More about Mary, Austen and class

Or maybe Mary isn't just a frustrated humourless failed flirt. When the family is discussing the invitation to Mr Bingley's ball, she says that she was not opposed to the idea:

'While I can have my mornings to myself,' said she, 'it is enough. - I think it no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening entertainments. Society has claims on us all; and profess myself one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for every body.'

You go girl!

I feel like I've read Pride and Prejudice several times but I can't honestly remember reading it more than once which I did when I was 10 years old. It feels much more becuase but have seen two BBC productions and the 1930s movie (NOT the Keira Knightly thing) and every viewing I stop and go 'oh no, the book is different.'

Not surprisingly, when I was 10 I missed the detail that Mr Bingley made his money in trade and was therefore visting the neighbourhood shopping for a landed estate to call his own. Thackeray would have gone on about this at GREAT length whereas Jane Austen just mentions it once in the context of explaining why he suddenly rents this big country house and then takes off again.

Oh Dear

Last night I started to read Pride and Prejudice again and I've discovered that in choosing to assume to identity of Mary Bennet I've sold myself a bit short. I knew she was an opinionated, hard working know-it-all. I had quite forgotten that Austen said she was like this because, unlike her four sisters, she was PLAIN.

PLAIN.

And, the implication is, that she thinks she would never catch a fella unless she could play concertos badly, discourse at length on erudite subjects and whatever else she does.

Poor Mary. I haven't read this book for many many years. I thought she worked so hard on her accomplishments because she wasn't a flirt. Instead, it looks like she's just a misguided uberflirt.

The Vesuvius Club

A colleague lent me this delightful book called The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gattis. It is a rollicking spy thriller set in Edwardian England (except for the bits in Italy) involving the secret service, assassins and artists, drug use, vulcanology and other excitement. The hero, Lucifer Box, is quite the dandy with exquisite tailoring and the right waistcoat for every occasion. At one point he is upset because he has only a single hour to dress for an engagement.

It is very funny and quite naughty. I simply could not put it down until I'd finished reading it.

One point bothered me though: there's a character called Joshua Reynolds who is meant to be a famous painter but this says he died in 1792. Guess I'm being too literal again.

Sense of Failure

I gave up on that book I was reading yesterday. I got halfway through yet another story involving some more dodgy magic realism and decided sleep was more important to me than finding out what happened next.

(Hello young writers, we've all read Marquez, Rushdie, Roy, Isabelle Allende, Peter Carey etc etc. We know about mysterious transformations. It's not amusing anymore but will be tolerated in small doses if there is a point. Yes I know there probably was a point to Tokyo Cancelled but I had to wait through too much artifice to care.)

Of course, these protests mask my deep sense of failure for not finishing I book I've started. I've always been like this. I've wasted days and days of my life persisting with books I hate just to say I've finished them. Much easier to stop reading a collection of short stories than a novel or a biography (even though with biographies it's usually clear that the ending will involve death.)

Tokyo Cancelled

I'm reading a pseudo-novel at the moment called Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta. I mean the cover says it's a "brilliant first novel" (aren't they all?) but it's really a collection of short stories on the same model as The Canterbury Tales . Thirteen people are delayed in an airport in the middle of the night with nowhere else to go until the plane in the morning. They are from all over the world (Japan, USA and India are mentioned.) They spend this time supposedly telling each other the stories that fill the book. These stories mimick the form of fairytaleswith quite simple language and beautilful princesses and young children being left in boxes to be raised by strangers and having mysterious destinies and magical powers.

But, unlike Chaucer's stories, they really don't lend themselves to being read out loud; they're far too long and are far too programmatic. So far they seem preoccupied with themes of colonialism and post-colonialism and echoes of Indian mythology (why oh why are Indian writers always talking about monkey armies?). I don't mind using the airport as a framing device but I really think there should be more attention to making it more realistic by making the stories more different, making the tellers of the tales more distinct.

Maybe it will improve in the next few tales.

Jane Austen society

I realised on the week-end that there is a Jane Austen Society in my city (for which I can't find the link).

For about three minutes I vaguely wondered if I should join. Then I realised that if the other members didn't immediately agree with me on everything I would hate them forever and I'd think bad things about them when they weren't there.

I've never been much of a joiner.

And I'm always right - especially when empirical evidence suggests I'm not.

Fairy tales or my childish need for happy endings

I finished Vernon God Little at lunchtime. I wish I knew someone else who'd read this book because there are two ways of taking the ending. All the reviews I've found on-line in five minute of looking say "this book is too good for me to spoil by describing the ending" which I do kind of agree with but, dammit, I still I need to know whether I should be happy or sad.

It's like that book I read years ago where a guy is meant to be hanged from a bridge and the book describes his miraculous last minute rescue and 150 pages of how he plots and achieves his revenge on everyone who dun him wrong and he gets the girl and riches and a relaxed old age growing grapes but then you get to the last page and it was all in his imagination and he really dies at the end of the rope. I hate having my emotions toyed with THAT way.

