Monsters

Spent a fair amount of the day considering what exactly it is that Dostoevsky and Dickens share in common, having made the comparison the other day. Obviously a concern with the world of the underdog, occasionally in ways that are disturbingly subversive, despite the apparent conservatism of both writers. (I use the term 'conservatism' here not so much in a political as in a social sense.)
 
Less obviously, but more tellingly, an ability to see people, and render them on paper, as what they really are. Monsters.

This accounts for the feeling that both writers engender that somehow we are not dealing with realistic fiction in the usual sense despite our recognition of how uncannily real it all is - a kind of hyper-reality.

This came home to me very powerfully today in three conversations I had, quite disconnected from each other, each one concerning quite different people, in which I immediately recognised accounts of behaviour that would not be out of place in The Idiot or Little Dorrit. So often we normalise, as it were, the behaviour of those we come into contact with, or even ourselves, to make it all seem reasonably sane but Dostoevsky and Dickens are there to remind us that it isn't (and that we aren't.)

And isn't it striking how obsessive both writers were about the idea of murder? FD seems to find a way to bring accounts of real life murders into The Idiot at regular intervals despite them having nothing to do with the plot in any direct way. Spooky.

On The Edge

Finally finding enough space to get on with something akin to sustained reading. Made reasonable progress in The Idiot today and got to the end of Part 1. Gripping stuff, by the way. The sequence of Nastasya Filippovna throwing the money on the fire in front of a house full of visitors on the evening of Prince Myshkin's first day in Petersburg is Dostoevsky at his edgy, scandalous best. On the surface it's impossible to understand or predict how his characters will behave, yet there's a strange dream logic to it all that makes events appear inevitable, no matter how crazy things get.

It's lucky I chose to read The Idiot over this recent period. I think I would have officially abandoned almost any other novel. But even just reading a couple of pages in a day has been enough to hold me tight to the novel and its strange story. Dostoevsky, like Dickens I suppose - I can't think of any other writer to compare him to - creates his own world. It runs parallel to ours, but seems to operate on somewhat different rules. But there's nothing of Dickensian comfort in the Russian Master's odd world. Things always seem to be teetering on the edge of some necessary disaster.

And what exactly is it all supposed to mean? Like Kafka, I'm not sure I really want to find out, even if I could.

Words Of Wisdom

Found myself speaking to a lot of very bright young people today, mainly about the writing of poetry, but I strayed into a few other areas as well. Of course, it's a situation I find myself in most days of the week, but the difference was that most of today's young people had not had to listen to me before, so there was a distinct sense of the unexpected - at least on my part.

Looking back on today's experience three things strike me, in retrospect as it were:

1. I've become extremely opinionated in my old age, and most of my opinions are a bit odd.

2. The young people I come into contact with here talk a lot of sense, and don't really need too much of other people's opinions (of which they get more than plenty.)

3. I hope they take the opinions of their elders, self included, with a super large grain of salt.

But that's just my opinion.

Too Much

Made myself go to the gym a couple of hours back for thirty-five minutes of torture exercise on the pedal-thingy machine. Thought I'd feel better for it. I didn't.

A Bit Of A Wander

Wandered out this evening just across the road to see the doctor. Or, rather, I accompanied Noi who needed to have a very sore finger checked out. She's been on antibiotics, but they've had little effect in terms of reducing the swelling, and as it turns out she'll need to go to the hospital tomorrow so they can drain the nasty stuff out her swollen appendage.

But this is beside the point. I just wanted to say how pleasant it is to walk out on an evening in the tropics. No wonder the coffee shops fill up around this time. The one time it feels like the pressure's off, even if it isn't. Little kids being taken out in their pyjamas. That says it all really.

Time to breathe.

The Real Thing

Had very little opportunity, if any, today to listen to music of the recorded variety. Fortunately, however, heard plenty of the live version, and was well pleased as a result. Isn't it odd, and possibly pernicious, how we've come to think of music as something essentially recorded? In one way of looking at it, or, rather, one way of hearing, only the live experience is 'real' music, an act of making in which the possibility of the components not quite coming together gives real life to the experience of listening.

Poor Folk

The poor are always with us, or so the Good Book in some translations tells us - a line that certain smarmy commentators of a conservative bent love to quote whilst grinning at their ingenuity in somehow justifying poverty (for others, of course) on the grounds that it's an essential part of the human condition. I must say, I'm particularly glad I'm not amongst their number - the poor, that is - in the country to our immediate north. The ringgit seems to be in free-fall at the moment, and whilst this is good news for those of us who get paid in Sing dollars and can gain considerably through the conversion to our neighbours' currency, I'm sure the repercussions for those struggling at the bottom of the food chain over there are/will be not pleasant.

When I was a kid I was vaguely aware that ensuring the family got through the week without running out of money before the Friday pay packet came was a concern for my parents. And I was also sort of aware that there were families around us who didn't always quite manage the trick. As an adult I look back with a sense of admiration at those who coped with those kind of pressures and got through it all. There's something heroic about those who count their pennies and somehow make them last. But, like I said above, I'm glad I'm not one of them.

Going To Extremes

Once upon a time I vaguely regarded restraint as some kind of artistic virtue. Not anymore.

That's what reading Dostoevsky and listening to VDGG at around about one and the same time does to you.

Fortunately I'm too busy to administer either other than in small doses, otherwise things could get very extreme.

Mockingbird

Good to see a fair amount of publicity of late surrounding the publication of Go Set A Watchman, the sort of companion novel to Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, simply on the grounds that any recognition of the power of literary fiction in the media is a good thing.

I haven't read the new one yet, and I'm not in any great hurry. I'm not a huge fan of Mockingbird, even though I've taught it a few times for 'O' level, so I haven't felt it imperative to get hold of the more recent publication relating to it, as it seems so many fans have. Actually the oddly passionate interest in Harper Lee's first, and, until recently at least, only novel seems to me to spring from two differing sources. The first is the simple fact that many readers, I suspect, encounter it in school and, thus, it has a peculiar impact as one of the few texts they'll ever read so closely. And second we have to take into account the strangely mythic power of the whole confection - captured beautifully, of course, in the movie. (Gregory Peck at his magnificent best.) But the truth is that in some ways it's a rather clumsy novel and distinctly over-written in places. (Try reading some of the weaker sections aloud to a class and you'll see what I mean.)

I remember in the late 80's an attempt of sorts being made to 'replace' it in schools (in the UK) as the canonical novel on matters of race in the American South with Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, partly on the grounds that as a black writer Ms Taylor's portrayal of such material was the more authentic. This sounds a bit overly politically correct, I know, but I must say I was a lot more comfortable teaching Cassie Logan's view of the world than I was that of Scout Finch. Cassie struck me as by far the more 'real' of the two children, but I'm not sure that Roll of Thunder plugged into that strangely nebulous mythical power in its evocation of childhood that I mentioned earlier. I can't quite imagine any reader being besotted with it in the same way that some manage with Lee's opus.

But I suppose we've got both, so there's really no need to choose.

Of Immediate Concern

At war with my own foolishness today as to whether I'll allow the weekend to be blighted in spirit by the pressures created by simply having so much to do (in relation to the Toad, work that is.) Managed to get out this afternoon to a Haj class at Bras Basah, and then onwards to tea and a muffin at the Raffles Hotel, no less. Ended up paying a small fortune for parking at the hotel but it was worth it just to breathe more easily.

Returned to get on with some more work, but with a greater sense of equilibrium, finding time to listen to two of Van Der Graaf 's more recent albums (the ones featuring the Jaxon-less trio). Though as to whether I'm entirely balanced remains uncertain.