” in various ways: released from prison after over two decades, in the case of one character; given a new, if brief, lease on life as in the case of Ellie Pascoe’s aging mother. Towards the conclusion, as Dalziel and Peter Pascoe are heading north on the A 1, Hill treats us to this poignant, eloquent paragraph, as good an illustration as any of the way in which the British are never very far from an awareness of their rich, extraordinary, and sometimes brutal history:

“This was the Great North Road, or had been before modern traffic made it necessary for roads to miss the townships they had once joined. Hatfield they passed, where Elizabeth the First learned of her accession, and Hitchin, where George Chapman translated Homer into English and John Keats into the realms of gold; Biggleswade where the Romans, driving their own road north, forded a river and founded a town; Norman Cross, near which a bronze eagle broods over the memory of eighteen hundred of Napoleon’s dead, not on a field of battle but in a British prison camp; then into what had been Rutland before it was destroyed by little men whose power outstripped their vision by a Scotch mile; and now began the long flat acres of Lincolnshire, and the road ran by Stamford, once the busy capital of the Fens and later badly damaged during the Wars of the Roses; and Grantham, where God said, ‘let Newton be,’ and there was light, though in a later century the same town ushered in some of the country’s most twilit years…”

Dwelling in his Cumbrian fastness, Mr. Hill has always avoided the limelight. (This short, lively bio has been on the Random House site for as long as I can remember.) His books will stand as a fitting monument to a life well lived in the realm of literature.

Here is an article in the Guardian, and here is Mike Ripley’s appreciation in the same paper. In addition, there is an article in the Telegraph.

Reginald Charles Hill: 1936-2012

‘Catherine the Great vs Guido Brunetti; or an illustration of the way in which suspense is inherent in the narrative, both its presence and is absence being of a surprising nature’

I don’t know if this title will make it past the draft stage of this post….Does it make any sense at all, I wonder?….

Some days later…in which time the above title has been unceremoniously scrapped.

Alors – let me explain. I’ve just read four mysteries in fairly quick succession: Well – as quick as possible, since the pacing of each of them varied from, shall we say stately, to downright glacial.

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     Karin Fossum is an author I very much esteem, and I enjoyed Bad Intentions, although “enjoy” is possibly not the appropriate word. Once again, the reader is faced with the unrelieved bleakness of much Scandinavian crime fiction, and once again one is reminded of critic Jake Kerridge’s observation: ” The closest most fictional Scandinavian detectives get to making a joke is to point out that man is born only to die.” Bad  Intentions is about unremitting grief and the refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions. It s about weak willed young people with no firm sense of morality. They drift into evil deeds and then can’t understand how they arrived at such a terrible place:

How quickly it can change, the life we think has been marked out for us. We start the journey with good intentions, the gift our parents bequeathed us. And then someone snaps their fingers and we find ourselves sidetracked; we end up in a foreign country.

Up close, we see the corrosive effect of guilt on sensitive souls. Sensitive – and weak. The only thing that moves with any speed is the characters’ increasing sense of hopelessness.

Karin Fossum writes beautifully. Bad Intentions has its poetic moments. But scarcely a ray of light  penetrates that northern gloom.

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     Drawing Conclusions was yet another slow mover. There are always pleasures to be found in Donna Leon’s Venice, even while the author points out flaws in the governance of her adopted city. I always enjoy the lively exchanges that occur at mealtimes in the Brunetti household. Children Raffi and Chiara are engaging without being cloyingly sweet. Paola the fiery intellectual always adds spice to the mix. Brunetti himself is something of a peacekeeper though no pushover in that role.

But in Drawing Conclusions, I didn’t get nearly enough time with the family. I got more than enough time with the dramatis personae involved in the crime under investigation. The idiocy of Brunetti’s superiors is verging on the cliche. The crime itself never really pulled me into the narrative.

Like Karin Fossum, Donna Leon writes beautifully. I kept wishing she were writing about people I cared about – or cared more about.

There is one scene in this novel that is so deeply felt that it moved me to tears. Commissario Guido Brunetti has been interviewing one Dottor Grandesso, an elderly man in a care home, or casa di cura, run by an order of religious sisters. As it turns out, this man has almost nothing of substance to contribute to the inquiry at hand. But while they discourse, he is fighting for breath, fighting for life, and fighting for dignity and repose. In addition, he is desperate to stay out of the hospital. After an episode of extreme agitation, Dottor Grandesso finally lapses into a slumbrous state:

For an instant, Brunetti feared that the man had died before his eyes, he helpless to prevent it; then he heard another of those long breaths, but softer. He sat motionless and watched until he was sure the doctor was asleep. As quietly as he could, Brunetti got to his feet and backed towards the door. He went into the corridor, leaving the door open so that the sleeping man could be seen.
The corridor was empty; the clink of plates and the rushing sound of water came from behind the closed door of the kitchen. Brunetti leaned against the wall. He put his head back until it touched the wall and stood like that for a few minutes.

