Tag: english classics

The Polygots by William Gehardie

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The Polygots by William Gehardie

English fiction

Source – Personal copy

I looked through the books for the 1925 club, and this one jumped out at me as I’d love to be a polyglot, but unfortunately, I’m not. But when I read about William Gehardie from an Anglo-Russian family, he was born in St Petersberg. Studied in Russian. Then in Oxford. He served in the First World War in the Royal Scots Grey. He then served with the British mission to the white guard in Siberia. He won several awards, including an OBE. He then started to write, Evelyn Waugh said I have the talent, but you have the genius! He was also, in part, the model for William Boyd’s character Logan Mountstuart in his book Any Human Heart. All that made me pick this for the club year.

I stooD on board the liner halted in midstream and looked upon Japan, my native land. But let me say at once that 1 am not a Japanese. I am very much a European. Yet when I woke that morning, and, looking through the porthole, found the boat had halted in midstream, and Japan, a coral reef, lay glittering in the morning sun before me, I was touched and spellbound, and my thoughts went back to my birth, twenty-one years before, in the land of the cherry blossoms. I dressed quickly and ran up on deck. A faint breeze ruffled my hair and rippled the water. Like a dream, Japan loomed before me.

All last night I had watched for the approach of the enchanted island. Like sea-shells, islets began to bob up to right and left of us as we stood watching, heedless of time, as in a trance, the liner stealing her way on in the warm nocturnal breeze of July. They came and swam by and were like queer apparitions in the charmed light, and the boat, lulled to sleep, seemed to have yielded to dreams. And waking in the morning I looked and saw the cliffs-and gladness filled my heart.

The opening as he is in Japan at first .

“The book focuses on an English officer based in the Far East, Captain Georges Diabologh, born in Japan, who had spent time in Russia, as did the writer himself. Anyway, he ends up in a Belgian-run hotel in China, where a Belgian family are the other main characters in the book. Aunt Tersea and her Husband, a former Belgian officer, is, in part, like Poirot in the way he was described as a small dapper man with a wax moustache. But a sort of broken Poitrot.This is a book about the characters he meets along.The family, including his two uncles, all have little stories to tell and be observed by George.

the way —these people out of water in the far east, a sad family of odd Belgians and others, all stuck in the Chinese city of Harbin, in part of Russian-controlled China. It’s a book about nationality, identity, and being far away from your home. There isn’t much of a plot; it is more a collection of observations about the people he comes across. George, who is related to the family, is observant of those in the family.

“The war is over,’ said my aunt, and yet there will be men, I know, who will regret it. The other day I talked to an English Captain who had been through the thick of the Gallipoli campaign, and he assured me positively that he liked fighting-and simply carried me off my feet. And I don’t know whether he isn’t right. He liked fighting the Turks because, he said, they are such splendid fellows. Mind you! he had nothing at all against them; on the contrary, he thought they were gentlemen and sportsmen-almost his equals. But he said he’d fight a Turk any day, with pleasure.

Because they fought cleanly. After all,’ my aunt continued,

“there’s something splendid, say what you like—a zest of life!

—in his account of fighting the Turks. The Turks rush out of the wood with glittering bayonets, chanting: “Allah! Allah!

Allah!” as they advance into battle. Because, you see, they think they are already at the gates of Heaven, only waiting to be admitted. So they rush gravely and steadily into battle, chanting: “Allah! Allah! Allah!” I don’t know—but it must be, as he says, exhilarating!’

Accounts of wars play a part as well

I can see how this book fits with the time; it has a little of Waugh in the satire, and a sort of madness in families at times. Then there is also a pinch of Saki in the pithy observations of those family members —from the wax moustache to the aunt to the child —all of whom have their little hang-ups, as you would see in Saki. The two things I’d like more of are a little bit of a plot; it is a book you fall into, and at times, get lost among these odd little people. I didn’t mind that too much, as he also didn’t really make the place come alive. But I think he is a writer who needs to be better known; the two things I mentioned may be why he has fallen by the wayside. His writing is satirical and captures those little habits we all have that are funny, well. An intersting last book for club 1925. I can also see how he was part of the character in Any Human Heart. From this book, there are parts that you think could come from Any Human Heart. Tomorrow I will be looking back at my favourote books from the last ten years of Simon and Karens year club.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

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Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

English classic

Source – Personal copy

I had seen earlier this year that it was the centenary of Mrs Dalloway’s publication. I had toyed with reading it, and when I saw the vintage classic edition, which features the original cover art and is styled after the original Hogarth edition of the book, it appealed to me. So the other evening I decided to order it as I knew it was set in this month, and having tried to find the exact day in mid-June, the book is set, it has various dates come up on Google, and this is sort of in the middle of them. I had read this in my late teens, but that is over thirty years ago, and I wondered how it would resonate with me as a reader now. The book, like Joyce’s Ulysses, follows a single day in the life of the main character, such as Clarissa Dalloway.

Edgar J. Watkiss, with his roll of lead piping round his arm, said audibly, humorously of course: ‘The Proime Minister’s kyar?’

Septimus Warren Smith, who found himself unable to pass, heard him.

Septimus Warren Smith, aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too. The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?

Septimus as man scared by the war

I THINK SINCE I read this book for the first time, I have spent time around the part of London where we meet Clarissa. She is a woman in her fifties, and she is wandering around London at the start of the book as she is gathering flowers for her party. Alongside this sis a side tale of Septimus, a man injured in the First World War, who spends his day in the park with his wife. There is a juxtaposition between the two and about how the war affected them both a broken man with his Italian wife, he spends the day as we see them both spending time. Also, Clarissa remembers back to her youth and times spent in Bourton on the Water, the picturesque Cotswold village that is nowadays packed with folks, but I would have loved to have been there back in the day when it was a tranquil village like Clarissa describes and remembers her youth and her meeting her husband and their friends. The day moves on, and it is the evening, and the party is taking place, when the two stories sort of meet as Clarissa finds out something about Septimus that makes her think about herself and her life.

Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied, ghostly-why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.

I loved that there iwas seedy characters around back then in the background of her walk as she is near St Pauls

This book is a book I loved more this time, the flow of her prose I connect with, I think vaguely, knowing London a little better than I did many years ago although I am due a trip to London soon. Also, the scenes in the Cotswolds as this is very near where my dad lives, and we often go when visiting him, around the Cotswold villages near him. At the heart of the book is the ghost of the First World War, but how people dealt with it the two main characters on the surface seem poles apart but actually, is Clarrissa just daage in a way but not showing it it captures class and not showing emotions as well The book unfolds over the day it is like Joyce in fact in last weeks Guardian there was a call for there maybe to start being a Dalloway day like Blooms day in Dublin for London. I love to walk around London I knew a few of the places well, others I wasn’t too familiar with. I’m pleased I revisited it after all this time; it shows how life can change a writer I had always found hard to connect with as a teenager. When I read a few of her novels. Have you read this recently, or are you planning to, given the centenary?

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Classic Detective fiction

Source – Personal copy

I was inspired by Simon Savidge in his Halloween read the video or something he did when he mentioned this book and then spent the day hunting my old Puffin copy, which is 40 yers old and when I found it as some books are still out of place in the shelves from the move. I looked at it and felt it was time to retire it to the shelf and get a new copy, so I brought a Penguin Clothbound copy. I then decided to try and find a Film version of the book I hadn’t seen and found a 1972 TV movie with Stewart Granger; I have watched so many versions of the novella, each missing bits of the book, some stick closely to the book, others drift away. This was near to the novella in most of the action. I think it is maybe the most filmed Holmes Story or Novella.

Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearthrug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.’ It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a ‘Penang lawyer’* Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. To James Mortimer, MRCS, from his friends of the CCH’, was engraved upon it, with the date ‘1884. It was just a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry

– dignified, solid, and reassuring.

Well, Watson, what do you make of it?”

The opening and the Cane left behind and what is the CCH ?

The book starts with one of the best pieces of deduction by Holmes, a Cane left by Doctor Mortimer at which is looked at first by Watson as Holmes sees him in the teapot and asks him to describe the owner. This is a classic piece of deduction. A silver label makes Watson think it is from the hunt and that he is an older country doctor. But when Holmes looks, he sees it very differently, and the young doctor and his dog appear just as he has described him. They learn about the Myth of the Baskervilles from the doctor and the death of the most recent Baskerville and lord of the manor Sir Charles. This is connected to a family curse of an evil hound, bringing death to the family. The doctor then says h had seen a huge paw print by the dead body. Hilmes says what has a curse to do with him, the new Lord Sir Henry is due to arrive. We all know the story they meet. Holmes takes the case but is busy, and he sends Watson to be his observer. The Dartmoor is imposing and full of places of mystery and quick mud. An escaped prisoner, several residents around the Baskerville property a man who sues people (he is often missed in the films !). Then Stapleton, the other main character, and his sister, but are they who they seem. Then the two servants in the house, The butler and his wife, what is their secret. Who is the body they see at night, and where is Holmes when all this is happening.

Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles’s nervous system was strained to breaking-point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart – so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound.The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement.

The Hound had haunt the dead Baskerville but who had feed that fire of worry ?

It is fair to say I love this Holmes it is my second favourite of them all, the first being the short story The Blue Carbuncle. Both share deductions and also a sense of tracking down a story. The main thing about Hounds of the Baskerville is there is very little Holmes. He is there at the start when he sends Watson to go to Devon with Sir Herny t watch and report all he sees and tells Watson to be wary at night, and then we see him in the last part of the book. The book is made up of reports Watson had made his observations. But as we learn, Holmes had observed those events as well in a twist at the end. It is a good take on the epistolary novel. It is also a classic for this time of year as the Moor Dartmoor adds atmosphere to the names of the places, and the sense of forbidding Doyle conjures up in the story. Perfect for a Halloween read and worth a revisit as ever, this must be the 20th plus time I have reread this book, usually this time of year. I will also try and find any more film versions I may have missed of this.

Have you a book you reread and reread?

Winston’s score A+ is still as good now as when it came out, and it sends shivers down your spine in places.

All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook

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All the devils are Her by David Seabrook

English Non-fiction

Source – personal copy

I said a few posts ago one of my favourite podcasts was Backlist. In the recent break, they played some earlier episodes, one of which was with the writer Rachel Cooke from the Observer, which was around this book by the writer David Seabrook. Seabrook was a crime writer who had written two books before sadly dying too young. He was a writer that looked at the underbelly of people’s lives. In his other book, he wrote about the uncaught serial killer Nick the Stripper, that had killed 8 prostitutes in the sixties; he drew the case and alluded to who he thought was the killer, and then there is this book that seemed to follow him on a number of bus rides from his home in Canterbury to the seaside towns that surround him. But he gets to the dark underbelly of these towns and their past. If you go to any town, spend time in the pubs with the drinkers and look at the dark parts, you’ll enter the world he talks about.

Evenings. Dead-eyed drinkers six deep at the bars, not always alone but often unspeaking, unsmiling – as if the pubs were cider houses and Rochester were Hardy country, far away.

Staccato laughter strafing the Casino Rooms just off the High Street, where audiences are entertained by comedians such as’X-Rated’ Jimmy Jones or Roy Chubby’ Brown, big men who tour England ceaselessly like lardy takes on the Ancient Mariner, bringing none of the poetry and all of the guilt. And finally, down by the station, all the year round, scores of prosti-tutes, some of them very young indeed – and every soul desperate for trade. They hassle locals hurrying home; they go down on drivers waiting for the lights to change; they pound locked cars like gibbons at Longleat. Residents have set up surveillance cameras to monitor the situation but the girls still show every evening at Gundulph Road, New Road and the base of Star Hill and they still take it in all the usual places (including the arm) . Theirs is an indsutry in turmoil, the first sign, on the way to Chatham , tht the sailorsn havre gone for good.

