The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón translated by Lucia Graves (Doubleday Canada) 531pp.

In the last pages of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, Daniel Sempere, the hero of the story, receives a parcel from Paris enclosing a book entitled The Angel of Mist: he "leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books." It was with just such an 'enchanted scent of promise' that I, and undoubtedly millions of other readers, experienced upon opening Zafón's latest novel, The Angel's Game.

We are back in Barcelona, and our hero, David Martín, born in 1900, is recalling his life as a young man making his way in the world of the scribbler's trade. The first two words of the novel, "A writer," provide us with the touchstone for this work, for, told from David's point of view, these 531 pages are his autobiographical revelations.

A single child of poverty, his mother having abandoned him to his illiterate, troubled, and at times abusive father, David manages to improve his life by being good at school, by finding solace in the written word, and by finding refuge in the Sempere and Sons Bookshop where he is allowed to read what he pleases. At one point he is given by old Sempere, a special copy of Great Expectations which becomes a key text to his life--his sympathetic imagination identifying with Pip.

His father was the night watchman at the newspaper The Voice of Industry, and David would accompany him to work and squirrel himself away there to read. But after his father was brutally murdered before his eyes, David, in shock, hides in the Newspaper printing department only to be found incoherent and lost. The wealthy and influential Pedro Vidal, a writer of true crime stories for the paper, becomes his benefactor by insisting David be given a job as a runner and allowed to sleep in the basement of the building. Weaned on lurid newspaper stories, he graduates from carrying cigarettes and coffee around the offices to being Vidal's assistant after showing promise of being a writer himself.

Like Dickens' Great Expectations, the story begins at Christmas as David recalls his being given the chance to write a story for the back page of the Sunday paper. It leads to more fiction being accepted and he creates a serial called The Mysteries of Barcelona, stories of Barcelona low-life told with exuberant Gothic excess, stories which ultimately establish his fertile career as a writer. His main character, a femme fatale called Chloé Permanyer, is much like Rodolphe, the character in The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, a character who prowls the dark dangerous streets, meting out justice to evil doers and helping the virtuous. One of many precursors to a character-type that continues to show up in various forms over the ages, perhaps most popularly in Batman and in graphic novels--"V" for instance in V is for Vendetta.

The supernatural thread, a spiral of Luciferian artifice, begins early on when his stories bring him to the attention of an obscure Parisian publisher by the name of Andreas Corelli. Corelli eventually offers David a commission to write a new religion for him, a fable for the times. (This Faustian pact reminded me of Balzac's Lost Illusions where the young writer, Lucien de Rubempré is saved from death by Vautrin, a Mephistophelian character who promises Lucien wealth, power, and fame if he follows his directions. It is a book that also deals with writers, journalism and publishing. Vautrin but another precursor to Corelli.) Though David is already busy churning out penny dreadful Gothic monthlies infused with Grand Guignol, The City of the Damned, using the pseudonym Ignatius B. Samson, for a publisher whose practices reveal a shady side to the business to say the least, he accepts this Faustian pact, and we follow David down this spiral into the dark wet shadows of Barcelona, a spiral that leads him, in the end, to discover he has not been alone in his endeavour.

Our initial sympathy with David is challenged by the decisions he makes and we witness his life crumbling before him while others prosper. The thread of romance is a major one and his first love, Christina has abandoned him for his mentor, Pedro Vidal. Alongside the literary, the supernatural and the romance, a new narrative thread develops as David begins to investigate the history of his newly acquired Tower House, a crumbling pile with a past and a previous owner with his own initials. We follow David into a realm of violence and death, the book taking on a semblance of a noir detective novel as a body count rises and a possibly corrupt police investigator and his two thuggish assistants shadow his every move.

This is a richly mirrored narrative, full of stories within stories and interesting characters such as Isabella, a bright resilient young Jane Eyre-like character who becomes David's writing assistant. There are amusing minor characters such as an all knowing librarian, a recalcitrant archivist, a stiff-lipped lawyer, and avaricious publishers among many others. The character of Isaac, the keeper of the Cemetery of Forgotten books returns and his usually laconic manner gives way to a bit of storytelling himself. The setting of Barcelona is a wonderful character in itself, from the cemeteries to the parks, from the libraries and archives to the bookshops, from the mansions to the slum dwellings, from the baroque old quarter to the recently abandoned buildings of the Great Exhibition and its cable car over the city.

The Angel's Game is a good read and it is a novel that can be enjoyed at different contextual levels. The narrative threads of suspense, crime, romance and the supernatural are intertwined with skill, but they are all bound by the subject of storytelling and writing which surround and permeate them. This literary thread is perhaps the most important thread we as readers should follow though this land of shadows.

A link to music the author composed around the novel can be found here

A link to a video interview with the author can be found here.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton (McClelland & Stewart) black/white photographs by Richard Baker, 327pp.

My initial impression of this book was its weight. This Canadian edition is a smaller format book, so it is surprising to the senses when one first picks it up. It is due to the selection of heavier weight paper which has been used to accommodate the black and white photographs which accompany the text, photographs taken by Richard Baker. Holding the book made me think that weight is perhaps an appropriate metaphor for work itself. Images of Atlas or Sisyphus came to mind, representative precursors of the daily grind.

Alain de Botton writes that he was inspired to embark on this book by his observation of shipspotters on a pier in London. Perhaps there is a source of irony there, for the casual passerby, noticing strange individuals hanging about a pier with binoculars, would probably think they were jobless and had time on their hands. Either that, or eccentric retired folks with time on their hands. Perhaps the more imaginative would wonder if they were sailors waiting for a ship, and think wistfully of sails and the open sea. But Alain de Botton was truly inspired by their fascination with what most of us ignore or are blind to, in this case, enormous container ships transporting the worlds' products around the globe--products we all enjoy, and rarely think of whence they came. After having read this remarkable book, I find my mind wanders while I make my selection of fruit at the grocer, searching for the heaviest smaller orange or grapefruit to assure for the best and juiciest fruit, and with the fruit's weight in my hand, I am reminded of the heft of Alain de Botton's smaller format book with the heavy weight paper, which leads me to think of the circuitous route that every product makes to end up on our shelves of convenience, and this makes me mindful of the people working at all hours on this globe and how we are all connected in some fashion.

Throughout my reading of de Botton's new work, I experienced many strange synchronous moments, the book as it were, resonating with reality. There I was driving to St. Jacob's with my wife and telling her how much the first chapter of Alain de Botton's new work reminded me of John McPhee, and not an hour later, there I was looking down at a lone copy of McPhee's Uncommon Carriers, in a bookshop which seemed the least likely to have any titles by this author. It was slightly damaged and therefore remaindered. I bought the book and read it in between chapters of de Botton's. Or my reading the last chapter on Aviation which mentions the $22 billion purchase of A380 air buses by the emirate of Abu Dhabi, and I look up to the late news announcing the arrival of the first A380 at Toronto's airport that day. There were other strange synchronous moments in between which certainly made me feel that Alain de Botton has his hand on the pulse of the world.

In his essay on Accountancy, he shadows an accountant rising from their home in the Berkshires and catching the commuter train to London, and follows them through a day at the office of one of the world's major accountancy firms. He writes:

The headquarters on the bank of the Thames is the setting for a
range of behaviours at least as peculiar as anything that an ethnographer might
uncover among the clans of Samoa. (p. 231)

This is perhaps the thought that governs his work, for everything we do as humans, whether we are a tribe of accountants in an air-conditioned tower, tuna fishermen off the coast of the Maldives, or a single artist in a field wielding a paint brush, human endeavour is rich in consideration.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is a book with wonderful writing, sharp insights, wry humour, and thoughtful philosophical musings. Whether it is about biscuit manufacture, pylon towers, accountancy, career counselling, or the craft of painting a single 250 year old oak tree over and over, Alain de Botton uses his wonderfully lucid mind and masterly writing skills to make us see life about us in a fresh and invigorating way, and makes us mindful of the interconnectedness of humans. There is a tinge of stoic melancholy about his conclusions of the necessity and importance of work, and a poignancy that for most of us, fulfillment and happiness are not to be found in our working lives.

Alain de Botton is travelling the world promoting the book. If that's not work, I don't know what is. Here is a link to a video of one of his lectures.

And here is a shorter video of a conversation with Will Hearst.

And for the curious, the room where some of the work gets done, Alain de Botton's room.

Concord of Sweet Sounds

Concord of Sweet Sounds: Musical Instruments in Shakespeare / Gerard Brender à Brandis; F. David Hoeniger (The Porcupine's Quill)

This is the second collaboration of master wood engraver and bookwright Gerard Brender à Brandis, with F. David Hoeniger, distinguished professor emeritus of the University of Toronto. The first was A Gathering of Flowers from Shakespeare (1997), a very special limited edition folio production, printed and bound by Brender à Brandis. A selection from this initial collaboration was featured in The Devil's Artisan/DA, 50 (Spring/Summer 2002), and then a commercial edition was issued by The Porcupine's Quill Press in 2006.

This new work presents a very handsome cover and title page which leads us to superb wood engravings accompanied by the textual references to Shakespeare, selected and interpreted by F. David Hoeniger. As always, The Porcupine's Quill Press maintains a consistent quality of production with fine paper, coloured endpapers and pleasing type faces.

The Devil's Artisan/DA, 64 (Spring/Summer 2009)

The latest issue of The Devil's Artisan/DA is devoted to master wood engraver and bookwright, Gerard Brender à Brandis, and is guest edited by Marianne Brandis who provides an excellent biographical essay on his career. The work includes very helpful bibliographical checklists of Gerard's works and shows, and is illustrated with samples of his wood engravings and images of his productions. This is a must have for any follower of Gerard's work. And for anyone interested in wood engraving, Canadian small press history, and bibliography, this issue will also be of great interest.

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Nocturnes : Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, May 2009) 221pp.

Kazuo Ishigruo's latest work of fiction, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, arrived while I was in the midst of re-reading and reading the short stories of Vladimir Nabokov. (In a timely thematic wink, I had just completed Nabokov's story, Music, with its wonderful descriptions of the pianist's hands reflected in the piano.) The contrast of styles was therefore more pronounced. Moving from the richly detailed reflections of Nabokov's narratives to the clear and precise prose of Ishiguro was certainly a shift. As the spectral reflections of the pianist's hands lingered in my mind, I thought that Ishiguro's short stories were finely crafted, but perhaps slight. But after having finished the stories and having returned to Nabokov, I kept thinking about them. And the more I thought about them, the more I came to appreciate the subtle triangular dynamic between the author's intentions, the motivations and perceptions of the characters, and the suppositions and anticipations of us the readers.

This triadic concern revolves around the--for the most part-- first-person narratives of Ishigruo's protagonists, protagonists who do share something with Nabokovian characters: they are displaced in the world. This triadic pattern is also paralleled in the relationships of the characters, usually the displaced protagonist is involved with two other people, generally a married couple. These open-ended stories may seem light, but the characters stay with you. They left me thinking that most people are displaced in some form or other. The imagination has room to conjure possibilities.

