Book Vampires

I jokingly referred in a comment on one of Caroline's posts that I believed my daughter would steal in on batwings at night to raid my book shelves as I constantly find volumes that I had thought I had lost lying abandoned at her place.

In short, I described her as a book vampire.

Imagine my consternation when I reached for my copy of A Tale of Two Cities to discover that, far from being a figment of my imagination, such dark creatures of the night exist.

Horror upon horror, its vowels had been bled dry!

I offer proof. Here are the desiccated remains of the opening paragraph.

t ws th bst f tms, t ws th wrst f tms,
t ws th g f wsdm, t ws th g f flshnss,
t ws th pch f blf, t ws th pch f ncrdlty,
t ws th ssn f Lght, t ws th ssn f Drknss,
t ws th sprng f hp, t ws th wntr f dspr,
w hd vryting bfr s, w hd nthng bfr s,
w wr ll gng drct t Hvn, w wr ll gng drct
th thr wy--n shrt, th prd ws s fr lk th prsnt
prd, tht sm f ts nsst thrts nsstd n ts
bng rcvd, fr gd r fr vl, n th sprltv dgr
f cmprsn nly.

Bookworms beware! And please report if you have been attacked.

Babies, Grandbabies & Me.

A whole week since I last blogged.

I am lazy
I am lazy
I am so very lazy!

Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima culpa

(For the Catholics among you.)

However, while at work yesterday I had an excellent idea for a new story for Amy, my first granddaughter. And, in due course, for her sister, Katie, now six weeks old. (My Amy is almost a palindrome. And she is at the stage where everything is "Mine".)

Readers will know I wrote one for her third birthday. It ran to 6,000 words. My darling Mrs ex-Wife, though very complimentary, observed that perhaps it was more suitable for a six or seven year-old.

She observed this several times.

I finally got the message.

So yesterday this idea popped into my head.

Funny how ideas *POP*. I wasn't even thinking consciously about Amy or stories. Perhaps Mrs ex-Wife's observations had been rankling in the nether regions. Though I do agree with her. The first story is too much for a three year old. (Mind you John Stuart Mills was speaking in Greek and Latin by that age and Mozart had written several operas, including Jesus Christ, Super Star and every other work by Andrew Lloyd Webber.)

Last night, I discussed the idea with the Mummy of Amy and Katie, i.e. my daughter Emily. (Good grief, my baby is now a MUMMY. Do other grandparents find this strange? I know I have lived with the reality of the situation for a few years now but every so often it thwacks me.)

Mummy Emily has been told the idea. She loves it. She loves me. So no choice. And because the nature of contemporary story telling for children is repetition, (is this necessary?), I am hoping she will be able to contribute. I am sure she will.

I can see the illustrations already. It is a strange feeling. On the one hand, reassuring, on the other, OMG, I have to buckle down and do them and will they be as good as I imagine them. Never. But maybe better. Or worse. Or different. OMG.

Do other grandparents find the idea of their babies becoming parents wonderful but strangely disturbing, or is it just me? Do let me know.

I can do lists.

Of a Sunday morning, I like to read the blogs of fellow writers that I have linked here while listening to the Archers omnibus. (Ruth: Oh noooo!)

I have noticed there is growing trend for bloggers to publish lists. Caroline seems to me to be the one who has been promoting this trend. She is an avid list publisher. Perhaps it is just the impression I have. I could be wrong. She might slap me for saying so. (But she is obsessed by Simon Callow, so she had better not or I will tell the whole world.)

So I am publishing my list. Trouble is I am not a person who has favourites. Ask me what my favourite book is and I will respond by asking, ‘What time is it?’ I don’t have a favourite book. I can list books that I enjoy, have enjoyed, for different reasons and different moods.

Wow – a list! I mentioned a list so let me list, in no particular order, some of my favourites and the reasons why.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte: I first read it when quite young, 15 or 16, so its dark romanticism filled my adolescent soul. I studied it at University when I was 50, so the unconscious allegory of the protagonists and location gripped my imagination.

Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier: same as above, but I didn’t study them later.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré: Having grown up through the Cold War years, and being a boy, I do like a good thriller. For my money, le Carré is the most intelligent writer of this genre.

Doctor No, Ian Fleming: one of Fleming’s secretaries lived just down the road from my uncle and aunt in Richmond, Surrey, so, at the age of 14, I believed I knew him intimately. Doctor No includes a small erotic scene that was, how shall I explain this delicately, jolly exciting for a 14 year old.

My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell: again a book I read as an adolescent and adored. Being the son of an army officer and so having lived in a number of countries in my early life, Durrell caught the dream like quality of my youth albeit in a country I had never visited then.

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh: I was educated at Stonyhurst College so was a Catholic. (Waugh’s youngest son was there when I was.) Be that as it may, and accepting the fact that Waugh was not a pleasant character, the exploration of sin, sexuality and sanity in the character of Sebastian is masterly.

Brighton Rock, Graham Greene: I choose this book, though I could have selected any by Greene, because it is encapsulates everything that was to dominate his writing for the rest of his life, i.e. the precise nature of good and evil.

Lord of the Flies, William Golding: similar to Greene, I could have selected any of his works, my reason being because he first awoke in me the idea of social determination and thus my interest in philosophy.

Hmmm, having said no particular order, I notice that so far I have listed books that had an early influence on me and have remained with me. I shall have to continue this at a later date.

Quand en France, mange et dors!

It is almost a month, seems like a year, since I set off to stay with Stuart and Gabrielle at their wonderful smallholding in Brittany. It is set midway between Dinan and Rennes and seems less of a smallholding than a small ranch.

