Commonplace Book

'The art of life, then, is to make life and art one, so far as we can, for ourselves and for others, - to find, if possible, the occupation in which we can put something of self. So should gladness and content come back to earth. But now, with the body made a slave to machinery, and the spirit defrauded of any scope for its pent-up force, we have nothing to hope for in the industrial world; and the breach between art and life will go on widening until labour is utterly brutalized and art utterly emasculated.'

from The Art of Life, a piece in The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman

Commonplace Book

'...History is a creative art, a putty nose. You can make what you like of it. Event, immediately it is past, becomes a changing simulacrum at the mercy of all the minds through which it must seep if it is to live, memory passed from hand to hand, coloured with prejudice, embroidered with fantasy, flattened with pedantry, and finally served up in all seriousness as history.'

from Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw (Part I, Chapter I)

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Suitably Edited (1825)

Bowled over by this. The main body-tumbler was the insight into how society functioned and how people thought three hundred and fifty years ago. There's no replacement for reading the words of those who were there and experiencing at the time; no 'history' can do what this does. Admittedly, Pepys was quietly connected to those in power at the beginning and very well connected indeed by the end of this diary, but the picture is still commanding and fascinating in its familiar unfamiliarity. The reader can feel the fresh air in London created by fields just a short ride away (an astounding notion in this age), can feel the woodenness of the housing of the city (totally unfamiliar now), can feel the busyness of the Thames as Pepys goes up and down by water to appointments from Chatham to Fulham (apart from the unsung riverbuses, unknown now). The picture, also, of the changing attitudes toward Charles II as his reign unfolded, the power machinations behind his relationship with parliament and the lords, the sizing up all the players undertook of their rivals and friends in the various camps vying for positions and influence, is intriguing. Further, the revelations of Pepys' more private life - his playgoing, bookbinding, coach-building, portrait-commissioning, wife-organising, servant-tagging self is revealed here in intricate detail, along with his responses to many a sermon - a good number of which were dismissed as uninspiring! The constancy of his to and fro of business is extraordinary - the mention of  "To White Hall, and spoke with the Duke of York about..." or "To the Park, and spent two hours walking up and down with Sir X X, much good talk about..." signifies the tenor of life for someone in his position (a secretary for the Navy, later Treasurer for parts of it). Lastly, of course, there are the really unfamiliar things which lend it even greater spice, little details of life, or names for things, which have passed into oblivion; ultimate proof that the past is another country.

The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell (2011)

Mixed feelings about this one. One story stands out as brilliant; there are a number of very good ones, within certain boundaries; two are a bit poorer. These stories indicate that Woodrell's world centres around the Ozarks in mid-America. An almost typically 'backwoods' place. A majority of his people are the sort of person an outsider would have come to expect if that terminology is used, apart from the fact that they are darkly modern in their failings: they're not lonely and crazed, they're drug-addled and crazed. They're not tormented by the rampages of "Indians" or bears, but rather their own war experiences, or a medicated madness from within. His style is poetically documentary; this is where one criticism occasionally rears its head: there can be a tryhard quality to some of the phrasing. An example: 'A damp virtuosity of misshapen reflections on the street...' That virtuosity pushes it too hard. But those times stand out because, relatively speaking, they're rare. The poetry in the prose often works well. I think the quality these stories lack for me is exhilaration. The thrill which goes through me at the best writing is somehow missing here, there's an inert quality which I can't avoid. There's something in the straight out documentary approach, some spark of deep inspiration, which doesn't catch. The exception is the splendid 'Black Step', a story of a young soldier on loan back to his family farm after unspecified PTSD, and of his coming to some new understandings about love, death, self and family in the small break before he is summoned back, which soars to greater heights and sets the brainstem fizzing. Others are often quietly impressive but lack the fizz. I'd be interested to read a novel, to see whether he can reach places cumulatively that he might not in the short form.

Commonplace Book

'...the absurdity of chance and the caprice of fortune, are, in reality, but the revenge taken in sport by Divine justice on the counsels of the would-be wise...'

from Academies, a piece in The Opinions of Jerome Coignard by Anatole France

Tobit Transplanted by Stella Benson (1931)

This novel was originally published in America the year before, under a different title. It was Benson's apparent apogee, winning the Prix Femina. It is most definitely graced with her incredibly original point of view in spades. The characters are strange mixtures indeed of obsessions, oddities and verbal and psychological tics, the grace point being Benson's capacity to see into those states, reason them out, feel sympathy and empathy for them, and relate them to ordinariness - to her mind, we're all odd, really, as much as we are predictable, that is! This is the story of Seryozha Malinin and his family, dispossessed Russians in Manchuria after the revolution (called White Russians) and their struggle to survive, communicate, thrive in a locale where they don't quite exist legally. His father, Old Sergei, is recently blind. His mother, Anna, a woman of strange unconsidered intensity, rules the uncertain roost. Seryozha meets up with Wilfred Chew, an Anglo-obsessed Chinese lawyer with a layer of inherited Christianity from his time in the Temple in London and his wanderings chaperoning petty British officials subsequently. They head off into Korea on a mission to retrieve an old debt of his father's, but get waylaid along the way by meeting the Ostapenkos: a blustering and wordy father, Pavel, a dutiful and buckled-under mother, Varvara, and, most particularly for Seryozha, a beautiful, original, and fascinating daughter, Tanya. Tanya, it seems to me, is most like Benson herself. She has been growing a reputation as Death itself, having had seven suitors who have all been rejected for one reason or another, a couple of whom have killed themselves, the others going into voluntary exile to get away. She has an intense fear of physical touch, little empathetic response where the usual channels should be followed, and loads of it where her original mind leads her, for animals, and for people and even circumstances in strange ways. She puzzles people, and scares them. Somehow, and it's a bit of a sore point that we don't really know how, Seryozha wins her over. There is comedy by the bucketload by the waysides of this crazy progress, and poignant observation, too. As a revelation of just how widely coloured and multifarious this world of ours is, as a delineation of Benson's deeply original understanding of the human mind, this is as intriguing as ever. There is what appears to be an editing error in the logistics of the final scene as Seryozha and Wilfred arrive home with his new bride which is quite glaring - Wilfred reports on events which, to all appearances, he hasn't been present at, to Anna, who was there. He is mentioned in a very offhand way in one sentence as having been around. It feels wrong, almost like Wilfred was cut out of the action and then sellotaped back in. A minor downer on a nevertheless typically fascinating journey.

Commonplace Book

'"...Under popular government, ministers will become so impotent that even their wickedness and stupidity will do harm no more.

They will receive from the general assemblies only an uncertain and precarious authority; unable to indulge in far-flung hopes and vast schemes, they will spend their ephemeral existence in wretched expedients. They will grow jaundiced in the unhappy effort to read their orders on the five hundred faces of a crowd, ignorant and at cross-purposes; they will languish in restless impotence. They will become unused to foresee anything or prepare anything, and they will only study intrigue and falsehood..."

from The New Ministry, a piece in The Opinions of Jerome Coignard by Anatole France