I don't often look at my blog statistics (honest), but lately I can't help noticing a very odd development, and I wonder if anyone can throw any light on it. The greatest number of my pageviews come, as they have done for a long time, from the United States, and they still do - but snapping at the heels of the US now is, er, Norway. Norway (from its tiny population) yields me over 50 percent more readers than the United Kingdom and, if present trends continue, might soon overtake even the United States. I have no idea why this should have happened: as far as I can make out, my review of the Peder Balke exhibition - and a mention of another Norwegian painter, Frits Thaulow - have been my only forays into Norwegian waters. Maybe Balke was enough...
Anyway, thank you, Norway - and if any of my Norwegian readers feel like getting in touch, please do.
Monday, 7 March 2016
Sunday, 6 March 2016
Farrell before Troubles
When I recently spotted a copy of J.G. Farrell's A Girl in the Head on the shelves of a second-hand bookshop (actually my favourite second-hand bookshop in all England - The Bookshop in Wirksworth), I bought it out of curiosity. Having recently reread Farrell's masterpiece, Troubles, I was interested to sample one of his earlier works.
A Girl in the Head was published in 1967, the last of three novels that preceded Troubles, and it attracted little acclaim, or even notice. It is a kind of black comedy set in a dreary English seaside resort, Maidenhair Bay, where one Boris Slattery, an ageing cynic and chancer, now lives, with various others, in the family home of his unhappy wife, Flower. Slattery - by his own account an aristocrat of middle-European descent - is on his uppers, and arrives in Maidenhair Bay by chance, having stepped off the train there on a whim. He has two overriding obsessions - himself, and a beautiful young Swedish girl who is coming to stay in the family home for the summer. In fact, Boris's eye for young and underage girls make for some pretty queasy reading; this unreliable narrator has none of the charm, wit or poetry of Humbert Humbert.
A Girl in the Head charts Boris's largely sordid, drink-sozzled life in Maidenhair Bay, and the devious machinations by which he attempts - and usually fails - to further his ends. He sometimes comes across as a kind of literary Ed Reardon, but is mostly less engaging even than that. His milieu - the small seaside town, the beach, the changing weather - is skilfully evoked, Farrell's strong sense of place showing through. Similarly the author's ingenuity in devising situations of excruciating physical embarrassment is often in evidence. But beyond that there is really nothing to suggest that the next time this author published a novel it would be one of the greatest of his time - Troubles.
To achieve that leap, to unleash his full creative power, he needed - as he was already sensing - a broader canvas, or rather a context of greater historical significance in which to place his hopelessly befuddled characters. Farrell was living in New York at the time of A Girl in the Head's publication, and reading up on the Irish War of Independence (of which his mother had some memories). He was also toying with various possible fictional scenarios, including a man trapped in an apartment building; a passive, possibly suicidal, Englishman abroad; a military widower with a teenage daughter; and a man battling with hordes of cockroaches (Farrell's hotel room was infested with these forerunners of the Majestic's cats in Troubles). Taking a break from his creative struggles, he took a boat to Block Island - and there he had his Eureka moment, looking around the spectacular remains of the burnt-out Ocean View Hotel, all twisted pipes, molten glass, charred beams, washbasins and blackened bedsprings. Yes, the very image of the burnt-out Majestic Hotel so vividly described in the opening pages of Troubles. Farrell had found his inspiration - the inspiration so sadly lacking in A Girl in the Head.
Odd, isn't it, how many of our best writers have found their true strength, or at least a new lease of life, by turning from the present to the historical past for their mise en scène? Penelope Fitzgerald and Beryl Bainbridge being other obvious examples, not to mention Hilary Mantel...
A Girl in the Head was published in 1967, the last of three novels that preceded Troubles, and it attracted little acclaim, or even notice. It is a kind of black comedy set in a dreary English seaside resort, Maidenhair Bay, where one Boris Slattery, an ageing cynic and chancer, now lives, with various others, in the family home of his unhappy wife, Flower. Slattery - by his own account an aristocrat of middle-European descent - is on his uppers, and arrives in Maidenhair Bay by chance, having stepped off the train there on a whim. He has two overriding obsessions - himself, and a beautiful young Swedish girl who is coming to stay in the family home for the summer. In fact, Boris's eye for young and underage girls make for some pretty queasy reading; this unreliable narrator has none of the charm, wit or poetry of Humbert Humbert.
