Twilight? Not yet. Brideshead takes over.

I'm looking, no, staring, at the front page of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and I just can't do it.  I will. ...just not today.

The problem is I've just finished reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and, perhaps fittingly I'm reluctant to hurry the drifting away of that world from my mind by pushing another story in just yet.

This is the only of Waugh's novels that I have read, but, judging by other of his titles - A handful of Dust, Decline and Fall - there might be an overall theme to his work.  Certainly these two titles would be excellent titles for a review of this novel, which follows the descent out of the heavenly state of youth and into bleak adulthood for its narrator, and also the last years of a wealthy english aristocratic family.  The novel ends with the once grand house empty at the end of world war II, and with the last members of the family unlikely to produce heirs.  The glory of the twenties, both at Oxford, and in the lives of the privileged, so enchantlingly portrayed when the story begins, has drifted away like a handful of dust.

Charles Ryder, who narrates the story looking back from the point of view of a lonely middle-aged army captain at the end of the war, befriends the flamboyant Sebastian Flyte in their first year at Oxford in 1920 after Sebastian, passing by drunk, vomits into his window.  For the next two years Ryder, Flyte, and Aloysius - Flyte's teddybear - are inseparable.  Sebastian, the spoiled second son of a well-to-do aristocratic and catholic family, takes Charles home to meet his old nanny, taking care to avoid his actual family as it seems he is reluctant to involve Charles with them.  That involvement is inevitable however, and as Charles, who for close family has only his hostile and sarcastic father, becomes closer to the rest of the Flytes, Sebastian becomes more distant.  The story, painfully beautiful, gives the impression of an ancient edifice, with time, like a chill wind, blowing through it.

It's been three days since I began this post.  Stephanie Meyer has still not got my attention.  I went  back to read the introduction of Brideshead  and, though I'm a bit busier this week, have found myself halfway through it again.  It's completely put me off fantasy for the moment. Why do you need fantasy if a story on earth can be told so well?

Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism.  In part the story portrays the passing of an ancient family line; the end of the age of privilege with hints of the rise of mediocrity.  But as much as that it is about catholicism.  The six members of the Sebastian's family are - for want of a better word - infected with Grace, and each responds differently to its overwhelming presence in their lives.  From the eldest son, Brideshead's complete unquestioning, boring adherence to the tenets; Sebastian and Julias' individual rebellions; to their father's - who converted on his marriage -  complete rejection of it, Grace gets them all in the end one way or another.

The book brought meaning to the oft-quoted "once a catholic, always a catholic".  It echoed exactly the way my catholic sister describes her religion, and also came some way to explaining to me why the couple of catholic girls for whom in my late teens I had such deep but unrequited feelings were not interested even when at the same time they seemed they might be.

I haven't been affected this much by a novel for quite some time.  Most people I know think of the TV series from 1981 when the title is mentioned.  I've not seen it but I might have to now.

If you haven't read it, do.

Danger

I started a book last night and it could be a problem. Reading one I mean.  It was late when I started and there was a bit on my mind and despite that it was starting to grab me even though I knew I had to go to sleep.  It's just lucky that somebody woke me this morning to give them a lift somewhere and I didn't get time to lay my hand on it then or that would have been me till bedtime tonight.

After I'd given that lift I came home to discover the rim of the toilet bowl had broken off again.  I glued it together with superglue about three months ago, because at the time the landlord didn't sound that keen on replacing a broken loo, so it's done pretty well really.  (As an aside I can say from this that toilet duck doesn't clean under the rim). Anyway it's not that much fun ringing up to hear the landlord wince at the thought of maintenance, so I decided there and then that I needed some araldite.   We also needed  bit of school uniform from town and some cricket gear and apparently some shelf brackets for shelves I'm going to put up, from Mega. So those of us that were left bundled into the car to go foraging. The book, for now forgotten lay by my bedside waiting.

