Letters from England – Karel Čapek

When Claire recommended Letters from England (1924, translated by Paul Selver 1925) by Karel Čapek it was one of those very welcome recommendations - being for a book that I already had on my shelves.  Usually I note when and where I buy books, but this time I didn't - I can only assume it was because the name rang a bell, the physical book is quintessentially 1920s, and I have a soft spot for books about England. And, oh, how fun this book is.

It doesn't that Čapek shares my feelings about the relative merits of London and the rest of the country. It is amusing, in the 1920s, to hear him complaining about grim housing and traffic (goodness knows what he'd think if he visited it today), but I entirely agree with him about the ferocious busyness of the place.  It is rather easier to be funny when one is criticising than when one is praising, of course, and Čapek is very amusing in these early chapters.

These houses look rather like family vaults; I tried to make a drawing of them, but do what I would, I was unable to obtain a sufficiently hopeless appearance; besides, I have no grey paint to smear over them.

Oh, yes, he includes plenty of pen and ink illustrations, of the variety that are deceptively simplistic.  He is particularly good at animals, despite what he says in the text.

But - thankfully for the self esteem of the nation - he doesn't just stay in London and criticise it.  Instead, he travels around the countryside and (belying his title) pays visits to Scotland and Wales, and writes about Ireland without actually going there.

Where are you to pick words fine enough to portray the quiet and verdant charms of the English countryside? I have been down in Surrey, and up in Essex; I have wandered along roads lined with quickset hedges, sheer quickset hedges which make England the real England, for they enclose, but do not oppress; half-opened gates lead you to ancient avenues of a park deeper than a forest; and here is a red house with high chimneys, a church-tower among the trees, a meadow with flocks of cows, a flock of horses which turn their beautiful and solemn eyes upon you; a pathway that seems to be swept as clean as a new pin, velvety pools with nenuphars and sword-lilies, parks, mansions, meadows, and meadows, no fields, nothing that might be a shrill reminder of human drudgery; a paradise where the Lord God Himself made paths of asphalt and sand, planted old trees and entwined ivy coverlets for the red houses.

You see his way with words, and his fondness for the long sentence.  We will forgive him referring to any group of animals as a flock, and believeing Essex to be 'up', because he is so expressive and enthusiastic an appreciator of the English countryside - which means so much to me too, in a way which transcends expression.  The countryside is the only place where I feel properly alive, and I would love to have accompanied Čapek on his travels, gasping at the beauty of the Lake District, admiring the simple aesthetic pleasure of a thatched cottage, and (for we are not perfect human beings) sharing eye-rolls at the sort of person who bustles hither and thither in a city all year, and never ventures out to visit a sheep.

Pink Sugar by O. Douglas

One of the shameful things about this year is realising how many books my dear friend Clare has given me over the years which I have yet to read.  Her name has appeared a few times already in my Reading Presently project (as the bestower of Four Hedges, Cullum, and possibly How The Heather Looks) and is likely to appear at least a couple of times more - but, for today, she is the provider of Pink Sugar (1924) by O. Douglas, the pseudonym of John Buchan's sister Anna.  I'll call her O. Douglas in this review, to make things simple.  It's the only Greyladies edition I've read so far, although I'm thrilled that they have reprinted a couple of Richmal Crompton books, including the wonderful Matty and the Dearingroydes.  And, guess what, Pink Sugar is rather fab too.

Kirsty Gilmour is 30 and has made a home for herself in the Borders (so the blurb says for me), taking in an old aunt who fusses and worries, but is rather lovely, and three children Barbara, Specky, and Bad Bill. The novel opens in conversation between Kirsty and her livelier friend Blance Cunningham - Blanche was quite a witty character, and I was sad that she almost immediately departed the scene (she also said wise things like "People who knit are never dull") but we are not at a loss for characters after her departure.

Kirsty is rather gosh-isn't-the-world-wonderful at times, thankfully offset with some quick-wittedness; like Lyn I sympathised more with the minister's unhappy sister Rebecca, and found the characterful novelist Merren Strang more amusing - but Pink Sugar needs someone like Kirsty at its heart, because it is neither an unhappy novel nor a caustic one.  It is emphatically gentle and life-affirming, where a cup of tea and a dose of self-knowledge are the inevitable accompaniments to evening.

