Baswoods books part 2

Half way through the year and I have never read so many books in 6 months before: a total of 66 books. Now they were not all doorstops, but Don Quixote was and eight of them were french books and so If anybody asked me what I have been doing in the last 6 months I would have to say I was reading.

I have largely kept to my reading plans as insane as they maybe. I mean what person in their right mind sets themselves a target of reading all science fiction novels published in 1951. Well I read another thirteen, none of them were truly memorable, but only one was really bad. There was even one that I rated as 4 stars and so a special mention to

Dragon's Island by Jack Williamson

Other books published in 1951 is still a target and I read another 13 of these. 4 of which were Maigret novels by Georges Simenon each scoring a respectable 3.5 stars. There was one book that I was surprised I had not read before, which proved to be the best of the bunch:

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene 4.5 stars

The 1951 books continue to throw up some good reading and I rated the following books as 4 star reads;

The West Pier - Patrick Hamilton
Chicago City on the make - Nelson Algreen
When Trees were Green - Owen Dodson
Two Cheers for democracy - E M Forster

Elizabethan literature has featured in many of my recent threads and I read 8 more the best being:

Midsummer Nights Dream - Shakespeare 5 stars
Richard II - Shakespeare 5 stars
Amoretti & Epithalamion - Edmund Spenser 5 stars
King John - Shakespeare 4.5 stars
The Most Pleasant History Of Ornatus And Artesia - Emanuel Ford 4 stars.

There was lots of good reading from unread books on my shelves which if nothing else shows that I have good taste when rummaging through those second hand book shops. I read 8 and the best were:

Don Quijote - Cervantes 5 stars
A Critical Biography: Miles Davis - Ian Carr 5 stars
The Women in White - Wilkie Collins 4.5 stars

Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card 4.5 stars
The Passion of New Eve - Angela Carter 4 stars
Claudine at School - Colette 4 stars
The Secret Pilgrim - John Le Carré 4 stars

Apart from the Simenon Maigrets I read 8 French books and the standout novel was:

Vernon Subutex Tome 3 - Virginie Despentes.

There were two other french books that I rated as 4 stars:
Nue - Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Par Amour - Valerie Tong Cuong

I read some more science fiction from the masterwork series and enjoyed:
The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard 5 stars
The Fall of Moon Dust - Arthur C Clarke

I read 4 poetry books all of them excellent
Penguin Modern Poets 1
Kid - Simon Armitage
Selected Poems - C Day Lewis
Selected Poems Fleur Adcock

And a special mention for a couple of books that I read along the way:
The Vermeer Catalogue for the exhibition at the Rijks Museum
Le Guide du "polar" (Collection les Guides culturels Syros)

A very full, rich and impressive first half, bas.

Memoires de Maigret - Georges Simenon
Published in 1951 this is the fifth Maigret novel to be published that year and it is a little different; there is no crime to be solved. Commissioner Maigret is summoned into his boss's office where he meets Mr G Sim and he is asked to show Mr Sim around the Quai des Orfèvres. It is written in the first person as though Maigret was writing his memoires. I didn't get the joke/twist until the second chapter whem Mr Sim is revealed as Georges Simenon who rapidly becomes Maigret's friend. He encourages Maigret to talk about himself and so we get a little story of Maigret's early life, how he came to be a police officer and how he met Madame Maigret (Louise is her first name).
It is Simenon who is the imaginary character in this story, but we do not learn anything about him.

For lovers of the Maigret novels this is an interesting read: Maigret's promotion to inspector, his first arrest when he wasn't the corpulent figure that he became in most of the novels. It is a time when there was as many horses and carts on the streets as there were motor cars, and gas lamps were a prominent feature. We also hear from Maigret the secret of his success; all down to hard work and experience and a talent for reading people and the streets. Even in the early days Maigret's appetite was legendary, but for food rather than drink. It is a novel that fills in some of the missing pieces of a long running series and done in masterly fashion 3 stars.

A wonderful first half of the year! I look forward to seeing what you unearth next.

Orpheus His Journey to hell and his musicke to the ghosts
This is a long poem of over 700 lines printed in 1595 semi-anonymously; the author only distinguished by the initials R. B. It is written in stanzas of six lines (sestains) with a rhyming scheme of ABABCC. It is a retelling of the story Orpheus and Euridice a story that had come down from Greek myths and was a popular theme for renaissance poets. R. B. tells the whole story in iambic pentameters mostly, with undeniable charm. These are stanzas near the start of the poem:

Where as the Maides by custome came in thronges,
when any Maid was married from their traine:
And there they spend the time in sport and songs,
that other may doe so to them againe:
Where some were dancing hand in hand in ringes,
And others sit to heare how Orpheus sings.

Here Orpheus warbles on his trembling stringes,
for to delight Euridice his joy:
She sometimes dances, then sits downe and sings,
and woman like begins to kisse and toy,
Thus these two sporting in each others sight,
Thinkes euery hower a yeare till it be night.

When as the wearie horses of the Sunne,
began to hie them downe vnto their rest,
And now their maisters iourney almost done,
they end their toylsome labour in the west:
Home hies these louers with a full intent
To change these sportes to other merriment.

The retelling of the story has resulted in some different versions springing from the original and so it is interesting to read this version from the mysterious Elizabethan poet. After his failure to bring Euridice back from hell Orpheus sings mournfully about fickle women:

And in inuectiue Ditties day lie singes,
th'uncertain pleasure of vnconstant Loue:
How manie woes a womans beautie bringes,
and into what extreames this ioy doth shoue
Poore foolish men, that ere they be awarre
Will rashlie ouershoot themselues so fatre.

There gins he sing of secrete Loues deceites,
and womens fawning fickle companie?
The outward golden shew of poysoned baytes,
that drawes so many men to miserie.
And for an instance sets himselfe to shew,
One that had suffred all this pleasing woe.

But the women have their revenge:

And with confused weapons beat him downe,
quenching their angrie thirst with his warm blood:
At whose vntimely death though heauens frowne,
yet they defend their quarrell to be good,
And for their massacre this reason render,
He was an enemie vnto their gender.

VVhich done, to rid him quite out of the way,
him and his Harpe they into Hebar fling:
Vpon whose stringes the gliding streames doe play,
and for his soule lamenting Dirges sing.
Till to the watrie Oceans greedy wombe,
They carie him for to go seeke his tombe.

It is interesting to compare this with Nick Cave's 21st century song that ends:

Poor Orpheus woke up with a start
All amongst the rotting dead
His lyre tucked safe under his arm
His brains all down his head
Oh mama, oh mama

Eurydice appeared brindled in blood
She said to Orpheus
"If you play that fucking thing down here
I'll stick it up your orifice!"
Oh mama, oh mama

"This lyre lark is for the birds, " said Orpheus
"It's enough to send you bats
Let's stay down here, Eurydice, dear
We'll have a bunch of screaming brats"
Oh mama, oh mama

Orpheus picked up his lyre for the last time
He was on a real low down bummer
He stared deep into the abyss and said
This one is for Mama
Oh mama, oh mama
Oh mama, oh mama

The story of Orpheus and Euridice is one of the great tales from Greek mythology; adapted by the roman classical poets Virgil and Ovid and still providing inspiration for poetry, drama opera and song. I enjoyed this Elizabethan version and so 4 stars.

Two more epic poems from 1595:

Thomas Edwards - Cephalus And Procris : Narcissus : from the unique copy in the cathedral library, Peterborough.
Printed in 1595 these are two epic poems written by a gentleman of whom very little is known apart from his name. They survive in a unique copy and have been reprinted for the Rorburghe Club in 1882 and edited by Rev W. E. Buckley. The original spelling and punctuation has been kept and so they do not make for an easy read. Apparently the poems were not well received at the time of publication according to two literary figures: Thomas Nashe and William Covell. They remain fairly obscure with modern critics seemingly (if the internet is anything to go by) more interested in discovering the identity of the author rather than the quality of the writing.

The poems are in effect two re-interpretations/translations of epic poems by the Classical Roman Poet Ovid, which were a treasure trove for 16th century British poets and they still are in the 21st century. They are of course regularly plundered for a good reason: they are good stories and are relatively well known. I wonder myself whether too much attention is paid today to poems that are original to the authors; with poems that are re-interpretations or even re-tellings of classical works being marked down for unoriginality. This was not the case in the 16th century.

Cephalus And Procris is the story of a newly married couple. Cephalus is a beautiful youth addicted to hunting and attracts the attention of the goddess Aurora. Aurora imprisons Cephalus who may or may not have resisted her advances. Procris wins back Cephalus with two gifts: a dog that could outrun any rival and a spear that always hits its mark. Cephalus continues to enjoy the hunt, which ends in tragedy when his spear finds its mark in the body of Procris. There is more to the story with its themes of love and sexual jealousy and the narrative is not always easy to follow in Edwards version. The poem is written in heroic couplets

Narcissus is the story of the beautiful young man who falls in love with his reflection in a stream. The poem is written in seven line stanzas and I found this to be the more enjoyable of the two. The poetry is lively and never without interest and there are many stanzas that worked well for me; here are a couple of examples:

See foulings Queen see how thou trainst me forth
Than gavest me beauty which the world admired
But when I came to talent out the worth
What issue joyed it that my youth required
A brain-sick hot conceit by love inspired
A flaming blast no sooner seen than gone
A sink to swallow up the looker on.

This is when he is staring into the water, a stream in this case not a pool and a mist comes up:

It was a vapour, fuming whole assent
Loosing the vital organ whence it sprang
Much like an untrained falcon loftly bent
Wanting the meanes, tottering till tir'd doth hang
Beating the air: so till the strength was spent
This saffron pale congealed fuming mist
Bearded my senses when my love I mist.

A little work is needed to put yourself into Edwards take on these classical stories and in this edition there are previous translations as well as versions by Boccacio for those who want to delve deeper. I just read Edwards' poems 3.5 stars.

Back to some science fiction:



Pattern For Conquest - George O. Smith
George O. Smith was a regular contributor to Astounding science Fiction and this novel length story was originally published in 1946, but repackaged as a novel in 1951. This is the first novel I have read by Smith and I almost gave up about a quarter of the way through because of the silly dialogue between the characters, which made up the majority of the text. Stellor Downing and Cliff Lane are two commanders of the Solar Guard, one based on Mars and the other on Venus. They are summoned to earth to spearhead an attack on a mysterious artefact some light years away from earth that is seen as a danger to earth's expanding civilisation. The artefact has been discovered by a race of small humanoid people from the planet Tlembo who are working with the earthlings. Stellor Downing and Cliff Lane are suitors for the same girl who happens to be the daughter of Co-Ordinator Kennenbec. The testosterone on show seems to have no limit as the two commanders try to outdo each other, hence some awful dialogue and sexist attitudes.

The novel is saved by a decent space opera story that kicks in, once Downing and Lane become forgotten characters. The assault force from earth must overcome a ruthless race of cat like people to destroy the artefact, but uncover a much more serious threat from another alien race the Loard-vogh who are planning to invade the solar system. Billy Thompson the commander of the Earth forces pits his wits against the aliens and the author Smith parades some hard science theories on interstellar space. There are space battles and inventive super weapons, but it is the psychological warfare between the races that makes this novel readable. Much of the dialogue in the latter part of the book is subsumed in the narrative, which was a relief to this reader who made it through to the end. There are plenty of Smith's science fiction novels out of copyright and available on the internet. 3 stars.

>6 baswood: It remains one of the real joys of LT that you occasionally get to see a post that starts with the line Two more epic poems from 1595...

Happy reading in Q3, Bas!