I just don't know if THAT'S what DBC Pierre has done or if I can take it at face value.

Panty fixation

I'm getting a bit creeped out by Vernon God Little today. The book's all about how a small town tries to find a "skate goat" after a mass killing where the shooter tops himself and Vernon was his only friend so the local police reckon he MUST know something. That's fine. And it says some uncomfortable things about how pecking orders work so that even though everyone is poor they all brag about things that aren't true as a way of bignoting themselves such as slipping "when I get back from Hawaii" into every conversation or refusing to go anywhere in case a mythical new fridge arrives. I like that. It's close enough to my experience to be recognisable but far enough away to be funny because the sorts of lies I've had to tell to save face over the years haven't been that bold.

But I am feeling a bit uncomfortable about Vernon's fantasies about girls' undies. Not so much that he thinks about girls; I'd be worried if he didn't. Not even that he describes in graphic detail the colour and smell of many different girls' underwear. It wouldn't be something I'd do but each to his own. What worries me is that he INSISTS on calling them "panties". This is the ultimate "ick" word for me. It just makes them sound like something slightly naughty, something you shouldn't show to people, reasons to cross your legs and make sure no-one can see up your skirt as you climb stiars, reasons to make sure boys at the school dance don't have shiny shoes in case they catch sight of a reflection of your smalls. "Panties" sound slightly naughty, like something you'd expect other people to think about rather than a perfectly functional piece of clothing that half the population wears. Ick.

Books that blow your socks off

On the train this morning I started to read Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. This book has been sitting neglected on my shelf for a couple of years. I bought it in a newsagency when I had a long journey ahead of me and didn't know if I had enough reading matter to keep me occupied and it was the only thing in the shop which:

a) didn't have gold embossed letters 15 centimetres high to indicate it was an "airport novel"
and
b) that I'd heard of that I hadn't read that wasn't by Tim Winton (whose books I dislike for complicated reasons).

I think I read the first page and decided to go to sleep. And ever since then, knowing that it's about a Columbine-esque mass shooting, I haven't actually felt that I NEEDED to read this. And I thought the Booker judges were maybe going for sensation over substance again in giving the prize to this guy. But then, this morning, I almost missed my stop because IT'S FANTASTIC.

Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of Victorian books lately and dodgy SF but the prose just struck me like a pole axe. This is in the first paragraph: "Hard to tell if she quivered, or if moths and porchlight through the windows ruffled her skin like funeral satin a gale." I wasn't entirely sure what it meant but I was hooked. And it keeps going like that. It takes a few pages to work out that in small town Texas, the police are talking to Vernon because he's the only friend of the supposed killer and Vernon just seems to be a bundle of neuroses and problems wrapped up in a 15 year old body. Can't wair to see what happens next.

Time Travel and Physics

I'm still reading that very short collection of science fiction stories. This is because I spent most of the week-end sleeping and watching sport.

It might surprise you to learn that I am a keen follower of both the Australian cricket team and Sydney FC but there you are. I could rabbit on about the narrative strength of great teams clashing and epic battles and the rise and fall of their fortunes over time but that would be dishonest. I just like watching sport sometimes. So does my Beloved. Both of these teams are at the finals end of their current competitions. Both of them did well enough yesterday. We enjoyed watching them play.

Back to the point, which is that book. The final story, by Clifford D. Simak and called "Gleaners", is about my all time favourite science fiction topic of time travel. People go back in time to check stuff out such as family trees and the location of treasure. One controversial proposal is to send a camera crew back to film Rome burning. (cool!) They're even considering arranging vacation groups. (where do I sign up?)

I've always wanted to have a time machine, so I could just go back and watch great moments in history and re-learn the lost languages and find the extinct species and answer all the questions they ask in history exams properly. I spent years studying ancient history and most of the time would end essays with "well we don't really know what happened next because there's no more information." I've thought long and hard about how to disguise myself so the locals wouldn't be suspicious (as a trader usually). I've considered how long I could cope without modern conveniences like soap, moisturiser and television. I've put a lot of time into planning my trip.

But one sad day, my Beloved, who has qualifications in actual science (as opposed to science fiction) told me that time travel backwards will never work. Something about Einstein or something. So it remains just a dream.

The Frozen Planet

Just for a change of pace, I'm reading a collection of 1960s American science fiction called The Frozen Planet and Other Stories published by MacFadden-Bartell in New York and originally retailing for 75 cents. I paid four dollars for it. The cover's fantastic: a Kirk Douglas-like semi-naked man is running under a purple and red sky away from invading flying saucers. It certainly seemed to interest my fellow commuters on the way to work today.

And it's such fun so far. People turn out to be telepathic. Aliens are fragile. Everything is a conspiracy but virtue defeats dastardliness. Hurrah!

Sadly, I've never heard of any of these five pulp fiction writers in the collection ( Keith Laumer, F. L. Wallace , Allen Kim Lang, Daniel Keyes and Clifford D. Simak) but that's why they have amazon. I also love how so many Americans include their middle initials in their names. I think from now on, I'll be known as Mary Z. Bennet, just to fit in.

