Bookworms

I've just added the reading schedules for our Wednesday evening book group, Bookworms, to the pages available on this blog. We started getting together over eight years ago now when a friend and I were looking for a group we could join, couldn't find one and so decided to form our own. If no one else is doing what you want then sort it out for yourself. It's the only way. I did the same thing last summer with literary summer schools and they worked as well as Bookworms has.

With only minor changes in personnel eight of us have met in each other's homes regularly once a month to discuss books chosen by the group members in rotation. We miss out August because, as several of us are teachers, we tend to be away then and in September we have a meeting with a difference, getting together for a whole day on the second Sunday and discussing a book in the morning, having a pot-luck lunch, then seeing the film of the book in the afternoon before finally discussing the adaptation over tea and cake. I have to say that only rarely have we had kind things to say about the films and some we have torn apart mercilessly. No one who had anything to do with the film version of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda would want to come within a hundred miles of us.

One of the best things about the group is the way in which our ability to discuss books has developed over the years. At first we were very tentative, even those of us who worked with literature for a living. Very often we had run out of things to say after half an hour or so. Now we have to call a halt to our discussion or we would go on all night and we all have to be up for work of one sort or another the following morning.

We don't always agree about the books chosen my any means. In fact the evening often goes with more of a swing when we don't. We had a very heated discussion of Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ just before Christmas, deeply divided, interestingly, not about the author's religious stance but about the worth of the book as a piece of literature. Other books, such as A S Byatt's The Children's Book, we all enjoy immensely but for very different reasons. And novels like that provide just as well for long and intense discussion.

I value Bookworms tremendously. I have been introduced to writers I might never otherwise have read and been forced to read others whom I have avoided for years only to find that they weren't so bad after all. After two false starts I finally managed to read Byatt's Possession and think what I would have missed if that hadn't been on the list. Above all though, I value it for the friendships that I have built. If any of the other Bookworms are reading this then thank you. You're the best.


Annie

Keeping the World Away ~Margaret Forster

So, there I was with my reading list for January drawn up and the books already taken down from the shelves and left in a pile in the middle of the study floor where I would fall over them every day until I'd work my way through them and what happened? Well, the inevitable really. I went along to my library group last Wednesday and someone waved a book I'd been wanting to read for ages in front of my eyes. Reading resolution number one shattered.

The book was Margaret Forster's 2006 novel, Keeping the World Away. It came out at a time when reading anything more complicated than the Beano Annual was beyond me and so, even though Forster is one of my favourite novelists, I missed out on it first time round. It was, however, despite some reservations, worth waiting for and definitely worth destroying my nicely drawn up reading schedule to fit in now.

Keeping the World Away is primarily the story of a picture. I assume of this picture on the right. Painted by Gwen John during her early years in Paris and at a time when she was infatuated with the sculptor, Rodin, it is depicted in the book as her attempt to capture a moment and place of quietude, to present Rodin with evidence that she has conquered the passionate nature that makes her a difficult person to live with.

The novel then follows the fortune of the painting as it makes its way from owner to owner and fills each woman who comes into prolonged contact with it with a need to try and find for themselves the quiet world it seems to present, a world in which they are free to develop as artists without having to give up their desires for the demands of family and societal expectations. But, woman after woman is forced to face either their own lack of ability or their lack of freedom to follow a path that is seen as being not quiet the thing for one of their sex.

In one sense this is a book about the way in which life has different expectations of a woman, expectations that make it impossible for her to develop a career that demands total absorption on the part of those that take it up, while a man can more easily follow that path. However, I think there is more to it than that. One woman, Lucasta, does forge a career as an artist but in order to maintain that life she has to give up her other relationships. While this might just be seen as another manifestation of the imbalance that makes it impossible for women to experience more than one life, the existence that Lucasta has and the way in which her personality develops forced me at least to question just what sort of life anyone has who becomes obsessed with something in the way that an artist has to. I know it wouldn't have been a life I would have wanted.

I always enjoy books that move through generations as this does and I would have been placing this high on my list of best reads had it not been for a couple of small, but nevertheless irritating, gripes. Firstly, I wasn't convinced by the way in which the picture moved from owner to owner. The 'need' on Forster's part to create a link between the people who found the work began to feel very contrived. The story would have held together just as well without those links.

