The Crumpetty Tree

"Is nothing sacred?!"

2007-10-06T08:19:00.000+01:00

This cry went up in a class this week.

We were using Alice in Wonderland as a springboard text to discuss other things, but there was some serious objection to 'studying' (that is, rigorous questioning, finding out, and thinking about) a book that people had read as young (ish) children. The idea behind the objection, I think, was a horror that the original childhood impressions of the magical tale might be overwritten with the intrusion of adult eyes; the child's brain had been put in a sparkly pink box (or perhaps a more fitting slightly sinister one, given the weirdness of Alice) and was Not To Be Touched.

The Annotated Alice text exacerbated this problem - it's a fantastic and eclectic peering at Carroll's stories through every conceivable kind of eyes - the historical, the mathematical and physical, the cultural, the literary, the adult...But this was, it seemed, just too much information; too intrusive, too questioning, too learned and - God forbid! - perhaps even reading too much into the stories. Hang on a minute, isn't that the line Literature students (of all levels of experience and competence) walk along all the time? But because this text was in some way held sacred, because of childhood experience, the tolerence level dropped completely - 'You are not touching this text, this memory', Tolerence hissed, 'It's mine. My precious...' (Gollum was there too).

I have to admit I was irritated, because - when it comes to the study of Literature (and other things) - I do not think that anything should be protected from questioning. Nothing is sacred when it comes to academia (however microscopically tiny that academia might be). I'm here to ask questions, and to keep on answering them until something relents, or I realise it's a stupid question, or I die. I am not here to pussy-foot around people's fluffy constructions of what they think a book was about once. That is not at all interesting.

There is something intensely annoying about Arts students (in this sense, Literature, Music and Art) who will only go as far as - or are content to stop at - a feeling about something. I'm not denying that certain arts can make humans react in an emotional (or irrational, though I'm not using those two things synonymously) way, but I am saying that that is absolutely not what studying the arts is about. Or, if it is, I'm definitely doing the wrong thing. The absence of a desire to scrutinise is incomprehensible, to me, in people who are otherwise enviably bright. If they want to hold onto a cute idea of what certain texts are, it's perhaps questionable whether they're studying the right subject. Or maybe I'm studying the wrong one. Why not give Lolita or Bleak House to a kid, ask them what it's about, and leave it at that? Because that doesn't work. Et voila, nor does that attitude to Alice. Grow up - or at least be open to the possibility that there might be a giant rabbithole even in adult life.

Interventions

2007-09-28T16:05:00.000+01:00

I wanted to write about the current situation in Burma at the moment, because it's frightening and big and all over the media. But it seems too big for me to get a handle on, so I'll take a more oblique look (that is, talk about something almost entirely different).

When things such as Burma's protests happen, something that comes up a lot is the idea of international intervention: just how much should the rest of the world do about something going on in another country? There are wars going on across the whole planet caused by one government's trying to intervene with another, or one group attempting to impose its idea of Right upon another. War is generally not a good thing, so we might say that extreme intervention (involving waging war) is Wrong (because it impacts too much upon people - civilians - who have no real power to change their country's situation). On the other hand, though, I do think that some things are just unacceptable and that a lack of intervention (of come kind) is reprehensible. Obviously this means I do not adhere to the belief that everyone should be able to do whatever the hell they like, regardless of the impact on other people - it's a possible standpoint but not, in my view, a valid one. I do, therefore, think that intervention (of some kind) is a necessity.

But when?

This is a bit twee, maybe, but that's not important. A very well-known poem by Martin Niemoller quietly highlights many problems:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Of those "many", though, the one that interests me is the end result of the lack of intervention. Not really the fact that eventually "They" will come and get "me" (that doesn't really factor anywhere in my thinking about this, probably because I'm fortunate enough never to have been victimised in the large-scale way this poem is concerned with), but the downward slope, caused by lack of intervention, leading to the victory of "They".

So take a smaller example. In the pub last night there was a young Polish woman working behind the bar and a (probably) drunken bloke walked in and started hurling abuse at her (I say "probably" drunk, because it explains his disproportionate behaviour - though obviously doesn't justify it). This abuse centred on three traits: (1) Her professionalism [refusal to serve him because he was already pissed, and very rude]; (2) Her sex; (3) Her non-Englishness. The disagreement about (1) I can understand (if not sympathise with) - he was drunk, prior to his arrival, and wanted more alcohol; the abuse relating to (2) was offensive but could perhaps be passed off as just a standard way to insult women - it annoyed me, but only because it was generally insulting (i.e. he was drunk, and expressing himself in the coarsest way possible. Fine). But when he got onto (3) I decided that was enough; probably because it was, by then, personal to the person he was attacking. It seems a bit odd that (3) provoked me into action, despite the fact that what I have in common with her is (2). I'm not sure why that is.
This was all happening extremely loudly and quite physically, in a pub that was in complete silence otherwise (his shouting saw to that). So, at the point (3) reared its head, I got up and asked him to leave - which he did (though probably not because I asked him - he could easily have knocked me out, I don't have the figure of a bouncer...), after calling me a "Medieval whore"*.
None of this made me angry. What made me angry was the group of business 'gentlemen' standing around the bar the whole time this was going on, and not one of them said a word. They stood, glasses in hand (and sober), watching in silence. That was it, that was their reaction; to watch it. The ignorant, drunk, yelling bloke was just that (a fairly harmless, though volatile, arsehole) but the silentwatching 'gentlemen' were, to me, morally disgusting and socially dangerous. On the bloke's exit from the pub one of the besuited businessmen made some cute placatory remark to him -- WHY? (I actually think the answer to this is that he was scared of being hit). I hope at least one or two of those blokes feels suitably embarrassed that they didn't step in, even when it was beginning to get physical.

Was I overreacting? Should I have stood and let it happen like the others? Did I take too much of a risk? (Probably, physically speaking). Am I right in being furious about the others' apathy/cowardice? Is self-preservation more important? I believe in freedom of expression...but does that belief extend to expressing yourself in such an offensive and disruptive way (I was, after all, trying to enjoy a nice evening in the pub!)? Do I have any right to get on my moral high-horse? (Probably not) Why did it bother me anyway?

Lots of questions.
As I said above, I think intervention (of some kind) a necessity; a necessity, that is, for retaining a sense of our own principles. There comes a point where everyone will make a stand (even if only for themselves, eventually), and it is that point, I think, that helps define us. It's not a linear thing, and not everyone's priorities will be in the same area, but it's where we say "no", isn't it, that makes us more than automatons? The point at which I say "no" isn't necessarily a Right one, but I'm reassured that I at least have one. I suspect Stanley Milgram would have had something to say about those gentlemen-in-suits...oh wait, he already said it: we're screwed, probably.

Of course it's a whole different can of worms to ask how we know if our principles/interventions are the Right ones. If we follow a principle of luxurious self-gratification we'd take a different tack to someone upholding the importance of the biological (reproductive) imperative, or a societal ideal of one kind or another. Who's to say which is the Right one? For now, I'd just like to think that everyone has some kind of guiding principle - that would be a start.

-----------
* "Medieval whore" did make me laugh (though not at the time, as I was wondering at that instant if he was actually going to hit me). It's probably the best drunken insult I've heard - and a surprising one, given the 'type' of bloke it seemed to be coming from. I would perhaps have preferred "dissembling luxurious drab" (Troilus & Cressida), but beggars can't be choosers!

Nonsenses, plural.

2007-09-27T21:55:00.000+01:00

One annoyance:
Why can't politicians just answer the occasional question with a Yes or a No, if one of those will suffice? That party politics has obscured sense is quite evident when a question such as "Do you agree with this very common-sense and really quite true thing?" is answered with equivocation, evasion, and another question.
I wake up to the Today Programme, which is most definitely the best reportage around, but it also has the unusual ability to get me riled before 6.30am. Impressive.

On a completely different note:
You know it's a good beginning of term when the first academic emails you receive include instructions to (i) Read Lewis Carroll, and (ii) Write an essay on a subject that includes ducks in hats.
We have lift off!

In which single-word subjects cease.

2007-09-13T23:24:00.000+01:00

It seems the best way to get through academic work (as well as being the best way for me to retain it), is to chat about it with people. Really, that's the only way anything gets anywhere. And it exercises the vocal chords, too -- going days without speaking to anyone does happen on occasion, but then re-entering the social world is something of a stressful experience.

Why say this now? Mainly because I've recently been exchanging emails with a couple of People Wot Read. I'd got a bit stuck with the Interminable Essay and my ideas were going round and round but not turning off anywhere, and they've really helped -- not because they know more about the subject (for once), but because they ask good questions. It's all about the questions. Questions from people who know more about it are scary, and serve their very handy purpose -- but that's for later; at the moment, to thrash an idea out in its preliminary stages, just 'innocent' questions often do the trick. More often than not it just seems to involve defining and refining the terms -- just as well, really, or I'd never make any sense.

Talking to the cat is also good. He is very patient, and pretends to understand (or pretends not to -- not quite sure which). Though the fact his favourite toy is one of my old socks probably doesn't say much for his intelligence. Never mind; I was rather fond of that sock too.

Introductions

2007-09-12T22:24:00.000+01:00

What is the purpose of an Introduction to a work of fiction?

I'm sure every editor has asked exactly that question before writing an intro (or before commissioning someone else to do so), but there certainly doesn't seem to have been an agreement anywhere. So it seems reasonable enough to ask it again. An introducing of something presumes -- doesn't it? -- that the thing being introduced, and the thing being introduced to have not met previously. Otherwise they'd be called "Reintroductions", or "Reminders". Reading decent editions of texts, though, often means being faced with (or outfaced by) a 'scholarly' introduction complete with obscure references to little things within the text, and a bamboozling array of facts (be they critical, historical, political, chronological or anything elseical). These very clever, very carefully researched critical essays are a great resource, but I don't think they serve well as introductions. They often don't make any sense whatsoever to readers coming to the text for the first time; which is surely self-defeating on the part of the introduction?

It very much depends on who is writing it. In the vast number of publications of the two editions I most frequently use (Oxford World's Classics, and Penguin) there is great variation in the apparent intentions, and end results, of the introductions. Some seem barely more than plot summaries (this is sometimes useful, because I am Not Good at remembering names of characters so it's a quick reminder; on the other hand, it doesn't tell you more than the text proper could); some are academic hard-ons (probably great fun for the writer, but a little uncomfortable for the audience); some get the balance better and provide information giving insight, but not so much that the all-important text itself is obscured behind academia so dense it causes all but the most trained eye to glaze over.

It must be a difficult balance to strike.
As I see it, an introduction should be like good gossip: more information than the original source can (or wants to) give you, but not so much sordid detail that you feel as if you're bitching unnecessarily.

Translations

2007-09-08T10:55:00.000+01:00

This has nothing to do with Brian Friel's play of the same name.

I just noticed yesterday that I talk to myself, at great length, when I translate texts. This is embarrassing. Must remember not to do that in libraries.
And why? I don't chatter on when I'm doing other types of work. It's like the Medieval and Anglo-Saxon parts of my brain are situated somewhere outside my head, and I have to establish dialogue to use the informations therein. My floating languages brain. Strange.

Limax

2007-09-07T00:56:00.000+01:00

Scattered things, from a bear of very little brain:

1) Limax means "slug". Somehow I find it very satisfying that such a strange little animal should have a Latin name (why I'm surprised, I don't know - but I've never wondered what that name was before). Next time I stand on one with bare feet (that is, me with bare feet, not the slug. It only has one foot), I shall exclaim: "Ghastly limax!" instead of the usual "Fucking slimeball". The study of slugs is "limacology". If I have a (dramatic) change of heart re: career, I might endeavour to become a limacologist. As it is, I'm heading more towards being "limaciform" [slug-like]. Fantastic word.

2) Fugues, fugues, fugues. I'm meant to be doing an English degree, right? Apparently this involves me teaching myself all that music theory again so I can attempt to form a coherent argument about a book. It is, of course, a good challenge and I'm enjoying it a lot. But I really wish I'd carried on with it earlier (ah, the joy of retrospect) - I only studied it up to the required level in order to continue with my practical instrumental exams...and that was when I was 12...Anyway, I've always hated playing fugues on the piano - have never been able to get my head (and fingers) round them when they're more than 3 parts. But playing with the theory is quite a different matter, and allows me to read brilliant books that aren't just about the music side of things (a Good Thing, because I am NOT doing a music degree!) . Particularly Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which makes much more sense now than it did 7 years ago. (A relief). Leading to...

3) ...fugues, seuguf, fugues...An inevitable result of my reading about and taking apart fugues again is a renewed attempt to play them. It's not proving much more successful than before, but I'm enjoying it more (certainly the result of the non-presence of Evil Piano Teacher).

4) Volunteering to make the committee T-shirts for College seemed like a good idea months ago. Two weeks before going back it is no longer such a great idea. Whoops! I like my design, but getting it onto the shirts [a] in time and [b] without making a huge mess is going to be a hassle.

5) A warning from the Hofstadter book above, which rings worryingly in relation to my Interminable Essay (of which, without doubt, more later - it's not submitted till April, so plenty of time for dithering and moaning about it): "It is of course important to try to maintain consistency, but when this effort forces you into a stupendously ugly theory, you know something is wrong." Quite. I shall keep an eye out for stupendous ugliness. Good way of putting it.

Intolerability?

2007-09-02T23:18:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about the concept of tolerance recently, or more specifically the point at which things should or could become intolerable. Not the kind of 'tolerance' Slavoj Zizek refers to in his comment that 'Tolerance makes everything boring, we need more conflict!'; though he does have some very interesting things to say about political [in]tolerance and what that action/non-action/non-engagement (of any kind) means in the real world. 'Why is the proposed remedy tolerance', he asks, 'rather than emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle?' (for more, you could look at this PDF - from which the latter quotation is lifted - although reading any Zizek is worth it, and more often than not raises similar themes). That type of tolerance is of course implicit in any notion of intolerance or - particularly - intolerability, but it's tangential rather than central to my musings.