I wonder if t here is an investigator in all of crime  fiction with as deep a well of empathy and compassion as  that so consistently evinced by Commissario Guido Brunetti….

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  Black Diamond is the name of a highly prized truffle. It is also the title of Martin Walker’s latest Bruno Courreges mystery. I knew I’d want to read this novel, as I was so captivated by Walker’s depiction of  life in France’s Perigord region in The Dark Vineyard. Walker works a similar magic in this novel. Here’s Bruno, Chief of Police in the village of Saint-Denis, making a venison casserole:

Gigi [Bruno's basset hound] looked hopeful at his feet as Bruno took down the large ham that hung from the beam that supported the kitchen roof. He sliced off some of the dense fat with the meat, chopped it into lardons, tossed them into his big casserole dish, and lit the gas. He pulled down six shallots from the string that hung from the beam and began to peel them. The roast was ready, and he and Gigi ate slice and slice alike before he began cutting the venison into rough cubes.

It gets better:

From his larder he removed a large glass jar of the mushrooms he had dried in September. Then he began to peel heads of garlic. When the venison was well browned, he sprinkled flour onto the meat to soak up all the juices and then tipped in the shallots and added half a dozen cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. He took a bottle of the Bergerac red he bought for everyday drinking and poured a splash into the pan where the onions had been and grated what was left of the baguette into the glaze. He then took a fat blood sausage, made from last year’s pig, squeezed out the rich, black contents from its skin and added them to the pan, crumbling the sausage meat that would help thicken the sauce, and then scraped the rest into the casserole. He added the rest of the bottle of wine, added the dried mushrooms and closed the lid.

Imagine the rich aromas filling the house! Mon Dieu!!

These elaborate preparations are for a dinner given in memory of a dear friend. The ceremonial meal itself is an intensely vivid and moving scene.

It seems churlish to criticize a novel that offers such riches, but detailed descriptions like the one above, delightful though they may be, do slow the pace of the novel considerably.

Black Diamond deals with a growing problem concerning the quality of the truffles sold in French markets. Buyers at these markets are not only private individuals but also representatives of high end restaurants, Lately there have been allegations that the batches of truffles have been adulterated with inferior products, probably originating in China.

Martin Walker is writing about an actual crisis. Large amounts of money are involved. As it happens, Sixty Minutes had a segment on this subject this past Sunday night. Click here for the video.

(And for the record: Gigi the basset hound is a superb truffle hunter.)

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  For me, the biggest disappointment in this group of mysteries was A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny. Generally speaking, I’m a great fan of this series, but for me, this novel really dragged. It felt padded; the plot seemed overly convoluted. It did have some of this author’s invariably pleasing stylistic touches;  moreover, I have become very fond of Armand Gamache and his team. In fact, I am very curious as to whether something will develop between Gamache’s trusted second in command, Jean Guy Beauvoir, and a certain young woman. I found myself much more interested in that tantalizing possibility than I was in the main thrust of the plot.

I thought Bury Your Dead, the predecessor to this book, was superb. It made me want to pack my bags and head for Quebec City immediatement! A Trick of the Light never grabbed me that way.

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Having said this, I really do feel that all of these writers are in the main producing wonderful novels. I absolutely plan to return each of these four series. And I’m willing to entertain the notion that my problem had more to do with my own mood than I’ve hitherto acknowledged. I remain amazed, though, that I was having more of a “glued to the page” experience with Catherine the Great than I was with the crime fiction I was reading at the same time. (I am still having that experience. I am almost finished with Robert K. Massie’s stupendous biography. I deeply regret that it must come to an end.)

Finally, it’s worth considering what are the elements that make for a page turner. Some would say that chief among these is a plot that keeps you on the edge of your seat.  I agree – that is one factor, but certainly not the only one. and in fact, some fast moving narratives sacrifice depth of characterization for swiftness of plot. In my view, the greatest suspense is created by presenting a terrific story populated by richly drawn, deeply interesting characters. These qualities can inhere in any literary genre, in fiction or nonfiction. They are present in abundance in the life story of Catherine the Great,  a German princess who became Empress of Russia almost by force of will, not to mention great audacity and courage, and continued to display these attributes throughout her long and turbulent reign. 