>8 thorold: Thanks Mark and your post reminds me that: I enjoy blogging and reading on Club read because of the variety. If I want to know about novels on the Booker short/long list I check out Darryl or Dan, for fantasy or science fiction its Annie or Michael or Keith, for Dutch literature - well Mark or Edwin, for modern German novels its Barbara and there is a distinct french connection. Jerry will have read something on post war American politics or race relations while Lola will give her trenchant views on anything that strikes her. Florence will tell me about expo's in Paris and Kevin what pencils I might need. Ursula will have a wall of popular music to enjoy and Cyrel will be going to the movies and Joyce will have the latest on travelling in Europe. Lisa, Dilara, among others will have read books from around the world. Kay, Laurel, Alison, Lisa (Bronx) will have reviewed some contemporary novels while Deborah and Margaret will more than likely have found something in the 20th century. Annie, Sassy will have delved further back to Victorian times, while Dan might still be in the 14th century. For historical novels I turn to Deborah in Pennsylvania, and for poetry its Diane and for whatever she has picked up at the local library sales its Betty. Plenty of people read Crime fiction, but not many of us read Westerns, Philosophy is hard to come by, but occasionally Mark will have something. Cookery books feature as well as graphic novels, but of course like Betty there are many readers who are not constrained by any genres and read anything that crosses their path. Its all here on Club Read, where we are serious about our reading.

>9 baswood: Happy new thread. I'm honored to have made your list, and of course you make a great point about the great variety of books and eras and genres there are to be introduced to here on LT (and, might I add, specifically on your threads). Cheers!

>9 baswood: A fun post to read :-) We are an eclectic bunch, and being a part of CR has increased my appreciation for all sorts of books of which I would otherwise have remained ignorant. I may never read the epic poems from 1595, but now I know a little something about them.

Christiane Singer - Seul ce qui brûle
In her preface to this novel published in 2007, Christiane Singer says that nothing appears to her more apt when thinking unreal thoughts of today and comparing them equally to other ways of thinking which can be equally passionate and fantastic. She chooses to think about an incident from a story in the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre published in 1558: a friend of a person of the nobility is invited to stay in a chateau and at diner time he sits down to be served at a long table, while he is eating a beautiful young woman with a shaved head takes her place at the other end of the table, she does not say anything, eats a little and then the waiter brings out a drink contained in the skull of a dead person. The woman drinks and leaves the table as silently as she came into the room.

Singer imagines a backstory to this event, which she tells in an epistolary format. The first long letter is by Sigismund of Ehrenberg to his friend the Seigneur de Bernage. He tells of his passion for a young girl of 13 years whom he marries as soon as she is considered to be of age; not very long after her next birthday. He worships the ground she walks on and she loves him with equal passion. His business affairs take him away from the castle and he arranges for one of his squires to keep his young wife Albe entertained. When he catches sight of them in bed together he stabs his squire to death and locks his wife in her room and arranges for a barber to visit her every three days to shave her head. The next instalment of the story is from a notebook kept by Albe during her internment. She still loves her husband, she tries to make the best of her new life and prays for the day when he will come to her again. The third piece is another letter from Sigismund to his friend. Sigismund is now at the end of his life, he has four children with Albe and has lived happily, he reminds his friend of the evening that he stayed to diner and Albe had appeared at the other end of the table.

This is a story where a contemporary author has imagined how a young wife from another age might think when an incident causes her husband to take harsh retaliatory measures. It is a story of love within the context of the times. Albe knows her duty to her husband, she accepts her punishment she knows that his love for her will triumph in the end. It is not a story that sits easily with contemporary thoughts on love and marriage, but it works well enough in this beautifully told story. It has also reminded me that I have not yet read The Heptameron and so 4 stars.

>9 baswood: Yes, I enjoy the range of things I can read about here! I read so many threads about books and eras I don't know enough about to comment, but it's interesting to read anyway. And it's been nice to feel welcomed with the music sharing as well - I've always felt like this group was sort of less open to non-book things (which is ridiculous because like you said, other people have been talking about pencils and travel and plays, etc. for years).

>9 baswood: What a nice summary. We could use this post to introduce Club Read next year!
I'll keep the punchline in mind: Its all here on Club Read, where we are serious about our reading!

>1 baswood: Always happy to see Wilkie Collins get his due.

>12 baswood: Intriguing.

>9 baswood: Loved this summary and agree with what others have said.

Mizora: A Prophecy - Mary E Bradley Lane
Mary E Bradley is described in wiki as an American feminist science fiction author and teacher. She was one of the first women to have published a science fiction novel in the United States. Mizora was published in 1889 and so now falls under the genre of proto science fiction. It is an Utopian novel and its full title is "Mizora: A Prophecy. A MSS. found among the private papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch being a true and faithful account of her journey to the interior of the earth, with a careful description of the Country and its inhabitants, their customs. manners and Government." what it does not tell you is that Mizora is only inhabited by women their civilization has progressed to the point where there is no need for men, the sex who only contributed to the destruction of civilization.

There is very little narrative story: Princess Vera Zarovitch in search of adventure trecks as far North as she can go, She takes passage on a whaling ship and finds herself abandoned in an eskimo settlement. She talks them into helping her build a boat launches into unknown waters in the acrtic sea and gets trapped in a whirlpool. She wakes up in a strange land in what becomes a hollow earth story. The vast majority of the book is a description of what she finds there.

She finds herself in a world entirely peopled by women, all of whom are blond, well featured and busily involved in running the country. Their civilisation that they had made seems like a socialist utopia. The State was the beneficent mother that furnished everything and required of her children only there time and application. Teachers were the aristocracy of their society, because they believed that education was the answer to solving most problems.

"All of those lovely traits of character which excite the enthusiast, such as gratitude, honor, charity are the results of education only. They are not the natural instincts of the human mind, but the cultivated one."

Science particularly the science of nature enabled them to live at a very high standard; disease had been eradicated, everybody enjoyed long healthy lives, there was no poverty everybody enjoyed a good standard of living, there was no crime and above all there was no men. They had one proverb that overreached all:

"Labor is the necessity of life"

The women chose what career or tasks they wished to do and everybody was treated equally. They believed that nature had taught them the duty of work and it was said that the person who goes out to seek labor is wiser than the person who lets it seek her. Their passion for science has enabled them to develop many labor saving devices. Their transport system is run on electricity and compressed air, they have invented video conferencing and tablet like devices for communication. The state sets a value for all commodities and nobody would think of charging less or more.

It is only in part 2 of the book that we learn what happened to the men. When the author revealed to the women that she came from a world ruled by men the response was:

You are the product of a people far back in the darkness of civilization

They went on to say that in their dim and distant history when men ruled: it was frequently the case that the most responsible positions in the Government would be occupied by the basest characters, who used their power only for fraud to enrich themselves and their friends by robbing the people. They deceived the masses by preaching purity. There were a series of revolutions which brought the country to its knees and it was only when agreement was reached that women would take over running the country for a period of 100 years that progress was made. New scientific discoveries were made and when women learned to shape nature by fertilising their own eggs then the writing was on the wall for men. The shaping of nature resulted in a programme of eugenics:

We believe that the highest excellence of moral and mental character is alone attainable by a fair race. The elements of evil belong to the dark race."We eliminated them."

The author becomes more concerned when she questions the absence of religion and a belief in an after life. She is told in no uncertain terms that:

"the more ignorant the human mind, the more abject was its slavery to religion;"

Mizora had outgrown the need for men; there had not been any men in their world for three thousand years and had outgrown the need for religion. It was perhaps these contentions that led the author to seek a passage back to her own world after staying in Mizora for twenty years.

This book has everything one could wish for in shaping an utopian world. The format had been used before many times; ever since Sir Thomas Moore's original Utopia printed in 1516. It can become a little dull if you are expecting a narrative story, but this is perhaps one of the most complete and earliest examples of an all female Utopia. It is extremely well thought out and so: 4 stars

I was reading last night Morning Journey by james Hilton on my computer when we had yet another storm and the internet went down. I have a print book that I am reading Aline et les hommes de Guerre so no problem, then the lights went out and so thank goodness my kindle was charged and I turned to The resurrectionists by Michael Collins.

>17 baswood: Nice to have all these options! I would be lost without my Kobo reader myself. I’m keeping the previous one, despite its very short battery autonomy, just in case.

James Hilton - Morning Journey
James Hilton was an English novelist and screenwriter who published more than 20 novels. Morning Journey published in 1951 was written towards the end of his life, he died in 1954. He had popular success with a trio of novels made into films; Lost Horizon, Goodbye Mr Chips and Random Harvest. His other novels are not widely read today, but I dug this one out as part of my 1951 reading project.

The novel starts with a celebration dinner for the popular and critically acclaimed release of the Hollywood made film Morning Journey. Carey Arundel is the female lead and is nervous of making her speech, but is overshadowed by her ex-husband and director of the film Paul Saffron. He uses his time at the microphone to criticise the Hollywood machine and Carey's acting in particular. Carey seeks solace in a friendly lawyer sitting next to her and the vast majority of this novel is written by its author as a back story, which focuses on the life of Carey and her relationship with Paul Saffron. It is written in omniscient style with the dialogue and actions of the characters expressing their feelings and points of view. The character of Paul seems to be based to some extent on the real life film director Orson Wells. Paul is an egotist and a control freak in his work as a stage and film director; he is brilliantly innovative and considers himself a genius and although he can be charming he lets nothing stand in the way of his own ambitions. He does not suffer fools gladly and his mercurial talent results in constant battles with the money men who control his work and the unfortunate actors and technicians who come within his orbit. His talent brings him some success, but his character can lead him to throw it all away on a whim, in which he is never wrong.

Carey Arundel is the central character in the novel and it is her story that is told. Hilton sketches in her background, and the story takes off when she meets Paul for the first time and much of the first part of the book is their early struggles to succeed in the world of the theatre. Paul recognises a certain something when he sees Carey perform in a supporting role in a local theatre production in Ireland. They move to London with Paul knocking on the doors of anybody who will give him a break and some money to direct a stage play. It is Carey who must get a job as a waitress to support her new husband. They eventually get a success with Paul directing Carey in a comedy play. They decide to try their luck in America, but the restless Paul goes to Europe where he discovers his talents work equally well in the cinema. Carey meets a millionaire on the boat to America and is charmed into a new relationship. Her life takes a different path to Paul, but she is fated to once again become Pauls supporting partner for the Hollywood film Morning Journey.

It is a good story although somewhat predictable; the supporting female behind the super talented, but errant male. Hilton nearly pulls it off, because of a brilliant portrayal of Paul, and he nearly does the same for Carey, but towards the end of the novel it is a bit of a stretch to understand her choices and to believe in her devotion to her ex husband. I think what the story lacks is any attempt to explore the sexual relationship between Carey and her male admirers. She is depicted as a beautiful and sensual women, but this does not come through in the story telling. The ease with which she attracts men is rather like one might see in a 1940's film, the charming millionaire whose son, also falls in love with Carey, the lawyer, the film producer and then Paul who seems just to take Carey for granted. Carey is a woman of independent means, she is intelligent and caring and Hilton reveals to his readers her thoughts throughout most of the book and one might question whether he does such a good job in this respect.

Hiltons writing flows nicely and the dialogue particularly between Carey and Paul is excellent. The story takes place over a 23 year period taking in the financial crash of 1926 and the second world war, all of which affects his male characters to a certain extent. He uses his experience as a screenwriter in Hollywood to create a realistic background to the later part of the novel. I enjoyed the reading experience and was interested to keep turning the pages I could not decide whether I was reading a popular novel or something more literate. 3.5 stars.

The Resurrectionists - Michael Collins
I get it, I really do - why Michael Collins novel drenched in the underbelly of American life was shortlisted for the booker prize, however I had to wait to the final chapters and the 'big reveal' to be convinced. It is one of those novels where I wish I had known the ending long before I got there, so that I could have appreciated what the author was really writing about. On the surface it appears to be a well written crime novel where a struggling middle aged man tries to come to terms with the guilt he feels following the death of his parents in a fire at their home, when he was a young boy and which he probably caused.