No, what I'm wondering is possibly more personal, and more concerned with one's actions once we decide something is (comparatively speaking) intolerable. How is the 'intolerable' defined? Turning to the OED:

1) That cannot be tolerated, borne, or put up with; unendurable, unbearable, insupportable, insufferable:
(a) Physically
(b) Mentally or morally

My interest is in sense (b) - that of the mentally/morally intolerable.
The danger with words like this is to slip into hyperbole or overstatement. Doubtless I will, because very little is genuinely 'intolerable' - most things are, however unpleasantly, put-upable-with. In the case of physical pain, most often we lose consciousness or go into a deeper state of unconsciousness still and die; in the case of mental, the extreme includes going mad (a type of unconsciousness, or at least a different consciousness) or committing suicide.

Assuming that there is little we can do about the real mental intolerabilities, chemicals running rampant through our bodies and brains to an extent which no drugs or reason can touch, and that really cause madness in the sufferer - in which case that might be argued to be 'tolerable in a different state', as the mind is forced to entirely change in order to accommodate said rampant chemical or state; though of course if a complete and unalterable change must be implemented that probably means the thing that causes it really is intolerable, as if we can't keep some semblance of ourselves amidst our reaction we aren't really managing very well to do much but breathe and be an annoyance in society. So. Assuming that is the case, it's the moral intolerabilities that are interesting.

Essentially what I'm asking is, at what point do we stand up and say "No" to something we find abhorrent? When, "Stop"? When is the line crossed between personally offensive and societally worrying? Does one of these matter more than another? Who gets to deem something 'societally worrying', anyway? The government? (Hopefully not, or suicide really is the only option given I can't will myself mad). As is often the case, what provoked this train of thought was something superficially quite mild (though, as always, it boils down to The State Of The World etc.): The News. Media. Reportage.

I cannot stand watching the news. It makes me feel physically sick. Everything about it: the way the newsreaders speak; inane/insulting/ignorant questions asked of the 'roving reporters' or commentators; the images it's deemed fitting to show to accompany the godawful scripts; the intrusion of reporters/photographers into the lives of normal (or even not-so-normal) people; the priorities of headlines down to items less 'newsworthy'; the very concept of newsworthiness. I can't remember the last time I managed to watch the news without walking out in disgust (and it's always walking out or turning off - changing channel is never an option because I'm always too riled). If the ridiculous scripts don't get to me first, the images do: I find them disgusting, morally. I hate the desperate scrabble to be closest to the scene of the latest bombing or war (can't it be reported safely away from the flying mortars?); to be the first to interview the surviving relatives of a "tragedy" (sometimes they really are tragedies, but on most occasions the word is used by the media the situation is not Tragic - get a sense of proportion) with insulting questions - "How do you feel about losing your entire family in the fire?", "What do you think about the Islamic terrorists who killed your father?"...to take the most shocking pictures of things we can imagine quite well ourselves, thank you very much.

This has gone on for years. I keep up to date with things current and political by reading newspapers because - just about - I can filter through the crap at my own pace, and am not too often out-faced by the appalling presentation of the horrific state of the world as 'glamorous'. The financial pages are quite calming, I find - numbers, ups and downs, games of business. (Though in the recent stock market mess those boundaries became uncomfortably blurred). So I flick between 'real news' and finance to stay sane. I also refuse to have a 'regular' paper, and consequently rotate the main broadsheets more or less regularly. If a tabloid is around, I'll flick through it to see what's being said, but I will never buy one - they have too much money for their crimes already. Listening to Radio 4's Today is good, as there's rarely one person saying their thing for too long, and even if they are there's often someone there to argue with them. This doesn't stop the stupid questions being asked, but it does provide more real balance than any visually-broadcast programme (all of which are shorter).

The other worry with visual news is our desensitisation to those images, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (War, Famine, Pestilence & Death). When I watched the news regularly (I stomached it between the ages of about 14 and 17), I simply got used to it. Now, it repulses me - physically and morally - because I'm not used to it (and, now, refuse to get used to it), and probably because the boundaries of acceptability have also changed. I don't want to feel comfortable looking at these things; I don't want them to be in my face until I shrug and say "that's life" or "oh look there's another war"; I don't ever want to see those images on the screen, belittled already by stupid or badly-advised commentators and reporters, and to have a disinterest - caused by familiarity - enough to simply flick over the channel to watch something more interesting or entertaining.

The media, reportage, 'News', is something that makes me really and constantly angry. About other things - about education (a subject close to my heart, mind and irritation), religion, politics, people - about these things I get a wee bit cross, I might rant a bit and let off steam, I might occasionally let out a yell of frustration. But mostly these things annoy me because what they are (at any given time) doesn't make sense, or people aren't thinking practically or sensibly (ever the logician...). Few things anger me without fail, and I rarely fail to see the good in things. Except in this case (and maybe one other, but that's not coming into the equation here). I find this situation intolerable - I cannot accept it, I can't live with it, I can't get out of my head the staggeringly detrimental effect it must be having in so many ways. An immediate reaction is to avoid it, to avoid The News (particularly visual, remember) - but this isn't a solution; it's a bit like hiding under a bed when things are going wrong, as you remove yourself from the problem but don't remove the problem itself.

And I can't find a way away from that anger (or, for any length of time, its cause). I can't commit myself to changing the system, because to do that would necessarily mean getting actively involved with it - something I simply can't do. It's not like it's one-sided reporting I'm so against, so I can't set up a rival organisation in an attempt to squash it. My inclination, always, is to tolerate everything within reason, and when the edge of reason arrives to take positive steps to change the situation causing (or containing) the intolerable. Very often this is a practical solution, and remarkably easy to implement (on a small scale. I've not yet figured out how to stop people killing each other on a worldwide stage...). But with this I'm stuck: I can't tolerate it because I find it so unutterably wrong, but I can't find a way to solve the problem.
Which means, I suppose, that I'll have to live with its intolerability (that, or suicide). But that itself is tolerating it, isn't it? Or is anger, constant anger, enough to count as a stand against the intolerable? And is it our moral duty (in whatever sense you want to interpret that - I have my own way, you will have yours) to remove ourselves from the influence of that we find intolerable, or to stop it? If the former, suicide looks an attractive (theoretical) option; but I'm always inclined towards the latter - changing things that are wrong (I live in hope, you see...). But what if I believe I can't change that particular thing (assuming that's realism talking, not pessimism - a constant debate, that)?

It's all circular, curious and infuriating. Maybe the ultimate defence mechanism is to slide into a stupor of not caring (or a stupor of ineffective but self-righteous anger, naturally!)? Then nothing is intolerable except the immediately personal, in which case there is no 'moral duty' to do anything, and one may slip quietly into unconsciousness through madness or suicide.
I don't know.

Gaps

2007-08-31T23:09:00.000+01:00

Well, it appears what happens when Crumpetty gets really busy is...gaps. Big ones. Expect more. Never mind. Some things:

1) Attempting to read Rubin's The Hollow Crown was once more not successful (tried last year, too), and I'll probably give up. It's is not the best book about the Middle Ages, and made me a bit cross. Facts have a habit of being incredibly boring and unmemorable unless extremely carefully (and skilfully) presented, and that's unfortunately what happens in this book. I'm not one to shirk a challenge (unless it involves roller-coasters or shellfish), but I've decided there are better books about similar things. Such as...

2) ...Alison Weir's biography of Isabella, which is excellent. Weir has written a lot - on the bookshelves her output volume visually compares to that of Antonia Fraser (and they both write on very similar things, which might make for interesting comparison some time). Weir constructs biography and pieces together history very cleverly, and although her texts are laden with facts (with even brief endnotes coming close to 100 pages) the writing never feels heavy, confusing or dull. She weaves a good story; and although liberties are taken to bend [lack of] evidence to her will, it's not too annoying. I've just got hold of Eleanor of Aquitaine, too, and look forward to reading it. She's very recently branched out into historical fiction for the first time, with Innocent Traitor, centred around Lady Jane Grey - there's a possibility this might soon(ish) become a TV drama, so watch this space!

3) A week in very soggy Cambridge, hidden in cosy libraries and quiet spots. With endless thanks to LJJ for being a wonderful work companion, even (especially?) when we haven't a clue what each other is talking about! Some work needed a bit of a kick-start and that seemed a good place to do it. Lots of fun, and I managed to have An Idea - which so far has been resilient to crushing. It's probably only a matter of time until the Inevitable Problem occurs, but there is hope! A little grouse, though: people who write in library books. Little marks/comments/pictures in margins are fine, but one reader (and it was one) scribbled his (and it was most definitely a 'his') way through two entire volumes of a biography I was trying to read - this amounted to about 900 pages of MESS. Some paragraphs were unreadable because of his enthusiasm. Enough already.

4) I've come across an author who manages, quite uncannily, to write frighteningly relevant texts. The sentences seem to encapsulate everything that matters, and everything that doesn't. Not going to say who it is, or which books, because that would reveal more about my way of thinking about the world and myself than I will ever admit. I am curious to know if I feel the same way about the books in twenty years...Is this simply indicative of where I'm at now? Or what I fundamentally am? Presumably if the effect is indelible I'll remember to revisit the words to find out.

Justifiable

2007-08-14T17:27:00.000+01:00

Work-avoidance is at its best served warm and justifiable - and as one of those lucky people who is interested in almost anything, justification is generally close to hand. Two things keeping me from being Little Miss Efficient today (whilst simultaneously teaching me some genuinely useful things):

1) Practicing reading Early-Modern scripts and manuscripts online. This is one of the most thoughtfully and effectively presented websites I've seen - it's fantastic! The idea is that one might learn and practice reading ye olde handwritings and scribal scratchings by following an impeccably designed and managed set of 'lessons', in which texts of differing complexities are transcribed. The site is maintained by Andrew Zurcher, who knows his and everyone else's stuff - an invaluable site for all Spenser nuts is also maintained by him (without which my Renaissance reading would [have] be[en] all the more anaemic). The handwriting site is an example of how the 'net can and should be put to best effect. That and YouTube, obviously.

2) First there was Pepys, now there's Roger Morrice. Well, not so much "now" as "there was also" - he's well dead. But a compatriot diary to Pepys' is very welcome; he's cited so much that it's good to have another text to go to, similar in form but different in content. This is fairly exciting, given I can already spend hours buried in a volume of Ypesp. It's always 'relevant', because I'm always reading something from the period (or thereabouts) - perfect procrastination, and with bonus educational benefits. A bit more information: here. When Newnham Library acquires the Morrice, that much less Real Work will get done - probably ought to pre-empt that by working now. Probably...

Miscalculation

2007-08-11T22:49:00.001+01:00

It took me two days rather than one to get to the end of Richard III's reign - but what's one more day when this project has run a week over already? Actually, I'm not quite going to stop yet - though I've finished the 'learning' part of things for now - next stop is Miri Rubin's The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the late Middle Ages. Nothing like a bit of immediate consolidation...or it might be procrastination, but I'm not really sure what from, given that my dissertation's going to have its very own University Library Time next week! All this reading is highly relevant to the Medieval Lit Paper we'll be doing next term, but it feels like I'm indulging my fascination with hi-stories (or, in later periods, His-Tories) rather than Proper Books. Still, more than enough time for that, always.

What's got me gripped about this whole thing is the variation in reports of the period (say, mid-13th century till end of the 15th). There are inevitably big gaps in evidence, and so much of what we 'know' is formed by propaganda of the various factions - like the stories about Isabella (Edward II's queen), or Margaret of Anjou (Henry VI's queen), or Joan of Arc. It's not all about the women - Richard III is a weird and wonderful case in point there, and Henry V - but the woman are particularly interesting because they don't often speak for themselves. There are some letters - about which I know very little, and I've no idea how much they say - but the overwhelming majority of the Middle Ages is written by men. The same can be said for later periods, but far less so - from the 16th century aristocratic women start writing and existing (and sponsoring) much more, and though there are serious limitations those women have at least gained a kind of retrospective freedom: we can hear them. Some might have been respected by their contemporaries (Magdalene Herbert, for example - the poet George Herbert's mother, famous in her own right), but many were ignored or ridiculed or excluded (Margaret Cavendish might take some or all of those titles). The difference being that, however they were perceived at the time, their written words have given them a posterity and a chance at being re-evaluated by subsequent generations. The persons of Medieval women are much quieter, and much more dependent on their contemporary menfolk for their reputations. Never a good idea.

A pretty good book for a starting point is Mark Ormrod's The Kings and Queens of England. Each of the royal Houses constitutes a chapter, and each chapter is taken by a different academic. There is some pronoun confusion (is she the sister of him, or of him? Or the daughter of him?), which often happens when a writer knows far more about the subject than their reader. Ho hum - only a minor annoyance, and the gaps have been filled in from elsewhere. It's a densely written book, which is good for saving trees, but less good for a nice casual reading book - not a beach-read, unless you have an elephantine (or professorial) memory!

Lineage

2007-08-09T22:38:00.000+01:00

Internet silence the last few days (a habit likely to continue in the run-up to Term and beyond), because I've been head-down in books about Medieval history - I've got as far as the Wars of the Roses and have to concentrate very hard for long stretches of text in order not to be utterly confused. Mainly because everyone's bloody called "Henry". At least in the Old Testament most people have different names (for a while, at least) - difficult, but different. The most you can hope for in the Middle Ages is that the eldest sons die so the next king's called something different. I'm really mainly focusing on the Houses of Plantagenet, Lancaster & York, but that's more than enough to go on for the time being - as it is I have post-it notes everywhere saying things like:

HENRY IV = HENRY BOLINGBROKE, EARL OF DERBY, RICHARD II's COUSIN. Opposed by HENRY PERCY = 'HOTSPUR', EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND's SON, not to be confused with HENRY (V), PRINCE OF WALES...