A look at the darker side of life

The book is in three parts. I’ll mainly talk about the first part, which sees David looking into Rochester, the seaside town that Dickens lived in but was another character in the village, an inspiration to Dickens, the writer. Richard Dadd, the painter who killed his father and was sent to the asylum at Broadmoor, inspired Dicken’s  Mystery of Edwin Drood, inspired by Dadd’s time in Rochester. The book is a thinly veiled look at the town of drug addiction and what happens when drugs go too far, as with Dadd. The strange thing is, as I looked back at the book today to review it, There is mention of the green man myth, which is strange as there is a pub. There is a controversial sign that used to have a figure on in the town of Ashbourne where we have just had a weekend away it is odd how these connections happen at times with books and life, The book is his looking at each place and spinning stories around those places the dark side of nature from a gay boxer Freddy Mills or was he ?  and Charles Hawtrey the Carry on the actor, then fascist shadows in the dark past from Lord Hawi- Haaw relative he meets along the way on his days out from Canterbury.

In 1864, the year in which he was transferred to Broadmoor, Dadd handed over the painting to its dedicatee, George Haydon, the steward at Bethlem. In January 1865 Dadd, possibly at Haydon’s request, provided a key of sorts to this picture in a long, digressive poem entitled Elimination of a Picture and Its Subject’. Dadd treks through his cast list, throws in a few scandalous tidbits such as the patriarch’s penchant for clubbing fairies, and ends meanderingly, with an admission of defeat: ‘But whether it be or be not so / You can afford to let this go / For nought as nothing it explains / And nothing from nothing nothing gains. No good, then. But why should he want to ‘eliminate the picture and its subject? Is he making a pun?If it isn’t a pun, what is it?

Dadd and his strange art and his life is looked at .

This is the dark cousin of Sebald’s rings of Saturn. If he had been a drinker and a near do well of writer, this would have been the book This is the World of a Drinker, a man of the pubs of the night dark alleys, dirty toilets and old men. I am so pleased I caught the backlist this was mentioned on, as even before the show had finished, I had ordered the book. I will be getting his other book at some time as this is the sort of book if I was going write, I’d write a book of free-flowing thinking and thoughts, a sort of interlink work that isn’t about anything but is actually just compelling, like staying next to that guy in the pub that has the lowdown on the whole town the secrets hidden this is the sort of sales you hear from taxi drivers late at night.  I often feel Kluge is the master of this sort of book, but this is the top-shelf version of his book. We have seen the dark side of these towns in other books from Brighton Rock or Carver’s dark LA Stories, but this is real life which proves the maxim fact is often stranger than fiction.

The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene

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The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene

English fiction

Source – Personal copy

I love when Simon’s and Karen’s six monthly year club as it gives me a chance to read the books that came out that year I hadn’t read and ion this case go back to a book I had read many years ago. I was always a fan of Greene I think I was 11 or 12 when I first came across him, and I think it may have been through a radio version of Our Man in Havana a different book to this one, but that was my intro to his works, and through my early twenties I read a lot of his books. I am not a huge fan of rereading books for me the process of reading the time, and the memories of that reading are like a fly caught in amber that one moment remembered, and one always worries if a book will be as entertaining or grabbing as I remembered this book was.

The lieutenant walked in front of his men with an air of bitter distaste. He might have been chained to them unwill. ingly – perhaps the scar on his jaw was the relic of an escape.

His gaiters were polished, and his pistol-holster: his buttons were all sewn on. He had a sharp crooked nose jutting out of a lean dancer’s face; his neatness gave an effect of inordinate ambition in the shabby city. A sour smell came up to the plaza from the river and the vultures were bedded on the roofs, under the tent of their rough black wings. Sometimes, a little moron head peered out and down and a claw shifted. At nine-thirty exactly all the lights in the plaza went out.

The lieutent a man of polish and belief in his quest

The book came about after Greene had visited Mexico and saw the persecution of the Catholic church at the time was for a non-fiction piece, but he later wrote this novel about a priest on the run. Always unnamed, we follow his journey and see a man with many faults, not the perfect priest. There is a joke about the type of men that go into the priesthood in Ireland, and one of the men that are said to join the priesthood is the drinker. Well, this is a perfect example of a whiskey priest a man that has had a child, and Brigitta his daughter is a strange child that he is drawn to help and loves her. Even thou as she has a look around her. But he is on the run as he is being chased by the Lieutenant a man who has vowed to rid Mexico of the Catholic church. It is the story of two men with beliefs, two sides of the same coin in a way driven to uphold what they believe in but also at polar ends of the spectrum. But who will win will the priest be drawn back because of God?

She said savagely, ‘I know about things. I went to school.

I’m not like these others – ignorant. I know you’re a bad priest. That time we were together – that wasn’t all you’ve done.

I’ve heard things, I can tell you. Do you think God wants you to stay and die – a whisky priest like you?’ He stood patiently in front of her, as he had stood in front of the lieutenant, listening.

He hadn’t known she was capable of all this thought. She said,

“Suppose you die. You’ll be a martyr, won’t you? What kind of a martyr do you think you’ll be? It’s enough to make people mock.?

Then the other side the priest here is him described

Greene is, of course, known for being a catholic novelist, but for me, this has both that and also a sprinkling of what he used to call his entertainment to it. The title is a nod towards the lord’s prayer. This is also where he admitted later in life he found his faith through those pheasants he had seen and the priest that worked underground and was the bases for the priest in this book. It has a pace to it, and I always feel Greene is the master of tension in his writing. He knows how to pitch it just right and he does that so well here as we get drawn to the end and discover what happens to the two main characters in the book. Two men that, as much as they are different, are the same and driven, by belief. As Lucretius said, Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion, and in both men, you can see this. Have you read this by Greene, or do you have a favourite book by Greene?

Winston’s score A – The book has stood the test of time and I loved it the more the second time around.

do you like rereading ?

