ROCOCO & SPARKLING
This is my 8th consecutive month of reading for Books on the Broad. Three of the books have ‘murder’ on the first page. I wonder why?
I follow my usual rules. Go straight to the author’s text. Avoid introductions, ignore reviews, bypass publishers’ puffs. Go straight to the author’s text! and carry with you the whole of your previous experience. And in this case I admit to prior knowledge of Hanif Kureishi. I have twice seen the film My Beautiful Laundrette when it was shown on the television. And I have a distant memory of picking up a copy of The Buddha of Suburbia, reading a line or two here and there, and returning it unpurchased to the bookshelf. (Not to my taste at the time or Not satisfying a transitory need. It doesn’t matter now but I can’t completely subdue the impression.)
Something to tell you is an easy-going conversational autobiography. ‘The Life and Times of Jamal Kahn’ as set down by a complaisant amanuensis.
Words are magic. I am drawn into the nub of the story. I am the invisible reticent bystander in the taxi ; in the half-light of the Kama Sutra Club ; alongside the naked sunbathers in their secret hidden corner of the garden ; chuntering away on an old golfball typewriter.
Then there’s the external world. Of dreams, of thoughts, of wisdom shared. Of Wittgenstein, André Breton, and great slabs of Freud. Of Schopenhauer. “Sexual passion is the most perfect manifestation of the will to live.” Even Mick Jagger has a walk-on part.
I’ve heard it all before. I’m back with Charlotte Bingham. Swinging London in the 60s. Basement cafés in Soho. Bubbling Gaggia machines. Night on a Bare Mountain as number one of the jukebox. But it’s different. Now it’s Shepherds Bush market, not the Kings Road. Not the Mods and Rockers. And certainly no Vespas or Lambrettas. This is a new generation showing indulgent delight in their cultured hippy freedom. They are all larger than life. Their ancestors may have grown up among far flung shreds of Empire. Now they revel in their own street theatre. Some of the script remains the same but the characters and the settings belong to their own richly hued panorama.
It’s flamboyant. It’s exhilarating. It’s hilarious.
It’s fun.
© francis cameron
oxford, 28 january 2009
Wednesday 28 January 2009
Tuesday 27 January 2009
CANDLE MASS
thoughts on candlemas
OE Candelmæsse
In churches of the Western Catholic tradition, the celebration of Mass on February 2nd includes the Blessing of Candles for use during the following year.
While the candles are being blessed, the choir sings the canticle
nunc dimittis servum tuum domine
Lord, now lettest thou they servant depart in peace
According to thy word
My mine eyes have seen thy salvation
Which thou has prepared before the face of all people
To be a light to lighten the gentiles
And to be the glory of thy people Israel
These are the words attributed to Simeon, the elderly priest of the Jerusalem Temple, before whom stood Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus.
Mary is there to fulfil the requirements of the ancient Jewish Law. She had given birth 40 days before. Now she comes to the Temple to be ritually purified and to present her first-born son to the priest. Hence the official name for the festival on February 2nd is either The Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. I am told that the former focuses on the status of Mary Theotokos (Mary the Mother of God) while the latter focuses on the masculinity of the infant Jesus.
I understand that this intention was first introduced – into the Greek-speaking Orthodox liturgy – during the eventful 4th century of the Common Era when Christianity was moved from ruthless persecution during the first decade of the 300s to the status of the one and only permitted religion in the final decade and, in the meantime, Christianity officially defined itself, by order of the Emperor Constantine, at the Council of Nikea in 325; and the Canon of the New Testament, sacred writings of the Orthodox faith, was finally specified.
There’s a rather interesting exposition attributed to Pope Innocent XII in the concluding years of the 1600s. The story goes that, in pagan Roman times, it was the custom for women to go about with lighted candles in imitation of the goddess Ceres seeking for her lost daughter Prosepine (who had been kidnapped by her uncle Pluto and held captive in the Underworld). [In the Greek version, it is Demeter the Earth Mother seeking for her lost daughter Persephone.]
There is also an association with the pagan practice of farm animals being moved out of the hayfield with the first signs of Spring.
© francis cameron
oxford, 27 january 2009
OE Candelmæsse
In churches of the Western Catholic tradition, the celebration of Mass on February 2nd includes the Blessing of Candles for use during the following year.
While the candles are being blessed, the choir sings the canticle
nunc dimittis servum tuum domine
Lord, now lettest thou they servant depart in peace
According to thy word
My mine eyes have seen thy salvation
Which thou has prepared before the face of all people
To be a light to lighten the gentiles
And to be the glory of thy people Israel
These are the words attributed to Simeon, the elderly priest of the Jerusalem Temple, before whom stood Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus.