...and so it goes on. Before the Henrys there were the first gaggle of Edwards; and after the Henrys more Edwards. For the purposes of this exercise I'll probably stop after Richard III - more than that won't stay in my head for long, so I'll come back to the Tudors in a few months. It's all good fun, though - finally I'm understanding what the Hundred Years War was all about (insofar as it was 'about' anything), though if I read one more time about it stopping and then restarting again I might just call it quits at Ninety Years and be in denial about the last decade or so. Who's going to notice? (Me, sadly). The only thing that doesn't seem to be improving at all is my spelling of Welsh names - I have to check every time, because I keep confusing the Welsh phonetics with the English phonetics, it's like half-knowing a language and then not being able to progress. The whole process is taking far longer than I'd planned for, though, as I'd intended to be doing this for about three days and it's already taken just over a week. I will finish tomorrow. Problem is, when I get my head into something like this I can't usually extract it until a reasonable stopping point rears up, which can become inconvenient. Still, I'm learning a lot, which can only ever be a good thing. Even if it does mean an echoing "Henry Henry Henry Henry" taking the place of tinnitus in my brain.

If there were more time I'd revisit the wonderful Histories of The Bard, if only because another factor of confusion is his fictionalization of things like Henry V's youth, and the turning of historical John Oldcastle into fictional Falstaff. And that's just one of the plays! The Histories are fantastic, and revisit them I will - although it might not be able to happen until it has to, for revision purposes.

Loosely connected to the Henrys (real and artistic) is the subject of Joan of Arc, another figure history has managed simultaneously to immortalise and almost obliterate with fictions and superstitions and - of course - politics. There's a highly recommended staging of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan at the National Theatre (Olivier Theatre) at the moment (until September 4th), which I'd dearly love to see but probably won't be able to. The cast has some impressive names but, more importantly, Anne-Marie Duff apparently makes a convincing Joan (despite the 'Chair Thing' she appears to do - you can see it in the clip if you follow the link above). Inevitably, and probably quite properly, parallels are drawn in related essays and reviews (including those in the official programme) between martyrdom and terrorism - I'm not sure whether that is pointless or important.

[On the subject of stages and shows, it seems the British Muesum's Chinese Terracotta Army exhibition has already sold 30,000 advance tickets - if you want to go, book now!]

I've ordered Alison Weir's well-reviewed book about Edward II's formidable wife, Isabella, and intend to read it on the train to and from Cambridge next week - I'm going up to get some serious work done (it has to happen some time, wonderful though this freelance education is), and it should be some good light(ish) reading, but just related enough to what I should be doing to assuage the guilt necessarily concomitant to prescribed reading lists - victory!

Extension

2007-08-04T22:48:00.000+01:00

Is it just me, or does the idea of carting dead animals infected with Foot 'n' Mouth Disease across the country - from their farms in Surrey to the incineration point in Somerset - seem counterintuitive? It's not the most instinctive way to control the spread of a virus! I'm sure they know what they're doing, it just seems a little odd. As does the irony that the outbreak possibly derives from the Pirbright laboratories, in which scientists develop vaccines for such diseases. Ooops. Their little motto is painfully wrong at the moment, too - "Good science, Useful science"...ahem, Deadly Science...
If it were seven years since the last outbreak I'd go on about Biblical pestilence again, but it was only six so I won't. (I don't really think it's a plague sent by God - though what do I know? - but as I briefly mentioned yesterday that's what I was reading about. Tangential point of interest: in Leviticus 14:44, simple mildew is described as "fretting leprosy", so if there's any green mould climbing your walls your house has a plague. I like the idea of building surveyors looking for brick-leprosy instead of damp rot, there's something as dramatic as house prices about it).

********************
And the Education rant of the day. The front page of today's Telegraph finally reports what we knew was on its way, the changing (again) of the A Level system. The fundamentals of what's being said are: the current system doesn't stretch the brightest students; new-style exams will cover 4 units instead of the current 6 (more depth, less breadth); an A* grade will be introduced for results above 90%; students will be expected to complete an 'extended project' (like in the International Baccalaureate). There is more to the new system than simply this, but it gets complicated (and detailed) very quickly, so I'll keep it at this for now. These changes are set to come in from 2008.
Much of what's being done is okay, or at least it's well-intentioned (often just the best of a bad job, though), and of course there is no perfect system for everybody - particularly not in a culture obsessed with everybody achieving according to the same standards. (1) They are right in saying that the system as is doesn't stretch the brightest students, and at the moment they are left to challenge themselves or Lady Luck finds them a fantastic teacher/mentor who prevents them from going off the rails with boredom and introduces them to new ideas. (2) Although the intention is to encourage greater depth in doing just 4 units, I suspect that by studying fewer subjects there will be far less accessible cross-referencing, which will ultimately lead to anaemic thinking and examination responses. The consequence will be, I think, increasingly narrow-minded, bored and unaware students. (3) The introduction of an 'A*' we've seen before, and it's an integral part of the GCSE system now. I'd argue for harsher marking and an upping of expectations, rather than the weak filtering that the A* will cause. Stop pussy-footing around the issue and pretending that everyone should be allowed to get A's and above. Make A's more difficult to achieve.

Finally, (4) the International Bacalaureate-like 'extended project', which is where I start gnashing my teeth. Instead of sliding along trying not to look like they're aware of the IB, why don't the Educationy governmenty people just introduce the IB into our mainstream schools? If that sounds like a wild idea to you, get a life. It seems like an incredibly straightforward option, and I have no idea why people aren't taking it. Maybe the same mindset as holding onto the Pound Sterling, though with little historical interest nor economic problems. The A Level system is a broken cobbled-together mishmash of diktat after diktat, respected by few and struggled against by hundreds of thousands of students every year. It is a mess, and unfixable without major alterations - alterations policy-makers are not willing, or not able, to effect. So it's broke, and we can't fix it. The IB, on the other hand, is continuing to have great success and is well-respected across the globe, and schools in Britain are increasingly adopting it as an alternative - or sole - curriculum. It's really good. It's not perfect, but it works. It challenges the most talented students, a fact indicated by the offers Oxford and Cambridge give IB students every year: marked out ouf 45, the standard offer from these two universities is between 38 and 42 points, with the Higher Level subjects requiring between 7,6,6 and 7,7,7. Compare this to A Level offers, which are almost always AAA or more.

The IB covers a broader range of subjects in greater depth. It doesn't sacrifice breadth for hoped-for 'depth' (cf: imminent changes in A Level system) - they study more. It's challenging for the most able students; respected and recognised world-wide; the government wouldn't be able to embarrassedly fix results because our examinations scripts would be sent all over the place for marking. It would require teachers to completely revamp their syllabuses and methods, but if the sweeping changes claimed by this 'new' system are really that sweeping then teachers are going to have a hellish settling-down period anyway, so why not go the whole hog with a system that has been tried and tested? They'd have far more fun teaching it. From what I've seen of IB students, they are quite simply better educated - that to me screams volumes, and it's not just because they all seem to have gone to private schools of one kind or another.

IB, please, Education Balls.

(I did A Levels, by the way).

Babel

2007-08-03T21:06:00.000+01:00

Radio 4 was on in the background this afternoon, as it is whenever I'm trying to pretend that I'm not doing a really boring task (though I'm not yet so old that I listen to the Archers - when I hear that theme tune the 'OFF' knob gets turned. Fiercely). There was a little piece on PM ('Tough on news, tough on the causes of news'...) which caught my ears. It was about learning languages at school (which is no longer compulsory, though I'm willing to bet that will change in the next few years); apparently the vast majority of people remember an average of just 7 words from these lessons. I'm not sure after how long away from the classroom these statistics were gathered, whether a year or a decade, but it seems a bit pants.

To see how I fared, I drew up a vocab list from memory in the three languages I studied at skool four to six years ago (French, German & Latin). German wasn't bad - 120 words (mostly nouns); French was more embarrassing with just under 60 (mostly verbs); Latin was...worse. That doesn't translate to a working reading knowledge of the languages, though - I'm better at translating Latin than either of the others (and still use it, increasingly - though need to be far more competent than I am. Something to work on), and I can read French more proficiently than German (LJJ can do my translation!). Weirdly, my grammatical understanding is fine in all three languages. So what's more important, being able to conjure words from nowhere, or being able to understand them when they're presented? I'd like to see the results of a test done to discover how many words people understand, as well as simply recall.

Wanted to write more about ML learning and teaching, but the neighbouring football club has some VERY LOUD (and dire) MUSIC playing, and it's proving too taxing to think in English let alone any other language!

****************
On a completely different subject, I'm listening to Newsnight at the moment and have learnt there's been an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in Surrey (just the one farm at the moment). I feel sorry for Gordon Brown, who has only just gone on holiday with his family - he has to come back because of some cows, bless him. Wonder where the virus came from this time? After spending a chunk of the day reading about Biblical pestilence, this is a bit weird.

Codswallop (ii)

2007-08-03T10:39:00.000+01:00

For a more eloquent comment on the TV 'issues' at the moment, take a look at today's blog of ever-aware Prof. Mary Beard. She makes the point far better than I did, obviously!

Antiquity

2007-08-02T20:40:00.000+01:00

There was an article in the Telegraph Magazine last Saturday that got me excited - the Terracotta Army is coming to London! Well, maybe not all the thousands of figures, but some. The British Museum is hosting the exhibition, The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army , for several months so there's plenty of time for us to go and see it...several times, perhaps...
(13th September -- 6th April)

On the subject of up-coming exhibitions, there's one on Millais' works at the Tate Britain to look forward to. It's a shame the 'promoting' image is his Mariana painting, though - I can't see it without thinking of the poem to which it is a tribute. Tennyson's text was entirely ruined for me by an awful rendition experienced in a lecture in 2005 - the (slightly varying) refrain of:

She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!

is haunting now, and in all the wrong ways. Thanks go to Mr Lecturing Man, not.
Otherwise, so long as no-one recites that poem at the exhibition, it promises to be a good one.
(26th September -- 13th January)

One I'd recommend for its variety is the Work, Rest & Play exhibit at the National Gallery. I saw this one when it was in Bristol, and it was a curious collection. Something for everyone and quite a funky subject, really. I hope they put it all in a single lot of rooms, though - in Bristol it was housed all over the place, and I missed a bit of it.
(On till 14th October)

Hooray for living somewhere within easy reach of London again! Three cheers for that.

Codswallop (i)

2007-08-01T23:23:00.000+01:00

All this fuss about TV deceiving its viewers - most recently the ITV Alzheimer's documentary, and before that Blue Peter; A Year With the Queen; Gordon Ramsay's fish non-catching incident, and Bear Grylls' hotel adventures. There have been others.

But I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Well, I do, but I don't understand why it's happening now. We've been fed utter rubbish by the multifarious media for...for all time, really. From the 'best' news-givers to trashy tevelision we're fed lies, half-truths, one-sides and meaningless noises, so why start kicking up about it now? And why not about more important things like the utter bollocks that certain politicians get away with spouting? Maybe it's a good and pointed thing, we're beginning to comment on things like integrity, honesty and fairness...but whether this is extended to include the stuff that really matters remains to be seen - it is, however, a start; better than nowt.

Counterpoint

2007-07-31T21:46:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I wrote briefly about Karl Jenkins' Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary and The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, and I woke up this morning with the instrumental and percussive bit from the very beginning of Armed Man going round in my head. Tum ti tum tum titty tum, tum ti tum tum...(repeat ad nauseam, then stick it in the last movement sped up and with a single semitone's difference on one note, et voila! there is difference!). It has to be said that each of Jenkins' motifs in this piece are probably repeated four times more than is strictly necessary, which sometimes means that a change is a huge relief, rather than a natural or surprising progression. That's a shame because this music shouldn't be allowed to get boring, it's too good.

In a curious but desperate bid to get these Ohrwurms to cut it out for a while, I've been listening to his Requiem on and off all day. Never heard it before, not sure why. There are elements of it I don't find interesting - the bits that sound like Enya, for a start - and it's a bit 'bitty', unlike Armed Man which, though the movements contrast, hangs together convincingly. What I do like about this Requiem, though, is - again, like with Songs of Sanctuary - the merging of musical and lyrical traditions from all over the place. Jenkins is a listener as well as a writer and he refreshingly listens to anything and everything, hooray. Particularly effective is the interspersal of Japanese haikus amongst the traditional Latin lyrics of the Mass; this is more striking in textual than harmonic form, because the prominance of melodic lines can too often negate words and syntax (in all music, not just this). The contrast is beautiful, and the haikus add helium to the heaviness of the classical liturgy. I'm not going to get away without examples.

Take this, the Confutatis (a staple part of the Requiem progression, cf: Mozart, Dvorak, Verdi...) reads thus:

Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictis.
Oro supplex et acclinis, cor contritum quasi cinis: gere curam mei finis.
(When the damned are cast away and consigned to the searing flames, call me to be with the blessed. Bowed down in supplication I be to Thee, my heart as though ground to ashes: help me in my final hour).

Lots of that gets stodgy, linguistically and thematically. So immediately after this Jenkins inserts a haiku by Issho (I won't bother with the Japanese, though the helpfully-supplied English translation in the sleeve notes doesn't adhere to the haiku structure):

From deep in my heart
how beautiful are
the snowclouds in the west.

