Counterpoint

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

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!

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.

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

*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

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

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.

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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

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)

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.