The other point that worried me was to do with how well the writer had done her background research. It always concerns me when I come across an error of fact that I am sure about because then I worry about all those facts that I've taken for granted and can't check. In this case it is what she has to say about one of the characters, Sam, who is at the fall of Singapore and then incarcerated in a POW camp. She talks of the fifteen months between his sister hearing from him and the war ending. In fact, Singapore fell in February 1942 and the men who were captured there were not back in England until November 1945. While their relatives in the UK heard from the Red Cross as to their wellbeing on a six monthly basis, there was no direct contact. Believe me, I know, I've lived with the aftermath of this all my life. It doesn't take much to check that sort of thing out and I wish Forster had taken just that bit more care with what is otherwise a very good read.


Annie

Tone Poems

I'm not certain whether the meal I've just eaten should be classed as the last Christmas Dinner of 2010 or the first of 2011. Whichever, our music group has had our January meeting this afternoon and because of the snow last month we began it with a pot luck Christmas meal. Consequently, I'm late coming to write today and possibly too full to be able to think clearly enough to say anything worth reading. I'm just warning you in advance.

We spent last year exploring various aspects of chamber music and so today were moving on to our 2011 subject, Tone Poems. You couldn't really have anything much more different. Chamber music is for the most part for small scale groups and tone poems are often for very large orchestral forces. Chamber music is normally highly organised, whereas tone poems broke away from the classical forms and were much freer in conception.

There are some big works on the horizon. In April, for example, I'm going to lead the group in an exploration of Smetana's Ma Vlast, a series of six symphonic poems that depicts various aspects of the Bohemian countryside. Today, though, we started easily with Mendelssohn's wonderful music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. His depiction of the woods outside Athens, the fairies, the lovers and, best of all, Bottom and his friends is, in every possible respect, magical, especially when you think that there was seventeen years between his composing of the overture and the rest of the music that makes up the entire piece.

I have twice had the pleasure of seeing a joint production between our local repertory company and the city's symphony orchestra bringing the play and the music together and the two work so well that it is hard to believe that they are separated in conception by around two hundred and fifty years. However, my strongest memory is not of anything very magical at all, but rather, in the first of those productions, of Moonshine's very real dog, who took one look at all those music stands and clearly thought he had been transported to doggie heaven. The musicians, especially those nearest his point of entry, were not so pleased with the situation!

I'm looking forward to exploring this area of musical composition because, with the exception of the Mendelssohn, I know very little about it.  Do any of you have any suggestions as to pieces we should consider?  We are a self-teaching group and all assistance is gratefully received.


Annie

Gwen John

Despite the fact that it wasn't on my to read list for January (best laid plans and all that!) this evening I should finish Margaret Forster's novel Keeping the World Away.  The book is about a painting by Gwen John that plays a significant role in the lives of several women as it moves from owner to owner, from the time when it was painted to the present day.  Although I can't be completely certain I'm assuming from the way in which it is described that the painting is the one I've included here.

I knew very little about Gwen John other than that I had heard somewhere that her brother, Augustus John, also a painter and in his time much more highly regarded, is reported to have said that fifty years after his death he would be known only as the brother of Gwen John.  I'm not certain that has entirely come to pass, but doing some background research to accompany the Forster book, Gwen John does seem to be much more highly thought of now than was ever the case in her life time.

The one painting by her that I did know previously was the one on the right, which is in our University gallery. This portrait is one of several versions she made between 1915 and 1925 for the Meudon nuns, who had commissioned a painted copy of an existing picture of Mère Marie Poussepin (1653–1744), founder of their order, the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin of Tours in 1654.  John was received into the Catholic Church around 1913, after her affair with Rodin had collapsed around her.  She moved into Meudon and must have felt that she wanted to give something back to the nuns who had helped her at a time of great turbulence.

The portrait that Forster draws of Gwen John is certainly that of a woman whose life was marked by turbulence.  At one point one of her friends reflects that

after a mere hour in her company she felt drained by the emotional demands made on her, that urgent need for constant sympathy which was so exhausting to give.  And Gwen, in that respect, gave little in return.


My heart lurched when I read that because I used to work with someone who was exactly the same and even the memory made me want to put the book down and run away.

And yet, both of these works have, for me at least, a certain air of tranquility about them and this was only strengthened when I discovered the third painting here which, appropriately enough is called The Perfect Book.  I don't know anything about this painting, when it was executed or who the sitter was, but a feeling of absorption and contentment radiates from it.  Whoever the sitter was, I want it to be me.

I am fascinated that a woman whose own life was apparently so permeated by strong, even violent, emotions could paint in a way that transmits such feelings of peace to me and at some point during the year I would like to find out more about her.  We have a new member of staff in the gallery, who used to work for the museum in Wales where many of John's works are now on show.  I shall have to try and waylay her in the coffee lounge and get her talking on the subject.  There is no point in having experts about the place and not making use of them.