Isn't that great? And another. The Lacrimosa, again a staple part of Requiems of all time (mistyped "staple" as "stale" then, which also works) -

Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla judicandus homo reus: huic ergo parce, Deus.
Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.
Amen.
(On this day full of tears, when from the ashes arises guilty man to be judged: oh Lord, have mercy upon him. Gentle Lord Jesus, Grant them rest. Amen) -

is followed by a haiku by Hokusai:

Now as a spirit,
I shall roam
the summer fields.

There are five of the little Japanese nuggets in all. The contrast between the inexpressible bigness of the Mass subjects and the little chinks of moment in the haikus is an innovative experiment, and I like it. I'm not so convinced that elements of the composition work melodically (Rutter's Requiem is a more successful composition, I think), but these textual details are something always worth noting with Jenkins - he cares about what is being said, and in what way, and to whom. Take Armed Man for another instance. Within it lies several languages (French, Arabic, Greek, Latin and English) and a richness of lyric taken from the Bible, Rudyard Kipling, Dryden, Swift, the Mahabharata, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and Tennyson's In Memoriam. So in the middle of scripture and Islamic calls to prayer, we have Lancelot and Guinevere chatting to each other! This is why I like Jenkins, because he listens to what other people have said, and he thinks it matters to the world.

Incongruities

2007-07-30T22:00:00.000+01:00

Travelling activities, and other present participles.

1) Listening to Mozart's Requiem (find it here) very loudly in a dingy, eerily deserted, bomb-threatened railway station miles from where I wanted to be on Friday evening. Weird experience. It was entirely coincidental, but the soundtrack of the armed policemen doing their 'thing' was the Lacrimosa - if you know it, you'll know why I wanted the gun-wielding men to move in slow motion. It would have worked quite well, as a film edit. Thanks ABP & CEH for coming to rescue me from the station, at no little inconvenience to themselves!

2) Reading Twain's Adam and Eve on the train. It would have been the right length for the journey, but the three hours stuck in aforementioned station messed up the timing. It's published in a few different forms, but I was reading this one. I do like this wee piece, particularly the first couple of sections - as quiet, irreverent but loving observation, it's something fun and real. Do take a look, it is touching and very short. Funny what can be done with three chapters of Genesis, and the comparison of the way other people treat the same subject isn't a waste of time - Twain versus Milton, anyone?

3) Reading Simon Armitage's translation/rendering of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on the return journey. This is a brilliant rendition of an already brilliant poem. Just like Heaney and his Beowulf, Armitage strikes a wonderful balance between the feel of the original text and his own distinctive poetic voice. His use of language to allow images is as gleeful as the source, and reading this is an easy pleasure. This text is a viable alternative Christmas story, if you get fed up of A Christmas Carol, The Night Before Christmas and Handel's Messiah.

4) Listening to Karl Jenkins' Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary whilst unpacking, washing up and generally being domestic. Jenkins is often regarded as something of a 'chocolate box' composer, and I have some sympathy with that (having sung and played some of his work, repeatedly); but this is a CD worth listening to. It's a fusion (no, don't run away from that word) of 'classical' western music forms (structures), and 'ethnic' (primarily African) harmony and vocal technique. It's very listenable to, which I suspect is why lots of classical music snobs object to it. It's peaceful (a good start, given the title!), but not soporific. Something very different is his The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace - best heard live, in a BIG enclosed building like a cathedral, this is moving and pertinent and awful and hopeful. It has chocolate box moments, but I think it's one of the most important pieces of music written in our time. If there's a big version of it going on in a cathedral (or similar) near you, don't miss the opportunity.

5) Leaving a sunflower in a vase after it should really be there. There was a sunflower on my desk last week, making me smile, and I left it there over the weekend. It has died (predictably), but a curious thing has happened to its stem: all the fibrous exterior has loosened so it's like a big brush, and there's a gooey gelatinous core that's slowly dissolving away. No idea what it is, or why it's happened (other than water over-saturation, which is obvious enough), but it's not something I've seen before!

Triumph!

2007-07-26T23:33:00.000+01:00

Excellent, I've just worked out how to make weirdly-formatted posts sort themselves out! Well, it's only taken a month! (And it did take me 20 minutes of fiddling to figure it - but no more!)

Begetting

2007-07-26T22:19:00.001+01:00

"Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim."

And so on. Today, for no sane reason, I've been cobbling together the family trees in Genesis; or family tree, really, as Adam'n'Eve are so traceable. As mum very helpfully asked, "Hasn't someone done all that already? Isn't it on the Internet?"...well, yes, they have and yes it probably is, but that's not really the point. The real reason I decided to spend hours doing it is because I realised the names of Someone who begat Someone who begat Someone who married Someonette, daughter of Someone brother of Reginald, just weren't sinking in. The words were being read, but their meaning/relationships weren't registering. A bit like George Bush reading "And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us" (if you're going to pray it, at least pretend to mean it). What better way to really read something than record its every detail? So I set to with a big bit of paper, and the cat chasing my pen. There are a lot of names in Genesis (which is why it took hours!).

As with everything worth reading, the closer you look the more there is to see. One thing, when you really read the names properly (rather than scanning over them as "As..z" and "Tog..ah" - and I don't believe I'm the only one who cheats with the name-reading), the verse becomes less litany more poetry. It's well-established that the King James is good writing, but it's quite another thing to find out why - and it's not enough just to be told, I gotta figure it out. Today is the first time I've not found the repetition tedious, it's the first time I've read every letter of every name; and no matter how many times I've read Genesis before, this might as well have been the first time. At last! The names of the earliest period are great. Classrooms now might be full of Lukes, Matthews, Johns, Marks and Jameses (and the occasional Darth Vader or Addidas) but, really, the Old Testament names are the best, aren't they? Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Caphtorim and Arphaxad! Or, for the inner-city comp feel perhaps Uz, Huz, Buz (I'm not making these up!), Hul, Mash and Nimrod.

It's impossible to draw a neat family tree when people are marrying their brothers' daughters and 'knowing' their wives' handmaids, though, so the big piece of paper has a bunch of lines and scribbles all over it probably only legible to me (though where the cat intervened even I can't make too much sense of it). Tomorrow will be typing-up day, before I forget what goes where. Weekend away with the girls starts tomorrow, and I'll be taking Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve to re-read on the train - it's about the right length for the journey and topical.

The Interfering Cat, once he'd had enough and flopped:

Loitering

2007-07-25T20:05:00.000+01:00

Though being away from University does suck quite a lot, one thing has made all these months entirely worth it - the space and time to re-read. Of course I'm looking forward to going back (9 weeks and 3 days, though I'm not counting...), but being able to read and re-read has been a luxury for which I'm thankful - Tripos seems to give no quarter, normally. People don't usually believe me when they find out the incalculably vast majority of my 'Literature' reading has been done in the last two years (since starting my course), but it's true - I read fiction until I was about 13, and then read mainly Philosophy, History and Politics, as well as Biology and Physics (lots of Physics) until my university interviews loomed four years later, which point seemed timely to start reading fiction again. (In case you're confused, English wasn't quite my intended career path until just before the university applications had to be finished). I'm not at all bothered by this fact, though it's very often apparent that I'm not as well read as most other Englings, because the historical/political/philosophical background always comes in handy. But it's a fact nevertheless.

With Tripos put aside for a while, then, reading could commence. All that funky sideways stuff that comes up in the course of the Papers but which never gets read because there just isn't time. Making up for lost time. I'm helped and hindered by an insatiable curiosity, with which I got tangled in Frontispiece (June). I've just been able to read anything and everything, and for once really follow up any 'Further Reading' recommendations in the backs of books. It's exciting, really. Exciting and infuriating (despite having unintended time, there still isn't enough of it to get through everything. Obviously). So I've been able to re-read the fairytales I should have been read when I was wee (I never was read them, but got round to doing it myself a few years later - but it means that Cinderella and Ugly Duckling and their ilk aren't part of my unconscious. That may well be for the better - I'm not scared of midnight, nor hopeful about ugliness); and I've been able to read more Beckett. Much more Rushdie and Eco, at last. And lots of the things so many people think are fundamental (and they are, in a way, but they weren't my building-blocks), like the Just So Stories, which I'm sure are much more interesting when read after Conrad, rather than when 6 years old - or at least that's my excuse, now. There have been some new discoveries, too: Auden and Dryden, amongst others. Reading (and the all-important re-reading) more texts by already-discovered and loved authors, in such abundance, is an unexpected treat I won't soon forget.

This might sound like I'm saying goodbye to that luxury, and I suppose in a way I am as Tripos is beginning to get its hooks back into me, and there's a dissertation that needs writing and - more pressingly - reading for. I love Tripos: without it I wouldn't have had such a want to read and read and read; but space away from it has somehow brought it, and what it stands for, closer.

Here seems as good a place as any to list some texts. These are my life-changers so far (though most good books have a very real impact, these have somehow significantly changed my thinking rather than just adding to it). If you don't like lists, look away now - I just feel like writing one! In no particular order:

A Room of One's Own, Woolf -- I've read this enough that now I just open it and read it whenever I'm restless or frustrated. It's calming and motivating, and really very funny. I love it for my being able to get something new from it every time. Every Newnhamite should be given a copy of it when they join the College. Maybe I'll start that tradition...
Paradise Lost, Milton -- It's beautiful, multi-dimensional, infinitely contentious and my 'Desert Island Book'. I can't get over how near-perfect the poetry is, and how vital almost every word. First read it in 6th Form, and it's another of those I can always open and enjoy.
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford -- Encountered this, as a two-page extract, in a 1st yr class. I was too curious to let it lie, so read it and againandagainandagain...This wonderful writer is now the subject of my dissertation, but I really need to get past the "This dude does dead good" stage of the argument!
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson -- The themes of this mattered first, and it was only later I realised how well the thing is written. This one was read when I was about 12, and it couldn't have been better timed. It was lent to me by someone who knew me better than I did, then.
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie -- The beginning of my interest in Literature, rather than just books. It's almost certainly this that got me doing English at Newnham, so I'm all for the man's Knighthood.
The Qur'an -- I read this for the first time a couple of months ago. It'll stay with me. Though I wish I could read Arabic...
The Henrys (IV, V & VI), Shakespeare -- Pre-University I was scared of what Shakey stood for, and avoided him. Faced with a whole term of his writing in 2006 I decided to just jump right in with the plays that frightened me most and see what happened, and I fell in love. These plays are what did it for me.
Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard --The beginning of a new world, when I was 13.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot -- I've always struggled with poetry; I love taking it apart and seeing how it works, but I don't often feel it. This is probably the first poem that grabbed something sinewy inside me and pulled until I had to give in.

Good books leave themselves in you somehow. Some deposit themselves as whispers of quotations that catch you unawares (like J. Alfred Prufrock); others as tableaus stuck in monochrome (The Handmaid's Tale, particularly, did this. I re-read it yesterday and re-visited all the old pictures, amending some too). Some of them niggle like an Ohrwurm, like this irritating song by 'Peter, Bjorn & John' (I challenge you to listen to it all the way through and then not whistle it...) - Fear and Trembling did this to me. Others draw you back to them with an invisible piece of thread they tied round you at first reading - Room of One's Own always tempts me from the bookshelf. Known books never disappoint, never betray; they change, as we do, but that's okay, that's layering rather than abandonment.

Implete

2007-07-24T12:16:00.000+01:00

Call this a cop-out, if you like, but I'll defend it.

Not going to write anything of my own today, much, but am going to link to Jeanette Winterson's homepage. Go and read her Column; the whole thing, if you've lots of time, or just dib in and out and in again. I re-(re-re-)read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit yesterday, and remembered why I've always loved Winterson's writing. Just because it is. It's new, always, and it's funny - really funny, the kind that stays with you for its truthful observation. After the recent Harry Potter doings, reading genuinely fantastic LITERATURE (all capitalized, all!) like this is like eating vegetables I've grown myself, instead of unidentifiable pre-packaged gunge. Back to real books for a while now. Though the enjoyment of reading something easy and readable and storyful after battling with Serious Things was nice, the relief of going back to that struggle is tremendous. Back at home. It's like breathing again, is reading something enduring.

There's a lot of her writing on the website - articles as well as the column. Go read. And her books. And then again.

Schemes

2007-07-23T13:53:00.000+01:00

There are loads of organisations and initiatives around at the moment, set up to encourage everyone to simultaneously read the same book, or from a set list. It's a peculiar phenomenon, and I'm not really sure what to think. Maybe more on that another time.

At the beginning of this year the Small Island Read took place. As part of the commemorative events taking place marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, it's predictable that the allocated book will have something to do with Black/White relations - and it does. The Black/White tangle is looked at in a refreshingly sideways way, though, which was a nice discovery; it would have been so easy to shove something like To Kill a Mockingbird in people's faces or, I don't know, Alice Walker (two birds, one stone - Black America and women - score). But the book chosen was Small Island by Andrea Levy.

Small Island follows four people - two black, two white - through a part of their lives. Based around the Second World War, the narrative is chronologically mixed and - because coincidence and connections are inevitable - parts of each characters' stories are told by other characters. It's simple, but quite clever. I was expecting a rehash of the ol' Black-Americans-struggling-against-White-Americans tale which, though important, has been done. Levy, though, writes about something different: she takes on the two islands of Jamaica and Britain (well, England). Only small sections of the book involve Americans, for which I'm thankful. Between the four primary characters we catch glimpses of Jamaican upbringing, England's Home Front, British involvement in India, and the effect of a steady influx of 'foreigners' into England. It's a new twist on the story it's so easy to think we know all about, and a good one. The writing is mostly fresh and original, and when it does get stodgy or predictable Levy is quick to move it on. She leaves quite a lot unwritten (particularly emotions, motives and thoughts), and whereas in some books this just makes the characters flat and unconvincing, Levy says enough to keep them alive - it's up to us to try to work them out, which suits me fine; that is, the right things are left unsaid. The ending is too neatly tied, and for that reason (I think) I found the final fifth of the book irritating - there was too much striving for a rounded end, too many resolutions and unlikely changes of heart. But so few books have fantastic endings that it hardly matters much to the whole. The book is good, surprising, sufficiently challenging and also pertinent. If you can do a Jamaican accent in your head (or aloud), all the better!

