Jack Gilbert 1925-2012

Thankful today, that the world was made a more beautiful, more honest place by this man. 

And just one of his poems that I carry with me every day, (and one of my all time favourite opening lines):

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

I don't have any words that feel good enough or big enough to celebrate this writer who changed me. Thank you, Jack. 

Surviving your PhD

 I wanted to write a post about my PhD, but the trouble is that writing about your research can be a minefield. While there is much about the internet and the access it provides to so many ideas that is wonderful and that makes my job as a researcher easier and more enjoyable, I also find myself coming up against problems that people haven't quite worked out the answer to yet. For example, it is difficult for me to write about my current research on this blog because then that information exists 'out there', and if the world already has access to all your brilliant new ideas then they stop being so brilliant and new, and who is going to want to publish them? This instinct to protect your work is complicated by a desire to celebrate what is brilliant about the internet- we can share ideas instantly,with so many people, and out of this collaborative experience can come great work that is marked by a sense of freshness and immediacy.

While I struggle to make sense of all this, I thought it may be interesting to share some of my own experience of working on a PhD so far. Everybody works differently, but this is the strange, slightly fraught, system that I have built for myself. Recently I have been really struggling to tame an unruly chapter and looking at these pictures they fail to convey the feelings of despair, joy, stress, and just plain lunacy that accompanied the process.
My research always starts with a massive pile of books. I read these, make notes on them, mark pages,split them into common themes, and generally feel upset that after every working day I have nothing to show for myself. This can be a common frustration for me. The writing - the word count - tends to happen very quickly at the end, but before that come weeks of painful slog where I seem to be working very hard and producing very little. I am much more at peace with this bit of the process than I used to be as I trust myself a lot more, but it can still be frustrating. This kind of research is slow and laborious, and would not make a good 'Rocky' style montage. After this I try to make some kind of plan by noting all the different ideas I've come across and how I want to try and fit them together. This usually results in a mad scrawl with lots of arrows pointing everywhere as my excited, tea-fuelled brain comes to the conclusion that 'EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED!!!' and a lot of exclamation marks and capital letters start creeping in everywhere.This is one of my favourite bits. Nothing beats that light bulb moment when you can see how everything fits together. I think this is especially rewarding because so much of what you do up until this point is based on instinct, and every time it falls into place your trust in yourself as a researcher grows. Sometimes I won't quite know why I've chosen to follow certain avenues of research, but these seeming tangents often offer me the most innovative insights into a text.

The picture on the left shows all my lovely chapter notes typed up and put into sections. I have to see all the notes in front of me on bits of paper so that I can move them all around until I have them in the best order. After that the actual writing happens very fast. I think that's another reason why putting in so much groundwork works for me- I like to be able to write very quickly, and to keep the style of the thing quite loose and fluid. I suppose the work is quite dense but I don't want it to read that way.
At this point it may be worth stressing how important it is to take breaks. At first I found this really difficult, but  just because you love your job doesn't mean you don't need to take regular time off from it. It's lovely being able to structure my own working days, but I know myself better now, I know how much the quality of my work tails off if I try to log ludicrous hours, and feeling guilty about enjoying my work and then having 'free time' as well doesn't help anyone. I know how lucky I am, and I don't take it for granted... this PhD is one of the most challenging, stressful, frustrating things I have ever done and I absolutely love it.

Geocaching and Kenneth Rexroth

Hello friends,

It's been a while. The trouble with doing any large research project is that no matter how hard you try to set many small deadlines they inevitably snowball into one giant looming deadline and eat up a month of your life. Now work is going well and I feel like I can stop, breathe, look around me. Happy.

This is excellent news because it coincided with a visit from our dear friend, Ruth, and a big adventure. I have discovered Geocaching. Maybe I'm waaaay behind the times on this. Maybe you all already know about Geocaching (but, if so, why, why didn't you tell me??!). The map on their website certainly makes it look like I am the last person on this planet to find out about it.