In the first story, Crooner, a young man, Janeck, originally from an eastern bloc country, is working in Venice as a musician in the outdoor cafés. The musicians have to pander to the tastes of the tourists and the 'Godfather' theme music is a common piece in their repertoire. This musical piece is referred to in the final story, Cellists, and acts much like a musical motif in bringing the five stories to their conclusion, rounding off the five movements with a rondo to this initial allegro ma non troppo. Janeck is an outsider to the locals, and yet is a masked player to the tourists. He recognizes a famous older American singer sitting in the café, a singer whose records Janeck's mother found solace and comfort with back in the old communist days of his upbringing. He introduces himself and the plot develops whereby Tony Gardner, the singer, asks Janeck to accompany him while he sings to his wife from a gondola. Janeck's perceptions of what state this older couple's marriage is in, is coupled with our anticipations of possible outcomes. But Janeck, and we the readers, discover that our expectations are blind and the cool truth is down a shadier lagoon.

In the second story, Come Rain or Come Shine, the displaced protagonist is Ray, a Brit who lives in Spain teaching English. He has come back to England at the behest of his friend Charlie whose marriage to Emily is in the rough. Ray and Emily had been close when in University where they shared a mutual love of the music of certain women singers like Shirley Bassie and Sarah Vaughn. Both Charlie and Emily believe that Ray is frittering away his life and that he should really settle himself and get a decent job, a marriage, a house. This is a strange dance of a story and we find Charlie trying to use Ray to help with his troubled marriage. Ray seems rather pathetic and lets himself be manipulated, and it seems it is due to his very displacement, his lack of roots, that he can be so easily used.

The third story, Malvern Hills, the first-person narrator is a young, immature man who is trying to be a singer-songwriter and has opted to help, in a most casual way, his sister and brother-in-law who run a restaurant in the Malvern Hills catering to tourists during the summer months. He has yet to make a way for himself in the world and suffers from that late adolescent light-headedness or self-centeredness which is a type of blindness to reality. He meets a Swiss couple who happen to be musicians. They play popular tunes in restaurants in Austria and Switzerland, although they prefer Swiss folk music. This is a soft gentle story, an adagio if you will, and I was left wondering if the young man's perceptions of the world were altered after meeting the older couple, but concluded that perhaps only on an unconscious level. He was still the unsettled youth with his unknown future before him like the clouds above, floating towards the distant Worcestershire Beacon.

With the fourth story, Nocturne, the first-person narrator is Steve, a jazz sax player whose wife, Helen, has left him for a wealthy businessman. Wealthy enough to offer to pay for plastic surgery for Steve so he can reestablish his career with a fresh face. This is a bizarre story-line and it has Steve staying at a fancy hotel in order to recover from his surgery. Next-door, also recovering from surgery, is the celebrity wife of Tony Gardner the singer in the first story, Crooner. It is a rather a sad story of how individuals are willing to change their external appearance rather than work on their inner self. Both Steve and Lindy Gardner are displaced and single, and seemingly without direction. My expectations of their mutual support floundered and like life, people, unchanged, go their separate ways.

In the final story, Cellists, we have the first-person narrator, a sax player, in an unnamed Italian tourist center playing in a group much like the group in the first story. He spots a cellist out in the café who used to play with his band seven years ago, a young man named Tibor. The sax player then tells the story of Tibor, the highly trained Hungarian cellist in exile, now playing popular tunes like the theme to the 'Godfather' in tourist cafés. Tibor is befriended by an American woman, Eloise McCormack, who wants to be his teacher and mentor. She recognized his talent, his 'potential.' The narration shifts into a third-person objective view point to encompass the breadth of Tibor's story and then shifts back into the voice of the sax player. Tibor's life is altered by this encounter with its interesting twist and yet we are left wondering exactly in what way. What really became of his career and life. The sax player with a laissez-faire attitude is reluctant, or too laid-back to enquire. Life flows on; people go their separate ways and we are left wondering.

Overall, Nocturnes is an interesting deceptively light group of lyric pieces and any fan of Ishiguro would want to check them out.

Paradise With Serpents: Travels in the Lost World of Paraguay

Paradise With Serpents: Travels in the Lost World of Paraguay by Robert Carver (Harper Perennial) 2007. 376pp. map.

Being more of an arm-chair traveller, there are better odds of my winning a major lottery than ever setting foot in Paraguay. After reading Paradise with Serpents: Travels in the Lost World of Paraguay, I imagine that could be said for the majority of the world's population. A troubled country which bewilders, saddens, and makes one shake one's head in disbelief.

Paraguay: Shaped like an internal organ of an indeterminate mammal, landlocked and located in the nether region of South America. That about summed up my knowledge of Paraguay prior to my having read Robert Carver's entertaining and perceptive travel narrative. I couldn't even recall the name of the capital. (Deceptione kept coming to mind, but that was obviously wrong.) My knowledge of the rest of South America is fairly sound in a basic sort of way: countries, capitals, history, landscape, music, literature, people, culture, but for some reason Paraguay had not entered my realm of knowledge. I felt less self-conscious about this ignorance when I read of Carver's experience while waiting in Sao Paulo for the flight into Paraguay: he noticed that, though there were newspapers and magazines from the U.S., Mexico, and numerous South American countries, there was nothing about Paraguay to be found in them. In addition, there were no periodicals from this isolated country to be found, and he comments that his "destination was as invisible as it had been in England."

Carver has done his research and, like most travel narratives, there is a mixture of information and experience. He actually begins the book with an autobiographical tale of a distant relative whose extraordinary life and disappearance in the wilds of South America is indeed stranger than fiction. This relative is one of the reasons he had wanted to visit Paraguay. It seems Robert Carver is the type of travel writer looking for the unusual experience. His first book, The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania, lays the groundwork for his visit to the equally uninviting destination of Paraguay, a dangerous and disagreeable country, and therefore a desirable spot for such a writer. Carver's travel narrative is in the English tradition of the individualist adventurer seeking the unusual, the anomalous. Most of Paraguay seems rather anomalous. Then again, perhaps anomalies are relative, for he finds that Paraguayans are shocked at how many laws, orders and strictures European countries experience. (It would be interesting to read a travel narrative of a true Paraguayan who experienced Europe.) The humour, at times dark, is generally evoked by the absurdity of the extreme situations he learns of, or witnesses, and the rather stressful situations in which he finds himself, which often involve either nature: vampire bats, piranhas, crocodiles, mosquitoes--night-time and day-time-- and the dreaded candiru fish.; or humans: police, thieves, muggers, smugglers, murderous drunks swinging machetes, and mad gun-waving Nazis.

But he does meet various interesting people who are the sources of much general and detailed social and historical information on the culture and history of the country, such as the youthful Welsh Patagonian Argentinian, Alejandro Caradoc Evans--the name clues us in to his character--a type of youthful remittance man exiled in Ascuncion, critical of everything Paraguayan, and eventually, everything South American. We learn of the maté addicted male population, the failure of the banking systems, the general corruption and criminality of the political elite, and the utter hopelessness that faces the average Paraguayan every day. Firearms are as common and visible as cell-phones in our world--perhaps even more common. Along with present day realities, Carver weaves into the narrative interesting historical information about Paraguay's past, such as the horrors and atrocities of the past regimes, the British involvement in the country, the Jesuits attempts to convert the Guarani indians, and the Australian attempts to build Utopian communities. His ventures into the interior lead him to many encounters with smugglers and odd characters but also with positive encounters such as with the Mennonite community of Filadelphia where the prosperous nature of their town and area make him feel as if he was in another country altogether.

Carver winds the story up to high suspense as the impending political unrest and stress drive him to the extreme feelings of panic, wondering why he ever set foot in the country, and we are also glad to be with him on the plane fleeing the country, and thinking, with a shake of the head, a book is about as close as one would want to get to Paraguay.

The Inconstant Reader

To be a more faithful reader is a desire which becomes more pronounced as my reading eye strays. Other authors, other titles, catch my attention resulting in my night table and desk left with little room for dusting. I generally have a focus on four books while a peripheral twelve try to entice me. Some of the peripheral titles do graduate to the main quartet, but others will end up merely perused, half-read, dipped into, dreamt of, and eventually end up back in their upright position on a shelf, a bit dusty from their outing. Some continue their peripheral life until I finish them. They tend to be books of letters, poetry, essays, and the like. More constant companions in a way. And some of the peripheral books will actually sustain my devotion until they are finished, while the others wait. Such is my inconstant reading.

Presently, my peripheral twelve include Letters From Oxford by Hugh Trevor-Roper [his letters to Bernard Berenson, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines]; The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry; Water on the Brain by Compton Mackenzie [a satire on the British Secret Service originally published in 1933 and turning out to be fairly comical]; Dostoievsky by John Cowper Powys; Paradise With Serpents: Travels in the Lost World of Paraguay by Robert Carver [this one is really pushing hard to get into the top four]; Resolution: Captain Cook's Second Voyage of Discovery by Peter Aughton; Where There's a Will by John Mortimer [a library book my wife brought home and which she found to be amusing and of interest, and I likewise]; Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama [such a commanding narrative voice]; The Inland Sea by Donald Richie; The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler; Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford [a multi-volume work which I keep trying to find time for, and a book that makes its appearance in the peripheral twelve off and on over the years]; and various volumes of short stories by various authors which seem to bear the weight above them.

My main quartet is overwhelmingly fiction: All the Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson, Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason, The Glass of Time by Michael Cox, and The Scream by Rohinton Mistry.

The Private Patient by P. D. James

The Private Patient by P. D. James (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2008) 395pp.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mystery author in the possession of a very good story, is rarely in want of readers--especially if that writer is P. D. James.

Phyllis Dorothy James, born in Oxford in 1920, began writing fiction in the cold war era of the mid-1950s while raising a family and working at a London hospital in administration. Her first book, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962 by the venerable publishing house of Faber & Faber which at the time was perhaps more known for its distinguished list of poets and literary authors. It was an ideal marriage. P. D. James's detective, Adam Dalgliesh, wrote poetry, slim volumes to be published by Faber & Faber. James has remained with the firm for the past 46 years in what appears to be a happy marriage for all concerned.

Faber recently reported that over a specific Christmas holiday period, ebook sales of her latest mystery, The Private Patient, reached 750 copies ( 1,200 copies total when sales of her other titles were included) only challenged by Faber's ebook sales of the popular British QI books, The Book of General Ignorance and Advanced Banter at 800 copies. ( Canadians and American are perhaps less familiar with the popular British QI comedy quiz show created by John Lloyd and hosted by the wonderfully convivial and erudite Stephen Fry--who, by the way, has recently become the presiding genius in the land of Twitter--but P. D. James is certainly a household name across North America. ) Much has certainly changed in the publishing world since her initial cloth bound début: talking books on cassettes and cds, downloads to ipods and now the more recent and significantly important ebooks which, it seems, alters the very nature of publishing.

Her literary output of 20 books over 46 years is respectable and she has had a steady and loyal readership. Her latest book, The Private Patient, shows no sign of diminished power due to her age. Her prose is as finely crafted and acutely perceptive as ever, her formal diction and construction is detailed and sharp and she slips in echoes and quotes from one of her favourite authors, Jane Austen. In P. D. James's richly descriptive prose there is a delicate balance between the inner psychological life of the characters and the exterior world and setting in which they move. The settings of London and Dorset are evocative but do not dominate. As well, her stalwart detective, now Commander Adam Dalgliesh, does not dominate the book either, for his assistants, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith form a triadic balance of inquiry, and each are given stage presence.

