Author: StuckinaBook

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Guys. I’m SO excited. I’m spending my Saturday at Astley Book Farm! I will report back in due course – why is it called that? do they farm books there? – but just think of me madly shoving books into my bag and living my very best life.

I can’t promise that a weekend miscellany will be quite as good, but it’s better than nothing, right? Here’s a book, a blog post, and a link to help you out if you’re spending your weekend is less of a biblio-heaven.

1.) The book – is one I heard about during an episode of the Chat 10 Looks 3 podcast (essentially two Australian journalists talking about culture, food, books, everything in a very funny way). It’s called The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon, and is a non-fiction look at the making of a movie of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Which was a massive flop and a terrible production. It sounds fascinating. (It’s also super long, which is why I haven’t quite bought it yet.) It’s from 1991 – has anybody read it?

2.) The link – Waterstones has been bought by Foyles. Eep. Apparently in a battle against Amazon? Sad to see an independent go to the wall.

3.) The blog post – I enjoyed this review of Memento Mori by Muriel Spark, over at 746 Books. Yay Muriel!

A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis

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I was given a copy of A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis by Frances (of Nonsuch Book) back in 2011 – I don’t even remember the context for that, but thank you Frances! We did eventually meet each other in 2015, which was lovely, but this book must have come across the Atlantic. When I was looking up which books I had waiting that would fit 1971, this one came up – and I knew it was about time that I finally read it. Though I had no idea what at all it was about.

Lowell Lake aspires to be a writer, but is actually in an uninspiring job and an uninspiring marriage. As the narrative later tells us, both he and his wife are married to the marriage more than each other – not only has love left their relatively-young relationship, but so has respect. In a masterpiece of writing a bit like the opening of Sense and Sensibility, Lowell’s wife gradually manipulates him into giving up a scholarship at Berkeley in favour of moving to New York – all while alleging that she doesn’t want to.

Their life in New York is no better. Davis’s writing is excellent, and we feel mired in this unhealthy, unhappy relationship – and stultified by Lowell’s mediocre life. Jonathan Lethem’s introduction to the NYRB Classics edition isn’t very good, but he does have one moment of brilliance where he describes Lowell as ‘chronically ill with self knowledge’. Lowell takes up writing full time, but does it largely at night – both he and his wife grimly determined that he will at least try to finish a novel. One of my favourite passages, because it rang so true, was Lowell’s response when he re-read his prose:

It read like mud. Totally by accident he had contrived to fashion a style that was both limp and dense at the same time, writing page upon page of flaccid, impenetrable description, pierced here and there by sudden, rather startling interludes of fustian and vainglory that neither adorned, advanced, nor illuminated the plot, although they did give the reader a keen insight on the kind of movies Lowell had seen as a child.

As you can see, hopefully, A Meaningful Life deals with unhappy people and a bleak situation, but it is very funny. I laughed quite a lot reading it – Davis has a turn of phrase that brings out the dark humour of a sad scene. He also judges just the right amount of surrealism to bring to the novel – and Lowell seems to have a small break down…

They spent the next couple of hours barricaded behind walls of newsprint, warily passing fresh sections back and forth as the need arose, and doing their best not to meet each other’s eyes. The last section to come before Lowell’s face was the ant ads. It was a moment before he realized what he was looking at. He wondered how it had come into his possession. Had he picked it up on purpose? Had his wife deliberatly placed it where he could reach it? Was he absolutely certain his shows were on the right feet?

This isn’t a turning point so much as one more milestone on a trek into misery. But a turning point does come, of sorts. And that’s when they decide they should buy property.

I have never come across a scene of house hunting that I didn’t enjoy – particularly in a comic novel. It provides such a rich seam of comedy. And in A Meaningful Life it is as strange as it is funny – particularly when they decide upon a rambling house that is currently occupied by seemingly dozens of people, each in their decrepit cells. It’s bizarre and dark and wonderful to read – and the rest of the novel looks at how the house affects Lowell and his marriage. It continues to be strange and funny and haunting right through to the final words – and Davis’s exceptional writing continues, perfectly judged. To pick one example, I loved the odd truth of something like this:

“My wife and I,” he began, striking an attitude, “bought our house six years ago.” He’d asked so many questions that this utterance of a simple declarative sentence sounded extremely strange, as though he’d begun to read aloud.”