The children veer a little towards Enid Blyton territory, but that's no bad thing (especially compared to modern literature, where happy children seem such a rarity), and there is a wildly unconvincing love plot thrown in to tie things up, but Douglas's good writing and refusal to bathe too deeply in sentiment made me able to love relaxing and reading this.

One aspect of the style I couldn't get on board with was Douglas's frequent recourse to Scottish dialect, for the maids, cook, etc.  It was so impenetrable that I ended up skipping forward a few pages every time it appeared, so fingers crossed that I didn't miss anything of moment there...

And in case you're wondering what 'pink sugar' has got to do with anything, as I was for quite a long while, thankfully it is explained by Kirsty in the narrative.  Excuse the rather long quotation, but I couldn't find a neater way to cut it off...:

"I was allowed to ride on a merry-go-round and gaze at all the wonders - fat women, giants, and dwarfs.  But what I wanted most of all I wasn't allowed to have.  At the stalls they were selling large pink sugar hearts, and I never wanted anything so much in my life, but when I begged for one I was told they weren't wholesome and I couldn't have one.  I didn't want to eat it - as a matter of fact I was allowed to buy sweets called Market Mixtures, and there were fragments of the pink hearts among the curly-doddies and round white bools, and delicious they tasted.  I wanted to keep it and adore it because of its pinkness and sweetness.  Ever since that day when I was taken home begrimed with weeping for a 'heart', I have had a weakness for pink sugar.  And good gracious!" she turned to her companion, swept away by one of the sudden and short-lived rages which sometimes seized her, "surely we want every crumb of pink sugar that we can get in this world.  I do hate people who sneer at sentiment.  What is sentiment after all?  It's only a word, for all that is decent and kind and loving in these warped little lives of ours..."

So 'pink sugar' is essentially akin to seeing the joy in life - and is, perhaps, a codified reference to any reader or critic who would sneer at Pink Sugar itself, as a novel.  Admittedly, it isn't Great Literature, nor is it trying to be, but I think Douglas is doing herself an injustice with this sort of self-defence.  Pink Sugar isn't a lightweight romance with no thought given to the style or characterisation.  It doesn't stand on sentiment alone.


Others who got Stuck into this Book:

"The strength of the book is the atmosphere of village life." - Lyn, I Prefer Reading

"Pink Sugar is a lovely, sweet, frothy concoction of a novel" - Christine, The Book Trunk

"I am so very happy to have made the acquaintance of O. Douglas." - Nan, Letters From a Hill Farm

The Flying Draper - Ronald Fraser

Out of all the books I'm reading for Reading Presently, this is the one I should have read before now... Tanya very kindly sent me The Flying Draper (1924) by Ronald Fraser, as she correctly thought it would be useful for my research (I'd actually requested a copy to the Bodleian library, and hadn't had time to read it there) - but somehow I have only just read it.  So it's going in the footnotes of my thesis...

Before I get any further - compiling my list of sketches from year six made me keen to include more in future.  Often I just can't think of anything to draw, so I came up with the idea of drawing punning cover illustrations, for how the book might look if the title were a little different... So, instead of The Flying Draper...

Ahahahaha... ;) As for the novel itself, the title does indeed give the game away.  For my research into middlebrow fantastic novels, Ronald Fraser provided a useful example which I hadn't found elsewhere: the flying man.  My only previous experience with Fraser had been a novel I did use in a chapter on metamorphosis, called Flower Phantoms - it wasn't hugely encouraging (which might account for the delay in reading The Flying Draper) since, although the idea of a woman turning into a flower was interesting, the novel itself was written in an equally flowery way.  Lots of swirling, whirling metaphors that ended up being so convoluted that they meant nothing at all, and all rather wearying to read.

The Flying Draper is much better; I thought maybe Fraser had developed his craft, until I discovered that it was actually written a few years before Flower Phantoms.  The narrator is aristocratic Sir Philip, who is rather a thin character of British decency, observing his energetic fiancée Lydia become absorbed in the life of another man - that man being Arthur Codling, the eponymous draper.  His flying happens rather matter-of-factly - the narrator and Lydia are a little surprised, but he doesn't seem to be, when he flies off a cliff and into the sea, where he bobs around for a bit until he comes out.

