Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Gloomydrome. This week two titans of tristfulness have drawn swords after a combined sixteen years of inactivity, two monsters of melancholia have lined up their newest songs and released, quite coincidentally on the same day, two albums of deepest desolation, facing off, in sadiatorial combat if you will, for the title of Most Miserable Band In Britain. Let’s meet the contenders.
I almost wish I were a sheep farmer, just so as to be eligible to read Sheep! magazine, surely the most enthusiastically named trade periodical ever. The cover of the current issue has an adorable picture of a lamb and a kitten on it, and features such intriguingly entitled articles as Golf Course Sheep Poo a Threat to Public Health, Wether or Not (aha!), and Herd It Through The Grape Vines. Fantastic.
This approach to magazine titling is probably not transferable to other professions, sadly. A pharmaceuticals trade rag called Drugs! probably wouldn’t find its way onto the lobby coffee tables at Gigantopharm UK PLC, for example.
[Original link via Errata.]
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)
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.
A Voyage to the Edge of Madness
(With sincere apologies to H. P. Lovecraft.)
It was in the depths of drear winter when I first sought to acquire that dark magic known only through fragments of ancient, incomprehensible legend as Veepee Enn. It is a dread name, and initiates speak of the thousandfold paths to attainment of its secrets, hinting often at some deep unknowable hierarchy through chains of characters concocted to discourage all but the most determined seeker. Lines of impenetrable seeming-nonsense serve to keep the novice from approaching the level of those who control the communications of a galaxy of possibilities, and unless the elect can decipher the meanings of the names of entities such as “The eight-hundred-and-seventy-seventh W, Gee Eee, K the Ninth,” he should abandon any wish he may have to attain true greatness.
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I really like snow. A decent covering of proper snow, delivered overnight, preferably with a howling gale, deep enough to prevent anyone going off and doing boring things like work or school, and of the correct consistency for snowmen and sledging, is one of the very best things known to mankind. Obviously it would be unpleasant to contend with these conditions on a regular basis, and I don’t particularly envy those people who happen to live in perennially snowy climes and who probably get a bit sick of having to excavate half a tonne of frozen water every few days in order to get to the shops. But the occasional blizzard in a normally temperate climate is a wonderful thing, and we definitely used to have them here in the UK, and I think they were marvellous.
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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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We got here by train, an interesting experience, if not one that I can wholeheartedly recommend: sleeper trains could perhaps be more accurately designated shallow-and-fitful-dozer trains, and the facilities for waiting passengers at Bruxelles-Midi are somewhat spartan, so I arrived in Berlin running at rather less than full capacity.
Not feeling up to anything more demanding, we spent the first day strolling along and around Unter den Linden, looking at landmarks and monuments and memorials. Sightseeing in central Berlin seems to tend towards the serious and sobering, you can barely turn a corner without encountering some reminder of grim events past. A visit to the zoo might be in order at some point, I think, by way of contrast.