Ahoy, me hearties!

Nothing quite like a day in bed (alone) to catch up on reading, even if your brain is only half there and reading is repeatedly interrupted by napping and eating ice-cream.

I finished Romance at 11.30 last night and a rollicking riproaring yarn of derring-do it was! It was like a well-written pulp novel for teenage boys.

I almost felt like running away to sea myself.

Romance

I’m sick today. Sick with the sort of cold that’s inflamed my sinuses to the point that I want to tear them out through the roof of my mouth. My scalp is crawling. My limbs are weak. There are dark patches in my vision when I stand. I’m soothing my swollen tonsils with ice-cream I can’t even taste. Life is grim.

So this might be affecting my response to the odd little book I found in a Kiama secondhand shop the other week. It’s called Romance and was written by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer and a strange and unusual, deeply paranoid story is within its battered red covers. So far, it seems to be about a young Englishman in search of Romance and instead finding conspiracies and treachery in the Caribbean along with people who may or may not turn out to be pirates and priests praying for England to return to the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

The book spends a lot of time describing the physical appearance of people you never hear of again. One man has a “Roman face” with a nose like half a bell. The descriptions of action are very artificial and very visual rather than relying on other senses. Scenes are established as static tableaux vivants complete with lighting effects. I mean, the authors describe the location of candles and the way they highlight people’s features similar to Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Maybe “painterly” is the word for this. But if you’re not paying much attention, as I’m not, it’s all very confusing and leads to a deep sense of unease and uncertainty. But perhaps this is intended.

Now my recollection of Ford Madox Ford from reading Bloomsbury biographies is that he was the darkly brilliant genius, working hard as a publisher and journalist, quite a leader in the little band of multi-talented modernists. I guess he dropped the Hueffer during the Great War just as the van Saxeburg-Gothas became the Windsors but it wasn’t something I consciously knew. I did remember that he took Joseph Conrad, a retired Polish adventurer, under his wing and encouraged him to write. At uni I was forced to read Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The three blokes in the mostly female class raved about it and Apocalypse Now but I remember reading in the foreword that Conrad had been unsure about whether to write in French or English and I heartily wished he’d chosen French. (Yes I know he’s a genius; that’s why I’m willing to give him another chance.)

This collaboration is an odd thing though. I don’t know how much of it is Hueffer and how much is the fledgling Conrad testing his themes of the evils of colonialism. The seafaring and Jamaica are probably Conrad but I wouldn’t be surprised if the painterliness and staticness (stasis?) are all Hueffer/Ford’s own work.

I don’t know if anyone reads Ford any more and I think he published relatively few novels considering his reputation. The Good Soldier was set before the Great War and was meant to be revolutionary for dealing with a marriage breakup. I found it dull and quite old-fashioned. But Parades End, a trilogy about a mathematical genius with an unhappy marriage having extreme difficulty coping with the war, was absolutely marvelous. It was very hard going though. I most recently read The Fifth Queen about Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife whom they told me at school was beheaded for adultery. It was a strange book about the clash of Catholicism and the new English Church. Ford’s Katherine is deeply Catholic and has long theological discussions in dark halls with menacing privy councillors. As in Romance, the location of all the candles is specified with great care. I remember being incredibly impressed by her knowledge of theology and the detail of his research. Then I read the foreword that said that Ford’s Katherine was almost nothing like the historical one so I felt very ripped off. Thanks a lot Ford.

So I hope Conrad gets a chance to put some more adventure in this book soon. Otherwise it could get really dull and theological.

At last

I finished Pendennis. As expected, the virtuous are rewarded with and the selfish do not profit by their evil or less than entirely selfless schemes.

Even Pen, sorely tempted by the prizes of wealth and fame, at last turns true and receives improved fortunes and some renown almost in spite of himself.

Although the most mischievous and entertaining of the the villains escapes the worst of it. What a good read! Why can't modern books be like that? The six dollars I spent on the book entertained me for four whole weeks.

At last: the point

Pendennis is certainly becoming tedious as Thackeray spreads his story more and more thinly so the plot lasts for the required number of pages. I can barely bother to keep squinting at the philosophical debates inserted to pad out these chapters.

For no apparent reason, the curate who was the tutor of young Pen's youth who unsuccessfully proposed to Pen's widowed mother has popped up as thr extremebly High Church local vicar in the village where Pen's most unbeloved potential fiancee has holed up. This gave him the chance to discourse at length about surplices, candles, confession and other examples of what the local Dissenters denounced as the rise of popery in the anglican church. Yawn. I'm sure it was a live debate in 1830 or something.

And as for the slender plot: yes WM, I understand the whole point is the conflict between the worldling's need to marry well and the sentimentalist's need to marry for love. That's great. It's just annoying that it's impossible to believe that Pen thinks of the supposed love object as anything other than his baby sister. I'd much rather read about his career in journalism because at least it sounds like you know what you're talking about there.

Only 70 pages to go.