Goldfinch

Born on this day in 1622 was Rembrandt's most gifted pupil, Carel Fabritius, best known for his wonderful little painting of a goldfinch, one of the very few of his works that survive. I've mentioned Fabritius before, in the context of his sadly early death, but since then (as all the world surely knows) Donna Tartt has published her widely acclaimed novel The Goldfinch, which has Fabritius's picture at its centre (if it can be said to have a centre).
 When The Goldfinch came out, I was startled to hear one of the critics on (I think) Saturday Review admit to having found its 800-odd pages something of a slog, and even to suggest that it was perhaps a little repetitive, a tad prolix, a touch disorganised. Well well, I thought, that's something you don't often hear said in culturally correct circles about an otherwise widely acclaimed new novel - this one must be a real stinker. Sure enough, it then turned up as Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, and I must report that, even reduced to a mere 10 quarter-hour episodes, it became as it went on (after an admittedly arresting start) ever more rambling, uninvolving, repetitive and grindingly, mind-numbingly tedious. I dread to imagine what it must be like to read - or attempt to read - the novel at full length. Some of the 1-star reviews on Amazon, I fancy, give a pretty good idea...
 But anyway, the upside was that publication of Tartt's doorstop coincided with a Dutch art exhibition at the Frick, to which many thousands flocked to feast their eyes on Fabritius's masterpiece, The Goldfinch.

Justice

Time for a poem. Here's Donald Justice, writing about something we all do as we get older - thinking about the past. It's an informal sonnet, more or less unrhymed, and breaking at the fifth and tenth lines. It was featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac as a tribute on Justice's 80th birthday in 2005 (he died the year before). As the poem nears the end, I think it becomes extraordinarily poignant and beautiful...

Thinking about the Past

Certain moments will never change, nor stop being—
My mother's face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune—
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red-haired girl with wide mouth—Eleanor—
Forgotten thirty years—her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery's, a small, caught bird—
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
O marvelous early cigarettes! O bitter smoke, Benton...
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the ends of songs...

Arlott 100

Today is the centenary of the birth of John Arlott, 'the voice of cricket', a man who was surely the greatest cricket commentator who ever drew breath (or quaffed claret). Certainly, in terms of phrasing, timing and the painting of word pictures, he was unequalled; the very different Richie Benaud was probably the greatest in terms of technical acuity and conciseness (though some may disagree).
 Arlott's experience of first-class cricket was limited. While still serving in the Hampshire Constabulary (he was in the force 12 years, rising to Sergeant), he was watching his county team playing Kent when they discovered that they were short a 12th man for their next game, against Worcestershire. Arlott, a club cricketer, made himself available and took to the field as a substitute, his name appearing in the Western Daily Press's match report as 'Harlott'. He had the pleasure of watching the Nawab of Pataudi score a typically elegant century for Worcestershire. Aah the Nawab of Pataudi - you don't get the likes of them wielding the willow these days... That was in 1938, and it was Arlott's only match. 'I've failed at everything,' he observed later in life.
 When Arlott commentated on his last Test match, in 1980, a public address announcement after the end of his last stint prompted a standing ovation. The crowd, the entire English team and the entire Australian team all joined in. Geoffrey Boycott was even observed to remove his batting gloves to applaud. There is no higher honour than that.

From Geoffrey Hill to Call My Bluff

Browsing last night in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, I noticed that some of them have footnotes  - most of which are not exactly illuminating. But the note to Hymn IV is a beauty. Here's the Hymn:

'I was invested in mother-earth, the crypt of roots
and endings. Child’s-play. I abode there, bided my
time: where the mole

shouldered the clogged wheel, his gold solidus; where
dry-dust badgers thronged the Roman flues, the
long-unlooked-for mansions of our tribe.'

And here's the footnote:

'"I was invested in mother-earth." To the best of my recollection, the expression 'to invest in mother earth' was the felicitous (and correct) definition of  'yird' given by Mr Michael Hordern in the programme Call My Bluff televised on BBC2 on Thursday January 29th 1970.'