Needless to say I ate extremely well. Apart from some spider crabs that we bought at Rennes market, and which I cooked á Singapore, all the food served at the table was home grown. This is typical of a dish that would grace each meal.

The first impression to make an impact on me was the local rural architecture. Traditional farm buildings are made of clay, the colour of a rich, warm terracotta, on a stone foundation. Perched atop each gable end is individual glazed pottery figure - this one is, appropriately enough, a tiler.

Such material sounds though it would not last a summer's storm but I offer proof that at least one building was erected pre-revolutionary times.
The five days was a holiday for me - something I had impressed on Stuart or the dear man would have regimented my days. A time to reflect on my writing. A time to reflect on chickens.

They have a flock of ten or so, variously named M. Rôti, Mme Coq au Vin, Madame Oeufs Brouillés. Heartless, I know, and I did my best to block the ears of the fowl to their ultimate fate.

I could reflect on chickens all day; on their comings and goings, their petty rivalries, their muttered conversations on the latest gossip, their ambitions to scale the ladder of social standing. Even on their deep appreciation of art.
The cats, on the other had, are interested only in the art of merging into the background.

Their was only one shock in the five days I was there. It seems the Bretons, for some reason known only to themselves, hold the former deputy leader of the Labour party, John Prescott, with deep respect.

For in the market square in Dinan, I found a statue erected to him kitted out in full regalia.

Ne Faites Pas Ça!

Being a baptised, confirmed, ordained and shortly to be beatified Francophile, I just love this. She makes me laugh every time she says, "Don't do that!"

OneBook

The more observant of you might have noticed that I have added a link to my Friends list; OneBook.

Its descriptor summarises its intention - 'If you could read one book…'

I, being a baldy of little brain, submitted the following which, I now realise, falls outside of the rubric so it was not posted. However, it deserves a wider readership. Not my writing, but that of which I write.

Adam Thirwell, ‘The Last Flippant Writer,’ an introduction to Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Vintage, 2005

I fear the book I wish to comment on does not exactly fall off the radar screen of required reading. It is Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories. However, it is introduction to the Vintage imprint, published in 2005, by Adam Thirwell, entitled ‘The Last Flippant Writer’, that caught my attention.

It is a very accessible analysis of Kafka’s writing, beginning with a definition of what Kafkaesque is and isn’t.

Kafkaesque is, to quote Thirwell, ‘the spirit of the non-serious – evasive, ironic, flippant.’ It is not the description of a man who is ‘a genius, outside the ordinary limits of literature, and a saint, outside the ordinary limits of human behaviour’.

Kafka’s discovery is that ‘Plots are so tiny, so small… that so much less was necessary to create a story than people had thought.’

As a writer, this is a liberating thought. The idea that detail, the floss traditionally extended to drive the narrative or create atmosphere, may itself constitute the story and so need fulfill neither function creates a delicious ambiguity. ‘Everything could be both, or neither, at once.’

Thirwell roots Kafka’s style in the experimental fiction of turn of the century European literature. He specifically refers to is the Swiss-German writer, Robert Walser.

‘From Walser, Kafka learned … that a story did not have to have a stated moral. It could be smaller, and evasive – it could be an exercise in style instead.’

Much of the mythology that has grown up around Kafka Thirwell attributes to Max Brod, a good friend who was charged by Kafka to destroy all his unpublished work. Fortunately, Brod refrained; less fortunately, he became Kafka’s first and most influential interpreter.

According to Thirwell, Brod ‘had a theory of a Great Writer’; someone who ‘is seriously racked by metaphysical doubt, a seer with a message for troubled humanity, a person preternaturally sensitive to pain and suffering.’

Add Brod’s desire to posit Kafka as a Great Writer to the author’s premature death and one can understand how Kafka becomes bracketed in the romantic ideal depicted in The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis.

Thirwell’s introduction, ‘The Last Flippant Writer’, runs to just 28 pages, a length one can comfortably read in-store at Waterstones or Borders so there is no need to buy the book. I would urge every writer, wannabe or published, to read this gem of literary criticism. It is, above everything, a Class A stimulant for the creative imagination.

The Sun has Got His Hat On. Hip, Hip, Hip Hooray!

Amazing how you can wake up feeling miserable then, within a matter of hours, feel like kissing every person you meet. (This is Brighton, so it is permitted.)

To bring you up to date, I toddled off to court, arriving five minutes late as my dear ex-wife had rung to wish me luck just before I was about to leave which took all of fifteen minutes.

So, sweaty from my accelerated walk as well as with nerves, I arrive in the waiting room and immediately spot my adversary, the landlord's agent. To spare his blushes, I will call him by his initials, TC. (They also happen to stand for Top Cat. Very appropriate as you will see.)

He is of a similar age to me and a most agreeable individual. He has plucked my ass from the flames a couple of times before.

So we chat. I explain the situation, he scratches his head. A good sign. The ball is in his court. He bounces it a couple of times.

"I need to refer to the umpire [i.e. his counsellor]," he says. "If she doesn't turn up in five minutes, I will adjourn the case."

I swiftly make a plasticine model of said counsellor and stick pins in it.

My voodoo fails. The counsellor appears and the two go into a huddle. TC emerges from the huddle.

"I will continue with the repossession order," he says. "However, I will sit on it and then, provided you can clear your arrears by the end of July, I will rip it up."

I can clear my arrears by the end of July. I will clear my arrears by the end of July. I can, I will. I will, I can.

As for TC, he is Top Cat.