Author: sarahwp

VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray, rather impressively, had managed to lose all his money by the age of 25. This was partly because he was a pretty bad businessman, and partly because he had a pretty big gambling problem.

He thus had turned to writing for an income, and eventually in his late thirties managed to produce VANITY FAIR, the novel that gave him back his financial independence, and eventually his claim to literary posterity. I always feel rather a fondness for these historical figures who only get their acts together in their thirties.

VANITY FAIR is, curiously enough, both a wickedly comic and a deeply moral book. It tells the story of two young women: Becky, who is poor, dishonest, and very clever, and Amelia, who is rich, honest and about as dim as a trout. I would summarise the plot, but honestly, this thing is 900 pages long, I don’t think you want me to. Briefly: marriage, Battle of Waterloo, death, debts, Wimbledon, bankruptcy, long lost love, India, happily ever after.

The joy of it really is the shining comic voice. Here, about a hopeful MP:

But though he had a fine flux of words, and delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured any man a success.

A wonderful book.

Trivia!: Weirdly, Thackery went to the same school – Charterhouse – as an author two books back, Robert Graves, and hated it just as badly, always calling it Slaughterhouse.

LOST IN TRANSLATION by Nicole Mones

Sometimes when one can’t sleep in the middle of the night, one will read anything one can get one’s shaking hands on.

Mine unsteadily landed on LOST IN TRANSLATION by Nicole Mones. Now, unlike 90% of everything else in popular culture, this has nothing to do with the movie.

It is a trashy tale of an American translator in China who is hired to help an archaeologist find the bones of Peking man, a homo erectus fossil lost during the Second World War. Here are the main elements:
– an engaging find-the-object plot
– ‘evocative’ descriptions of China (ie. evoking nausea)
– stupidly obvious psychological issues for the translator
– a background story relating to a 17th century Jesuit, intended to give a literary patina to this nonsense

The translator who is a white American is apparently only interested in Chinese men. We are supposed to find this charming, but really I just found it racist. For some reason, people don’t seem to get this: anytime you outline how you only like one race, you are by definition a racist.

Anyway it was a good page turner, but I had to stop after 250 pages or so. I could easily have got to the end, but really, life is short.

EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck

I seem to be reading nothing but memoir at the moment, so I thought that this epic novel would be a interesting change.

Oh dear, never mind that, this turns out to be a kind of memoir too, but of the large scale, mythic and messed-up kind. Steinbeck wrote it as a history for his small sons, and was convinced it was his masterpiece.

It’s pretty long and painful overall, but there are some great parts: a wonderful evil prostitute murderer character; ideas about early home freezing; some quite shocking violence; and an interesting conception of America: ”In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.”

On one level, it’s a retelling of the biblical story of Cain and Abel; on another it’s a story of the Salinas Valley in California where Steinbeck grew up; and on another it’s a history of his family. Basically, the book tells of two neighbouring families, across two generations, where two sets of brothers battle for their father’s affections. Steinbeck clearly feels we are a bit dim, and in case these repetitions weren’t enough, makes sure to tell us, frequently and explicitly, about his theory that the ur-story of us all is our endless struggle for our parents’ love.

Clearly, this guy had a lot of issues with his siblings.

Personally, I think he should have gone to the therapist, rather than the publisher, but what the hell, he’s Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck and I’m some girl in Nairobi who’s still in her pyjamas at 2pm.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Robert Graves

Graves wrote this memoir when he was just a year older than me, 34, going through an ugly divorce, and on the point of leaving England forever. It is an awesome exercise in wholesale bridge burning.

It makes me feel like writing my memoirs, except that fortunately for me I have not had quite such an event filled life as Graves, who was in that unlucky generation that left high school in 1914, and so swapped one uniform for another, entering the First World War as teenagers.

We begin with his childhood, which is largely spent in one of these famously damaging English public schools, and he seems to have been accordingly damaged. He is bullied relentlessly (honest to god, where are the ADULTS in these places? When I was teaching I regarded one of my main jobs as keeping a beady eye on the big ones – anyway), until he takes up boxing. He has some success with this, and that seems to help keep the worst kids off him. He’s also astonishingly frank, for a book written in 1934, about falling in love with a younger boy, Dick.

On graduation, he volunteers for the army and is sent to France. The first dead person he sees there is a soldier who has killed himself rather than carry on, and things go downhill from there. Graves writes a very straightforward account, including detailed accounts of the bungling by high command. At one point he is declared dead, and his mum gets the condolence telegram, but with all the rude health of nineteen he pulls through.

On one of his leaves he marries a young woman and when the war ends they live in Oxford together. You might think, from the prosaic way he writes, that he was not as damaged by the war as some; but then he calmly tells you all about how he keeps seeing dead people piled up on the streets, and how these daymares are with him constantly until at least 1928.