Rhoda Gradwyn, a 47 year old investigative journalist, a private, rather enigmatic person, has decided to have plastic surgery to remove a facial scar she has had for 34 years. This scar has shaped her life. The natural reaction of adults was to look away from the scar, and so this enabled her to observe people, and she became an astute and perceptive student of human behavior. It also shaped her life's interest which was "in finding out what others kept hidden." [p.8] She has decided on an exclusive clinic at Cheverell Manor in Dorset--complete with a neolithic stone circle, the Cheverell Stones--owned and operated by a renowned plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, and it is here that she meets with her mysterious death. The dozen or so characters whose lives intersect with Rhoda Gradwyn and Cheverell Manor are all given their back stories with detailed yet succinct brushstrokes and each has us wondering if they could be responsible.

With Commander Dalgliesh's appearance, there is a very natural unfolding of information, and we come to learn of stories within stories, and occasional red herrings, but it all is gradually revealed in an organic way. In the last quarter of the novel, there is a concentration on letters and wills and this has a very Charles Dickens/Wilkie Collins feel, providing a resonance with the past.

When Commander Dalgliesh makes his appearance in the second section, he is in a very Jane Austen/Oscar Wilde position of being interviewed by his future father-in-law over the offer of marriage to his daughter Emma Lavenham, a character introduced in Death in Holy Orders. Marriage is a theme in the book--perhaps a nod to Austen. Although each marriage is different in nature--much like Austen again--they involve older couples which perhaps reflects modern society. Commander Dalgliesh, often referred to as AD, is also in for possible career changes as bureaucratic machinations may bring an end to the Special Investigative Squad he heads up. We are left wondering what may become of Commander Dalgliesh, and P. D. James provides us with a few rumours to think about. Dalgliesh muses that a job in the upper echelons of bureaucracy would not offer much inspiration for his poetry.

Will this be the last mystery novel by P. D. James? I hope not.

God's Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery

Douglas Hunter - God's Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery (Anchor Canada, 2008) {416pp.: maps.}

The talented writer, Douglas Hunter, is not only an author of many books on sport, business, and the environment, but he is also a trained visual artist and graphic designer with a passion for sailing and yacht design. As a reader I wondered why he ventured into the area of early Canadian history and exploration, and concluded that it must have been another true interest. He spent three years working on the book and ended up with enough material for two more. He has produced, with editorial grace, a wonderfully readable, suspenseful and dramatic work of historical investigation and synthesis. By employing various narrative techniques, and by placing all source notes and bibliographic information at the end of the book, he has crafted an historical narrative which flows along with a storyteller's artistry.

In the first half of the book, the author brings to the foredeck, Henry Hudson. We find Hudson working for the Dutch in an effort to discover the North-East Passage, but instead he finds his way to North America and the eventual discovery of the Hudson River. Already we sense a bit of a rogue individualist. In returning to Europe, he just makes landfall on the English coast and later finagles his way into a Captaincy of the English vessel, The Discovery, with the goal to discover the North-West Passage--that mythic short-cut to the silks and spices of the Orient--a goal that had drawn English explorers on a quest for over thirty years. Douglas Hunter fleshes out the characters of the crew and we get a good sense of the intrigue and uncertainty that could develop. It is a story of Hudson's obsession with finding the passage, an idealist's vision versus the more limited views of the crew whose discontent, discomfort, hunger, sickness, fear and shifting allegiances, ultimately lead to mutiny after wintering over in James Bay--the bay of god's mercies. The author weaves in stories of previous mutinies such as the one against Edward Maria Wingfield in Jamestown in 1602, and against Captain George Waymooth in 1607, and how these stories would have been known to Hudson's crew, providing context and structure in how they should proceed with theirs.

Hudson's obsession is driven by fragmentary knowledge, conjecture and the misreading in a translation of a text by Samuel de Champlain. It is a story of the influence of exploration narratives and the charts and maps of cartographers. Hudson believed in the 1599 navigational chart by Edward Wright which had a vast Lake Tadouac, a lake which he hoped would lead out to the far east:

"His perspective was burdened by the arcana of the efforts of earlier explorers, these figures and their accomplishments a mix of real and imagined, and by almost hallucinatory visions of cosmographers and cartographers of the shape and nature of northern lands and seas." [p. 94]

After setting Hudson, his son and other crew members adrift in the summer of 1611, we follow the mutineers and their pathetic way back to England, and Douglas Hunter fills in the story of the voyages to find Hudson, and then the legal ramifications for the remnant mutinous crew members--all with detail and great interest.

The second half of the book follows Samuel de Champlain and his particular vision of discovering the passage to the far east. Nicolas de Vignau, one of Champlain's men, had spent a year with the Algonquins and had learnt of a story of an English survivor from the far north held by the Nebicerini, held as a gift for Champlain. With this story we find ourselves in a narrative that is filled with anticipation and suspense. The author provides us with the backcloth of Champlain's extraordinary career to date, his writings, his struggles with the fickle nature of politics, financial backers, Royal Monopolies and regional competitors such as the mariners of St. Malo and the Basques, and of course his diplomatic relations with the native tribes.

Drawn by the possibility of an English survivor of a northern expedition who could hold important information as to a salt water passage to the orient, Samuel de Champlain held the broader vision rather than the more immediate view of the profits from the fur trade. We learn of Champlain's relations with the various tribes on his arduous trek up the Ottawa River to the Algonquins and the difficulties in his search for the English survivor--and ultimately, his discovery of truths and lies.

Addendum: Douglas Hunter has completed a new book on Henry Hudson to be published in the fall of 2009 by Bloomsbury.

In Spite of Myself by Christopher Plummer

In Spite of Myself: a Memoir by Christopher Plummer (Knopf Canada)

Christopher Plummer's recently published memoir, In Spite of Myself, clocks in at 648 pages. I can't think of how he could have found the time to take notes having lived such a full life, so he must, then, have a prodigious memory. A prodigious memory for a prodigious life. If he wrote about every detail of his life it could easily have been a three volume affair, but as it is, this hefty volume, written with idiosyncratic flair and panache is a substantial tell-all of one of the very greatest actors of our time.

He has worked with so many people in his long career, and experienced so much, and has so many stories to tell, that as a quiet introverted reader, I had to put the book down from time to time to gather strength. His style is flamboyant and richly textured which captures the energy and passion of his life, and he has framed the memoir with a novel's structure, and neatly brings us full-circle in the final pages.

This will be a must-read for any theatre and movie fan for it is also a compendium of theatrical and movie lore. One of those substantial books ideal as Christmas gifts.

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Paul Theroux - Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (2008) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) (McClelland and Stewart).

Beyond the Oxus
In the autumn of 1934, the 27 year old Peter Fleming, adventurer, journalist, travel writer--and elder brother of the yet to be famous Ian--embarked on a trip from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea coast, to Samarkand: a three or four day journey through the deserts of Central Asia aboard the Trans-Caspian Railway--the "express" train. His brief account of this rough trip through parts of the Soviet world--old Transoxiana--was later given as a BBC radio piece and collected in his With the Guards to Mexico! (1957). His descriptions of the conditions of this train and his co-travellers is strangely parallel to the experiences of Paul Theroux as he travelled the Bukhara Express to Samarkand in the year 2006, recounted in his latest travel book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: on the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar. Certainly there have been many historical changes over the 70 years, but it seems the conditions of the trains--possibly the same rolling stock--and the conditions of the co-passengers have changed very little. Considering that Paul Theroux ended up having nine people crammed into a four-person compartment for the over-nighter is perhaps a sign that conditions have actually deteriorated. But, as he has said, "luxury is the enemy of observation." I have to tip my imaginary Tilly to Paul. He was 65 years old, and this section of his trip was but a fraction of the journey which had him retracing the steps of his 1973 adventure by train through Asia and back, The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), in an effort to revisit the ghost of his younger self, and to see what has changed, and what has remained the same.

Beyond South London
Paul Theroux was born in 1941 and grew up with his large family in Medford, Massachussetts. By the 1960s, a well-informed, intelligent young man, he had joined the Peace Corps and was off to teach in Africa and later in South East Asia, taking opportunities to travel when he could. By 1973, in his early thirties, he was living the exile's life in London with his wife, a BBC producer, and their two young children. He was a seasoned professional writer by this time, with six published novels under his belt, one more set for the printers, and one in the making, plus a book of criticism, many "pieces" of journalism, and many, many book reviews. What possessed him to leave this professional existence behind for a four months journey of adventure and discomfort? (Sitting in a room for most of the day writing sentences may have had something to do with it.) Perhaps he had reached a point in his life, an arrival if you will, which rubbed up against a need for a grand departure: a need to abandon the static position in favour of one of locomotion; a need for reality in lieu of imagination; a need for conversation rather than soliloquy; a need to throw himself into the world and let the depths of possibility help keep him afloat. A romantic suggestion. Akin, perhaps, to Stein's dictum in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. However, he has written that he wanted to make more money--a refrain amongst writers--and he received his first advance for what would become The Great Railway Bazaar, a book that became a best seller. It was a pivotal time in his life. He succeeded in forging an innovative template for travel writing--which others were to follow--and he used this template creatively to write further books based on further travels such as The Old Patagonian Express, The Kingdom by the Sea, Sailing Through China, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Happy Isles of Oceania, The Pillars of Hercules and Dark Star Safari, experiences that also helped fuel his prolific output of novels, novellas and short stories.

With Theroux's revisitation in 2006, his retracing the route of his youthful journey, he offers revelations of his personal life concerning not only the present, but of the past as well. Seeing memory itself as a ghost train, he fills in the backcloth to the first journey with the personal context he did not reveal the first time round. The ghost theme plays throughout the book, rather like a musical leitmotif. Many of the train trips are night trains to dream-like destinations: Night Train to Baku: the Trans-Caucasian, Ghost Train to Mandalay, or Night Train to Kyoto: the Twilight Express, and Theroux often muses philosophical about travel itself, what he refers to as his Tao of Travel. The archetypal structure to his trip, the hero's circular journey, is lightly played upon in his present book, his wife playing the part of Penelope, knitting while she worries over her husband's return, while he, an older Odysseus, always travelling alone, benefits from the openess of strangers. As a reader, I felt like a ghost hovering over his shoulder, listening in on conversations with multi-charactered humanity, and attentively following his observations and gleanings on the overland route.

With this contrast between youth and age, between the first and second journey, we have the comparitive contrasts of countries and cultures--the historical context. In the first railway trip, he travelled through Iran and Afghanistan, but for this trip he had to follow a northern route through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan and we see such a striking contrast of these countries and their oppressive governments, with India where every rickshaw driver has a cell-phone and there is a positive and polite work ethic, though one challenged by over-population and poverty. Theroux provides us with glimpses of the "dystopia of Turkmenistan, melancholy rural India, the open prison of Burma, the social laboratory of Singapore", and a great deal more. And he has his requisite meetings with fellow authors, this time Orhan Pamuk in Turkey, Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka--an aged oddity--Haruki Murakami in Japan--a fascinating outsider and observer of his own society--and his good friend Pico Iyer in Japan as well. And there are the many characters he encounters such as Mr. Karpoorchand on the train to Jaipur with his unusual retirement plan, Mr. Kumara on the train to Kandy who reads Theroux's palm, Oo-Nawng, the rickshaw driver in Mandalay who Theroux befriends and reaches out to, and the Bernard family at Candacraig, a small hotel in Maymyo, Burma, the relatives of the Mr. Bernard he had written about in the first book and many, many more. Theroux has a keen eye for interesting characters, and this is one of the great strengths of his travel narratives, the interesting characters he discovers and brings to the page. His well-burnished ability for "casting strangers for roles in my narrative" as he puts it in his most recent book, seems almost an innate talent for observing human nature.