Setting is also vitally important. Russia fascinates and mystifies, as it has done down through the centuries. I love a book that attempts to penetrate a mystery, even if the author does not quite succeed – perhaps especially if the author does not quite succeed. I love a novel with great dialog; equally, I love eavesdropping on the ruminations of a first rate mind. I am once more reminded of each of these pleasures as I return to Edinburgh via the latest entry in the Alexander McCall Smith‘s Isabel Dalhousie series. Already we’ve had Isabel thinking deep thoughts about the nature and purpose of art, conversing with a new acquaintance about the role of religion in contemporary life, and sparring with her housekeeper Grace about who should iron Jaimie’s  shirts (Jaimie being Isabel’s live-in lover, father of her child, and soon-to-be husband) All this and much more, and I’m only on page 57. 

I picked up The Forgotten Affairs of Youth two days ago and have been happily immersed therein ever since. Eureka! I have found my page turner, just as I thought I would.

I then learned that Graham-Dixon had a new book out on Caravaggio.   While I was awaiting my reserve on that title, Amazon helpfully informed me that this author had also written a book on the history of British art. This proved a somewhat tough “get,” as it is out of print. I obtained a used copy somewhat the worse for wear but acceptable condition (and enhanced here by Ron’s artful camera work):

This is from the introduction:  “An air of abjectness and a consciousness of failure has for centuries hung over the discussion of art not just in England but in Britain as a whole.” The author then adds, “Perhaps this partly explains the curious fact that no-one , to my knowledge has, until now, attempted a general history of the subject in one book.”

Right at the outset, Graham-Dixon insists on confronting head-on the crucial importance of the massive destruction of religious art which was the concomitant of Henry VIII’s separation from Rome:

The radical leaders of the new Protestant church were vigorous and determined opponents of all Roman Catholic rituals and imagery. Under their direction thousands upon thousands of works of religious art were burned and smashed. Throughout Scotland, Wales and England cathedrals and churches were emptied of sculptures, paintings and stained glass. Grimy festive bonfires were lit, and the common people were encouraged to warm themselves as their religious past went up in flames.

As regards the teaching and the discussion of British history, especially British art history, the extent of this destruction has not been acknowledged. But it must be, Graham-Dixon insists, if a true understanding of that history is to be attained.

Once he’s fairly launched into the body of this work, Graham-Dixon presents us with some stunning images from pre-Reformation  Catholic Britain. Most of these have survived by having been deliberately hidden or simply overlooked. The author laments:

The Middle Ages in Britain have become the Missing Ages, and British churches and cathedrals have become the graveyards or excavation sites of the art produced during the long centuries of Catholic belief….But there are certainly enough remains to refute the eccentric and still often repeated notion that the British have never proved themselves to be an especially exuberant or self-expressive nation. The British were once a zealous, convulsive, rowdy, colourful and superstitious people, possessed by consoling dreams of other, brighter worlds and by nightmares of death and damnation, living their painful and devoted lives in a world of  smoke and incense and music and hot, hot colour.

(I find that last sentence amazing. It contains an entire ethnography of the British people of the Middle Ages. And so beautifully expressed. I love the way this man writes.)

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In 1892, the Church of St. Peter in Wenhaston, Suffolk, was being restored. Workmen had taken the tympanum – a painted  backdrop for a carving of Christ on the cross – out of the building and laid it on the ground. (The crucifix itself was long gone.)

At the time these events occurred, the painting on the tympanum was covered with whitewash that had been applied centuries before. Was the plan to paint it afresh? to burn it? No one knows for sure. What is known is that during the night, while the tympanum lay outside, it rained. The whitewash dissolved and ran off. When the workmen returned the next day, this is what they saw:

“Too crude to be a masterpiece but crude enough to be unforgettable,” it is called the Wenhaston Doom and probably dates from around 1490 AD.

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Ranworth, a village in Norfolk, is home to St. Helen’s Church, which dates from the fourteenth century. The church keeps within its premises a medieval Latin antiphoner dating from the 1400′s. This type of illuminated prayer book, used in the Catholic worship service, was banned in 1549. The Ranworth antiphoner, consisting of 285 vellum pages, was undoubtedly slated for destruction. Yet miraculously, down through the ages, it has survived:

Nativity with shepherds

Jonah and the big fish

Musicians

King David Kneeling

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According to Wikipedia, The Worshipful Company of Mercers is “…the premier Livery Company of the City of London.” We are further informed that “It is the first of the so-called “Great Twelve City Livery Companies.” First constituted 1394, the Mercers are based in Mercer’s Hall. This edifice is now in its third iteration, having first been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and then again in the Second World War.

I think it’s fair to say that this is one of those entities whose historic function is somewhat hard to grasp for those not intimately familiar with English history. Its present function, or at least one of them, however, is easier to understand:

‘This exclusive hall has now opened its doors to the corporate market for the first time in its 500 year history and is perfect for all evening dinners, receptions or conferences.’

In the 1950s, while digging under the Hall’s foundation, builders discovered this:

Here is Graham-Dixon: “Art was the sympathetic handmaiden of a faith rooted in sympathy for the sick and the dying, whose God had Himself experienced human pain and an excruciating death through the person of Jesus Christ. There is no more moving meditation on this theme than the Mercer’s Hall Christ.”