The draper is a great character.  He is rather detached from everyday life and manners, observing the world around him wryly, being wittily offhand while selling fabrics, and having the potential to be a brilliant eccentric in the same mould as Miss Hargreaves.  But he never becomes quite developed.  His flying takes over from the establishment of a promising character, and oddly diminishes him as a force on the page.  Similarly, Fraser never seems quite sure how to develop the story, once he has thought about it.  There is an intriguing plotline about politics being disrupted and disturbed by Codling flying, and a branch of parliament and a branch of the church wanting to have him expelled or locked up or killed.  But then Fraser suddenly introduces a heap of young, bohemian characters who don't seem to add much at all to the book.

It all gets a bit lost and winding at that point, which is a real shame - the flying draper was an interesting idea, and Fraser had lots of other ideas to follow it up - but he just shoved them all in, in any order, and hoped for the best.

And the style?  Well, some of it is still rather over the top, mistaking exotic and curious imagery for fine writing - such as the following...

"Codling has just published a book," he said. "I read all I could of it last night. A sort of account of his doings during the three years of his absence from England. The finest book, I think, that was ever written; so cold, so calm, so clear, like an April evening; and, pervading it, hints of a passion, huge and heedless and flowering, like the passion of our earth, Philip, in spring. He has felt passion, that man. When he writes of love you smell blossom and you see daisies spring up in the carpet. He knows more of love than is in the brains and hearts of most men to understand. And that is just the trouble. He handles his themes, and especially that theme, so primitively and so coldly, Philip, that it will be death and perdition to the sentimental, who preponderate. For most people his philosophy will be like a lump of ice in the small of the back."

...but Fraser shows a talent for amusing secondary characters, such as Codling's landlady, which I'd have liked to see much more of:

"What I call a near-actress," she answered. "Dances a lot and doesn't say much. And a very pleasant young woman she is, and I don't think I ever saw anyone so pretty in my life, Sir Philip. Blue-eyed and babyish, though very grown-up, hif you know what I mean. Hair like tow with a shine on it, and every bit her own, believe me or not. And a stink of powder like a Turkish harem. I did her up one night, Sir Philip, and the smell of powder and scent nearly knocked me down. But what she wore underneath! You never saw anything so flimsy. It's my believe you could undress her with one motion of the 'and, which no doubt she finds convenient, though I will say that she strikes me as being quiet for a hactress."

Some people have a hatred of comic working-class characters in novels (I remember reading that Angela Carter hated them), but I love affectionate spoofs of middle-class and upper-class characters, and it would be silly of me to make an exception for Cockney landladies.

So, all in all, The Flying Draper certainly has its moments, and is an enjoyable enough read (and useful for my thesis, thanks Tanya!) - but, like so many second-rate writers (for Fraser, sadly, is that) the narrative lacks coherence and the promise of ideas is ultimately not matched by their execution.  The Drying Flapper, on the other hand, I would love to read.

Skylark

43. Skylark - Dezső Kosztolányi

I've been reading some pretty brilliant books recently, and not finding time to write about them, so prepare yourselves for some enthusiastic reviews coming up soon.  And let's start the ball rolling with Skylark (1924) by Hungarian novelist Dezső Kosztolányi, translated into English by Richard Aczel, and a heartfelt köszönöm to him for doing so.  It's gone on my list of 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About.

Skylark came to my attention when Claire/Captive Reader put it in her Top Ten Books of 2011.  I added it to my Amazon wishlist, and waited... it felt, for some reason, like the sort of book which should really come as a gift.  Lucky for me, Our Vicar and Our Vicar's Wife spotted it there, and it arrived in my Christmas stocking last year.  So, consider this a tick on the list for my Reading Presently project (where I'm intending to read, in 2013, 50 books which were gifts.)

Before I get on to the wonderful writing and moving story in Skylark, I have to talk about the book itself.  If I'm ever asked why I don't want a Kindle, my one word reply will now be: "Skylark".  This NYRB edition is quite stunningly beautiful - not just the lovely colours and image on the front, and that turquoise/mint green I love so much on the spine, but the feel, the flip-flop of the pages, the perfect flexibility-to-sturdiness of the cover... the physical book is a work of art here, and I am so pleased that the content matched up.

The novel starts as a not-quite-young-any-more woman called Skylark leaves her provincial town for a week, to stay with relatives.  Actually, it starts while her parents are packing for her departure:

The dining-room sofa was strewn with strands of red, white and green cord, clippings of packing twine, shreds of wrapping paper and the scattered, crumpled pages of the local daily, the same fat letters at the top of each page: Sárszeg Gazette, 1899. 

