My Uncle Florimond by Henry Harland (1888)

This is as close as 1888 got to a 'young adult' novel. We meet Gregory Brace at 12, living in Connecticut with his grandmother and nasty uncle, and learning about the illustrious history of his now reduced family back in France - the de la Bourbonnayes. This is where the fantasy of visiting his grandmother's brother Florimond, still in France, first takes hold, along with notions of his aristocratic grandeur. Then his beloved grandmother dies, and, left with his nasty uncle, life loses colour. He has an adventure saving a fisherman's pole which has been dropped in a river-flood. The eccentric Jewish gentleman up from New York, whose pole it was, swears allegiance to him in his gratefulness. When life becomes too miserable Gregory cuts ties with his uncle and heads off to the big smoke to find him. Harland has a really deft touch with the vocalisations and habits of Jewish New York as Gregory explores that world, and learns quite a few life lessons along the way. Finally, at 15, we see him meet his Uncle Florimond who, though he is not the admirable and wealthy man Gregory had imagined, emerges as a partner in life's journey, echoing Gregory's growing maturity and his sense of life's realities. This is Harland's most engaging book of those I've read - I imagined how it would sound read aloud to an upper primary class, and was surprised by its muscle and strength.

Commonplace Book

'Changing at Inverness, he had tea at the Station Hotel, an experience which disturbed him.

*These people should be stuffed.

An elderly woman with soft red complexion and deerstalker matted with flies was talking to a man with a shepherd's crook half as high again as his high self. The large amount of floor space between them necessitated raised voices but not such shouts. They were discussing Geordie. Isobel had been over on Saturday and said he was much better.

"I heard he was worse," the man roared with moody aggression.

But the disagreement in no way marred the conversation which slid with ease into "Is Hughie taking Ardgower this year?" At one point the woman caught a hotel porter by the arm and whispered into his ear. He whispered back, cheerfully.

Lionel's distress deepened. Even domestic servants connived, it seemed, in the macabre.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 2)

Commonplace Book

'...he thought that not only was his job necessary, unlike that of a journalist, from an absolute point of view, but also few people could do it as well as he and nobody exactly as he did it. He had his own particular flavour. For instance Milosh and Elizabeth Craik and Lady Hindshead. How many men could tune in like a crystal to expatriate, ex-Marxist Viennese Jew under three psycho-analysts, spinster under thirty existential novelist of Mayfair extraction and gaiety girl widow of a peer, whose memoirs had to be pruned from three thousand libellous pages[?] Like an experienced gardener - he could move from medlar to cactus to hydrangea - and facilitate the growth of each, sympathising with the purposes of succulent decay, dessication and superabundant mauve fructivity.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 1)

Commonplace Book

'Finally the couch. Jungian, Female. With dermatitis.

In a word: Hilde.

Sometimes he just lay and didn't say anything for days. Often he would go to sleep while remembering his dreams which had a snowball effect on the agenda.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 1)

Commonplace Book

'The mistake our "aesthetes" made, these lovers of Egyptian dancers and Babylonian masks, is that they suppose the simplicity of Lamb's subjects debar him from the rare effects. Ah! They little know! He can take the wistfulness of children, and the quaint gestures of dead Comedians, and the fantasies of old worm-eaten folios, and the shadows of sun-dials upon cloistered lawns, and the heartbreaking evasions of such as "can never know love," and out of these things he can make a music as piteous and lovely as Ophelia's songs. It is a curious indication of the lack of real poetic feeling in the feverish art-neophytes of our age that they should miss these things in Elia. One wonders if they have ever felt the remote translunar beauty that common faces and old, dim, pitiful things can wear sometimes. It would seem not...'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Charles Lamb chapter)

Commonplace Book

'...Mr. Finkelstein smiled faintly, and said, as if to excuse himself, "Vail, I cain't help it. I must haif my shoke."

"The grandest thing about your wit, fader-in-law," Mr. Marx observed, "is dot you don't never laugh yourself."