Paul with our first find

For the uninitiated, Geocaching is the grown up (or child-friendly) treasure hunt that will make your heart happy. People hide caches of all different sizes in all different places and upload the coordinates to the website, then you stick in the postcode of where you are and set off to find some near you. We live in the middle of nowhere and there are hundreds hidden on our doorstep. In our (so far extremely limited) experience these geocaches are tricksy things with log books inside so that when you (eventually) find them you can write your name on the list and walk on with that small glow of satisfaction that comes from secret keeping. I understand that there are many different kinds of cache in existence and that some house treasure like toys and sweets, but to be honest the excitement of finding one is reward enough. There are several things about this that are truly brilliant. Firstly, there are millions of them. I mean, the scale is ridiculous and so wherever you are RIGHT NOW you are probably near one and you don't realise. Isn't that a sort of deliciously exciting prospect?(When we first looked, the nearest one to us was 0.2 miles away...only the torrential rain outside stopped us from running out the house there and then.) Secondly, people hide them in beautiful, weird, wonderful places that you may not visit otherwise. We had a glorious Sunday morning walk thanks to the efforts of Geocachers in our area. Thirdly, it's a treasure hunt that feels the same as treasure hunts felt when you were little, except this time you get to hold your phone like a compass because we live in the future. It's just lovely, and magical, and creative, and it is a thing people do to bring joy to others, to share a nice walk with them. I think that's something special.

Ruth and Paul...See! How much joy!

Another thing that has been on my mind this week has been Kenneth Rexroth's poem 'Signature of All Things'. I got so many lovely messages about the Mary Oliver post and a feeling of timeliness that went with it, so I thought you may enjoy this. Although Rexroth describes a 'deep July day' there is something about this poem that seems so of this moment to me. I think the taut, beautiful language owes much to his brilliant translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry, and the result is somehow peaceful and soul-stirring all at once.

Signature of All Things

The view from our house, Sunday night.

I

My head and shoulders, and my book                
In the cool shade, and my body
Stretched bathing in the sun, I lie
Reading beside the waterfall –
Boehme's 'Signature of all Things.'
Through the deep July day the leaves
Of the laurel, all the colors
Of gold, spin down through the moving
Deep laurel shade all day. They float
On the mirrored sky and forest
For a while, and then, still slowly
Spinning, sink through the crystal deep
Of the pool to its leaf gold floor.
The saint saw the world as streaming
In the electrolysis of love.
I put him by and gaze through shade
Folded into shade of slender
Laurel trunks and leaves filled with sun.
The wren broods in her moss domed nest.
A newt struggles with a white moth
Drowning in the pool. The hawks scream,
Playing together on the ceiling
Of heaven. The long hours go by.
I think of those who have loved me,
Of all the mountains I have climbed,
Of all the seas I have swum in.
The evil of the world sinks.
My own sin and trouble fall away
Like Christian's bundle, and I watch
My forty summers fall like falling
Leaves and falling water held
Eternally in summer air.

2

Deer are stamping in the glades,
Under the full July moon.
There is a smell of dry grass
In the air, and more faintly,
The scent of a far off skunk.
As I stand at the wood's edge,
Watching the darkness, listening
To the stillness, a small owl
Comes to the branch above me,
On wings more still than my breath.
When I turn my light on him,
His eyes glow like drops of iron,
And he perks his head at me,
Like a curious kitten.
The meadow is bright as snow.
My dog prows the grass, a dark
Blur in the blur of brightness
I walk to the oak grove where
The Indian village was once.
There, in blotched and cobwebbed light
And dark, dim in the blue haze,
Are twenty Holstein heifers,
Black and white, all lying down,
Quietly together, under
The huge trees rooted in the graves.

3

When I dragged the rotten log
From the bottom of the pool,
It seemed heavy as stone.
I let it lie in the sun
For a month; and then chopped it
Into sections, and split them
For kindling, and spread them out
To dry some more. Late that night;
After reading for hours,
While moths rattled at the lamp,
The saints and the philosophers
On the destiny of man;
I went out on my cabin porch,
And looked up through the black forest
At the swaying islands of stars.
Suddenly I saw at my feet,
Spread on the floor of night, ingots
Of quivering phosphorescence,
And all about were scattered chips
Of pale cold light that was alive.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

This is not the cover I have... but look how pretty!