A Girl in the Head charts Boris's largely sordid, drink-sozzled life in Maidenhair Bay, and the devious machinations by which he attempts - and usually fails - to further his ends. He sometimes comes across as a kind of literary Ed Reardon, but is mostly less engaging even than that. His milieu - the small seaside town, the beach, the changing weather - is skilfully evoked, Farrell's strong sense of place showing through. Similarly the author's ingenuity in devising situations of excruciating physical embarrassment is often in evidence. But beyond that there is really nothing to suggest that the next time this author published a novel it would be one of the greatest of his time - Troubles.
To achieve that leap, to unleash his full creative power, he needed - as he was already sensing - a broader canvas, or rather a context of greater historical significance in which to place his hopelessly befuddled characters. Farrell was living in New York at the time of A Girl in the Head's publication, and reading up on the Irish War of Independence (of which his mother had some memories). He was also toying with various possible fictional scenarios, including a man trapped in an apartment building; a passive, possibly suicidal, Englishman abroad; a military widower with a teenage daughter; and a man battling with hordes of cockroaches (Farrell's hotel room was infested with these forerunners of the Majestic's cats in Troubles). Taking a break from his creative struggles, he took a boat to Block Island - and there he had his Eureka moment, looking around the spectacular remains of the burnt-out Ocean View Hotel, all twisted pipes, molten glass, charred beams, washbasins and blackened bedsprings. Yes, the very image of the burnt-out Majestic Hotel so vividly described in the opening pages of Troubles. Farrell had found his inspiration - the inspiration so sadly lacking in A Girl in the Head.
Odd, isn't it, how many of our best writers have found their true strength, or at least a new lease of life, by turning from the present to the historical past for their mise en scène? Penelope Fitzgerald and Beryl Bainbridge being other obvious examples, not to mention Hilary Mantel...
Saturday, 5 March 2016
Tate Modern: No Change
Being a fair-minded type [outbreak of coughing and shuffling in the audience], I like to test my opinions against reality from time to time, in case something has changed that might cause me to think again. Too often, alas, this reality check merely serves to confirm my prejudice - or rather demonstrate that it is no prejudice but sound judgment.
So it proved with Tate Modern, which I rashly revisited yesterday. I have long held that this is a very bad art gallery indeed, a dismal and dispiriting waste of a huge amount of space (to say nothing of money, and opportunity) - and I saw nothing yesterday to change my mind. The thematic arrangement of the collection is incoherent to the point of randomness, and far too many of the depressing white spaces that pass for galleries are given over to crass and joyless gigantism. I saw plenty that vaguely piqued my interest, plenty that was simply repellent, a little that was genuinely clever or well made, but - leaving aside the Rothko Room, the Richter room, and a thin peppering of real quality works - almost nothing that lifted the spirits or delivered real aesthetic pleasure. Any room of the National Gallery delivers more of those than the whole of Tate Modern. Though it has held some superb exhibitions, and I've enjoyed a few of the turbine hall installations (the current one appears to be a kind of untended allotment garden), Tate Modern seems to me a monument to failure - the gigantic failure of Modern Art, or rather its decline into a sordid, self-serving industry, a trendy branch of showbusiness. Happily there are many very good artists still at work in the world - but they are sorely under-represented in Tate Modern.
So it proved with Tate Modern, which I rashly revisited yesterday. I have long held that this is a very bad art gallery indeed, a dismal and dispiriting waste of a huge amount of space (to say nothing of money, and opportunity) - and I saw nothing yesterday to change my mind. The thematic arrangement of the collection is incoherent to the point of randomness, and far too many of the depressing white spaces that pass for galleries are given over to crass and joyless gigantism. I saw plenty that vaguely piqued my interest, plenty that was simply repellent, a little that was genuinely clever or well made, but - leaving aside the Rothko Room, the Richter room, and a thin peppering of real quality works - almost nothing that lifted the spirits or delivered real aesthetic pleasure. Any room of the National Gallery delivers more of those than the whole of Tate Modern. Though it has held some superb exhibitions, and I've enjoyed a few of the turbine hall installations (the current one appears to be a kind of untended allotment garden), Tate Modern seems to me a monument to failure - the gigantic failure of Modern Art, or rather its decline into a sordid, self-serving industry, a trendy branch of showbusiness. Happily there are many very good artists still at work in the world - but they are sorely under-represented in Tate Modern.
Thursday, 3 March 2016
Thomas and Larkin Mark the Day
The poets' birthdays are coming thick and fast; today it's Edward Thomas (born 1878). On his birthday in 1915, two years before his death, he marked the day with one of his happier poems:
That last line is so unexpected...
