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End December 2002

Read some more on Noel Coward, a biography, and a hagiography by Graham Payne. Moved on to his enemies, the Sitwells. Interesting just how much they had in common, not in talent (he really had talent, they had strong will and a bit of wit) but in attitudes; they both purported to be doing "new" things, avant garde things, but they are essentially conservative. Coward is merciless with fakes and phonies, whether social climbers or in relationships, but he adores social rank. And the Sitwells made their fame based on their poses as aristocratic avant gardians. The interesting thing, to me, about the Sitwells is that they could draw truly talented people around them. T.S. Eliot being one. And of course they could use that energy to propel those of small talent (Pavel Tchelitchew) to fame, however momentary.

Another read is Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. Somehow I'd never read this. I'm only a few chapters in so far, but I'm finding it odd; some penetrating observations interspersed with fictional clutter caused by the author coming in to lecture us yet again about the middle class and their economic attitudes. I wish his narrative voice would stay in the background and let the reader make the connections. The women so far are also not really convincing; he stays out of their POVs, for the most part. I wonder if Irene will ever come alive, or just stay a Sex Object, born to make trouble.

Mid December 2002

A wonderful quote from my current book:

"...I wonder how long this trend of dreariness for the sake of dreariness sake will last. Apparently, in the minds of the critics and intelligentsia, significance and importance can only be achieved by concentrating on unhappiness, psychopathic confusion and general dismay. No lightness is permissible. For these misguided souls it is obviously much to be deplored that the great public refuse to be impressed by the Brechts and the Anouilhs and all the rest of the defeatists and continue unregenerately to enjoy being amused in the theatre...."

Noel Coward, 17 Feb 1957

Years ago I read Pomp and Circumstance, a somewhat frivolous but entertaining novel; Coward seemed to be a kind of British Patrick Dennis, only a better writer. Now that I've been reading his journal, I see that we have more in common with respect to our outlook on literature and entertainment than I'd thought. I do find it amusing that he inveighs against women who, with the best intentions in the world, write about homosexuality and get it wrong (the term 'slash' hadn't been invented yet, but he clearly thought that Mary Renault was writing slash, with which I have to agree) and yet he insists on writing from a woman's POV, but he betrays in little ways, usually arch little ways, that he is not a female. Well, he's engaging enough for me to want to pursue more of his work, both fiction and non.

Other reading. I finally forayed into thrillers, having devoured Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle. What a tightly written, hellaciously paced book! The villain was sympathetic and believable, though he does horrific things, the other characters complex and believable. (As for that villain, I think he makes a brief appearance in Night Over Water, which I've been reading with less interest, as I find Margaret, the main character, annoying and a tad too nineties for my taste). Since then I've read several of his books. The St. Petersburg novel is in some ways my favorite; he catches the time so brilliantly, and the characters are so engaging, the coincidences are even convincing. Pillars of the Earth was quite good over-all, but I do wish he'd had a decent editor on it. Prose flaws kept intruding, the sorts of things one good rewrite, with the help of an exacting eye, could have easily smoothed out. But it was a fascinating novel, especially the parts concerning the design and building of cathedrals. It makes me want to get out Henry Adams and read his fabulous work on Saint Michel again, once my books ever get unpacked.

Other than that, times having been stressful, I've been rereading Austen for the fify billionth time, plus some L.M. Montgomery's (I finally made my way through The Golden Road, which was good once I got past her insistence on writing from a boy's POV, jarring me with the arch, coy references to future romance with tags such as "deponent sayeth not" and "Of malice prepense" and so forth, very popular among women writers of the time, plus the constant focus on the girls' hair, and clothes, and their maidenly ways.

I read Carl Hiassen's Skin Tight, which I found extremely funny and entertaining, mostly because of the style--the same reason I enjoy Jennifer Crusie, who writes quite well about sex--a rarity to my eye.

The only thing I inherited from my father, who died in August of 1998, was a well-thumbed collection by Damon Runyan. (I don't think he left it to me, I think his wife chose me as the recipient.) I take it out and reread it from cover to cover every couple of years. Runyon will never be considered great. He makes no effort to see past the prejudices of his day though otherwise he appears to take people as they come, but the rhythm of his distinctive style, the easiness of the stories (though a few of them are darker than one would expect) evoke a time and place long gone. Perhaps it never was as easy as he depicts it. The sentimentality boosts the stories to another world, one where World War II didn't really exist, and gangsters mostly rubbed one another out, instead of innocent bystanders. I know why Dad reread them, for escape, and I feel a little as if we're having a relaxing visit in spirit when I revisit these stories.

