April 14, 2012
Giving In
I have discovered what ereaders are good for: reading erotica in public.
Actually, they're good for a myriad of reasons. I am a reluctant gadget adopter as I tend to only buy them when I have no way out anymore or, obviously, if they seem useful - which is very rare. I still don't understand why people use a GPS when on road trip holidays. The best part is when you get lost! Or why would I like to connect to the internet anywhere so I can look up something quickly rather than wonder, speculate or try to recall - it's bad enough I don't know any phone number by heart anymore.
When ereaders first came out I scoffed at the possibility of having 10000 books at my fingertips. I still do. I wish there were 10000 books I want to read but there aren't. It's like having 300 TV channels. Useless. But I ended up getting an ereader because there were a number of books on gutenberg.org I wanted to read, books which weren't available at my library and that I had no wish to own. In fact, I want to get rid of most books I own as it is - all these boxes we have to schlep around whenever we move. And I just can't read these pdf's and whatnots on a laptop screen. I find myself not attached to the idea of books as objects unless they're gorgeously bound, have beautiful pictures or are signed. Nevertheless, I don't plan on buying any books for my kindle. It's exclusively dedicated to either out of print, extremely expensive antique editions or discardable out of copyright classics - I still love bookshops and have no wish to contribute to their disappearance.
At first it was Fernando Pessoa's fault. He was into crime novels and on his personal library there are all these old fashioned books by writers nobody reads anymore - and there it was, Austin Freeman's The Eye of Osiris at Gutenberg, looking at me and begging to be read. Then it was Eric Rohmer who loved Sax Rohmer's thrillers so much as a boy that he adopted his hero's name. I definitely didn't want a Fu-Manchu adventure sitting on my shelf but I just needed to read it. And then there are all these wonderful retro science books... Centuries year old, inaccurate when not just plainly wrong, non-fiction is the best social history document there is. I've been having a grand time reading psychiatric reports from turn of the century Portugal.
Other than trash literature and faulty science, I managed to get my hands on classics of spanish and french literature I always meant to read and which I would have to order from their native countries and would have to keep even after being disappointed by them.
And lots of John Ruskin. So I can disagree with every line the man writes but not have to see his name on the bookshelf.
Anyway, I'm an addicted semi-luddite and I have no shame.
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April 13, 2012
Easter in Edinburgh
At Edinburgh Books.
******
Edinburgh has brilliant cemeteries. The 18th century graves at St. Dunstan's are the best ones. Memento Mori galore.
*****
The National Galleries of Art exceeded expectations. The only downside was that the shop had run out of the Companion Guide to the Collection - surprising, to say the least, considering how well stocked they were on every other type of souvenir. On top of that, they don't allow photography in the galleries, the online collection isn't complete and the images available are very small. And I obviously had to fall in love with a minor renaissance painting by an unknown master which isn't mentioned anywhere. I probably will never see it again.
Also, they had a cassone which is further proof for my "Quit romanticizing them, Renaissance Italians were just crass" theory. It's decorated with a painting based on a cuckold/female abuse themed Decameron story. Exactly what you want your virgin daughter/bride to see when she puts away her bridal linen in her wedding chest by the conjugal bed.
*****
In the National Museum of Scotland, looking at the "national heroes" section:
C: Here's Robert the Bruce. Oh, he was defeated by Edward I. Took him a while to get anywhere. He did get Scottish independence. But that sort of ended, didn't it? Last thing he did: defeated by the Irish. William Wallace. Captured and hanged by the English. Mary. Beheaded. James I. Took off to London to be king of the island and only came back to Scotland once. So much for a Scottish king of Britain. Rob Roy. Wounded by the English, defaulted on his loans, imprisoned as outlaw. Bonnie Prince Charlie. Fled from Scotland, defeated by the English. So, all Scottish national heroes are either losers or they didn't care enough?
R: Shhh. Quiet. Yes.
We agreed the Scottish would be better off commemorating all the amazing scientists, philosophers and writers the country has produced rather than these characters of dubious loyalty and accomplishments. They could start by putting J. M. Barrie's striking portrait by William Nicholson in a proper place rather than on one of the walls of the back room of the cafeteria in the National Portrait Gallery.
*****
Like many other things in my life, I'm afraid, I first heard of haggis on a Scrooge McDuck comic book. Inducks.org is failing me but I vividly remember Donald Duck feeling nauseous when a Scottish character carves open a sheep's stomach and an aroma comes out, toxic cloud-like. Being an offal loving person and having had much weirder things to eat in the North of Portugal, I'd say the childhood haggis Disney induced trauma exists no more. I love it.