'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' is a rare book. Perhaps its feeling of rarity is underpinned by the fact that it is the first and last book by Mary Ann Shaffer who sadly passed away before the manuscript was completely finished. (It was completed by her niece, Annie Barrows, who is listed as the co-author of the book.) I read this book as one of those rare treasures- the kind that you can't wait to tear through but that you also can't bear to finish. When I turned over the last page I went back to the first without hesitation and read the book for a second time laughing, crying, and generally feeling that I was in the warming company of good friends. This is an epistolary novel which I thought at first would put me off as it is not my favourite format, but here it is treated perfectly and displays how, sensitively handled, there can be no better way for a writer to truly embody a cast of different characters. I believed in them all utterly. I was completely distraught when I had to leave them.
The book is the correspondence between Juliet Ashton (lovely, lovely character) and a peculiar mixture of individuals who make up a literary society in recently occupied Guernsey. It is extraordinary how cleverly the plot and characterisation are embedded in these letters. If you want an example of 'show don't tell' in writing then this is it. There is something elegant and understated about this quiet book which charmed me completely. When I had finished (for the second time) I pressed the book into Paul's hands with an urgent request to put down what he was reading right now, NOW, and read this because I needed to share it, I needed to talk about it. I think I needed him to make friends with it in that way we have when we press our favourite books onto loved ones. And he did. He loved it too, and we talked and laughed about characters like Isola and Sidney (best of all Isola and Sidney together) like we knew them. I then gave a copy to my mum and talked it up so much to her that I was afraid she would be disappointed. She wasn't, SHE loved it, and when she finished it she took it over to my Nan. When I saw my Nan a couple of weeks ago I asked her what she thought. No surprise, she loved it too, but what was a surprise was that she had had cousins living in occupied Guernsey, right there where the book is set, and she told us about their big house there and how there was a working well actually inside it, and all about her cousins, and what I'm trying to say is that this book was the gift that KEPT ON GIVING. I think it's so special when a book does this, when it brings people together and uncovers thoughts and stories that you might not otherwise hear. This is why my job is the best, why English degrees are the best, because what could be better than sitting and talking about the shared experience of a book read?  'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' is something that I have shared, that I have carried around with me ever since. Now, I hope you will read it, or share it, or talk about it, and I hope all this talking it up won't disappoint you.

Just Poetry- Mary Oliver

As I am writing this Lauren Laverne is on Radio 6 asking people to help create an autumn themed playlist. I am working at my desk wrapped up in a cardigan. Outside it is bright and sunny but there is a definite chill in the air. To paraphrase Ned Stark... Autumn is coming. Which is wonderful. I love the autumn. I love back to school and new post it notes and pencil sharpenings. I love it when the leaves start to change. I love snuggling under blankets with a cup of tea and a book, I love scarves and pink cheeks and cold fingers, and hot chocolate. Most of all I love the feeling of 'fresh start' that autumn brings. I wonder if it is because I am so immersed in 'school life' that the start of the academic year always feels like a clean slate to me. I am excited about what this year has to offer.

This poem is one of my favourites. It's right at the top of the list. And to me, this poem feels like autumn. I don't know why. I'm not sure if it's because I first read it in a crisp Tennessee autumn (the most beautiful I have ever seen) or because subconsciously I knew that autumn is when all the wild geese turn up in the UK. (It's true! I just looked it up here. Isn't it strange the things you don't know you know.) This morning I felt a real need to sit down and read it, and it felt good, and warm, and comforting.

Wild Geese

By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

And, if you can handle any more loveliness:

Happy autumn. 

Much Ado

My not brilliant picture of the actually brilliant set.

Just a quick post. We went to see this brilliant RSC production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon on Monday. When Paul and I first met we bonded over our shared love of the play and of the Kenneth Branagh/ Emma Thompson film version, so it seemed like such a good sign that our first Stratford theatre experience after moving up here would be a play so special to both of us. We were not disappointed.  Never before had it occurred to me that the plot leant itself so brilliantly to a slice of Bollywood. Paul Bhatacharjee and Meera Syal as Benedick and Beatrice were wonderful- she had me in tears (both kinds). The rest of the cast were great too, even the Dogberry scenes which I have never liked before were perfect, and the music... the music was amazing. You could see everyone wiggling around in their seats because the whole atmosphere was so infectious. I really enjoyed seeing such a fresh interpretation, the way that the dialogue stood up so well to such a creative rendering is testament to the timelessness of the play, to the flexibility and immense possibility ever present in language. Funny, moving, truly joyful, if you can catch it then I would highly recommend doing so. Here is a trailer that gives you a little taste of things:

