The Green Stuff

As I mentioned the other day, I've made a start on the Letters of Ted Hughes and the great poet's genius is obvious from the very earliest letters penned in his teenage years. Amusingly another obvious aspect of TH's character on regular display in these missives, a bit at odds with the usual stereotypes of literary brilliance, is his keen interest in how to get his hands on money - plenty of it - in as short order as possible. I remember Jonathan Bate pointing out in his biography of the poet just how often Hughes got involved in money-making schemes, usually of his own contriving, but it's striking to witness this at first hand, as it were. And the schemes are invested with as much imaginative zest as his verse, as in one early letter to his older brother extolling the virtues of breeding mink in the British Isles.

Mind you, it's important to bear in mind that in these early years TH is looking for a way to forge a poetic career - and doing so with the relentlessness of Joyce. I don't think we can characterise the Hughes family as being working class, but they're not that much better off, so financial survival is an enormously real concern to allow room for writing, yet one that is obviously going to be dealt with somehow.

Just in general terms, TH's confidence in his gifts is wonderfully bracing. I love his passing reference in a letter to his sister Olwyn, to the children's stories that were to be collected in How the Whale Became, a favourite book of mine. He just knows what he has achieved: Since I came here I've written nine animal fables. They are original and I think they are very good. I have written them absolutely simply.

Hope he earned a few bob from that book alone!

Further Jollification

A bit of a repeat of yesterday. Accomplished the same amount of marking in the early part of the day. Then it was off to Woodlands with lots of eatables prepared by the Missus to confirm and celebrate the engagement of Fafa with a gathering of a fair number of the clan at Rozita & Fuad's - not to mention cutting a cake for Fifi's birthday. Somehow our nieces got all grown-up when we weren't looking.

Must say, it's been a fine way to spend a weekend, but I'm not sure I could keep up such a frantic social life beyond a couple of days. 

A Sense Of Balance

Spent the morning and early afternoon marking various Individual Orals from the November examinations for the IB. Then spent the evening eating plentifully in excellent company at Yati and Nahar's along with Boon and Mei. I know which part of the day I preferred, though I suppose they complemented each other well enough.

Something Funny

A good day for all in all. But quite serious in tone. Felt the need for laughter, of the out loud variety around 10 pm. Considered with some care what might be guaranteed to provoke the necessary chortles and decided an episode of Round the Horne would do the trick. Quite honestly the one I selected was an entirely random choice, but what a classic!

Nice to think I most likely would have listened to this live on Sunday with the rest of the family at just ten years old and been chortling away, not really understanding half of what was going on - but knowing it was funny despite my not knowing.

Forging Ahead

Much as I've enjoyed rereading some of the novels on my shelves recently it struck me as being a bit overly inward-looking. With that stricture in mind I popped into the library at work yesterday and came out with three titles intended as reading (of fiction) for the next couple of months. Not necessarily in order of merit they are: Conrad's Chance, Alice Munro's The Beggar Maid and Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love. (To be honest, they are in descending order of merit, but you're not allowed to say that sort of elitist thing these days. I'm hoping the brackets will save me from general opprobrium on social media. That and the fact that my readership remains helpfully low in number.)

I made a start on Fleming's fifth Bond outing and, I must say, it's a stormer. Vastly superior to Casino Royale, the first in the series, which I borrowed from the library some time back. There were signs of fine writing in Casino Royale, but also a lot of clumsiness and downright uncertainty. However, I've just finished the first part of From Russia with Love, which is set almost entirely in Russia as the dastardly plot against Bond is worked out and the writing is uniformly excellent. Not that I'm claiming it's got the subtlety of John le Carre - Fleming is writing in-your-face popular fiction; but he's writing it as well as it can be written.

I'd cite as evidence the brilliant first chapter, in which nothing much happens except a somewhat unpleasantly tough and mysterious chap getting a massage at a poolside from an attractive young lady. There's a vaguely sexual undertone to the description, but nothing overt - which later turns out to be important in terms of the characterisation of the chap, a Smersh assassin - but far more significant is the explicit yet unrealised sense of menace. Fleming conveys this in the slightest details. I said he wasn't subtle, but how about: To take the small things first: his hair.? I love that colon (the only one in the whole of Part 1 if I'm not wrong) beautifully suggesting the slight hesitation of the unnamed masseuse as she assesses her client's body in a detached, deliberately distanced, fearful fashion.  As I said, nothing happens, but you just have to read on. 

I should add, by the by, that I'm mixing my reading of Fleming with the very chunky Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid. I've dipped into Reid's selection often but I've decided it's time to go cover to cover. Hughes's spelling is something to wonder at, by the way. I suppose when you're a genius you can afford not to care about the conventions we ordinary humans have to follow but TH couldn't be bothered even before anyone knew he was officially the real thing. Though even the very earliest pre-Cambridge letters explode with something very like genius.

