Cornflower

Books to keep alive

    

     Just the other day I read Simon's post about a new publishing house and went straight to their website to order a catalogue. Capuchin Classics have launched their first four titles this month - that's of a planned sixteen a year - and offer reprints of "outstanding works which have undeservedly been forgotten or are not easily available in the British market, alongside a choice of literary favourites which are themselves in the classic genre."

     Their categories include fiction, biography, travel and belles lettres, and available now are The Green Hat by Michael Arlen, Pamela Hansford Johnson's An Error of Judgement, Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills and On Horseback and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant.

Writers appearing on Capuchin's list in the coming months include Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan, A.A. Milne and H.E. Bates, Nancy Mitford and Elizabeth Goudge; I've already got my eye on a few of these prettily distinctive editions with specialist introductions.

    Looking through the list makes me ask: are there any books you would try to "keep alive"? What do you think needs to be rescued or deserves to be better known? I'd vote for this one.

Alternatives

     I watched last night's Open University programme on hypnotherapy (presented by scientist, Prof. Kathy Sykes) and was very interested to see the effectiveness of this practice in the treatment of physical conditions, as well as for those suffering from phobias or wanting to change an unhealthy habit. I've long been interested in both conventional medicine and alternative or complementary therapies of different kinds and I am firmly of the belief that there is a place for both, side by side.

    My route to one such alternative, Reiki, came through a slipped disc some years ago. Conventional treatment led to a recovery of sorts, but the resulting niggling pain and having to be 'careful' with my back eventually worsened until I'd wake every day in very considerable discomfort and be unable to straighten up for some time - this despite yoga and keeping reasonably fit by walking.

    When, about three years ago, I had a particularly bad bout of back pain and restricted movement, coupled with a winter 'bug' which was slow to shift, I knew something had to be done, so I found a Reiki practitioner who lives nearby and, knowing little about it, went for a session. The treatment itself was very pleasant, but the outcome was that I woke up the next morning feeling as though a miracle had taken place. All symptoms of the bug had disappeared, my back was completely pain-free and I could move normally. It was quite amazing, and what's more the effects were lasting.

    I had one or two further sessions in the following months when I felt the wear and tear of life was making me below par, and then I went to learn how to give Reiki myself and have used it ever since for family and friends. I know it's not for everyone, and it sounds a bit weird, but despite - or maybe because of - my analytical, probing lawyer's mind, I believe in it completely - I've seen and felt the evidence for myself!

    Does anyone else have any similar stories to relate? Anyone tried acupuncture, hypnosis, or meditation (which is the subject of a forthcoming OU programme) or are you a practitioner yourself? And if you want any information on Reiki or suggestions of books on the subject, please let me know.

Miscellany 5

     I did say there would be several 'posts' today!

Miscellany 4

     I said today's posts would be a mixture and they are. Here we are in links territory, firstly a tenuous one, then some definitely worth following.

    The green scarf is progressing and is a pleasure to knit - details here. Its colours are appropriate for today, St. Patrick's Day, which is as good a day as any to visit some favourite Irish blogs covering a range of subjects.

For instance, Cheryl's, Laura's and (one I hadn't realised was Irish until the other day) John's.

Miscellany 3

     Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Back to that fascinating question of how much/how quickly we read. Have a look at this article and tell us whether you're a literary tortoise or a hare!

     I've been both, usually through forces outwith my control, managing five novels in eight days at best, and taking ages over one shortish one when the mind won't settle or there are too many other pressing things to do.

    I'd like to sit down with a book just now but the hoovering calls and duty wins!

Miscellany 2

      A quick summing up of our Book Group comments on The House of Mirth shows that we range from loving it and finding it compelling and engaging to not wanting to finish it! I think that's as it should be. We all have different tastes or different reading moods so a book is unlikely to appeal (or disappoint) across the board, and hearing just what makes some of us enjoy it and others not is what it's all about - we learn a lot about our own perspective from considering other people's.

     Criticisms include the length and the melodramatic nature; some were fascinated by the portrait of Lily's social set, others bored or irritated by it. We're agreed that the writing was in places superb and elsewhere flawed, and it seems clear that this isn't Edith Wharton's best book, however, my thanks to Mary for suggesting it.

     Carolyn asks if anyone has read Hermione Lee's biography, Edith Wharton. If you have, please let us know what you thought. For those still reading Lily's story, comments remain open so do have your say as and when you're ready.

Monday miscellany

     A busy and rather disjointed few days have left me feeling a bit scattered. That will be reflected here today as I serve up a medley or melange of posts, a few mouthfuls rather than a full meal! I'm not sure quite what's on the menu, but pop back through the day and you might find something to your taste.