It is written in the first person; Frank reads in a newspaper that his uncle who raised him has been murdered. He immediately thinks that there may be something in it for him as the sale of old farm house should be split between him and his half brother as there are no other claimants. As he says to himself "where there is a will there is a relative". He telephones his brother and is told in no uncertain terms to stay away. Frank is in a new relationship with Honey whose ex (Ken) is currently awaiting execution on death row, Honey had two children with Ken; the 14 year old and difficult boy Robert Lee and the five year old Ernie. Honey is still in love with Ken, but is persuaded by Frank to hitch her wagon with him in a journey to near the Canadian border to the small town where Frank was born. Frank is broke he has to steal cars to make the journey and looks for an opportunity to steal money to support his new family, while he argues over his rights under Uncle Ward's Will. When Frank arrives in the freezing north the pressures that made him leave his home town are still in evidence, people treat him with suspicion and he becomes a suspect in the murder of his Uncle Ward. The major part of the novel is the unveiling of the story of his parents death. Frank admits that he is un unreliable witness, having been committed to a mental institution some time ago, where he underwent electric-shock therapy and life in his home town is complicated with the needs of Honey and Robert Lee.

There are no likeable characters in this inverted world of the American Dream. Frank himself is not above committing horrible crimes, Robert Lee is a teenager full of angst, Norman; Franks brother is a simple soul bored with his life as a farmer and his wife is not above framing Frank for murder. Frank's new work colleague Baxter is an alcoholic, bent on cheating his way to more money with a Donald Trumpian attitude to women. Their boss is busily putting into practice some of the worst aspects of Dale Carnegie's advice in "How to win friends and influence people" and the psychiatrist who treated Frank as an adolescent is creepy. Everybody in town seems to be inured in the low-life and everybody seems to watch trashy day time TV. Franks efforts to uncover the mystery of his parents death are getting nowhere until the murder of another suspect and so much of the story in the meantime, is about Franks efforts to keep his new family together and to become a useful citizen in his new environment, there are relapses and no assistance. The story is set in the late seventies: America is coming to terms with Vietnam, there are plenty of veterans around, the cold war is still in full swing and Watergate and political scandals have soured any respect for political leaders. Jim Jones mass suicide is a daily feature on TV and the shocks seem to keep on coming. Michael Collins has set his story as a reflection on American trauma at this time and this is the strength of this novel. Franks struggles are indicative of the loss of the American dream for many people. It is more difficult to survive for somebody like Frank and when the final pieces of his story are put into place one can appreciate better all of what has gone before. 4 stars.

Karine Silla - Aline et les hommes de Guerre
This was the next book from the library shelves: Karine Silla born in Dakar (Sénégal) is an actress, director, author and screenwriter and chose to write a biography of Aline Sitoé Diatta who became a hero of the Senegalese resistance to French colonial rule. It was claimed by researcher Paul Diedhiou that she was also a féticheuse; roughly translated as fetishist, a term that was used by french colonists to describe an African cult where a figure or other object was used by worshipers in some sort of religious ceremony. Karine Silla uses this information to give a more rounded portrait of Aline.

The basic facts of Alines short life are that she was born in 1920 in Kabrousse in the tribal area of Casamance. At a young age she left home to work as a porter in the docks of Zinguichor, the work was hard and she moved to Dakar where she was employed as a maid. She heard a voice calling her to liberate her people from French rule and she moved back to the Casamance where she led a movement of civil disobedience. It was 1943 and French rule was fragile because of the German occupation of mainland France and Aline was arrested as she was considered subversive and dangerous. She was imprisoned and exiled to Timbucktu in Mali where she died after being poorly treated. She was 24 years old.

Karine Silla having been born in Dakar has good background knowledge in which to place her subject, she has also researched the history of Sénégal during the war years and it filled in many gaps in my knowledge; for example I was unaware of General DeGaulle's attempt to make Dakar the base for his free French movement to operate in Africa. Silla places Aline in Dakar at this time and imagines that she would have heard the naval battle off the coast. How much of Aline's life has been imagined by the author is not clear to me (there are no references), but her portrayal of an economy based on rice paddy fields sounds right. She describes Aline's role as maid and would be educator of a French couple's children. She uses imaginary letter between the husband and wife to demonstrate the man's increasing uneasiness in his role in the colonial machinery, but his wife becomes ill with worry and sees Aline as a danger to France. Further viewpoints are explored in the husbands circle of intellectual friends, he is a doctor. There is also Aline's protector and friend who acknowledges her calling and tries to help, but perhaps the biggest leap is Aline's activities when she leaves Dakar for the villages in the Casamance to start her fight to free the people. She invokes the Gods to make it rain during a dry spell and is seen to have miraculous powers when she emerges from the forest. Her arrest and time in prison is evidence that she was seen as a danger by the French Vichy government and conditions in the jails were known to be appalling.

Silla tells her story mainly in the third person, but at times allows her characters to speak for themselves. Her knowledge of Sénégal and its environment provides a realistic feel for this biography and as a reader I was carried along by her story telling. Aline comes across as a heroine even a martyr, and to base her convictions on tribal knowledge and visions of a better life is probably the most logical conclusion. A very readable biography that captures the time and place well and brings to our attention a woman's fight to free her people from the evils of colonial rule. It is all too believable 3.5 stars.

Oh dear! the cover picture is not Aline Sitoé Diatta and while it is a striking picture I can only guess it has been used as a comment on French Colonialism and its attempts to sell the African product. Then again it could have been used just to sell more books.

>21 baswood: Wow, fascinating. Thanks. I'm guessing there's no English translation (or at least I couldn't find one via a very quick online search).

Francis Sabie - The Fisher-mans tale
Francis Sabie - Flora's Fortune
Francis Sabie - Pan's Pipe 1595
Francis Sabie had thee books printed in 1595. He is another of those Elizabethan authors we know precious little about. He was designated as the schoolmaster of Lichfield and there is some conjecture that he was also a clergyman. He had a further work printed in 1596 Adams Complaint. None of these titles were reprinted and it is thought that the editions printed were not large. The wonder is that they have survived, albeit in only a single copy and so one wonders how representative they are of the sort of books that managed to get into print at this time. The Fisher-mans tale: of the famous Actes, Life and love of Cassander a Grecian Knight and Flora's Fortune: The second part and finishing of the Fisher-mans Tale is an epic poem written in blank verse.

The story starts off in the first person where a shepherd sets out to fish in his wherrie boat and gets swept out to see. He makes a landing on a rocky isle where he comes across an elderly man who has the bearing of the nobility who introduces himself as Cassander and tells the story of his life. He was a merchants son who became a great knight and fought on the side of the Christians against the pagans. He is lorded with honours when he single handedly saves the beautiful Lucina, but refuses the offer of marriage and returns to Greece intent on becoming a shepherd to live an idyllic life in Arcadia. He falls in love with Flora, but her father will not let her marry a stranger. They elope, but are discovered and chased onto a boat just as it sets sail. The boat is shipwrecked in a storm and Cassander manages to save himself. The second book is Flora's story. She and her father also survive the wreck and land on the island of Delos and visit the church of Apollo, where a scroll tells their fortunes. Flora will live a long life and Cassander has also survived the wreck. They take ship to Greece and father and daughter become famous as prophets, but Flora disowns a life of fame and sets out to search for Cassander.

The resolution of the story owes pretty much everything to Robert Greene's Pandosto a story written in prose, which was published in 1587, however borrowing from previous published works was an accepted fact of life for writers in the 16th century and Greene had himself adapted stories from classical authors and Shakespeare may have used Greene's Pandosto for his play A Winters Tale. I found that Francis Sabie was comfortable in writing in blank verse and his story was lively and well told. His chosen format of an epic poem enabled him to tell his story in a more condensed and immediate style than the prose of Robert Greene. It does not seem out of place when compared with more illustrious writers using the same format, which one can only think was popular at the time. I enjoyed the read and so 3.5 stars.

Which rent our ships against the craggie rockes,
Then might you see an heart lamenting hap,
Some hang on boords, some swimming in the deep,
All labouring to saue and keep their liues:
I held in armes my true and dearest loue:
Thinking with her to end my lothed life:
When suddenly we were by fate disioynd:
I throwne by force all headlong in the seas,
Yet labouring my life still to preserue:
For who so wretched but desires to liue,
These twinding armes caught hold vpon a boord,
Which drew me to this life-preseruing rocke,

Pans Pipe; Three Pastoral eglogues in English Hexameter with other poetical verses delightful, is not in my opinion so successful. An eglog is more commonly spelt today as a eclogue and is a pastoral long poem based on the classical example set out by the ancient Roman Poet Virgil. By 1593 it was a common form of poetical expression used by educated men associated with the court of Queen Elizabeth and made popular by Edmund Spenser's poem The Shepheards calendar in 1579. An Eglog harked back to a golden age that never existed where shepherds tended their flocks and played and sung about an idyllic life and the troubles of the world outside their own sphere of existence. Sabie follows the well trodden path of Edmund Spenser, but his attempts at writing in the style of an English Hexameter are clumsy. The first eglogue is a conversation between two shepherds in Arcadia who tell of the pleasures and some of the problems of life in the countryside. Tyterus tells of his love for a shepherdess. In Eclogue two Damon and Melibeus tell the stort of Faustus who because of a riotous life was banished from Arcadia for severn years and had to seek employment under a master in a house in town. His love for a country girl kept him going for his years in exile. The third Eclogue is a story telling competition in which Faustus is the judge. This is pretty poor reading today and so 2 stars.

Fascinating. Where do you find all these books?

>24 FlorenceArt: Mainly through research on the internet and then tracking down the texts which are of course not copyrighted and have been transcribed from the original copies. There are a number of thesis which have been published on various subjects that give clues to the availability of books on the internet. I use the internet archive, Early English books from the University of Michigan library and the HathiTrust digital library.

Hal Annas - The Longsnozzle Event
Hal Annas - Maid-To Order

Two short science fiction stories from the magazine 'Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy' published in 1951. I can find no information about the mysterious Hal Annas, but he seemed to have been writing short stories for pulp magazines between 1950-1959. William Hamling published and edited the magazine and his editorial policy (as stated in wiki) summed up the quality of the stories that were selected:

Hamling's editorial policy was consciously slanted against intellectualism. In the November 1951 issue he commented that "science fiction was never meant to be an educational tour de force. The so-called adult story is nothing more than an attempt to show the reader how dumb he is and how smart the editor is." Imagination's approach, he said, was to publish entertainment: "What we need is a little relaxation. And entertaining reading is one way to get it."

The Longsnozzle Event imagines an armchair detective solving a murder sometime in the future, assisted by a beautiful Venusian Lady and a dog that can sniff out clues from watching a video screen. The running joke is the discovery of a weapon from the past called a Colt and the detective's attempts to discover which way it should be pointed. He is impressed by the noise it makes as all the weapons that he has seen are silent ray machines. Its all played for laughs many of which are sexist in the extreme. Here is an example of the dialogue between the detective and his client when the detective is trying to establish if she can afford his fee;

"No!" The woman shook her head sadly. "I have a private atmosphere-runabout, a house with seventeen rooms in Florida, a ranch in California with ten thousand domesticated descendants of movie stars grazing on it, a plantation on Venus where I keep a herd of poets, a million acres of arable land on Uranus, a crater on the moon, and a chunk of what's left of the ice at the North Pole. But I have nothing whatever valuable."
"No property on Mars?"
"A single canal, but it's worthless. It's filled with billions and billions of barrels of oil. Have tried to give it away, but no one is fool enough to take it."

I suppose this may be more funny in an ironic sort of way today than it was in 1951

Maid to Order is probably worse. It imagines a dating agency some time in the future where a scientist is looking for the perfect woman. His requirements are so strict and detailed that there is only one woman on the agencies books who could possibly qualify. Ho-hum and 2 stars.

Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
Published in 1963 and now part of the science fiction masterwork series, this novel is more of a satire on the state of the world rather than a science fiction adventure story. The state of the world in the 1960's that is, but we would struggle to see much difference. The book takes a scalpel to religion, scientific research for weapons manufacture and to colonialism, but it also examines the nature of what is true. To work well satire needs to be funny as well as thought provoking and it needs to exaggerate it targets in such a way that the reader gets the message, but wonders if the exaggeration bears much reality to the item that is in the writers crosshairs. There is a story of sorts on which the author hangs all his angst and which comes together in its logical conclusion; after all John who tells his story in the first person is engaged in writing a book entitled "The Day the World Ended."