Mr Gum... and Elizabeth Bowen

"summer was almost at an end and the day stretched out long and lazy like a huge glossy panther made of time"- Andy Stanton, Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire

When Paul's niece and nephew came to stay with us last week we spent two evenings with all four of us propped up on the spare bed laughing like drains and taking it in turns to read Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire by Andy Stanton. What a joyful experience it is to read aloud like this, and one which I don't get to do often enough. The Mr Gum books are a particularly wonderful example of this pleasure because they mix an offbeat sense of humour with a sort of madcap poetry. The quote above was right at the start of the book and I found myself turning it over in my mind for days afterwards. It's just so...pleasing. As an image, as a sound, as a celebration of language. And it was in a children's book. I have a real passion for children's literature both because I was an avid reader as a child and because as an adult I still find a very specific kind of imaginative escapism may only be found in reading children's books. It is because of this love of children's literature that I found myself running a children's bookshop for a while, and why I have taken care to carve out a space for children's literature in my thesis. 

It is funny how these things come about in research, how every so often you will read something that stays with you and somehow shapes what comes after it in your work. This happened for me when I read Elizabeth Bowen's essay 'Out of a Book' while researching my MA dissertation. I knew even as I was reading it that I was changing, that some chord had been struck. I read with a gleam of recognition, of words that made manifest half thoughts that my brain hadn't been able to verbalise. Any reader will know this feeling and when it happens it is such a moment of elation... a moment in which a text and an author become a friend and kindred spirit.

Elizabeth Bowen

"I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experience, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

Reduced to the minimum, to the what did happen, my life would be unrecognizable by me. Those layers of fictitious memory densify as they go deeper down. And this surely must be the case with everyone else who reads deeply, ravenously, unthinkingly, sensuously, as a child."

"The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child. I mean that, admittedly, the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind. At any age, the reader must come across: the child reader is the most eager and quick to do so; he not only lends to the story, he flings into the story the whole of his sensuous experience which from being limited is the more intense. Book dishes draw saliva to the mouth; book fears raise gooseflesh and make the palms clammy; book suspense makes the cheeks burn and the heart thump. Still more, at the very touch of a phrase there is a surge of brilliant visual images: the child rushes up the scenery for the story." -Elizabeth Bowen, 'Out of a Book' in The Mulberry Tree

This is what I meant earlier when I talked about that specific escapism to be found in children's books. It is because for me they hold the echo of those periods of childhood reading, of trembling hands pressed to pink cheeks and heart thudding excitement and physical sensation born of a total immersion in the other world and other life on offer between the pages of a book. Andy Stanton's 'huge glossy panther made of time' is one of those phrases Bowen speaks of, one whose very touch creates a surge of brilliant visual images, and it is because this image called out the child reader in me that it has remained in my mind long after the book itself has been put away.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

This film by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg won the Oscar for best animated short film this year. It is difficult for me to tell you how much it moved me. For the majority of the film I found myself making that strange, juddering sound somewhere between laughing and crying and my heart ached, yes, really ached. The importance of the book, as friend, healer, and confidante is what stands at the back of all the work I do. That sounds lofty and self important, but it's not supposed to. What I mean is that it is my pure and wholehearted love of books that made me want to do a job that involved sharing that feeling. I am evangelical when it comes to reading. And so is this film. Of the (many) things that I love about this film one of the best is the way it addresses the value of reading in its place in time. The film shares the spotlight with an app, an ebook for children which is completely interactive. The rise of the ebook is a controversial one in book-lovers' circles, but here it is done so right. Here we see artists and writers embracing what is new to enhance the experience of reading, to explore what is fun and vibrant, to be playful as well as respectful. The film is a joy, watch it over and over.

One of my favourite parts of the film is the surgery scene. How perfect that it is by reading the book that we bring it to life. It made me think of one of my favourite essays on reading by Maurice Blanchot, and that perhaps his words are a good way to leave this subject.

“The book whose source is art has no guarantee in the world, and when it is read, it has never been read before; it only attains its presence as a work in the space opened by this unique reading, each time the first reading and each time the only reading.”

