Commonplace Book

'There were sharp, short, firm steps ranting up the passage. The wrenching wrongly of the handle gave his face time to solidify in quite incredulous indignation - then in came April.

She came straight up to him, stopped short of his carpet slippers, mirrored him as a turd on a cushion - and rapped out one word, like spitting.

"CAD!"

"I beg your..."

But she had gone. The door had banged. Another door had banged - and this time Lionel was ready for the glimpse of the great swerving saloon - and the swoosh of gravel.

As though his senses, not April, had taken leave down the drive[,] he rose in some haste to catch a last sight of them. No. There she went.

And slowly - slowly his face[,] taking it in, became corrugated - the laugh was not natural. She had been sick on him, actually left something on him. An archaism - and vomit.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 18)

Commonplace Book

'...In the lingo of democracy, America has always been a classless nation. Yet writer after writer, from James to Faulkner, from Dreiser to Fitzgerald, has proclaimed the opposite. A work that does so here, or a writer, is always in danger, at least at first. For Americans, to go back in time is to be a recidivist, a snob, unless, like Lowell, you are already in the national mind very clearly defined. (Then it is patriotism.) Class difference, when finally admitted in the United States, was thrown to the sociologists. Who have treated it as such a stinkbomb of a subject should be - without humor and without human coloration. So that none of us skunks would smell of the results.'

from Herself by Hortense Calisher (Part I)

The Piccinino by George Sand (1847)

This is Sand's Sicilian romance, and is classically her, with a rich landscape, young love, a political/philosophical battle, a mystery and the threat of violence. Its overwhelming colours are black and green, and its landscape a tortuous one. The black is the lava, spewed up from Aetna, which underlays the landscape in the area around Catania where the main action is set. The green is all of the intense bright verdure which grows on this super-fertile mix. The landscape is tortuous because of the gullies and peaks all around, through which the characters climb and slip, into which their houses and palaces are built, accessible often by staircases in the rock and staring down chasms. It's a steamy feeling. The main man, Michel (that's short for Michelangelo, so Mee-kell, rather than the Mee-shell) Lavoratori, is taken with a local princess on his return to Sicily from Rome where he has been trying his way into art. She seems strangely connected to his mason-decorator father. Meanwhile the rumoured brigand of the hills, the Piccinino, campaigning furtively against Sicily's Neapolitan rulers of the time, also taken with the princess, slips in and out of a political intrigue surrounding the coming death of Sicily's invalid ruler, the princess' uncle. Michel discovers at a crucial point that all in his life is not what it has hitherto seemed, and the scene is set for he, the princess (the revealer of the mystery) and the Piccinino to play their important parts in the struggle for possible Sicilian freedom. Those who want tough concision, rather than expansive largesse, might find it frustrating. But as a typical example of Sandian high romance, this is full of rich colours and highly entertaining.

Commonplace Book

'...even a virtue can be carried too far. Drake, for instance, carried patriotism as far as to be indistinguishable from piracy. Venetia carried resignation, which is conscious of grave faults in mankind, so far as to be indistinguishable from absent-mindedness, which is conscious of nothing...'

from Young Men in Love by Michael Arlen (Book One)

Commonplace Book

'...Her feet were very small. Her feet were too small. Unable to keep up with Venetia's growth, they turned against her. Like Mexico, they were a disorder unto themselves...'

from Young Men in Love by Michael Arlen (Book One)