A high Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

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A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

English fiction

Source – Personal copy

I always have a look on my shelves when the club year is announced and this was a book I already owned so it saved me from ordering another book and it is one I had long wanted to read, I think I may have seen the film when I was younger. Richard Hughes was a journalist and writer he wrote four novels I have another by him Fox in the attic. He was friends with Dylan Thomas who stayed with him. This book has been described as an inspiration for William Goldings Lord of the flies. Supposedly at the time, Hughes wrote the book he hadn’t visited Jamaica. But it is only featured in the first part of the book most of the action is on the sea.

The passage from Montego Bay to the Caymans, where the children had written their letters, is only a matter of few hours: indeed, in clear weather one can look right across from Jamaica to the peak of Tarquinio in Cuba.

There is no harbour; and the anchorage, owing to the reefs and ledges, is difficult. The Clorinda brought up off the Grand Cayman, the look-out man in the chains feeling his way to a white, sandy patch of the bottom which affords the only safe resting-place there, and causing the anchor to be let go to windward of it. Luckily,, the weather was fine.

The island, a longish one at the western end of the group, is low, and covered with palms. Presently a succession of boats brought out a quantity of turtles, as Emily described.

The natives also brought parrots to sell to the sailors: but failed to dispose of many.

The opening of the third chapter is as they set off on the first boat.

The book follows the aftermath of the Hurricane on an English Family in Jamaica whose property is destroyed by the storm. Which leaves the parents of the Bas-Thornton children to take the decision. It would be better to send their five children homeland in England. The children have very few memories of England and are sent with two creole children with them. They head to the port town Montego bay and on to a ship, the Clorinda with its captain Maypole the ship has barely set off when the ship is taken over by Pirates initially thaty seem to wan the cargo but then are looking for a safe they seize the children ( John, Emily, Edward, Rachel and Edward with the two creole Margaret and Harry.) and use them as leverage to get to know where the safe is on the ship. The chain of events that follows means the children end up with the pirates and the Captain Maypole of the ship Clorinda they were on writes to tell the parents the loss of the children rather than dying initially the pirates aren’t to bother with the kids but the chef and a couple of them befriend and the captain of the pirate ship takes a liking to Young Emily another has relations with another pirate as with the shackles of parental control the kids start to go rogue and act like the pirates, in fact, they maybe are worse than them. What will happen will they get home will they all get there alive what happens to them on that ship.

The children all slept late, and all woke at the same moment as if by clockwork. They sat up, and yawned uniformly, and stretched the stiffiness out of their legs and backs (they were lying on solid wood, remember).

The schooner was steady, and people tramping about the deck. The main-hold and fore-hold were all one: and from Where they were they could see the main-hatch had been opened. The captain appeared through it legs first, and dropped onto the higgledy-piggledy of the Clorinda’s cargo.

For some time they simply stared at him. He looked uneasy, and was talking to himself as he tapped now this Case with his pencil, now that; and presently shouted rather fiercely to people on deck.

And by the next chapter they awake to being on the pirate ship and what happens there.

I must admit I was one of those kids that never got into pirates which are maybe why I had never gotten to this book. But I was pleased the 1929 club gave me the nudge to read this book.I can see the connection to the lord of the flies and the way the children act once they are with the pirates.  This book maybe captures the last age of the pirates as it seems it is just as sailboats are making way for mechanical ships.I looked up to see if there had been cases of kids as pirates there were some kids in the 70s that were shipwrecked like the lord of the flies but they didn’t go like they did. I wonder if he had read an article about some kids taken by pirates as one of his other books In Hazard came from a news story. I’m sure there were children taken and became or were used by the pirates. It deals with the idea of what happens when there are no boundaries and no consequences for your actions on the young Bas Thorton children. He captures the darker side of childhood the book has a gothic feel at times in someways the writing reminds me of a couple of Daphne Du Maurier books I have read it maybe influenced her I feel he maybe was a Stevenson fan it is a darker cousin of Treasure island it also maybe has a nod to the books of Conrad another great writer of a ship bound fiction he captures that confined feeling of being on a ship on top of one another and how that makes people feel his trilogy of books set on the sea is set around the same time as both steamboats and sail ship share the high seas. Have you read this book or have you a favourite book set on the sea Pirate or otherwise?

Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess

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Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess

English Fiction

Source – Personal copy

I haven’t talked about how Anthony Burgess is one of my all-time favorite writers, so when I looked at the list of books for club 1976.  was happy when I saw this book which I had brought when it came out two years ago as part of the University of Manchester Irwell edition of some of Burgess works that had fallen out of print or as in the case of Puma was part of another novel that Burgess had wanted to publish as a separate work. Anyway, this book was one of the books from Burgess that had fallen out of print this new edition is the first to include the pictures that David Robinson had taken around Rome to highlight the text supernatural parts of the book the original edition had them but in black and white not like color here. The book also has a number of Autobiographical elements that parallel Burgess’s own life.

She died in an English March. He should known, those quiet years in Londin when he was earning their living as a writer of scripts for radio, television and cinem, what her trouble was. He had even written a television play in which one of his characters, a writer of scripts for radio, television and cinema, died of cirrhosis. From those years in Brunei on, when he had woirked for Radio Brunei, it never seemed to him that either of them drank excessively. In the tropics, surely you sweated all that gin out before it got anywhere near the liver.

His own wife died due to Alcoholism they had both lived in Brunei as well.

The book opens with the main character in the book Ronald Beard as we see him with his wife dying. When his wife finally passes away, he decides to head and pursue a job as a screenwriter in Hollywood as he has been hired by a studio exec to write a Musical based on the time Shelley and Lord Byron spent in Geneva. A time that changed both the writers forever as they see a big Hollywood star playing Bryon he heads to Rome as he tries to wor on the musical he is drinking but soon after he arrives in Rome he falls for a woman this is maybe like the drinking a way of avoiding the grief but his wife is still there as we see he is haunted by her as he tries to get on with his new life bu the past keeps creeping in did she die?  As he thinks of there past and figures from his past in the far east crop up. So why did he run off to Rome. Then mix in the atmospheric pictures from Robinson which lifts Beard’s journey of the page.

