Adventures in Reading
Yes, I know; it sounds like the title of a grade school textbook from days gone by. But adventures there have been lately, largely due to the increasing dominance of the e-reader in my life. (I use the Kindle app on my iPad.) The intense gratification I experience upon the instantaneous acquisition of texts is simply delicious! I used to be a compulsive impulse book buyer. Now I am an equally compulsive content downloader.
One of the results of this obsessive behavior is the bloating of my Kindle Library. Every time I visit that virtual treasure trove I am once again amazed at what’s in there. Sometimes I have no memory of adding a particular title – or titles. Sometimes I think I read a book in hard copy, only to find that its electronic doppelgänger happily residing in the Kindle Library.
It is important to note that the titles currently appearing on my ‘device’ represent only a small fraction of the vast number currently to be found in my Kindle Library. Even so, what’s on the device at this time rather overwhelms and chastens me. Some of these titles I’ve yet to really look at. Others I’ve looked at and not wanted to pursue. Some of those looked at titles I do want to pursue – just not right now…. 
There are some items on my Kindle App that do not reside in the Kindle Library and never will. These are the Free Samples that you can get from the Kindle Store. If you’re not sure if a book is for you, being able to sample some of it can be most helpful. You can get some sense of both style and content. For instance, I recently encountered a review by Jessica Mann of a mystery called The Cornish Coast Murder. Written by John Bude, this novel was originally published in 1935. It’s part of a series of re-issues called British Library Crime Classics. The sample I downloaded contained an excellent introduction by Martin Edwards, who himself is not only a fine author of crime fiction but has also made it his business, via his blog Do You Write Under Your Own Name, to bring worthy older crime fiction titles to the attention of avid readers.
Here’s how the first chapter of The Cornish Coast Murder begins:
THE Reverend Dodd, Vicar of St. Michael’s-on-the-Cliff, stood at the window of his comfortable bachelor study looking out into the night. It was raining fitfully, and gusts of wind from off the Atlantic rattled the window-frames and soughed dismally among the sprinkling of gaunt pines which surrounded the Vicarage. It was a threatening night. No moon. But a lowering bank of cloud rested far away on the horizon of the sea, dark against the departing daylight.
The Vicar, who was fond of bodily comfort, sighed with the profoundest satisfaction. Behind him a big log fire crackled in the open hearth. A reading-lamp cast an orange circle over the seat of his favourite chair and gleamed, diluted, on the multi-coloured book-backs which lined most of the room. In the centre of the hearth-rug, placed with exact precision between the two arm-chairs, was a small wooden crate.
The Vicar sighed again. All was exactly as it should be. Nothing out of place. All ambling along just as it had done for the last fifteen years. Peace, perfect peace.
Cornwall! Vicars! Vicarages! I immediately downloaded the entire book – for $3.99. 
Meanwhile, my reading has become increasingly scattershot. I often have five or six books on the go at the same time. (This is partially, but not entirely, due to compulsive downloading.) One of those books is, in fact, Dead Woman Walking, a most absorbing novel by Jessica Mann, the above mentioned reviewer. Having so much enjoyed A Private Inquiry by this author, I was eager to plunge into her latest work. 
Some of the other books I’m reading:
Just barely into it. I was reading a library copy and knew that I’d never finish it that way, so it’s been downloaded. I started reading it again from the beginning. Romer’s work opens with an inquiry into Egypt’s predynastic history. We literally journey back to the dawn of civilization via a book that’s both laden with dense detail and beautifully written.
This is one of those novels that you begin reading and your first thought is…Oh, this again. Older man in position of authority, younger woman subject to that authority, the enclosed claustrophobic setting of an academic institution….Well, okay, the premise is anything but original. But I’m liking the urgency and desperation of the first person narrative. And I confess to being fascinated by tales of obsessive desire. (Also I love the Halls-of-Ivy cover image.)
This is a book I dip into from time to time when I need an art fix. I love the way Camille Paglia writes about these works; she veers from intellectual rigor to esthetic rapture, with stops in between for more measured analyses. And bless her, she’s given me the excuse I need to place some of those glittering images in this post.
Paglia is especially eloquent when writing about the art of antiquity:
Queen Nfertari and the Goddess Isis
Ghosts carved out of time. Egyptian art is a vast ruin of messages from the dead. Clean and simple in form, Egyptian painted figures float in an abstract space that is neither here nor there. The background is coolly blank. Everything is flattened into the foreground, an eternal present where serenely smiling pharaohs offer incense and spools of flax to the gods or drive their chariot wheels over fallen foes. Hieroglyphics hang in midair, clusters of sharp pictograms of a rope, reed, bun, viper, owl, human leg, or mystic eye.