"A Lovers a liar
To himself he lies
The truthful are Loveless
Like Oysters their eyes!"

Ditties or calypso's are littered throughout the book and the above is one of my favourites. John is studying the religion of Bokonism from which many of these little songs are taken, but at the start of the several books of Bokonon there is the warning:

"Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either"

John is immersing himself in Bokonism as part of his research for his book "The day the world ended" his angle is to write down exactly what people were doing and thinking when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He is particularly concerned with the scientist credited with making the breakthrough in the weapon research and his family and entourage. He names the scientist Frank Hoenikken and the story unfolds when he tracks down his children: Newt who is a midget, Frank who claims to be a scientist and Angela who is a plain tall woman without any discernible qualities. John travels to the island of San Lorenzo, which its ruler/dictator Papa Monzano claims is a paradise in the West Indies. Frank is Papa Monzano's number two with the title of Colonel and John arrives with a bicycle manufacturer and an American diplomat to find that most of the islanders live in dire poverty, where the outlawed religion of Bokonon flourishes and where law and order is kept through threats of the Hook (anybody who had visited Madam Tussaud's in London in the 1960's will know what this was).

The book is made up of 127 punchy short chapters, many of which are dominated by dialogue between the characters: this is a satire and so the characters are exaggerated like everything else, and any relation to real life people is of course a coincidence. The novel was published the year after the Cuban missile crisis when the world was breathing a sigh of relief and I think it is useful to try and imagine that era to appreciate the satire. Similar books have been written since Cat's Cradle and so it is difficult to understand what effect it had on its readers at that time. It should be noted that it was published some six years before "Slaughterhouse 5", but it apparently sold well in paperback. Reading it is not an uplifting experience, but of course today the satire has lost its bite and it can appear a little quaint. However it is still a 4 star read.

Georges Simenon - Tante Jeanne
Simenon published 117 novels which did not feature Maigret and these have been classified as Romans Durs or hard novels, they are known in English as psychological novels. It is claimed that they are more literally constructed and stylistically sophisticated. Simenon published three in 1951 and Tante Jeanne was the first; hitting the streets in January of that year.

Jeanne Martineau returns to France some time after the second world war, she has been abroad for 34 years and she arrives one afternoon at the hotel of her home town. Her brother Robert owns a large house (the family home) just across the river and she decides she is too tired to pay a visit that day. When she does visit the next day it is too late to see her brother because he has just been discovered hanging from a beam in one of the loft rooms leaving a note that just says Pardon.... His wife has locked herself away in one of the many bedrooms and the maid is on the point of quitting the household. The doctor has been summoned and he arrives shortly followed by the police who quickly come to the conclusion that Robert had committed suicide about an hour earlier. Alice the wife of one of Robert's son Julien who was killed in a car crash lives in the house, but takes no interest in a young baby that is foisted on Tante Jeanne to look after. Madeleine and Henri; two other children of Robert are not in the house as it is not unusual for them to spend nights away and are unaware of their father's death. It all falls on Tante Jeanne to try and make something of this dysfunctional family, but she has problems of her own

Simenon examines the life of the family through the eyes of Jeanne Martineau. It is unusual for him to view the world from the point of view of a female character, but he has chosen one in this case: Jeanne is an overweight lady continually referred to as gross, who is not in good health, but she sacrifices herself to try and do the best for a family to which she is an outsider, only her dead brother would have known her personally. Simenon does not pull any punches, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for this family as Jeanne, uncovers or is presented with, the reasons for her brothers suicide. A hard novel set in France in the aftermath of the second world war, it reads like a realistic description of a family who have fallen on hard times through decisions made by the head of the family. Good characterisation with Simenon's usual stance of presenting his story and the actions of his characters for the reader to make their own judgement; for example we are never told the motives for Jeanne's actions, but must piece these together from her back story, which slowly unfolds. 4 stars.

E C Bentley - The Complete Clerihews
Gavin Ewart in his introduction to The Complete Clerihews published in 1951 says of the author:

Bentley was an intelligent Gent - and by this I mean a well educated member of the English upper classes. - liberal and uncensorious in his instincts, a member of the Fabian society at Oxford (but also an enthusiastic rowing man).

He became famous for writing short witty poems, named after his own middle name, which were designed to amuse.

Charles Dickens
It was a pity about Dickens
Insane jealousy of chickens
And one could almost weep
At his morbid mistrust of sheep

A more formal definition of the Clerihew is: a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed in two couplets, with lines of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose. It is short and pithy, and often contains or implies a moral reflection of some kind. The name of the individual who is subject of the quatrain usually supplies the first line:

Geoffrey Chaucer
Took a bath in a saucer
In consequence of certain hints
Dropped by the Black Prince

Cervantes
The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes
An opinion resented bitterly
By the people of Italy

Clerihews certainly enjoyed popularity and were ditties or poems that many people felt that they could have a go at - perhaps a bit like the Haiku today. As late as December 1980 the Weekend Competition in the New Statesman invited Clerihews on existing newspapers and magazines, and in 1981 the Sunday Times ran a clerihew competition.

Brahms
It only irritated Brahms
To be tickled under the arms
What really helped him compose
Was to be stroked on the nose

George Bernard Shaw
Mr George Bernard Shaw
Was just setting out for the war
When he heard it was a dangerous trade
And demonstrably underpaid

The Complete Clerihews which is apparently not complete is set out: one to a page with an amusing pen and ink illustration. Some of them refer to political or celebrity characters that have since faded into anonymity, but I loved them all, harmless fun with a sense of the absurd - 5 stars and I couldn't resist:

Mr Donald J Trump
Is really a bit of a chump
He once stood on the steps of the Capitol
But will soon disappear down a rabbit-hole.

>29 baswood: Fun! I like the one about Cervantes.

>29 baswood: Thanks for a much needed chuckle!

Charles Causley - Hands to Dance and Skylark
Published in 1951 this book of short stories gives more of a flavour of life in Britain during the second world war than possibly any other book I have read published in that year and yet many of the stories take place in foreign countries.

Charles Causely was a British poet, school teacher and writer, but most of all he was a Cornishman. His first poems entitled Farewell, Aggie Weston were published in 1951 (now long out of print and hideously expensive secondhand), but he also published some short stories: Hands to Dance in that year. I read the 1983 re-publication which includes Skylark which sets the record straight on the earlier stories, many of which were written in the first person. The short stories tell of the exploits of a Seaman who enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940 and was trained as a coder, he was demobbed 6 years later, and spent much his service overseas in Gibraltar, Spain, Malta, Italy, Egypt, Australia and Africa. Causely's afterword Skylark makes it clear that his stories were largely fictional; his life as a coder may have been just as dangerous, but the colourful derring-do of some of the exploits were beyond the range of the shy, unpromising physical specimen that was Causely at that time.

Many of the stories take place in dockland areas in British naval bases abroad and are concerned with enemy attacks or more usually with local civilians or fellow seamen that he met during his service. The stories generally play down the danger and their matter of fact re-telling makes one feels that they could only have been written by a circumspect Englishmen. They never fail to emphasise the discomfort of living in digs abroad, or the unrelenting work schedules, or a seaman who never really got over his sea sickness. His short spells on leave place him in another world that of his rural background in a small Cornish town. Interspersed with the exploits of seaman Causely are three or four stories based in Cornwall written in an omnipresent voice and they are so realistically presented that they fit right in with the flavour of the more biographical tales. There are nineteen stories, averaging about 8 pages each, complete in themselves and with a poets eye for detail and a writers eye for colourful characters. There is no drop in quality and a few of the stories are very good indeed, some prefiguring the dangers of war service on the minds of those who survived.

The flavour of Britain in the 1940's is well captured, through the eyes of this Cornishman. The transport arrangements in wartime: for example 6 changes of train to get up to the base on the Scapa Flow, or the life in a small town during wartime, or British serviceman abroad. A fine collection of short stories which capture life in exceptional circumstances and so 4 stars,

>32 baswood: Thanks for the review, this book sounds interesting!

Christian Signol - Cette vie ou celle d'après
I have a friend who lives in the north of France with whom I share some favourite novels, but increasingly she wishes to read novels that have a "feel good" factor. After a recent visit she has left me with four novels that she thinks I might like, I struggled to find some books that I could give her in return, but I am wondering whether I could recommend to her Cette vie ou celle d'après, which I have borrowed from the library. It is a bitter-sweet novel, but one that I found moving in it's own quite way. It was published in 2003. Wiki claims that Chistian Signol is one of the most widely read authors in France today and I suspect one could always find one of his novels in the local library.

We meet Blanche an elderly lady living alone just outside the village of Villard, which is set high up in a forest of the Alps. It is covered in snow from November to March making it difficult for an elderly lady living on her own to negotiate the footpath down to the shops. Blanche was born in the town where she was the schoolmaster in the local school, which she can see from the balcony of her chalet. She gazes down and thinks of the past. She has a daughter living in Marseilles who leads a busy life and struggles to find the time to visit her mother. Blanche despite her age has moved back up to the mountain village fairly recently, so that she can connect more closely with her memories of Julien the love of her life. The novel charts its course through a hard winter in the mountains where Blanche waits expectantly for her daughter to visit, while she thinks on her past life and its painful memories. The novel flows beautifully as small events in the difficulties of day to day living causes Blanche to dwell on her past.

Blanches story is told largely in chronological order, no obvious usage of 'stream of conscious' technique; rather the author concentrates on evoking the quality of a life lived in the high mountains. There is a poetry and softness in the language that still manages to portray the harsh living conditions: Blanche is always cold, but this could be because of her age or because of her memories. All is revealed as the novel moves towards an expected, but satisfying conclusion. A feel good or a feel sad factor? I am not sure; 4 stars.

>34 baswood: This reminds me strongly of Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill: the old woman on the hill and reminiscing about a past love. Have you read it?

>35 labfs39: No I have not read Madame Verona Comes down the Hill, but reading your review I can see the similarities. I note that the french book was published 3 years before the Dutch one.

Raymond Carver - Where I'm Calling From: The Selected Stories.

"Maxine said it was another tragedy in a long line of low-rent tragedies"

This is a quote from one of the 37 short stories featured in this collection and could summarise many of those stories. Where I'm Calling from was published in 1988 the year of Carver's death and features stories that appeared in magazines and earlier collections published between 1971 and 1987. The main subject of the stories is American suburban life, but one might also add alcoholism. Many have an unnerving feel of real life situations as characters fight or succumb to events that appear largely out of their control. They fight against taking another drink or succumb to having another shot, always looking over their shoulder, but never quite becoming destitute. Men cheat on their wives, on their girlfriends and occasionally the women fight back. It is a tawdry selection of subjects on which Carver has chosen to base his stories, but they are so well written and so convincing that they draw the reader in.

Carver appears to have been an alcoholic for much of his adult life, in the mid 1970's he claimed that he had given up writing and had taken to full time drinking. In his stories almost everyone drinks and as a good proportion of them are written in the first person they have an autobiographical feel to them. His characters are exceptionally well drawn and their dialogue hits the mark almost every-time. Couples argue and fight, cheat and deceive, pretend they do not see what is right in front of their eyes. They act like people in a TV soap opera, but are totally convincing. Some of the stories are mere snapshots of events in his characters lives, but have a lasting impression, there is often not a clear resolution and God forbid there should be happy ending.

Almost all the characters are white Americans, lower middle class or blue collar workers, none of them are out and out criminals, but often choose to act out of pure self interest or are dumbed down by the need to earn a living in a society that takes few prisoners. Mostly it is not a pretty picture and like people who suffer with alcoholism there appears to be an overlying trait of self deception. It is a sobering collection.

Carver when he was able, taught literature at colleges and was a guest lecturer as creative writing courses, but took on miscellaneous jobs when he needed. He states in the preface to this collection that his chosen medium was short stories and was interested in paring the stories down to precise images that reflected the real situations that he was depicting. How far he succeeded in this and how near he came to presenting a culture of a section of life in 1970's America will probably depend on each readers own experiences. Sexist and occasionally racist in accordance with the unenlightened 1970's but good short story writing that can be uncomfortable to read: 4 stars.