"No, dot's so," agreed Mr. Finkelstein. "When you get off a vitticism, you don't want to laif yourself, for fear you might laif de cream off it."

from My Uncle Florimond by Henry Harland (Chapter III)

A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (1953)

This novel has an outlook which should guarantee grimness. And miraculously somehow it doesn't. It's the story of aristocratic John Grant who has three days' worth of second world war in Italy where he is hounded by his doubts of himself, uncertain in his responses to his men and ends up in a horrific nervous funk which leads to an appalling accident and the death of one of the men. After the war his catalogue of uncertainty continues, with relationships a continuous source of teeth-clenching: bursts of bravado alternate with awful melancholy and searing nervous intensity. The most extraordinary thing is the feeling one gets that Charteris intended Grant in a substantial way as a self-portrait. He is thoroughly tough with most of his characters, examining their every last failing with a microscopic eye. He is the same with Grant, though - himself! This is a classic English mid-century novelised autobiography, revealing the dark truth within, completely unsparing of the author's own negative aspects. As such it is a brave book. Given that prognosis, it could have been a miserable read. The subject matter definitely is. But this is where the miracle occurs - Charteris' intense, complex, allusive prose has something special in it, something like the perfect mixture of mind, muscle and poetry; a heady, searching multi-facetedness which is not only pleasing to the gut, but ultimately even redemptive.

The Blessing by Nancy Mitford (1951)

Grace ends up marrying dashing aristocratic Frenchman Charles-Edouard after being swept off her feet while her slightly drippy fiance was away at war. It proves to be a good step, on the whole. She is immediately completely taken with his house in the south of France, Bellandargues. They spend an idyllic period there with their new baby, a little boy, and of course his extraordinarily firm, calculating and slightly dour English nanny, who provides some fabulous comic moments. Then comes a move to the Paris house and reconnection with Grace's old schoolfriend Carolyn, who has married a wealthy American with a love of the sound of his own voice. Their boy, Sigi (short for Sigismond), now a little older, is consistently shunted to one side as they embrace a life of society and all its outre goings-on. Charles-Edouard's typically French roving eye finally undoes him, as Grace realises she can't be quite as easy as she'd originally hoped with his philandering. Thereafter, Sigi is spoilt rotten by his separated parents, one in France, one in England. He realises, little blessing that he is, that this is the way to keep things, and deliberately foils all attempts at a reconciliation. In the end, he is himself foiled, but not before several classic schemes have come to fruition. Mitford's prose is sparking with wit, full of wry-mouthed worldliness. All her novels thus far have been so, and the unnatural division pushed forth popularly between the 'bad' first four and 'brilliant' second four is a nonsense.

Commonplace Book

'"Do you know something? It takes two to tell the truth. The alternative is silence. And do you know another thing - the hell of being with you was...being alone."

When she was some distance from him, collecting odds and ends to take upstairs and pack, she said, "Then you'll soon be out of hell."

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 23)

Commonplace Book

'The suggestive power of genius plays us, indeed, strange tricks. I have sometimes fancied that the famished craving in the eyes and nostrils of El Greco's saints was a queer survival of that tragic look which that earlier Greek, Scopas the sculptor, took such pains to throw upon the eyelids of his half-human amphibiums. It might even seem to us, dreaming over these pictures as the gusts of an English autumn blow the fir branches against the window, as though all that weird population of Domenico's brain were tossing their wild, white arms out there and emitting thin, bat-like cries under the drifting moon.'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (El Greco chapter)

Commonplace Book

'"...That's why Badger-Skeffington always wins everything - Daddy says he's literally full of food, like a French racehorse. They're nouveaux riches, you know."

"Now hold on, Miles, that is not true. I often see Bobby Badger at my club, he's frightfully poor, it was a fearful effort to send the boy here at all, I believe."

"Yes, I know, Uncle Hughie, the point is that they are nouveaux riches and frightfully poor as well. There are lots like that here. Their fathers and mothers give up literally everything to send them."

"Oh dear, how poor everybody seems to be, in England," said Grace. "It's too terrible when even the nouveaux riches are poor."

from The Blessing by Nancy Mitford (Part II, Chapter Nine)

Commonplace Book

'A Da Vinci or a Goethe accepts religion and uses it, but between it and the depths of his own mind remains forever an inviolable film of sceptical "white light." This "qualified assent" is precisely what excites the fury of such individualistic thinkers as Tolstoi and Bernard Shaw. It were amusing to note the difference between the "humour" of this latter and the "humour" of Shakespeare. Shaw's humour consists in emphasizing the absurdity of human Custom, compared with the good sense of the philosopher. Shakespeare's humour consists in emphasizing the absurdity of philosophers, compared with the good sense of Custom. The one is the humour of the Puritan, directed against the ordinary man, on behalf of the Universe. The other is the humour of the Artist, directed against the Universe, on behalf of the ordinary man.'

from Visons and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Shakespeare chapter)

Commonplace Book

'"...Her virtue arouses my admiration, and the dumb despair which seems to be crushing her inspires in my heart profound and affectionate compassion. To admire and to pity - is not that to adore?"

