Slow Reading

It took me just over a week to read Samantha Harvey's Orbital - which I completed this morning, having saved the final four pages for a leisurely read before getting on with my marking for the day. Since the whole novel (novella?) comprises just 136 pages I can't make up my mind whether I'm pleased or embarrassed that such a slight text took me so long. 

Pleased because: this is a work that in its sheer intensity cries out to be read slowly.

Embarrassed because: time was I would have read that number of pages in a day, or possibly two, and I'm really just making excuses for an old chap's lack of focus. 

Anyway, I reckon it's a brilliant book. In almost every way highly original. Gem-like in its beauty. And convincing in its often radiant picture of our poor planet in a similar light.

Found And Lost And Found

Noi has returned from her adventures in Surabaya and Malang, so life is returning to its usual satisfying routines here. I met her at the airport just now where she arrived happily on time after a smooth flight, but unhappily without her watch which she had taken off in the restroom at Terminal 2 before getting her luggage and left behind. When she tried to retrieve it, it had gone. I assumed for good, but we made a report at the info desk at Arrivals before grabbing a bite at the Cafe O upstairs at Departures.

Astonishingly we received a text there, telling us the timepiece had been found and handed in by the restroom attendant. And it was back on Noi's wrist by the time we set off back home.

Yet again the airport staff score maximum marks in this writer's unofficial title race for world's best staff at a great airport. Somebody here is definitely doing something right. 

The Days Are Packed

14.00

After a busy morning I still have a busy afternoon and evening ahead of me. Now in transit from Friday Prayers to receive an award I don't really want. (No money involved, I'm afraid. Yes, I'm really that calculating.) I'll be late for the event, but I quite enjoy being late for this kind of thing, so that adds to the fun. Then I'm off to the cinema to watch The Odyssey, having bowed to pressure from quite a few students to do so. Could be fun, but might not be. Watch this space for further details, as they say.

19.10

Briefly back at the ranch for a quick shave. Then it's onwards! (Again!)

23.55

Gosh, that was good. The film, I mean. I surrendered to the story-telling from the get-go - which was easy given the craftsmanship on display. In advance I did wonder whether I'd struggle with the sheer length of the movie, but it seemed pretty much perfectly paced for this viewer.

The Unexpected.

A good day - until a late-night case of students' items going missing took the final hours in a new, less positive, direction. Stuff happens, I'm afraid.

Feeling Obliged

Attended an interesting talk this afternoon delivered by three young ladies who recently directed a production of Medea. There's a video of this available to us in school, but I've not had the chance to watch it yet. From their account it sounds like quite an adventurous version of the tragedy with lots of inventive creativity involved.

Which got me thinking in broad terms of how much of an obligation a director owes to a text he or she is staging. I didn't want to put this directly to the three ladies this afternoon since it sounds a bit confrontational if you're not aware that my view is that if you're putting on a show your only obligation is to make it work for your audience and all other considerations come a long way after that. So the fact that their production features a deliberately individuated (if that's the right word) chorus doesn't worry me in the slightest - indeed, sounds exciting - but it's definitely not what Euripides intended, or how Greek drama works.

Actually a kind of answer did emerge when one of the directors said they didn't alter the sequence of events in any way. That seemed to point to some sense of the kind of obligation I had in mind. To be honest, I doubt the notion of 'obligation' had crossed their minds in any explicit sense, since thinking about this made me aware that in my days of putting on shows I never consciously took this into account. But I'm very sure I did have a kind of intuitive sense of the parametres I set for myself in terms of playing around with the script being worked on and how it was to be manifested on the stage.

Essentially I've only ever worked with material that I felt I wanted to deliver in something akin to the form originally intended. I was always in thrall to what I vaguely saw as the magic of the original. So I don't think I would have ever tried to do something with a chorus that the progenitor of the text would have found foreign to their understanding of what a chorus should do. The fascination for me lay in making whatever the writer wanted work - even if that meant an audience might struggle to 'relate' to what was on stage. Indeed, I suspect that the most exciting kind of shows are difficult in that sense.

Mind you, it's also the case that I'm not all that creative as an individual so maybe I was just taking the easy way out after all.

Sounding Delicious

Forgot to mention the 'other' reading I'm indulging in at present, in addition to the fiction that's on the go. Won't try and list it all, but suffice to say it's well under control being manfully restricted to just three 'extra' tomes at present.

One of these, that I will say something about, is the very chunky Tennyson - A Selected Edition in the Longman Annotated Poets series (which is always value for money.) The notes, courtesy of Prof Christopher Ricks, are excellent (as you might expect coming from the great prof) and a huge help in putting the individual poems in context. And I must say that reading Tennyson is a lot easier than getting on with Henry Vaughan just at the level of straightforward clarity.