>37 baswood: Terrific. I don't often get on with short stories, but I really love Carver.

>29 baswood: Love these. I with my mind worked this way.

>37 baswood: Excellent review. Interesting that it appears to be published by Hamish Hamilton, based on the cover. I buy their books whenever I spot them, which unfortunately is all too rarely. They always have something to offer.

The First Rape of Faire Hellen - John Trussell.
I am needing a bit more perseverance to search out and to read more publications from 1595 as it seems I am getting to the bottom of the barrel. Its a little like my project of reading science fiction novels from 1951: you have to expect that the nearer you get to the bottom; then there will be a drop in quality. This has not been so evident in the Elizabethan texts, because what is and what has not been preserved is down to taste, luck and the machinations of history.

The first rape of faire Hellen is an epic poem of nearly 1000 lines: there are only two known copies in existence and one of those is illegible in places. M. A. Shaaber got permission to print a copy of the text and carried out some research on the author. He could draw no positive conclusions, but the sonnet which proceeded the poem with its praise for an unknown author has been surmised as being Shakespeare and the author J. T. declares his friendship and amitie. Shaaber's article appeared in a 1957 edition of Shakespeare quarterly, but the poet John Trussell remains a mystery.

The poem is made up of sextets with an ababcc rhyming scheme and tells the story of a very young Hellen - too young the poet says for marriage. The poet meets the ghost of Hellen while walking in the woods and she tells him the story of her first ravishment. In this way it follows the well trodden format that was so successful in "The Mirror for Magistrates" The beautiful young Hellen was already attracting much attention:

Look now on Hybla - honey seeking bees
when Phoenix shines forsake their hived bower
Loathing to touch dissembling Alpine trees
Do cling together on the fairest flower
So come enobled wights in general
To view my beauty that surpassed all.

Theseus becomes a persistent suitor and takes an opportunity to ravish her, leaving the young Hellen distraught.

Then gan new sorrow vexe my souls salt taste
and uncouth passions to assail my heart:
When weighing present pain with pleasure past
my forepast solace with my feeling smart
My hoarse-grown voice a fresh began to mutter
And to the senseless rocks new sorrows utter.

The poem follows Hellen thoughts and feelings as she mourns her lost virginity and thinks to hide from her family what has happened to her. She tells her waiting maid who confesses that Theseus also raped her and they agree to keep it secret from Hellen's noble parents. However word gets to her mother who confides that the best course of action is to keep the secret and to marry King Menelaus who her father agrees is a good match.

But twas sufficient that my face was fair
And that sufficed to satisfy his mind
My virtue lost did not my beauty impair
Perfection so did his affection bind
That he would not my imperfection see
But with all faults was glad to marry me.

The story of Hellen's first abduction comes from Book II of Virgil's Aeneid, but John Trussell may well have gathered it from other sources. Classical literature was a source for many of the epic poems that appeared at the time and Trussell's story does not lose itself in too many classical allusions, but focuses on the distress of Hellen and how her family are able to navigate her into a worthy marriage. It is well told with some good stanzas. 3.5 stars.

Georges Simenon - Le Temps D'Anaïs
Back to 1951 and Georges Simenon. Le Temps D'Anais was published in March 1951 by Les Presses de la Cité after being serialised a couple of month earlier. It is another in the series of Romans Dur: that is novels that do not feature Commissaire Maigret. This one however does heavily involve the police and the judicial system of France, it allows Simenon to step outside of the usual detective format and this one has some striking results as he delivers a cracking psychological crime novel.

Albert Bauche is driving out of Paris, he is alone, he charges through the suburbs and into the countryside and drives in pouring rain until his car breaks down. He finds himself in a forested area and see a light across some fields. He makes his way into a small village and finds the local bar open. He downs a few glasses of eau de vie and is ignored by a group of locals sitting at the other end of the room. He asks to use the phone and the number of the local police station. It is only when he tells the policeman at the other end of the phone that he has just committed a murder in Paris, that he gains their attention. The police tell him to await their arrival at the bar. The story continues from Bauche's point of view as he is duly processed and then is escorted in handcuffs first by car and then by train to the Paris headquarters.

The first part of the story tells of Bauche's alienation from all those around him especially when he tells of the nature of the murder: He had walked into the apartment of his boss shot him in the mouth and when he was still moving clubbed him to death with a metal statue that was to hand. Bauche shows no remorse, but is intent on explaining why he carried out such a brutal murder. It is an open and shut case, but Bauche when given a chance to employ an advocate chooses an old friend from a seaside town where he was brought up. It is he thinks his best chance of explaining why he committed the murder; he keeps saying to himself that he is an honest man and the authorities should listen to him. His advocate quickly realises that the only chance of saving his client from the guillotine is to claim that it was a crime of passion because Bauche's boss was sleeping with Bauche's wife. Bauche will not go along with this because for him it is not true. He is then examined by a psychologist to see if he is fit to stand trial and the whole story of his past life unfolds under the examination.

The story is certainly existentialist in nature, there are echoes of Albert Camus's Mersault in L'Étranger (published in 1942). However Simenon is more interested in detailing Bauche's past sex life and his sometimes strange relationship to women, which puts him outside of the 'normal rules' of a sexual relationship. Bauche is not embarrassed by the revelations because he imagines that the psychologist might be a bit like himself and will listen to what he says and will ask him the right questions. Simenon is at his best with question and answer situations and although this is not the usual police interview he uses it to tell Bauche's back story. The point of view of the novel is very much from a man's perspective, but probably accurately reflects the social mores at the time. 4 stars.

>41 baswood: interesting. This sounds really weird.

>42 FlorenceArt: What is a little weird is that when Bauche is examined by the psychologist there are 12 other men present, taking notes, students perhaps. Bauche is sitting in a chair under a spotlight while being questioned and so the other people apart from the professor are not clearly visible to him. He is questioned in some detail about his sex life and it all feels a bit gratuitous, there are of course no women present.

Penguin Modern Poets 2: Kingsley Amis, Dom Moraes, Peter Porter.
Kingsley Amis is first up with 25 poems. I Think of Amis first and foremost as a novelist and perhaps that is why I soon got tired of reading his poems. I found it hard to discover a poetic voice, yes there are plenty of good lines, but I never experienced the thrill and the flow when reading one of his poems all the way through. Nothing made me want to re-read them and I was never able to glimpse themes emerging from this collection. I didn't wish to spend any more time with him and so I quickly moved onto the 25 poems by Dom Moraes.

By contrast after reading a few of Dom Moraes poems I felt a connection to the poetic voice. A poet who not only comes up with some brilliant lines but weaves them through poems that sing of poetry. I could soon get to grips with the themes that emerged from his poems; alienation certainly, a keen observer of society, perhaps a man who would not quite fit anywhere. You would never call Dom a happy man or an optimistic man; but these thought would apply to many poets, what was peculiar to Moreas was a sense of regret, a sense that things could have been different. He is a poet who looks into his dream world and also a poet that has been guided by his catholic faith, but this seems increasingly in abeyance as I read through this selection.

A few lines from the poem Afternoon Tea are typical of his thoughts and his use of language:

'She poured the tea. Vaguely I watched her hands.
The mask was fitted: In my wandering dream
Were boulder-broken valleys, a strange land.
Remote, astonished, I stood by a stream
Holding her hand in mine. ............'

There is the poet in his own dream world; in a strange land where things could have been different, however he is only vaguely watching her hands pouring the tea, he is not really in this world or the world of his dream. Water is an ongoing theme in his poetry as is rocks and stone as he wavers between a reality and his own inner world.

The second poem in this collection entitled Autobiography is a poem of 4 stanzas of eight lines whose subject is what has led him to write poems and the final stanza makes it clear how he sees himself:

'I have grown up, I think, to live alone
To keep my old illusions, sometimes dream
Glumly that I am unloved and forlorn,
Run away from strangers, often seem
Unreal to myself in the pulpy warmth of a sunbeam.
I have grown up, hand on the primal bone,
Making the poem, taking the word from the stream,
Fighting the sand for speech, fighting the stone.'

The poem 'One of Us' pins down his feelings of alienation, when he recognises another man who is not really part of a group of friends that drink in the same establishment as him. Moreas says 'I never spoke to him' but recognises someone so like himself. There are other poems where he observes lonely figures, outside of the normal friend or family connections, there is nothing malicious or wrong about these men (they are always men) but they do not seem to fit anywhere and then they disappear. There are poems about sex with women, perhaps even love, but 'Snow on a Mountain' starts in typical fashion:

'That dream, her eyes like rocks studded the high
Mountain of her body that I was to climb.
One moment past my hands had swum
The chanting streams of her thighs:
Then I was lost, breathless among the pines.'

Moraes stretches his visionary imagination with a three part poem entitled The Island where he imagines a primitive society that have let their hero become the prey of a dragon; "The unwieldy hero pyred upon the sand" It does not auger well and when conquerers come there is only the dragon to protect them.

This selection is taken from Poems published in 1960 and so is an early collection. Moraes died in 2004. In 1961 he reported on the trial of Eichmann and travelling through Israel and then translating poems from Hebrew gave him a new sense of seriousness and discovery, which you wont find in this early selection. Moraes was a journalist and a travel writer and struggled with alcoholism. Worth further investigation?

Peter Porter is perhaps the most established poet of the three and like Dom Moraes he was not born in Britain; an Australian by birth he emigrated to England in 1951 and by the time his first collection of poems were published in 1961 he was an established member of the "Group" a London based collective of poets. His 26 poems are selections from that first publication titled Once Bitten, Twice Bitten.

The first poem; 'Forefathers' View of Failure' takes as its subject the settlers in Australia building churches and trying to impose their way of life onto the new land. They do take root and set the future for the new country. After this tour de force of a poem the following selections are more concerned with life in Britain and the immediate impression is one of satire. Perhaps only an outsider (non British born) would be able to gather such a clear picture of a society slowly rotting, but determined to hang on to what it has got. In the poem John Marston Advises Anger, Porter compares the Elizabethan society that Marston exposed in his plays with the London scene in 1961 and the poem ends with:

'His had a real gibbet - our death's out of sight
The same thin richness of theses worlds remains -
The flesh packed jeans, the car-stung appetite
Volley on his stage, the cage of discontent.'

The poem Made in Heaven is a satire on a pretty young girl giving up her opportunities to settle for a rich wedding and a well kept life. He satires religion in Who Gets The Popes Nose:

'And high above Rome in a room with wireless
The Pope also waits to die
God is the heat in July
And the iron band of pus tightening in his chest
Of all God's miracles, death is the greatest.'

Death is a recurring themes especially death from cancer; nowhere better depicted than in 'Death in the Pergola Tea-Rooms.' In 'The Historians Call up Pain' he makes the point that today we cannot know the pain that religious martyrs felt and he cannot resist a jibe at his former countrymen in the brilliant; Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum:

'It is Australian innocence to love
The naturally excessive and be proud
Of a thoroughbred bay gelding who ran fast.'

The poem "Your Attention Please" is a satire on a governments final instruction to its population before an imminent nuclear attack. It was used as a lyric to a song by the Scottish group The Scars; a song that I knew well before discovering it was a poem by Porter. 'Somme and Flanders' is an anti war poem which starts:

'Who am I to speak up for the long dead?
Three uncles I never knew say I'm right.
Their tongues are speaking in my head
I'm related to their flesh by fright.'

There is even a poem entitled 'Reading a Novel' and a wonderfully entitled sonnet; 'A High-Born lady Condenses her Memoirs For Readers Digest.' Arresting images keep on coming and I thoroughly enjoyed almost all of the 26 poems selected here. Most of them work really well and I sort of wish I had read these poems more closely back in the 1960's. I am going to make up for this now; having just ordered a copy of Porters' collected poems.

All in all Penguin Modern Poets 2 is an exhilarating read; it may start off with a questionable poet in Kingsley Amis, but follows with some gorgeous dream-like poems from Dom Moraes, before roaring out with Peter Porter. A five star read.