It was a short trip, only about two hundred dollars long, and when we got back I put together some toasted sandwiches for lunch.  While I ate them I thought with distaste about gluing the loo back together.   I decided (buying some time) that I might be able to do some of the assessment for that QS course I'm doing by correspondence if only I could find the bit of paper with the questions on it.  I had, for the moment, forgotten the book, which is by Clive Barker. Clive Barker is one of those authors I don't read often, but can't put down once I start reading.

Sadly the piece of paper was exactly where I thought it was.  I had no choice. I laid a dirty towel on the puddle in front of the loo to kneel on and began drying out the broken pieces of rim with an heat gun.  Then I mixed up all the araldite (my dad used to be so measly with it) and smeared it over everything I could think of and pushed the pieces back into places.  My hands were all over it when somebody came in and asked me if I would make some more toasted sandwiches when I had finished. Do you really want that? I thought, looking at where my hands were.  The book lay waiting.  Do you know somebody once gave me a trilogy for Christmas and I didn't speak to anybody until the day after boxing day?  No books for me at Christmas please, save them for the winter holidays when there's more of an excuse.

Well, it all seemed to be sticking and the araldite had filled them holes from missing shards quite nicely, so I got up and made those toasted sandwiches.... no wait... I got up and washed my hands and then made those toasted sandwiches.  Then I sat down with the question paper, the plans, the course book, the take-off paper, the calculator and my copy of NZS4202 to look at the assessment.  It consists of taking-off-quantities-for-sheet-vinyl-flooring-in-an-amenities-building-making-allowances-for-extra-value-over-coved-upstand-skirtings-and-enumerating-all-internal,-external-and-irregular-mitres-and-for-cutting-and-fitting-to-openings,  all laid out neatly according to the conventions described in the standard and not missing anything out.  I got up to find a pencil.

You know obsessive reading runs in the family... I remember when I was eight or nine my brother would come home  from university exhausted.  After sleeping for thirty hours or so he would rise and make his way to the bookshelves in the hall.  When he'd selected ten or twelve books he would return to the lounge, pausing only to grab the fruit bowl from the servery, and lie face down on the three seater couch, his feet dangling over one end and his head over the other.  To one side he would stack the pile of books and to the other he set the fruit bowl.  I remember watching for hours on end in fascination as he rhythmically turned page after page. The pile of unread books gradually got lower and lower, and the stack of read ones grew.  By dinner time he'd read them all and emptied the fruit bowl too.

Anyway I've now got half of that assessment done, and a list of questions for when I ring the tutor in  the morning.  Everyone's in bed and the lights are all out and I've just remembered that book.  I won't be able to find it in the dark... but when I get home from work tomorrow it will be waiting...

All the best,
The Gedle

Love Tove Jansson

These paragraphs from "The Spring Tune" out of Tales from Moomin Valley get me every time:

"It's the right evening for a tune, Snufkin thought. A new tune, one part expectation, two parts spring sadness, and for the rest, just the great delight of walking alone and liking it.
He had kept this tune under his hat for several days, but hadn't quite dared to take it out yet. It had to grow into a kind of happy conviction. Then, he would simply have to put his lips to the mouth organ, and all the notes would jump instantly into their places.
If he released them too soon they might get stuck crossways and make only half a good tune, or he might lose them altogether and never be in the right mood to get hold of them again. Tunes are serious things, especially if they have to be jolly and sad at the same time.
But this evening Snufkin felt rather sure of his tune. It was there, waiting, nearly full grown - and it was going to be the best he ever made.
Then, when he arrived in Moominvalley, he'd sit on the bridge and play it, and Moomintroll would say at once:  That's a good one.  Really a good one."

Well, my trio of literary followers... do you feel like that when you write?

If you liked the image the rest of the story is even better. Get the book.  I've also always been fond of "The Fillyjonk who was afraid of Disasters", "A Tale of Horror" and... heck all the rest of the tales in it.