“What is a book that no one reads? Something that has not yet been written. Reading, then, is not writing the book again but causing the book to write itself or be written- this time without the writer as intermediary, without anyone writing it.”


“Reading transforms a book the same way the sea and the sand transforms the work of men: the result is a smoother stone, a fragment that has fallen from heaven, without any past, without any future, and that we do not wonder about as we look at it.” 
                                      ~ Maurice Blanchot, Reading

The Night Circus- Erin Morgenstern

A busy week means I am late posting about this book- something I wanted to do as soon as I put it down last weekend. I find that everything is a bit stop and start at the moment, so when I have time to read something 'just for fun'- and I enjoy it as much as I did this book- I tear through it in one sitting. Reading in this particularly feverish way was wonderful when digging into The Night Circus.
A beautiful, dark, sprawling fairytale, The Night Circus is the story of a magical black and white circus that appears, without warning, and only at night. While the people who visit the circus are stunned by the intricate, breathtaking acts and scenes they come across they do not realise that the most obvious explanation for what they see is the truth of it. The circus is magic. And not just magic, but the venue chosen for a game of skill a lifetime in the making.
The premise of the book is interesting, but I did feel that the plot had unravelled slightly by the end, as if it needed to be wrapped up quickly- which was especially jarring as for most of the book the story unfolds quite gently. The book's late nineteenth century setting also felt, at times, like something of an after thought. That being said this book's real strength is in its incredible visual quality. While I would never call it a children's book it awoke in me the same sense of excitement and intense imaginative experience that I associate with reading as a child. The descriptions of the circus are wonderful and really play into this feeling of childlike abandon. Les Cirques des Reves is just that, an escape to a space full of living dreams, and it is this feeling of a dream that the slow burning pace of the novel respects. This is not a fast paced work of fantasy, and while the novel is built around a duel, it is a duel between artists attempting to create the most perfect of dreamscapes.
Given that the book is so intensely visual I am not surprised that the film rights to it have already been sold- there is a wealth of beautiful material here. Some of it too beautiful, I think, to be translated to the screen. I attach the book trailer because- although I dislike them in general- here I think it provides a nice mood piece which may give you a better idea of what you're getting into than all my hazy thoughts. Simply, I think you should read it. A lovely book.

Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska, Polish poet and Nobel Laureate, died this month. I have been a big fan of her poetry since I came across her in Czeslaw Milosz's anthology, A Book of Luminous Things (yes, that is the best title imaginable for a poetry anthology, and yes, the book absolutely lives up to its name.) Szymborska was a writer who found me at an important time in my life, during a year spent studying at the University of Tennessee where I found a life shaped by reading and writing poetry in a community of brilliant, important, and hugely talented friends and writers. I found, and still find, her poetry inspiring. I love how her poems are deceptively simple- they are so lyrical, so intricate, such a pleasure to unravel. There is one poem of hers - the first I ever read- that I often find myself returning to. I consider it a beautiful meditation on language and experience.

View With a Grain of Sand

We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
Whether general, particular,
Permanent, passing,
Incorrect, or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn't feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it, it is no different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn't view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake's floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.

A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they're three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that's just our simile.
The character is invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman.

Milosz considers Szymborska's view too scientific, too detached, but my own response feels more complicated than this. Like Milosz I dislike the idea of being so disconnected from the world around me, but in this poem I feel that Szymborska celebrates the richness of the internal experience in a way that is honest. It means that every individual's experience of the world is wholly unique. It also feels peaceful , as if to say worries and limitations are what we impose on ourselves- the world goes right on without them. Also, it sounds just beautiful. If you can get away with it read it aloud and you'll see what I mean.

Perhaps my reading of the poem is also coloured by Szymborska's Nobel lecture which is charming, funny, and which celebrates how astonishing the world really is, how far away she feels from finding answers. It is this desire for answers that drove her poetry, and that drives me every day in my own small endeavours. It is her own particular definition of inspiration that I find so moving because it is real, and it is why I am unimaginably lucky.

"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners - and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

There aren't many such people. Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.

And so, though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings."