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March 30, 2012
Useless but Addictive.
What do you do when you find the French state has massive portions of their public records online? You go find birth records of writers and artists, of course.
Marcel Proust. Or Valentin Louis Georges Eugčne Marcel Proust. His father was the one who went to register Marcel: "Achille Proust, aged thirthy seven, aggregate at the University of Medicine, doctor of the Paris Hospitals, Knight of the Legion of Honor...". I'm pretty sure all they needed was his profession but it turned out that he had his CV on the tip of his tongue. The witnesses were his uncle Louis Weil and grandfather Nathe Weil.
Carlos Gardel, born in Toulouse as Charles Gardes which is probably why Uruguay still claims him as their own despite the evidence.
André Breton's is a mess. That's because the french add marriages to the record and they ran out of space.
Apollinaire's Death notice. "Type of Death: War wounds".
Utrillo's is a fun one as his paternity was only recognized when he was 8. So, they just crossed out his previous family name, Valadon.
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March 21, 2012
Argh.
Claudia's Law of Unwise Reading Choices: sitting next to me on a flight from Lisbon was this very nice and interesting Portuguese lady who turned out to be a scholar, prize winning poet and profusely translated at that. We chatted a bit about poetry, art and generally pleasant high brow subjects. When the moment arrived, the one when conversation between two fellow passengers lulls and both want to go back to what they were doing, I realized I had in my hand a trashy crime novel. I, who make a point of carrying philosophy volumes into the hairdresser to avoid frivolous conversation about soap operas or being offered "women's" magazines, was sitting next to a major literary figure holding a trashy crime novel - holding it very stealthily, in a way that unsightly spine and unsightly cover were hmmmmm out of sight. I don't know if it was charity or coincidence but when we started chatting again, the conversation took a twist into crime novels. I could breath again. And, yes, crime novels can be high brow too in many interesting ways but definitely not the one I was half concealing. My life can be so silly at times.
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March 08, 2012
Misericords
Misericords. I noticed them in Ludlow one of these last weekends for the first time and I only haven't found them earlier because I've been sitting on them. Misericords are narrow ledges on the underside of tip-up seats, offering support when standing through interminable religious functions. The carved ones are obviously more interesting. Although they exist throughout Northern Europe, only the English ones seem to have, in almost every instance, supporters on both sides of the central carving. I read that, probably because of the part of the anatomy which the misericords were supposed to provide support for, only a small proportion of the carvings are about biblical or overtly religious themes. The majority of the carvings are said to embody some sort of vernacular theology by illustrating moral tales of folkloric origin with models taken from now lost frescoes, bestiaries and popular epics and mystery plays.
There are a variety of themes for the carvings but the "Beware of Women" sexist satire ones seem to be well documented. The mermaid holding a looking glass and a comb (destroyed) - meaning a seductress - above is a later development over the early medieval mermaid holding a fish symbolizing a soul.
The story of the Cheating Ale Wife - the woman who used a false bottomed measuring tankard to cheat clients out of their beer - seemed to have been a rich source probably because not only it proves how wicked women are but also because it deals with a very serious issue - alcohol. The devil on the left is the recording devil, Tutivillus, whose job it is to note down idle chatter by churchgoers or negligently recited prayers. The center has a devil carrying the Cheating Ale Wife (plus tankard) over his shoulder while another one plays some kind of wind instrument. The carving on the right has the wicked women being thrown in the gaping jaws of hell (see Hellmouth) .
The woman with the horned headdress (and how men should protect against them - see the man on the side holding a shield) is another common theme. This aversion probably derives from St Jerome's diatribes against women's fashions. The Bishop of Paris wrote a poem about it in the 14th century which says>
If we do not take care of ourselves
from the women we shall be slain.
They have horns to kill the men;
they carry great masses of other people's hair
upon their heads.
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March 07, 2012
On consulting a bibliotherapist
I'm never without a book to read and, despite the periodical frustrations with fiction, I almost always have sucess at finding new authors. Especially through other authors - I just ordered a John Cowper Powys on the strength of a George Steiner recommendation, for instance. It may not work out but until it arrives I live in the anticipation of finding a new favorite. No shortage of ideas or choice, then. Yet, I signed up for Mr. B's Reading Year - I will be the recipient of 11 volumes chosen by Nic at the great Bath bookshop.
The reason why I signed up is twofold: I've never left Mr. B's without thinking to myself how marvelously knowledgeable the staff is over there and, mostly, because I am aware of how terribly prejudiced I am.