Call My Bluff! This was, in its late Sixties/ early Seventies prime, one of the  most enjoyable programmes on TV. It had a simple format: two teams of three each had to offer definitions of wildly obscure words, only one of which was genuine. In the show's golden age, the chairman was the urbane king of the comb-over Robert Robinson, the team captains were the puckish Arthur Marshall (whose memoir Life's Rich Pageant is well worth a look - as mentioned here) and the languid humorist Frank Muir, whose pal Patrick Campbell was also a fixture on the show. Campbell, an Irish aristo (the 3rd Baron Glenavy) and prolific writer of humorous columns, was even taller than Muir and every bit as languid. A cheery soul, he was afflicted with a stammer that often made it hard for him to get started; he would slap himself on the knee and urge himself to 'Come along! Come along!' Call My Bluff was extremely jolly, utterly civilised, often very funny and genuinely informative - and it came with panellists whose like would never be seen on today's TV (if indeed their like still exists). It's nice to think of Geoffrey Hill watching it, notebook in hand...

Cather to Elkin

I recently finished reading Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop - a title that to English ears sound like a Golden Age whodunit. It is of course no such thing, but a historical novel about a Bishop (then Archbishop), Jean Marie Latour, and his great friend and fellow priest, Joseph Vaillant - both of them from the Auvergne - working to establish a Catholic diocese in the vast and hostile territory of New Mexico in the second half of the 19th century. The Bishop is a version of the real-life Bishop Lamy, who built the very French cathedral of Santa Fe (pictured). The novel is a kind of companion piece to Shadows on the Rock, which I wrote about recently: both books have similar virtues, and both deal with the bringing of the old gods to new places (though from the Mexican point of view, it would have been the other way round) and the concrete things that make a life - the careful preparation of food prominent among them (they are French, after all). It offers a fascinating account of its time and place, one that is sympathetic (in a realistic, unsentimental way) to the Indians and the Mexicans, as well as to the Church's endeavours. In a series of episodes spaced out across the years, Cather evokes the look and feel of New Mexico, traces events, and explores the characters of Latour and Vaillant and the deep, touching bond between the two men. There are even a few appearances by the legendary Kit Carson, one of the heroes of my boyhood!  It is a beautiful, accomplished and subtly achieved piece of writing - though, for myself, I warmed more toward Shadows on the Rock than toward this one.
  Having finished Death Comes for the Archbishop, I felt like a change, so I reached for a Stanley Elkin I'd recently bought - The Magic Kingdom. I've written about Elkin and The Dick Gibson Show before, and I should have known to expect the unexpected - but The Magic Kingdom is something else. It's essentially an exuberant black comedy about a man deranged by grief after the death of his young son - who hatches a scheme to send dying children on a dream holiday to Disney World. So far, so Elkin - but what I had not expected was an English novel, set (initially) in England, with an English protagonist and English characters all talking to each other in a bizarre Mary Poppins/ Swinging Sixties argot. The first chapter takes us straight to an audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace - while finding time along the way for many a long jazzy Elkin riff, one of which could have won him a Bad Sex Prize any year. The chapter ends with the Queen signing a special Royal cheque for £50, which is not to be cashed but shown around a bit and returned to her:
'It isn't for keeps, Your Majesty?'
'Nothing is for keeps, Mr Bale.'
'You want it back? Fifty quid? You want it back?'
'Does the Pope shit in the woods?' asked the Queen of England.'
   This is going to be quite a ride...

World Ends Again

I feel it's only fair to warn you that, if the Norse myths are to be relied on - and there is no reason to doubt it* - the world will be ending tomorrow. Rogmarok - a succession of unfortunate events, on the kind of grand scale that Norse mythology favours - will tomorrow culminate in the submersion of the world in water. Only a few of the gods will survive, plus a couple of humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, whose job will be to set about repopulating the world.
 Oddly, with all this end-of-the-world stuff going on all around it, the otherwise exhaustive Norse chroniclers make no specific mention of the fate of the world-tree Yggdrasil. According to some interpretations, it could be that Lif and Lífþrasir survive the unpleasantness by sheltering in the world-tree. That would be nice.
You might recall that Yggdrasil (or Igdrasil) gets a mention in Richard Wilbur's homage to Robert Frost - Seed Leaves.


* apart from the fact that they are a pile of ballsachingly tedious hokum.

Coincidence - or Watt?

I've been thinking vaguely that it might be good to re-read Samuel Beckett's Watt soon. But my battered old Calder & Boyars paperback is falling apart now...
So there I was, browsing among the bookshelves of the hospice shop (it has only bookshelves, it sells only books) just now, when I spotted it - the Calder & Boyars paperback Watt, but in near-mint condition, despite its age. I opened it, and on the flyleaf was written, in a childish hand:

'To Dada,
with many happy returns of the day
(30 March 1971)
lots of love from Caroline.
"Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep,
Dreaming of both."
(Gerontion: T.S. Eliot)'

Musing, I bought it.