Surprises

2007-07-22T11:08:00.000+01:00

NO plot-spoilers in this blog.

The new Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows is surprising. Not so much the plot, which is what I've loved Rowling for up till now, but the writing itself. Okay, so the details of the plot are complicated and it takes some concentration to figure out what on earth's going on; but more excitingly, the way the plot is conveyed is completely different to the other books. It's densely packed, there aren't all that many superfluous clauses, and there is subtlety. It's only just over 600 pages long, but took me a good 12 hours to read (compare that to the almost-800 page 5th book, which took about 7 hours). For the first time, I think, Rowling demanded concentration and effort on the part of the reader, and it was such a better book for that - hooray! Not going so far as to say it's 'literary', it's not; but as a first toe-dip into reading tricky books, it's got something. I'm also emotionally drained having got through it. Which is probably a bit sad, but indicative - not every book can do that.

She uses a lot of ellipses, and virtually no semi-colons (I should learn from that latter). Ellipses are funny things. I use them a lot, because I'm lazy. The time for elliptical experiment has gone (cf: Ulysses and, say, Ford Madox Ford's Parades End), and it's generally it's my feeling that they shouldn't be used too much, unless they are doing something other than simply filling a space where the writer should in fact be writing words (that's how I use them, which is Bad). So Rowling uses too many ellipses, she uses them as much as Ford, but with a lesser effect. A small problem in a really good book, though. In Deathly Hallows, Rowling has demonstrated not just that she's a fantastic story-teller with an incredible imagination (that's been proved before), but that she is capable of writing concisely, delicately and densely to say her stuff. A good note to end on.

Apparently around half of Bloomsbury's revenue is Potter-related (according to the Guardian) - what on earth are they going to do in the coming years? Some investment in another type of book would be welcome - come on Bloomsbury, put some of your millions into 'unpopular' writers and make them popular.

Cartography

2007-07-20T21:34:00.000+01:00

I was born in 28, brought up in 154, go to university in 209, and my last holiday was in 160. What? They're the reference numbers of Ordnance Survey maps, one of my favourite set of objects in the world. Maps are beautiful. Staring at them for ages; studying their contours and colours; seeing the real geography in my mind from the information on the flat page; planning walking, running or cycling routes; finding perfect picnic spots. A good map is the world in miniature and symbols, and getting lost in them is a perfect way to forget reality for a while.

Most of my Cambridge-based exploring so far has been deliberately accidental: I've set off, on foot or bike, and just moved around the area. Almost always ending up happily lost, and quite honestly I never know where I've been. It doesn't matter, really. But it's annoying when I find something nice but can't go back there because "There" doesn't have a name or direction. Worse, I'm directionally useless in cities and towns. Put me in a wood or on a hill and I'm normally fine: towns are a mystery. Deciding enough was enough and that next year will involve Proper Exploration, buying the OS map for the Cambridge area seemed a good plan. Anyone who regularly uses maps, though, will know that this was a stupid thing to set out to do. In the OS world, there is rarely a single map for somewhere - with the same regularity as falling toast landing butter-side down, the place you're interested in exploring (from) is on the edge of a map. And hwaet! this venture landed butter-side down. Exploring the Cambridge surroundings requires three maps - three! That's two more than is convenient! Going to Ely needs maps 209 and 226; same goes for Newmarket and Mildenhall. Huntingdon requires 225. How annoying is that?

Still, I suppose it means more lovely maps to look at. Not that Cambridge affords the most aesthetic interest, given there are no hills...

Conkers

2007-07-19T19:38:00.000+01:00

Ed Balls is continuing to impress me. And I haven't yet learnt not to be sarcastic.
Actually, in fairness to the poor bloke, it's probably just that he's now officially a Useless Politician dealing with something with which he has little experience, forced to answer fantastically inane questions posed by ever more ludicrous media representatives. So despite all the inevitable words against "him" that I'll write (and say), I do feel sorry for the chap and am aware it's not all his fault, and that there is lots of good work going on, unreported, somewhere. But he has such a good name to ridicule...so unto the breach.

Balls has recently demonstrated his suitability for his post (as Minister for Children, Skools & Families) by stating that childhood should be a "time for learning and exploring" - profound and groundbreaking stuff. Remember that this man is mainly qualified for his post because he is "father of three" (this fact crops up every time his credentials are needed. Ruth Kelly has more kids - I think that means she was a better Minister, or something). He goes further and demonstrates a naivety that would be laughable if it weren't tragic: "My assumption," he says, "is that if it snows, kids go out and build snowmen and have snowball fights, that in October kids go out and play with conkers, that they play with marbles". Okay, he's probably right with the snow; conkers would be on the agenda if schools allowed kids to play with them (many don't) - but marbles?! When was the last time a (normal) child played with marbles? Balls is supposed to be one of the 'young and in-touch' members of government, not one who reminisces about childhood games of marbles.

Although Balls says some silly things, the context from which the above is taken is less cause for despair. Essentially he is calling for an end to pampered, pandered and stifled children, and a return to fun, less structured, rough-and-tumble childhood (of a kind that involves neither knives nor drugs). One of the results of our compensation culture is the banning of things like conkers, snowball fights and violent tag (well, just tag, but we all know it turns violent. The only time I've been punched properly in the face was in a primary school game - and the assailant wasn't even a Horrid Smelly Boy. There was gushing blood. What larks!). This has led to the most boring playgrounds ever, and Balls is now joining groups such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (a comic misnomer) in calling for a return of common sense and fun. Between them there's an effort to get children outside, running about and - probably, hopefully - breaking a few bones doing exciting things like climbing trees; which is something I very much believe is good. Clearly my (hypothetical) children are going to have a great time - "There you go, kids, there's a field. Go and kick each other around for a bit. Don't be late for tea!"

What made me think about this 'issue', though, aside from the contrasting common sense and utter lunacy involved on either side of the argument (insofar as there is one), is the fact the government doesn't seem to be talking to itself. As ever. In May (*before Balls was in his post*, I hasten to add) there were reports of the newest shiny government Academy in Peterborough (still under construction, I think), which is being built without a playground. It's difficult to get a genuine idea of what's really going on, as all media coverage of it was incredibly one-sided (anti-academy, obviously), and I really suspect that, even more so than usual, we were not getting the full story. That makes the situation impossible to properly evaluate. The government thinking that a school without a playground was a good idea, however, is a cause for concern. Point of info: they are intending no substantial break-times, and a 30-minute lunch break; school hours would be 8.45am till after 4pm (for older pupils). The arguments put forward for why this model is preferable seem to run thus:

1) 2,200 pupils (11-18) would be uncontrollable running around at break times & lunch.
2) Only "organised physical activity" is worthwhile, so any running & playing will take place in designated Physical Education lessons.
3) "Research has shown that if children concentrate on lessons throughout the day, then their work improves." (So no substantial breaks)
4) "Pupils won't need to let off steam because they will not be bored."
5) "We have taken away an uncontrollable space to prevent bullying and truancy."
6) The intention is to treat pupils as responsible 'employees' - and there's no playtime for bankers or lawyers...

These arguments are untenable and completely dismissible. Why?

1) 2,200 pupils might be a lot, but it's not substantially huger than other big schools that manage quite well. Presumably with the necessary increase of staff (and with the vast sums of money these academies apparently have at their disposal), there will be enough people around to control the rampaging teenagers. Anyone who has stepped into a school recently (one that's not been primed for The Inspectors or Important Visitors, that is!) will know that the vast majority of 11-18 yr olds don't run around. A few do. But most mill about, sit in favourite corners, retreat to their classrooms and eat sandwiches, do homework that should have been handed in yesterday, go to detention, stand outside the gates having a fag, go to orchestral rehearsals or clubs...
"So they don't need playgrounds after all!", you might cry - well, yes, they do. For those times when the teenagers stop putting on a strop show and just want to be daft - there's a lot of that in skools (when staff aren't looking). So, there will not be an uncontrollable rabble rioting around the grounds.

2) Everyone knows that designated P.E. lessons only exist to be skived, for half the pupils. For very few they might provide access to sport they wouldn't otherwise do - this is a minority. For the rest, the sporty ones, P.E. is wholly inadequate and a waste of time; because of curriculum pressures (yep, there's a P.E. curriculum) most of the lessons are spent listening to teachers explain the rules, or practicing underarm throwing or balancing techniques or something useless. Very little running around is done. Those who are that way inclined have to find other time and places to do sport - it doesn't always happen in P.E. lessons. To argue that only the "organised" activities are worthwhile, then, is to raise the question "For whom?". (And, again, anyone who's been near a playground will know that there are plenty of kids organising games at lunchtime, involving tearing round the place and jumping on friends. It works).

3) "Research has shown that if children concentrate on lessons throughout the day, then their work improves." Horrendously, this was said by Dr Alan McMurdo, the principal of the academy. Firstly, well, yes - obviously concentration improves work; we don't need a Doctorate to figure that out. But concentration isn't at its best in a full, unbroken day's work! This is madness. Dr McMurdo doesn't come across as the most brilliant potential principal, as demonstrated (again) by this:

4) "Pupils won't need to let off steam because they will not be bored." This indicates a befuddling lack of awareness of what teenagers are like on the part of McMurdo, and the comment is so insanely off the mark that I can't imagine many people not questioning it. How is a school (it's still a school, no matter what fancy name it has) intending to keep 2,200 pupils from boredom? That's not going to happen, ever. Of course some teachers are fantastic and some lessons riveting - but most aren't, and there aren't many people who can get through a school day without day dreaming at some point. Be realistic, you stupid man! What on earth makes him think that his school and his staff (and his pupils) will be so much better than those in the rest of the country? Barking.

5) "We have taken away an uncontrollable space to prevent bullying and truancy." (Miles Delap, managing the project). Outwardly true. Bullying, however, is not going to stop because the playground has gone - it will simply move; and there are more effective ways of tackling it than just removing the spaces. There will always be a toilet/behind-the-bikesheds equivalent, and although environment plays a part, attitude is more the problem. Toilets and playgrounds do not cause bullying. Truancy, hmm - I'm sure there are other places to play truant than in the playground. I used the library. Most normal kids use somewhere out of the school grounds.

6) School pupils are not employees, and they are not adults. They are not in a business workplace - they are at school. There are differences. Treating (particularly young) kids indiscriminately as adults does not make them adults. And it completely goes against what Balls is now campaigning for: the return of childhood.

Sometimes it feels like the world has gone potty.

To end, from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents stating more profundities, this: "Of course, we don't want exposure to risks where children are likely to die or be permanently injured". I feel safe in the hands of these people.

*******
*Balls quotations and conkers stuff from a Guardian article, 18/07/07
**Academy information was reported in May (link to a Telegraph article, from which quotations were taken). I've not seen anything updating this, though I'll have a search around to see if anyone is making any sense yet.
***Linking to articles on the internet has been an interesting learning curve - though I read all the major broadsheets (and occasionally tabloids) in steady rotation (I don't trust any of them), the Telegraph seems the best to link to. It's got the most searchable database, and more often than not has better pictures. Shame about the political bias, but never mind.

Repetition

2007-07-18T08:08:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately I anticipate that this won't be the last of Harry Potter on this blog, as he's sure to get a mention once the final book is out; but I wanted to post this, a Guardian article by Lezard, who merrily trashes J. K. Rowling's writing. I don't have a problem with what he says about her writing style and lack of subtlety (he makes the point about her discourse markers better than I did in the Preparatory blog the other day) - she isn't literarily inventive, and her books will never be anything more acclaimed than a children's literature phenomenon (aside from the unprecedented media hype, which is a subject in its own right).

What Lezard doesn't say, however, is more irksome: he doesn't mention the fantastic story-telling that is involved in her books. The almost complete world Rowling has created isn't acknowledged, and that, I think, is unfair. What we think of as 'Literature' (note capitalisation...) has its roots in simple story telling. Take the Anglo-Saxon stuff, for example - stories, it's all tales and myths and legends; passed through the oral/aural tradition for yonks before being put into the text forms we know today (Beowulf, Battle of Maldon, Dream of the Rood, amongst them). Not only are they just stories (almost always with a moral point, in one way or another), but they are stories consisting of formulaic phrases, recycled bits put together in different orders. In this light, the repetitious formulas it's possible to find in Rowling's story telling becomes a bit more forgivable. Come on Lezard, lighten up: lie back and enjoy the ride. Or at least stop treating Rowling's writing as if she's claiming to be the next Virginia Woolf - she's not.

Tweetension

2007-07-17T22:13:00.000+01:00

Call this "twee" or "pretension", or what you like, but it plays on my mind a lot --

Henry Ford said: "Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right".

In most situations I almost entirely agree with this (obviously not all. I've tried very hard to fly like Superman - to the extent of wearing my knickers on the outside of my trousers - but it ain't happening. And yes, there are more sensible examples. Work them out). My believing the sentiment above inexplicably annoys lots of people (and no, I do not go around quoting it - it's just a philosophy I follow, so the attitude becomes obvious even if the quotation itself remains hidden). But it seems to make a lot of sense. First off, "I can't do it" is a phrase (and, often, attitude) heard all the time, and it's almost never true - almost always it is a pathetic excuse for either being a lazy sod, or giving up as soon as the going gets slightly difficult. That's annoying. Secondly, as suggested in that last, continually thinking "I can't do it" has an alarming tendency to morph into an actual inability - and that's just destructive.