The only problem, and I'm not really sure it is a problem exactly, is that it seems to me that the early poems are clear simply because they don't have a lot to say. Oodles of atmosphere, yes, and they sound gorgeous, but other than expressing a general mellifluous longing I'm not sure there's all that much going on. Mind you, I suppose there's a fair argument that mellifluous longing is quite enough to be going on with, especially for the lovelorn. 

The Right Spirit

Today had a look around the WWW for responses to Leila Aboulela's River Spirit, the novel I finished over the weekend. Was heartened to see how many good reviews it had got, especially over at Goodreads, a sign, I think, of a text with mass appeal. I suppose that's what most forcibly struck me about the novel: it obviously has abundant literary merits, especially in the expertise with which the writer switches point-of-view; but it's a strong story also, something of a Romance, I suppose, with central characters who manage to be both believably true to their time and place, yet actually likeable. I have in mind Akuany and Yaseen, who carry the central 'romance', if that's what it is, and Salha, Yaseen's actual wife, who by the end of the story seems to occupy its moral centre. It's also worth saying that the European characters escape caricature - especially the Orientalist artist Robert. Even General Gordon evokes some sympathy, possibly more than the Mahdi himself, though Ms Aboulela is completely convincing in her portrayal of the oppression suffered by the Muslim population of the Sudan.

Indeed, she strikes me as a formidably empathetic writer, as well as an assured stylist. 

Oh, and I must say it's refreshing to read a novel that embodies a fair and insightful view of Islam, especially through the abundant good sense and intelligence of the merchant and scholar of the Qur'an Yaseen. 

Real Reading

Noi is going with her sewing chums to Surabaya this week. I saw her off at the airport early this afternoon and jolly nice it was there, at Terminal 2. Her group of four had already checked-in on line before we even got there, and it took less than ten minutes for them all to complete the automated stuff needed to get boarding passes and check-in their luggage with no queue in sight. In fact, the main business of the proceedings was to catch a bagel and chai latte at Starbucks and then say cheerio, which was all highly relaxing in its way.

I took the MRT back, with a cunning detour into the centre of town for a visit to the big Kinokuniya bookshop. Must say, the shelves were looking a lot healthier than the last time I was there which made me a little more sanguine about its future. And the place was absolutely packed, for the most part with young people who kept getting in my way around the Literature shelves. Which added considerably to my optimism about the future of reading on these shores.

Picked up a copy of Samantha Harvey's Orbital of which I've heard nothing but extremely good things. And on the evidence of the opening pages, it looks like those extremely good things were accurate. This is my replacement for Leila Aboulela's River Spirit which I finished yesterday, a novel of which I'd heard nothing until it landed on my desk, though it did win the Caine Prize for African writing. Which doesn't surprise me as it proved to be a deeply engaging read. Actually genuinely exciting in terms of the action therein, and genuinely insightful regarding Sudan and its people.

Looking forward to getting some real reading done in the last couple of weeks of term and the holiday week now the marking has scaled down to reasonable proportions.

In Theory

It's that Saturday at that time of year when I find myself serving as a 'Lit Critic' at the annual Lit Seminar that takes place on these shores. Last year I found myself a bit more uneasy than is my usual wont on account of the degree to which all of the kids' presentations, first-rate as they were, were heavily informed by my bête noire: Theory. And it was the same this year. Excellent presentations, but the insights afforded by the theories referenced struck me as not as insightful as the texts themselves and the experience of reading those texts.

Fortunately the students' sense of enthusiasm for the texts was palpable - for the most part. Oddly the most sophisticated of the presentations in terms of real intellectual firepower also struck me as being the most detached from any sense of the actual texts referenced being genuinely worth engaging with. Mind you, one of the texts under scrutiny was a recent Disney offering so the notion of real value was in doubt from the get-go.

I can't help but wonder if all this is related to something I've often been made painfully aware of over my years of teaching Lit here: the strange fact that the idea of the simple enjoyment of novels, plays & poems seems almost frowned upon, as if essentially frivolous. I suppose I should be rather more reticent than I am over letting people know that I basically have a good time teaching the stuff I teach and it's not exactly work in any sense. But let that be our little secret, Gentle Reader.

The Shallow End

Now complacently pleased with myself for getting to the gym this evening, keeping up a decent level of frequency for August. Got good numbers without really trying and thought I'd tell the world the good news. Really should aim for greater depth in my life, but just can't be bothered.