Mary is there to fulfil the requirements of the ancient Jewish Law. She had given birth 40 days before. Now she comes to the Temple to be ritually purified and to present her first-born son to the priest. Hence the official name for the festival on February 2nd is either The Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. I am told that the former focuses on the status of Mary Theotokos (Mary the Mother of God) while the latter focuses on the masculinity of the infant Jesus.
I understand that this intention was first introduced – into the Greek-speaking Orthodox liturgy – during the eventful 4th century of the Common Era when Christianity was moved from ruthless persecution during the first decade of the 300s to the status of the one and only permitted religion in the final decade and, in the meantime, Christianity officially defined itself, by order of the Emperor Constantine, at the Council of Nikea in 325; and the Canon of the New Testament, sacred writings of the Orthodox faith, was finally specified.
There’s a rather interesting exposition attributed to Pope Innocent XII in the concluding years of the 1600s. The story goes that, in pagan Roman times, it was the custom for women to go about with lighted candles in imitation of the goddess Ceres seeking for her lost daughter Prosepine (who had been kidnapped by her uncle Pluto and held captive in the Underworld). [In the Greek version, it is Demeter the Earth Mother seeking for her lost daughter Persephone.]
There is also an association with the pagan practice of farm animals being moved out of the hayfield with the first signs of Spring.
© francis cameron
oxford, 27 january 2009
Sunday 18 January 2009
STRIKE THE FATHER DEAD
I have been reading Strike the Father Dead by John Wain. It was first published in 1962 and came to us at 199 High Road Knighton as the monthly selection from World Books in, probably, the July of 1963. I have no recollection of its contents, no memory of actually reading it in those days. That happened from time to time. My professional engagements came in fits and starts. Perhaps the book arrived during one of those gluts.
I picked it up again now because I’d often seen its title among those pointed out as part of the new wave of postwar writers collectively known as the Angry Young Men. Just how Angry and different it was, was something I wanted to find out for myself.
It is by way of being the autobiographical memoirs of three people. Alfred is a Professor of Classics at a not very well endowed provincial university. He is a widower. Eleanor is his younger sister, foster-mother to Alfred’s son Jeremy. I am immediately impressed by the very high quality of the writing. Each of the characters has an individuality which comes out quite splendidly with each of their contributions to the narrative. Albert is a survivor of the battle of Vimy Ridge. He writes with the academic precision of a man schooled in Edwardian times. Eleanor is almost a twittery type, of an era when the man was the breadwinner and the woman prepared the meals and kept the house in order. Jeremy rebels against his father’s claustrophobic regime, runs away from school, survives as a jazz pianist in wartime London. The year is 1943. The worst of the blitz is over. Flying bombs are not yet ready for their unmanned assault. Jeremy spends most of his time playing in jazz clubs. He develops a personal style leaving Trad behind but avoiding the seduction of the avowedly Modern. After the war he escapes to Paris and has considerable success along with Percy Brett, a jazz virtuoso partnering on the valve trombone. There’s more to come, but I’ll not spoil things for those who choose to engage with the book for themselves.
Observations? I did not find the kitchen sink drama I had expected. This is a cracking good tale, jam-packed with verisimilitude. No frothy lightweight entertainment by a Noël Coward or an Ivor Novello. The recesses of my mind say Balzac or even Bizet. A polished account of real people living everyday lives. If anything, I become aware of the turning of the page as generation succeeds generation. Alfred’s father enjoyed the comfortable assurance of a Victorian clergyman. Alfred himself is part of that lost generation whose mental outlook was ever conditioned by those too elderly to take up arms in 1914. Jeremy is part of the generation which rejected Winston Churchill in 1945. Harbingers, in their turn, of massive social change. And that’s about it. I must look along my shelves and see whether I still have other exemplars of that particular ambitus. I must admit, I do tend to look back (not ‘in anger’) and compare my memories with those who committed their thoughts to paper as new flowers grew from the ashes of austerity.
© francis cameron
oxford, 18 january 2009
I picked it up again now because I’d often seen its title among those pointed out as part of the new wave of postwar writers collectively known as the Angry Young Men. Just how Angry and different it was, was something I wanted to find out for myself.
It is by way of being the autobiographical memoirs of three people. Alfred is a Professor of Classics at a not very well endowed provincial university. He is a widower. Eleanor is his younger sister, foster-mother to Alfred’s son Jeremy. I am immediately impressed by the very high quality of the writing. Each of the characters has an individuality which comes out quite splendidly with each of their contributions to the narrative. Albert is a survivor of the battle of Vimy Ridge. He writes with the academic precision of a man schooled in Edwardian times. Eleanor is almost a twittery type, of an era when the man was the breadwinner and the woman prepared the meals and kept the house in order. Jeremy rebels against his father’s claustrophobic regime, runs away from school, survives as a jazz pianist in wartime London. The year is 1943. The worst of the blitz is over. Flying bombs are not yet ready for their unmanned assault. Jeremy spends most of his time playing in jazz clubs. He develops a personal style leaving Trad behind but avoiding the seduction of the avowedly Modern. After the war he escapes to Paris and has considerable success along with Percy Brett, a jazz virtuoso partnering on the valve trombone. There’s more to come, but I’ll not spoil things for those who choose to engage with the book for themselves.