Georges Poulet

It is time to introduce Georges Poulet, a man who is very important to me. It was his essay 'The Phenomenology of Reading'  that lit a fire under me and helped me to decide what it was that I wanted to write about, what was important to me. This essay is a beautiful, passionate celebration of the pleasures of reading, of the book as an object full of possibility. I am working a lot on the boundaries that we cross when we read, about the relationship between our interior and exterior worlds, and for me there is no better starting place than with Georges. (He is Georges to me now, in that way that writers who change you become great friends.) There is nothing I can say that will better explain the joy of reading his work, than by giving space to some of them here. Of books he writes, "made of paper and ink, they lie where they are put, until the moment some one shows an interest in them. They wait. Are they aware that an act of man might suddenly transform their existence? They appear to be lit up with that hope. Read me, they seem to say. I find it hard to resist their appeal. No, books are not just objects among others."

Another of my favourite sections from the essay begins like this:
"take a book and you will find it offering, opening itself. It is this openness of the book which I find so moving. A book is not shut in by its contours, is not walled-up as in a fortress. It asks nothing better than to exist outside itself, or to let you exist in it. In short, the extraordinary fact in the case of a book is the falling away of the barriers between you and it. You are inside it; it is inside you; there is no longer either outside or inside."
I love everything about this, and how it speaks to my experience of reading, and of that very particular joy. Hopefully I have linked to the full article on Jstor up at the top so if you have access I'd recommend reading the whole thing.

The Cazalet Chronicles- Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Cazalet Chronicles are four books by Elizabeth Jane Howard that tell the story of the Cazalet family from 1937 to 1947. I read all four books back to back only putting one down to pick another up. Reading them this way was wonderful, moving, terrible. The family make up a sprawling cast of characters, from the Brig and the Duchy to their children, their children's spouses,their grandchildren and their spouses, cousins, friends, lovers. From characters in their 80s to newborn babies, all are accounted for, and for great swathes of the books all are present under one roof. When not at Home Place, the idyllic family home in Sussex, each character still occupies space in the narrative. The books move from person to person, voice to voice in a way that many avoid. The result is a kind of clamouring, a demand for attention and over the course of the four books you gain insight into the motivations, the desires, the inner life of each character. It is an exhilarating, sometimes exhausting way to read. What I found particularly fascinating about these novels was that almost all of the male characters are too old or too young to go into active service. There is no space made in the books for descriptions of war, but it permeates every page. This is the story of war at home, of everything that was terrible and frightening, and of how people carried on living anyway. How children and teenagers grew up barely remembering a world in which they weren't living through a war, how everything was not a constant state of action and panic, but - and in its own way awful to read about- how inert things could be, how mundane rations and air raid alarms become when you don't remember life without them. In large part the novels focus on the three young girls, Louise, Polly, and Clary, who become teenagers, young women, wives and mothers during this strange, standstill time. The transition to adulthood is brilliantly explored, and it was so interesting to read about in this context- everything the same but completely different. All four books are beautifully written, this is a real family saga that you can throw yourself into- each character so fully imagined that now I feel when I remember the books that I am remembering people I know, places I've been.I am only sad that there aren't more of them- I'm finding it hard to say goodbye to the Cazalets.    

The Children's Book

This review is actually one I wrote some time ago, however  I decided it would be nice to include it here as the book I am currently reading put me in mind of it. In fact, for various reasons, this book has been hovering around in my brain a lot recently- over a year after reading it- which is surely the mark of an exceptional read. I think that justifies its inclusion here as an intensely pleasurable read. 

I have a confession to make. I have been putting off reading this book for over a year. When I bought it I read about 20 pages, put it down and decided I would come back to it when I had ‘enough time’ and by that, you know, I meant the right sort of time- long, book reading hours with a really wide awake brain. Once I eventually did start the book I finished it in two days. Ever since, I have been mulling over writing a blog about the experience. The truth is that  A. S. Byatt intimidates me. Now, don’t get me wrong…before we go any further I should say that the book is fantastic, that the reason I read this 624 page epic in less than 48 hours is that it is an incredibly absorbing, well written, finely crafted piece of literature. It is also unbelievably clever. I think it is her cleverness that intimidates me. When I first read ‘Possession’ I naïvely believed in Byatt’s two Victorian writers because I found it unthinkable that a person’s imagined characters could be so fully developed as to include their own entire back catalogues of perfectly crafted 19th Century verse. Of course, I was wrong.