He has four children by his wife, who is an early feminist, and when they lose all their money in a failed business venture, very laudably pitches in with this mountain of childcare for many years. Even more laudably, given that this book is written during a bitter divorce, he refrains from bashing on the feminist wife too much.

A grimly honest account of an interesting thirty four years.

THE LAST RESORT by Douglas Rogers

This book tells the story of the author’s parents’ attempts to hold on to their land during the decade of Zimbabwe’s collapse from about 2000 on. The perspective is surprisingly honest: Douglas Rogers couldn’t wait to shake the dust of Africa from his feet, and can’t understand why his parents would fight to stay.

Rogers grew up on various farms in eastern Zimbabwe, and once he left school fled this rural idyll as fast as he could. On retirement, his parents bought a rocky piece of land and decided to run a backpackers lodge, which did well initially, until the economy, and thus the tourism industry, began to crumble.

That Rogers worked as a journalist for many years is abundantly clear from this book. The style is simple and unaffected, and the plot moves quickly enough to keep the attention of any commuter. This is almost to a fault; the book is sort of forgettable, though the story is not.

After the backpackers left, the prostitutes started arriving, then a small dagga business (that’s pot to the non-African readers), then the dispossessed farmers (both black and white), then the illegal diamond dealers, then, most dangerously, the MDC activists in hiding during the dark days of 2008 (that’s during the bloody elections, non-Zimbabwean readers). Meanwhile the possibility of their land being seized was constantly in the air; at one point they found out that their property deed had been cancelled, and ‘vested in the president,’ without their even being informed.

It’s a very intimate portrait of his parents, and of their struggle to maintain not just their lives (it gets very dodgy at the end), and their land, but their definition of themselves as Zimbabwean. In the final chapters, when the father is taking considerable risks protecting the MDC members, there’s a very sweet section about how, for the first time in his life, and for the first time in the history of his family in Africa (an impressive 350 years) he is at last on the right side of history.

This books sounds quite tragic, but is largely written in the comic vein, which is I think very Zimbabwean. It also a story more of victory, than of defeat. I hope that’s very Zim too, though possibly not.

Here’s a rather sweet interview with the author.

I DREAMED OF AFRICA by Kuki Gallmann

This book recounts the author’s life in Kenya. Originally from Italy, she had always been fascinated by Africa, and eventually moved there with her second husband, buying a large ranch on which they kept cattle and provided a safe haven for wildlife.

She provides an interesting picture of Kenya in the 70s and 80s, at the tail end of the Happy Valley period, and includes many accounts of her intimate experience with African wildlife. The heart of the book however is her various bereavements. Her husband is killed in a car crash, and then a few years later, her son, an amateur herpetologist, is killed by a puff adder. Their funerals are minutely recorded, as are those of two or three of her friends.

Now, you would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this.

I think I may have a heart of stone.

Great suffering does not necessarily make a great novel. Heartfelt sincerity, while important, is not all you need. (Oscar Wilde: “All bad poetry is sincere.” Ouch)

Now, before you start hating me in the Comments, let me give you an extract, and you hand on heart try and tell me that this is not dreadful:

There, on the extreme edge of the Great Rift Valley, guarding the gorge, grows an acacia tree bent by timeless winds. That tree is my friend, and we are sisters. I rest against its trunk, scaly and grey like a wise old elephant. I look up through the branches, twisted arms spread in a silent dance, to the sky of Africa . . . A last eagle flies majestically back to nest on steep cliffs.

Clearly, while she may have dreamed of Africa, she did not dream of writing without cliché.

In the interests of fairness, I should say it is very readable, especially if you skip the funerals. I couldn’t sleep last night, and polished off about 200 pages from 1am.

I admire the lady, who has a genuine and inspiring love for the Kenyan landscape, and has had a genuinely terrible time; but I just cannot admire the writer.

BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON

This is a book I have been meaning to read for some time. It’s one of those books one ought to read. So, I’ve read it. Alright, most of it. I had to give up. And I feel terribly guilty. How charming is this, from the Preface, obviously written by a much better person than me:

Loyal Johnsonians may look upon such a book (the abridged ‘Life’) with a measure of scorn. I could not have made it, had I not believed that it would be the means of drawing new readers to Boswell, and eventually of finding for them in the complete work what many have already found – days and years of growing enlightenment and happy companionship, and an innocent refuge from the cares and perturbations of life. (Princeton, June 28, 1917)

Dr Johnson’s fame rests primarily on the fact that he wrote the first English dictionary. In other countries this was apparently the work of entire institutes, not just one man, so this is no small achievement. Dr Johnson was apparently a great conversationalist, and was much admired across eighteenth century London. And by nobody was he more admired than Boswell, who set himself, after every night out, to recall Johnson’s words and set them down. On the one hand, I found this a bit bizarre and stalkerish. On the other, there’s something touching, and not at all contemporary, about so unashamedly and entirely admiring someone. So we learn a lot about Johnson’s opinions. Here’s one I really feel:

When I was running about this town a very poor fellow, I was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty; but I was, at the same time, very sorry to be poor. Sir, all the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil, shew it to be evidently a great evil. You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune.

