Middlemarch & others

Based on the strong urgings of a friend (she lent me her copy) I have been reading Middlemarch for the past few weeks. It is a great novel, certainly not light.

I had started before, for free on my e-reader; but could not get past the first chapter or so. I took a dislike to Dorothea and her self-martyring ways; guilt-tripping her younger sister about liking their late mother's jewels, the early passage about horseback riding:

"Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way and always looked forward to renouncing it."

But I worked on it. Especially after my fr The people are such people, very well rounded characters. But, if some people say Jane Austen has a bit of a cruel and satirical eye, well George Eliot's eye is that trebled. It is realism, and not happy realism. It is hard to enjoy a novel when you don't like the characters much. But time moved on. I began to feel sorry for Dorothea on her honeymoon. I met the Garths and liked them a teeny bit, especially Mary. Lydgate annoys me, but I feel a bit sorry for him too. I suppose that is the effect that Eliot is going for? That we see them and dislike most of them, but also pity them.

But I have come to understand that a lot of what I get out of reading is what most people get from watching TV sitcoms or cop shows - escapism and relaxation. Definitely not what I get from Middlemarch. I may be a bit old for this, she makes me feel almost too much.

So, last week, I had to flee to Trollope for a bit of light relief. Re-read/skimmed Can You Forgive Her and started up Phineas Finn. His realism is not so keen and he has characters like Mrs. Greenow and her suitors to make us laugh.

Then. I dipped into some Neal Stephenson, re-read The Diamond Age and just started his new book REAMDE. But, I think I will go back to Middlemarch later this week; I'm about 60% done.

Other stuff, Dorothy Sayer's apologetic work: Letters to a Diminished Church, much in the same line as CS Lewis's works, or (so the inter-webs say) GK Chesterson.

Gore Vidal - memoirs and novels & historical fiction & history

For some reason I'm reading and re-reading Gore Vidal these days. First, I read his memoir of his first 39 years, Palimpsest, which he wrote in 1994 and published in '95, when he was 70. At first I did not enjoy it much, I thought the way he dwelled on Jimmie Trimble (his first and only love, who died on Iwo Jima at the age of 20) a bit of a bore, and also sad, that he never loved anyone again (so he says) and so lived a rather emotionally stunted life. But, then as things went on past the 40s I decided that I enjoyed his emotional honesty. As Somerset Maugham wrote in The Razor's Edge, people like success stories and his memoirs are that, he achieved success as a novelist and a playwright and a screen-writer, and (to some extent) as a politician. He had many friendships, if not love, which then makes me wonder how Mr. Vidal defines it.

Over the weekend, then, having finished Palimpsest I wanted to find out what happened next, so went to amazon.com and bought Point to Point Navigation as an e-book and began to read that. He repeats a few things from the previous memoirs, but is also bringing things forward. He intersperses events closer in time, like the death of his life-long companion, Howard Auster, with events further in the past, such as his move to Italy. I'm only part of the way through.

In the meantime, I am also reading his historical novel, Julian which I started but never finished about 20 years ago. I'm, enjoying it now, and comparing point of view and characters with Gillian Bradshaw's Beacon of Alexandria, which takes place about 30 or 40 years after the events of Julian and has Athanasios as an important character, a "goodie" shall we say, as opposed to his off-stage (at least at this point) mentions in Julian as rather "baddie" - being not only a Christian but Mr. Nicene.

So, I'm about 1/3 of the way through Julian and it also reminds me of another novel I never finished, Belisarius, which when I first remembered it over the weekend I thought "Is that Gore Vidal too?", but then remembered it was Robert Graves.

Of course, in Julian, all the characters are various aspects of our types that we encounter in many Vidal novels. In some ways, Macrina reminds me a bit of his portrait of Kate Chase in Lincoln. But then, that is one of the things I love about novelists with large bodies of work. I could say similar things about Robertson Davies and Marge Piercy, or Margaret Drabble, for example. They, the novelists, have strong voices.