*************************************************The Charioteer of Delphi
The Charioteer of Delphi represents a stillness of perception, a peak moment where an exceptional person has become a work of art, the focus of all eyes, human and divine. He embodies the Greek principle of kalokagathia, “ the beautiful and the good,” which saw virtue and physical beauty as inseparably intertwined. The Greeks defined existence as a struggle or contest (agon) that tested and built character. To strive to be the best was a moral duty. Life was a perpetual game or race, with little hope of rest. The mad motion on the dirt track may be forgotten for an hour, as the winner humbly accepts his tributes. But victory is as transient as a young man’s perfect beauty, which the Greeks described as a flower that blooms and vanishes.
**********************************************
Laocoon and his sons
Laocoön’s blank, tormented face seems to ask whether an ethical standard exists in the universe or whether the gods too are subject to impulse and caprice. It prefigures the agonized expression of the crucified Christ in medieval art, when he asks why God has forsaken him. The juxtaposition of beauty and horror in the Laocoön is close to decadent. It forces a mixed response of attraction and repulsion on the viewer. In late phases of culture, basic survival needs have been met, but the spiritual life is in disorder. The Laocoön represented a time very much like our own , when civic and religious traditions were breaking down and when nations felt they were in bondage to a host of intractable problems, slithering and ungraspable.
********************************************
Finally, I am still enthralled by They Were Counted, the first volume in Miklos Banffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy. Recently, when I saw I was nearing the end of the book, I felt panicky – I don’t want it to end – ever! Fortunately, there are two more volumes; I hastily downloaded the second. Such a relief. I simply must know what’s going to happen to these people; I am so immersed in their lives….
Of course, in a larger sense, I already know what will happen. These novels are set in he early years of the twentieth century. History is about to come down on these folks like a hammer. But the ultimate fate of unsuspecting – or in certain cases, all too suspecting – individuals in the story is yet to be determined.
Meanwhile the lives of the characters, filled with political intrigue and thwarted love, go relentlessly forward. Some of what Banffy describes seems almost petty, yet it still fascinates . I’m thinking in particular of a dastardly stratagem practiced by an unscrupulous head butler on a lady’s maid in one of the aristocratic households. The scenario was like something right out of Downton Abbey.
On the other hand, there is much rapturous description of the countryside surrounding Denestornya, the estate of one of the novel’s main characters, Balint Abady:
The young man reached the bank of the millstream near where the outer wooden palisades had once stood. He crossed over what was still called the Painted Bridge, even though every vestige of colour had long since disappeared, to the place where the wide path divided and led either to the left or the right, while ahead the view stretched across the park interrupted only by the clumps of poplars, limes or horse-chestnuts. In this part of the park the grass was quite tall, thick and heavy with dew. It was filled with the feathery white heads of seeding dandelions, with golden cowslips, bluebells, waving stalks of wild oats and the trembling sprays of meadow-grass, each bearing at its extremity a dew drop that sparkled in the sun. So heavy was the dew that the grasslands, as far as the eye could see, were covered with a delicate shining liquid haze. For Balint this pageant of wild flowers….
So magical and mysterious, so still and yet so full of resurgent life, did the meadow seem that Balint stopped for a moment to contemplate its mystery, and wonder at the fact that even the distances did not seem real and stable and fixed. The park seemed to have no end but to continue for ever into the distance as if it comprised the whole world and the whole world was the park of Denestornya and nothing else. As Balint stood there, motionless, rapt in a new sense of delight and exaltation, seven fallow deer appeared slowly from a group of pines. They were wading knee-high through the morning haze, two does with their fawns and three young females, and if they saw Balint they did not take any notice of him but just walked quietly and sedately on until, after a few moments, they disappeared again into the shadow of the trees. Their sudden appearance in the distance in front of him, and just as sudden disappearance a moment or two later contributed strongly to Balint’s sense of wonder and enchantment.
As is obvious from the above passages, the writing and by implication the translation are superb. One of the translators is Katalin Banffy-Jolen, granddaughter of Miklos Banffy. She and her fellow translator Patrick Thrusfield were awarded the Weidenfeld Prize for translation, presented in 2002 by Umberto Eco. A wonderful essay on They Were Counted may be found on the blog The Reading Life. In it, the blogger mentions that the entire trilogy runs to over 1500 pages. I’m so glad! (And remember, this is the person who frequently expresses her frustration with long books.) Banffy himself actually called the trilogy The Writing on the Wall. When a person is said to have seen the handwriting on the wall, he has supposedly been granted a glimpse of what the future will bring. It is a glimpse filled with foreboding. So you can see why the phrase is so apt for a work set in the final days of the of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
(The reference is to a scene in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. In the midst of King Belshazzar’s feast, a disembodied hand appears and writes a message in Hebrew on the wall of the banquet hall. The Hebrew is usually transliterated as Mene, Mene,Tekel, Upharsin. The translation usually given is “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting,” or words to that effect. A truly frightening message to get from G-d the Father. I interpret it to mean, Clean up your act – or else….