The opening of his first travel narrative The Great Railway Bazaar, reads very much like a novel due to his observations of character. Leaving London in 1973, he finds himself bunked together on the delapidated Orient Express with a Mr. R. Duffill, a rather odd man who reminded me immediately of Anthony Burgess's creation, Enderby, the oh so idiosyncratic poet. Poor old Duffill, with his essence of Enderby, his name becoming a verb, duffilled in Domodossola, watching in stilted horror as the train left the station without him. And of course there was Molesworth and his mineral water. Theroux reveals the true name of the man who was Molesworth in his latest book. One could do worse than be cast by Theroux. If one made it to the page, one could dine out on it for quite some time.

Though he mentions it is common to hear of young upstarts trying to make a name for themselves by retracing the footsteps of famous journeys made in the past, it is not common for writers to retrace their own footsteps. It seems Paul Theroux has managed, once again, to find his way home in an original way.

New Note: from Bill Thompson's Eye On Books: an audio interview with Paul Theroux:

Further audio interviews can be found here.

Sail on the Horizon: Reading Virgil Burnett's Scarbo Edge: a Romaunt

Scarbo Edge: a Romaunt by Virgil Burnett / with illustrations by the author (Blaurock Press, 2008).

About six pages into Scarbo Edge: a romaunt, an intuitive presumption of familiarity stilled my reading eyes. . . first chapter called 'The Golden Ampersand' . . . night train from Paris to Venice . . . a passionate tryst . . . . . . Venice . . . an erotic assignation. In a visual sense, these would be the first shadowy crosshatchings of my interaction with the text--one reading over another, a memory rising up from the shadows--from the past.

This evocative novel's first chapter appeared--I finally remembered--in a literary journal, an issue devoted to Venice. Not able to remember the specific journal, I did remember the cover image, a rather distinctive animal-faced Venetian door-knocker, and it was by this remembered image that I was able to trace the journal among my wife's collection: Descant, 128, Spring 2005. Looking at it now, I am fascinated by the eyes of this creature which seem almost alive with a sad resignation, as if weary of but another visitor wishing to gain entry, but another soul announcing their arrival. Within this same issue, there is a portfolio of photographs taken by the author when he was in Venice in the late 1950s--France and Italy being an annual pilgrimage for this artist/author. These photographs reveal a city of locals going about their business, a city that had yet to see the inundation of 'tourists' much bemoaned by present day writers such as Javier Marias in a fairly recent article. Perhaps the eyes of this creature reflect the present rise of landfalls and departures--the weight of the worlds' footsteps vibrating through the lagoons.

It is a city in which we find our idealistic hero Eber and his singular love, Isa, secretly celebrating their relationship. Eber, many years ago, met Isa when they were in architecture school, he three years her senior. They began an affair which was casual, non-possessive, modern. When Eber took a position with Marcus Associates he travelled widely and yet he always returned to renew his love with Isa. Disillusioned with Marcus' emphasis on making money and developing properties rather than creating innovative architecture, Eber resigned and travelled the world in an attempt to realign his life. Being an excellent draughtsman, he found work with archaeologists on Iron-age Celtic sites from Malta to Brittany to Cornwall. Years pass. He discovers that Isa has married Marcus, a loveless marriage of convenience. After their tryst in Venice and some attempts to cure his singular obsession, Eber returns to Canada, renting a somewhat run-down Victorian pile called Scarbo Edge on the rough coast of Lake Huron not far from Falaise, Marcus' mansion where Eber has discovered Isa resides. And so their relationship is renewed, fraught with dangers from the present, and possibly mirrored in the past.

Scarbo Edge is not only a variation on the Tristan and Isolde legend--the eternal love triangle, that triadic template for much of the Western narrative tradition from the Iliad on--but it incorporates a variation of the suspense genre as well. It is both an old story and a new one. It is a story of passionate physical love, of eroticism, of singular desire. A narrative richly veined with allusions and ambiguities, dualities and duplicities, ghostly parallels, existential wanderings, and mythic ordeals.

Virgil Burnett, artist and author, is a master of the line--'proportion, anatomy, and composition'-- and this mastery, informed by a wealth of experience and knowledge, finds its equivalence in his written word . His style is one of a born story-teller, both simply told and beautifully written. His descriptions of the physical relationship of a man and a woman is both exquisitely poetic, and vigorously real. A rich addition to Virgil Burnett's diverse oeuvre.

Two from the Porcupine's Quill

A Wood Engraver's Alphabet by G. Brender à Brandis (Porcupine's Quill, 2008).

Prompted by Tim Inkster of Porcupine's Quill Press, Gerard Brender à Brandis, master engraver and print maker, has produced another wondrous book of wood-cut engravings, a flower for each letter of the alphabet.

The engravings are so rich, so densely cut, that looking closely at the engravings one feels drawn into the pictures as if entering a forest, a forest of detail. Coming to the Foxglove, I felt as if I had entered a clearing and there stood the flower, totemic in its beauty.

In his introduction, the artist reveals something of the process of engraving--conceptions and methods--much like he so affably does when one visits his "Artist At Work" open gallery and workshop in Stratford, Ontario, during the Shakespeare Theatre season.

Although a book of silent images, he reminds us of how flowers were used as messengers of unspoken meanings, and so the alphabet, the text--sub rosa-- can be woven within these images for each of us, with our own associations.

A volume to sit alongside the other finely produced books of this artist issued by the Porcupine's Quill, and a book, by all means, for the gardener's or horticulturist's collection. An ideal gift in fact.

Off the Wall drawings by Tony Urquhart with Captions Courageous by Michael B. Phillips (Porcupine's Quill Press, 2008).

Though admittedly not thoroughly familiar with the work of this artist--only vaguely so in the shadows of my knowledge--I found this most unusual book to be most entertainingly amusing. I was surprised in a most pleasant way for I had approached this volume in all seriousness, thinking I should first look closely at all of Urquhart's images before embarking upon the textual commentary by Michael B. Phillips, realising that I may be entering the rather dubious territory of tertiary discourse: the artist's work, the associate's commentary on that work, and then my observations of the work and reactions to the commentaries, a rather dour academic endeavour fit for the post-graduate in art history. . . .

I guess I should have clued in to the title: "Off the Wall" and "Captions Courageous."

The commentaries, or rightly so, 'captions', are as imaginative, absurd, humourous and surreal as some of the drawings, prints and sculptures that grace the pages of this finely produced volume.

My initial observations evoked images of pedestalled personal altars, cosmological or climatological devices, strange reliquaries, bizarre, surreal--à la Remedios Varo--objects with organic links between the terrestrial and the cosmological space-time continuum. . . So how refreshing to come across Phillips's courageous captions such as this one on page 52:

A box inspired by the Spanish puppeteer Senor Sergiao Wenches, a frequent guest on the Ed Sullivan Show. Any resemblance of the head-like object within the box to a former Prime Minister of Canada, or to Ed Sullivan himself, is probably a coincidence.

The image itself is listed in the index as: A forgotten trip. Pen & ink, white gouache, 1977-1983. 14.8cm x 11.4 cm.

I am in awe of their dual imaginations seemingly open to all wave lengths. A very interesting book.

reading in the shade

To roar through a few good books in one day is not my forte, but I did manage a fairly quick pace with two books recently--unusual of me, I know--both good summer reads, each in their own way.

Odd Hours by Dean Koontz (Bantam Random House Canada)
I have certainly handled books by Dean Koontz while working in the library world; I have certainly gazed upon his books in the shops; certainly read the blurbs; and certainly contemplated the dustjacket photos of the author, who, over the years, has experienced a type of reverse tonsorial evolution--initially sporting a vigorous mustache and a shining prominent forehead with short hair in receding fashion, to the now clean-shaven look with a youthful head of hair--a rather impressive transformation, but perhaps fitting for an author who has also written under many other names.

Not being a thriller, suspense or horror aficionado--at least, that's my excuse--he is an author I never got around to reading. Until now that is. As is usual with me--generally the last to know of anything--I find myself starting in medias res so to speak. Odd Hours is the fourth and latest book in the series featuring the character Odd Thomas, a character who I sense has a loyal following. I can see why. He is a sympathetic, quirky, smart twenty year old short order cook looking for a simple life--simple due to the fact that he can see the lingering spirits of the dead which tends to complicate his life just a tad. Odd has been drawn to the small California coastal town of Magic Beach, and has found work as a live-in personal chef and assistant to an 88 year old former Hollywood actor with enough anxieties, fears and phobias that could very well require an index. There is an entertaining banter between Odd Thomas and Lawrence 'Hutch' Hutchison which I found I wanted more of, but Odd is having peculiar dreams involving a red tide, and one visit to the boardwalk leads to a multiple encounter that initiates the adrenalin rush of the plot propulsion and I quickly found myself pulled by the narrative undertow, my hands turning pages, my feet squirming with unease, my heart rate up. I have to admit I once again felt like a youngster reading The Most Dangerous Game.

Dean Koontz is an old pro and knows how to throw a sharp fresh sentence on the page. I very much enjoyed Odd Hours. I have the nervous pleasure now, of exploring the backcloth of Odd's life in the first three books in the series: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, and Brother Odd, where I should discover his unusual life and good friends in Pico Mundo. Perhaps I shall pace myself. Reading his books before bed tends to shade into one's dreams. . . .

The Roar of the Butterflies by Reginald Hill (Doubleday Canada)

Here again I found myself reading an author whose work I have handled but never read, another old prolific pro who has also used the odd pen name or two. And once again, I find myself reading into a series from the most recent end, the fifth in the series featuring Joe Sixsmith, a sympathetically drawn, funny and lovable, former lathe operator now working as a private detective in the fictional town of Luton. Joe is surrounded by interesting characters in his life including his Aunt Mirabelle and of course his own cat. In this outing, it is one hot summer, perhaps the hottest yet in Luton, and Joe, in his shorts with the colourful parrots, has been requested to look into a possible irregularity which took place at the private posh Royal Hoo Golf Course. Anyone who is a golfer will enjoy this one. And anyone who is a duffer on the links like me and Joe, will enjoy it as well. Lots of humour and detection, and narry a drop of blood. My kind of summer reading.

The Roar of the Butterflies is a well written and perfectly paced work of humourous detective fiction. What I found fascinating is how, though it is set in England, the narrative voices of the characters have none of the "englishness" one might have expected, in fact the voices and the use of language reminded me of North American hard boiled, but in a light-hearted fashion--refreshing. I now find myself trying to schedule the earlier books into my reading list: Blood Sympathy (1993), Born Guilty (1995), Killing the Lawyers (1997), and Singing the Sadness (1999). I think a marathon weekend of Joe Sixsmith would do the trick.

K is for Kafka--who else could it be?

If asked by a professional in the area of psychology what would first come to mind when shown the letter "K" on a flash card, mine would be an immediate response--and a telling one: Kafka.