The stage is set for the importance of the home - and the way that it is subverted and disturbed by Skylark's departure.

One might expect (I did expect) that a novel which starts with a character getting ready to leave her home will follow that character on her travels.  Particularly so in a novel whose title bears the name of that character.  What Kosztolányi does so cleverly is, instead, focus on the effects of her absence, leaving the reader to bear witness to the unsettled lives of Skylark's father (Ákos) and mother (known simply as Mother or 'the woman' throughout.)

They have a very obviously unhealthy dependency upon their daughter - but, at the same time, long more than anything for her to marry.  A man who has been polite enough to smile at her is built up into a potential - and then a definite - suitor; when he fails to follow up on this non-existent intimation, he becomes a figure for bitter hatred, much to his confusion.  Mother and Father can barely cope with Skylark leaving town for a week, let alone forever, but this is still their aim in life, even while they realise that it is almost impossible.

And why?  Because Skylark is ugly.  Extremely ugly.  Not horrendously disfigured or anything, simply deeply unattractive.  From what we see of her before she leaves, and hear about her, Skylark also seems domestically very capable (if unambitious), unimaginatively kind, practical, and pretty dull.  But her parents, of course, love her dearly.

This narrative is so clever and subtly written.  It is a mixture of quite pathetic inability to manage in their daughter's absence, with a glimpse of what life would be like without her.  They eat interesting foods at restaurants and talk to their neighbours; Ákos gets drunk at a local club (which resembles the Freemasons in some fashion), and this leads to the most moving, vital, and brilliant scene of the novel - where all the couple's unspoken fears and thoughts come tumbling out.  Kosztolányi gives the viewpoint of both husband and wife, so we see the scene through two sets of eyes simultaneously.  It is heartbreaking and extraordinary, but it is not the sort of confrontation that 'changes things forever'.  Things cannot really ever, we sense, be changed.

They had given her that name years ago, Skylark, many, many years ago, when she still sang.  Somehow the name had stuck, and she still wore it like an outgrown childhood dress.

That passage is from early in the novel, and I marked it as being the one which suggested to me that I'd be onto something special.  It was also the first sign of something I thought throughout Skylark, which was that Kosztolányi's writing reminded me of Katherine Mansfield's - which is about the highest compliment I can pay to writing.  He has the same delicate touch, and the same way of showing ordinary people stepping outside of their normal routines, even slightly, and finding that everything is changed thereby, however unnoticeable this is to others.  The subtlest shift in the way acts are performed - the way Skylark holds a birdcage; the seasoning Ákos puts on his risotto - are shown by Kosztolányi to hold enormous significance.

Like a short story by Katherine Mansfield, I imagine Skylark would benefit from being read in one sitting.  At 221 pages, it could be done.  I, sadly, seemed to read almost all of it on bus journeys to and from work, and thus the reading experience was too broken up.  I will have to read it again when I have an entire afternoon to spare.

The only part of this edition I didn't much like was the introduction by Péter Esterházy, since it barely spoke of the novel at all.  Apparently he is one of the most significant contemporary Hungarian writers, but I wish he'd written this introduction more as a fan of Skylark, and less as a fan of his own thoughts.

I've been thinking about the style I aim at on Stuck-in-a-Book, and how I want my posts to be a bit amusing - but it's very hard to be funny when I have nothing but praise for a novel.  So instead, I'll finish by saying that I went to a 1970s murder mystery party on Saturday (the one I mentioned I was writing), and somebody said that I looked like a fraudulent spiritualist from an Agatha Christie novel - must have been the floral bandana that did it.  With that image in your mind... go and buy a copy of Skylark; make it this beautiful NYRB Classics edition.

A Couple of Capuchins

Well, hasn't it heated up? Anything above polar leaves me manically fanning myself and drinking gallons of water, so I welcome the cool evenings. My computer is also heating me up, in as much as it is slower than me in a marathon at the moment... if you're reading this post, then the unlikely has occurred, and I have battled my way to posting it....!

I've had a little pile of Capuchin Classics to review for a while (click here for an interview that Emma, who runs Capuchin, did for Stuck-in-a-Book). First two out of the starting blocks are The Green Hat by Michael Arlen, and An Error of Judgement by Pamela Hansford Johnson...