In Geneva Mary and Percy and his limping lordship(come in perhaps on that Limp) looked up at the statue of John calvin. “The monster that created a monster,” said Byron, handsomely bitter,”A clockwork toy called Predestinate man, wound up by god and arribitrarlly set by him on a path leading to salvation or preditio. No choice is the matter, no freedom in the scheme. How I hate Jack calvin and how I hate  John Knox. i was brought up, ye ken, changing to stage scotch, “on the pestilential puritanism of that woman loather ”

His work on the musical he was sent to work on

 

Now, this has large chunks of Burgess world he loved Rome Which like Dublin he was more drawn to as a capital city than London. He was a catholic so felt closer to these two cities. Like his character Beard Burgess had lost his wife, he also married an Italian woman.  Then there is a shared history in Brunei where Burgess had also worked he also did write a screenplay for Tv about Shelley and Lord Byron that is included in the appendix to the book the book has these elements but Beard isn’t Burgess he used his life as a setting and biography for the story. There is a supernatural element to the book I was reminded at times of the scenes from Don’t look know where we see the image of the lost child in the canal in Venice here we see Beard’s wife there in the background the pictures conjure up the feeling of loss and mystery. The book of its time a world has now gone screenwriters writing musicals about Byron for a Hollywood studio now !! if only lol. If like me you are a huge Burgess fan this is one to read if you like Rome it is partly set there and lots of pictures around Rome. Have you a favorite book from Burgess I have reviewed four other books by him which include two other books from the Irwell series of books. A little late for club 1976

Winstons score – A for me I loved it but I love his writing so much this had lots of his life story in it !

Beowulf A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

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Beowulf A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

Classic Epic poetry

Original title – Beowulf

Source – review copy

I haven’t reviewed a lot of poetry over the years of the blog which is strange as I have a lot of poetry on my shelves that I tend to dip in and out of so when I was given the chance to read a reworking of the great Anglo Saxon Poem Beowulf. In the acknowledgments for the book Maria said she came up with the idea of translating Beowulf when she was up for a world fantasy prize for her acclaimed book The Mere Wife how she had used a translation of Beowulf in the research for the book and was asked in the Q & A when her translation would be out she decided to pick up the Baton. As for me, I did read the Seamus Heaney about the time it came out as there was such acclaim for that book as it made the poem more accessible but I always feel language moves and there is always room for new angles at old works if it brings something new to the table. as Borges said in his poem about his thought on translating Beowulf.

Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf

At various times, I have asked myself what reasons
moved me to study, while my night came down,
without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.

Used up by the years, my memory
loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history. Borges

The opening of Beowulf in the new translation!

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings! in the days

Everyone knew what men were: brave, bold, glory-bound.Only stories now, but I’ll sound the Spear-Danes song hoarded for hugry times

Their first father was a foundling: Scyld Scefing.

He spent his youth fists up, browbeating every barstool-brother, bonfiring his enemies. That man began in the waves, a baby in a basket.

but he bootstrapped his way into a kingdom, trading loneliness for luxury. Whether they thought kneeling necessary or no, everyone from head to tail of the whale-road bent down:

There’s a king, there’s his crown!

Thats a good King

The opening 11 lines of Beowulf !!

 

Beowulf follows the hero of the Title as he heads from Anglo Saxon England (Although England is never mentioned in the text as Q (Arthur Quiller-Couch) pointed out in a lecture in his work “On the art of writing”. he travels to help the king of the Dane who has lost many of his best men to the monster Grendel. he offers his help to kill Grendel and creature that has been terrorizing the kingdom since the creature is meant to be descended from Cain a nod to biblical connection in the origin of the book. They celebrate when Beowulf kills him with his own hands and then on the next night they are attacked by Grendel mother as Beowulf isn’t there but when he arrives back there follows a great battle Beowulf returns home and is made king of his own land only many years later to die fighting a dragon now this is the story but what Maria has done is made it easier to get into with the use of street terms and add a little more flow to the prose.

 

Hidden by fog,grendel roved the moors, God-cursed

Grudge worsening. He knew who hunted:

wine-drunk, mead-met men, and he oined

for his prey. Under storms clouds, he stalked them,

in his usual anguish, feeling a forbidden hearth,

that gulded hall stop the hill, gleaming still,

through years of bloodshed.This was not

the first time he’d hunted in Hrothgar’s hall,

butnever before nor later had he such hard luck.

no one worthyhad historically lain in wait

10 lines from early on in the book just show you how the book pops.

Christopher Hitchens said in his review of Harry Potter many years ok said it would spark a revival of anglo Saxon works like Beowulf as it has since the likes of Tolkien and C S lewis been interwoven with the world of fantasy as well. With dragons, quests warriors it has a link to Fantasy and also back to greek epics but what Maria has done is make it also sound modern with her use of street slang with words like Bro. She has also made it bloody it’s almost as though it has mixed a Nordic noir with an episode of Vikings and has also made the female characters appear a little more than I remembered in the Heaney translation. This is a great new version of the book if you haven’t read it this may be the edition for you if you like a=fantasy or greek epics this is the bridge between those works a cornerstone of English literature given a new breath of life for a new generation !!

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

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84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

Epistolary work

Source – Personal Copy

I sometimes like a change and like most of us book bloggers, we all love books that are about books and book people. Here is a great epistolary work that contains the letters sent and received from the 50s through to the late sixties by New yorker Helene Hanff she was a playwright her early books covered her struggling to get a foot in the New York theatre scene. Later she wrote scripts for Elery Queen. Marks and co a bookshop of the title based at 84 Charing cross road published and advert in the Saturday Review of Literature that they could get hold of ut of print books this leads to the letters that form the book as Helene a well-read woman had struggled to get certain books. I have tried to find the advert in the online collection of the Saturday Review of literature but haven’t found it just love to see the original advert.