Who else could it be?

If asked for other choices, there would be contenders. Kierkegaard is in the shadows, neither in, nor out. Kleist with a ghost-like whisper, is a possibility if pressed. Keats even. But all are in the shadows, so to speak, of Franz Kafka and his Josef K., whose very existence and literary work inhabit the letter, indelibly--at least for me.

I realise it reflects my culture, my judeo-christian background, my literary interests, my education--my alphabet. For others, the letter, or its equivalent, would have a kaleidoscopic variety of responses, from Kiev to K-Mart, from Kilt to Kangaroo, from Kalamazoo to Kathmandu, from Kandahar to Kuala lumpur, from Kawabata to Kurosawa, from Kinshasa to Kansas, from Koontz to King. . . . Other perceptions, other preoccupations, other permutations, other possibilities of this world's rich variety.

Is it Kafka's importance in relation to what happened in the twentieth century that has helped dominate the letter for me? A world wholly changed and reflected in the works of Beckett and Wittgenstein, and discerned in the shards of Yeats and Eliot? The mute marble busts of the illustrious, the great thinkers and writers of the western tradition, looked out with blind and featureless eyes upon the wastelands of the twentieth century while an obscure young man in Prague, passively and introvertedly captured the essence of what was transposing.

The eyes of Kafka implore us to see.

K is for Kafka, who else could it be.

J is for Jules and Julian (and cause for delay).

Nothing To Be Frightened Of
by Julian Barnes
(Random House Canada, 2008)

There is a design feature of Julian Barnes' latest offering--or is it a lack of one--which is at once appealing and challenging: it is a book without formal chapters. Appealing, for I found myself immediately involved in the non-fiction narrative as if I was sitting in a cafe listening to an erudite, sharp, funny, insightful and philosophical friend recount his views on death as seen through the prism of his family, friends and his non-blood relatives, the great writers, musicians and thinkers of the ages from Montaigne to Maugham, from Daudet to Devo (ok, maybe not Devo) in a style both eloquent and vigorous. An extremely well-written piece of work--but I gather one doesn't want to disappoint death.

And challenging due to this very openess. Though furnished with 67 decorative printer's devices to designate informal rests along the way--most sections but a few pages long--it moves back and forth between revelations of friends and family history to references to famous writers, musicians, philosophers and other creative types and their beliefs or views on death, making it a book with a labyrinthine, discursive quality. A book so replete with interesting stories that one wishes there was an index! This long philosophical essay with its light-hearted tones of a cafe-au-lait to the darker tones of an absinthe (we are sitting in a cafe after all, and it's Julian Barnes, so a French cafe) could be subtitled, "or, variations upon a theme of death, and what you may want to know when you get to the end--perhaps."

Quite simply, it is a wonderful read. A book to own and return to--there is a lot of meat on the bones so to speak.

And talking of bones, the book design for the Random House Canada edition--pictured above--was by the hand of C. S. Richardson, and it sports a skeletal hand and forearm reaching down from the head of the spine of the book jacket, pointing towards the author's name, which to me, echoes the hand of Adam in Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel painting--seen in a boney light. Another design feature is Richardson's choice of lower case letters for the title which underscores the meaning very nicely too.

There is a richness to this book that a few quotations or comparisons in this brief musing can do no justice. I leave it to readers to discover the pleasures themselves.

As for Jules, it refers to one of Julian Barnes' interests, Jules Renard who said: "It is when faced with death that we turn most bookish."

-Mais evidement, c'est ca mon ami, a cause for delay.
-Sans farce?
-Sans farce.
-Ah, bon.
-Le Fin.

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt, 2008)

Out of my blind spot, it was as if Quirke himself had emerged from the shadows and tapped me on the shoulder. The latest Benjamin Black novel, his second, was out. His first book, Christine Falls (my brief review here) had rendered me off-kilter as I absorbed the fact that John Banville, a novelist whose work I consistently followed and enjoyed, had assumed another name and produced a crime novel. A very good crime novel. A novel which had, unbeknownst to me, slipped into circulation and produced more than a ripple. A pleasant surprise.

In The Silver Swan, we are once again in 1950s Dublin; two years have passed since the Christine Falls affair, and Quirke, the somewhat melancholy consultant pathologist, is surrounded by the fallen, the wounded, and the ghosts of his past. There are hints that Quirke is coming to suspect that his actions have deeper roots than the desire for the truth, or justice; that there are unconscious motivations reaching back into his orphaned childhood. Quirke is a divided, conflicted individual who is possessed with a continuing unease with figures of institutional authority, religious or otherwise. His determined efforts in the Christine Falls case had dire effects upon those close to him and he is now doing a personal form of penance. Twice a week he visits his adoptive father, Judge Griffin, now paralysed upon a hospital bed and non-conversant. And once a week he dines with his daughter Phoebe in the attempt to start afresh and bring her back to him. His relationship with the Judge's son Dr. Malachy Griffin is governed more by a casual truce.

In this penance he is distanced further from the shared life of his fellow Dubliners by his half-year of teetotaling temperance. This abstinence of alcohol--although he does imbibe one glass of wine when dining with his daughter, which has a religious overtone in a way--has sharpened his olfactory glands; smells, odors and fragrances create a rich texture in his awareness which includes the "smell of the recently bereaved," a smell he detects in Billy Hunt, a long-forgotten college friend who has approached him to ask a favour. Billy Hunt's wife, Dierdre, was found washed ashore on Dalkey Island, a possible suicide, her clothes neatly folded on the seat of her car. Billy, possibly for religious reasons, doesn't want his wife's body to have a postmortem. The thought of it disturbs him greatly.

It is from this unusual request, and the discovery of a small puncture mark on Dierdre's arm, that Quirke, gradually, ineluctably, finds himself drawn into the search for answers. At first he begins to heed his better judgement warning him to avoid by all means looking into the drowning, but when he discovers his daughter Phoebe's slight connection with Dierdre Hunt and her dubious business partner, that "hollow man" Leslie White, Quirke inevitably follows it up. And so it is, during the sunny warm weather of the "dead center" of a Dublin summer, that Quirke finds himself tossing a pebble into the calm waters of his penance, and we, as readers, are well and truly off.

The author skillfully weaves the life story of Dierdre Hunt, from her impoverished childhood growing up in the Flats, to her interactions with the Anglo-Irish in the fashionable quarter. The backgrounds of other characters are also fleshed out with painterly effect, enough to make us feel they have a pulse. Even with nameless characters the author can create a picture: here, through Quirke's eyes we see a barman:

He was young, with a short-back-and-sides haircut and a pustular neck. He wore a white shirt and a black waistcoat. Quirke noted a frayed cuff, a greasy shine at the pockets of the trousers. This country. Someone had recently offered Quirke a job in Los Angeles. Los Angeles! But would he go? A man could lose himself in Los Angeles as easily as a cuff link. (228)

I read the novel fairly quickly the first time, carried along by the story and the desire to discover the answers, answers that kept me guessing till the very last pages by the clever use of indirection and misdirection. It is a better crime novel than Christine Falls and very well made. With the second reading I enjoyed finding all the clues and foreshadows, and the wonderful weaving of the backcloth which I gleaned too quickly the first time round. We are far from the foggy cold wintry wet Dublin, but still the author creates masterful touches which make even the longest days of the summer fraught with atmosphere. There are many examples that deal with the sun such as:

The day was hot already, with shafts of sunlight reflecting like brandished swords off the roofs of motorcars passing by outside in the smoky, petrol-blue air. (37)

or,

By four o'clock the daylight was already curling insidious fingers round the edges of the curtains in his bedroom. (35)

These descriptions tend to follow Quirke about--like death-- as they are his perceptions, his conceits:

The bricks of the houses he passed by seemed today a deeper shade of oxblood, and in the gardens lush, damp dahlias hung their scarlet heads as if exhausted after the effort of coming into such prodigious bloom. He turned in at the gate and rang the doorbell and waited, eyeing the violent flowers. He took off his hat and held it in his hands; the dark felt was finely jeweled with mist. (266)

There seems to be a suggestive parallel between Quirke's trajectory with that of his daughter's: Quirke involves himself with Kathryn White, while his daughter Phoebe becomes involved with Leslie White and we come to see how these damaged souls, damaged each in their own way, share troubled motivations. Quirke distrusts the "tentacles" of coincidence which have brought them into the same vortex,but the action takes place in the south east quarter of Dublin, and as one writer wrote, "coincidence traced back far enough, leads to inevitability." Phoebe lives on Harcourt Street, and works in the Maison des Chapeaux on Grafton Street; Dierdre Hunt's business the Silver Swan hair salon was just around the corner on Anne Street. Quirke lives on Upper Mount Street, and the mysterious Dr. Kreutz lives in a basement flat on Adelaide. Although other characters live in the suburbs, they spiral round each other, sometimes passing each other unbeknownst until the resolutions at the very end of this novel--one example reminded me of a scene from one of my favourite recent films, L'Homme du train.

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and now anticipate the next. Could it involve Dublin's Phoenix Park whose gates Quirke and Inspector Hackett--with his hat--had approached but never entered? Or could we see Quirke doing some consulting in Los Angeles? That might be interesting. However, Dublin is such a wonderful character in itself, it would be a shame to leave it. I have yet to visit Dublin. Yet to follow in my father's footsteps searching his Dundalk roots. One day perhaps. Until then, I shall have to wait for the next installment to enjoy the vicarious pleasure of walking the streets of another era.

To keep up to date with everything Black, there is an excellent website for Benjamin Black, which includes a short video of John Banville/Benjamin Black discussing his work and Dublin itself.

-map from the front free endpaper of Dublin: A Study in Environment by John Harvey(London: B. T. Batsford, 1949).

I is for Inevitable (give or take a day)

C. S. Richardson The End of the Alphabet

Perhaps "I" should be for "Impossible." The impossibility of escape (ultimately at least). A Simenon-like conceit. The protagonist finds that he has a month to live, give or take a day. A contrived, clichéd conceit? Perhaps.

The author is a highly accomplished book designer. The publisher, the Random House group, is the company he works for. One of his book design team designed the little volume. Cozy. A small press feel. The copyright is held not in the name of the author but by Dravot & Carnehan Inc, which happens to be the name of the advertising firm that the protagonist, the ever-dying Ambrose Zephyr, a creative type with a fascination with typefaces and travel brochures, has found employment with for many years.

{ Ironic that. Ambrose: Ambrosia, elixir of life. And Zephyr, the good old west wind, Shelley's vehicle for a spiritual rebirth. }

It's first incarnation in print for me was as an excerpt. It was published, if memory serves me, in the spring of 2006 with the then title The Grand Tour of Ambrose Zephyr. A small, slim paper covered edition of 35 pages (give or take a page), the alphabet running down the narrow spine in tiny typeface, the upper cover sporting an image of a vintage suitcase. Very much a promotional teaser. I read it and was hooked. Wanted to read more. Felt right. Sounded good. (Probably worth something if signed.) And then, eventually, I forgot about it. That is, until the day my wife the librarian who gave me the said teaser dropped the first trade edition in my lap, retitled and ready to go. A bit of a memory jog, but it started to come back to me.

