On The Mountain

I've got four books on the go at the moment and I'm happy to say I'm thoroughly enjoying all four. And I'm reading all at a very slow pace indeed, which I think is adding to the enjoyment. I suppose I'm savouring them all.

One of them is the Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, which has been occupying me for some months now. I've just started on River, which at the time of publication struck me as a bit of a disappointment, I suppose because the original book, like Remains of Elmet, featured an interplay of text and image and the images didn't work for me at all. In the Collected there are no images, of course, and I think River gains by that. Having said that, I was struck by the mixed quality of the opening few poems. The Morning before Christmas struck me as Hughes on something close to concrete top form; Flesh of Light, I struggled with, not quite tuning in Hughes in mythopoeic mode (I think, I really didn't get it, I'm afraid).

Then there's Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary, regarding which the whole point was to reread at a pace that guaranteed I followed the fine detail of the argument. I'm happy to say it's working, such that material I thought was a bit tricky the first time round turns out to be obvious - and even more convincing. It's a bit like reading a murder mystery for the second time where the biggest puzzle is how you didn't figure out the killer right away the first time round.

The third tome under slow scrutiny is a handsome compendium from Thames and Hudson entitled The World of Islam. It's got lots of fascinating illustrations and features a number of essays from various experts - but of a fairly 'orientalist' persuasion, being edited by Bernard Lewis. It's been on my shelves for a few years and I've frequently dipped into its pages, but never tried to read more than a few pages of an essay at a time. I think I know why. The style resembles that of an encyclopaedia, never really seeking to excite the reader, but strong on basic information. In some ways this is the right time for me to carry out a sequential reading since I know enough to feel that I'm benefitting from the gaps in my understanding being filled in as opposed to learning about the world under view from scratch.

And, finally, the latest thing on the fiction front is a classic I've had in view for some years and never got round to: Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm highly deficient in German lit and the only Mann I've read is Death in Venice (as a teenager) and Buddenbrooks. I thought both were brilliant, so it's a bit of a surprise I've never got beyond them. Also the status of The Magic Mountain as a modernist classic, with all that that implies in terms of its relation to the work of Joyce and Proust, adds to the puzzling aspect of the gap - though simple laziness probably suffices as an explanation. Anyway, I'm sixty pages or so into Castrop's arrival at Davos and completely bewildered as to where any of this is going, though relishing the detail of every paragraph. An excellent sign.