I’d be intrigued to know what Davis’s other novels are like. This isn’t quite like anything else I’ve ever read. Good as it is, I don’t know how often I’d be in the mood for more of the same – but I can certainly see it happening at least once every few years. And to leave you with a word of warning: if you have the NYRB Classics edition, don’t read the blurb – at least, don’t read it to the end. It gives away something that happens in the final 15 pages. You’re better than this, NYRB!

What did I buy in August?

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I’ve missed these for a few months, which emphatically doesn’t mean that I’ve not been buying books. But I think I’d been a bit restrained over the past couple of months – and, indeed, had been pretty restrained in August until the last week or so of it… and I have a whole heap o’ books. But they’re pretty great. No regrets.

If Only They Didn’t Speak English by Jon Sopel
I saw Sopel speak at the Hay festival earlier in the year – the only thing I went to, in fact – and it was excellent. Saddening, but excellent. So I eventually got a copy of his book – which retreads a lot of the same ground as his interview, but is good reading nonetheless.

Portrait of Stella Benson by R.E. Roberts
My recent wonderings about Stella Benson led me to buy this – I’d seen it described as a personal account of her life, and I love it when the memoirist has a relationship of some sort with the subject.

Letters of C.S. Lewis
I found this in a charity shop, and apparently bought it shortly after it was put out on the shelves. Which led to a curious conversation with the person shelving books, who I thought wanted to take the copy from me. It was all very confusing.

In the Freud Archives by Janet Malcolm
Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm
Psychoanalysis: the Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
Yup, I was serious when I said that my recent read of Two Lives had sent me off on a Janet Malcolm craze.

The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy
I really enjoyed her novel Hackenfeller’s Ape, and the Backlisted podcast did an episode that convinced me this novel was definitely worth buying – so I was pleased to find it in a charity shop recently.

The Trip to Echo Spring by Olivia Laing
Adding to my pile of Laing books to read, after really liking To The River. This one is all about writers and alcohol – intriguing, no?

The Bachelors by Adalbert Stifter
I’ll be honest, I don’t even remember buying this. But I love these boxy little Pushkin Press editions.

Reaching Down the Rabbit Hall by Allan Ropper and B.D. Burrell
The subtitle ‘extraordinary journeys into the human brain’ sum this one up – hopefully the sort of popular neurosciency type stuff that I find fascinating.

Rockets Galore by Compton Mackenzie
I want more and more Mackenzie. Though I think this might be a sequel. Which would be the second time I’d done that with Mackenzie.

Rosy is My Relative by Gerald Durrell
Sure, I need more Durrell waiting on my shelves.

Any you’ve read, or would recommend, or are interested in? I’ve already started the Sopel and one of the Malcolms…

Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald

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The final of the Betty MacDonald audiobooks from Post-Hypnotic Press is 1955’s Onions in the Stew – the fourth of her four autobiographical books. And it’s just as enjoyable as the others, even if Anybody Can Do Anything remains my favourite of the series.

No chicken farms or TB wards in this one – rather, it documents MacDonald moving to Vashon Island with her new husband, Donald MacDonald. As always (always!) MacDonald meanders around vagaries connected with the topic before getting into the topic proper – but ultimately they decide that they can’t live in Seattle or the surrounding suburbs, but could make a home for themselves on one of the islands,

MacDonald does seem to make a rod for her own back. She describes her difficulties and obstacles extremely amusingly, but moving to an island that is often inaccessible, and to a house that doesn’t have a road leading to it, is hardly conducive to ease.

As in all the other books, MacDonald encounters any number of odd characters. There is a feeling of unity on the island, but the odd fly in the ointment – such as the woman who palms off her (many) children on anybody who’ll house and feed them, then makes out later that she has been horribly offended and abused by said person. In MacDonald’s writing, though, the incident is funny rather than traumatic – with just that dark edge to it to set it off. The most appalling character seems to be her angry and bellicose dog Tudor.

MacDonald does self-deprecation so well. It’s so fun, for instance, to read about her family’s attempts to manoeuvre a washing machine by boat. Her daughters make a proper appearance here, having been mysteriously absent from her previous memoir, and join in the family’s amiability and ineptitude.

As for Vashon Island – I was rather surprised to learn, from Wikipedia, that the population is over 10,000. I don’t know what it was in the mid-century, but I rather got the impression from the book that it was a few hundred. I suppose 10,000 is still a smallish place, but I live in a village of about 150 people, so everything’s relative.