Spring Releases and Library Cuts

Over the weekend The Guardian website had two interesting, if not actually complementary, articles. The first was on the books that we can look forward to as the Spring releases become available. I worked through their list jotting down a title here, crossing one off there and eventually came up with my own

Not To Be Missed

selection.



January

By Nightfall ~ Michael Cunningham
We Had It So Good ~ Linda Grant

February

A Discovery of Witches ~ Deborah Harkness

March

A Visit from the Goon Squad ~ Jennifer Egan
Anatomy of a Disappearance ~ Hisham Mater
Bracelet of Bones ~ Kevin Crossley-Holland

April

Bullfighting ~ Roddy Doyle
A Man of Parts ~ David Lodge
The Possessed ~ Elif Bautman

May

Smut: Two Unseemly Stories ~ Alan Bennett

June

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress ~ Beryl Bainbridge
River of Smoke ~ Amitav Ghosh
Pure ~ Andrew Miller

July

The Stranger's Child ~ Alan Hollinghurst

August

On Canaan's Side ~ Sebastian Barry

Having decided what I absolutely could not miss I then went over to the library site to see if they had the January books at least on the catalogue so that I could pre-order them. Not a one! Not a single solitary one. In fact, the only book from the entire list that they had put in an order for was the David Lodge and as he is a local author his omission would have been completely unprecedented.

But, should I have been surprised? The previous week, when the five category winners of the Costa Awards were announced, I went onto the library site then to reserve those. Only three of them were on the catalogue. Now remember, these weren't titles just picked out of thin air. The short lists had been available for some time and the library service could have at least put in an order for the chosen titles, but no.

Now, before any librarians out there get hot under the collar, believe me I'm not blaming you. I know where the fault lies. And that takes me to the other article posted by The Guardian, an article to do with the library cuts being enforced by the Government. Across the country as many as 800 libraries may have to close and 40 in my own area are facing, at the least, severe cut backs in hours and staffing levels. At a time when the majority of people are facing a reduction in their disposable income will someone please explain to me why it makes sense to limit the only access some will have to books?

My own local library is ripe for culling. It is tiny, housed in a space over a hundred years old and not much bigger than my living room. If it is still open in a year's time I will be amazed. But, it has access to a large municipal collection and it serves one of the poorest communities in the area. Half the people who live in the ward don't have cars. Half are one parent families struggling to find enough money to pay for food and fuel. Where are they supposed to get their books?

And yet there is an appetite for reading. When I ran a developing reading project here a couple of years ago not only 200+ children joined in but 40 of their parents as well. And the books they read came through the schools and the library service.

I'm more than happy to do my bit in 'The Big Society' and volunteer to help in the library, but I don't think that will make any difference. The savings the local council have to make are just too great and the clout libraries have just too small.  Sometimes I simply despair.




Annie

Where Should I Start?

I am slowly working my way through Susan Hill's Howard's End is on the Landing, her account of a year selecting her reading just from the books already on her shelves. Slowly because there is so much in each chapter that sets me thinking. I need time to take in what she's saying and reflect on how it applies to me and my own reading journey. Originally I borrowed the book from the library. I'm on a very fixed income and I have to make as much use of the library as I can. However, it soon became apparent that there was no way that I was going to be able to keep it as long as necessary and so I've just bought my own copy. So far I've made it about one tenth of the way through and I intend to savour every single moment.

One of the first things that stopped me in my tracks was Hill's query when discussing reading Barbara Pym as to which of her books she should begin with.

Would I like Barbara Pym? Where should I start? Anywhere, really. Odd that. It is not always the case. You should never begin reading George Eliot with 'Middlemarch', nor Trollope with 'The Way we Live Now', and one of the lesser Muriel Sparks might put you off for good...I am glad I did not read 'The Mill on the Floss' first or I would never have tried another George Eliot, and 'Travels with my Aunt' is not a typical novel by Graham Greene, so it does not much matter if you do not care for it.

Wherever possible I have always tried to begin an author's works at the beginning, to make my way through their bibliography chronologically. In some instances this is essential. I found myself saying of two crime writers last week, "even though each book tells a separate story you need to read them in order to understand the relationships amongst the ongoing police personnel.". And, I have just put a novel to one side because I discovered it was a sequel and to understand it I was going to have to read its predecessor first. However, this doesn't really explain why I feel this compulsion to begin and the beginning and read until I get to the end.