Observations? I did not find the kitchen sink drama I had expected. This is a cracking good tale, jam-packed with verisimilitude. No frothy lightweight entertainment by a Noël Coward or an Ivor Novello. The recesses of my mind say Balzac or even Bizet. A polished account of real people living everyday lives. If anything, I become aware of the turning of the page as generation succeeds generation. Alfred’s father enjoyed the comfortable assurance of a Victorian clergyman. Alfred himself is part of that lost generation whose mental outlook was ever conditioned by those too elderly to take up arms in 1914. Jeremy is part of the generation which rejected Winston Churchill in 1945. Harbingers, in their turn, of massive social change. And that’s about it. I must look along my shelves and see whether I still have other exemplars of that particular ambitus. I must admit, I do tend to look back (not ‘in anger’) and compare my memories with those who committed their thoughts to paper as new flowers grew from the ashes of austerity.
© francis cameron
oxford, 18 january 2009
NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS
exercising creative imagination
I have been reading Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus which was first published, by Chatto & Windus, in 1984. It is a fantastic story. 'Fantastic' being the operative word. Let me give you some idea of how that comes to pass.
Fevvers is an aerialiste, the star of the circus. The place is London. The time : the fin de siècle decadence of Victorian England. But Fevvers is no ordinary aerialiste. She claims to have been hatched rather than born. She is a true daughter of Leda. There is no need to specify her father. Her human body has grown a veritable pair of wings. That is sufficient testimony. She flies, elegant and graceful, from high wire to trapeze and then to wheresoever she chooses.
Into her life comes Jack Walser, a young reporter originally from California. His mission : to unmask her for the fraud she is. In pursuit of this mission, he joins the circus as a clown, an august in wet white, as it sets off for Petersburg. There he is caught up in more fantastic adventures. The tiger tamer plays on a grand piano, right there in the cage, while her young female partner dances with her chosen tiger. The clowns perform their time honoured routines. The vodka flows. Disastrously.
The circus sets out on the railroad across Siberia. In the depths of winter, the train is ambushed. Blown up.
For Fevvers there are sideshows with a women's collective jailbreak, a gang of forest-dwelling male outlaws, and shelter in a desolate conservatoire of music with but one professor and no students.
For Jack Walser there is unconsciousness, separation, amnesia and eventual lodging with a Shaman where he begins to experience more than one level of absolute reality. For him there is now 'no difference between fact and fiction'. Instead there is 'a sort of magic realism'.
And there we have it. Magic realism. Lo real maravilloso. A company of writers wherein is inscribed the name Angela Carter.
It would not surprise me to find readers who take up Nights at the Circus and enjoy it simply as a story too good to be true. An escapist fantasy. Something far beyond the bounds of reality. But here's the paradox. It really is a true story. A true and faithful record of something that actually happened. Something ready to be appreciated in its true light by anyone open to receive. Here are displayed characters plot and landscapes conjured up in a reality created by the author and set down by her in writings to weave the essence of her magical spell. A magical spell ready to be unwound by all those with eyes to see and ears to hear. A silent incantation which opens the way to realities beyond reality. The words are all there. Between two covers. We have only to take them up and begin at the beginning. We shall be buffeted by clowns as they cavort. We shall smell the stench from the tigers' cage. Stand on one side as the rails buckle and the train shatters. Move with the Shaman from one reality to another. Even pause with him in the spaces between realities.
It is magic. Real magic. The magic of creative reality. Such stuff as dreams are made of as we go once more a-roving so late into the night.
© francis cameron
oxford, 5 december 2008
Saturday 17 January 2009
the prize
I have been reading The Prize by Irvine Wallace which came to me as part of my World Books subscription in 1964.
It employs a common structure. Take half-a-dozen or so apparently unrelated people. Introduce each of them in turn, then proceed round and round with episodes in each of their stories. A crucial event brings them together in the same time and place. They interact with each other with twists and turns as the excitement builds towards the dénouement. A grand final peroration is optional. Wallace exercises this option to send a message to the wider world.