Also on this day, in 1956 (60 years ago!), Philip Larkin wrote First Sight, an unusually sweet poem of 14 lines (but not a sonnet) that moves from winter to spring, or its promise - 'Earth's immeasurable surprise':
March the Third
Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.
'Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end
When the birds do. I think they blend
Now better than they will when passed
Is this unnamed, unmarked godsend.
When the birds do. I think they blend
Now better than they will when passed
Is this unnamed, unmarked godsend.
Or do all mark, and none dares say,
How it may shift and long delay,
Somewhere before the first of Spring,
But never fails, this singing day?
How it may shift and long delay,
Somewhere before the first of Spring,
But never fails, this singing day?
And when it falls on Sunday, bells
Are a wild natural voice that dwells
On hillsides; but the birds' songs have
The holiness gone from the bells.
Are a wild natural voice that dwells
On hillsides; but the birds' songs have
The holiness gone from the bells.
This day unpromised is more dear
Than all the named days of the year
When seasonable sweets come in,
Because we know how lucky we are.
Than all the named days of the year
When seasonable sweets come in,
Because we know how lucky we are.
That last line is so unexpected...
Also on this day, in 1956 (60 years ago!), Philip Larkin wrote First Sight, an unusually sweet poem of 14 lines (but not a sonnet) that moves from winter to spring, or its promise - 'Earth's immeasurable surprise':
Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.
As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.
Medical News: Joy Kills
I am indebted to the BBC News website for tidings of the latest killer lurking in our midst - joy. It seems a moment of intense joy can trigger a potentially fatal heart condition. The list of trigger situations makes chastening reading; I particularly like the last - news of a CT scan giving the all-clear: 'Why doctor, that's such fantastic - -' [thud]. The cross-head 'More Research Needed' could be wheeled out for absolutely any medical/ scientific 'research' story (for 'research', read 'money'). But as we're only talking about a subset of those potentially at risk from a 'rare event', this is perhaps not the most obviously urgent of research projects. And there's a lot to be said for dying happy - isn't there?
Tuesday, 1 March 2016
Richard Wilbur: Love Calls Us
Today is the 95th birthday of the great American poet Richard Wilbur - an occasion to rejoice that he is still with us. I hadn't realised until today that he shared his birthday with Robert Lowell, born four years earlier (and dead nearly 40 years). When I was at university (as the Sixties became, with sickening inevitability, the Seventies) Lowell enjoyed an almost god-like status among contemporary poets; it was pretty well taken for granted that he was one of the greats and that his fame would endure, certainly outlasting the likes of Wilbur, who was seen as an irrelevant old-school formalist. As it turned out, the intervening decades have not been kind to Lowell; though he is still respected, is he still read? The last time I tackled the Selected Poems (a few years ago), I was surprised to find how underwhelmed I was... Ah well, it is not a competition, but it is good to know that Wilbur is still alive and, I like to think, being read anew, now that the decades of unfashionableness no longer matter. Who could fail to enjoy a poet so in touch with the pleasures of being alive in this world, whose poems, so beautifully constructed, are such a delight to read? Here is one of his best-known works. Enjoy - and pay attention, and give thanks - that is all the world asks of us, and no living poet has better embodied those sweet imperatives than Richard Wilbur.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”
Please Help Yourself...
I recently reported on an outbreak of nomenclatural insanity in my local Barclays bank. Happily this has since been rectified and the three hole-in-the-wall machines now perform their functions in the anonymity that befits them. However, the bank madness is still all around us. This afternoon I stepped into a branch of Lloyds to make use of its indoor cash machine and, while getting my bearings - checking this was indeed a bank and not the reception area of some dubious club - I noticed a rack containing a range of leaflets. 'Our Products and Services', said a notice on the wall. 'Please Help Yourself...' I scanned the titles in a state of total bewilderment and, unable to believe my eyes, noted them down. The 16 leaflets - four rows of four - were titled as follows:
Calm
Flourish
Wish
Snug
Smarter
Breathe
Belong
Excited
Together
Castle
Aspire
Kicked
Fearless
Elated
Dream
Confident
Words fail me - though not, alas, the marketing hotshots who came up with that lot. Do the banks really need at this stage to give us more reasons to hate them?
Calm
Flourish
Wish
Snug
Smarter
Breathe
Belong
Excited
Together
Castle
Aspire
Kicked
Fearless
Elated
Dream
Confident
Words fail me - though not, alas, the marketing hotshots who came up with that lot. Do the banks really need at this stage to give us more reasons to hate them?
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