It is here, while discoursing on this work which dates from the early 1500s, that the author gives a free reign to his frustration with the state of British art history scholarship as regards this particular period:

The fact that its existence has been known to only a handful of people until now makes it one of the most compelling instances of the black hole of amnesia and ignorance into which so much of the medieval art of Britain has  been allowed to fall….It should be on public view but is to be found, instead, lying on the floor of the Mercer’s Hall boardroom. Time has lent the work additional pathos and now this marble corpse of Christ proclaims two deaths, the death of God and the death of an entire tradition of British art.

(A History of British Art was published in 1996. One wonders if this situation has since been addressed.)

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In  the Renaissance wing of London’s National Gallery can  be found the Wilton Diptych (ca. 13395-9): “…the most beautiful dream of heaven to survive in all British art: a paradise garden think with fat, bright blossoms, occupied by a lethargic, almond-eyed Virgin and crowded round with long-necked, sleepy angels with flowers in their golden hair.”

In this gallery filled with the art of the great Sienese painters, the Wilton Diptych is the sole work by a British artist.

Walking through the rest of the museum, the visitor passes all that never took place in British art. There was to be no British Titian, no Tintoretto, no Raphael, no Michelangelo, no Caravaggio, no Velasquez.

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Taking a leap forward in time: “It took two foreigners to repair the wreckage of the British visual tradition and to lay the foundations of a recognizably British way of making and thinking about painting.” They were:

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), of Augsberg, in Bavaria;

Jane Seymour, Queen of England

King Henry VIII

The Ambassadors

Sir Thomas More

Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), of Antwerp;

Hemtrietta Maria and the dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson

Charles I, King of England at the hunt

Triple portrait of King Chares I

Self-portrait

There’s more to come on this fascinating subject.

But there is a problem. He does not want to live there.

He prefers the older house. More specifically, he prefers the room that has served, for many years, as his study. It is on the top floor:

The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill.This was the sole opening for light and air. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once  been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw.

The professor is not always alone in this room: he shares it for some weeks in the spring and the fall with Augusta, the dressmaker who outfits his wife and daughters. As an aid to this work, Augusta uses two dress forms, which are stored in the attic study year round. St. Peter enjoys Augusta’s company; likewise, the two dress forms. When she offers to remove them, he objects vehemently. And so they remain there.

There is a young man in this novel whose character acts as a bridge between two worlds. He is Tom Outland. Having spent his youth in New Mexico, Tom comes east to acquire an education.  (It is this intention that brings him to the attention of Godfrey St. Peter.) There’s much more to this aspect of the novel, but I won’t dwell upon it now. I will only say that along with his friend Rodney Blake, Tom Outland had the great good fortune to discover and explore a deserted city atop a mesa. The details of this extraordinary adventure are contained in the second section of the novel, “Tom Outland’s Story.”

Tom’s descriptions of this otherworldly place are intensely lyrical, yet even so, he feels that words fail him, or very nearly so. Here he first catches sight of the city on the mesa:

It was such rough scrambling that I was soon in a warm sweat under my damp clothes. In stopping to take breath, I happened to glance up at the canyon wall. I wish I could tell you what I saw there, just as I saw it, on that first morning, through a veil of lightly falling snow. Far up above me, a thousand feet or so, set in a great cavern in the face of a cliff, I saw a little city of stone, asleep. It was as still as sculpture–and something like that….
There was something symmetrical and powerful about the swell of the masonry. The tower was the fine thing that held all the jumble of houses together and made them mean something. It was red in colour, even on that grey day. In sunlight in was the color of winter oak-leaves. A fringe of cedars grew along  the edge of the cavern, like a garden. They were the only living things. Such silence and stillness and repose–immortal repose. That village sat looking down into the canyon with the calmness of eternity. The falling snow-flakes, sprinkling the pinons, gave it a special kind of solemnity. I can’t describe it.

But of course he is describing it, very effectively and very vividly. He concludes with this stunning realization:

I knew at once that I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries, preserved in the dry air and almost perpetual sunlight like a fly in amber, guarded by the cliffs and the river and the desert.

(In the novel, this place of incredibly pristine beauty is called the Blue Mesa. It was actually modeled on Mesa Verde, which was discovered in 1888 by Colorado rancher Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charlie Mason. It became a national Park in 1906; Willa Cather first went there in 1915. Click here for an interesting background piece.)