Or:

Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod. ‘I would rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terror to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there’s an end on’t; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other.

I got a good way through the book, but eventually I got bored and had to give up. There were large sections that seemed obscure and eighteenth century, and I constantly felt like I was missing the point. Also, it had no shape. Like real life, it had no plot, no structure or meaning, and I don’t read books to spend more time in real life, but less.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD by Thomas Hardy

I’ve been having some trouble sleeping so am often awake from 3 am for a bit, and was the other night. At some point one does have to read FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, and I guess this was my point.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD tells the story of one Gabriel Oak, a shepherd who has managed to take out a loan to get his own flock and some land. He asks a local young lady, Bathsheba, to marry him. She refuses. Some time after this his young dog in an excess of zeal keeps chasing the sheep till he forces them over a cliff.

George’s son (the dog) had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o’clock that same day – another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Gabriel is thus destitute again, as all his investment, the fruit of ten years work, is wiped out. This all happens before page 33. I was not surprised. I know very well not to trust Hardy, his books are hectic. He will crush you soon as look at you. I learnt this from reading JUDE THE OBSCURE, and I won’t give away the plot, but suffice to say, don’t get too attached to the children.

Anyway, Bathsheba has inherited a farm, and employs Gabriel, much to his chagrin. She marries a certain Sgt Troy who is irritatingly obviously going to be trouble, and he is, eventually faking his own death after his pregnant ex-girlfriend appears and dies of starvation on the doorstep. When he resurrects himself Bathsheba’s new boyfriend shoots him dead, and goes to jail himself. Enter Gabriel, and a happy ending.

So a story not lacking in drama, much of it stupid. However it was entertaining, and there is a supporting cast of yokels which is hilariously well written. Also, Hardy as a philosopher has much to say that is of interest – I enjoyed this, on Gabriel after his loss:

He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. . . . . There was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of aman, is the basis of his sublimity if it does not. And thus the abasement had been exultation, and the loss gain.

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE by W. Somerset Maugham

I love Maugham’s book OF HUMAN BONDAGE, so I was excited to find this in my cousin’s bookcase.

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE is very loosely inspired by the life of the nineteenth century painter Paul Gauguin. It tells the story of one Charles Strickland, an English stockbroker who leaves his wife and children and runs away to Paris. Everyone assumes he is in love with another woman, but in fact he is in love with oil painting. This is met with general boggling by all his acquaintance.

He paints furiously while in Paris, and almost dies of starvation there. He eventually takes a passage working on a ship going east. When he finds Tahiti, he feels himself at last at home, moves in with a local woman, and continues to paint furiously till he dies of leprosy.

This book is quite interesting in terms of considering what qualifies as a worthwhile goal for your life, and in terms of what it means if your goal is not one that anyone else understands:

Each one of us is alone in the world….We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener’s aunt is in the house

.

So interesting, but, I thought, a little trite. The above is sort of like OF HUMAN BONDAGE, but on a bad day.

It also all seems to be written by W Somerset Misogynist. It’s only 217 pages, but manages all sorts of unexpected and distasteful discussions of his early twentieth century views on gender:

When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. She has a small mind, and she resents the abstract which she is unable to grasp. She is occupied with material things, and she is jealous of the ideal. The soul of man wanders through the uppermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her account – book.

Now, I never knew I could use my trusty account-book for encircling unwary souls! My small mind shall get right on that.

I am not surprised this has all come out in a book on Gauguin. I never liked those pictures of women he made, who all just stare out at you, half-naked, as if they had a secret and mysterious message, that message being BOOBS.

THE ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje

Honestly, I wanted to like this book. I wanted to so much that I forced myself all the way up to page 125, before I just had to give up.

It is focused on a villa in Italy in the aftermath of the second World War in which live a group of shell-shocked characters: a severely burnt pilot, his nurse, a sapper who is in love with the nurse, and an ex-spy, with no thumbs, who is also in love with the nurse. Could be interesting, right? Sounds like the bare bones of a good movie, right?

OH IT IS SO POETIC I WANT TO PUKE. I was worried right from the get go, because there are a lot of prepositions, which in my experience is always a bad sign. So it begins: “She stands up in the garden . . . ” then “She has sensed a shift . . ” “Every four days she washes his black body.”

Mr Ondaatje likes a literary flourish. Let me just give you the first and last lines of a couple of sections, chosen quite at random.

“. . . her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.”
“This cools her and she likes it when she goes outside and the breezes hit her, erasing the thunder.”
“Someday there would be a bower of green limes, rooms of green light.”

I know this novel won the Booker, and all that, but I can barely choose a paragraph at random without being irritated. Homicidal, actually, by page 125.