I sometimes wonder why in the past several years I have been so attracted to reading about the 3rd-7th centuries? I even bought and read a short history of the Byzantine Empire a few months ago. Is it because I am interested in the decline of the Western Empire and see some parallels to the Anglophone empire? I really enjoyed Bryan Ward-Perkins The Fall of Rome and the end of civilization which was much more of an economic history I had expected and I learned a lot about Roman commerce and pottery industries. I liked it much more than Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? [we, meaning the USA] which ended up fence-sitting, "in some ways, yes, in some ways no, a lot remains to be seen...". Ward-Perkins book did not fall into the trap of forgetting Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Or, maybe I just like to read about it because it is interesting and the 3rd-10th centuries in Eurasia were neglected in my formal education and I want to make up for it? I always do enjoy reading about people in other times and places, which also ties into my anthropological interests. Gore Vidal in Palimpsest says something along the lines that novels are true in ways that official history is not, and with that I do agree.

Hostages to Fortune

"HE THAT hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune"

I always took that to mean that when we get married and have children, we have given our hostages to Fortune and that we are at Fortune's mercy for our safety and peace of mind.

Last week, the phrase kept running through my head because my son had a head injury and I had to take him to QE Hospital Emergency room. It was a mild concussion and he is recovering slowly. Thank goodness it is the end of term, so he's not missed much work.

Then I look at what I just wrote, and think, what am I saying?!!! Thank goodness it looks like he will recover and be neurologically normal.

Then the other sweet hostage in Fortune's care. My daughter, she got a bad cold and was hacking and hacking. It turned out to be bacterial infection, so she's on antibiotics and is recovering as well.

Then I decided to look up the original quote, by Francis Bacon(1561-1626). It turns out it his from his essay "Of Marriage and Single Life".

Well, when I read the whole thing, I find at first I have some visceral disagreement
that a spouse and children are "are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief." Y
- Yes, maybe, but what do you mean by "great" Francis, and if the "great enterprises are mischievous, then better they were not undertaken, hmmm? And what about many people with spouses and children who have done "great things" (thinking quickly to try and find some examples...).

Later in the essay, he writes "Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses.'
- Yuck, Francis, that's so sexist, so 17th century. But yes, there is a degree of truth in it too.
So then, Francis is a great writer, because almost 400 years after he is dead, I want to talk to him about what he says. So, I suppose I will read more, listen to him and enjoy him, and argue and agree and disagree, as though we were having a drink together.


Then I read the previous essay for the first time, "Of Parents and Children"
and see:

"THE joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten labors; but they make misfortunes more bitter.They increase the cares of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death"

- yes

"Some say life's the thing, I prefer reading" -

"Some say life's the thing, I prefer reading"

- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

Discuss:

I am fond of reading, have been since the summer of 1974, when I finally became a smooth reader, enjoying "chapter" books. The two books that made the largest impression on me were The Exciting Family / by Mary Dorothea Maitland Hillyard (1927) and Ben and me : an astonishing life of Benjamin Franklin by his good mouse Amos/ by Robert Lawson (1939).

The first was set in an imaginary town where everything was gray and dreary by law and habit, until a an unusual family comes to town and changes everything, using magic. It had beautiful color illustrations by children as well. The book belonged to my step-father's family and was on the shelves of The Old Family Place in Barre, Massachusetts.

The second was historical fiction of a type I still enjoy - an imaginary (or several) imaginary characters meet and talk and live with historical characters. This came from the shelves of the Public Library there, which was the first of the important libraries in my life. Today, while composing this entry, I have found out its name: The Woods Memorial Library.

Since then, it's been at least 2 or 3 books a week. I still love fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction. I have branched out also into history and sociology and anthropology. Poetry, less.

For the past 36 years, reading has been my solace and joy. Do I truly prefer it to "life"? No, but my life is so bound up with reading, that it is hard to separate them. But, if I had grown up without books, then I think I would still have been enamored of stories. I would have likely been the child who always ran off to hear a story teller and always begged granny or grandpa for another story; and grown up to be the old lady, sitting by the fire, keeping and telling stories.