There are authors whose nationalities put me off - it's not xenophobia, I promise, just a conditioned reflex which is the fruit of a string of bad experiences fueled by a tendency for pessimistic forecasting. Yes, profiling it is. A pink cover will send me running. The book with too many national newspaper endorsements on its back cover will get scoffed at. Book club endorsements likewise. I end up avoiding any "feminine take" because I'm a woman and I don't really see how having a vagina fundamentally changes my metaphysics. In fact, there is an infinite array of other irrational prejudices for which I can't find even marginally defensible reasons. At least I'm aware of it, no?
Also, I love surprises. These surprises arrive by mail wrapped, sealed and with a little note explaining why my bibliotherapist thinks I might enjoy the book they're sending.
And I got for my first monthly installment... Ismail Kadare. Which is fabulous because I have an irrational prejudice against him and I didn't even mention my prejudices to Nic or my goal to exterminate them - that would be embarrassing in a way that exposing then on a blog post is not, for some unfathomable reason. In fact, I am very aware of having irrational prejudices in general against writers from behind the iron curtain.
I am so aware of this that I made an unnatural effort to read Solzhenitsyn, for example. I'm thinking Kundera was easier because I can read his politics as a backdrop to his more philosophically interesting plots. I think I end up liking the allegorical novel as long as it's not too partisan, too much against communism per se but against totalitarianism in general.
I gave it a little bit of thought and I can only imagine that communism has a different meaning to me which is a personal, emotional meaning with no political connotation. Communism was all pervasive in my childhood. It was the exact opposite reaction to the fascist dictatorship that had disappeared just before I was born. My childhood was one long succession of left wing rallies, red carnations and singing protest songs. One of my first memories is of queuing with my mother for her first opportunity to vote - she obviously voted for the communist candidate. The word communism was some abstract ideal that many people couldn't define but that naively sounded like just something everybody must want - a more equal and just society. The last thing on anybody's minds was stalinism, gulags or that what looked like the exact opposite of the right wing regime would inevitably go down the same path. And so these cautionary tales about the perils of communist totalitarianism always sounded to me as cynical remarks by people who love deflating everybody's balloons. It's not they are not correct. It's just that I refuse to connect "my" communism, my first years of life in an exhilarating time of hope of renewal, with those atrocities. A bit like how the Obama voters must feel when somebody points out to them on whose mandate a major terrorist was murdered without even the pretense of a trial.
In any case, The Palace of Dreams was an enjoyable read even if it felt like it was written by the product of a crossing between Salman Rushdie and Bohumil Hrabal - the Rushdiesque vaguely mystical fantasy with the inventiveness of the oppressed Hrabal. Paradoxically, I ended up finding the novel not daring enough in its subversiveness. It made me realize I'm glad I saved some Hrabal for a rainy day. This means I will definitely choose the Czech over the Albanian whenever I feel the need to smother my prejudice a little bit further. But before reading Kadare like a good schoolgirl on an assignment how could I have known?
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Almost makes me want to go to Milan.
Why am I not going to heaven? Certainly for very good moral reasons, but for much more practical reasons too: I've already been there. What is heaven? It is the Galleria in Milan. I'm sitting with a real cappuccino, in front of me is La Stampa, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Le Monde and the Times. I've got a ticket to La Scala in my pocket, and coming at me are the ten or twelve complex smells in that Galleria — of the chocolate, the bakery, the twenty bookstores (which are among the world's best bookstores); the sound of the steps of people moving towards the opera or the theaters that night; the way Milan vibrates around you. I've been to heaven, so I'm not getting a second one.
--George Steiner, Paris Review Interview
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March 04, 2012
British weather is character forming
Dorothy L Sayers in her essay "The Gulf Stream and the Channel", from the book "Unpopular opinions":
"It has, I believe, been said that Britain possesses no climate, only weather. The weather of this country has been much abused (...) by ourselves, with no justice at all, (...) for our weather is our character and has made us what we are. (...)
All British institutions have an air of improvisation; and seem allergic to long term planning. Indeed, what else can you expect in a country where it is impossible to predict, from one hour to another, whether it will be hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or still - where every arrangement for an outdoor sport or public function may have to be altered at the last minute owing to uncontrollable causes? "Rain stopped play", "If wet, in the Parish Hall", "Weather permitting" - such phrases punctuate the whole rhythm of our communal life, and compel a general attitude to things which is at once sceptical, stoical, speculative and flexible in the last degree. (...)
The whole aim of the British weather is to make everything difficult and nothing impossible."
*****
This last sentence has been much quoted in this household. When we first moved to London, we lived in a Georgian building overlooking a leafy square where, at the first ray of sunlight, lawns would be covered with pasty white bodies lounging like lizards.