The finished product is designed to resemble a leather journal, much like the Chatwinian Moleskin journals that have become fashionable. It sports two camels on the dustwrapper, a one-humped Arabian Dromedary facing the upper cover (west?), and a shorter legged two-humped Asiatic, or Bactrian camel facing the rear cover (east?). ('Bactrian' conjures up images of Alexander the Great . . . .) Chocolate-brown cloth-covered boards with a small, neat typeface in gilt upon the spine. For a dustwrapper designer it must have been a difficult decision to choose from so many images offered up by the text: a statue of Peter Pan (apt that) in Kensington Gardens, a painting by Rembrandt, the labyrinth of Chartres, antiquarian books, the pyramids of Giza, the Rokeby Venus, travel brochures, type blocks, the Hagia Sofia, Venice. . . perhaps tempting for a collage, or shadow-box a là Nick Bantock, but I guess that's been done. So, it is the moleskin journal and camels. The journal is important for it is the framing device of the very novel itself, and the camels are symbolic of Ambrose's imagination. As a youth with a fascination with typefaces, he would copy the lettering on cigarette packages, packages sporting images of camels, a source of imaginative escape and dreams. {Faint trade winds, the Peter Pan image hovers. . .} Ambrose Zephyr retains his youthful imagination, retains his ability to see the past, retains the ability to see far distant shores, conjuring history before his eyes while looking into the past. Ambrose, as adult, is perhaps a representative modern type, reflecting western traits of modernity: a professional nearing 50 years of age, married to a professional, childless, holding onto youthful imagination.

A. Z. over Z. A. These initials appear upon the spine of the dustwrapper. Ambrose Zephyr, and Zappora "Zipper" Ashkenazi, his wife. They reflect high-end fashion and design lifestyles. A childless professional couple living in fashionable London. Their emotions seem refracted, or cooly faceted, condensed within this grand melodrama. Two introverts who, though different (Wuthering Heights is the dullest of books to Ambrose, yet Zipper has lost count how many times she has read the novel), seem to fit like two letters in a devoted space. There is a yin and yang quality to them; a love story, muted in the silences of each other's quiet imaginations. Ambrose has thirty days to live and Zipper has thirty days to die, symbolically that is. Ambrose desires the movement of the old fashioned Grand Tour guided by the 26 letters of the western alphabet, a last chance to visit and revisit the locales of his imagination and his past, A is for Amsterdam, B is for Berlin, C is for Chartres. . . .

Minor characters are gently drawn, like Mr. Umtata, Ambrose's tailor, and an aged Florentine man with failing sight, perhaps the ghost of Ambrose's unattainable senescence.

It is a clever, well-constructed, laconically written novel, and upon finishing, one naturally returns to the beginning for in the end is the beginning.

The typeface chosen for the book is Filosofia, a typeface designed in 1996 by Zuzana Licko (yes, two z's and two a's). A typeface described as being able to provide "good readability in smaller text sizes." Seems apt for the novel itself.

H is for Hullabaloo, or, Out on a Limb

Hullabaloo. Even if the precise meaning of the word is unknown, hullabaloo is one of those words whose sight and sound seems to evoke its very meaning. For me it has a light overtone, memories from childhood birthday parties, with musical chairs, and those rude, gleeful party horns that unfurl with a small faux-feather, in blue or pink, dangling on the end, ideal to tickle another's ear.

The etymology seems to be a native Scots/English derivation, but Indian English is also important: "The term 'Hullabol' is still used in Indian English to describe a type of public demonstration, involving making a great noise."

I have owned Kiran Desai Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

since its printing in 1998, and like many books I own, it has been shelved and half-forgotten. It was to this novel I turned in preparation for reading her Booker Prize winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss. The titles seem at opposite spectrums of seriousness. So desperate, in fact, that I half questioned myself as to the authorial connection. The title of her first novel is like the self-conscious smile of a brilliant mind, a smile that pokes fun and yet is heartfelt. The title of her prize-winning second novel hints that she has shed the youthful satire and moved on to serious affairs, exchanging the trampoline for the hammock. For it is a trampoline of a novel with moments of farce, great hilarity and satire. The middle-class Narayanesque world satirized with a soupcon of Rushdie and a touch of allegory.

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is a title that in five words hints at the rich use of language, plot and setting. A title which gives the reader a sense of what to expect much like such titles as The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, or Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There to name a few. Titles quite different from the poetic, symbolic, or conceptual like The Rings of Saturn, or Elementary Particles to name only two.

The story opens with the birth of Sampath Chawla, auspiciously born on the day the Monsoon rains finally arrived in the northern town of Shahkot after the hottest of summers, and at the very moment that a Swedish Red Cross relief crate crashes into the family's front yard tree. The second chapter shifts twenty years into the future and from here the plot follows a straight line to the finish. Sampath has turned out to be a rather reluctant partaker of life, and a failure at many a job; fed up with his latest position at the post office, he wanders off one day and finds himself in an orchard, and is possessed with the desire to climb a guava tree to escape. To escape it all. Gradually the cast of characters are introduced episodically as they react to Sampath's search for stillness and calm, a cast which includes a machination of monkeys with a taste for liquor, a spy for the BUFHM, Branch to Uncover Fraudulent Holy Men, various administrative types, and other town folk and of course his own family. There is a brief attempt to entice his son back to normality with the concept of marriage as a cure, but after Sampath has impressed the townsfolk with pronouncements from on high (personal insights into their lives due to his having passed the time as a postal employee reading their mail), Mr. Chawla has an epiphany that his son as holy man could make the family's fortune and raise them out of their middle-class life. He proceeds to reap the economic benefits while the farce unfolds. The minor subplot of Sampath's aggressive sister Pinky's pursuit of a suitor, Holy Hop, a lowly ice-cream vendor, is quite hilarious. There is a scene where there is a reversal of roles, Pinky as Romeo to Holy Hop's Juliet as he showers her with bathing implements from his bathroom on high.

This is a gentle satire of a society's superstitions, religious and social positions, the remnants of colonialism, and of human nature in general. The fanciful ending as the Baba of Shakhot, with all his cryptic and whimsical adages ("many a pickle makes a mickle") is spirited away to the ever present and looming mountains further north, symbolic of the mystic union of spirit and nature, is one that evokes fairy stories and folk fables. However, the spy for the Branch to Uncover Fraudulent Holy Men, gets his just desserts as he plummets from his hiding place in the tree down to his watery destiny. I somehow think that the author particularly enjoyed this character's end.

Allegory? Satire? Whatever it is, it is a an enjoyable read which lifted me out of the wintery doldrums of a Canadian winter and left me impressed with her sense of craft, style and humour and made me look forward to her Booker Prize winning second novel, The Inheritance of Loss.

G is for Gorey, Genji, Gotham, Grim!

My Dearest Pepys,

We've enjoyed your recent Homeric related letters at Postman's Horn, but glad you threw in a Thurber and that recent Chatwin. My dear wife says--and I agree with her--that you ought to find more women correspondents, though I understand your difficulties for I do realize that your collection is heavy on the male side. Yes, sorry, an unfortunate and unintended pun. My apologies. I shall keep my eye out for books of correspondence by women authors and send them your way.

I have recently been reading a book mentioned by you over at the Horn, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay written by Sir George Otto Trevelyan (orig. pub. 1876), and I was reminded of certain facets of your character. No, I will say no more. We would only disagree on which character traits you may share. I was, however, intrigued with a passage relating how Macaulay and his siblings were brought up with books, especially those of Jane Austen, Samuel Richardson, Fanny Burney and other, more popular and hence forgotten authors. I quote:

There was a certain prolific author,' says Lady Trevelyan, 'named Mrs. Meeke, whose romances he all but knew by heart; though he quite agreed in my criticism that they were one just like the other, turning on the fortunes of some young man in a very low rank of life who eventually proves to be the son of a Duke. Then there was a set of books by a Mrs. Kitty Cuthbertson, most silly though readable productions, the nature of which may be guessed from their titles: --'Santo Sebastiano, or the Young Protector,' 'The Forest of Montalbano,' 'The Romance of the Pyrenees,' and 'Adelaide, or the Countercharm.'

Supposedly Lord Macaulay annotated his copy of Santo Sebastiano on the last page with a list enumerating the "fainting-fits that occur in the course of the five volumes." Five volumes! Unlike you who may be more familiar with such obscure works, I found myself surprised by the fact that it included many Lords as well as Ladies. Men swooning, indeed. I quote:

. . . A single passage, selected for no other reason than because it is the shortest, will serve as a specimen of those catastrophes: 'One of the sweetest smiles that ever animated the face of mortal men diffused itself over the countenance of Lord St. Orville, as he fell at the feet of Julia in a death-like swoon.'

The actual list of these fainting-fits I here append:

Julia de Gifford 11, Lady Delamore 4, Lady Theodosia 4, Lord Glenbrook 2, Lord Delamore 2, Lady Enderfield 1, Lord Ashgrove 1, Lord St. Orville 1, Henry Mildmay 1.

Certainly Julia de Gifford was adept, but one is left wondering about poor Henry Mildmay. A young suitor perhaps, or the young man who finds his father to be a Duke? Male swooners! It must have been a fashionable 18th Century break in one's deportment. I can certainly see Mr. Turveydrop swooning, but although a Victorian character, he was living in the past and Dickens' gentle satire of his type was finely drawn in Bleak House. This reminds me of Lady Dedlock. I have always remembered the phrase "equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction," which Dickens used to describe her psychological defensive stance, and yet that 'equanimity of fatigue' was unable to overcome the sight of her former lover's unique handwriting, and down she fainted like an icicle falling from an eavestrough.

This brings to mind the animated introduction to the PBS television series Mystery using the drawings of Edward Gorey: a women upon a roof edge, lying upon her back, sighing faintingly with high pitched oohs and ahhs (which my wife imitates to perfection), holding a handkerchief and waving it about her face. . . . Gorey was very fond of long Victorian novels and would probably have been amused and entertained by Meeke and Cuthbertson. I believe, though, that Jane Austen was one of his most especial favourites. Lady Murasaki as well. He named many of his cats from characters found in The Tale of Genji (Waley's version).

We remember when we visited New York and we made our way over from the New York Public Library to the Gotham Book Mart for a browse. The resident cat, a long-bodied pale orange tabby with watery eyes and slow movements quite ignored me but went straight for my wife as if he recognized an old friend. Edward Gorey's association with the bookstore is legendary and so I wondered then if this unusual cat had belonged to Gorey who had been dead, grimly so, for two years. I believe I later learned that all resident Gotham bookstore cats were named after authors, and that this specific cat held the moniker, Thomas Pynchon. As I am usually a cat magnet, this bit of info soothed my pride.

I see this letter has digressed too far to include my references to a scholarly article concerned with fainting: Fainting and Latency in the Eighteenth Century's Romantic Novel of Courtship by Christine Zschirnt, in the Germanic Review, 74.1 (Winter 1999). I kid you not. I have read it twice but still find myself puzzled, though fascinated. The author explores the fainting fit as "a device describing a state of unconscious consciousness." Yes, this letter may have brought you to that very state. I leave you, and hope this finds you well.

Your most humble servant,
R. P. Chumley

F is for Fortune, the Ambiguous Skill

I have been back, for some time now, from reading The Dark Back of Time by Javier Marias--my 'holiday from the infinite'--but I only now find myself writing this piece. Why the delay? Was it the weather? Ill health? Ennui? Was it perhaps due to lack of exercise, or, one too many digestive biscuits with my tea? No, I believe the delay was due to my having neglected my diary.