14 East 95th St

November 18, 1949

WHAT KIND IF A BLACK PROTESTANT BIBLE IS THIS? Kindly inform the Church of England they have loused up the most beautiful prose ever written, whoever told them to tinker with the Vulgate Latin? They’ll burn for it, you mark my words.

It’s nothing to me, I’m Jewish myself. But I have a catholic sister-in-law, a methodist sister-in-law, a whole raft of presbyterian cousins (Though my Great Uncle Abraham who converted) and an aunt who’s a Christian science healer, and I like to think none of them would counternance this Anglian Latin bible if they knew it existed(As it happens, they don’t know Latin existed)

The Bible incident the wrong Bible was sent they later sent a better copy.

What follows is a series of letters that see Marks finding the books well FPD as they sign themselves in the early letters, Boks from the likes of Hazlitt Stevenson. The cost of these old but as Helene says fine books too good for her Orange crate bookshelves far better than their modern counterparts she has brought in the US. There is humor at times when they send a bible she calls a Black protestant bible and says it had ruined the Latin version in the translation to English as she said she was Jewish but has Methodist and Presbyterian relatives. As the book moves on Helene finds she is talking mainly to Frank Doel who is the main buyer for Marks and co. She discovers the hardship of post-war Britain makes her choose to send a food parcel from Denmark here she writes after sending it with concerns about if the owners are Jewish as she sent Ham to the bookshop but no everything was ok she receives letters from other staff on the side thanking her and wishing her well and looking forward to meeting her. But the main body is her and Frank as he hunts down the books she wants but life means she struggles to get to the UK.

Dear Miss Hanff,

We are glad you liked the “Q” anthology. We have no copy of the Oxford Book of English Prose in stock at the moment but will try to find one for you.

About the Sir Roger de Coverly papers, we happen to have in stock a volume of eighteenth century essays which includes a good selection of them as well as essays by Chesterfieldand Goldsmirth. It is edited by Austin Dobson and is quite a nice editon as it is only $1.15 we have sent it off to you by book post. If you want a more complete collection of Addison & Steele let me know and I will try to find one.

There are six of us in the shop, not including Mr Marks ancd Mr Cohen

Faithfully yours,

Frank Doel

For Marks and Co

Her love of Q lead to a later book I’d love to get about how Q influenced her reading

I love this book I have a special VMC hardback I brought a number of years ago it has the follow-up. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Which finally saw Helene make it to the UK. This is a window into a bygone world Marks and co is gone and most of the shops that made up Charing Cross road have gone over time. It’s hard to split the book now from the film for me though I did feel the film was well cast the humor of Helene that came across in the letters a sort of deadpan wit was well portrayed by Ellen Burstyn. Frank equally was played as a straight-laced English man by Anthony Hopkins. I have a number of books she mentions I have been a fan of Arthur Quiller couch or Q as he was known as the editor of Oxford book of English Verse which I have had for a long time as it was often mentioned on Rumpole of the Bailey which I loved as a kid. This is one of those books that reminds us why we all love books and reading and the bygone age when we had to hunt for books which we still do, well I do there are so many translations I would love to find like Helene I’d love to find an 84 Charing Cross road. Have you have read it?

Vile bodies by Evelyn Waugh

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Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

English fiction

Source – personal copy

Well, I enjoy Kaggy and Simons year club this time we are now back in 1930 this time for the 1030 club and when I looked at a list of books published in 1930 this one was jumped out at me as I have read this a few times before it is one of my favourite books in English. I may review mainly translated fiction these days but in my youth, I loved the works of Waugh and have in the past did a small weekly blog event for Waugh. This book for me maybe captures those bright young things at the best and worst the only book that comes near is Henry Greens party going.

“French, eh/” he said. “I guessed as much, and pretty dirty, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Now just yoy wait while I look up these her books? – how he said it! “in my ist. Particularly against books the home secretary is. If we can’t stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop it being brrought in from outside. that’s what he said the other day in parliment, and I says “hear,hear,” =Hullo,hullo,what’s this, may I ask?”

The custom officer confiscating his books and his own manuscript as he arrives back in the UK.

The book focus on the ups and downs of the life of Adam Fenwick Symes as he returns to London after time in America trying to write his magnus opus of a book which he has in his Case. The first down for him is that he loses this book and the money he was going to get for it from his publisher as it is seized by an over efficient custom officer with a hatred of literature. Putting at risk his marriage to Nina Blunt this on-off marriage runs through the book as he on a number of occasions tries to get her father a rather mad colonel. He returns to his hotel and by chance doing a magic trick wins a sum of money which he is persuaded not to keep but by a Major to let him bet on a sure thing outsider horse that is running at 33/1. So when the horse wins he needs to find this Major this is another thread in the book. Also, he is given a chance of a job as mr chatterbox by his publishing tycoon boss in a chance to redeem himself as Mr Chatterbox. A role Adam jumps at but then as his predecessor in the job got in trouble he is pushed by Nina just to make up characters and events and trends like a green bowler hat which leads to fact and fiction blurring as people start wearing them. Will Adam get Nina will he get his money or even his book back?

(… Masked parties, savage parties, victorian parties, greek parties, wild west parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming baths, tea prties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crabm parties at Oxford where on drunk browbn sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in londonand comic dam=nces in Scotland and disgusting dancesin Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity …Those Vile bodies

In his Mr Cgatterbox piece we see the title as Adam describes those bright young things parties and what they get up too !!

Well this is a book that is timeless in fact since the last time I read it Adam stint at Mr chatterbox seems more apt than ever we live in a time that Gossip is now news it seems ever more to me every time you see a red top paper there isn’t news just gossip as news and also the angle of Fake news the reporting of green Bowler hats a piece of fake news that drifts off into reality,. The book is based on Waugh own life and his circle of friends at the time from the batty to those near the prime minister of the day mad relatives. It is for me his funniest book his later books have humour but also the tinged  by world war two this is a moment between the wars that saw as Stephen Fry retitled the book for his film those Bright Young things were able to party and be carefree just before the crash and far enough away that hope had grown after world war one. A perfect first choice for the 1930 club have you read this or have you a favourite Waugh book?