In genre, I read Paul Kearney's The Hawkwood Voyage, which I found unneven; why did he bother with an alternate world when it's so closely tied to ours? Either it should have been Europe, or else another world without the ham-handed analogues to our history. He's at his best when writing about ships and sailing, and at his worst when writing about the motivations of woman characters. He killed off the most interesting character in that book. There was a whole lot of torture and fighting, and there promised to be a lot more of that in the sequels; I might jump up and read the last book, which is recently out, since I bet I can easily guess what happened in the interim--the bad characters being so obvious, and the loooong descriptions of war and torture can be easily skipped.

Other genre reading, The Apocalypse Door, by James D. Macdonald. Peter Crossman, the Knight Templar with covert ops as one of the items in his mysterious past, and Maggie, member of the Special Action Branch of the Poor Claires (AKA the Fun Nun with a Gun) get their own novel at last. Stylish, fast-paced, with assured detail on everything from the harborside mean streets to Manhattan to weapons to history, this novel also carries enough complexity and depth to reward rereading.

7 March 2002

What I've been reading are Saint-Simon's memoires, and of late the complete new editions of Samuel Pepys' diaries. Fascinating! Also I devoured George Macdonald Fraser's Pyrates, which had me laughing out loud. On the genre front, truly superb books: Tom Le Farge's Zuntig, and Tim Powers' Declare.

22 December 2001

Lord of the Rings. In preparation for seeing the Fellowship movie (which I loved) I began rereading the Rings trilogy again, after far too many years have passed. My last reading brought home to me with relentless force just how much of Tolkien's terrifying experiences of World War One had shaped the story, until the story became a kind of palimpsest, a fairy tail rewrit over the bood and horror of real life experience.

So this reading, I was braced for that effect--and rediscovered just how much laughter there was in the story. The balance is extraordinary: sorrow and joy, grimness and laughter, horror and beauty; above all wisdom. I really begin to believe that yes this is the greatest work of the 20th Century. It's certainly one of the wisest.

As for the film, far too many phosphors are being squandered, and will be, on the divergences from the book. I'm not going to go into that here. What I appreciated was that the things that mattered were there, perhaps scanted a bit too much in Lorien. But the beauty and the laughter are both there, as is the heroism, and Frodo is not diminished: his quest is not for power, but to throw it away.

One of the things I appreciated in the film was the splendid beauty of the countryside. On this reading of the books, more perhaps than ever before, I appreciated Tolkien's gift with the evocation of nature's beauties.

1 December 2001

Voltaire in Love, by Nancy Mitford

Though I don't care for her fiction, I find Nancy Mitford quite interesting in essays, letters, and especially when she writes about history. I suspect one has to take her judgements of character with the proverbial dash of salt (well, I know one does; her view of Madame Maintenon, for example, in her work on Louis XIV is a fine example of the born aristocrat's contempt for an ambitious mushroom--and worth reading because it shows just how Maintenon was regarded by the court) so I kept resorting to my collection of Voltaire's letters, and double-checking, French dictionary in hand. But she writes with delightful style, she works hard to make the people of the time come to life, and I find her historical ruminations, like those of Warnie Lewis on the same period, great relaxation reading, sometimes with a more academic text at hand to check on the dreary facts.

Sir Appropos of Nothing by Peter David

Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones are known for how they brilliantly send up well-worn fantasy cliches. Peter David, in this fantasy about a limping base-born boy who is in a rage at an unfair world, also sends up a bunch of fantasy tropes, including some funny twists on common terms that get reinvented (The Harpies Bizarre being one of the most, er, compelling); but the humor is uncomfortably juxtaposed against some really ugly stuff. Heroes do horrible things, including the main character. At one point the hero and the heroine are obviously eating human meat, though they don't know it, but the reader does, and is shuddering. There is a long and rather unnecessary rant in the middle (we get the point already!) but even so I kept reading, and reading, and reading, until the end. Colorfuyl prose, non-stop aciton, unexpected twists, characters reappearing at odd times, interesting revelations from what you think are stock characters, all made it a wild roller coaster ride. Just don't expect the funnies to be comfortable...but then Pratchett wields a hatchet at times, as well. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the second one.