Commonplace Book

'...From the first, when it begins to be said that I have a style, am a "stylist," I chafe. Doesn't this mean I have nothing to say comparable to the way I say it - or else that anything I say will all sound the same? I do have in mind an image of sentences I would like to read: long lean branches of them, with buddings here and there or at the end - of fruit, or short stoppages, in sudden calm. And a prose, centrally aural-visual, which would make one hear-see. The "disappearing" style once so vaunted by Maugham and so fondled by the hacks - that seems to me merely a "showing," with no room or vision left for "telling" - and done in an understatement which never dares overdescribe. The best style seems to me so much the fused sense of all its elements that it cannot be uncompounded - how-you-say-what-you-say, so forever married that no man can put it asunder. Its elements may be anything; the expression may be as elaborate or violent as the meaning is. (No one ever raises the point, if it is as mild as the meaning is.)  The word "prose" itself is what should all but disappear in the mind as one reads; just as in poetry, one accepts the marriage of idea and word, but does not too dividingly congratulate. The marriage of meaning and manner is then its own lawful issue, a new object or presence, made accessible. What words make at their best is an open fortress of meaning.'

from Herself by Hortense Calisher (Part I)

Commonplace Book

'...modern young men are too easily deluded. For one thing, they have swelled heads, and ask for trouble. They are so sceptical, they believe nothing that they are told. They are so credulous, they believe everything that they tell themselves.'

from Young Men in Love by Michael Arlen (Book One)

The Carissima by Lucas Malet (1896)

This is the first time I've heard a stutter in the smoothly-humming engines of Lucas Malet. It is her fifth novel, and confirms the theory that her odd-numbered ones seem to be smaller, more unusual, particular pieces. This is the story of a seemingly ingenuous young woman, Charlotte Perry, contracting an engagement but not seeing her betrothed for some time while he pursues business in South Africa. Malet's archetypal worldly aesthete character, Anthony Hammond, is introduced to her on holiday at Lake Geneva; her betrothed, Constantine Leversedge, is Hammond's friend. But Hammond knows Leversedge's secret - he has had some tough experiences in South Africa. The most tough was coming across a camp on the veldt where some people had been viciously murdered quite some time before - the stench and the horrifying scene are what he calls "the Thing-too-much," and the sight of a demon-like dog there, presumably feasting on the corpses, has caught him like a constantly recurrent bad dream. Leversedge is haunted, and often nervously unstrung, thinking he sees his hound dogging him elusively and threateningly at times of stress. A terrible tragedy of inconstancy then plays out on Lake Geneva, with social vying playing at cross-purposes to emotional uncertainties. This novel feels a little too uncertain at times, with Malet seemingly not sure if she'll have Charlotte be misunderstood or manipulative. The result is a feeling of not-quite-thereness, despite a potentially fascinating mixture, and a delving into the supernatural that holds promise.

Commonplace Book

'She got out, swearing once with drab, staccato effect.

Then Lionel came twisted out of the murk - radiating pleasure.

"Elizabeth - you got here."

"Yes, I'm here, hun," she said. "It would be swell if you took this case - it's got books in it."

"You don't know what your coming means to me."

"I can guess. Does the train just go on and on? I mean after one gets out - does it still just go on and on? It would be interesting to stay on it and see. Or does it come back? I got so I didn't care. You look older."

After a time in the car she said, "It's extraordinary to think that people live here, isn't it? Is there much rape?"

This was better. He smiled at her with private welcome, instead of answering.

"Just of sheep after church," she added[,] beginning her trick of screwing her hair round one index finger, and looking truly like a dead cod with the pathos of yet being a human being...'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 15)

Wacvie by Faith Bandler (1977)