Philip K Dick - The Counter-Clock World
This 1967 novel from Philip K Dick is a bit of a car crash, even for a science fiction novel. It starts off well enough with people coming alive again in their coffins and calling out for help. The Hobart Phrase has caused time to run backwards and so people are coming alive again and regressing to childhood and then back into the womb. An enterprising group led by Sebastian Hermes are touring the local graveyard looking for signs of life and when they hear something, they dig up the coffin give medical aid to the old-born before auctioning them off to family members. Once the opening phase of the novel moves to a story of the rebirth of a cultist religious leader of a negro sect then the story starts running into trouble.

It was originally a short story expanded to novel length and the gaps in the story telling are far too obvious. Time moving backwards only seems to affect certain aspects of the lives of those who have been reborn and so the author can be selective in what happens to them. In the case of the religious leader Anarch Peake; it is his experiences of being dead for fifteen years that makes him a prize amongst those being reborn. His welfare is the subject of a fight between, the catholic church, his cult followers and the Library which is embarked on a project of removing from the world all those inventions, books and works of the old-born as they move backwards through time. All that Sebastien Hermes is interested in is making a profit and holding his marriage together and he gets caught in the middle.

The action and the characters become so preposterous that I was not sure whether this was just an elaborate satire, an action story with too many plot holes, or an outline onto which Dick could come up with even more fantastic ideas. This didn't work for me on any level, I just got bored 2.5 stars

C Day Lewis - The Poet's Task
This was an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 1 June 1951. Lewis stood in front of the students as a practising poet and this lecture would serve as an introduction to the world of poetry. He starts off by saying that young people should learn to love poetry without at first becoming too critical. It would be the wrong way round to learn everything about form and linguistic techniques before embarking on reading poetry. The reader of poetry should embrace as much as he can: he likened it to not being afraid to sowing wild oats ( I noted the male dominated metaphors and the examples of male poets with some amusement). Lewis went on to say more experienced writers and readers of poetry can distinguish better poetry that "most illuminates human experience in which moral and sensuous truths go deepest."

Poetry can be seen as a game, a sort of revel in making and discovering words and phrases; to keep working at them, to refine them, perhaps to rewrite them with new experiences. Lewis here was talking about his own methods of poetry making as he goes on to say that his experiences during wartime made him re-evaluate his childhood and his dreams. He talks about culture and conventions of history and that to appreciate much of the poetry of past eras it is important to be aware how the best poets were able to work within that culture and still produce works of genius. Whatever the era Lewis says we are looking for poets that are getting to the heart of a given experience. On the subject of more difficult poetry, from a poets perspective it can be said that:

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand

He ends his lecture on an upbeat note saying that the poet's task among other things is "to incline our hearts towards what is lovable and admirable in humankind" Perhaps he needed to say this after giving examples of poems by Thomas hardy and T S Eliot.

This was a lecture which would probably have been delivered over a timespan of about 45 minutes to a lecture room full of students. There is nothing revolutionary here and although it starts engagingly enough, it does gets a little bogged down. Lewis was not lecturing to entertain; it was all serious stuff, however he makes his points clearly enough and it reads well - 3 stars.

John Holloway - Language and Intelligence
John Holloway was an English poet, critic and academic and in 1951 he published Language and Intelligence, which is how I came to read this philosophical enquiry. I usually steer clear of philosophical works having little patience or perhaps the intelligence to follow lines of intricate thought to arrive at a position which has long become self evident. Language and Intelligence has only reinforced my thoughts in this direction.

Holloway's book is an exploration of the use of language in philosophical concepts. He spends much ink in arriving at a conclusion that the ambiguity in the use of language makes it extremely difficult to arrive at a point where everyone can agree on a concept that has been put forward. He starts with a chapter on the problem of the meaning of words and how philosophers have tried to define what gives verbal and written words meaning for people who hear or see them. He starts by looking at the ideas of John Hume who claimed that

"the meaning of words is determined exclusively by the series of ideas which hearing and seeing the word brings to mind"

This leads Holloway to ask whether we see images in our mind of words seen or heard and then whether we see phrases as symbols or universals. He uses the word red as an example. How does the mention of the word red come into our mind and how is its arrival related to the awareness of a universal. Do we all understand red in the same way? obviously not, because there are different shades of red and when the word is used with adjectives or with other nouns then the attempts to bring a clearer definition lead to all sorts of other ambiguities.

There are chapters on Signs and Symbols, Does intelligence exist?, Habit and Intelligence, Proliferations of the Verbal language, Ambiguity in Language and finally Language as a system. During this final chapter Holloway expresses some thoughts on the nature of philosophical discussion:

Each participant in the discussion develops his own model and the easiest way to increase its attractiveness is to expose the weakness of its rivals - a process always guaranteed of some success.

Philosophers do not discover in ordinary language a hierarchy of linguistic strata completely formed, but an immense variety and a complete absence of system.

I struggled a little to follow all of the arguments and found some of the examples to seem to go on for ever, but along the way there were some interesting ideas. Not a complete waste of time then, but for me a 3 star rating.

Jean-Luc Seigle - Femme à la Mobylette
Jean-Luc Seigle was a french dramatist, scriptwriter and novelist; he died in 2020. his first novel was published in 2001 and so his novel writing came towards the end of his career: Femme à la Mobylette was published in 2017. He seems to have specialised in modern day tragedies and this novel takes the POV of a woman in her forties who is at the end of her tether. Reine has three children and they live in a three roomed house with a small garden. Her husband has left her for another woman and Reine has not managed to find any work, she struggles to put one meal a day on the table for her three children who are always hungry. We meet Reine during one of her many nuit blanches (sleepless nights), but this one is worse than most, she has a sharp knife on the kitchen table and does not dare to look at it in case she picks it up and murders her children and herself.

The day after her worse night she looks out of the window at her small garden that is covered in junk. Her ex-Olivier always had big plans of building something, but never got round to it. Reine in an attempt to lift herself out of her depression decides to clear the garden, she loves the flowers and the birds. At the bottom of the heap she finds a mobylette that still looks presentable. She manages to get it started and now has the means to look for a job. She gets employment at the local undertaker who wants to train someone to become a mortician. Reine has always been fascinated by the dead, paying frequent visits to her family tomb and her skills as a dressmaker secure her the job, meanwhile Olivier is suing for a divorce.
Reine battered by life is rapidly coming apart at the seams, but the mobylette could be a turning point. She meets Jorgon a long distance truck driver who thinks that Reine looks like Bathsheba in a painting by Rembrandt and says he wants to make a picture of her.

This is a story of a woman, who seems haunted by a past, which is never explained. Her current troubles prey on her mind and push her to the edge of suicide. Her fascination with the dead and her family history all play their part in pushing her to embark on some surprising actions. What is real and what is imaginary becomes confused and Jean-Luc Seigle captures this in his novel. His use of short sentences in describing the thoughts and actions of Reine add to a feeling of disconnectedness, a feeling that can only be eased by love. 3.5 stars.

Pardon my prosaicism, but wouldn't she be getting child support as the abandoned party, and a lifelong housewife? Seems like a strange omission.

>49 LolaWalser: I got the impression that her depression was so bad that she never answers letters or emails - Do people in that position fall between the cracks I wonder.

John Le Carré - Our Game
The next unread book on my shelf was a John Le Carré novel and Our Game proved to be an excellent novel if you sign up to the idea that British Intelligence was run by a bunch of public schoolboys who never really grew up. Come to think of it that is also a description of the British government over the last fifteen years or so. In addition to this the hero of the story is Tim Cranmer; a retired spy and I enjoy reading about retired individuals who can bring a more balanced view to the world in which they live.

Tim Cranmer like many public schoolboys gets rich due to his inheritance and so is not unduly worried when he is forced to retire from British Intelligence after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is disturbed from his struggles in managing his English vineyard by a visit from the police who wish to interview him about the disappearance of Professor Larry Pettifer who they believe was a close friend of Tim. In fact Larry Pettifer was a double agent who Cranmer handled throughout his service as a spy: Pettifer had also seduced Cranmer's younger girlfriend (the beautiful Emma). Things get more difficult for Tim when he is summoned back to MI5 headquarters and discovers that they believe that he is implicated in a plot to embezzle millions of pounds from Russian oligarchs, that he would have known when he worked for the intelligence services. Tim realises he must use all his spy-craft to work for himself and track down Pettifer.

Le Carré introduces his readers to the wilds of the North Caucasus and the tribal Russian republics of Chechenia, Ossetia, and Ingushetia following the breakup of parts of the Soviet republic, (decent map supplied), this contrasts with the gentlemanly culture of the British intelligence service which takes up two thirds of the novel and is really Le Carré's forte. Cranmer's character is well presented: a man having to get back into harness with a world that he thought he had left behind; he is not a super-hero, but with a little luck and some skill manages to make some headway. There is perhaps no fool like an old fool and Tim comes close to realising this when he looks back on his relationship with Larry and his love for Emma.

Le Carré takes the violence out of thriller writing, but still manages to create enough tension and grittiness to make his stories feel real enough and he has a good story here. He also imbues a more balanced and nuanced view of international politics and the world of spying. The Russians are not all beastly savages and the Brits and the Americans are not as sure footed or as unprejudiced as their governments would have us believe. A criticism of Le Carré's approach is that perhaps he makes it all appear too much of a game, (hence the title of this book). In this novel there is a bit of a hole, character-wise, because we only get to meet Larry Pettifer through flashbacks from Tim Cranmer and information from other characters, and so as readers we only get second hand information on his aims, ambitions and his conscientiousness. Is he a selfish, grasping, crook or is he an idealistic, man-of-his-word trying to make the world a better place? The answer of course lies somewhere in between, but he remains an inconsistent character. When the adventure part of the story gets going it becomes a page turner, but there is much to enjoy in the internal and external politics of the police and intelligence agencies in the meantime and so 4 stars.

Thomas Churchyard - A musicall consort of heavenly harmonie (compounded out of manie parts of musicke) called Churchyards charitie.

Thomas Churchyard (1520-1604) was the son of a farmer, who received a good education. He entered the household of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey where he remained for twenty years, no doubt learning something of the art of poetry. In 1541 he began his career as a soldier of fortune and continued this on and off for most of the rest of his long life. He campaigned in Scotland, Flanders, Netherlands Spain and Ireland. He was taken prisoner by the Scots but boasted that he charmed them with his language and writing skills to the extent that he was treated more like an honoured guest, while he waited for a ransom to be paid. He wrote much poetry, history, travelogues and other entertainments, he was employed to provide pageants for Queen Elizabeth, but sometimes his writing got him into trouble and he was forced to go on campaign again.

Now known simply as Churchyards charitie this pamphlet or book was printed in 1595; towards the end of his life and when he had been retired some 20 years from campaigning. It contains a dedication/epistle to Robert Devreux Earl of Essex, An everlasting memorie of Christian comfort to the Queens most Excellent majestie and then an untitled poem of twenty stanzas ; each stanza ending with the short line O charitie help. Much of Churchyard's oeuvre is autobiographical and this poem while telling of the ills that are facing England ends with the ills facing Churchyard himself:

The wo of wars, and pride and pomp of peace,
The toile of world, and trouble here and there
And churlish checks, of fortune I release
Their heavy cross, I can no longer bare
In pieces small, my scribbled scrolls I tear
So slinging verse, and books before your feet
I crave some crownes, to buy my shrouding sheet.
O charitie help.

There follows a single stanza poem to the general reader before we get to the meat of the book and Churchyardes Charitie. This is a poem of 92 stanzas of seven lines making a total of 624 lines. It is an extension of the earlier "O charitie help" poem without that final line. It has the same caesura around the middle of each line that reminds me a little of the 14th century Piers Plowman poem, like a broken back to the poem and like the earlier poem it complains of the ills facing the country, through the greed and pride of the rich, here is a sample:

Who does not sigh, to see the poor opprest
Bye rich men's reach, that wrests away the right
Who will not wail, the woe of troubled breast
Or sore lament, the state of wronged wight
When broad day brings, darke dealings unto light
who will not rue, our wretched race on earth
That keeps till death, no rule from day of birth.