My diary would be tedious reading to anyone; the recording, however, of mundane occurrences and thoughts, impressions and feelings of my uneventful life seems to help clear the thought processes of mental sediment; or perhaps it is more like a yoga for the mind, keeping the brain limber and flexible, working out the knots and tension that can build up due to the general anxiety and stress of living. More importantly perhaps, is that this record of facts, thoughts and impressions is an aide memoire, an attempt to preserve times' passage as it so quickly slips by us, day by day, month by month, until we find ourselves another year older, trying to remember the past, and our other past selves, which are now in the shadow of time, seen darkly through the anxiety of our forgetting.

James Boswell wrote a monthly essay for the London Magazine between 1777 and 1783 under the byline The Hypocondriak; in his essay No. 66 (March 1783), 'On Diaries,' he writes:

For my own part I have so long accustomed myself to write a diary, that when I omit it the day seems to be lost, though for the most part I put down nothing but immaterial facts which it can seem no purpose of any value to record. For instance, the diary of this day will be little more than that 'I sat quietly at home, and wrote The Hypocondriak, No. LXVI, On Diaries.'

Perhaps diaries attempt to trap lost time, memory, the past, the shadows and ghosts of the ifs and what might have beens which all seem to have a place in what Javier Marias calls 'the dark back of time,' a phrase he has adapted from The Tempest (1, ii, 38-50) ; this phrase and title of the book, appears, along with another Shakespeare adapted phrase from Othello, 'put out the light, and then put out the light,' throughout the text like leitmotifs, whose reappearances guide the narrative of this 'false novel' through the digressions and meditations on the ambiguities of death and meaning, identity and significance, fate and destiny.

It is a book born of a previous book, All Souls, published eight years prior, a book taken for a roman a clef by numerous readers. Marias in Dark Back of Time begins rather straightforwardly and at times humorously with the reactions to this book by the various Oxonians and Oxfordians, and even his students in Madrid, and then develops the narrative, weaving in digressions of more complexity and depth as he explores the multiple strands, both historical and imaginative, personal and fictitious:

It was after the book's publication in England that the tempo of events and coincidences and confirmations I hadn't sought began to accelerate, and it hasn't yet slowed and may never stop, and I sometimes have the feeling that you must be careful about what you make up and write down in books because occasionally it comes true. {Dark Back of Time- translated by Esther Allen (New York: New Directions, 2001) p. 248.

By having included in All Souls, his fictional novel set in Oxford, references to real people, the obscure and forgotten and perhaps ill-fated author John Gawsworth being central, it elicited responses from readers which created such ramifications that to this day, the life of Javier Marias is for ever changed; the most extraordinary being his inheritance of the Kingdom of Redonda because of his treatment of Gawsworth in the novel. In the Dark Back of Time he explores these responses and ramifications which are informed, however, by Marias' perception of life, a perception ultimately coloured by the experiences of his father, Julian Marias, a future Professor of Philosophy, slandered, traduced and informed against by a colleague to Franco's Regime. Marias gives us clues on page twenty-four, clues that hint at this view of life, a view which he clearly and finally states near the end of the book.

As a reader, I feel I did my part, and followed his elaborate narrative, his explorations of coincidences, "inchoate combinations," responses, curses and blessings, and yes, many deaths, so many deaths. The strange sad fate of Odon von Horvath in Paris; the bizarre death of Wilfred Ewert; the unusual life of Oloff De Wet; the death of his brother at the age of 3 1/2, a brother he never knew; the death of his mother, a friends suicide and numerous other deaths, all these stories and more creating a sense of fate, a perception of destiny, of seeing a figure in the carpet. But it is near the end of the book when Marias' perception of life, and death, is revealed:

Everything is so random and absurd, it's incomprehensible that we can grant any transcendence whatsoever to our birth or our existence or our death, determined by chance combinations as fickle and unpredictable as the voice of time when it has not yet gone by or been lost, when it is not yet ambiguous, when it is not yet even time, that voice we all know and hear murmuring as we move forward, or that is what we believe, because really it is the voice that moves forward; how can any importance be conceded to our fragile and insignificant passage which could so easily not have occurred because of a lie or some false testimony , or could indeed occur because of the excessive fancifulness and hatred of two of Franco's informers . . . who fabricated accusations that were finally too improbable and novelistic about the man who couldn't yet even dream of being my father . . . Yet all we can do is grant ridiculous importance to the products of these inchoate combinations, to each one and to our own--or rather, the one that we are--to those already obliterated and to those that are present, and even to those that are fictitious, if we don't want our passage through time to be entirely idiotic as well as fragile and insignificant. So we spend our lives pretending to be unique and chosen when in fact we're interchangeable, each the random outcome of a spin of the wheel of fortune at a dank, decrepit carnival. (p. 314-315)

Perhaps this is the source of my having neglected my diary and hence my delay in writing this piece. Perhaps I have been maundering about with these thoughts, spun around and set off-kilter onto a variant path or perception of life; such is the power of a book. I console myself by looking back upon having had the Duchess of Ontario visit our little bookshop on various occasions all without knowing of her title bestowed upon her by Javier Marias, an author unknown to me at the time, and my running up the street after her with a copy of a Laurence Sterne she was looking for, an author Marias admires and has translated, and it restores a sense of the interconnectedness of humans, and that can help me find, perhaps not meaning, but at least solace in the strange, and perhaps ambiguous nature, of fortune's wheel.

E is for Endogeny or What you Will

With my two volume Oxford English Dictionary, I resort to taking my glasses off and placing my nose close to the page where I can smell that ever relaxing fragrance of print and paper. This is the dictionary with the print the size of a grain of sand and the one that is a challenge to the eyesight of most, if not all, people, even with the magnifying glass, a glass which usually comes nestled in the little drawer built into the slipcase for the set--mine having mysteriously vanished with some previous owner who couldn't resist, perhaps, the shadowy sherlock mystique of holding one or having it just so, at hand, upon the writing table; then again, perhaps it was a youth who withdrew it from a parent's study to observe the structure of tiny black ants or the patterned veins of a butterfly's wing and then left it behind, forgotten in the meadow, grown over, lost. . . (Easy enough to replace a magnifying glass, but indeed, it would always be an impostor.) It was to my print intoxicating OED that I turned when, in the midst of enjoying Javier Marias's novel All Souls, I came across a wonderful passage--one of many--with a word that sent me to the dictionary: endogeny. Marias (here pictured), or more correctly the unnamed narrator, is describing a bachelor, a professor emeritus at Oxford, one Toby Rylands:

He was a very big man, really massively built, who still had a full head of hair: his statuesque head was crowned with wavy, white locks like whipped cream. He dressed well though, with more affectation than elegance (bow ties and yellow sweaters, rather in the American style, or the way undergraduates used to dress) and he was regarded as a future--indeed almost extant--never to be forgotten glory of the university, for in Oxford, as in all places where people perpetuate themselves by some form of endogeny, individuals only achieve glory when they begin to relinquish their posts and become passive beings about to be shuffled off to make room for their legatees. He and Ellmann, Wind and Gombrich, Berlin and Haskell, are or were all destined to end up as members of the same race: the retrospectively desired.

-Javier Marias, All Souls (New York: New Directions, 2000 ) translated by Margaret Jull Costa (1992) p. 128.

Endogeny: "growth from within." A botanical appropriation. It seems appropriate with Javier Maria's novel whose very subject matter, the endogenous intellectuals of Oxford, is spun around the themes of time, identity, the past, memory and change. How to reveal the inner lives of the characters is the challenge. The narrator is an outsider and is showing us a small group of intellectuals who lead rather closed lives, often solitary, withdrawn from everyday concerns. If one knows gossip about another, it is money in the bank, but one does not reveal anything about oneself. It is rather like a grand card game with all the players holding their cards close to their respective chests. But for the closed nature of the group, the narrator does enter into their world and does gain insight and understanding into some of these dead souls.

The unnamed narrator recalls his two years as a visiting lecturer of Spanish literature and translation theory at Oxford, "a city in syrup, where simply being is far more important than doing or even acting." He looks back and it is through his memory--reliable or not--that we learn of his observations, ever so detached, of the city life, its eccentric characters, and his experiences. The preoccupation with time, identity and perception is revealed in characters such as the touchingly drawn character of Will, the aged (almost 90 year old) porter of the Institutio Tayloriana who takes Martial's epigram to heart { "To be able to enjoy (in memory) your former life is to live live twice over." [Epigrams, Bk. 10, 23, I] }, for Will is a character whose life is atemporal. A man whose "limpid gaze" saw individuals differently each day:

Will literally did not know what day it was and spent each morning in a different year, travelling backwards and forwards in time according to his desires or, more likely, quite independently of any conscious desire on his part. (p. 4)

There is also Clare Bayes with whom the narrator has a rather abstract affair. He says of her that:

Everything about her was expansive, excessive, excitable; she was one of those beings not made for time, for whom the very notion of time and its passing is a grievance, and one of those beings in need of a constant supply of fragments of eternity. . . (p. 21)

It is perhaps within these abstract parameters of time that this novel exists. The narrator sees his time at Oxford as one of "unease" for the University was not in time, rather out of it, in stasis if you will, and it is only when he is back in Madrid does he re-enter the real world of time.

If one reads the novel with the thematic structures in mind, the series of observations drawn by our visiting narrator take on greater cohesion for each chapter seems to deal with a different individual or situation. There is the wonderfully comic scene of "high table" where the Oxonian congregation gather for their ritual meal; the visits to Oxford bookshops especially Mr. and Mrs. Alabaster's bookshop, two amusingly drawn individuals like spiders in their web of words; his observations of Oxford beggars, some fallen from creative accomplishment like the violinist John Mollineux and the theologian Professor Mew; his fellow dons, Cromer-Blake, Toby Rylands and Dewar, the latter a multi-linguist solitary and occasional pen-pushing spy; and Clare Bayes, the fellow professor with whom he is having the affair and who reveals to him in their final meeting in Brighton, the dramatic events of her mother's death, which, with a twisted trajectory, is connected with the author--the real-life author--John Gawsworth.

In the middle of the book there is a chapter devoted to the then obscure and forgotten John Gawsworth which reads rather like a non-fiction biographical piece. By bringing the real-life character of John Gawsworth into the fictional world of his novel, Marias adds but another dimension. His treatment of this obscure author led to Marias being given the title of King of Redonda, a title, fittingly abstract and quasi-fictional, which he has taken to heart and truly has done the most with in creating a publishing imprint and a literary prize.

After the book was published and translated, many individuals thought it was a roman a clef: Javier Marias, like the narrator, was a visiting lecturer at Oxford for two years in the 1980s. Many saw themselves in the book, others wished they did. In fact, the book created so many ripples that Javier Marias penned Dark Back of Time, what he called a "false novel," nine years later dealing with, among other facets of time and theme, the reception of, and reaction to, All Souls . And it is to this book that I now turn my attention, my time, in a "holiday from the infinite".