Of course I'm not ruling out the incomprehensibly massive part that luck has to play in every 'journey to success' (or whatever awful marketing phrase you might choose). But to be twee and pretentious (if you like) again - "The more you practice, the luckier you get". Luck remains, though. The utterance "God willing" is an important one, and whether you call it God's will or luck, it's still there.

Believing you can is definitely not enhanced by other people saying "Of course you can, you'll be fine". Really, it doesn't help. Weird, that. Ending there - busy week, short thoughts.

Wadding

2007-07-16T20:50:00.000+01:00

Two things. Both have been in the papers today.

1) Mad Man swimming at North Pole. That says it all, really. He is insane - who voluntarily throws themselves into unnaturally fluid water (think about it...it's the North Pole and it's less than 0 degrees. The water should be very, very hard)? And then deliberately stays in it for 20 minutes? Am I missing something here?! Anyway, he did grand and lives to, well, probably he'll do something like it again. But I did like his saying this: “It’s a triumph and a tragedy – a triumph that I could swim in such ferocious conditions, but a tragedy that it is now possible to swim at the North Pole.” The possibility that the ice at the Pole could be non-existent in summer by the time I'm middle-aged is frightening. Not cool enough. (I'm sure I'll do a Green Rant on here at some point. Not now, though, you'll be glad to hear).

2) Organ Donation. Our Chief Medical Officer says that organ donation after death should work on an opt-out system (at the moment it's opt-in). I agree. Entirely. I would not be agreeing if the move were towards indiscriminate giving of organs - but so long as the opt-out availability is consistently well advertised, I fully support it. Dying people need organs; dead people have organs that could stop the dying people from becoming dead people. I really don't see much to discuss. (At least the Organ Donor Register now properly exists, rather than relying on carrying a Donor Card and their families being present to agree...). If you are not a donor, and would like to consider it (or, better, sign up!), visit the site here.

Hmm, well, that was a bit of shameless advertising! Ne'er mind.

Minutiae

2007-07-15T23:26:00.000+01:00

This is one of the reasons academia makes me smile. A little clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform (which really just looks like a sparrow has walked all over the wet clay with its pointy feet*) has been hailed as "the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years" [same article as above, but from the Telegraph rather than Times]. The tablet mentions the name of Nabu-sharrusu-ukin, a minor character in the Old Testament (spelled Nebo-Sarsekim, which looks like a different name to me, but what do I know?). Because he was an historical actuality, then, more weight is lent to the entire book of Jeremiah (Chapter 39, if you're interested - though in my King James the name is so differently spelled that it could be quite another person, but I'll take their words for it).

But what makes me smile is that this discovery - this variously-spelt little man on a little piece of clay - is probably going to be the highest point of someone's academic life. Whilst to most of us it just looks like a bit of dried mud with bird-prints. Little things, great minds. Occasional madnesses...

*NB: Image in this link is not of the tablet in the article.

Preparatory

2007-07-14T22:42:00.000+01:00

Indulging the inner child is always fun - and today I've been doing it big time! Well, I've just been reading something that probably better suits my real intellectual level (that is, low). Harry Potter!

There's a bit of a Potter glut at the moment, with the 5th film very recently out and the 7th and final (oh please final!) book out on Saturday. Not that I'm counting the days or anything. Look, there's an excuse, I'm a Potter Child - when the first book, HP & the Philosopher's Stone came out, I was the same age as Harry. That matters. Anyway, it's the 5th book, HP & the Order of the Phoenix I've been galloping through this afternoon, in preparation for seeing the film sometime this week. The films are great but they don't do the books justice, as they tend to leave great gaping holes where Rowling lovingly wrote explanations...it's annoying, so I curb the annoyance by reminding myself of the details pre-film. It's damage limitation.

People often ask me what I think of the Potter books, and it's invariably a slightly awkward conversation. They seem to think that because I study Real Literature (old books 'n' stuff), I will (a) not read 'popular' books or (b) look down on them but read them anyway, frowning and moaning. So the question is almost always asked apologetically, which is a bit sad. And then it's my turn to be trapped - either I say that I don't like the books, in which case I'm an academic snob and not open to anything fun/popular (and dismissing or rubbishing their literary taste into the bargain); or I say I do like them, in which case my studying Literature somehow becomes void and a sham because I can't tell the difference between Shakespeare and Rowling (in their minds). Obviously all this awkwardness and over-thinking is avoided if whoever's asking doesn't know that I study (a) English, (b) at Cambridge - a fact I keep as quiet as possible, so easy conversations do sometimes happen (not often enough, sadly). With the final HP book very much on its way, it seems time to come clean:

I'M CRUMPETTY AND I LIKE *HARRY POTTER*!

Rowling has got a fantastic imagination, and she does great stuff with it. The plot of every one of the books is gripping, and I want to know what happens next. And that last is vital. I'm not reading HP for a Literary buzz; I'm reading it because it involves a great yarn. Good against evil for kids, but with the dark bits left in. It's not patronising, nor moralising, nor stodgy. The writing quality has markedly improved since the 1st book, which is an interesting development to trace in itself - for starters, Rowling finally seems to have got a handle on her discourse markers ("NO!", "roared Harry", " shuffled Ron", "squawked Hermione", "warned Hagrid"...it's calmed down now, thankfully, and an unobtrusive "said" is used more often). Some of the writing can be really powerful, and other bits not so. But the urge to turn the page to see what happens next is huge. She can tell a story. And that's what matters in this kind of book. It will be good to see if she turns her hand to another style post-Potter, and if she carries it off. I hope she does (both) - it would be a shame to be a seven-part one-trick pony.

Have I ordered my copy of the 7th book, HP & the Deathly Hallows? Yep, of course! And I'll spend next weekend locked in my room, away from telephone, internet or annoying fast-reading children who might talk, within my earshot, about what happens at The End. Am I ashamed of this? No. Though, just in case I should be ashamed, I'll confess that I read HP & the Philosopher's Stone in Latin. Less impressively, I tried it in Russian but got about as far as a dolphin in the Sahara. So, onwards, Chapter 1 -

"Dominus et Domina Dursley, qui vivebant in aedibus Gestationis Ligustrorum numero quattuor signatis, non sine superbia dicebant se ratione ordinaria vevendi uti neque se paenitere illius rationis. in toto orbe terrarum vix credas quemquam esse minus deditum rebus novis et arcanis, quod ineptias tales omnino spernebant..."

(Who on earth thought it was a good idea to translate HP "et Philosophi Lapis" into Latin?! Fantastic, and mad!)

Divination

2007-07-13T23:04:00.000+01:00

A divining wooden leg; it twitches and pulls when it finds underground water - funky, eh? It's one of the few constant possessions of Henry Smart, the linchpin of Roddy Doyle's novel, A Star Called Henry - first volume of The Last Roundup. I bought the book months ago from the Oxfam bookshop in Cambridge but didn't get round to reading it until the train journey this last weekend (though I've just finished it in the comfort of home). Doyle's style is very readable. It's not (usually) clunky, and he doesn't push effects too far. He's a master of dialogue and idiosyncratic turn of phrase. He is funny, with a darkly aware edge. He is not too explicit, nor obstructively obscure. Vitally, I think, the characters come through as a much stronger presence than their creator. It's the same in The Woman Who Walked into Doors, a very different but very strong little book.

A Star Called Henry traces the main-man's life from birth through to the end of his teenage years. Narrated by Henry himself (even at birth, which is a bit weird - though somehow it works as Henry possesses a self-knowledge and assurance that's convincing enough for anything to be possible), his story develops alongside the rise of Irish nationalism and the increasing activity of the I.R.A. It helps to know something about Irish history (and geography, to an extent) in order to follow the plot. Henry is one of those people who is involved in everything, but not quite important enough to get the credit for it. He's a vital shadow, invisible but essential. Doyle treads a thin line between historical inaccuracy and plausible happenings, though I think the balance works out because Henry does manage to stay on the right side of obscure. But in that way Doyle gives his very ordinary man extraordinary characteristics and roles. It's good. It's funny, sad, humanitarianly terrifying and literarily engaging. And I come back to the dialogue - Doyle is one of the best speech-writers I've read, because his characters don't say too much (a flaw of so many writers, who put their own words and plots into characters' mouths for too long a time. It becomes unsustainable).

It's tempting to write a bit about the plot because its historical basis is really interesting, but I won't - spoilers are annoying, and reading a good book for pleasure for the first time should, I think, involve surprise and discovery. So read it. I'll seek out the second volume at some point (Oh, Play That Thing), and hopefully will enjoy it as much - given the consistence of Doyle's writing, I see no reason why I won't. There was a stretch of about 30 pages towards the end of the book where the subject, writing style (yes, I mean syntax) and even the words came together in an unfortunate predictable clump; but that was it - and 30 duff pages out of over 300 really isn't a bad tally (and they're all together, so it's over fast!). I'm not sure why that happened (though it's easy to see how it did). I think one of the reasons I like his writing is because he deals with difficult topics and people whilst neither making them trite nor too heavy; he is a fantastic writer, good enough to get lost in the first time and to be gainfully revisited, but not so challenging as to be too-slow progress. S. Clayton Moore claims that this is "not a beach read", but I beg to differ - I think it's a perfect beach read, for those who like their books, and aren't so fond of beaches.

Illumination

2007-07-12T22:13:00.000+01:00

A few people who have made the mistake of asking what I've been doing in the last few weeks will know I've been reading various religious texts in an attempt to plug an enormous knowledge gap. My earlier blog refers to part of an experiment concerning looking at condensations of the texts - it wasn't really concluded, because my reading certainly hasn't been; but essentially there are insurmountable disadvantages to trying to shortcut the Real Thing, so I'm just sticking to the translations of the main texts. Anyway, apart from provoking extreme annoyance because I can't even attempt to read anything that isn't in English, Anglo-Saxon or Latin (yeah, useful languages...), it's proving to be a really fun little (HUGE!) project. So, when I found out that the British Library's major exhibition at the moment is Sacred (not "scared" as my secret dyslexic self tried to pretend), I jumped at the chance to go and have a look (somewhat to the detriment of the planned socialising - apologies to EH & LVW!).

There is too much to say to get it all down here without using up more than my fair share of the web-waves. Just a few notes, then, of things I found interesting or surprising or delightful. Where possible, links are provided so you can get a bit of a look at what I'm talking about; but I really recommend you go and visit if you can. Entrance is free, and it's on until 23rd September. If you can't go, the website (linked above) is an extremely good taster, with high-resolution images of lots of the texts - though there's nothing like seeing them for real. (If you're very keen but still can't get there, the book is well worth getting).

In no particular order:

1) Anyone who has chatted to me about my academic interests, if I thought they really wanted to hear what I like doing (which if I'm honest isn't often), will know that the period between 1450 and 1700 is where I'm happiest. Conveniently this essentially covers English Bible history (we'll ignore the Anglo-Saxons for now) - from Tyndale's first English New Testament in the early 16th century, through the Great and Geneva Bibles, to the King James Authorized. More than averagely enthusiastic about these things...
It was great to see, therefore, a copy of the Tyndale text. Hadn't realised it, but there are apparently only three known copies surviving. It's a straightforwardly lovely object. So vital historically, this one has an almost academically sentimental value for me. Similarly,

2) The Great Bible (or [Thomas] Cromwell's Bible). Again, the historical milieu (and its literary consequences) is 'my thing'. But something made me laugh: of importance because of its use of the vernacular, the title page depicts the monarch (Henry VIII - top centre) giving English Bibles to his subjects. The texts he's handing them, though, are inscribed with the words: "VERBUM DEI". Whoops!

3) Though I've seen it in modern texts (indeed, employed it myself in doodles), I hadn't realised that micography was something very specifically Jewish. Plundering the Sacred exhibition, here, for a definition: "the weaving of minute lettering into abstract, geometric and figurative designs." It looks amazing - bet the scribe got hand cramp (or maybe he was only a few inches high and used a correspondingly tiny nib).

4) Whenever looking at incredible collections like this, I often wonder what this era is going to leave future historians in terms of the written language. So much correspondence and publishing is done online that it's likely that this so-called Age of Communication is going to leave little material in its wake. Unlike letters of important figures past, emails aren't going to be found in dusty attics centuries later. It was good to see a contemporary parchment manuscript in the exhibition, then! The Saint John's Bible is big, very big; and the two very plain pages on display at the British Library made me wonder for a moment what the point was - why are we trying to copy a style belonging to centuries ago? But looking at the website linked above it became much clearer - all the illustrations and illuminations are, though adhering to old principles, strikingly modern in design. It looks good, and it looks relevant. It's also very pretty! Take a look.

5) There were a fair few Biblical picture books on display, which made me smile. The book really does have the most fantastic set of stories, and it's easy to forget that when people start preaching Hell and Damnation. As I said in the earlier blog, one of the best ways to experience the Bible is, I think, to get hold of a good illustrated children's version - clearly they figured that out in the 14th century and earlier!

6) The marginal creatures in manuscripts have always made me chuckle. There's a good bit in The Name of the Rose about the subject too (was going to give you a page reference or two, but just read the book - after the first 80 pages or so it's one of my favourites). There are so many bizarre and wonderful figures in the borders of medieval pages, and hours have been spent getting lost in them. There were lots to see in the exhibition, and they're as fun as ever.

7) Just the age of some of this stuff is enough to make you gasp. So much of it is incredibly well preserved (I've no idea how - anything like that mammoth they've found in the Siberian permafrost?!). To think that some of these texts have been around for nearly 2000 years. What have they seen? Less anthropomorphically, who's touched them?

8) I liked seeing the various Arabic scripts employed in the different Qur'ans - they're so distinct, and all so beautiful; and each fulfils a different function. Actually, the calligraphy generally - in all different languages (and there are a lot of languages in this exhibition) - is beautiful.