The poem continues with complaints about the unchecked power of the rich and well connected. He tells of the lanes and fields being full of the sick and lame and of overflowing prisons where the inmates reach out through the grills. The rich hoard their wealth and speculate to make more money and do not give a thought to charity. He talks of the golden age of the past and how that has now been transformed:

Words are the waves, that welters on the seas
And works a froth, in colour white as snow
Makes thousands sicke, and breeds a cold disease
To those that with, such swelling surges go
Inconstant words, with tide will ebb and floe
But fruitful deeds, stands firm and fast as rock
That bides the brunt, of every blast and shock

The poem moves on to celebrate the worth and the role of charity and ends this section with God knows but charity is rare. Lust, greed and pride destroy everything and then there is new fangledness among the courtiers. Churchyard is pessimistic, believing that man cannot change. He spends several stanzas speaking of the coldness of the weather and how this is reflected in the ills of the majority of the people. He ends by saying he is old and that his hap and hope is for a better place. He ends with a plea for men to take charity aright.

There is another poem to finish the book which Churchyard calls; A praise of poetry some notes thereof drawn out of the apologie, the noble minded Knight Sir Phillip Sidney. It consists of some 60, four line stanzas, celebrating the power of poetry. Looking backwards to the classical poets and giving fairly short shrift to his contemporary poets, none of whom approach the poetical voice of Sir Phillip Sidney. There are some pleasing stanzas for example:

The childest wit and churlish mind
Lo then how poetry may
Both alter manners and bad kind
To frame a better way.

It is no surprise that Churchyard was scrabbling around towards the end of his life for patronage. His views of society could not have endeared him to the patrons he was hoping to attract. I enjoyed reading his thoughts on the state of contemporary Elizabethan life. He pulls no punches and does not hide the axe he has to grind. His poetry is not the greatest, but the insight it provides outweighs any shortcomings. I am always pleased to read something from this soldier poet and so 3.5 stars

In addition to Churchyard's chariie I also read the words of a ballad written by William Elderton: The Lamentations of Follie (written to the tune of New Rogero).
The lyrics of this song cover similar ground to Churchyard's poem:

And though that our vnworthinesse.
hath not deserued so:
Now let vs cease our wickednesse,
and graft where grace may grow.
And let vs pray for our defence,
our worthy Queene elect:
That God may worke his will in her,
our thraldome to correct.

Wow, I don't think I've ever heard of this poet. Very powerful work. Thanks for the excerpts and the review.

Clifford D Simak - Empire
Empire was the second novel from Simak published in 1951. I read the first one Time and Again over three years ago. I liked that novel starting my review with the sentence "What you get with Simak is a thinking person's science fiction" I could have started the review of this one with "What you get with Simak is a thoughtless persons science fiction, because for two thirds of the novel it feels like the same old dross that you can find in many science fiction magazine stories from that era: Implausible discoveries that lead to super powerful scientists controlling the destiny of mankind. I continued reading and found myself becoming more absorbed in the story and suddenly it was as though somebody had thrown a switch and I was reading something by Alistair Reynolds. I can understand why this novel is not so well thought of in the vast cannon of Simak's work, because it reeks of being a typical science fiction magazine story. It was originally published in digest size format by Galaxy science fiction Novels: digest size format is readers digest size format which has two columns to a page.

The action takes place in the middle of the 22nd century when man has settled on most of the planets in the solar system. Spencer Chambers is the most powerful man because of his control of the accumulators that provide the power for spaceships. Big business calls the shots and Chambers is busily involved in forcing other competitors out of the market, he who controls the patents for the propulsion of the transport system controls the governments on all the planets; Chambers calls this economic dictatorship and is opposed to democracies which according to him:

"Democracies were based on a false presumption - the theory that all people were fit to rule. It granted intelligence where there was no intelligence. It presumed ability where there was not the slightest trace of any. It gave the idiot the same political standing as the wise man, the crackpot the same political opportunity as the man of well-grounded common sense, the weakling the same voice as the strong man. It was government by emotion rather than judgement."

The scientist Russell Page teams up with space hero Gregory Manning to trial a rival power source, which involves harnessing power that can be found using the concept of four dimensional space. It becomes a race against time to develop the new power system before Spencer Chambers can dominate the economic market. Chambers uses organised crime to thwart his rivals, but Russell Page invents other useful items along the way which means that he always has the jump on Chambers activities. The story moves from being earthbound scientific 'pissing up the wall' contest to being a fully fledged space opera with battles that reminded me of Reynolds' Revelation Space.

There are no female characters this is fiction for the male adolescent market (they might have enjoyed the thoughts on democracies), but the novel does have its moments and its well thought out with an ending that surprised me and so three stars.

Manley Wade Wellman - Twice in Time
I expected as I drilled down further into 1951 science fiction novels to find a marked decrease in quality, but after reading Wellman's Twice in Time this is not the case. He claimed to be the author of some 500 stories of which over 80 were in the fantasy and science fiction genre. Many of his stories were originally published in the pulp magazines of the 1940's 50's and 60's and in 1956 his nonfiction historical work Rebel Boast was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize: with a legacy such as this, there is no doubt that he was a competent writer.

Twice in Time is a fantasy time travel novel. Leo Thrasher in 1957 has invented a time travel laser disc that he uses to transport himself back in time. He has a workshop just outside Florence in Italy and succeeds in transporting himself back to the mid 15th century at the time of Lorenzo de Medici the Magnificent. Leo unfortunately at once finds himself under the power of a sorcerer in the black arts, however his skills as an artist and fencing master enable him to adapt into the society of the high Italian renaissance. He rapidly becomes an adviser to Lorenzo the Magnificent being able to suggest and then detail in diagrams, practical examples of inventions from the 20th century that can aid the enlightened despot.

Manley Wade Wellman wrote many young adult stories and this novel soon turns into an adventure story that fits with the known historical events of that period, for example Leo finds himself involved in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. Leo's struggle with the sorcerer and his own knowledge of the future explains some of the mysteries of the advancement of science during the Medici reign. It is historical fantasy fiction, brought to life with some skilful writing and a reasonable feel for the period. It hasn't got the depth of a novel like Mark Twains much earlier 'A Yankee in King Arthur's Court', but it is a page turner of a story with some nice ideas. 3.5 stars

A Rough Shoot - Geoffrey Household
A Time to Kill - Geoffrey Household
Two novels published in 1951 by Geoffrey Household who specialised in thrillers of the more genteel English kind. He wrote over 25 novels and scored big with Rogue Male (filmed as Manhunt) near the start of his career in 1939. He served in British Intelligence during the second world war and afterwards lived the life of a country gentleman when he wrote most of his books. These two novels feature his character Roger Taine who lives in Dorset England after service in the war and gets mixed up with a bunch of spies in the period shortly after the end of the war. Household writes well about the countryside that was familiar to him and also captures the uncertainty of dealings with foreign people and/or agents acting in Britain after the defeat of the Nazis.

Roger Taine is not quite a country gentleman, but a vigorous individual fresh back from the war and working as salesman of building materials. In A Rough Shoot he has rented shooting rights in an area near his home, he is married with two children and likes to get out of the house after work with his gun to roam around his shoot. One evening from a hide he sees an individual acting suspiciously, he decides to teach him a lesson with a shot of buckshot. The man falls forward onto some spikes he is carrying and when Taine gets to him he is dead. Taine is a man who tries to do the right thing, but when he sees what he has done he realises he would go down for murder and so he quickly hides the body, before deciding what to do. When he retraces his steps the next day he sees other individuals, not the police, searching the area and after a talk with a nearby landowner who is involved organising a fascist ring of individuals he finds himself caught up in a desperate adventure to clear his name.

The events of the early part of this novel take place on a relatively small area of English countryside and Tain's intimate connection with the land is so well drawn that I could easily picture the action taking place. Taine gets involved with Polish agents and spies as well as disaffected Germans and the story is a battle of wits rather than blood thirsty action. Taine survives to fight another day and in the next book A Time to Kill his spymaster based in London lures him unwillingly back into amateur action to deal with a so called mopping up operation. This time the action centres around Poole Harbour and the Purbeck cliffs and Taine's life and his family are in danger. Again the feature of this story is the countryside and seascape around the County of Dorset as Taine must link up with a protagonist of the first book to fight against a more determined nest of spies.

After reading the first instalment; A Rough Shoot, I was happy to follow a new storyline in A Time to KIll. These two books certainly evoke a period that is often shown in 1950's British films. A hero who fights gallantly against the odds, but whose local knowledge and intelligence is enough when pitted against foreign agents. Two novels that do more than most books I have read (published in 1951) that capture a time and place so well. There is a certain amount of realism in the background to the story that makes it seem, not at all far-fetched. Both books were an entertaining read and so 3.5 stars.

Pleasant Quippes for upstart newfangled gentlewomen or A glasse to view the pride of vainglorious women containing a pleasant invective against the fantastical Foreign Toyes used in womens apparell

A poem of 294 lines in six line stanzas with a regular rhyming scheme published in 1595, which has been attributed to Stephen Gosson by J Payne Collier. It is easy to see why this should attribution should be made because Gosson had authored The Schoole of Abuse in 1579 which was an invective against actors and other performers on stage. I read an edited version by Edwin Johnston Howard who claims that Collier had forged Stephen Gosson's signature on the copy that he studied and so the poem must be seen as anonymous.

The poem is generally humorous and light hearted, and avoids the worse kind of misogyny that was all too apparent at this time:

But when as men, of lore and wit
and guiders of the weaker kind:
Do judge them for their mate so fit
that nothing more, can please their mind.
I know not what to say to this,
But sure I know, it is amiss.

The poem gently chides women of various ages for wearing the apparel which the poet claims has largely been imported from abroad. He then runs through the various items of clothing, which are obviously difficult to wear and which only serve a purpose of hiding a true women's worth. He says that Holland smocks are like nets to trap the unwary and the hoops and rings imported from France served to hide unwanted pregnancies, he goes further:

When whoores in stews had gotten poxe
This French device kept coats from smocks.

I think thats enough from this poem, but Howard's notes at the end contain an explanation of the items of clothing referred to in the text and also some colloquial phrases for example:

Light Heeles Trash is worthless clothing and such frippery as is usually associated with whores and drabs.

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The Trumpets of Fame or Sir F Drake's and Sir J Hawkins farewell, with an encouragement to all sailors and soldiers in this worthy enterprise, by Henry Roberts

With this poem Henry Roberts launched a career of Patriotic pamphlets that was to keep him occupied for the next thirty years.

The poem has stanzas of varying length on its 14 pages and is mostly rhyming couplets. There are short sections on all the famous sailors that were involved in the enterprise which is thought to be the English attack on the Spanish island of Puerto Rico and the ships that took part. It is fairly awful stuff and probably only interesting for the people named. Roberts is quite clear that England had God on its side and the treasure plundered would enrich all of England.

These two poems interested me because of the variety of their subjects, probably an example of other poems printed at the time and now lost. I cannot claim any worth as to the poetic content, but it was amusing to read them 2.5 stars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzDNsg8VbIU

Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
Just returned from a trip to the south western Atlantic coast of France for a few days, staying in a hotel with a view of the surf pounding on the shore line. Capbreton is perhaps the surfing capital of France and walking on the broad endless beaches backed by sand-dunes is an intoxicating experience. I envied the people, young and fit enough to get up on their surf boards in those great Atlantic rollers. I had consciously chosen a book that would have some flavour of a sea-going experience hence Josephs Conrads Lord Jim, but it felt in essence a million miles away from the carefree lifestyle that seems to encompass the world of surfing. I looked up from my book and thought about the Beach Boys. I only got halfway through the book on vacation and only connected with the book when I got back home and finished the read.

