Choices choices

Another sleepy evening, and so another little poll. I'm quite intrigued by the results for this one... imagine you could only keep one: Art or Music?

and yes I know music is an art, but you know what I mean...

Responses in the comments, please, and we'll see which wins out!

With the Woolfs

Glad you all took a trip down memory lane with me - I'm sorely tempted to buy the DVD of The Herbs... but probably shouldn't.

That book I was going to talk about... A Boy at the Hogarth Press by Richard Kennedy, which my friend Barbara gave to me, and which (I hear) is being republished by Slightly Foxed. I've had my eye on this for a while, but somehow hadn't got around to buying it when Barbara sent me a copy, and so I was rather delighted. The list of Woolf-related books I've read isn't small, and it is growing - I like to dip back into Bloomsbury waters every now and then, especially the books which are first-hand, but from the peripherals. The most recent addition to 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About was one of these - and while Kennedy's isn't *as* good, it's still rather wonderful.

Richard Kennedy was just what the title suggests - a boy at the Hogarth Press, the small publishing venture started by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Kennedy did the day-to-day tasks, but was also occasionally asked his opinion about the books people sent in - winning something of a victory when he (with the help of his uncle) called Ivy Compton-Burnett a genius, while Leonard Woolf dismissed her as being unable to write. His book was written about forty years after his time there, but is still in the form of a diary, which leads to a rather odd mix of naivety and disingenuosness - but an uncomplicated eye amongst the complicated which is difficult to resist. All new angles of Virginia are welcome to me, but perhaps especially one who wasn't all that afraid of her, and judged her by such standards as it being 'bad form to laugh at your employees'. Love Virginia Woolf though I do, sometimes contemporary accounts of her can be a little nauseating. How much more precise is: 'I think she is rather cruel in spite of the kind, rather dreamy way she looks at you.'

Richard Kennedy would never rival his employers in terms of writing - the boyish charm is needed to carry a patchwork of recollections, tied together by similarly boyish sketches - but A Boy at the Hogarth Press is a refreshing and amusing addition to the canon of Bloomsbury onlookers.

Blame Parsley...

Sorry, I meant to review a book tonight. But I've spent my time using YouTube to re-discover children's programmes from my youth... and before. Especially The Herbs. I await joyful cries...

The Road to Revolution

I mentioned that I'd read Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road last week, for part of my Masters course, and Lucy added in the comments that a film is coming out - which probably means the novel (complete with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the cover, no doubt) will be rocketing up bestseller lists again. Well, whatever small amount my influence can do will, I hope, give the book a start on its way.

Published in the early 1960s, Revolutionary Road was successful in some respects, but widespread popularity doesn't seem to have been one of them, at least not for very long - Yates' is now described as a 'writer's writer', whatever that means. Has to be a good thing, one assumes. Revolutionary Road tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, idealists who live in non-ideal suburbia. The novel opens with a play in which April plays the lead - and it is an unmitigated failure. So (watch out for the simple transferral of allegory) is April's performance as a housewife; so is her performance as a latent revolutionary. The Wheelers dream of better things, and think they are hiding their gold amongst dross - but the credentials of that gold come under question when April decides to put their long-held plans into action.

Revolutionary Road is unmistakably American, and I don't know why. It's not just the "Geez, baby"s that crop up from time to time, but... well, I just don't know. The American Dream in the background, perhaps. The striving for an achievement, even when that achievement is impossible - striving where the English would have cynically given up and put on a pot of tea.

Similarly, I don't know why this novel is so good. All the usual - writing that grabs you, situations which need resolution, a subtle wit throughout - though undeniably sad, too. As I was reading (and before I knew that the Titanic co-stars would be reuniting) I kept thinking the book would make an excellent film - the plot is so event-led. Lots of emotions on the surface, or lots of surface emotions anyway. Kate Winslet rarely does a bad film, and never turns in a bad performance, so I'm quite excited at the prospect of seeing this one on the silver screen. Hopefully Yates will become a readers' writer.