Do go and see Sacred if you have the opportunity and are interested in religion, religious history, calligraphy, pretty things, books, display cases......

With thanks to the British Library for its excellent website!

Balls

2007-07-11T22:09:00.000+01:00

Another rant. And one based on a Telegraph article, no less (apologies).

"We want schools to be world class in 10 years, says Balls", claims the headline (well, the paper has that headline. The internet version is pointlessly different). Why am I annoyed about this? On the surface it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to say. But really, it's a load of balls. And yes, the word "balls" is going to appear a lot - it's a useful name for a politician to have. Sorry, Ed.

Once again there's the promise of "sweeping reforms" and a "review" (another review. If they stopped reviewing and started actually doing something - or, actually, stopped doing things - it might be better). Remarkably, "parents, teachers, universities and pupils will be consulted". That's novel, that is, talking to the people who policies affect; I'm sure that's not been thought of before. There's going to be an "inquiry", too, "into the way children are taught maths amid concern that too many youngsters leave school unable to add up properly" - fine, but ten years ago New Labour initiated a "numeracy strategy" to combat exactly the same problem. A numeracy strategy that Ed Balls has already called "successful". Of course, mistakes aren't admissible in Politix, so all that'll happen is that a very slightly revised version of the "strategy" will appear under a different label (probably "Shopping Skills" or "Life Accountancy").

I get a bit anxious whenever "sweeping reforms" are mentioned. They are invariably not sweeping, and often just make a mess of both the old system and the intended new. It's a load of gobshite. What's worse is that sweeping movements are rarely made by people who are (a) knowledgeable about or (b) genuinely interested in the systems they claim to sweep. They might have a little of both knowledge and interest, but only as much as their job's worth. Shoot me for saying it if you like, but at least Estelle Morris was a teacher - none of her successors have been (Clarke, Kelly, Johnson, Balls), and it shows that they've never been involved in the education of anyone other than themselves. I'm not saying that people necessarily have to have been on the front line to make a good job of being Education Secretary (now Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families), but being actually or at least intellectually involved helps. Curiously, it's John Denham who is S-o-S for Innovation, Universities and Skills - I seriously hope he and Balls occasionally communicate. Please. Even if it's only in passing in the corridor.

Clearly people leaving skool without a decent grasp of the Three Rs is something that still needs to be addressed, though until we develop Matrix-style knowledge implanting it's unlikely we're ever going to get 100% success with this, and why they hell should we? I'm almost cheering on the kids who manage to ignore 12 years of eddicayshun - it's quite impressive, in its own way. Though I'm biased - I did my fair share of ignoring and truanting, but just got away with it because I wasn't too much of a pain in the arse (most of the time). Obviously people are missing out on something by not being able to read, but there are more important things. "Sweeping reforms" aren't what's needed to sort out these fundamental problems, though - gentle changes and thoughtful tinkerings will do enough for that. Sweeping reforms will only be needed or enacted when (not if) the running of the education system is put back in the hands of educators and people who have a real understanding of and long-term interest in what's going on. Fact is, as we stand at the moment, teachers - the people who do stuff - are the people who have the smallest influence on education policy. On what planet does that make sense? The more levels of almost laughably irrelevant bureaucracy above them, the less of a difference in their own classrooms these (mostly) fantastic people can make. Admittedly in a few scary cases that's a good thing (naming no names), but they're the minority.

This has got long, no less ranty and largely disjointed, so it'll be ending soon. But coming back to the original point: why do I find the headline annoying? Because it's meaningless. Andrew Gimson says it well enough - "This is a world in which the declaration of good intentions has become an end in itself". And it's true: so long as inquiries are promised, sweeping reforms threatened and reviews continually undertaken, that's policy sorted. Or not. We don't need "world class" schools - we just need schools that are allowed to do their thing according to their demographies, strengths, and values. I'm not saying that these shouldn't be monitored at all (of course they should), but they shouldn't be overpowered by the clueless, gesturing and empty words of Politix. "World class" sounds impressive, but isn't a helpful aim. What's needed (and realistic) are "community class" or "education class". No matter how well-intentioned, people who get dragged into Politix seem to end up spouting a load of balls. I'll be staying out of it, thanks, and just working on my square metre of influence.

Melomania

2007-07-10T21:13:00.000+01:00

A quick one. Just back from Cambridge and Ely Folk Festival, which was a lovely few days of indulgence, activity and fun - lots of fun. So, in the mood for music.

Came across Suntrap at the Festival (that link is their MySpace page), and loved them. Will be keeping an eye out for their appearance elsewhere. Have a listen. Be warned, Heavy Metal fans - it's folk...

Rifling through the CDs at home last week I also found Andy Summers' album, Green Chimneys: The Music of Thelonious Monk and bunged it on the ol' ipod - have been listening to it on repeat almost continuously. Funky jazzy technically brilliant wizardry. It's good for train journeys, I've found - particularly ones progressing at a not-very-impressive 25mph behind the Slowest Train in Britain. The "Train Manager" (daft title, poor bloke) kept apologising for the delay in a way that made him sound as if drunk, weeping or possibly both. He was almost incomprehensibly incoherent. Not so sure I'm happy about his managing my train, but am safely (if slowly) home with the tunes of Summers & Monk humming in my ears. So thanks, perhaps, to the drunken weeping Manager.

Finally, nothing to do with music (possibly), but check out this poem by Ian Patterson. It gives me goosebumps and leaves me without words more.

Tripartite

2007-07-06T11:45:00.000+01:00

Finished Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days last night, which will elate CEH because she's been nagging me to read it for months. It's certainly like nothing else I've read. It does some new stuff, and does it in a new way. Not so sure about the insistent Walt Whitman theme going on, though; and I have to admit that when a line of Emily Dickinson appeared from apparently nowhere I groaned a bit and begged it to stop. The description is very detailed, possibly too much so - Cunningham would make a brilliant film director, probably, with his eye for accuracy. He'd be perfectionist and dictatorial, but a damned good film would come out of it. But his description tells too much and just doesn't leave anything much to be imagined, except for the psychology of the characters, who are - without exception - weird.

Saying that, any book that brings together the industrial age, terrorism and an android in love with an alien lizard is probably worth a look - particularly because it doesn't feel as strange as it should. The android/lizard part actually made the most sense. It definitely took me longer than usual to get into the book and what it was doing (and I'm still not entirely sure of that), which isn't necessarily a bad thing; and I enjoyed it more as it progressed (which probably says more about my being unsettled at the beginning than about the book itself).

It was a thought-provoking read, though. Maybe it doesn't quite work, but it's cleverly different, and a mainly enjoyable way of spending a few hours.

Terminal

2007-07-05T22:53:00.001+01:00

If I delete a comment on one of my posts it firstly tells me that: This comment has been deleted by the author. I then get the option to delete it "FOREVER". Bit melodramatic, isn't it? Death to the comment, death. End. Doooom.

Miseducation (i)

2007-07-05T19:56:00.000+01:00

There will be more on this, no doubt. But briefly,

I've been reading Aristotle's Poetics and the experience has been most frustrating; not the text so much (I've not finished it yet), but the process of reading it. What's bugging me is the fact that Aristotle's 'views' about Tragedy are talked about all over the place (well, not normally in the canned veg isle of the supermarket*, but you know what I mean), incorrectly. I don't mean incorrectly in the sense of 'there are lots of interpretations and this is the one I choose'; incorrectly like 'I don't know there are any interpretations. This is what it means.'

Probably annoyed about this because I thought I vaguely understood the basic concepts behind Aristotelian tragedy, but quite evidently that's not true. What seems to have happened is that I was taught about "Aristotle" at skool by people who almost certainly hadn't read Poetics, and they were probably taught by people who hadn't read it either, and so on. So there was me thinking I had a clue, but I don't: what I 'know' is at best an offensively over-simplified and at worst totally WRONG version of a Chinese Whisper that may once have been about Aristotle. Which is very annoying. So far, every 'standard' piece of tragic terminology (mimesis, hamartia, katharsis, pathos, praxis, etc.) I've come across in this text (and its comprehensive introduction by Malcom Heath) has meant either something different to that I was taught, or something so ambiguous or fluid or contextually-dependent that my 'definition' of it is absurdly out of whack. Bummer. My own fault - should have read the text itself long ago.

But it is very annoying that, at skool, kids are taught a weird mixture of lies and semi-truths, and almost always second-hand. Either give them the original texts (or scientific experiments, or whatever medium we're dealing with) and help them draw their own conclusions about stuff (if they're way-out, well, that's what Teacher's for); or only 'teach' them things they're actually capable of understanding (and it's not for some ludicrously out-of-touch government department run by an economist of all people to state what exactly it is kids of different ages might or might not be capable of understanding). It's irritating that 16-yr olds are told that electrons do one thing, and then when they start their AS Levels at 17 they are told almost the opposite; by the time they get to A Level, electrons probably don't exist, or something. Okay, so sometimes stuff has to be simplified - but at least tell them that what they're being taught is more an analogy than fact. And when it comes to literature/texts, doesn't it make more sense to avoid imposing complicated theoretical theories (i.e. Aristotle's, in this case) if it's deemed that the theories proper are way above the students' abilities? Why pay lip service to it at all?

Pah. Excuse the grousing, but I've got to go and figure out Aristotle. Again. Properly, this time.

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*ISLE?! What kind of word is isle?! It should be pronounced 'eyes-ull' or 'eyes-lee'. The more I look at it the weirder it is, and I'm not sure any more if it's the right word at all. Isle. The OED doesn't mention anything about supermarkets.**

**Yes, um...aisle. THAT would explain why it looked wrong! Duh.

Condensation

2007-07-04T20:46:00.000+01:00

The raison d'etre of the Bible, as far as I can make out, is one- or two-fold:
(1) To tell a great set of stories,
(2) To make us think at least twice about Divinity, humanity and what might be between them.

Problem is, it's a very long text and hardly anyone ever bothers to read it (including, rather ridiculously and worryingly, Christians). Luckily, though, there are plenty of summaries, sections and condensations of the Bible on the market for everyone who wants to get a good idea of what's going on in the Book without having to take a sabbatical. One such condensation is The 100-Minute Bible, by Michael Hinton. Sadly, it's a bit rubbish. It advances neither of the two probably essential things above - the fantastic stories are flatly and sketchily conveyed, and religious or spiritual awe, thoughtfulness and/or interest are entirely absent. It manages to make the Creation, Abraham's almost-sacrifice and - even - the coming of Christ almost negligible. Nothing is explained (it isn't really in the Bible, either, but at least there's almost always a good back story to get to grips with so an explanation can always be deduced), and there's just a lot of thwarting of intentions and forgiving of actions without any reason why that might be appropriate.

This little pamphlet is very well intentioned, but neither tells a good story (despite having the best original material) nor makes God or Christ out to be particularly worth following. It is definitely a text intended (or at least it's only good) for people who are (a) already very familiar with the majority of the stories and (b) already convinced. Beyond that, though, it neither tells a good yarn nor goes into any kind of theological detail (which is a shame, as that's where the thoughts and questions lie).

If you want a good version of the stories, and they really are good, I reckon the best bet is to get a children's Bible. You know the kind - with corny and mutedly-coloured illustrations of shepherds with tea-towels on their heads. And if you want the theology, there are, I very much hope, some good condensations of the text out there - but until I stumble across it (or someone recommends one), I'll be sticking with the good old King James version.

Having said that, if you really do want an extraordinarily general overview, The 100-Minute Bible is better than nothing - it really does take about 100 minutes (and there's even a large-print version available if you feel your eyesight will hinder your speedy reading).

Touchstones

2007-07-03T01:36:00.000+01:00

Not sure why yesterday's post formatted itself weirdly. Silly computers. People always say (and it's very annoying), "Computers don't do anything wrong, it's the user who's at fault". Not true! Computers, apparently, "only do what you tell them to". Not true! They manifestly do not do what I tell them to, nor what I ask nicely, nor what I beg. The 'brainier' computers get the more frustrating they are - it's wonderful, them using some kind of freaky binary intuition to figure out how you want to do things; and not so wonderful when they stop being cleverly intuitive and start being stubbornly obnoxious. Yes, the computer last night was being obnoxious. Whatever next - Artificial Intelligence? Actually, if that happened I think I'd move to a cottage in the Highlands and hide from it all - I'd be like Will Smith in I, Robot with the motorbike and everything (though perhaps without the bionic arm or heroic tendencies).

The artificialization and/or mechanization of things that might perhaps be better left a bit unsure, fallible and personally-touched or interpreted has been bugging me today. A tenuous link with I, Robot and my computer battles, but never mind. Poetry: Matthew Arnold's writings on. In his essay, 'The Study of Poetry' (1880), Arnold introduces to literary criticism the concept of a 'touchstone' (I'm sure others suggested the idea beforehand, but Arnold's the one who gave us the convenient word for it, so he gets the credit - bit like Aristarchus being obscured behind the cheeky Copernicus; it's easier to say "Copernican" than "Aristarchusian", anyway). He says this:

"[T]here can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. [...] [A]n infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them."

He does concede that, "Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble [the touchstones]; it may be very dissimilar," which is generous of him. Arnold is trying, desperately, to justify his profession (both poet and critic), and things get a bit hyperbolic:

"More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry."

Though not all poetry will stand up to this obligation, and Arnold says as much that, "if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be a poetry of a high order of excellence. We must accustom ourselves to a high standard and to a strict judgment." Herein lies the birth of the touchstone, the guide for objective observation of morally enhancing and 'suitable' literature destined to replace major human belief systems.