Lord Jim is really a book of two stories, but without a dividing line. They are told by the narrator Marlow who tells a tragic personal story of love and loss to a group of his cronies. In the first Jim is a young adventurous seaman who faces an extreme moral dilemma when the Patna; a rusty old tub of a boat, overcrowded with pilgrims starts to sink after a collision with an obstacle in the ocean. Jim is the Mate; second in command in a crew of four disparate Europeans. The Patna becomes a "cause celebre" especially after the public inquiry, which will decide whether the crew should lose their licences to practice as seaman. Marlow then tells how he tried to help Jim get over the trauma of the inquiry by finding work for him along the seaboard and the second story takes place on a remote island that Conrad calls Patusan probably part of Indonesia. Jim earns the title Lord Jim (Tuan Jim) as the representative of a Dutch trading enterprise working alone in a hostile environment and becomes the de facto head man of the island and takes a native wife, however when a pirate ship visits, the underlying tensions on the island come to a head.

Jim is a powerfully built, attractive man and a parson's son. He never loses his thirst for adventure, he is a romantic who wants desperately to do the right thing, he has a boyish air about him, which he never quite loses. An injury suffered while training to be a seaman and then the incident on the Patna causes him deep trauma, which he is unable to get over, they colour all his subsequent actions, he feels a need to atone for deficiencies of character which take him outside the company of normal men. The soul searching, the desire to make a better fist of things lead him to take solace at times with Marlow. His relationship with other men is certainly homosocial and maybe homosexual, but Conrad is careful never to make this explicit.

Lord Jim was published in 1900 a year after Heart of Darkness and has a similar viewpoint on colonialism which of course leaves it open to accusations of racism. Marlow expresses views on colonialism in a letter which would have probably been a la mode at the time:

You said also - I call to mind - that giving your life up to them (them meaning all of mankind with skins brown, yellow or black in colour) "was like selling your soul to a brute." You contended that: "that kind of thing" was only endurable and enduring when based on a firm conviction in the truth of ideas racially our own in whose name are established the order, the morality of an ethical progress. "We want its strength at our backs" you had said. "we want a belief in its necessity and its justice, to make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives......

It is by no means an easy to read adventure story. The narrative is told to us mostly by Marlowe, but also by letters and so there are some different interpretations of character. Conrad conceals from the reader the fate of the Patna for some time, by jumping backwards and forwards in time. The reader is constantly invited to read between the lines especially in the conversations between Marlow and Jim and it is by not always clear where we are in the timeline of the story or who is actually doing the talking. It is a psychological portrait of a character who finds it difficult to express his thoughts and emotions. It took me some time to get to grips with Conrad's style, but he has a way of describing events and the natural world that put this reader right in touch with the late 19th century.

Jim is never given a formal name and when we are told Jim's story on Patusan I could not help thinking of captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise. In reflection Jim has a similar modus operandi when dealing with alien species (in this case natives) in trying to impose his culture onto theirs.
A 4 star literary read

News From Nowhere - William Morris
A book that describes a socialist/communist Utopia in England - whats not to like? - Answer, William Morris' book published in 1890. The hero William Guest (yes very witty) falls asleep after a meeting of the socialist league - he might well have fallen asleep during the meeting of the socialist league, and dreams that he has woken up in some sort of future socialist utopia. To keep the reader guessing, for a short time Guest does not know where he is, but the sun is shinning and everybody that he meets acts kindly and considerately. He then embarks on a journey up the river Thames with his new friends learning from them the joys brought about by common ownership and the ditching of machines.

I found the book weakly thought through with it golden glow version of socialism based on handicrafts and the love of nature. Guest learns from an elderly boffin the history of the previous two hundred years as he continues his journey of discovery following the river Thames through sleepy villages that were once commuter hubs for the cockneys. Its all so facile and even worse than that; it is boring. This did not work for me on any level, probably it will be the worst read of the year - 2 stars.

>59 baswood: Too bad you hit this clunker.

Robert A Heinlein - Between Planets
Between Planets was Heinlein's second novel published in 1951 and seems to have been aimed at a young adult market. It is an adventure story set sometime in the not too distant future when man has colonised Venus and Mars. Don Harvey a space born teenager is at school on earth, he was brought up on Venus, but his parents who are scientist work on Mars. Don is in his final year at school when he receives an urgent recall from his parents to join them on Mars. He is instructed to meet a scientist friend of theirs before he boards the space rocket. There is talk of a war between the colonists on Venus and mother planet earth. Don is given a ring by the scientist who then disappears in mysterious circumstances, Don struggles to catch his ship to Mars which is anyway diverted after a space station is blown up. Don ends up on Venus where sundry characters take an unusual interest in his ring. Don's main characteristic is his stubbornness, which gets him in and out of trouble.

Featuring a teenage hero puts the book in the young adult market, but Heinlein's story runs smoothly enough with a well written plot. Don grows up when he is forced into military service on Mars and finds himself at the centre of an espionage story when he is hunted for his ring. A Venusian landscape of swamps, thick fog and mud banked lagoons provide a suitable territory for a hunt and the highly intelligent Venusian dragons add spice to an interesting story. An enjoyable read with no overt racism or sexism. 3 stars.

Loving Without Tears - Molly Keane
Loving Without Tears published in 1951 is a romantic novel which sounds outdated today and probably did when it was originally published.
Angel a matriarchal figure is eagerly awaiting the return of her eldest son Julian to the family castle somewhere on the Irish coast. He has been an airplane fighter pilot based in Italy near the end of the second world war. Waiting at home with Angel are Slaney her daughter and Tiddley a cousin noted for her shortness of stature. Oliver is a land agent who also lives in the castle as does the cook and servant Birdie who used to be the children's nanny. Angel has prided herself in managing the lives of her family and looks forward to having them around her again. Julian however arrives home with an American Lady Mrs Wood a widow some ten years older than him whom he intends to marry. Angel has work to do: she needs to break up her son's romance, stop Slaney becoming infatuated with Colonel Chris, ensure that Birdie does not run off with Mrs Wood's manservant and get rid of Tiddley's piano.

The majority of the story takes place on the day of the arrival of Julian. The dialogue for the most part is excruciating, with Angel breaking out into french when she wants to soften her blows. Angel is the only grown up in the room until Mrs Wood arrives; most of the others acting like naive half-wits. Did wealthy people really talk and act in this fashion I wonder, as most of it sounds like a badly acted kitchen sink drama. The only saving grace for this novel is some fine descriptive writing of the castle buildings, the gardens and the little boat docking area. 2 stars.

Norman Lewis - Dragon Apparent: Travels in Indo-China
Published in 1951 this is the story of British novelist and travel writer Norman Lewis' journeys through Vietnam and French Indo-China made in 1950. Lewis realised that French colonial power was being challenged and was under no illusion that he was heading to a war zone and that there was no time to lose before travel became impossible. In the middle of January 1950 deciding to risk no further delays he caught an Air France plane from Paris to Saigon.

This is not a guide book; it is a narrative of Lewis' travels. It is also a socio-political account of the situation that he found in the countries that he visited. Travel writing of this kind treads a line between either giving too much information so that the reader becomes bogged down in facts or not enough information so that the reader cannot appreciate the situation that is being described. In my opinion Lewis gets the balance just right and he does this within his narrative so that the reader does not lose sight of the story, but can also appreciate, just what is going on, for example, the dangers, the cultural differences, the military situation, and the geography. In other words Lewis is a very good travel writer.

Starting off in Saigon and a relative newcomer to Asian culture Lewis expects to find difficulties. He says the difficulties and frustrations usually turn out to be worse than one has feared, especially a traveller like Lewis who wants to visit tribal areas which are increasingly becoming a battleground. Lewis was armed with letters of introduction and a journalist pass, but found himself reliant on individual French colonial administrators to find means of travel. At this time Saigon was suffering terrorist attacks and military convoys were the only means of travel into the interior. The administrators were a mottley crew, some were enthusiastic, but had little knowledge of the situation, others were more cautious, but Lewis paints a portrait of individuals who were doing their best to adapt to an ever changing situation and probably welcomed the distraction of someone like Lewis, who was quite happy to risk his life and was prepared to suffer periods of a military existence.

Lewis describes difficult journeys to the tribal area, he was lucky his convoys saw a minimum of military action. He got to stay in very remote villages where Europeans had hardly ever ventured. He describes the life and culture in these remote places never looking down on their ways of life, and having enough knowledge of their culture to explain why they act in the way that they do. Travelling in this fashion where transport is difficult always means that where you can go, who you can see and what you can do is never clear with the likelihood that you can become stranded in dangerous situations. This all makes for an exciting account.

He travels through Cochin-China into Cambodia getting to Pnom-Penh. When he gets out of the big towns and into the villages he is amazed by the way of life of many of the people he comes across;

Cambodia the descendents of the Khmers are without a care in the world and wear wonderfully well. There are times when one feels that perhaps it would be even better to be a little poorer, if at the same it could be a little freer.

He came across French administrators in various stages of 'going native.' becoming enchanted with the culture, inspite of the atrocities of war being carried out by both sides. When he gets to Laos with its unexplored valleys he finds a land full of enchantment on the edge of being destroyed. He manages to wangle a ride in an aeroplane to Vientiane where he makes contact with a repesentative of the insurgents: the Viet-Minh and crosses over the shifting lines of engagement to spend an exciting evening with one of their small military groups, who are carrying out a raid on a temporary French fort.

Lewis although describing the situations in which he finds himself never strays into talking up his own exploits. He is intent on describing what he sees, giving a balanced view but veers towards the indigenous people, especially where they are in opposition to the missionaries. He reports gleefully that the missionaries are spectacularly unsuccessful in making converts. Lewis provides a first hand account of an area of the world that is about to undergo considerable change. He writes about what he sees without having any noticeable agenda (apart from the missionaries). His book is a valuable document and for me an exciting read 5 stars.

>63 baswood: Wow, that sounds extremely interesting.

Lydie Salvayre - La déclaration
Lydie Salvayre is a french writer and La délaration is her first novel published in 1990. She was at one time a practising psychiatrist and so it is no surprise that her first novel should be a psychiatric study. It is written in the first person by an unnamed man who experiences a complete mental breakdown when his partner leaves him. The book is his declaration and it starts with a chapter where he tells us how much his female partner disgusts him and of course she reminds him of his mother. He is disgusted physically and mentally and he cannot sleep at night. His partner leaves him.

He is immediately plunged into a nightmare of his own making, he can hardly sleep at all, he is extremely restless, he walks around the streets of Paris for something to do. Going back to visit his mother makes him feel worse and he thinks about his unhappy childhood. At the office he thinks his fellow workers avoid looking at him, he does not know how to compose his features, he is frightened of bursting into tears. His compatriots suggest a holiday and he rents a villa with them, but cannot face being with them. He goes to America meets a couple who are happy to be in love. He is ashamed for himself and returns to Paris on the next available flight. He functions less and less well, he joins a dating agency, but after some initial excitement he can hardly be bothered. He ceases to function all together and is committed to a mental institution and is treated by various psychiatrists who try and reconnect him to his childhood; his mother looms large.

It is a short novel that takes the reader on a journey in the mind of an extremely unhappy man whose misogyny pushes him over the edge into mental illness. It is a piece of writing strong on physiognomy as an expression of feelings although the man's face is not described. It feels more like a study of a condition than a story. One thing that did interest me was the use of the Minitel as the first mass-market Internet-style service for sex-related applications. Minitel, unlike the Internet, was private by design, and the privacy features of Minitel took sex chat into the workplace. In the late 1980's, it apparently reached endemic proportions in Paris. In this book our hero's continual use of the Minitel with its abbreviations and euphemisms, reduced his command of the french language to such a low level he could no longer communicate on a day to day basis. Is there a lesson here? 3 stars.

I read The Company of Ghosts by Salvayre several years ago and wanted to like the book much more than I did. It too was very psychological, about a woman whose mind is stuck in the traumatic past, but the structure was difficult. Almost all dialogue but without the punctuation that helps a reader navigate it.

>66 labfs39: It is interesting that you had a similar experience with this author. I have found that it is not unusual for french authors to set out dialogue differently to english writers.