I’m sad to have got to the end of MacDonald’s oeuvre, and enjoyed hearing Heather Henderson narrate them so well. But I do have all the books on my shelves, so next time around I can read them the old-fashioned way.

On re-reading The L-Shaped Room

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One of my ongoing, unsuccessful (and, to be fair, fairly inactive) battles is to convince Rachel that we should read The L-Shaped Room (1960) on the Tea or Books? podcast. It’s one of my favourite books, and I’ve read it a fair few times – and it’s not often I’ll re-read a book at all, let alone more than once. In the end, I decided just to re-read it (again) myself. And, rather than write another review of it, I’ll take you through the experience I had…

Taking the book off the shelf

As someone pointed out in an Instagram comment, my copy is definitely falling apart. The spine went a long time ago, there are tears in some pages, and the whole thing might just crumble into dust at this point. It was in pretty bad condition when I paid 10p for it in a charity shop in Pershore, Worcestershire, buying it on the strength of having loved The Farthest-Away Mountain and The Indian in the Cupboard as a child.

But I can’t get rid of this copy. Maybe one day I’ll have to buy another, if this one gets too fragile to hold, but I love it too much to throw or give it away. Not because of the design or feel, but because it has been with me for so long, and was one of the first adult novels I loved.

Starting the book

There wasn’t much to be said for the place, really, but it had a roof over it and a door which locked from the inside, which was all I cared about just then. I didn’t even bother to take in the details – they were pretty sordid, but I didn’t notice them so they didn’t depress me; perhaps because I was already at rock-bottom. I just threw my one suitcase on to the bed, took my few belongings out of it and shut them all into one drawer of the three-legged chest of drawers. Then there didn’t seem to be anything else I ought to do so I sat in the arm-chair and stared out of the window.

This is the first paragraph and I’m instantly so happy. This description of a room isn’t exactly paradisiacal – it’s meant to be the opposite – but I feel like I’m coming home. No, my home isn’t remotely like this – but the world of the novel is one I love so much that it feels like coming to home to be back in that block of flats, and back in the L-shaped room.

The l-shaped room

Speaking of – once we’ve seen a bit of Jane’s background (in the theatre, then in a café, then being forced to leave home because she’s got pregnant – rattling through the premise, sorry) we’re in the room. And I realise that I have never paid any lasting attention to the description of the layout that Lynne Reid Banks gives. I’ve blogged before about how I can’t visualise descriptions in books – and it’s definitely true of layout. Try as I might, I can’t put those pieces together in my mind. So, for me, her room is laid out exactly as it is on the book cover.

The discriminatory language… 

When I first read the novel, in 2002 or thereabouts, I wasn’t happy about the racism and discriminatory language used about gay people. I’m still not happy about it, of course – even if it’s largely put in the mouths of characters we’re not supposed to agree with. Jane herself is rather racist as the novel starts, though perhaps because I know she’ll change her mind later in the book, I can get through these pages. But there are some sentences that are really tough to read.

Toby and Jane

It is very, very rare that I care about a will-they-won’t-they couple in a book. Reading about romance tends to bore me rather, and I’m much more interested in reading about a couple who’ve been married for thirty years than by young suitors. But Toby and Jane might be that couple. Even though I can’t actually remember whether or not they end up together – either at the end of the book or at the end of the trilogy. Despite all those re-readings, and my love of them, that detail has disappeared. But Toby is great. He comes along, rattling away about his writing and his life, and Jane wants nothing to do with anyone. But you know from the first moment that he’ll wear her down, and they’ll become friends and comrades if nothing else. As her friend Dottie says, “First of all I thought he was just some
little fledgling that had fallen out of its nest, but I very soon realised there was more to him than that.”

What did I remember?

My terrible memory is bad for many things, but good for re-reading. While the atmosphere of a book stays with me, the details usually flit from my mind pretty quickly – and, even after four reads, I’d forgotten pretty much everything that takes place at Jane’s workplace. It’s not as prominent as the block of flats, but there is quite a fun dynamic with her brash but friendly boss. She does the PR for a hotel, and there is an extended scene of her trying to manage a staged meeting between a comedian and a diva, and it’s very amusing. As I read it, it all came back to me – but if you’d asked me before I started this re-read what Jane did for a living, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.