Carter Beats the Devil, by Glen David Gold

This book was a pleasure to read, except perhaps for the (to me) far too extended torture of the climax. But by then, of course, one cannot stop reading, for one cares desperately about the characters, including the animals. Gold's Carter is so good-hearted, something all too rarely encountered in too much of today's fiction. The characters are vivid, the structure quite interesting, the times well depicted (with only one or two tiny falters, the main one being the tiresomely ubiqitous "It's about X", and some cliches that I'd expect a writer of Gold's caliber not to resort to--faces falling, a chill going down someone's spine, and some eyes flashing and flaring, but these were quite rare). Outside of those, Gold does a wonderful job with the wild times, and shows how rapid change made anything seem possible, but was scary too . . . something we certainly can relate to today.

I do think the relationship with Borax could have been a tad clearer, but again a small creeb. I really enjoyed reading the novel, could hardly wait to get back to it when I was interrupted; the last mainstream novel I felt that way about was Kavalier & Clay

23 September 2001

Recommended was a "presumptive" Austen sequel. I found a glimmer or two of wit, but after a promising beginning it veers more and more off-kilter. At first the mistakes are small: Caroline Bingley calling Kitty and Mary 'Misses Kitty and Mary Bennet' instead of 'the Miss Bennets' (thus implying a familiarity she would scorn to claim), the misuse of the word disquiet for disturb, and some others...but then the characters do things they just wouldn't do, and it became increasingly hard to read, despite some occasional fun passages. I wonder if the writers reread Austen assiduously, but failed to read other period work and so, despite their attempts to ground the novel in Austen's details, did not grasp how people of the time behaved. In a fantasy or broad historical adventure that wouldn't matter, but in comedy of manners, the manners must be right, or what's the point?

What I can attest to in its praise is that there is no mapping of Georgette Heyer's distinctive prose style over the supposed Austen. Lady Catherine de Bourgh does not advise Georgianna Darcy not to 'make a cake of herself' and Elizabeth never exclaims 'You're bamming me!' Heyer herself wisely never poached onto Austen's ground, being content to fashion her own world loosely based on Jane Austen's times and place. She could never have caught Austen's tone, nor, alas, does this novel.

8 September 2001

Began Louis Cha's The Deer and the Cauldron. He is apparently the best martial arts novelist in China today. Already I'm seeing riffs belonging to the shaolin karate we've studied in our family, and to the underlying tropes of Chinese martial arts cinema. Fascinating. (And expensive, gulp.)

4 September 2001

Many times I like reading several books concurrently; while I was reading Liselotte, I began Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV intending to compare their POVs on the progression of court events. Alas, Ladurie's book is more of a riff on Saint-Simon as a writer, examining his journal from various perspectives. It's entertaining reading, but the true thrust appears to be the skewering of other scholars and their views of Saint-Simon. Next time, I'll get out my battered old copy of his journal, which is, alas, as severely truncated as the Liselotte letters. (I really, really want these in German, and unabridged!)

24 August 2001

A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Duchess of Orleans, as edited by Elborg Forster, is interesting, entertaining, fascinating, and sad. I've seen Liselotte's letters referred to in various books about the life at Versailles, and I've always wanted to get the German editions, but they are ruinously expensive, alas. This selection whets the appetite for the whole series. Liselotte, especially when read in congruence with Saint-Simon, gives a vivid portrait of the court. But she's interesting on her own account.

Here's one quote, fro, 20 May, 1700:

Not much is new here. The King has had the Duc d'Estrees put into the Bastille by lettre de cachet. Some weeks ago d'Estrees wrote a long letter promising to give up his debaucheries and lead a decent life; nonetheless he again went on a wild drinking spree with his own lackeys and they ended up by setting fire to several houses in Paris. Drinking themselves into a stupor and committing insolences of all kinds is considered nice by the young people of quality these days, but they do not know how to exchange two words with reasonable people. Nothing could be more brutal than the youth of today.

Not that she was a stuffy fuddy-duddy. Far from it. She liked gross jokes as well as anyone, and her views of people were reported with unvarnished truth, including her description of herself:

Not one of my portraits resembles me very much; my fat is in all the wrong places, which is bound to be unbecoming; I have a horrendous--begging your leave--behind, big belly and hips, and very broad shoulders; my neck and breasts are quite flat, so that, if truth be known, I am hideously ugly, but fortunately for me I do not care one whit.