The House of Mirth

     

"Lily had the odd sense of being behind the social tapestry where the threads were knotted and the loose ends hung".

      What a fate indeed for Lily Bart, the beautiful object of fascination, the adornment to the rich, smart New York set in which she moves and within which she hopes to marry. Edith Wharton's description of Lily's downward-spiral is a salutory tale - "she likes being good and I like being happy" says Lily of her friend Gerty, and if only she herself had taken the righteous path or followed her heart, she might yet have remained on 'the right side' of that tapestry with a life of ease and love before her.

      The novel is partly about society and its power to influence individual lives, but it's through Lily's own choices vis-a-vis that social group that her destiny is determined. Intent on marrying well, that is for money, she must dissemble, displaying the traits and attitudes she feels are called for, adapting to her suitors and extemporising as required. All this in one instance at least "...on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life". But Lily is her own worst enemy and in casting aside the fine but poor Selden, hoping to catch a bigger, richer fish she invites disaster.

     As befits its period and setting, The House of Mirth is full of social posturing, of reputations made and lost, of fine distinctions on people, the old money and the new, and  - by way of commentary - some waspish lines. Lily's aunt, Mrs. Peniston "....was the kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast" and "[her] genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect of succeeding to the black brocade". A minor character, Melville Stancy, is described as "...a lawyer in his leisure moments", while the poor Miss Silvertons, seeking to support themselves, have little to fall back on: "Miss Jane reads aloud very nicely... and Miss Annie paints a little." Oh dear!

     What do we think of Lily and her story? Too long, too melodramatic? Did we all want to try to grab Lily back from the brink of disaster or give her a good shake? Finely written or only patchily brilliant? Please have your say in the comments here.

Volume 5

   

Our fifth Cornflower Book Group title comes with an added bonus: we get to talk to the author! Out of the hat this month has come Speaking of Love by Angela Young, and as Angela is a regular visitor to this site and indeed a member of the group, she has kindly offered to answer our questions on this her first novel. Not only that, she wants to hear any criticisms we may have, too, as - true professional that she is - she says it all helps with future writing.

    You'd have been forgiven for thinking that "Speaking of Love" is in no way connected to the book we've just read and will be discussing this weekend - Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth" - but there is a link. When the BBC dramatised Wharton's unfinished The Buccaneers they commissioned Angela to write the 30,000 word ending for the accompanying edition of the book, following Mrs. Warton's original plan. Will we discover any Whartonesque turns of phrase in Angela's own writing, I wonder?

   These lines preface the book: "You must take care of love; if not it goes bad", and from the text - "The real risk...lies in not talking about the things that matter the most...What we don't say doesn't go away...".

     "Speaking of Love" has received numerous highly complimentary reviews and was recently shortlisted for the World Book Day/Books to Talk About award. The paperback edition came out just last month and the book is available overseas, but for any readers outwith Britain who have trouble getting hold of a copy, you may like to know that The Book Depository offers free international delivery.

     Angela is currently working on her second novel, a modern version of Beauty and the Beast, and you can visit her at her blog here. Meanwhile we shall read "Speaking of Love" ready for discussion beginning Saturday, 12th. April. I'm looking forward to it.

Orbital perturbations

 

     When W. G. Sebald encounters a dotted line of fishermen gazing out to the North Sea from the shore south of Lowestoft, he writes "They just want to be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness". That seems to sum up this book. The Rings of Saturn is ostensibly a cerebral journey inspired by a walk around East Anglia, but it is very hard to classify  - or even describe accurately - being part travelogue, part memoir, part meditation, and Sebald called it "prose fiction" which then leads the reader to question which of its scenes are factual records and which imaginative meanderings. But whatever it is, it's the work of an extraordinary mind.

     Its discursive style leads from items of local social and historical interest to Swinburne in Putney, Conrad, a fascinatingly eccentric Irish household and the funeral cortege of the Emperor of China in 1861. One such digression I must quote for its wonderful technical terms: on silk production in Norwich prior to the Industrial Revolution these materials are listed - "silk brocades and watered tabinets, satins and satinettes, camblets and cheveretts, prunelles, callimancoes and florentines, diamantines and grenadines, blondines, bombazines, belle-isles and martiniques..."

     Sebald himself is elusive, hiding behind his knowledge, occasionally appearing obliquely on the physical journey and through the scholarship, only to vanish as quickly again, and to that extent the book leaves the reader with many questions. Who is this man and what is he seeking on his way? "The east stands for lost causes", he says, so is it significant that it's eastwards he has gone? ".... we all move, one after the other, along the same roads mapped out for us by our origins and our hopes...ghosts of repetition...haunt me with ever greater frequency".

