Darkness & Light

Progress with From Hell has been fitful lately. I hardly touched it in the week of the production and didn't take it to Melaka, having other fish to fry there. It's difficult to read in bed due to it's sheer size so I've taken to dipping into Colin Wilson's book on the murders, last thing at night, the one he co-wrote with Robin Odell. Doing so helps to create a necessary distance from the mesmerising, sometimes overwhelming power of the graphic novel. (There are moments when I feel I'm drowning in black & white.) I've just got to the end of Chapter 9, the titular From Hell, and it feels a bit like being on the edge of the heart of darkness.

There were a few fish in Melaka. I reread a few of the stories in Salman Rushdie's East, West, as preparation for introducing the text to my classes soon. The stories seemed to pack much more emotional power the second time round - my first reading seemed to be spent coming to terms with the verbal & stylistic fireworks. In fact I found the ending of Chekov and Zulu extremely moving in this respect. In between times I glanced at The God of Small Things, essentially to sort out certain details of the plot, again as preparation for lessons. I feel keenly the need to read it again cover to cover (to do it artistic justice) but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to hack out the time. And, finally, I luxuriated in the first third or so of Roddy Doyle's The Snapper. Apart from the fact that it's an hysterically funny read it also seems to me to be slyly wise. It's made me uncomfortably aware of my occasional (possibly frequent, let's be honest) priggishness. I suppose there's a fairly good working definition of Literature (with a capital 'L') lurking here: books that are even better the second and third time around that entertain you in ways that are less than comfortable.