The Green Hat first. I hadn't heard of 1920s vogue novelist Michael Arlen (real name Dikran Konyoumdjian) but was swept in by the opening sentence: "What kind of hat was it?" And, more importantly, whom the wearer. In this Green Hat, Iris Storm makes her entrance - watched by the novel's narrator - as she visits the recalcitrant Gerald March. What a simple way this novel begins, and yet what a whirl it takes one through - from simple domestic beginnings, we are whisked off over the country, through Europe, through philosophy about marriage; pondering on purity; the drama of near-death illness and the wit of the self-reflective. It's impossible to describe succinctly the plot of The Green Hat, so I shall instead try to tempt you with its style. It's the sort of novel we are assured that the 1920s are full of, and yet which I have never before read. It is the sort of novel which demonstrates how wrong those 'writing experts' are when they say never to use a metaphor where the truth will suffice; never to use five words where three will do, and preferably cut the whole chapter. Arlen luxuriates in his loquacity, and would not be ashamed to say so in words of comparable length.

There are sparks of humour, hyperbolic quips, which make you think he is of the Wodehouse school - then, twisted with a sardonic aftertaste, which brings Wilde instead to mind - and finally he will take the line into an entirely unexpected emotion or thought, which leaves you certain that this could only be described as 'Arlen'. It is brilliant, and only occasionally wearying - like reading witty treacle.

Of course, all that warrants an example, and I can find nothing to fit - but I noted down this:

'I said to the taxi-driver: "Hell can know no torment like the agony of an innocent in a cage," and when he had carefully examined his tip he agreed with me.'

The characters are studies in fashionable absurdity; sincere caricatures. Arlen introduces these figures in a dramatic and unique manner - for example:

Hilary was a man who had convinced himself and everyone else that he had neither use nor time for the flibberty-gibberties of life. He collected postage-stamps and had sat as Liberal Member for an Essex constituency for fifteen years. To be a Liberal was against every one of his prejudices, but to be a Conservative was against all his convictions. He thought of democracy as a drain-pipe through which the world must crawl for its health. He did not think the health of the world would ever be good. When travelling he looked porters sternly in the face and over-tipped them. His eyes were grey and gentle, and they were suspicious of being amused. I think that Hilary treasured a belief that his eyes were cold and ironic, as also that his face was of a stern cast. His face was long, and the features somehow muddled. It was a kind face.

Some will say this is all show, and it probably is. People say true art conceals art, but the 1920s disagree - for a lavish, luxurious, and often hilarious read, but one which holds the emotional and painful experience of Iris, a character with depth behind the decadence - you can do little better than The Green Hat.

Onto An Error of Judgement. Pamela Hansford Johnson is one of those names which has been skirting around my consciousness forever, though never enough to actively seek out one of her novels. Written in 1962, An Error of Judgement is an odd mixture - on one hand it is a slanted comedy of manners, a depiction of an ailing marriage - but at the centre of the novel is a gruesome and senseless murder (described, thankfully, in a brief manner). The narrator, Victor, has a fairly average marriage to Jenny - as the novel opens, he has been to see a Harley Street doctor, Setter, and discovered that nothing is wrong with him: he imagines returning with this news - 'I saw Jenny running toward me, her face alight with hope and fear. I saw her transformed into Maenad joy when she heard my good news, clutching at me, clawing at me, in the force of her delight nealy spilling us on the linoleum.' In actuality:...

I put my key in the lock. Jenny came walking towards me.
"Darling," I cried, "I'm all right! I'm all right!"
"I never thought you were anything else," she said, replacing my constant image of her by the equally constant reality, "And what did all that cost us?"

Alongside the dynamics of this middle-class relationship, Setter is quite a grotesque character. He confesses to becoming a doctor because of his love of pain - both preventing and inflicting it. The latter temptation he scrupulously avoids, but thinks he might have found justification when a macabre murder takes place, and he believes he knows who did it.

These two strands work alongside each other, in a portrait of moral decisions and human foibles. Varying in scale, they are nonetheless compatible storylines - though perhaps neither are dealt with quite satisfactorily. I finished the novel uncertain what Pamela Hansford Johnson had been trying to achieve, or whether or not it had been achieved. Certainly a thinker, as they say.

Well, this post has taken longer than I'd have thought humanly possible, and my laptop has made every effort to prevent it... so I shall take myself to bed.