This is a novel of quiet spirit. It impresses with its simple strength. It also has less compulsive elements where simplicity and quietness don't adequately serve the material. This fictionalisation of the story of Bandler's father begins on Ambrym, an island now in Vanuatu, then the New Hebrides, in the late Victorian or very early 20th century period. Its illustration of the civilisation of the island, its main points of reference and cultural beliefs, is intensely felt, with colour and moods and tastes well depicted. Then, puzzlingly, white men come to the island and its neighbours. They steal people, taking them off on their huge white-sailed ships, never to be seen again. Wacvie is one of these. His time in Queensland as a labourer on a sugar plantation, a virtual slave, forms the main part of the narrative. His growing awareness of the injustice of his position, and his retention of his simple outlook, are the main grace-points. We also meet Weloa, his friend, and Weloa's wife Emcon, who provide a picture of domestic life and privations in these harsh circumstances. There are also the white plantation managers and owners, who are perhaps less well-depicted. There are unbelievable angles in the life of Maggie, the manager's wife, and small errors of historical detail and minor anachronisms which mar their story a little. Eventually Wacvie, Weloa and Emcon run away from the plantation to New South Wales, and start again with their own small farms among other Islander people. There is warmth in their freedom, and a sense of somewhat restored plenty. I think what this story lacks most is a sense of the rush of life, its pulse beating through its veins - almost as though, in searching for dignity for these characters, Bandler has disallowed them some level of reality. Very forgivable when the main character is your father, in one sense, but tale-telling not well served in another.

Commonplace Book

'...The feeling returned upon me which had oppressed me earlier in the evening, as I worked my way out of the crowded hall, namely, that there was an abnormal, a malign element in my surroundings. It was absurd, of course, yet increasingly the Spirit of Fear - fear of I know not quite what - whether a perception of something supernatural, or merely a heightened perception of the ever-present possibility of tragedy in mortal existence, of "the Thing-too-much" - seemed to haunt the whispering trees and dusky garden, to diffuse itself through the blue-purple abyss of the lake and mountains, and the clear, impassive, starlit night.'

from The Carissima by Lucas Malet (Phase Fourth, Chapter VI)

Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (1915)

These seventeen enthusiasms are joyous things. Essays on beloved authors are a very specific art, and Powys has mastered it wonderfully. That is not to say that I agree with him in all instances either; a large part of the pleasure derives from enjoying his obvious enjoyment, registering his twistings to serve his points, and his partialities that cannot be dully, servilely supported. There is fallible human delectation to be gained from that, and imagination serves up what our own choices, and biases, might be in the same circumstances. His range of choice also elucidates, more specifically, his literary bearings. He includes Dante, which many wouldn't; he mentions D'Annunzio in passing, which almost no-one would do today; he devotes an entire essay to Walter Pater, towards whom very few venture any more. The pieces on some authors feel closer to his heart than others; so, his bulging, baroque prose pulsates even more soundingly in scoring their triumphs. Some of the essays here inspire a fresh perspective on hackneyed names: Charles Lamb needs new examination, as does Milton. One I'm pretty sure I can never join him in - Edgar Allan Poe will always be beyond my personal pale, when push comes to shove, I think. Though I can sense his cleverness, and the strange nervous twist of his lurching sensibility, I can never see him as a genius. Perhaps Powys' championing will finally convince me next time I read it. If anyone could, he could.

Commonplace Book

'An elephant, touched on leather hock with dandelions' puff of pistils, would be more put out than April teased.'

from Marching with April by Hugo Charteris (Chapter 13)

Commonplace Book

'...Somebody must have the discrimination and the detachment necessary to do justice to our "creative minds." The worst of it is, everybody in these days rushes off to "create," and pauses not a moment to look round to see whether what is being created is worth creating...'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Conclusion)

Commonplace Book

'...after all, what is taste? The hedge from behind which the feeble shoot at the strong; the refuge of the unproductive; the cloak under which the unsuccessful try to cover the blackness of their envy; the spangles with which talent tries so to dazzle the eyes of the commonplace multitude, that it shall fail to see the stars of true genius shining on quietly very far above its head...'

from The Carissima by Lucas Malet (Phase Fourth, Chapter IV)

Commonplace Book

'...what banalities! What ineptitudes! They make the mistake, our modern free-versifiers, of thinking that Art can be founded on the Negation of Form. Art can be founded on every other Negation. But not on that one - never on that one! Certainly they have a right to experiment; to invent - if they can - new forms. But they must invent them. They must not just arrange their lines to look like poetry, and leave it at that.'

from Visions and Revisions by John Copwer Powys (Walt Whitman chapter)