A Sort of Perfection

We kept ourselves busy in KL over the weekend, which left me little time to read anything. But enough time for Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. A weekend spent reading the great American novella can never be counted as wasted.

Keeping In Touch

If someone had told me at nine o'clock yesterday evening that I'd be able to post to this Far Place today I wouldn't have placed any great faith in their judgement. Arriving at Maison KL after an uneventful drive we found the phone lines working, rather gratifyingly since they weren't the last time we were here, but a lady's voice thereon informed us that the service had been cut off as we hadn't paid our last bill. In addition there was another letter suggesting we had terminated out internet service - which surprised us as we'd done no such thing. (We also found that a monkey had decided to use our bedroom balconey as a lavatory, but that's quite another story.)

We set out to try and sort out this mess and restore communications late this morning, none too hopeful of achieving very much. And then we found ourselves in several queues, being shunted from one attendant to another, as is often the way here. But astonishingly, it worked. By the time we reached home our phone lines were working and our internet connection restored. Mind you, the monkey droppings are still there. Still, two out of three's not bad at all.

The Real Thing

For the first time in yonks I bought a copy of The New York Review of Books. I'd be more than happy to buy every copy that came out - and I can just about afford it - but I've been manfully restricting myself to only making a purchase when I've read all the material in the one I'm reading currently, and it's a measure of my painfully slow speed of reading that I've only managed one edition since the beginning of the year. Mind you, it's been a busy old year regarding the Toad work one way or another, so there's another weak excuse. And I read a fair bit of what the editors rather sweetly post on their website.

This time I just had to buy a copy though since, as well as finishing the previous edition, I noticed from the online edition that there was an excellent article on Duke Ellington, and since he's one of my super-heroes I just had to have the hard copy to savour it. Somehow reading it the old-fashioned way makes it feel more real.

I suppose that's somewhat similar to the sense you have of listening to real music made by real men (and a lady or two) when savouring the Duke's actual recordings.

Punked

Caught a ten minute item on BBC World earlier today featuring everyone's favourite politically committed, radical leftist, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg. Very interesting to hear about Billy's moment of epiphany as a youngster caught up in the heady days of 1970's punk undergone, as I'm sure many such moments were, watching the almost equally young The Clash in concert.

Our songster was, as were we all, a big fan of the Stones and he suddenly realised The Clash were doing what The Rolling Stones had done; in fact they were being the Stones, and there was nothing stopping anybody and everybody having a go too, if they were so inclined. Billy was (so inclined) and the rest is history, so to speak.

This was the essential lesson of punk, not the safety pins, the mohicans, the spitting and general cursing - as much fun as they were. Write the song yourself and play it yourself, preferably for an audience of more than one. And don't let anyone tell you you can't.

Not Enough Said

Even as I typed yesterday's post I knew it wasn't the whole truth (but then it never is.) It was a lousy day, certainly, but this related simply to a rather frustrating mess that I needed to help to clear up. Not that you ever really clear such things up or genuinely deal with them. Rather you apply a couple of sticking plasters and hope for the unlikely best. But the point I'm getting to is that the spillage from the mess sort of infected every corner of my day quite unnecessarily simply because I foolishly allowed it to.

So to redress the balance I'm just going to mention four bright spots of my Tuesday, in no particular order of merit, as they say:

1. Enjoyed all the teaching that went on. Really pleasant students and I think one or two learnt a bit.

2. Saw a squirrel crossing the driveway at work. Fabulously bushy tail.

3. One colleague talked about recovering from a very bad illness. Another of his young daughter's recovery from something awfully similar. More than enough to keep any small troubles of my own in proportion.

4. Came home to play Elvis Costello's North. My fourth listen. Genius. Now at the point that I'm carrying around fragments of several of the songs all day long.

Now if you can come close to matching that list I reckon you're very, very lucky indeed.

Enough Said

Dreadful day in terms of the Toad work. I don't really want to talk about it. So I won't.

Getting Away From It All

A little correction to yesterday's post. I said that Ghosts and A Doll's House weren't in any sense 'message' plays, but on one level they clearly are. I should have said that this is not fundamental to how they function or affect the viewer.

But it's not all been Ibsenite gloom (or light, possibly) lately. The joys of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? have done much to remind me of just how flexible a medium for ideas the novel can be. At least one trick he pulls off, amongst many, is quite remarkable. I'm referring to the way he takes tissue thin characters - at times little more than ciphers for the real thing - and endows them, or evokes through them, powerful layers of emotion. The bit where Phil Resch, the android hunter that our 'hero' and chief android-hunter, Rick Deckard, encounters at the 'other' police department, is wondering whether he himself is also an android, and coolly assessing how he intends to do away with himself, had me both genuinely on the edge of my seat with suspense (I'd completely forgotten what happens next) and feeling a sense of potential real loss. It's as if you are made to endow the characters with the psychological depth Dick doesn't bother to give them - or cunningly implies. I suppose.

I've also been holidaying in the sunlit world of Anthony Buckeridge's characters Jennings and Darbishire having picked up one of the series in a recent amazonian foray. More of which anon, as I am now going to get ready to take our nieces for a bit of a nosh-up in honour of Fifi's birthday. There's more to life than just books, you know.

More Ghosts

First of all I reckon Joyce recognised an implacable honesty in Ibsen. It's easy to forget that that same kind of honesty was something that Joyce saw as central to his own art, and it was, of course, that honesty that got him into so much trouble with the censors. It's also easy to forget how deeply shocking Ibsen must have been to his first audiences. I thought I'd find that aspect of the plays fairly routine as I reread a couple - i.e., Ghosts and A Doll's House - but I found myself aware of the intensity of their challenge to our conventions of respectability both then and now.

Worryingly I saw enough of myself in Torvald Helmer to instill at least a temporary sense of humility regarding the scandals of others.

Secondly I think Joyce saw, even just on the printed page since he wouldn't have witnessed any productions, the poetry that seems to lie behind the plays. The action of each seems to take place against a web of symbolic associations, signaled clearly in the titles of the two I'm talking about here. This poetry takes us beyond the immediate social applications of the dramas. It gives them that peculiarly Joycean sense of stasis, the integritas, consonantia, claritas of Aquinas that Joyce made his own, and ours.

It seems to me remarkable that the young Joyce knew immediately what hardly anyone else of his time recognised - that these are not in any sense 'message' plays.

Ghosts Again

The only real ghosts I've encountered lately are those in Ibsen's drama of the same name. His are much more frightening than the real thing because they can't be escaped and they don't go away.

The last time I met them was quite a number of years ago when I originally read a fair bit of Ibsen. They weren't quite as frightening then - but nothing is at that age.

I realised that the main reason I'm reading Ibsen again, other than teaching Hedda Gabler which we use as one of our World Lit texts in school, is as a result of my recent immersion in Joyce's Stephen Hero. I'd half-forgotten what a great fan of Ibsen Joyce (and hence Stephen) was. The young Jim Joyce after all wrote a fan letter to the elderly Ibsen, a rather touching one, in fact. Being reminded of this made me interested in what exactly it was that Joyce found so deeply impressive in the dramas. It's not as if they obviously correspond to the aesthetic theories expounded in A Portrait and Stephen Hero.

I think I found the answer - two answers indeed. And I might just say what they are if I can find the time tomorrow.

In Our Finery

The shots above are not exactly current, dating back as they do to an Eid outing last month in Melaka. But they capture me and the missus in our current state of repair, which is not all that darned bad I'd say. I reckon the grey look worked. Well, on the lady, at least.