Belshazzar’s Feast, by Rembrandt
This has always been one of my favorite Bible stories.)
*************************************
Reading Mikos Banffy is much like reading Tolstoy’s great epics, although there are some differences. Banffy has a wry sense of humor that manifests itself from time; admittedly, this is not a quality usually ascribed to Tolstoy, unquestionable genius though he was. The blogger at The Reading Life expresses surprise at the “sexual explicit” passages in They Were Counted. I think I would call them sensuous rather than sexual, but they’re there all right, and they’re pretty frank, and they surprised me too.
On Easter Sunday, a walk and a dream
I knew that it might be crowded at Centennial Park, on this Easter Sunday. But I did not anticipate the sheer numbers celebrating the return of Spring! Finally we can be outdoors. It was still a bit chilly -mid 50s – but still walkable. And walk I did, all the way around the lake. And as I walked, I encountered a huge variety of people, of different ages and ethnic origins. I heard numerous different languages spoken, of which I could I could identify with certainty only one. The large group of Spanish speakers seemed to be having an exceptionally good time. Actually, everyone seemed quite happy.
Although most were on foot, many were on wheels. There were bicyclers, kids on scooters, two young women on roller skates, another child on a skateboard, babies in strollers. Dogs were much in evidence. One man was walking two large, gorgeous fluffy white canines. (For me, there’s just something about white dogs. I like white cars, too, for that matter.) I always have fun trying to identify the breeds. I’ve been helped greatly in this by watching the yearly Westminster Kennel Club competition. I’m reasonably certain that I saw a bichon frise and a Norwegian Elk Hound. There were several dachshunds. One was being wheeled in a stroller. (Oops – I guess he should have been mentioned in the individuals-on-wheels category.) One was wearing a little pink leotard with a fetching ruffle toward the hind end. I exclaimed in pleasure at the sight, and the owner (do we say ‘guardian’ now?) explained that since she only had boy children, she allowed herself to play dress-up with the dog, who just happened to be a female of the species. The Spanish speakers had with them a chihuahua, attired in a red turtleneck sweater.
Alas, I did not have a camera with me, so here are some shots of the breeds, gleaned from Google Image Search.
Bichon Frise
Norwegian Elkhound
Daschsund
Chihuahua
On the park’s broad lawns, groups were picnicking and barbecuing. (Oh, that aroma!) Frisbees were being thrown. There was a photo shoot of some sort taking place. It was festive and life affirming. I’m glad I went.
****************************************
On Easter Sunday, I always listening to The Good Friday Spell from Wagner’s Parsifal. This music always makes me feel dreamy and sends me into a sort of fugue state. Once there, I come close to believing in miracles. Anything good seems within reach.
Happy Easter to all.
Clever Girl, by Tessa Hadley
Stella, the eponymous Clever Girl in Tessa Hadley’s engaging novel, thinks she has her life’s trajectory pretty well plotted out. At least for the immediate future, her plans certainly include university. She’s an avid reader and a budding intellectual. She is also possessed of a passionate, intensely romantic nature.
Coming of age in mid-twentieth century England, Stella is nothing if not sure of herself. But adolescence can be a perilous time, especially for someone like Stella. On her way to young womanhood, she finds her plans suddenly derailed, largely due to her own heedlessness.
I read and enjoyed The London Train, also by this author. Hadley’s way of describing states of mind is both artless and resonant. Here is Stella as a young girl, first finding her footing in a challenging world:
My instinct in those days anyway was to smother any unpleasant truth, push it back into its hole. I was (rather abstractly) enthusiastic about dogs and horses because the emotions these aroused seemed to me clean, unproblematic: I had a dreamy image of myself running through long grass with a collie dog jumping up beside me, trying to lick my face (after long deliberation, I had elected collies as my favourites). This image was my idea of ‘nature’, and had in my private world a religious resonance.
Although this novel has its share of unanticipated twists and turns, it is not by and large highly dramatic. Hadley’s writing is not showy, but in her choice of words, she has an almost pointillist gift for precision. (In this, she reminds me of Alice Munro.) In telling Stella’s story, she is to some extent limning the life lessons learned, of necessity, by a twentieth century Everywoman:
….I thought that the substantial outward things that happened to people were more mysterious really than all the invisible turmoil of the inner life, which we set such store by. The highest test was not in what you chose, but in how you lived out what befell you.
Tessa Hadley
The Usual Suspects discuss Reginald Hill’s Bones and Silence
On Tuesday of last week, the Usual Suspects took on Reginald Hill’s Gold Dagger winning novel Bones and Silence. This book is not an easy read, but it is the work of an author whose verbal pyrotechnics and witty asides never fail to delight. At least, they never fail to delight Your Faithful Blogger. But it quickly became clear that a good number of the Suspects were rather less than delighted.