If anything ’The Children’s Book’ is even richer in detail. A dizzying cast surrounds the Wellwood family, each character so complete it would hardly surprise you to bump into them in the street. To call the Wellwood family the ‘centre’ of the book is perhaps misleading. ‘The Children’s Book’ certainly begins with its focus firmly on Olive Wellwood, a successful children’s author, and her bohemian family who live a seemingly idyllic life in the English countryside but fine threads are quickly spun out from these characters to engage other families in the narrative, giving a broad cross-section of late 19th century life. One such family is the Fludd’s, headed by the truly scary Benedict Fludd, an artistic genius with a temperament to match. The exploits of this manic figure only further underline the dark tone of the book. And don’t be fooled by the title or the pretty cover, this book is seriously dark. The dark side of children’s literature is explored brilliantly and I loved the extracts from Olive’s books (yet another example of how completely imagined Byatt’s worlds are) which seemed heavily influenced by the kings of sinister children’s literature – the Grimm brothers. There is, in fact, an interesting thread about the children’s literature of the period running throughout the book with Kenneth Grahame, Edith Nesbit, and J.M.Barrie popping up and exerting their influence on Olive’s work. As an avid fan of children’s literature I was really charmed by these inclusions which acted as one in a long, long list of enriching details.

I know I’m not giving you too much information about plot, but that’s because it’s difficult to put into any sort of neat synopsis. This book is really the sum of its characters. Think big, sprawling stories like Middlemarch or the more sombre Dickens novels and you’ll get the idea. Of course, one thing that makes the novel so interesting is the inclusion of the first world war which we see hanging over the innocent children we meet at the beginning of the novel like an ominous thunder-cloud just waiting to burst. This results in a final section of the novel that is particularly well-handled and an inevitably devastating conclusion.

Although this book is quite long it is also very dense, and it is precisely this density that I both admire and take issue with. The detail is at times overwhelming, and Byatt’s novel is so complete that it leaves little room for the reader to really take hold of the book for themselves. There is not much room here for your imagination to fill in the gaps because there are no gaps to fill. In her earlier book ‘Possession’, Byatt raises some interesting questions about the ’ownership’ of a text, and in ‘The Children’s Book’ I found it very difficult to ‘own’ any of the characters for myself. At times this meant the book left me a little cold.

That being said, this seems like an almost inevitable result when crafting something so complex and full of detail, and I really would recommend picking up a copy of this book. Don’t let it intimidate you like it did me, because when I finally did read it I was sorry that I had left it looking sad on my shelf for so long.  Byatt’s impressive knowledge of her chosen period shines through every word, so much so that it could have been written there and then, and I am finding it difficult not to turn this post into a long (and slightly pretentious) essay. In brief- read this book. It is very, very good. Be not afraid.

Having a bad day?

This will make it better...

Chick-lit and Chocolate cake

What better combination? I think maybe this is what weekends were made for. Paul works on Saturdays so it was nice this weekend to do some baking and then to have some real indulgence time tucking into a big piece of chocolate cake and the latest Karen Swan novel. I think my love of chick-lit comes from my love of fairy tales as a child. I was very, very girly. I wanted to be a princess, or a ballerina...really anything where I got to prance around in a lot of pink. Much to my mother's disappointment. And everyone else's I should think as I had all the grace of a baby elephant. Anyway, I have never shaken that love of a story with a bit of romance where all ends happily ever after. These are the books that I read wide-eyed and in one sitting- still the 12 year old sitting on her pink duvet reading Sweet Valley High. I read a lot of things and I think there's no problem with 'owning up' to enjoying chick-lit (although I hate that phrase, using anything else sounds like you're trying too hard.) As in any other genre there are bad writers and there are good. Helen Fielding is an obvious example of when someone gets it right, when a book is smart, funny, and well observed as well as romantic and feel-good, I have a real soft spot for Jilly Cooper's early stuff- try 'Imogen' or 'Bella' and you'll get it. On Saturday I read 'Christmas at Tiffany's' by Karen Swan which is her third book. I really enjoyed it, as I did her previous two but for different reasons. First of all Karen Swan books are all quite chunky, I think usually over 400 pages, and this is a big plus for me. I love long books because I read quickly and so for me when I have a weighty book in my hand I know it means I get to spend some real time enjoying it (this is another obvious draw of the massive, sprawling Jilly Cooper novel.) Christmas at Tiffany's is not a taxing read, it is not particularly clever, but it's not pretending to be anything it's not. What it is is wish fulfilment. The novel is set in New York, Paris, and London and is the story of a woman rebuilding her life after splitting up with her husband in three of the most glamorous places on earth, it's all romance and adventures and make overs and drinking cocktails in Manhattan, and cycling by the Seine and rooting for the underdog. It's fun.Maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea, but for an afternoon's escapism it did the job for me.