I remember that the first time I read The Professor’s House, I felt slightly impatient with Tom Outland’s narrative. It represents a complete break with the story of Godfrey St. Peter, his family, and his university colleagues. I had become very absorbed in the professor’s professional and personal challenges, and I resented this sudden change of focus. But I now realize that it was very artfully done. Tom Outland’s story is of a whole different order of magnitude, and Tom Outland himself is that rarest of beings, possessed as he is of a great intellectual curiosity matched with an equally great intelligence. These qualities are coupled with a natural warmth and almost unbounded enthusiasm. He seems destined for great things.  Upon meeting him, St. Peter perceives all this almost at once. He perceives it, and he sees in this extraordinary young man a mirror of his own youthful aspirations.

What has become of those aspirations? And what is there now in the professor’s world that can infuse his life with new meaning? How much of ourselves are we called upon to sacrifice in order to insure the well being of those close to us? These are the crucial questions that dominate the novel’s brief and powerful final section.

Critic E.K. Brown sums up the problem this way:

In the first part it was plain that the professor did not wish to live in his new house, and did not wish to enter into the sere phase of his life correlative with it. At the beginning of the third part it becomes plain that he cannot indefinitely continue to make the old attic study the theatre of his life, that he cannot go on prolonging or attempting to prolong his prime, the phase of his life correlative with that. The personality of his mature years–the personality that had expressed itself powerfully and in the main happily in his teaching, his scholarship, his love for his wife, his domesticity–is now quickly receding,  and nothing new is flowing in.

(Such a beautifully apt locution, “the sere phase of his life.” I have no idea who E.K. Brown is, but the eloquence and insight that characterize this brief piece remind the reader that literary criticism can be a noble calling. The essay can be found in Modern Critical Views: Willa Cather, a collection is edited and introduced by Harold Bloom, whose life’s work serves as a similar reminder.)

I’ve been deeply moved by my third reading of The Professor’s House. I may read it yet again. For one thing, the writing is wonderful, transcendent with out being the least bit extravagant.

The critic E.K. Brown encourages the reader to ponder the true significance of houses in this novel: the professor’s dwelling places, both the old and the new, the grand country house being built by Rosamund and her husband – and the community of small houses atop the Blue Mesa.

And then, of course, there is that final house, that final bed, the inevitable ending that S.t Peter finds occupying his thoughts more and more. At one point, these lines of verse come to him:

For thee a house was built
Ere thou wast born;
For thee a mould was made
Ere thou of woman camest.

Alone in his attic study, the professor meditates on this:

Lying on his old couch, he could almost believe himself in that house already. The sagging springs were like the sham upholstery that is put in coffins. Just the equivocal American way of dealing with serious facts, he reflected. Why pretend that it is possible to soften that last hard bed?

And oh, the leaden weight of those last four monosyllables!

To begin with, I never expected anything good to come of my Type Two Diabetes diagnosis. Surprisingly, something did – or rather two, things. I mentioned in Part the First of this disquisition that I lost 37 pounds and kept it off. That’s the first good outcome, and I firmly believe that I’ve kept that weight off because I started – well, I discovered Zumba.

Actually, I began with basic aerobics. I was advised to get regular exercise as a way of keeping my blood sugar low, increasing bone density, and keeping both blood pressure and cholesterol at an acceptable level.. It’s done all that, and more. It has introduced me to a whole new social circle. It has made me feel much better, both physically and emotionally.

Zumba is just one of three types of fitness classes that I now attend regularly. I still go to aerobics, and I’ve also been going to Body Vive for quite some time now. Body Vive differs from the other two in that it is pre-choreographed and doesn’t depend quite so much on the instructor’s inventiveness as do the other two. But the choreography changes with each new “release,” an event that happens every three months. Body Vive is distinguished by its use of the ball, and of resistance bands rather than free weights.

At this point, body vive is not as well known as Zumba and aerobics. I don’t know why; I think it’s a terrific workout and lots of fun.

Zumba in particular has acquired so much renown that it does not need me to further elaborate on its virtues. It began as a Latin dance craze, but in the sessions I intend, other kinds of music have been worked into the routines: classic rock, Middle Eastern (including a rousing version of “Hava Nagila,” which I can’t resist singing along with, as per my ancient past), and even Indian. To wit, this captivating number called “Maahi Ve:”

(Be assured – That is NOT our dance routine!)

The original Zumba has now spawned several different iterations of itself. Click here for an enumeration of them. I’m currently doing Zumba Gold, mainly because basic Zumba proved a bit too rigorous for me. I also very much enjoy Zumba Toning:

I’ve had trouble finding a video version that approximates what I’ve been doing in the Zumba sessions I attend. Most of the videos are populated with shapely young women sporting bare midriffs, gorgeous hair, and high wattage smiles.

This one is closest to the reality I’m familiar with:

My Zumba classes have a rather remarkable mix of ages. We have a fair number of young women, some of whom are already in great shape and others who are clearly working toward that goal. (And some who have had training in dance; they’re invariably a pleasure to watch.)  A goodly number of us are in our sixties; some are in their seventies, still moving well and possessed of the necessary agility. Quite a  few of us have bonded loosely into a sort of community. We figure we’re all together in this fight to stay healthy.