A gun for sale by Graham Greene

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A gun for sale by Graham Greene

English fiction

Source – personal copy

I found a few days ago every book I was reading wasn’t grabbing me I start three or four never getting more than forty pages in so I decided it was time to try an old classic one of my Graham Greene for me he is one of those go to writers when you have been struggling to find something great. Graham Greene is one of those writers that didn’t write many bad books and this is one that isn’t as well known as some of his other books but it was made into a film in the forties an Italian and Turkish films and a tv film in the nineties and was written before Brighton rook and like Pinkie raven is a very amoral character.

Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful. You had to use your brains. It was not a question of hatred. He had only seen the ministeronce: he had pointed out to Raven as he walked down the new housingestate between the little lit christmas tree, an old, rather grubby man without any friends, who was said to love humanity

The cold wind cut his face in the wide continental street. It was a good excuse for turning the collar of his coat well up above his mouth. A hare-lip was a serious handicap in his profession; it had been badly sewn in infancy, so that now the upper lip was twisted and scarred. When you carried about you si easy an identification you couldn’t help but becoming ruthless in your methods. It had always, from the first been necessary for Raven to eliminagte the evidence

The opening two paragraphs could jump from a classic american hard boilded noir i loved them!!

The book unfolds after a hired assassin Raven kills the minister of war in a distant European country. his father was hung for murder and his mother committed suicide so he grew up very amoral and with his own code.  He returns home to get paid by his paymaster a man called Cholmondeley. It is only after he is paid he gather he has been double-crossed when the notes he is using are stolen and being tracked by the police. He finds that Cholmondeley is heading on a train to Nottwich a fictional midland town. This is where the man that paid Cholmondeley is a steel magnate Sir Marcus paid him to kill the minister. On the train he meets a chorus girl who is the fiance of a detective on the tail of Raven, So he takes Anne with him but as she knows Cholmondeley real name which is Davies and helps him get to him as a way to keep her self alive. Will he get Davies and find out who paid him and will Anne escape.

Nor did the meter fail him. He had a schilling to spare. When Mr Cholmondeley led the way in by tthe Euston war memorial to the Greart smoky entrance and rashly he gace it to the driver: rashly because there was a long wait ahead of himwith nothing but his hunderd and nitey-five pounds to buy sandwich with. For Mr Cholmondeley led the way with two porters behind him to the left-luggage counter depositing there three suitcasesm a portable typewriter, a bag of golf clubs, a small attache case, and a hat-box.Raven heard him ask which platform the midnight train went.

Raven tracking after he found he had been double crossed and they head tio Nottwich on the train .

This is an early Graham Greene written before Brighton rock Raven is maybe an early take on the Pinkie character that sort of Amoral man of circumstance here raven is a cold-blooded killer and isn’t pleased when double crossed so he then goes on an act of revenge. It is wonderfully paced keeping you gripped to the last page and has an interesting set of character the chorus girl Davies the middle man Sir Marcus the man paying for the killing and Anne’s boyfriend the main detective on Raven’s tail to add a nice twist in the tail. This is Greene before he was Greene a writer early on his career it has pinches of Buchan, Conrad and a touch of American Hard-boiled thriller. But for me it still has that Catholic guilt that in a lot of his fiction. Have you read this or have you another favorite By Greene?

 

Services edition Graham Greene

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I was at the local Flea market today which over the years has turned up a few gems the Gunter grass  cat and mouse arc I found there the other year today I found something I had been looking for a while and that was an Old world war two service edition books both The Uk which is mine produced these books for the Forces Penguin then guild and other presses. The Us editions used have two novels or other books in one edition. The book I found today was The confidential agent by Graham Greene. I am a Greene fan and have his biography

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A sort of life and 11 of his novels < I hadn’t a copy of confidential agent as a kid I read a lot of Greene and in recent year when I start getting together all of Anthony Burgess novels together which I have nearly done there is only a couple of Burgess books left to get thanks to the new Irwell editions. My mind turned to those other writers I liked as a kid and teen Greene, Steinbeck, Hemingway and Waugh. I have got a few more Greene to get but they are something I rarely see secondhand and the ones I have left to get are his lesser novels. So I have opened the door on another project after Burgess which I still have a lot of his books to review on the blog. I also love that Greene and Burgess had a history as they lived near each other near the end of there lives and had a few run-ins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you seen any service editions? are you a fan of Graham Greene

 

The pianoplayers by Anthony Burgess

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The Pianoplayers by Anthony Burgess

English fiction

Source – personal copy

I review another of the lesser known books from Anthony Burgess this has actually just been reissued by Manchester university press as part of the Irwell series. In fact, if you order the books now there is 50% off for next week or so . I have all the books they have reissued barring Beard roman women and Puma (although I have the end of the world news which puma is a part of the book now removed into a separate sci-fi novel).This book was near the end of Burgess life and in a way was maybe more personal than his other books as it is set in Manchester and one of the main characters had the same job as a piano player as Burgess own father had. Music has been a large part of Burgess life he considered his own music more of an accomplishment than his writing.

My father wasn’t really getting married. What he was going to do was just live with a woman who kept a pub, a woman separatedfrom her husband,her husband had gone off with a young girl, a barmaid I think it was. The woman had had the pub licence from the husband who had died previously , not the one who’d gone off.The pub was called the grapes though it sold no wine except port and sherry, it was in a slummy district it was big and full of brass rails and it had two singing rooms as they were called.

This remond me of the pub in the northern based comedy Early doors like this pub an old pub for the working man the sort that is dying out now.