The three principal motifs of this novel are set forth in its opening chapters. Chapter One consists entirely of a letter to Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel. In it, the writer declares his (her?) intention of committing suicide. No name is given, and no reason, either for the intention or for making Dalziel the recipient of this disconcerting information. The tone is oddly upbeat, even cheerful.
There are more of these mysterious missives to come.
The second motif concerns the plans of local theater impresario Eileen Chung to stage the York Cycle of mystery plays on mobile stages that will roll through the streets of the city. The aim is to recreate as closely as possible the the way in which the plays were originally experienced by their medieval audience:
…through her mind’s eye…ran pictures brimming with colour and excitement of the great pageant wagons rumbling over the cobbles, harbinged by music and dancers and trailing a long wash of jugglers, tumblers, fire-eaters, fools, flagellants, giants, dwarves, dancing bears, merry monks, cut-price pardoners, knights on horseback, Saracens in chains, nubile Nubians….
Chung, a woman with a vivid personality and an imagination to match, has gone a bit wild here, but the vision is no less enticing for it.
The third motif is kicked off by a bizarre homicide that takes place in a house in Dalziel’s own neighborhood. Dalziel himself comes crashing into a bedroom in the dwelling right after the ear shattering sound of gunshot. He finds a man holding a gun, another man cowering in terror on the floor, and a naked woman sprawled on the bed, dead, with most of her face blown away.
Murder, of course. But was it, really? As so often is the case in Reginald Hill’s cunningly spun narratives, nothing is quite what it seems.
As the plot of the novel gained in complexity, so did the frustration of some of the Suspects. And there were other problems, chief among them being the antipathy aroused by Andy Dalziel. Rather than being amusing, his crude behavior and irreverent speech were perceived as annoying and even offensive. Pauline made no bones about her dislike of the book, criticizing among other flaws its messy structure. (I respectfully disagreed with her on this point!) Someone else said that she disliked not only Dalziel, but Peter Pascoe and Ellie as well. (I, on the other hand, find them quite appealing, both as individuals and as a couple.)
Susan mentioned that characters would suddenly turn up dead with no prior intimation that this was likely to occur and no explanation why. Just about everyone agreed that the book was too long, resulting in a periodically sluggish reading experience (that dreaded slogging sensation, feared by all readers).
No one, even ardent Hill fans like Yours Truly, argued with this last assertion. The novel was not a page turner. Yet even the dissenters among us had to admire this author’s sly and irreverent wit. At a point early in the story, Sergeant Wield, a resourceful and intelligent officer, is sent to interview a witness (suspect?) in the hospital. That would be Waterson the cowering fellow in the above described murder scenario. Upon entering the hospital room, Wield gets more than he bargained for:
It occurred to him instantly that Waterson must have private medical insurance. A nurse in a ward sister’s uniform was leaning over him. Their mouths were locked together and his hands were inside her starched blouse, roaming freely. No way did you get this on the National Health.
The nurse turns out to be Waterson’s estranged wife – estranged, that is, until that memorable encounter!
***********************************
Mike was our discussion leader for Bones and Silence. Like me, she loves British mysteries in general and Reginald Hill in particular. This title is a particular favorite of hers, which is why she selected it for the group. In my view, she presented a persuasive case for the book, but one of the great lessons you learn in book groups is that you can’t predict how people are going to react to your choice. I admit that it pained me somewhat to hear such negative comments about a writer whom I hold in such high esteem, but that’s how these things go some times, and you have to be philosophical about it.There’s little point in having these discussions if participants don’t feel that they can express themselves directly and honestly.
While I do like Bones and Silence, it’s not my favorite in the Dalziel and Pascoe series. That designation would have to go to On Beulah Height. (Several others in last Tuesday’s group felt the same way.) I also have to say that as the series was reaching its (regrettable) conclusion, I felt that Hill’s writing was getting better and better. Dialogues of the Dead, Death’s Jest Book, Midnight Fugue – I loved all of them.
********************************
Quite a few in our group had watched the Dalziel & Pascoe series on DVD. I recommend them highly, especially series one through four, which contain episodes drawn directly from the novels. (Inspector Morse fans will recognize the soundtrack as being by the inimitable Barrington Pheloung.) 
In Bones and Silence, The role of Philip Swain, he who held the gun in the above described homicide scene, is played – beautifully underplayed I should say – by veteran British actor Michael Kitchen, whose portrayal of Christopher Foyle in the series Foyle’s War has been admired and enjoyed by many of us. (Dalziel’s relentless pursuit of Swain puts one in mind of Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean in Hugo’s Les Miserables.)
*********************************
Reginald Hill passed away in January of 2012. A site was organized that summer, with the purpose of celebrating Hill both as a writer and a friend to other writers.
Reginald Hill
Books to the Ceiling 