Matter of Recall

I’ve just finished Strange Affair, the second of two Peter Robinson crime novels which I’ve listened to in audio format rather than reading.  I have read some of his earlier work but have not been the devotee that some of my friends are.  Indeed I have one friend who deliberately saves his new novel each year for her Christmas treat and retires behind closed doors with that and a bag of fudge not to be seen again until she has finished both.

While I’ve enjoyed both books I have to say that listening to them, experiencing them in a medium in which you have to encounter every word, has made me aware of some the weaknesses of the extended series that a reader might well skim over and not necessarily notice.  For instance, there are moments of verbal déjà vu when you come across the reminders of specific characteristics of the main participants, so often couched in exactly the same words as they were in the preceding book.  Or you find yourself listening to the recall of episodes from earlier crimes in the sort of clunky detail that signals this is something you need to know if you’re going to understand what happens next but really you ought to have read the previous books.

I’m finding this a bit grating and beginning to wonder if one of the mark of a really good writer is the ability to orientate the reader to what has gone before in a way that is less than obvious.  I remember when Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets came out cringing at the way J K Rowling handled the necessary recall from book one and then being aware as the series progressed that one indication of how she was growing as a writer was her development in this area.  I’ve moved on now to Henning Mankell, also a new writer to me, and I shall be interested to see how he stacks up in this respect.  Of course, it does depend on my being able to get hold of his books in audio form.  Off to the library site again!

Sunday Salon ~ Reading for the Snowbound

While I was washing up this morning (well, even the mundane jobs have to be done every now and again) I happened to catch the thriller writer, Andy McNab, being interviewed on the radio about books to be read while snowbound.

Now, one of the more interesting discoveries that I’ve made about myself as a reader over the past couple of weeks is that when I have apparently endless time in which to do nothing but read I can’t sit for more than an hour or so without needing to get up and fiddle with something.  Maybe this is because the leisure time is enforced, I don’t know.  Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the idea that there might be some books that were better for the snowbound than others (perhaps I’ve been choosing the wrong ones!) and even more intrigued by McNab’s choices, which included Great Expectations and Catcher in the Rye.  The one thing that his selections had in common was that they were plot driven rather than character led.  Of course, this might have something to do with nature of his own writing, I don’t know.  He did set me wondering, however, if there were books that were more appropriate than others and whether or not you have any ideas that might help me to take better advantage of the time the snow is forcing me to spend in my comfortable new chair.  I’ve read everything McNab suggested and I’m sated with re-reading at the moment, so what can I pick up instead?  All suggestions gratefully received.

Conan Doyle v Sherlock Holmes

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself reading a number of novels featuring either Arthur Conan Doyle or Sherlock Holmes or both without ever actually picking up a book by Conan Doyle himself about the great Baker Street detective. The January meeting of one of my reading groups was focused on Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George, while thanks to a number of blogging recommendations I’ve also been reading the first two books in Laurie R King’s Mary Russell series, which features Sherlock Holmes as the young Mary’s investigative mentor.

I wasn’t too sure about the first of King’s books, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, which seemed rather bitty, but the second, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, holds together better as a story with just one plot running throughout rather than the more piecemeal structure of its predecessor.  In fact I was congratulating myself on the fact that I found a new series and still had eight more to go right up to the point where I hit the last few pages, which contain a plot twist that I’m not sure I’m prepared to accept as credible.  Obviously, I can’t say what that is without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t already discovered these books but so uncertain am I about the turn of events I shall have to think hard about whether or not I want to go on with Mary’s adventures now.  I might try just one more to see if King can make her decision work, but I have to say that I’m sceptical.

Arthur & George is a very different kettle of fish.  This was a re-read and I’m very glad to have been given a reason to go back and think again about a book that I thought was excellent the first time round and which I now think even more remarkable.  As I’m sure most of you know, Barnes has taken a real life incident about a young solicitor, George Eydalji, who is accused of and eventually jailed for the mutilation of several horses.  Some years after his release from jail Conan Doyle took up his case and set out to prove his innocence.  The final outcome was a typically British piece of compromise with George exonerated but the decision taken that it was nobody’s fault that he was jailed and therefore no compensation should fall due.  (We still do this today, as anyone listening to last week’s judgement about the helicopter crash blamed on the pilots when there was ample evidence that the machine’s computers were unreliable will witness.)

The first time I read this I was most taken up with the injustice, especially as the case was local and I felt the shame of what George was put through personally.  This time, however, I found myself noticing much more what Barnes is saying about the relationship between fact and story.  Maybe this was because I’ve been reflecting on the use of real characters in fiction recently, but I don’t think so.  I think it really is central to the book.  George is almost totally lacking in imagination.  His world is one of logic and therefore he cannot understand why he is being accused of a crime when there is nothing but circumstantial evidence against him.  What he doesn’t realise is that most people don’t relate to pure fact.  As Barbara Hardy once said, “narrative is a primary act of mind” and so the people called upon to judge George take a few of the facts that suit them and then weave a story round them with him as the villain.