I attend two different facilities for these classes. In one of them, there’s a day care for small children located just down the hall. When the little ones are collected by a parent and they go by the studio where we’re exercising, they invariably pull up short, utterly fascinated by our gyrations. It always gives us a lift and a laugh, to see their little faces pressed against the windows.

Music is a big component of these fitness classes. Its most important attribute is the beat. Admittedly, I don’t care for some of the selections, but actually I like more of it than I thought I would. I’ve enjoyed being introduced to exotic items like “Maahi Ve” (see above). And lately there have been several old favorites that it’s been a pleasure to revisit:

Here, I just have to say to my son Ben: Yes, you were right – I finally “get” this song. But I never needed convincing about The Eagles:

And I’ve long loved “Don’t Stop Believing,” sung by Steve Perry and  Journey:

One of the most important life lessons I’ve learned from my embrace of this activity is that there really is a close connection between mind and body. You’ve got to be attentive to the instructor’s directions, and you’ve got to work hard to make your body do what he or she asks you to do. To my delight, I discovered that I got better at this as the years passed.

Where instructors are concerned, I feel deeply fortunate Mine are generous, enthusiastic, warm, and caring. Deb, Deborah, Vicky, Marie, Megan, George, and Jen – Thank you for making something I thought would be an onerous chore into an activity I look forward to each week. And finally a special thanks to Zumba goddess Robin, who brought each of us socks for Christmas!

(I was unable to resist demonstrating my sock ball making technique to anyone who was interested. Their numbers were small, but they were appreciative of this neat little trick, taught to me many years ago by my sainted mother, who would do anything to make laundry sorting go faster.) 

The Christmas tree in the Medieval Sculpture Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The music:

“Dance of the Mirlitons” from The Nutcracker, danced by the Kirov Ballet, now once again known as the Mariinsky.. Music is by Tchaikovsky.

Here is a concise history of the Nutcracker Ballet. (An advertisement must be endured at the outset, alas.)

The quaity of this video from the English Baroque Festival is not great, but the costumes and the music – Handel’s Water Music – are quite delightful:

I’ve long loved this video of Luciano Pavarotti and his father Fernando singing Cesrar Franck’s “Panis Angelicus” at the Modena Cathedral. They’re high up in the choir, while the celebrants below receive Holy Communion.

Here, Pavarotti sings the same piece, backed by two choirs, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Montreal, Canada, in 1978.

Here’s Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus,” sung by the King’s College Choir of Cambridge University:

Click here for the  “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” from the Great Mass in C, also by Mozart, sung by the English Baroque Soloists, the Monteverdi Choir, and conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, whose lifelong service and devotion to this music deserves the highest praise and gratitude.

Another “Gloria,” this one from the Vivaldi work by the same name. We here Trevor Pinnock at the harpsichord and conducting the English Concert.

And once again we have John Eliot Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir, and the English Baroque soloists in “Jauchzet, Frohlocket,” the rousing opening of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio:

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The family:

Etta Lin, Erica, and Ben Davis

 This little family has brought us boat loads of joy this year!

I just have to slip this in: It’s Etta’s first school picture! She is currently matriculated  at a Montessori School Daycare, where she is honing her social skills and even learning to dance (now that she’s up on her two feet).

Here is Ron, taking pictures during our England sojourn in May. This is the man who always puts himself in the background while cheering on his (occasional drama queen) wife. I sometimes kid that he’s “the wind beneath my wings,” but the fact is: He is my everything.

And no, I have not forgotten – as she sits patiently awaiting yet another food bowl refill – the dependable provider of comic relief around here (and lots of affection too):

Miss Audrey Jane Marple

I feel deeply blessed and just as deeply grateful. Thank you to  the great artists of the past and present, to my wonderful family.

In fact, I was so scared, I virtually stopped ingesting carbohydrates, convinced that they were my sworn enemy, out to inflict loss of vision on the world’s most compulsive reader. This is NOT what I was advised to do. A moderate intake of carbohydrates is necessary for good health. Note the use of the word “moderate.” A dietician calculated what I should be eating along those lines; her conclusions were based on my sex and my weight. She was being reasonable; I was being terrified. I not only cut out carbohydrates, I drastically reduced fat. What was left? Mainly protein laden foods like beef, chicken, fish, and eggs, and rabbit food – sorry, salads. I quickly got sick of garden salads. I hated – and still hate – steak, though I can tolerate ground  beef. I ate numerous hamburgers (no rolls – those things are loaded with carbs), eggs, and a little cheese – strangely, the sole dairy product almost completely free of carbohydrates. I cared only about lowering my blood sugar to an acceptable (for me) level. I achieved this goal in fairly short order. In the process, in the space of a few short weeks, I lost 37 pounds.