The pair of us, having been brought up 5000km away from each other but sharing the experience of a permanently sunny childhood - R. even more so, living the T-shirt and Shorts Californian life - were unprepared for the whims of the British weather. We'd lazily wake up on a Saturday morning and notice, after weeks of what seemed exceptionally low, dark grey clouds hovering over the city, that it was a sunny day. Cheered up by the prospect of a walk in a sunny park, we'd calmly get ready, shower, cook breakfast, eat and, by the time we were ready to leave the apartment, it would be raining.
So we learned to hastily join the pasty white bodies downstairs in the square at the first glimpse of sunlight but, conversely, we have learned that if you let the weather stop you from whatever you feel like doing, you'll never do anything at all. And so we've come to understand that stoicism is not about sacrifice but about freeing yourself from external hindrances and therefore, if we want to go hiking, there is no rain or wind that will stop us. Because we are free. And also because if we put it off until the day after, the weather may be even worse anyway.
Sussex in July. See what I mean?
The most startling thing is that we've grown fond of the weather. Last Christmas in Portugal we found ourselves commenting how sunny and cloudless it was and realized we were bored by the immutability of it all. Portuguese weather would make for a very uneventful stop motion movie. Sitting back home at my perch over the Frome valley, I find myself making a sport out of figuring out whether I can see the Welsh Black Mountains in the distance or if the tops of the hills around us are dusted with snow or if the cows are lying down -that is always a sure sign of rain to come - or if that gap in the clouds will bring a few rays of sun in a short while. It is truly exciting and suddenly Turner makes sense, in an anthropological way.
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February 28, 2012
At the Movies
The Muppets. Unexpectedly, the level of silliness was below par. It was probably the mixture of nostalgia pangs and "misfit identity crisis" plot which, while never reaching a stage that could be mistaken - not even remotely - for serious psychological or social analysis, did hinder the full blown Muppets surreality somewhat. To sum it up, too much batrachian pathos, not enough nonsense. Still, I loved it.
****
(We're having a private Jim Jarmusch festival.)
****
Night on Earth, Jim Jarmusch. I first saw it when it came out. I was a teenager and I loved it. I've never stopped listening to the Tom Waits soundtrack ever since. But what did I love about it? It would have been impossible for me to understand it - there are too many cultural references, socially significant accents and national stereotyping in-jokes. I'm assuming a polyglot teenager stuck in a provincial backwater in pre-internet days must have been dazzled by the cosmopolitanism of it. I still am.
****
High Heels, Pedro Almodóvar. Another one I watched when it first came out. Teenagerhood must have limited my attention span and all I could remember from it was both Miguel Bosé in drag and Miguel Bosé practically naked. Teenagerhood, or rather, the lack of critical sense that comes from inexperience, must have prevented me from noticing how flabby Bosé's buttocks are. Not that it matters but it comes as a good excuse to my teenage self to say that I fear that is all I'll remember in the future from this non remarkable standard Almodóvar plot with a brilliant kitsch soundtrack. (I also failed to identify the Mexican interior decoration in Marisa Paredes apartment the first time around.)
****
Ghost Dog, The way of the samurai, Jim Jarmusch. It combines two of my favorite things: it nods to Asian mafia gang war movies and winks at cheap philosophy. Thanks to Ghost Dog, my quite belated new favorite thing is the Wu Tang clan, much to R's chagrin. He has been trying to convince me of the artistic significance of vintage rap or hip hop or whatever it is for years. Well, he should have played The Rza to me a long time ago.
****
Coffee and Cigarettes, Jim Jarmusch. After a while you start noticing black and white checkered patterns everywhere. It feels a lot like an intimate production done with friends which you are allowed to peep in to try and discover the recurrent themes in the vignettes. And it features the underground icon Taylor Mead who starred in Andy Warhol movies. To turn this post into a homage to C&C's structure of inter-vignette hints and imagining Almodóvar will read this:
Taylor Mead's Ass (1964) is a film by Andy Warhol featuring Taylor Mead, consisting entirely of a shot of Mead's buttocks, and filmed at The Factory. Warhol came up with the idea for the film after reading a review in The Village Voice which said of his previous film "Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of" that "... people don't want to see an hour and a half of Taylor Mead's ass."
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February 24, 2012
Snowdonia
We spent the weekend climbing to see hidden lakes on top of mountains.
Llyn Cau. It's in a protected area and there was no one in sight. Other than sheep. If it weren't so cold out I would have skinny dipped. They need to install a finnish sauna up there, although soaking in a beautiful free standing tub afterwards at the isolated Old Rectory on the Lake (yet another lake, Tal y Llyn) made up for it. Watching Mynnyd Rugog from our window.
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