I think the real motivating force here is the desire to understand how a writer's thought processes develop. When I did my first substantial piece of research into Shakespeare's plays, looking at the way in which he portrayed the character of the Fool, instinctively I read each play in the order written (as far as we can ever ascertain that) and found that it was possible to chart a change in his understanding of what the Fool stood for and was capable of, what the character was about. Reading chronologically was essential. I have never understood why people insist on reading the Narnia books in the order the story happens in fictional time. This isn't how Lewis wrote them and the growing darkness makes much more sense if you follow his growing distaste for the female characters as the writing process develops.

But, I can see that it some instances this might be a problem. What if the first full length Dickens I had read had been Pickwick Papers? I'm sorry if that happens to be your favourite Dickens; it leaves me totally unmoved. While I don't suppose I could have escaped without ever reading him again, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have developed the abiding love for him that is one of the hallmarks of my reading life. I'm trying to remember what was my first. David Copperfield I expect. It was a set text in my first year at secondary school, but I think I'd already encountered a television version.

And, some writers take time to find their metier. I always think of the British children's writer, Jacqueline Wilson, in this respect. Best known now for her work for eight to twelve years olds that hides cutting edge exploration of social problems behind telling humour, few remember that she started writing much more straightforward stories for older teenagers. They were excellent and I wish they were still readily available, but if you were to start at the beginning of her output and find you didn't enjoy them you might never discover the later work which might be more to your taste.

In the end you find your way in to a writer's work in the way that best suits you and very often it will be through an act of serendipity. What matters is that you get there. I've never read Barbara Pym, so I shall take heart from what Hill says and just pick up whatever I can get at the library and hope that she is a writer I take to. Then perhaps I can work through her books chronologically and see what that experience has to say about her.


Annie

Love is my Sin

I've just come in from Stratford, where I've been to The Swan to see Natasha Parry and Michael Pennington in Love is my Sin, a piece devised and directed by Parry's husband, Peter Brook, and based on a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets.

I'll write at some later point, perhaps, about what I think of the newly refurbished RSC theatre, especially as I haven't yet been into the reconstructed Main House. As far as I can see pretty much all they've done in The Swan is reupholster the seats. And thank goodness they haven't messed it about in anyway because as a space for live theatre it was pretty much perfect as it was.

Shakespeare's plays haven't yet made a reappearance in either the Main House or The Swan. Wisely, the management have chosen to stage a number of smaller events to get the theatres up and running and thereby give themselves a chance to iron out any teething problems. And, when they do introduce full length plays they will be productions moved over from last season's repertoire in The Courtyard rather than anything new.

So, what I've been to see today was a travelling show that took thirty-one of Shakespeare's sonnets and used them to create the story of a love affair between two people no longer in the prime of youth but still more than capable of all the intensity of feeling that goes with loving someone and for one reason or another being uncertain of the reciprocity of the emotion. I have to say that it was one of the most beautiful and touching pieces of theatre I've ever experienced.

The sonnets were split into four groups: Devouring Time, Separation, Jealousy and Time Defied. Brook says of his selection:

At first, Shakespeare evokes a shared tranquility, but little by little the pains of love appear: there is separation, then infidelity and treachery which lead to a disgust of the body and flesh. But in a final phase, Shakespeare affirms the reality of a love that can transcend all barriers that is even more powerful than age or death.


For love can conquer time.

For the most part, the sonnets selected were not the better known ones, but they led up to probably the most famous of them all, number 116,

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Parry and Pennington are both brilliant actors, but even so I think the two facts that hit me most forcibly would have been apparent had that not been the case. The first was something that should perhaps have been obvious, namely that these texts were composed by a man who wrote for the voice and who wrote to tell a story. At no point did it appear that we were listening to poetry. These could all have been speeches being made one character to another in any of Shakespeare's plays.

The second feature that was brought home to me, even though, again, it was something I shouldn't have needed reinforcing, was how close iambic pentameter is to natural English speech patterns. If you hadn't been aware that on the page these words were laid out as fourteen lines of ten syllables each you would never have guessed. And this just makes the works all the more miraculous, because it infuses them with a truth that transcends the structure and takes on a life of its own.

One other factor that was interesting in respect of my Titus Andronicus studies was the use the Brook made of music. I've spent the last couple of days researching his 1955 production of the play and apparently one of the things that made it so effective was his use of sound, often very minimal, often discordant and unexpected. He did exactly the same here, including at one point having the single musician use the bellows of a piano accordion to echo the sighs of lost love. It always seems miraculous to me when you can feel events reaching to each other across boundaries of space or time or culture and this was one such occasion.

Annie