I also lost almost all joy in the consuming of food, up until then my chief joy in the world. Eating became an activity inextricably mixed with anxiety. I was so repulsed by the food I could eat in any quantity, and so filled with longing for the food that I could eat only in minuscule amounts, that the whole enterprise began to seem pointless. I thought I’d take on cooking as a challenge but it soon began to seem like an onerous chore. (And I so missed those heaping plates of pasta!)

Eventually, I stabilized my relationship with food. There are some things I have pretty much sworn off entirely: rice, pasta, bananas, nearly all sweets, most baked goods. I knew I could not give up bread completely, so I still have it, but in very small quantity, and almost always in its multi-grain or whole wheat form.

I’ve always loved what I ate between meals much more than the meals themselves. These are the items that keep me from going crazy when desperate for something to snack on:     .  It’s probably needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway: the aforementioned can in no way take the place of the beloved and still longed for: .

Three other items are of critical importance to my eating life. In fact, they represent to high points of my day. For breakfast, I have one of the Kashi whole grain cereals. Loaded with fiber and occasionally enriched with dried fruit, the taste is one of natural sweetness (though I add Stevia anyway). This is my current favorite:   For lunch, I have a sugar free (or no sugar added) muffin baked by the excellent folks at Butterfly Bakery.   Brenda Isaac began creating these recipes in 1998 with her own mother, a diabetic, in mind: “As I shared my creations with family and friends, I realized there was a real need for these products in the marketplace.” This gifted baker also observed that”….the choices in the marketplace were unappealing and limited.” Well, Ms Isaac, all I can say is that you have earned the everlasting gratitude of this constantly-feeling-deprived diabetic!

Every night my dessert is the same: one Carb Smart ice cream bar from Breyers. Six net carbs!   (‘Net carbs’ means the number of grams of carbohydrates minus the number of grams of fiber. If you’re diabetic, fiber is your friend.)

What I really wanted to write about here is the emotional impact of all of this. Like many Type Two diabetics, I have struggled all my life to control my weight. I have gained, lost, and then gained back more pounds than I’d like to count. It was only the threat of vision loss that was powerful enough to get me on the wagon for good.

So, isn’t this a good thing? Of course it is, but it has come at a cost. I’ve made a number of discoveries since embarking on this life of Being on a Diet Forever. One is that you cannot force yourself to love broccoli. (My gorgeous, slender daughter-in-law Erica actually does love it, wouldn’t you know!)

Erica with her "little lamb," Etta Lin!

Another is that it’s the anticipation of eating something you know you love, as opposed to the actual consumption of same, that provides the major mood lift. I’d be thinking happily of settling down on my favorite soft couch reading spot with a good book and a bag of chips. Immediately thereafter I would realize with  a sharp pang that although the former was permissible, indeed desirable, the latter was not. I felt a momentary panic. Would reading, and my joy in it, still be possible without the accompanying, seemingly essential Joy Bringer? Only time would tell….

Time has told. I am reading now more compulsively than ever. And enjoying it. Loving it, really. But as for the rest of life, abstention from chips, cookies, cake, big hunks of crusty French bread, heaping bowls of pasta, rice, and French fried – French fries! – has exacted a price. If you’ve used food for mood control purposes your entire life, and then you have to stop doing that, you do suffer a kind of withdrawal, or at least, I did. You may not be as effortlessly happy as you once were. I’m not.

I have also kept off all of that 37 pounds.

I do not want this little piece to degenerate into a whining plea for pity. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a terrific primary physician and an equally terrific husband, both of whom have been unstinting in their support. (This is the same husband whose favorite, somewhat modified article title is: “Health and Nutrition, Its Prevention and Cure.” He trots this out every time he feels annoyed at yet another lecture in writing from the food police.) I know that there are people facing far more dire challenges to their health with courage and resolve that I am almost certainly incapable of summoning.

Much more could be said on this subject, but I’d rather, at this point, move on to the fitness component. The fun factor is much greater there. Besides, I must get to work on the Boeuf Bourgignon. This dish is one of the few that I still enjoy cooking. The recipe comes from The Art of Cooking for the Diabetic. . (I’ve written about this before, in a somewhat different context.)

And so: on to Part Two, in which, among other things, the mystery of the Really Nice Socks will be revealed….

My sentiments exactly, I regret to say.