The Book of Joe

When I was still running a bricks and mortar bookshop, I had the great pleasure of meeting many erudite and artistic customers. Stratford is home to many visual artists, writers, and musicians which makes the city a lively and diverse community. Especially in the summer months. One of my customers was Virgil Burnett, an accomplished renaissance man: artist, illustrator, author, professor, sculptor, and publisher--if he raises rare orchids I wouldn't be surprised. Virgil asked me if I would like to carry a few copies of one of his latest publications, The Book of Joe: Joseph Plaskett and the Art of Painting which he published under his imprint Pasdeloup Press and co-edited with Bruce Barber. I said I would be delighted.

It is a handsome book, with cream coloured paper covers and is finely illustrated throughout with the art work of the acclaimed Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett whose friends and colleagues have contributed reminiscences, poems and stories about their compatriot in the arts. It also includes a brief essay on art by Plaskett and an interview with the artist by the well-known Canadian broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel. The stories and anecdotes about the artist are wonderfully entertaining and informative, and the last reminiscence in the book is worth the cover price alone.

It is a book to have nearby. A book to dip into occasionally and re-read for the insights and the humour, and to enjoy the beauty of the artist's work.

Black River by Kenneth Sherman

After finishing Kenneth Sherman's new sequence of poems, Black River, (Porcupine's Quill, 2007) I lay back and realised I have been living in the fast lane of prose--library work, book selling, blogging, book clubbing, periodical reading-- for too long. Reading these poems I found myself rediscovering a natural breath and rhythm, and I was carried along with the poet's evocatively natural, yet nuanced choice of words making ripples upon the surface as he journeyed along the Black River.

To have the time to read poetry, or to make the time to read poetry, is important. As Kenneth Sherman says: "Stop and search beneath life's flux / if you wish to discover your will, / your forbearance." (p.55) It is healthy and ultimately life affirming to meditate on the past, our place in the present, and on the ghosts of history that surround us, for we live with "forgetfulness / and nightmare blood below the surface." (p.29) His references to the First Nations people and the Holocaust make us mindful of man's inhumanity to man, and that our surface culture, fast moving and forward looking, is blind, and quick to leave the past behind.

For those who escape each weekend to the cottage life, this slim volume of poetry would be a good companion. One to make us mindful and much more conscious of our relationship to this land and to those we share it with; If you don't have a cottage, yet know someone who does, order one, it would be an ideal thank you gift for that invitation to visit.

Like all books issued by Porcupine's Quill, it is a fine papered edition printed and bound with great artistry. The cover and the images in the text are by the Canadian print maker George Raab. The book was readied for the press by Eric Ormsby.

D was for Digressive Thoughts Unsubdued

There is a saying in Tilvanica: "Whatever you do, don't discuss physics with mourning doves." Or so I was told. This reminds me of the day when an old friend Tristy Ramshand found himself on the street where Chumley and Pepys Used Books once existed, bricks and mortar that is; I was placing the sandwich sign out one morning, when who strolled by with pipe and avuncular smile but old Trist, and in he walked and proceeded to expound on the nature of coincidence (quoting a writer whose name I have forgotten: "coincidence traced back far enough leads to inevitability") and began to trace the veritable trajectories of his life and how they came to intersect with mine on the sidewalk outside old Chumley and Pepys. He rarely looked at me, fearing no doubt a vacuously rapt expression which might interrupt his thoughts with present reality. (He was rather like having the radio on, except one couldn't turn it off.) Within twenty minutes he had moved on to a discussion of theoretical physics which led him to reminisce about growing up in a small town in Outer Manitoba, called Tilvanica. (For years I have been meaning to see if such a place exists, but his digressions always left me exhausted, and therefore, once he had gone, I was ever reluctant to revisit these memories--does Outer Manitoba even have mourning doves?) Trist was a talking machine capable of holding multiple conversations on diverse topics, a true top lister at any dinner party or get together; and yet, though his digressions had digressions, he somehow managed to round off each conversation with what I like to call a cornerstone remark, which would leave everyone thinking to themselves "hmm, yes. . . .the man is brilliant, but thank god I don't have to live with him and pity the person that does."

Thankfully closing time came round and I went out to get the sandwich board leaving Trist talking to a cornered customer. Upon returning, I interrupted old Trist by giving him a copy of Sterne's Tristram Shandy so the customer could breakaway and make a quiet and quick exit. He said he had numerous copies--though he would like this one--and began to tell me about finding a singular copy translated into Spanish which he found in a book stall in the small town of Upper Sneezewood, and how the name on the flyleaf just happened to be that of a distant, and most eccentric, uncle of his. . . .

But that is another story.

C was for Corso a Book Scout Pursued

When it was released in 1999, The Ninth Gate really didn't do well at the till, nor did it give critics much of a thrill, but I, like many who enjoyed reading Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas (originally published Madrid: Alfaguara Hispanica,1993), ventured out to see this film with a visibly evanescent hope that it might capture something of the novel's flair.

Dealing with books as it does, I had thought that there would at least be qualities of production design that would be of interest to the eye, and here it didn't disappoint; and with Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp one could be assured of something dramatically skewed, ever so slightly, like a cocked spine on an old Chandler first. The screenplay(s), however, dropped much of the book's material which was par for the cinematic course. Film is film.

Having not seen the film since its initial outing, I look forward to the recent DVD release and hope it has extras of interest. Perhaps it would be good to reread the book, though it can be a dicey affair to try and recapture that dizzily reserved feeling of a first reading. But one can try.

"B" Was for Blogger Who Went For a Walk

Walking thought No. 1:
I--like the majority of bloggers I imagine--have never submitted written work other than university papers for the eyes of Professors--or their assistants. I have always written though: journals, unfinished short stories, reviews and exercises in non-fiction, light verse and of course, ponderously derivative poetry written during my teen years, which, thankfully, still basks in the shadows of the unread--or is it the shadows of the unreadable? But though I have never submitted written work, I find I am still able to express myself, and weblogs are wonderful tools for self-expression. I envy the youth of today who are at the starting gate for they will be able to create an archive, an extended memory if you will, so upon reaching my graying age, they can, one hopes, with whatever technology exists in thirty years or so, bring up a review from their early university days and either nod or groan over what they had written.

Walking thought No. 2: The persistent discussions over the book review table of late have centered on whether reviews written by bloggers have any real merit. All I know is that I enjoy reviews written by bloggers as well as by professional reviewers and published authors. With blogs one doesn't know what diction to expect because there are no set parameters. With the New York Review of Books, or the Times Literary Supplement, one has certain expectations. But blogs vociferously run the gamut. The diversity of views, and their likewise diverse use of language and style, can stimulate thought and promote the exchange of ideas. Perhaps it comes down to, like most things, tribalism, territorial defence and change.

Walking thought No. 3: Like most people too, I feel more comfortable with a few books on the go; I am not, however, one for building stacks beside the bed which threaten vulnerable toes in the night. No, a manageable pile is required. One that doesn't overwhelm. One that can sit upon the bedside table without undue stress. (Perhaps the older one gets, the greater the need to moderate and balance the weight of so many words, so many pages, so many books. Then again, it might just be me--I get vertigo, and perhaps a hint of envy, looking at all those book stack pictures on people's blogs!) Having a few books on the go, however, brings up, as many readers know, companion readings, or tandem narratives which are unplanned, at least consciously. How these narratives weave their way through the brain and affect my dreams I don't know, but it is sometimes quixotic how the narratives of different books mingle and exchange thoughts seemingly of their own accord, forcing themselves into my consciousness; at times it is dispassionately subtle and at other times emphatically obvious. This is generally the point where I reach for the pen and notebook, nodding as if to placate the intrusive nature of that other narrative as I jot down a few words and hopefully delineate my thoughts from the mingled narrative strategies.

Addendum: Perhaps in my dreams Paul Auster, Matthew Pearl and Cees Nooteboom are exchanging narrative secrets while I pour the wine and keep the fictional characters away from the expensive cheeses. Or maybe it is the fictional characters in control, and I find myself looking over the shoulders of the authors as we all try to catch a peek through the window--that point of view of the house of fiction--and try to catch glimpses of the cavorting characters.

Tables do furnish a room

On the official letterhead of the Palace, Jaipur, Rajasthan, this extremely thin blue paper was creased and folded inside a book on, what else, a history of western furniture.

This letter offers much to the imagination.



The history of the royal family of Jaipur can be found here.

After Dark with Murakami

Our viewpoint is from above, like a camera, our vision pans down to the rectangular structure lying upon the highly polished veneered tabletop, the subtly coloured dustwrapper of the book intrigues our eyes as the light from the window glints off the lettering, H a r u k i M u r a k a m i. Our left hand--or our right--reaches out and lifts the book closer to our vision and we see the title of the book is called: a f t e r d a r k; these letters are artificially superimposed on an image of thin vertical blinds over a photograph of what appears to be an urban night scene. We turn it over and scan the blurbs of acclaim for the author's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories, and our eyes rest upon the bottom edge of the dustwrapper where the image of colourful Japanese drink bottles nestle against one another, like bottles nestling against one other. We open the rear board and the photograph of the author instills us with a sense of anxiety, his expression is one of distant perplexity. We look down and see that Chip Kidd was responsible for the jacket photography and design. We nod. Our eyes notice the small print near the author's photo and we zoom in to see that it is not Jerry Bauer but Elena Siebert, photographer. We nod again.

Slipping the dustwrapper off the hardcover, our eyes widen with the colours displayed: pink on the spine, purple on the boards, with special ribbed paper for both. Spine title in gilt stamp. Our vision blurs as our hands feel the tactile qualities of the ribbed paper covered boards, the ribs echoing the vertical blinds of the cover image in a nuanced dance of sight and touch.

Opening the book to the title page our vision takes in the typeface used for the title and author, something modern, something different; a resemblance to a stamped name, a stamped title. Then, a fleeting image in our imaginations comes up, of a vast floor of workers, each sitting at a desk, each stamping books on title pages, the sound, a loud musical counterpoint to the unheard rhythms of their hearts. . . .

We turn to the first page and observe a stylised image of a clock showing just before midnight. We hear an old Pet Shop Boys song on the radio, in the distance. Our eyes scan down and we begin to read:

"Eyes mark the shape of the city. . . ."


-for a review of Murakami's After Dark, millions has an interesting one, or perhaps this review at Christian Science Monitor or here at the L. A. newspaper.

From Awnings To Steinways

I must say that I am not a collector of ephemera or bookmarks. There are professional dealers in ephemera but I have never purchased anything, though I have browsed shows devoted to ephemera. Having been involved with books for so many years, I have merely accumulated items which I have found in books, certainly a modest collection. I am an accumulator if you will. And a preserver. I find them quite fascinating. There is much to be learned from them.

This business card which I found in a book on American history is attractive. Before air-conditioning, awnings and canopies did the trick. On the back of this card is written in pencil with a flourish: "$2.00 a window." Certainly sounds like a bargain today. I imagine many booksellers relied on awnings and canopies to keep the fading and sunning to a minimum in their display windows. There is certainly something stylish with those old awnings and canopies.

I am not familiar with Astoria and I didn't know of Steinway & Sons connection with the borough. Fascinating to find this out. The homepage for Steinway can be found here.

Pepys' Letters

My alter ego, or doppleganger, Mr. Pepys, (so quiet here at Chumley and Pepys on Books, never a peep out of old Pepys I always say) has started a weblog devoted to Letters. A daily selection of letters for the delectation of readers. A commonplace book shared.

Good luck, Mr. Pepys!