     This is an original and mysterious book, intense, curious, finding patterns in life and history, taking a spiralling course through time and place. It requires some concentration but is undoubtedly worth the effort.

Books and cakes - 4

     What to bake for Lily Bart - or rather, to go with our reading of The House of Mirth? "[Lily], attended by the troubled Gerty, lunched luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations", and on one such occasion the ladies deliberate between Coupe Jacques and Peches a la Melba. I wanted something delicate but a trifle decadent for Lily, so I took my cue from the Coupe Jacques which my edition describes as lemon and strawberry ices topped by fresh fruit steeped in kirsch.

      I decided on Nigella's Sponge Drops from How to Be a Domestic Goddess:  featherlight, fatless sponge discs sandwiching morello cherry jam, whipped cream and cherries in syrup - I shall add a dash of kirsch for the ones we'll eat at supper tonight. I've just had two (well, they are bite-size) and they live up to Nigella's description : "mouthfuls of heaven"!

   

One equal music

   

     The title of this post is from John Donne (you can read the rest of the passage here) and it came to me this morning when I was thinking about recent discussions on the subject of our response to books. For example, Lindsay wrote the other day that one never reads the same book twice, that is, one's perspective is individual but changes according to mood, experience, sensitivity, thus a familiar book may elicit a reaction or appreciation quite different from that of earlier readings.   

      I would agree with him, of course, and I'd go on to suggest that how a book 'resonates' can in some instances almost be pre-determined. That's a very broad statement, but if you liken books to music, the importance of interpretation becomes clear. A piece of music may not 'work' if transcribed for an instrument other than that for which it was written (the converse is true, too, of course) and even a change of key to accommodate a different voice may produce an effect - and a response in the audience - quite other than originally intended.

     Where books are concerned, we the readers are the interpreters, and as Lindsay says, "you and I never read the same book": we read it differently because we are different people and this explains our varying reactions. Our recent book group reading of They came like swallows, for instance, seemed to display this. Generally speaking, the men found it lacking in subtlety and unduly sentimental, the women found it delicate, touching and perfectly judged. I would suggest that is because it's a piece which - using the musical analogy - cannot be transposed or transcribed : the sensibility of the reader - the pitch and tone of the 'instrument', if you like - has to be right for it. You would not take a late Beethoven piano sonata, say, and score it for a full orchestra, and nor can Maxwell be 'heard correctly' by someone reading him without the sensitive and intuitive touch of a John Lill playing that Beethoven. Thus the book appealed more to the female emotional range than to the male.

    I hope all that makes sense and is worth thinking about, but to continue the theme, can anyone recommend novels about music or with a musical setting? Going back to today's title there's Vikram Seth's An Equal Music which I want to re-read soon, and Conrad Williams's The Concert Pianist which Dovegreyreader tells me I'd like. Any more?

Mirth and melancholy

      Just a reminder that we shall be talking about Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth", our current Book Group read, on Saturday (15th. March).

The picture is Mirth and Melancholy by George Romney (1734-1802).

Today's post proper will be coming up later.

Out of town

 

     A run out of town yesterday morning for a walk along the beach at Tyninghame in East Lothian.

The headland below is called St. Baldred's Cradle, after the 6th./7th. century evangelist and hermit, St. Baldred, who was sent by St. Mungo to spread Christianity to the Lothians.

He founded a monastery at Tyninghame and then sought seclusion by living in a cell on the Bass Rock (below)

The rock is now home to vast colonies of seabirds - ornithologists can have a look here.

After the game

     On our walk home after the game yesterday we took a scenic route. First, up to Ravelston from where we saw this rainbow just touching the copper-domed octagonal and ogee-roofed turrets of Donaldson's School for the Deaf (designed by W. H. Playfair and built 1841-1851).

Then down into Dean Village, walking by the Water of Leith and with a view up to Holy Trinity Church (1838) at the end of Thomas Telford's Dean Bridge. The church is now an electricity substation.

The village itself was home to millers - from the 12th century - and bakers or 'baxters', and here (above) in a single arch bridge over the Water of Leith, is a panel of crossed peels or bakers' paddles, used for extracting hot loaves from the baker's oven.

Nearby is this blocked doorway with the inscription "GOD BLESS THE BAXTERS OF EDINBRUGH UHO BULT THIS HOUS 1675" (sic.)

More on Dean Village here.