Like Jonathan Yardley, I’ve been reading the fiction of years past and enjoying it greatly. To wit: Guy de Maupassant is not an author I’ve thought very much about. His short story “The Necklace” was frequently included in the literature textbooks of my school days, and frankly I never thought much of it. As I recall, it had the kind of trick ending one usually associates with O. Henry. But about a year ago, I read a Maupassant tale called “Looking Back.” In it, a woman, Madame La Comptesse, has the sole care of her of her orphaned grandchildren. Their priest, Abbe Mauduit, is visiting. The children are put to bed, but not before saying a tender good night to the priest. The priest and the grandmother talk about their respective lives. The story ends. It is all of six pages in length, and yet an entire  world is created therein. (Stories like this astound me; I’ve written about John Updike‘s “The Music School” in a similar vein.)

In The Art of Time in Fiction, Joan Silber writes with admiration about Une Vie (A Life), a novel written in 1883 by Guy de Maupassant. I got it (from Amazon). I read it. I loved it. Ah, Jeanne de Lamare, pauvre petite! That such a life, begun with such careful parental cosseting and fervent hope for happiness, should unfold with so much pain and heartbreak! More to come on this luminous story of an ardent young woman’s romantic aspirations.

I shall most certainly be reading Une Vie once again, before long….

  Effie Briest (1896) was yet another revelatory reading experience. Not only had I never heard of this novel, but its author Theodor Fontane, was also unknown to me. Born in 1819 in Brandenburg, Fontane was the descendant of French Huguenots who had relocated to that part of Germany. He enjoyed a certain success as a novelist during the second half of the nineteenth century. The introduction to the Penguin edition pictured here proclaims that “Fontane’s sensitive portrayals of women’s lives in late nineteenth century society was unsurpassed in European literature.” This seems to me to overstate the case somewhat (see Une Vie, for instance), but Effi Briest is a marvelous, fully realized creation. While this novel does not have quite the emotional impact of Maupassant’s,  it does present a vibrant picture of the times and of life among the minor gentry of Germany. And Fontane’s writing sparkles with unexpected flashes of wit.

Effi Briest has been made into a German language film more than once. I’m thinking the 1974 version directed by Rainer Werner Fassbender is the one to get. 

Guy de Maupassant

Theodor Fontane

I learned about Effi Briest from The Rough Guide to Classic Novels. I’ve long had the intention of blogging about this singular little reference work. I started the post some months ago but have never gotten around to finishing it. Ergo, I’m going to insert what I’ve written so far right here:

This is one of the most appealing reference works of its kind that I’ve come across. (And I came across it quite by accident, in the library.) It is not organized chronologically or by country of origin, but rather by subject and theme. The chapters are as follows:

Love, romance and sex
Families
Rites of passage
Heroes and anti-heroes
Making it
Adventure
War, violence and conflict
A sense of place
Incredible worlds
Horror and mystery
Crime and punishment
Comedy and satire

So far I haven’t gone beyond the first chapter. “Love, romance and sex” is comprised of short essays – long annotations? – on twenty-nine novels. There’s actually more suggested reading than that number would indicate, since each entry is followed by a suggestion as to “Where to go next.” The selections are international in scope. When a work is written in a language other than English, Simon Mason notes a preferred translation. Brief paragraphs on topics such as romanticism and magic realism are scattered throughout the book. These have their own table of contents and are thus easy to find.

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Herewith, my choices for 2011:

Fiction

A Life (Une Vie)  – Guy de Maupassant
Effi Briest – Theodor Fontane
The Empty Family – Colm Toibin
The Painted Veil - W. Somerset Maugham
State of Wonder – Ann Patchett
The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

(I’m currently rereading The Professor’s House for a book club, and I’m even more entranced by it the second time around – or is it the third…?)

Nonfiction

How To Live, or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer – Sarah Bakewell
“Los Angeles Against the Mountains” in The Control of Nature by John McPhee
The Great Divorce – Ilyon Woo
The Greater Journey – David McCullough
The Fatal Gift of Beauty – Nina Burleigh
Destiny of the Republic – Candice Millard
On Conan Doyle – Michael Dirda

(I’ve not done The Greater Journey justice in this space. What a marvelous book this is! I plan to revisit it via audiobook.)

A recent article in the New York Times brought the welcome news that this holiday season has seen a resurgence in book sales.This uptick has been helped by the especially rich offerings in nonfiction:

“This year so far, it’s been the year of nonfiction,” said Peter Aaron, owner of the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, citing “The Beauty and the Sorrow,” a history of World War I by Peter Englund, and “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, an exploration of thinking and intuition. “What’s extraordinary about the books that are out there is that they’ve been so well written and such a pleasure to read. Maybe people have an appetite for nonfiction right now, just for some sort of grounding in reality.”

Or for the opposite reason: to escape into a completely absorbing story, one that is strange and  vivid and all the more remarkable for being true. (And this is an apt description of the book I am reading right now: Robert K. Massie’s magisterial biography, Catherine the Great.)

[To see my picks for Favorite Crime Fiction for 2011, click here.]