December 2010
16 posts
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Endings
“I arise from dreams of thee”—that’s why I write. I have just woken from a dream in which I was at a play, in the pit and suddenly you, who were sitting across a gangway in a row in front, turned and looked at me and we both went into fits of laughter. What the play was, what we laughed at, I’ve no notion, but we were both very young (no, for you had your beard) and...
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Brrrr.
It was the kind of cold you feel first as a stiffening, crackling crust inside your nose, followed by a sparkling sensation all over your face, like stepping into a stiff gin and tonic.
Dorothy Dunnett, Dolly and the Nanny Bird
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In the stacks
Of the romantic encounters we find in Pym’s diaries, the most influential for her fiction in general seems to be the one that took place in the Bodleian library during the early 1930s. This affair provided material that she used and reused for the rest of her writing career. Because of the setting for this tumultuous and influential episode in her life, I would argue, libraries in general,...
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The sort of writer one is not.
I don’t think you are a 500-words-a-day-on-the-Riviera sort of writer—perhaps nobody is now What would one do for the rest of the day, having spent the morning writing? Lead a worthless life, I suppose, and how pleasant it might be for a bit. Then one would get involved with the English church—there would be no escape.
Barbara Pym, letter to Philip Larkin of December 11, 1961
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'Round here, we consider it the Christmas season...
It was Christmas at Camelot—King Arthur’s court, where the great and the good of the land had gathered, all the righteous lords of the ranks of the Round Table quite properly carousing and reveling in pleasure. Time after time, in tournaments of joust, they had lunged at each other with leveled lances then returned to the castle to carry on their caroling, for the feasting lasted a...
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'Tis the season
All the traditional disasters happened—the cat got into the cellar where the turkey was waiting on a nice cold shelf and it was only just rescued in time, Alfie appeared quite well, but mysteriously ran a temperature as soon as he was put to bed and was only restored to health by being brought downstairs, and I was laid low by backache, so I can’t quite explain why we all enjoyed...
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Style
Then Bob Dombey came around in the afternoon with two Christmas presents for me. His wife Alice, the reader, whom I had not met as yet, was making Christmas dinner for the boys, which of course I wasn’t going to be able to attend, so Bob had smuggled in a piece of fruitcake for me. That made me fell both better and worse. Bob also had a present for me from Alice, and it turned out to be a...
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The good Doctor is unwell
Dr Johnson has been very unwell indeed. Once I was quite frightened about him, but he continues his strange discipline, starving, mercury, opium,—and though for a Time half demolished by its severity, he always, in the end, rises superior to the disease, and the remedy,—which commonly is the most alarming of the two. His Kindness for me I think, if possible, still...
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The green islands of the imagination
Some three years ago, or it may be more, I recollect your telling me that you had received a letter from our friend Sam, dated, “On board his gondola.” My gondola is, at this present, waiting for me on the canal; but I prefer writing to you in the house, it being autumn—and rather an English autumn that otherwise. It is my intention to remain at Venice during the winter,...
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The reckoning
Well last week I said to Laura “Are you sure you aren’t overdrawn at the bank?” “No, I don’t think so. I’m sure they’d tell me, if I were.” “Well do ask.” So she did and, my dear, she had an overdraft of £6,420 which had been quietly mounting up for years. There is no possible way to pay it off, as her capital is in trust and for me to...
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Slow and steady
The impatience of men of letters to see their work in print, in performance, well known, extolled, the folly of it fills me with wonder. It all has about as much to do with their real task as it does with dominoes or politics. There you are.
Everyone could do as I do. Work just as slowly and as well. You only need to unburden yourself of certain tastes and deny yourself a few small pleasures. I...
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The best book is a non-book?
Bother it all—how I HATE books. The marvellous thing about yours is that they never appear, such a good thing. And if by any chance one does (a) read & (b) like a book it’s so awful when it’s finished.
Deborah Mitford, letter to Patrick Leigh Fermor of May 28, 1974
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On translating Simenon . . . with Mme. Simenon...
I see Mme. Simenon’s points, though of course trying to render the “rhythm” of the original is what makes most translations read unnaturally. The whole point of Simenon’s style is its colloquial ease, and this is apt to get lost if one sticks to the order of the French sentences when translating. Another difficulty is slang. This book is full of it, and all the pungency...
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Where's the fire?
P.S. The Algonquin Hotel is on fire as I write this. I left my room there a few moments ago and found the fire department outside on the street. The Algonquin met this crisis as it meets all other problems of hotel management—with resourcefulness bordering on the eccentric. Instead of phoning in the alarm, it sent Mrs. Bodne (wife of the owner) and her daughter Barbara around the corner, to...
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Chekhov despairs of his talent
And we? We! We paint life as it is, but beyond that—nothing at all… . Flog us and we can do no more! We have neither immediate nor remote aims, and in our soul there is a great empty space. We have no politics, we do not believe in revolution, we have no God, we are not afraid of ghosts, and I personally am not afraid even of death and blindness. One who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and...
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On Eminent Victorians, Chinese Gordon, and the...
Gordon, as I knew he would, cast a gloom upon my festival. I thought him masterly—indeed, it’s amazing how from all these complications you contrive to reel off such a straight and dashing story, and how you weave in every scrap—my God, what scraps!—of interest to be had, like (you must pardon one metaphor) a snake insinuating himself through innumerable golden...