As I said this book is partly based in Manchester it has two storylines that are in the present which at the time the book was written well earlier maybe but sometime between the late sixties and eighties we meet Ellen Henshaw she is a madam on the French coast her life goes back to the backstreets of Manchester and the story of her fatherBilly  a drunken cinema piano player. He is one of the men that made the music to the silent films before sound took off and  played in pubs as well as she follows him from Manchester through places like Blackpool and the Lancashire mill towns in the ups and downs of his life as the cinema jobs dry up and he starts to fall down the bottle some more this leads to the latter half of the book which is Ellen’s own journey from a convent girl to the sort after girl to spend the time with for money as that career wanes she starts a school of love.

This maggie had a snub nose and a bit of a double chin coming on, but she had these very lovely legs, I’ll say thart for the little bitch. They were very long and you could seethem right up to her bottom, and they were in sheer black silk stockings with the seam absolutely straught at the back.They were beautiful legs, and she didn’t deserve to have them. They were like the legs you see much more of post-war legs having got longer due to better nutriment or Marshall aid or something,My dad played a song for her, nut while she did her bit of monolougue i couldn’t helo notice that he kept looking at these legs

When he has to do Vaudeville with an older act but with great legs as he points out here.

This is a personal book the best character is Billy which is based on Burgess own father who like Billy was a piano player then there is a connection with Ellen who had escaped England which is something that Burgess had done himself in his later years he lived in Tax exile all around Europe. This is a comic lament of a world that is long gone of men playing along to films trying to stay sober to the end of the film and the coming of the talkies meaning they had to leave Manchester and head to the Vaudeville stages that were still around at that time and these pubs with piano players. Maybe not his best book after the death of Billy Ellen story is maybe less believable than that of Billys. But the book is worth reading as the first part evokes those years of piano players in the cinema and how hard it was to improvise to the films there is a number of passages around the musical  notes he played not being musical I not sure how good they were but Burgess was a composer so I expect them to be accurate. Have you read any of Burgess lesser novels I have a lot more to get through by him but this is a fun book by him .

A Vision of Battlements by Anthony Burgess

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A Vision of Battlements

 

A Vision of Battlements by Anthony Burgess

English fiction

Source – Personal copy

I have over the years I have been blogging talked about my love of Anthony Burgess for me he was one if not the best English writer of the later 20th century. I did a post of all the books I got over a year ago since then this came out as the Manchester University Press has been bringing out some of his out of print novels. This was the first in that collection the Irwell collection it has a lengthy intro by Burgess biographer Andrew Biswell who is also director of the International  Anthony Burgess Foundation. There is also the previous intros from the earlier books the only piece that is missing is the illustrations that were in the first edition a series of cartoon depictions of the story.

Ennis, sergeant Richard Ennis, A.V.C.C , lay in his hammock on the sergeants’ troop deck, shaping his miond, behind his closed eyes, against the creacks and groans of the heaving ship, a sonata for Violoncello and piano. He listened to the sinuous tune of the first movemnet with its percussive accompaniment, every note clear. It was strange to think that this, which had never been heard except in his imagination, never been commited to paper, should be more real than the pounding sea, than the war which might now suddenly come to particular life in a U-Boat attack, more real than himself, than his wife. It was a pattern that time could not touch, it was stronger than love.

Like Burgess Ennis is a composer Burgess often felt himself more a musician that a writer.

A vision of Battlements is partly based on Burgess own experience at the end of the second world war and the time just after the war. He was like the hero well anti Hero of this book Richard Ennis based on that small British island of Gibraltar. Like Burgess Ennis has a job teacher troops about The British way and purpose which was a collection of essays the war office had brought together to illustrate the British way to the everyday squady. Ennis is a musician a heart that loves music and poetry and really has ended up there by the fact of being drafted into the Army. He teaches the students in his own way. But he is viewed as a left winger when he gives his talks. He also has a problem with Authority he frequently clashes with his commanding officer. Major Muir a man sidetracked to the position he is in and one that has invented his own history that finds Ennis a bright younger man a threat and someone to worry about.  This is the everyday life of the Gibraltar post the argument of the men and the way they lived the frequent drunkenness of the men. Ennis is allowed to go into Spain here he falls in love with the poetry of Lorca and decides to translate him and he gets into trouble with the Christain brother who views these poems as godless. Ennis then also has relations with a local widow.

Major Muir was a regular W.O 1 with a first class ceritficate of Education. Wounded early in the war, he had been commissioned as a lieutenant in the army Educational Corps, then transferred, with promotion, to this newer organisation. He had delusions of grandeur and had invented fantasies about himself – the many books he had written, the many universities he had attended.He spoke often ungrammatically, with a homemade accent in which Cockney diphthongs stuckout stiffly, like bristles. His ignorance was a wonder

.Muir and ennnis don’t get one it is rather like the dads army pair of Captain Mainwaring and Sergeant Wilson

Now this book was actually the first book he wrote. He finished it in 1953 and put it to one side when he had published a few books in 1961 he gave it to one publisher they passed on it and in 1964 he gave it to the publisher that published the book. The book came from a series of blue notebooks Burgess kept whilst he was posted to Gibraltar doing much the same things as his hero Ennis was doing there is also a nod to Burgess great writing Hero Joyce he used the Aeneid as a loose frame to the book like Joyce had used odyssey in Ulysses. So certain names echo ones in the Aeneid Iabrus is Barasi and Turnus becomes Turner a character that is a complete opposite to Ennis. This book has a sprinkling of the comic the sort of view of army life that only those that have lived in the barracks can see and write about. Ennis was written about the same time as Amis wrote Lucky Jim and they are similar in a number of ways both are loved in a way by those they teach and mistrusted by those around them and also have trouble with the authoritarian figures in the world. This book has been out of print for forty year which is a shame as it is an interesting slice of world war two history not heroic but that everyday side of the army when you are in a place that isn’t near the front line but still needs to be manned. Burgess referred to this as wasted time and a huge chunk of his life. I will be back sometime soon with another Burgess as I still have a lot to cover for this blog.