from The Piccinino by George Sand (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'Did, at this prognostication of achievement, a great Hallelujah fill John's heart? No. The satirical mood of the station platform lingered, and now the face which often seemed to say, "How could she possibly say 'No' to me?" Elaborately concealed even alone in that empty room, the thought, "If she takes me it must mean she had no one else." And from there to proceed to wonder if she were so very "wonderful" and if he were in love. Emotionally, his character was a house built of cards, the full pack.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 21)

Commonplace Book

'...Through the mists and mephitic smoke of our confused age - our age that cries out to be beyond the good, when it is beneath the beautiful - through the thick air of indolence masquerading as toleration and indifference posing as sympathy, flashes the scorching sword of the Florentine's Disdain, dividing the just from the unjust, the true from the false, and the heroic from the commonplace. What matter if his "division" is not our "division," his "formula" our "formula"? It is good for us to be confronted with such Disdain. It brings us back once more to "Values"; and whether our "Values" are values of taste or values of devotion what matter? Life becomes once more arresting. The everlasting drama recovers its "tone"; and the high liturgy of the last illusion rolls forward to its own music.'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Dante chapter)

Commonplace Book

'A pair of young mothers now became the centre of interest. They had risen from their lying-in much sooner than the doctors would otherwise have allowed. (French doctors are always very good about recognizing the importance of social events, and certainly in this case had the parents been forbidden the ball they might easily have fretted themselves to death.) One came as the Duchesse be Berri with l'Enfant du Miracle, and the other as Madame de Montespan and the Duc de Maine. The two husbands, the ghost of the Duc de Berri, a dagger sticking out of his evening dress, and Louis XIV, were rather embarrassed really by the horrible screams of their so very young heirs, and hurried to the bar together. The noise was indeed terrific, and Albertine said crossly that had she been consulted she would, in this case, have permitted and even encouraged the substitution of dolls. The infants were then dumped down to cry themselves to sleep among the coats on her bed, whence they were presently collected by their mothers' monthly nurses. Nobody thereafter could feel quite sure that the noble families of Bregendir and Belestat were not hopelessly and for ever interchanged. As their initials and coronets were, unfortunately, the same, and their baby linen came from the same shop, it was impossible to identify the children for certain. The mothers were sent for, but the pleasures of society rediscovered having greatly befogged their maternal instincts, they were obliged to admit that they had no idea which was which. With a tremendous amount of guilty giggling they spun a coin for the prettier of the two babies and left it at that.'

from The Blessing by Nancy Mitford (Part II, Chapter Six)

Commonplace Book

'"...I should like to see a bottle of Coca Cola on every table in England, on every table in France, on every -"

"But isn't it terribly nasty?" said Grace.

"No, ma'am, it most certainly is not. It tastes good. But that, if I may say so, is entirely beside the point which I am trying, if I can, to make. When I say a bottle of Coca Cola I mean it metaphorically speaking, I mean it as an outward and visible sign of something inward and spiritual, I mean it as if each Coca Cola bottle contained a djinn, and as if that djinn was our great American civilization ready to spring out of each bottle and cover the whole global universe with its great wide wings. That is what I mean."

"Goodness!" said Hughie.

from The Blessing by Nancy Mitford (Part II, Chapter Four)

Commonplace Book

'We are all of us only too familiar with the popular phrase "Ivory Tower." It is a phrase used very literally by certain rough-and-tumble hail-fellow-well-met rufflers and bullies and rodomontaders of the ordinary critical world, whose academic position and prestige would be seriously impaired the moment any kind of especially penetrating scholarship or particularly daring metaphysical speculation or unusually subtle aesthetic appreciation began to be demanded by public opinion. As a matter of fact, in spite of these artistic rowdies it is a sign of stupidity in us, not a sign of strength, when we resist the offer made to us by Fate or Chance or Providence to build what these swashbucklers call an Ivory Tower in some secret back-garden in the private half of the double life which we have to lead if our existence is to be at all happy or satisfactory.'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Introduction)

Plumbum by David Foster (1983)

I'm going to come at this from four angles:

The first cornerstone is - YARB, YARB, YARB.

The second cornerstone is - hyperbole.

The third cornerstone is - intelligence.

The fourth cornerstone is - "intelligence".

How those four elements merge ought to give the picture. This novel is essentially about a rock band - thank heavens, you think, Foster in the contemporary period will at least obviate the need for the really poor historical vision of previous efforts (not that he would have regarded that as important). But of course this is the greatest rock band in the world, called heavy metal but somehow not feeling so. Inherent in the setting of the piece just after New Wave, and in the tone of his describing of them, is something a bit like the Divinyls with a bit of the Plasmatics curdling through. Some of his mooching around the live band world of the time is accurate - contrasts between band members, the political angles of members' approaches to life defining them and their annoyances with others, the secret and not so secret jibing based on those kinds of facts. Brothers in a band, too, is rich territory for comic contrast, and sexual tension with female lead singers is grist to that mill.

