Adopt Late, If At All...

Rather a good piece here on the many and various virtues of being a late adopter (and a mender) - and here's another, more sobering piece about the hidden cost of all this endless upgrading. Needless to say, I am a very tardy adopter myself (if I bother adopting at all - I certainly feel no urge to own a games console or a large-screen TV). For my listening pleasure when I'm on the move, I am happy to rely on a teaplate-sized CD Walkman and a chunky radio-cassette player, both of which earn me bemused or pitying looks on the train. I have my beloved MacBook of course, and a decent digital camera, but these were both bought for me, and I've yet to learn how to download, or upload or whatever it is, pictures from the camera (must get round to that). When it comes to mobile phones, I am more than satisfied with my 'design classic' Siemens A62 (which I got for, I think, £6.99 on eBay). Oddly - in a reversal of the normal state of affairs - my primitive machine now looks strangely small compared to a modern iPhone. Rather elegant, in fact...

'A life beyond the grave of contemporary reputation...'

I've remarked before on the ludicrously extravagant praises heaped on mediocre, so-what fiction by today's reviewers. However, one thing they rarely do is predict a long life and enduring high reputation for the books they're puffing. Perhaps they are held back by some residual sense of proportion, even honesty, as they must know that, even in good times, only a tiny proportion of fiction lasts - and, in times like ours... Well, it's hard to imagine anything much from the past 20 years of English fiction lasting long.
Things were different in the interwar years, where it was a commonplace of criticism to declare which books would stand the test of time and still be read by future generations - and reviewers were pretty bold about it. Here's Desmond MacCarthy on Logan Pearsall Smith's All Trivia:
'I agree with those reviewers who have predicted for it a life beyond the grave of contemporary reputation. It is the sort of bibelot that Father Time often keeps on the mantelpiece when he changes the furniture in the house...' [they don't write them like that any more]
And here's Robert Lynd on the same subject: 'Many good critics believe that this is one of the few books of our time that will still be read a generation hence.'
Another writer who attracted confident predictions of literary immortality was Ivy Compton-Burnett. Here's Norman Shrapnel in The Guardian:
'Of the two candidates for greatness among comic novelists of our time, Evelyn Waugh and Ivy Compton-Burnett, it is her prospect that looks the more secure...'
And here's David Holloway in the Telegraph: 'It is always dangerous to prophesy immortality for any writer, but it is certain that Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels will be discussed a century hence.'
Dangerous indeed it is. Ivy Compton-Burnett's works are mostly out of print (scandalously), while Waugh posthumously thrives - as does the great comic novelist Shrapnel doesn't mention, P.G. Wodehouse. As for Logan Pearsall Smith - Father Time seems to have got out of the habit of keeping bibelots on the mantelpiece... Still, these were honest critics' assessments of writers' true worth - unlike so much that is written in the review columns these days.

Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

I see that over on The Dabbler I'm offering some thoughts on dressing for the country. Commenters have adroitly switched the subject to cycling attire - long a national scandal and offence to the eye. Here's how to dress if you're riding a bicycle - exactly as if you're not riding a bicycle at all, just walking about being effortlessly stylish. Not a trace of Spandex or Lycra here, and not a single helmet. As so often, the Danes show us the way...

Hilary Hahn

The startlingly young American violinist Hilary Hahn is 32 today. Her recording of the great Bach Chaconne is one that I listen to again and again, and it never palls. Here it is (and you can segue smoothly into part two if you're quick)... Thank you Hilary - and Happy Birthday!

An Unfortunate Find

Having just finished Penelope Fitzgerald's superb joint biography, The Knox Brothers, I was browsing online seeking to find out a little more about Ronald Knox's own favourite of his books (though oddly unmentioned by PF), Enthusiasm - and so it was that I came across this extraordinary outpouring of bile, written when the poor man was barely cold in his grave. There's the true Xtian spirit if you like - and it would seem my friend the Galway Cyclops is not the only one with firm views on Masons (and, of course, 'their Jewish progenitors')...

Birdsong and Heroes

Having been hit by a thoroughly unpleasant 'cold', I've been awake rather a lot lately in the small hours, and I find that the birds are singing more lustily than ever, kicking off around 2am and keeping going, with occasional pauses, till sunrise. It still seems very odd, but I suppose it will be taken for granted by future generations of town dwellers.
Meanwhile, after reading the obituary of the interesting poet Peter Reading, who died last week, I followed a link and found this altogether extraordinary chap. At a time when members of the armed forces are referred to generically as 'heroes', it's good to be reminded of the real thing. And read to the end for his prophetic words about 'Europe'...

Shakespeare Got There First

I was interested to see this - and to hear the good doctor on the radio early this morning... Was Shakespeare a 'pioneer of psychosomatic research'? Hardly. It's more that - as I've always maintained - all you need to know about being human, about our inward and outward lives, is contained in his works. If you needed to explain to an alien race looking on from some distant galaxy what human beings are, you could do no better than to refer them to those works, which tell far more than any science-based descriptions of us. Science - especially the dubious science of psychology - limps along behind Shakespeare, picking up scraps. He was there first, and he went in deeper than any psychologist.