His argumentative style, however, is frustrating. Or, more probably, he is taking on a topic too big, a point too unprovable (cf: Milton wrestling with multiple ideas of God in Paradise Lost, a brilliant poem yet still [arguably] falling short of what it's trying to do) - whilst at the same time basically saying, "If you don't agree with me you are an insensitive reader incapable of higher understandings of the world. Get on with yer manual labour, scum," (That might be a paraphrase...). So it's kind of a win--win for him, at least as far as his perception of his readers goes; though his argument remains shifty. He quotes liberally from his touchstone texts (primarily Milton, Shakespeare, Homer & Dante), but doesn't do anything with them - they are nice examples of poetry, sure (well, Milton, Shakey & Dante are, but I'm stumped entirely by Homer's Greek so we'll ignore him for now), but there is no way to prove that they're substantially better than other good bits of writing - or even, in many cases, better than some less enjoyable pieces. He just dumps pretty quotations and then concludes that,

"These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate."

How, exactly? I don't see Milton's verse standing at every text I read saying, "Emergency exits are here, here and here". And because resemblance isn't necessary, nothing about a touchstone text can be compared to another text except a feeling which, though I'm happy for this to be a factor in everyday talkings about literature (or non-literature), is absolutely not a foundation for a reading theory - at least, not one that professes to be objective. Apparently the touchstones are sufficient that, "If we are thoroughly penetrated by their power, we shall find that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical quality is present or wanting there." I'm unconvinced.

Mainly I'm unconvinced because it doesn't take into account any purpose that poetry might have, other than to be Simply Wonderful Verse (or prose, I spose). Milton's lines,

"Darken'd so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel; but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care
Sat on his faded cheek...",

which Arnold cites as a touchstone, might be poetry of the highest degree, but it doesn't compare to Edward Lear's nonsense poetry if you just want to make someone smile --

"There was an old person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon rabbits;
When he'd eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits."

Similarly, Lear wouldn't be well-placed in a theological epic. Probably. So which is the "better" poetry? I may have gone to extremes here, but the point stands. There's a whole nother argument here on what constitutes 'good' or 'worthy' literature, and whether it's possible/worthwhile/right to try to dictate what is Good and what is Bad in the world of words; but that debate's been raging long enough for me to leave it at least another night.

*****************************

Ah ha! It seems that the format goes stupid when I put italics in the main texts (and from that point the damage seems irreparable, so there's not point getting rid of them). How curious. I certainly didn't ask it to change the format, the bastard! Never mind. Mystery partially solved, that's good enough for now.

Crunkle

2007-07-02T22:12:00.001+01:00

Crunkle is a nice word. It looks funky on the page - first 4 letters in a nice conventional set followed by a weirder 3, with a balanced mix of curves and lines - and it sounds nice, rolling around sounding like a gentler, fatter version of what it means (OED 1). Unlike the word "awkward", which while looking fittingly uncomfortable in itself, is neither good to look at (unless you like pointy, jabby things) nor say.
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Trying to figure out if crunkle is an example of "language really used by men", or whether it's more of the "poetic diction" register Wordsworth writes against in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. At first it seemed to fit snugly with the first category, but:
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I only knew this 1st definition of crunkle before looking it up - "To wrinkle, rumple, crinkle" - and thought it was quite cute. And that's the one, obviously, I've stuck to. But it also means: 2, "To cry like a crane" (there's a word for that?!); and 3, "To make a harsh dry sound, as by grinding the jaws". Not so cute, then. More than that, the word has a slightly icky origin (though the OED isn't entirely sure about it, and it's a bit of a circuitous route) - from the OE "crincan", "to fall in battle, [...] ‘to draw oneself together in a bent form, to contract oneself stiffly, curl up’". So there was me thinking that crunkle was a typically functional, OE-derived word that said what it meant, and was used exactly when needed; "language really used by men". Despite sounding simple enough to be a Real (as opposed to Poetic) word, though, I've never heard it used; and whilst that's a shame in itself (nice words should be used), it also goes against my view that it's a Real word (rolling-off-the-tongue pronunciation, with a place in daily living). But then I wondered what Wordsworth actually means by "the real language of men" - does he mean words that sound common/simple/functional, probably from OE stock; or words that are in active and frequent use, regardless of their complexity or etymology (in which case, "crunkle" would likely be classified as Poetic and defunct)? Does it mean only those words used in every social class and geographical location? As soon as these kinds of restrictions start rolling in the language pool suddenly gets very small indeed, and Wordsworth himself couldn't make much of it. So I think he uses a blend of, well, his principles and a bit of cheating, really.
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He looks to "humble and rustic life" for inspiration, because apparently them there Zomerzet farmers "speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, [...] in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Bit idyllic, but okay. And then he cheats a bit (the swine!) - over the rustic goodness he throws "a certain colouring of imagination", and goes on to justify metre and rhyme. Neither of which, last I heard down yere in Zomerzet, the humble rustic much use. So it doesn't matter whether they use crunkle or not -what matters is that they might, could, or should; which means that whilst it sounds like a word that would be used in Rural Places, it's also rare enough to be zingy and so be a word towards a good poem. That's agreeable. (Ignore, please, that my observation of 21st century Zomerzet vocab isn't very helpful when talking about a 15th century word - Wordsworth probably wouldn't have cared). His justifications for metre (and rhyme, to a lesser extent - probably because it's much more difficult to tackle, as rhyme just sounds stupid regardless of who the poet is) are worth having a look at (whole Preface found here).
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Regardless of his attempts to capture what matters and what's felt in the world, though, I can't help feeling Wordy is upstaged a bit by his sister. Dorothy's journals are easily obtainable, and they make for some relief-ful reading amidst all the male Romantic troupe. Her writing was inspiration for some of William's poetry, and I think she sometimes does in her prosaic way what he never quite manages in most of his verse: she captures life and movement with few words (and even fewer Latinate). Here, from the Grasmere Journal (April, 1802):

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I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.

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Compare that to Wordy's 'I wondered lonely as a cloud', and see what you think. It might just be that rhyme irritates me too much. The unadulterated seeing of Dorothy's seems, to me, to say far more than her brother's words do after they've been forced into a mathematical frame; though I do like the way he writes (prose).

Hysterias (ii)

2007-07-01T00:02:00.000+01:00

University applications. It's that time of year when Sixth Formers start thinking about them. Well, actually, there are several times in the year when they do - but post-exams (now) is one of them. (The others are in Sept/Oct, UCAS deadlines; Nov/Dec, interviews; Dec/Jan, post-interviews...brief respite until May/June, thence exams; August, A Level results. This leaves four months when they're not thinking about them). Lots of earnest questions being asked, and they land in my inbox by the dozen - questions about Cambridge, about the English Tripos, about Newnham College. I like answering them, and it's only very occasionally that a vitriolic response wants to escape into the tippytappy keyboard from my fingertips (normally in response to "Is Newnham full of lesbians?") - and the causticity has been suppressed thus far. But there is something a bit wonky about the whole thing...

For starters, there is an utter lack of common sense in about 70% of questions asked - or it might in many cases be called laziness. The University and College prospectuses give much (though not all) the information needed. Dear applicants, please read them! The various prospectuses sit as a pile on my desk and most often the direct answer to the question asked is contained within their slightly fishy-smelling pages. Though I have the advantage of knowing the system (and, by now, the page numbers for every answer possibly required, groan), it really isn't that hard to find what's needed - and a wee bit of initiative wouldn't be amiss in a Cambridge (or indeed university) applicant. Please?

The delicious main course of the affair is a more serious one. Misinformation and the dogged persistence of Oxbridge Myths (these latter are seriously tough cookies, some of them have been told for over 100 years!). The Access & Admissions people (various academics, staff and students) work very hard to distribute up-to-date and genuinely helpful information, but it seems not to permeate into the application atmosphere. It's not just the completely mad stuff - like the idea that setting fire to your interviewer's hair will make their boring day more interesting and thereby gain you a place at the University - it's a bit more sinister than that. The idea that if you attend your local comprehensive (or have a northern accent) you will instantly arouse dislike. The idea that if you go to a public school (or have a Home Counties accent) you will instantly arouse dislike. Or sport - competence at sports attracts suspicion (brawn and brains incompatible); incompetence at sport means instant rejection ("What? Not captain of the county lacrosse team? You miserable specimen!"). Naturally, the interviewers are out to get everyone. You have to be a certified genius to stand a chance. And once you're safely at the University you are chained to your desk for 10 hrs a day...or is it that everyone spends all their time in the bar, the work getting done magically by the telekinesis of genius? I can't remember - it's all got so complicated.
Anyway, there's still a huge volume of work to be done in this area - both in getting rid of any wobbly bits at the University end (the ethnic minorities and state vs. private school chestnuts are still hanging about), and in simply getting applicants to CALM DOWN. Just read a good book to take your mind off it all. Please?

A short but sweet dessert. The number of [potential] applicants who seem almost entirely disinterested in their subject (or any other subject) is scary. It's something that carries through to the University population proper too, to an extent. Yes, yes, I know it's not cool to say that Physics is Phun or that Readin' is Rockin', but a little enthusiasm would be nice. Please?

There's a lot of fun to be had answering the more sensible questions, though. Many of the more astute queries raise serious questions about the nature of education generally, and the UK university system entire. And there are gaps in the official information that need filling (there are probably things that can't 'officially' be said - like the fact that English is The Best Subject. It's absolutely true, but there's probably some rule that means it can't go on the front of all the prospectuses). It's just that after sifting through a silly number of emails today all asking some variation of, "If I don't own a business, captain a national sports team, sit on a board of trustees and play seven instruments, will I automatically be rejected?", it's time for a cuppa. The answer to that question (and the vast majority of its variants), by the way, is 'no'. As is the answer to the lesbian question.

Hysterias (i)

2007-06-30T22:21:00.000+01:00

What I want to write about is the recent car bombs in London and Glasgow, but I lack the articulacy demanded; and I lack a point, really. Other than the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever. The result of targetting explicitly public places is simply public fear - not governmental policy changes (except to everyone's detriment), not religious or cultural understanding, certainly not human communication. Maybe I lack a point because it lacks one. There's no human gain from the acts, except of course for the leaders of whichever country, organisation or community is committing the violence at the time; but even that gain is tenuous (and heavily reliant on the manipulation by/of the media in every region), and liable to volatile changes. Britain and America are not gaining politically, economically or culturally from their warfare in the Middle East (and elsewhere for that matter). There is no gain for religion. Though too much is made of the Islamic connection, it is one of the forces in play (or at least the violence actively hides under the guise of Islam; and in turn Islam is demonised by much of the West[ern media] and real issues hidden, conveniently for our governments, under its name and outwardly Other conventions). The Qur'an isn't about war or hatred - save a few clauses about defence and proportionate justice (no different to Old or New Testaments, in this sense) - and it certainly isn't about indiscriminate homicide. Devotion to God, 'islam', is not being enhanced in all of this.

Who is getting anything out of this? Who?
Selfish buggers, people are - though I'd argue no more so than any other animal fighting for survival, it's just that our terms of survival aren't quite the same - but capable of some Quite Good things. Why the Quite Good majority aren't now rising up and saying STOP, I have no idea: fear, wilful myopia, ignorance, selfishness, they'll all play a part. But we are capable of overriding all of those, in certain circumstances - now would be quite a good time. Eurgh it makes me so cross...and inarticulate.

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So, now that I've not written about the car bombings (ahem), onwards.

Frontispiece

2007-06-29T12:14:00.000+01:00

What I like about words, and the joining together of words in books and articles, is that they always connect to other words, and other words joined together in other books and articles. So if you've got the time you can munch your way through a wonderfully eclectic collection, all secretly (or not so secretly) connected...and still it's possible to get nowhere. Backwards from nowhere, actually, because there's just too much to read; so you think you've read something substantial and then realise that there's a whole different area of knowledge out there that you're never going to have time to grasp, ever. Every text opens up a vast void like this - so by the time I finish my degree I'll know (as a proportion of what I know there is to be known) less then I did when I started. And the harder I work and the more I read, the less (proportionately speaking) I'll know.

There's a choice, probably: (1) Stop reading. Then I won't become aware of any more unknowns and will be able to fool myself into satisfaction with what I do know. Or, (2) Keep reading. Omnivorously, with my eyes hanging out (as Alistair Fowler says). This has the significant downside of making very obvious every single thing I don't (and will never) know; though is balanced by the advantage of at least being an attempt. This seems simultaneously depressing and exciting.

There is another issue with (2), which is - for me - the more troublesome. The more pedantic and academic I get about reading things, the less real work gets done. Despite any amount of effort, my manifest productivity rests at next to nothing - a book that's been read looks pretty much the same as one that hasn't (though it might be a little bit happier). A lot of reading and thinking does get done - honestly! - but by the time the original text's been read, all unknown or ambiguous words looked up (and, if cool, their etymologies - and the etymologies of the etymologies, if we're on a roll), cited articles or books pursued, tangential texts tackled, slightly wrelevant writings looked at; by the time all this has been done the next project (normally externally imposed) is vying for attention. Not to mention all the potential projects rearing their heads in the process of all that reading. And so I move on, and leave in my wake a lot of books read - but far more untouched. It's the only reason I would ever choose to live longer than a natural lifespan, to read more. It would also be pretty awesome to be a (male) contemporary of Marlowe &co. - it was definitely easier to read everything 'important' within one lifespan. And everyone spoke in blank verse back in them Olden Times.

Had fun the other night. Decided that, despite the fact I generally think him a pillock, I probably ought to read more T. S. Eliot - his criticism, at least. Got hold of a copy of his earliest essays, The Sacred Wood, and was delighted to find on the very first page the admission that the criticism within is tinged with "a stiffness and an assumption of pontifical solemnity". This was written, by the way, eight years after the essays (and is included in the book as prefatory material). I like Eliot much more now, just for that slight apology. His arrogance and eloquence are breathtaking, and brilliantly coupled. He wouldn't be half so eloquent without the arrogance. He can, therefore, keep it.