His tone reminds me of a drug addict, crossed-legged on the floor, circa 1978, bent over, hugging themselves, eyes closed tight and wrinkling, rocking back and forth, muttering and laughing insanely at something which has amused them. SHAKING with laughter, and lost in themselves entirely. I can't get that picture out of my head.

The hyperbole most define this thing. Early on they are kept within some sort of bounds as the catalogue goes on of the most amazing player, the hugest number of lovers, the wildest amount of money, the shabbiest possible gig, the most unscrupulous behaviour. All decorated with bursts of scabrous humour taken to the nth degree. And it's entertaining on the short scale, it passes time, though the reader is aware even then that the 'addict' is really just talking to themselves. The love of the tall story can transmit.

The wild career of the band reaches South East Asia, that typical late 70s transmutation-point, and after a little while it happens. The sense comes that Foster's painted himself into a corner or got bored. Along comes a fantastical 'manager' down the tiny Bangkok street in a giant prime-mover who whisks up the band at a particularly low ebb, and the whole opus flies off into comic-book territory, exponentialising the wild elements. Transferred to Calcutta to record the album which will break them, very quickly the musical talk falls away, and, for a while, this enters its most interesting territory. A mad life on those dirty streets for these Australian musos with gigantic personalities, and those of the Indian poor who surround them. Experiments in living everywhere, and shot through with comic-book exaggeration and impossible flights.

There is no question that this author, cross-legged and hugging himself, giggling madly, is not intelligent. The capacity for making connections, pulling them through one another backwards, and then making them resound humorously, is evident and is something. Too much of it is, though, arrived at and discarded like so much flotsam. It's a jumble with shards of beauty. Given that he has access to such beauty, I want it to add up to a damn sight more than this. It's a world where all is eventually in service of the hyperbolic - where the necessary softening of reflexivity, of emotion, of genuine gentleness is regarded as dismissable stupidity. So, intelligence, only so much in itself, put to the service of what?

Then follows an ill-defined period of world domination as the band achieve all that their hyperbolic talents would predicate. We see them last on their worldwide tour, personalities crumbling and reforming with all the extremity going on within them and all that they have access to. There is a gruesome section of Joycean-Ginsbergian blah-speak (presumably meant satirically, but it's hard to fathom the reasoning - that's probably asking too much) which 'elucidates' a mind-blowing performance near the end of the tour. Then some wandering in post-performance fuzz, still determined by its rad-extremity, its genuine sparks of cleverness, and its strangely monotone quality, its comic-book hardness.

There are also simple errors here - language such gutsy characters wouldn't use, for example. Are they rubbed away by the conflation of colour - politics, spirituality, ethics, the self, the world: all treated with irreverence and gaminess? This crazed mosaic of little snapped-off bits of observation, riffing with one another on occasion very impressively? Not utterly, but a lot can be said for this novel's gusto and brain-popping bravura, in their limited striation.

To bring it into full focus, mention will need to be made of that thing we do when reading a book which we may not often own up to. We get an impression of the writer in the words on the page, yes, but, reading behind that, we also get an impression of who it might be who is doing the writing. We come to some personal conclusions about the trembling soul which is trying to entertain us. And that's where my picture of this rocking, mad-laughing, closed-eyed, lost-to-all-but-himself addict comes in. Right or wrong, THAT's the impression this collection of words ultimately gives me. And almost all I can hear from them is YARB, YARB, YARB.

There must be a point in Foster's career where this hard shell of yell finally breaks and some soft goo oozes out. Roll on the ooze!

The Woman in the Case and other stories by Anton Chekhov (1953)

This collection almost all comes from a particular group of years in the 1880s when the author was following a vein of satirical sketchmaking. Their consistent characteristics are the enormous fallibility of many a human being, their capability of being gripped by things, large or small, which have impacted them in an emotional way, and have led to delusional, or obsessional, or melancholic behaviour. And then there are those who either suddenly come upon them, or have to put up with them, or are affected by them in some usually negative way. Occasionally he will broaden into more political territory, where the fallen ones are on the make, or manipulating selfishly a hopelessly moribund system. The picture made is a pretty grim one, and has that quality which one would normally associate with 'minor' authors in translation in reprints from university presses, to put it too generally. There is nothing especially 'classic' about these, which presumably is the reason they weren't translated until much later. The exception is A Visit to Friends, which is more personal and tragic. This is what I imagine the famed Chekhov to be about. Now to find out.