2010 read of the year

My favourite book this year would have to have been Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

I know, I know I'm a bit behind the times. This book was first published in 1984.  But I often feel it's rude to chase after a book, and prefer to read them when they come to me.  This particular book was pressed into my hand, along with a bundle of others (which included my close-second best read for the year: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami), as the lender urged me to understand that these were her favourite books ever and I just had to read them.  Now... (private rant) there's nothing more rude when somebody presses a book in your hand in that manner than not to have read it by the time you next see them, or at least to have made a serious attempt to have done so.

The number of books that I might as well have given away in this way (it is rude to ask for them back if they haven't been read now, isn't it?) bah...! But I digress...

I'm a sucker for stories about immortality,  (I think watching The Highlander at an impressionable age set that off) and those that hint on some level just beneath reality where things are interconnected (the Murakami book I mentioned might have more to do with that comment). It's not that I necessarily want to live forever like the characters in these books, but the idea of in one existence witnessing any of a bunch of exciting moments in history appeals to me.  It's for that reason I also like John Masefield's Box of Delights, even though as a story it's a really odd shape. Imagine living to see Beethoven play and to see the Great Wall being used for what it was built. 

In Jitterbug Perfume the hero Alobar does neither of those things, but he and his partner discover a method for extending life which enables them to outlive civilisations.  In that time Alobar, an "eater of beets", among other things stays in a Tibetan monastery, lives in sixteenth(?) century Paris, and eventually moves to the New World taking time out on occasion to consort (my euphemism) with nymphs in the company of the god Pan.

It is the type of book which throws itself at you with the sort of force that makes you think it encompasses more than it actually does. It is a wild, fun and memorable ride, but I'd have to say one I'd only take once.  In the same way a ghost train in a visiting carnival is thrilling the first time, but on subsequent rides you start to notice the light bulb inside the skull or the rusty hinge on which the terrifying spectre swings, I wouldn't want to ruin the experience by putting myself into the position of seeing through anything.  I might read it again, but in a year or two, when the carnival next comes to town.

Before you go running out to read this because I said I liked it, take a wee pause and ask yourself "Am I a prude?"  If you think you might be, click on the link I've put in up top to the wikipedia article about the book.  You'll get a brief summary of the plot and its contents, and if you imagine the subject matter described written with a sort of puerile glee you might get a hint of what you could be getting yourself into.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

If you like a story so wierd that it requires you to not just suspend, but completely discard disbelief for the duration of your reading, because you know you'll enjoy it all the more for it, ...go out and find a copy.    

I will have more to say

I just don't seem to be able to find the time at the moment.  It's not only the time.  Just like I find with my nemesis in the corner of the room, some days I sit down and the music will not be held down.  No matter how hard I try to grab it it eludes my fingers and instead they crash dully against the keys. At other times, when I least expect it, my fingers for some reason feel safe as they cling to the keys and my hand dances with the music, never touching it but moving in perfect time like an ancient dance where the dancers move together, close but neither touching nor drifting apart.  The steps of that dance are at the same time precise but variable, with cliche lying in wait for those who stumble to the left and chaos waiting to the right.

Freaky mystic madman you say.

I find the same with writing. I now have three unfinished posts for this blog which seemed inspired at the time and may yet prove to be.  I am forming the idea of chucking up a poem every Sunday and some music during the week but less frequently. 

One of my fellow bloggers has mentioned a reading challenge  for next year.  If I was to take on such a thing it would be to finish all the books in the shelf I have started but not quite reached the end.  There is a pile of open books at the end of the shelf, some with very little left of them to read. Off the top of my head they include:

Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy - couldn't finish it.. too close to home
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie - shaping up to be very funny
The Confessions of St Augustine
Language, Truth and Logic by A J Ayer
Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - already read it but he's great
The Summer Book by Tove Jannsen - ditto the above
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

There's a Jeffrey Archer there too, equally important I would say

Looking forward to having time,
The Gedle