19 August 2001

Diana Wynne Jones, Castle in the Air is a delightful book. Abdullah, a carpet merchant of Zanzib, has always dreamed of escaping from thieves, and meeting a beautiful young aldy...when these do happen, with the aid of a magic carpet that has a mind of its own, the story really gets going and never stops until it gets to the end. This is a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, Howl fans will be glad to know. Sophie's in it, and some very practical princesses, and an ugly dog, and the usual zany cast. Exquisite writing and a whole lot of humor make this a real pleasure to read.

13 August 2001

A couple more chapters of Tom Shippey's Tolkien book (see below) read; that on the Hobbit, and the next on the opening of LOTR. My internal dialogue with Shippey's book, while giving due appreciation to the discursion into lost fairy tales, and how attitudes toward them have changed since they were relegated to the nursery, and into linguistics, causes me to reflect on Tolkien's work. Yes, how things are said is as important as what is said, something that those who prefer a modern outlook and voice might overlook. But also, it's frequently been pointed out that "there aren't any women" in LOTR or Hobbit, which isn't quite true, though they are rare, and play a minor part. But Tolkien's story is about people, most of whom happen to be male, just as most of those he dealt with in his educational, military, and professional life happened to be male. No one stands at the door of the Council of Elrond and says "Women aren't allowed" so the gender focus is never an issue. It is true that Eowyn is told that she cannot go to war--so she promptly turns around and does it anyway.

Reading this book heightens my awareness of so many aspects of the work overall I really think I will finish it before doing my once a decade reread of Lord of the Rings--which, I might add, I love the more each time I read it. And I adored it at fourteen.

11 August 2001

J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century by Tom Shippey

For a radical change I've begun Tom Shippey's Tolkien book. It's not a new biography, it's more of an essay, and judging from the opening, a good one. He discusses what Tolkien's definition of philologist was: not just the quantifier of old words (to paraphrase) but those words within their literary context. Yes, it makes sense, and of course you see this attitude in everything Tolkien did: he loved forests, for example, but disliked what he perceived as the barren categories of botany. Those might delight another sort of forest lover but to him categorization without context strips out the beauty, the numinous quality to which some humans respond--and have responded since those sagas were first sung round the hearthfires.

He also casts a tolerantly askance glance at the fumings of self-styled literati (meaning the proponents of mainstream realism, or what they call "high literature") and in their own jargon.

I wonder if he'll get to the 20th century phenomenon of the separation of the arts. Surely I'm not the only one to perceive that those who run galleries and museums and expensive art magazines praise stuff that most of the rest of us won't look at for more than two seconds (and to which we respond yeeech, who'd want that mess in your house?) and likewise how modern "classical" music (sidestepping the absurdities in that terminology) has become so atonal, if not strident, that such small handfuls of music experts listen to it you can almost name them all--to the rest of us, it sounds like musical instruments falling down stairs, or, in the case of the minimalists, alarm clocks beeping for an hour. Ditto modern literature, with "giant" print runs of five thousand, and no one reads the stuff but English profs, earnestly publishing papers on the glories of no plot, no meaning, and Social Relevance.

Sophisticated critics on both sides of the Atlantic really were upset by those polls held in Britain a few years back, wherein, with stubborn consistency, LOTR took the number one spot. And second place was not even close. (Except for Wales, which loyally stayed with ULYSSES.)

Even at its most sophisticated, court-patronized arts of the past were primarily meant to be enjoyed. Is all that modern high art really meant to be enjoyed any more? The polls certainly show that the rest of us unswervingly choose music, art, books that we enjoy.

5 August 2001

Turning on the Girls by Cheryl Benard

This delightful sfnal novel from a mainstream publisher is probably the best genre work I've read so far this year. It's told in a delightful voice, very reminiscent of Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Women have taken over the world, which has correspondingly less violence, crime, and pollution. Lisa, a young woman, is assigned to reconstruct erotica so that enlightened women can enjoy it. She's given a nice young man named Justin as an assistant. But all is not well in Paradise: there are plots afoot to restore things to the bad old days, and not just men but women are involved. Everyone has an agenda. Lisa and Justin are chosen to infiltrate...but meanwhile they continue their research. Very funny riffs on the pompous twaddle of Anne Rice and Ayn Rand, the Marquis de Sade, and others of that ilk. Also an interesting look at romance novels--and how women are secretly reading them in this enlightened world. The ending is unexpected, unpredictable, and cinematic, and the prose refreshingly humorous, wise, and with a direct hit on social foolery quite worthy of Jane Austen at her best.

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