Received Opinions

I like to think I'm the sturdily independent sort when it comes to forming opinions relating to novels, drama, music, poetry, art, and all that palaver. However, in recent times I've come to suspect that deep down I'm more of a follower than I'd ever care to admit. But I'm also coming to think that's not such a bad thing as long as I make sensible choices as to whom to follow.

Two such choices for me, that I've mentioned in this Far Place before, are the music-themed blogs of Richard Williams at thebluemovement.com and Bob Shingleton at On An Overgrown Path. Both temporarily closed down earlier this year and I felt the loss keenly. Mr Williams's blog is only functioning intermittently at the moment, but it's good to see signs of life, whilst the quirky Overgrown Path appears to be back in its full fascinating glory, I'm very pleased to say.

I've learnt a heck of a lot from both and been guided along paths into territory very much worth exploring. I may have stumbled upon it by myself, but I somehow doubt I would have fully recognised where I was and its special beauties.

Picking Up The Pace

It's the invigilation season and I am feeling absurdly pleased with myself for succeeding in walking as quickly as my colleagues. Mind you, considering the fact that a little over a month ago I couldn't walk at all I think I can cut myself some slack on this one.

Not So Simple

Another odd coincidence. On this day, last year I was moaning about the rise in price of the week to a view diary that I favour. (In truth, 'favour' is a mild way to put it. I just have to have one of of the darn things to function.) And then just yesterday I ended up getting my copy for 2023, paying almost three times as much as usual since the only version available seemed to be the 'executive diary'. I suppose I should pretend to be an executive of some kind, but I'm afraid I really don't fit the part. A simple chap like myself requires a cheap, simple diary, but those days are gone.

Second Time Around

Odd coincidence. Yesterday I was talking about being on the lookout for examples of graft being used in the sense of corruption in a British context, vaguely guessing this crept into common usage in the last ten years or so. Then this afternoon, approaching the end of Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, in the 'half' chapter entitled Parenthesis I stumbled upon the phrase, ...the bribe-takers to graft. Now the novel, or, rather, collection of cunningly linked short stories, was published in 1989, which is when I first read it, so the American usage of graft crossed the Atlantic a lot earlier than I thought. 

In case you're wondering why I've been rereading Barnes's book, it's really down to my colleague Saravanan, who offered to lend me his copy the other day when I was talking about running out of fiction to read in my convalescence. This prompted me to remember I had a time-faded copy on my shelves somewhere and I'd forgotten most of the stories except the first in the volume about Noah and the one about Gericault's The Wreck of the Medusa (if that's what the painting is called.) It struck me that I'd not really been all that enthusiastic about the volume, except for the Gericault story which struck me as both highly original and very engaging. One problem had been the hard work of adjusting to the very different worlds, linked tenuously by themes and motifs, in each story. Since then I've read three other novels by Barnes which I've enjoyed immensely: Flaubert's Parrot, Arthur & George and The Sense of Ending and I thought it might be worth giving History of the World another go now I'm older and (highly tentatively!) wiser.

Must say, this time around I didn't have much of a problem moving from one tale to another. I suppose having read them some thirty-three years ago might have helped, though I remembered precious little in the way of detail. I can't say I found them much more engaging this time around though. Clever, yes, but not gripping at the emotional level - except for the account of the voyage of the St Louis with its crew of Jewish refugees in the Three Simple Stories chapter, but this works at the level of simple historical truth. Can't say I really appreciate the weaving together of the various motifs. I mean it's quite entertaining in its way to take note of the woodworm and bitumen and various waterways and whatnot popping up here and there, but any real significance is strictly illusory as far as I can see (or not see, if you see what I mean.)

Facing Two Ways

We were driving back from Arab Street this afternoon, passing a building site for a new MRT station, when the phrase hard graft popped into my head as I observed the various workmen scattered across the site applying themselves to all sorts of tasks. The fact that they were all heavily clad to protect them from the sun and from injury added to the sense of just how physically tough the work was. It put me in mind of when I was a kid watching bricklayers working on construction sites back in the UK in the depths of winter with other labourers shoveling the frozen ground as they worked. 

But then it struck me that the word graft now seems more commonly used to refer to corruption, especially the sort that is political in nature. I know this seems an odd change of subject, but the deep contradiction in terms of meaning struck me as particularly jarring. I mean, I'm very much aware of the existence of 'Janus words' that face in very different directions, but going from a word that evokes a feeling of an essential nobility to the same word conjuring a sense of sleaze was quite a switch. Not to mention the notion of grafting a fresh piece of skin upon a wound, for a third meaning.

When I got home I did a bit of research into the origins of the word to see how the contradiction(s) emerged, but didn't get too far. But I was able to figure out that in personal terms I probably encountered the idea of graft as work first, in childhood I think, since hard graft is regarded as informal and British whereas graft as corruption is seen as American. I reckon in recent times - especially the last ten years or so - it's very much entered the lexicon of British political discourse. I intend to listen out for it to confirm my suspicions. I also suspect that hard graft is very much a working class thing in British terms since those are the folks condemned to it.