The Mill on the Floss

Reading The Mill on the Floss was a really peculiar experience for several reasons. The first was that I genuinely knew nothing about the story- except that I had a vague inkling that it was very gloomy, which is what had put me off for so long. In fact the first half of the book is not gloomy at all, it's all innocent childhood adventures and- dare I say it- it's even funny. Then, just when I was thinking I'd got it all so wrong, Eliot just hits you with this complete tragedy. Reading it in this way made the whole thing more real for me, I really lived this book alongside Maggie and it made me realise how often one knows what's coming in a book whether or not you've been told about it beforehand. Although there is an underlying strain of sadness through the novel I found, in my ignorance, that it didn't overwhelm the lighter sections, only cast them in that slightly melancholy rose-tinted glow of remembering simpler times.
One of the lovely things about doing my PhD is the way it has me reading. I read this with a view to using it in my thesis and I could feel my brain working hard to contextualise the text, to somehow situate it in amongst the other research I was doing, but as it all unfolded in front of me that part of my brain took a back seat and although it was still there, ticking over somewhere, I just sat and read, and read, and read, completely involved in a story being expertly told. It is something that people have often asked me over the last few years, whether studying literature makes reading seem like work, whether it turns it into a chore, or homework. The truth is that it makes it better. Nobody would suggest that the more you know about art the less you would enjoy looking at a painting, and it is just the same. I appreciate the skill in a  novel like The Mill on the Floss more, I know something of who wrote it and the time she was writing in. I have scarcely scratched the surface of what there is to know but I know more than I did six years ago, in fact I know more than I did six days ago and doing such a large research project means constantly learning, absorbing, changing. Studying literature is my passion for many reasons but the simplest and most true of all is just this, that I love to read.

Something Lovely...

New Year...

It is no surprise that the new year heralds a return to blogging. If I were someone who knew things about statistical analysis and created complex graphs (which thankfully I am not) I feel like I would have a lot to say about the increase of blogging in January. Anyway, clichéd as it may be, the new year inspires me to be a better person and one way the bettering takes place is through a return to this pretty space.
I am not going to lie to you- my long and lazy Christmas break has been spent reading very little except Georgette Heyer books. Let me explain. About a year ago I came across this list compiled by the most excellent India Knight:
http://indiaknight.posterous.com/ultimate-comfort-reads

Georgette Heyer- most beautiful.

This list represents one of the things I love the most about reading, and really why I started this blog in the first place. It's that special sort of pleasure- that sense of complete comfort and indulgence that reading can provide. India Knight's list already contained some of my favourite books so I thought it sounded a pretty good template for my own reading list. (Plus, really, any chance to indulge in some Jilly Cooper reading is a plus for me.) There are several books on the list that I have loved, but I shan't go into that too much here because a truly loved book surely deserves its own post. The Georgette Heyer books I put off. I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction, I thought I wouldn't be too overawed by a Jane Austen wannabe- I'd rather read the real thing. And various other puffed up sounding nonsense. Because it was nonsense. Eventually, as suggested, I started with 'The Grand Sophy' and I haven't looked back. What a joy these books are. So warm and funny, so well plotted with loveable characters, and more often than not a clever, interesting, and almost certainly 'grey-eyed', heroine. And there are 40 of them! 40!Joy, joy, joy. The Grand Sophy is a wonderful place to start if you like your female leads adventurous, daring, and thoroughly heroic- as I do. Working my way through there have been some really excellent reads, there is of course some overlap in storylines, and some have been more successful than others, but I'm already looking forward to reading them again. These are perfect for those cosy armchair afternoons- tea and biscuits are mandatory.