Five of the principal characters are about to become recipients of Nobel Prizes. Their backgrounds are exposed for inspection. We are introduced to the supporting cast of players. Count Bertil Jacobsson, the Assistant Director of the Nobel Foundation is the anchor man. The majority of the action takes place in Stockholm with a considerable emphasis on the names of streets, districts and buildings, as though the author is obliged to show a detailed knowledge of the locality. The year is not specified. It reminds me of those theatre programmes where the action takes place in Time : the Present. On the other hand, there is notably careful specification of the exact time of day at which each event takes place and, as we approach the crucial date of the Tenth of December, there is a growing sense of an inevitable diachronic intensity spreading out to take in events maturing more or less simultaneously in different parts of the city.
In places the writing resembles high-class journalistic reportage – as though Irvine Wallace had a file drawer neatly filled with 5 x 3 index cards queuing up, each waiting their turn to be copied into the text. As a result, I find the characters more like the contents of a collection of dossiers than lifelike beings created in the mind of the writer. As to the city itself, I am left with little more than an impression of a northern winter’s cold and darkness – quite appropriate, for this is the time of the Cold War between the Eastern Bloc and the West.
So what is the story about? I find it difficult to say. The craftsmanship of the writer is there. Certain characters express their individual thoughts in extended paragraphs but most of the time we are concerned with the interaction, the verbal and emotional duelling between the two characters temporarily occupying centre stage. The basis of this duelling is, more often than not, the unresolved sexual tensions between a man and a woman. I recall some other novels by Irving Wallace that I read in the ‘60s where the sexual element is very near the surface. In my recollection of those days, sex was something we frequently read about but seldom actually talked about – and certainly not in public. A message that seeps through from Wallace is that there are more open and enjoyable ways of sex than are commonly experienced in his home country.
I certainly enjoyed this book back then in the 1960s. Today I marvel at the craftsmanship of a best-seller writer; feel that the profusion of topographical detail was almost a requirement of the times; notice that while attitudes to sex are freely scattered, descriptions of sexual activities are almost entirely absent. Such are the fashions of passing time. I did feel a need to keep turning the pages until I reached the final page when we could almost have added that reassuring bedtime message :: and they all lived happily ever after.
© francis cameron
oxford, 17 january 2009
It employs a common structure. Take half-a-dozen or so apparently unrelated people. Introduce each of them in turn, then proceed round and round with episodes in each of their stories. A crucial event brings them together in the same time and place. They interact with each other with twists and turns as the excitement builds towards the dénouement. A grand final peroration is optional. Wallace exercises this option to send a message to the wider world.
Five of the principal characters are about to become recipients of Nobel Prizes. Their backgrounds are exposed for inspection. We are introduced to the supporting cast of players. Count Bertil Jacobsson, the Assistant Director of the Nobel Foundation is the anchor man. The majority of the action takes place in Stockholm with a considerable emphasis on the names of streets, districts and buildings, as though the author is obliged to show a detailed knowledge of the locality. The year is not specified. It reminds me of those theatre programmes where the action takes place in Time : the Present. On the other hand, there is notably careful specification of the exact time of day at which each event takes place and, as we approach the crucial date of the Tenth of December, there is a growing sense of an inevitable diachronic intensity spreading out to take in events maturing more or less simultaneously in different parts of the city.
In places the writing resembles high-class journalistic reportage – as though Irvine Wallace had a file drawer neatly filled with 5 x 3 index cards queuing up, each waiting their turn to be copied into the text. As a result, I find the characters more like the contents of a collection of dossiers than lifelike beings created in the mind of the writer. As to the city itself, I am left with little more than an impression of a northern winter’s cold and darkness – quite appropriate, for this is the time of the Cold War between the Eastern Bloc and the West.
So what is the story about? I find it difficult to say. The craftsmanship of the writer is there. Certain characters express their individual thoughts in extended paragraphs but most of the time we are concerned with the interaction, the verbal and emotional duelling between the two characters temporarily occupying centre stage. The basis of this duelling is, more often than not, the unresolved sexual tensions between a man and a woman. I recall some other novels by Irving Wallace that I read in the ‘60s where the sexual element is very near the surface. In my recollection of those days, sex was something we frequently read about but seldom actually talked about – and certainly not in public. A message that seeps through from Wallace is that there are more open and enjoyable ways of sex than are commonly experienced in his home country.
I certainly enjoyed this book back then in the 1960s. Today I marvel at the craftsmanship of a best-seller writer; feel that the profusion of topographical detail was almost a requirement of the times; notice that while attitudes to sex are freely scattered, descriptions of sexual activities are almost entirely absent. Such are the fashions of passing time. I did feel a need to keep turning the pages until I reached the final page when we could almost have added that reassuring bedtime message :: and they all lived happily ever after.
© francis cameron
oxford, 17 january 2009
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