Cussedness
The natural cussedness of things in general.
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Heaven’s Command by Jan Morris
The predominant image of the British Empire in popular culture of bewhiskered bastards mechanically exterminating entire nations of noble savages is challenged repeatedly in the history related by Jan Morris in Heaven’s Command. Morris tells the story from the point of view of the invading conquerors, rather than those invaded, and it is interesting to discover that the British didn’t spend all their time murdering innocents in a mad drive to conquer the world, and that the imperial actions of the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign seem to have been characterised by rather more altruistic, if misguided, aims. (more…)
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Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet
This is the book referenced by Liza Picard when discussing the old cliché of Victorian piano legs that I mentioned a few months ago. Her report of the story is a little inaccurate: that particular exaggeration was apparently first used by the Victorians themselves, in reference to the perceived prudery of contemporary America, but was, ironically, modified over the years to refer back to its originators.
Inventing the Victorians is packed with stuff like this, and barely a page passes without some mangy old canard being blown out of the water. (more…)
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Lighthouse at the End of the World by Jules Verne
Lighthouse at the End of the World was pretty much the last book Verne sent off to his publisher before he died, and William Butcher’s translation comes with an excellent introduction and compendious notes which explain the various problems engendered by this. Verne revised heavily at the proof stage, but Lighthouse never had the benefit of this process, and was instead knocked into shape by his son Michel as part of a settlement with Verne’s publisher Hetzel. (more…)
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Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne
Paris in the Twentieth Century is one of Verne’s earliest efforts, written just after Five Weeks in a Balloon, and rejected by his publisher as unbelievable, and for having “a real goose” as a hero. Hetzel wasn’t wrong about Michel, who has all the appeal of a whining sixth-former, but his judgement of the plausibility of Verne’s creations was less perceptive. (more…)
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I Am A Cat by Natsume Sōseki
The nameless feline narrator is the best thing in Sōseki’s first novel by a mile. Witty and sarcastic, he is a scathing observer of the humans with whom he shares the world. His thoughts on trousers as a measure of human achievement provide an excellent example of his opinions:
Had mankind been created with an inborn readiness to be content with inequality, I cannot see why, born naked, they should not have been content to live and die unclothed. However, one of these primeval nudists seems to have communed with himself along the following lines. “Since I and all my fellowman are indistinguishably alike, what is the point of effort? However hard I strive I cannot of myself climb beyond the common rut. So, since I yearn to be conspicuous, I think I’ll drape myself in something that will draw the eyes and blow the minds of all these clones around me.” I would guess he thought and thought for at least ten years before he came up with a stupendous idea, that glory of man’s inventiveness, pants…
I’ve heard that it took Descartes, no intellectual slouch, a full ten years to arrive at his famous conclusion, obvious surely to any three year old, that I think and therefore I am. Since original thought is thus demonstrably difficult, perhaps one should concede that it was an intellectual feat, even if it took ten years, for the wits of proto-rickshawmen to formulate the notion of knickers. (p245)
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Victorian London by Liza Picard
Liza Picard’s Victorian London, her fourth book on the capital, is readable, interesting stuff, but it seems to lack focus. Perhaps unavoidably for a book seeking to provide as much context as this does, lots of the information is not actually specific to London, and the overall approach is general. But what we lose in detail we gain in range, and a huge amount of subject matter is covered despite the fact that the book only deals with the first half of Victoria’s reign, from 1840 to 1870. The chapters on servants, the working classes, transport, and crime stand out in particular, and the sections on poverty put modern life into perspective. Victorian London will probably serve as a pretty good starting point for further exploration of the period, although it would have been nice to see a further reading section to save dredging the notes section for other more detailed treatments of areas of interest.
Oh, and apparently the old story about Victorians covering up the legs of pianos was made up, a rumour put about by some American bounder or other, shocking.
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Villette by Charlotte Brontë
I found this my third attempt at Villette considerably easier going after reading Jane Eyre. Things start slowly but the tale gathers momentum once we reach the city of the title, and whilst the story never reaches the Gothic heights of its more famous sibling, it has own more subtle appeal that many readers will find preferable. The main attraction is the narrator, Lucy Snowe, a more interesting character than Jane Eyre, sharper and less idealised, occasionally given to vicious sarcasm and very single-minded. Villette is reputedly semi-autobiographical, and if the narrator’s character reflects the author’s then it must have been a rewarding and entertaining experience to incur her displeasure. One imagines afternoon tea punctuated by pithy remarks scathing enough to curdle the currant buns.
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre is another one of those classics that I should have read before now. It is an entertaining novel of great depth, and worthy of its status. It is also one of those books about which literal acres have been written, so I’m not going to attempt to say anything new about it.
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Cash by Johnny Cash
I’ve had this on my to-read list for years and years, since I read High Fidelity, which must have been in about 1997 or so. The main character in Nick Hornby’s novel cites it as his favourite book, as I recall, and for some reason that stuck with me, and made me think that this must be a definitive work of rock’n'roll literature, and that I must, some day, get round to it. My sister-in-law and her husband bought it for me this Christmas, so I finally have. (more…)
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Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
Bill Watterson’s review of David Michaelis’s biography of Charles “Sparky” Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, is a fair representation and, written as it is from the viewpoint of another brilliant comics artist, is probably the best introduction available. That review dates from before the controversy kicked up by Schulz’s family called Michaelis’s account into question, however, and therefore makes no mention of the alleged problems with the book. Shortly after publication the New York Times printed a brief article detailing the family’s main objections, and more remarkable still is this thread of comments on Cartoon Brew, in which four members of the family (Monte Schulz, Amy Schulz Johnson, Jill Schulz, and Jean Schulz) appear to lay into Michaelis for numerous errors and omissions, and for the overall tone of his portrayal of the artist. Michaelis indirectly addresses a few of these issues in one interview conducted before the Schulzes went on the warpath, but the NYT article presents his best response:
Mr. Michaelis said that he was surprised to hear how upset some members of the family were, but that “to their children fathers are always heroes, and very few families can see beyond that paterfamilias.” After interviewing hundreds of people, going through every one of the 17,897 comic strips Schulz drew and doing extensive research, Mr. Michaelis said, “this was the man I found.”
“Did I get the story right?” he asked. “Absolutely. No question.”
The fact that one of Schulz’s children, Amy, actually calls her father “Christ-like” in response to perceived slights in Michaelis’s book would seem to bear out the idea that her assessment, at least, may not be entirely accurate. The biographer naturally dwells on the interesting, but the interesting stuff in a life is precisely what people personally associated with that life will try to hide or revise after the fact, so we should expect a strong reaction to any account that isn’t entirely positive. Minor factual errors aside, the main complaints seem to be mostly unfounded. (more…)