Was it as good as I remembered?

Of course. This many times in, I know it’s a reliable joy. Seeing Jane grow to love the people she is surrounded with, and deal with the enormous life changes facing her, was as wonderful as always. Perhaps this novel wouldn’t have captivated me in the same way if I’d read it a few years later, but I know it’s now down as one of my all-time favourites and will never be dislodged from there.

Will I read the sequels next?

As always, I ended the novel bereft that I was leaving their company – leaving the l-shaped room and the house and the experience of reading the book. And it’s very tempting to go onto The Backward Shadow and Two Is Lonely, that continue Jane’s story. This time, I probably won’t. They’re both good, but they leave the flat behind – and I miss the flat terribly when I’m reading those books. So I’d certainly recommend them, and I’ve read them three times each, but I only give in to the urge to read them (and feel slightly disappointed) every other time I read The L-Shaped Room.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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A very happy weekend to you all – I will be enjoying it by running a stall at the village fete. I’m fully immersed in village life now, donchaknow. If you can’t make it along to my stand (bowling, at the time of writing) then perhaps this book, blog post, and link(s!) will do instead…

1.) The book – I loved Edward Carey’s strange and fascinating novel Alva & Irva, and also enjoyed Observatory Mansions, so I’m pleased to see he has another novel out soon – Little, about the life of Madame Tussaud. Find out more…

2.) The link – there are two this week, because they’re both interesting in different ways. The first – has Instagram changed how book covers are designed? And the second – oddly mesmeric photographs of abandoned mansions across Europe.

3.) The blog post – fans of D.E. Stevenson, you’ll be pleased to hear about the new reprints coming from Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press. Discover which titles in Scott’s announcement post.

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm

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What an extraordinary little book. A while ago I read Blood on the Dining Room Floor by Gertrude Stein and found it more or less unreadable – the sort of High Modernism that renders every sequence of words gibberish – but I wanted to read more about her life. So when I saw a copy of Two Lives (2007) by Janet Malcolm, about Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, I bought it – and thank goodness I did, because I have been introduced to a rather wonderful writer. And that writer is Malcolm, not Stein.

It’s quite an odd start. We are thrown immediately into comparing three different accounts of Stein and Toklas trying to rent a house that belonged to a lieutenant in France in World War Two. It’s a bit dizzying, this in media res, where we are exploring the details of competing versions of the story – two from different autobiographies Stein wrote; one from Toklas – before we’ve been told anything about them and their lives. And, indeed, Malcolm never writes about the women’s childhoods or lives apart from one another, nor do we see how and when they met, or anything that you might expect in a normal biography. This is not a normal biography.

For a long time I put off reading The Making of Americans. Every time I picked up the book, I put it down again. It was too heavy and too thick and the type was too small and dense. I finally solved the problem of the book’s weight and bulk by taking a kitchen knife and cutting it into six sections. The book thus became portable and (so to speak) readable. As I read, I realised that in carving up the book I had unwittingly made a physical fact of its stylistic and thematic inchoateness. It is a book that is actually a number of books. It is called a novel, but in reality it is a series of long meditations on, among other things, the author’s refusal (and inability) to write a novel.

Indeed, it’s not really a biography at all. It has elements of that, alongside literary criticism, literary history, investigative reporting, and all shades in between. I found it beguiling and exciting. We would dart from Stein publishing a 900+ page novel that nobody could understand (and which Malcolm writes about brilliantly) to Malcolm’s own reluctance to read it, and then to notes on the discovery of manuscripts to the chequered history of interviews with Toklas. In between is much on the way Stein has been posthumously treated by critics, academics, and publishers – shown alongside conversations Malcolm has with other Stein enthusiasts.

If I loved Stein and wanted to know all about her life, it might have been frustrating. As it was, it was a wonderful experience – Malcolm is such an intriguing companion to walk alongside. Her thoughts are original and vivid, and her voice is so distinct. I immediately went to see what else she wrote, and ordered four more of her books – on Freudianism, journalism, and writers and artists.

It made me think of Julia Blackburn’s quirky and wonderful book about John Craske, and is in that category of non-fiction where all the usual tenets of biography are thrown out the window – or, rather, stirred and rearranged and made clear and new. It was a wonderful reading experience – and, while I still don’t know many details about the lives of Stein and Toklas, I feel as though I know their characters and personalities well and brightly. I’m really looking forward to reading more by Malcolm.