Miss Read et al

Thanks for thoughts on Miss Read - they seem to be overwhelmingly positive, so I shall have to un-neglect this author! I always had her down as quite bad romance, but that was based on the covers seen in my local library - I was rather taken with the covers on the ones I bought. So I might read on and make my judgement on something more literary... the two which I have to sample are Miss Clare Remembers and Gossip from Thrush Green, which seem to be from vaguely the beginning and end of Miss Read's writing career respectively.

These were called comfort reads by a few of you - we were chatting about comfort reads at Book Group last week, and two people there didn't really understand the concept, and thought they'd probably never re-read a book... gosh! I don't re-read much (though have done more this year than usual) but some comfort reads are essential for me.

What else did I buy? Against my better judgement, a book by Jeremy Paxman, who irritates me a great deal - but The English was mentioned so often with fondness in Kate Fox's excellent Watching the English (my thoughts on it here), and seems to attempt a similar thing. Hopefully his writing isn't anything like his presenting/reporting... But it's non-fiction, so that will please Our Vicar (Dad, I've read 28 non-fiction books this year! Proud of me?) Also related to one of my 50 Books... is David Garnett's Aspects of Love: I was in the book shop and toying with spending £3 on a secondhand copy, then saw that there was another copy a few books away for £1.50. I love it when that happens. And I bought it, and read quite a lot of it on the train home - not up to Lady Into Fox, and rather hurried... I daresay I'll write about it soon.

And to finish with, Richard Yates' excellent novel Revolutionary Road - we had a class on this on Friday, and I read a library copy, so am delighted to have a copy of it myself. Will doubtless blog about Revolutionary Road soon too - I've been finishing so many books recently that I'll be able to fill days and days with them! Then again, sometimes there are so many that I forget... I never did blog about Passage to India, and now I can't remember much about it. So I'd better get onto these soon...

But for now, bed. With Miss Buncle's Book, the latest Persephone title.

Back

Hello! I'm back from a lovely time in London, where I attended a fantastic talk (as detailed below) and saw Elaine (Random Jottings) - also, unexpectedly, Lynne (dovegreyreader). After that, and during today, I saw many friends from uni who have made the move to London... Emily, Karina, Will, Hannah, Matt and Joy. Gosh! What a busy couple of days. Started and finished two books, too. And it won't surprise you to learn that I bought a few books... five, in fact, but four were in a charity shop. Shall reveal all later, when I'm not too tired to get my camera... but for a little preamble I shall ask... Miss Read: yes or no?

The Home-Maker and The Home-Wrecker

Just to make people jealous... I'm going tomorrow to London, to the fourth Persephone Lecture. I haven't managed to get to the others - where previous speakers have been Penelope Lively, Hermione Lee (my supervisor for my thesis!) and Salley Vickers - but shall be attending 'The Home-Maker and The Home-Wrecker: Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Susan Glaspell, and 20th Century American Women Writers' by Elaine Showalter. Quite a combination there - one made perfectly for Elaine from Random Jottings, who very, very kindly bought me a ticket and will be going with me. For those not in the know, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Fidelity and Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell, are novels published by Persephone Books. They're rather good, especially The Home-Maker, which is about a ruthlessly efficient mother and wife who is forced to let her husband become a househusband when he is injured and becomes a wheelchair user. From 1924, it is very ahead of its time in gender/job ideas - even ahead of today, I'd say. While a lot has been done to level the field in gender equality at work (still some way to go, of course) there is still enormous stigma attached to a househusband, and men don't really have the career/housework and parenting choice which is becoming open to more and more women, and so often debated.

But I don't think it's the plight of men which Elaine Showalter will address, and that's fine. She's probably best known (to me, anyway) as the author of A Literature of Their Own, about British women novelists, though I've been using it recently in regards the South African writer Olive Schreiner.

(As an aside, I know men have dominated literary history, but I was thinking the other day... my knowledge of it is swayed completely towards female writers. Those were the choices I made both academically and recreationally... which is really good on one hand, but means I'm quite ignorant of the path for male writers through the ages! And if I had to label three genii in writing... it would be Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf. Women are winning...)

Anyway - I fully expect to have a fascinating evening, and will report back in due course - might not be until Thursday, as I'm spending Wednesday catching up with friends who've moved to London. And don't they all eventually!