Tea or Books? #63: First Edition vs Worst Edition and Parnassus on Wheels vs The Education of Harriet Hatfield

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Women opening bookshops, and how we feel about the physical book.

 

In the first half of this episode, we look at first edition vs worst edition – in a fairly sprawling discussion about whether we care about first editions, how the physical condition and appearance of the book affects us, and all that sort of thing. In the second half, we look at two novels about women starting selling books – from opposite ends of the 20th century. Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley was published in the 1910s and The Education of Harriet Hatfield was published in the 1980s – but which would we prefer?

You can support the podcast at Patreon and you can visit the iTunes page. Do let us know if you have any suggestions for books or topics for future episodes – we always love to hear from you!

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Blood on the Dining Room Floor by Gertrude Stein
Virginia Woolf
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam
A Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom
Old Books, Rare Friends by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
The Other Day by Dorothy Whipple
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Muriel Spark
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
E.V. Lucas
Rose Macaulay
Willa Cather
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
According to Mark by Penelope Lively
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Henry Thoreau
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton
As We Were by May Sarton
Joanna and Ulysses by May Sarton
A Woman of My Age by Nina Bawden
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
Safety Pins by Christopher Morley
Coronation by Paul Gallico
Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico

The Gentlewomen by Laura Talbot

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It was only as I started writing this review that I noticed the title was The Gentlewomen and not The Gentlewoman – which certainly puts a different spin on this 1952 novel by Laura Talbot. When it was in the singular (in my head), it referred to Miss Bolby – in the plural, it tells us more about the world that Talbot has created.

Miss Bolby is a governess in the mid-1940s, and has recently accepted a new position with Lady Rushford. Miss Bolby is proud of her status as a gentlewoman, keen to tell everyone that her sister married a man with a title, and that she was born into a good family living in colonial India. The Indian bracelets she wears attest to this when her words do not.

But Miss Bolby finds herself in a world where such things are no longer valued as much as they used to be. She arrives at the railway station alongside Reenie, the kitchen maid, and they are treated fairly similarly. At the same time, the dignified family seem to be growing less dignified – no longer putting such an emphasis on the correct names and titles, or a strict hierarchy within the house. As the blurb of my Virago Modern Classic edition writes very well, ‘Miss Bolby needs her pretensions to gentility and, in a household where these are no longer of consequence, her identity begins to crumble’. And that plural title – it shows Miss Bolby striving to put herself on the same level of those above her – but also the threats from those below, as the term ‘gentlewoman’ loses its dignity.

I thought The Gentlewomen was very well written, in a style that didn’t quite fit with anything I’ve read before. There are hints of Ivy Compton-Burnett in the cool and proper ways characters address one another, but also the lightness of the middlebrow novelist – and, woven in between, the manners and mores of society-focused fiction. Miss Bolby is never a pleasant character, but nor does the reader wish her ill – even when she is petulantly using her power as a governess to take out her frustration on her infant charges.

Much of the novel looks at the dynamics between the different characters – but a couple of important plot points in the second half give a new momentum to the narrative, and Talbot skilfully pulls us through.

It’s an unusual and impressive book – looking not just at the world war atmosphere so familiar to us from novels and film, but seeing how one world order was beginning to disintegrate – and how that didn’t only affect and disorientate those at the top of the hierarchies.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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This feels like the first day in ages where I’ve had nothing to do, and I fully intend to spend it sleeping, reading, and lying about. I’ve seldom been more excited about a weekend’s activity. And, before I go, here’s a book, a link, and a blog post…

1.) The book – was sent as a review copy by Michael Walmer. You might know the novelist F Tennyson Jesse, but did you know her sister Stella wrote Eve in Egypt? I’m hoping to read it before too long – but find out more here.

2.) The blog post – thinking about Michael Walmer made me wish more of his Stella Benson reprints were available. I’m sure they’ll be coming, but in the meantime reading more about Stella Benson led me to this amazing and thorough (ten-year-old) blog post about Benson. The blogger compares her to Robin Hyde, whom I haven’t read but who has been republished by Persephone.

3.) The link – I used to link to my OxfordWords article quite regularly. What I write for Oxford Policy Management might be of more niche interest – but, anyway, here’s a piece I wrote on the status of development in Malawi.