Conan Doyle, on the other hand, is totally taken over by story.  From his earliest days he has lived in a world dominated by the tales of chivalry his mother told him and consequently has lived his life out as if he were a character in one of his own books.  The defence he eventually offers in order to exonerate George is every bit as much of a fabrication from circumstance as that which originally condemned him and George is bemused as to why Doyle should ever think it would hold water.  He may well be grateful for his support but he is as different in mind from the great writer as it is possible for two men to be.

What really interests me though is the fact that exasperating as Doyle is, as wrong as he is, it is still the story writer, the being with the narrative cast of mind, with whom I am most comfortable.  I may be able to see logically that George is right in the perspective he takes on the case, but his total in ability to see the world in terms of story feels odd.  He feels odd. It’s fascinating and very cleverly done.  Kenneth Pike once said “man is a pattern making, pattern seeking animal”.  This book suggests that the concept of man as a story making, story seeking animal is every bit as true.

Communications Update

I am very chary about saying this too loudly, but I think we may have the phone problem solved.  The BT man arrived early on Monday morning and following my directions (I reckon I now know this system better than anyone who works for them!) snipped a couple of wires and tied them off and lo and behold the phone started ringing.  I have to say I’ve been very tempted to snip said wires myself, but had I been wrong my arrogance could have cost me a hefty sum in repairs.  In truth, we’re not going to know whether it really has worked for two or three months because we’ve had false dawns before, but for the moment I’m just enjoying being back in touch with everyone and being fairly certain I’m going to be able to post here. 

Of course, at the moment we are out of touch  in any other way because of the snow.  We have about eight inches here and more falling even as I write.  I hate being housebound, although I will at least be able to put my boots on and go out for a tramp once it stops.  The Bears, on the other hand, are absolutely confined to the house.  Most of them would be completely buried if they so much as crossed the threshold.  Mind you, they have been enjoying themselves standing at the front door and playing at being Captain Oates.  “I may be gone some time.”  I can only hope the novelty will wear off soon!

Sunday Salon ~ Characters in Genre Fiction

As I expect my UK readers already know, The Teaching Company has recently opened an outlet on this side of the Atlantic, which has made ordering courses from their catalogue considerably easier.  Just before Christmas I treated myself to Timothy Spurgin’s twenty-four lecture series, The Art of Reading.  On sale, the downloadable version was less than a pound a lecture, a bargain unlikely to be beaten even in the most generous of January reductions.

I used to teach a course very similar to this and it’s always interesting to see how someone else approaches a topic that you have spent hours, weeks, years even, trying to make as accessible as possible to new undergrads who at school have been drilled with techniques designed to get them through exams without paying much attention to developing them as open-minded, thinking readers.

This morning I was listening to the session on characters, always a problem area for me because as a structuralist I instinctively read for plot first and characters tend to come a pretty poor second.  Spurgin was stressing the point that what he was considering was literary fiction where he would expect the principle characters to be well rounded and to have the potential to behave in unexpected but convincing ways.  Pulp fiction on the other hand, he suggested, was more likely to feature characters whose behaviour is predictable.  (I should say that he wasn’t necessarily downplaying plot here -we haven’t got that far in the series yet- simply focussing on one particular feature for discussion purposes.)

Now I would have stopped my I-pod there and then in order to have a good argue against this had Professor Spurgin not immediately qualified what he’d said – or rather had he not acknowledged that his wife had pointed out to him that he was being too sweeping in his generalisations.  Mrs Spurgin, a librarian apparently, had drawn his attention to the fact that what distinguishes a good genre writer from a poor one is precisely the fact that while plot is likely to be pre-eminent they do also make an attempt to shade their characters and give them three-dimensional qualities.  The author mentioned was P D James and I would agree that she does indeed create well-rounded characters, at least in her earlier books.  In fact, thinking about this while I was out walking, I realised that it was the way in which James has begun to falter in this respect in the more recent Dalgliesh books that has made me think that they are diminishing in quality.

Walking is always thinking time for me, so while I was out in this morning’s gorgeous winter sun I found myself drawing up a list of other popular fiction writers that I would cite as paying considerable attention to the creation of characters who are more than simply cardboard cut outs.  Ian Rankin was high on my list, as was Katharine Kerr in the field of fantasy and Philip Pullman where children’s literature is concerned.

What do you think about this as a means of distinguishing amongst the writers of genre fiction and if you agree with it as a principle who would you suggest should feature on that list?  All suggestions gratefully received.  Who knows, we might all meet some new writers we can add to our tbr piles – as if we needed any additions!

Serendipity and Gresham College

Don’t you just love those marvellous discoveries that come along through an act of complete serendipity, those occasions when you find something that you know is going to enrich your life in a multitude of ways quite by unexpected chance?  Let me share my latest serendipitous finding with you all, because the best part about it is that it available absolutely free to anyone with computer access.

Just before Christmas the latest edition of the BBC Music magazine arrived and over lunch while I was idly flicking through the classifieds at the back I noticed an advert for a Professor of Music at Gresham College.  As I didn’t know where Gresham College was and being of an inquiring mind (i.e. nosy!)  I read on and discovered that what was being offered was not a full-time job but rather the sort of post that you would take on in addition to work elsewhere, because Gresham is a college founded in 1597 solely for the purpose of providing free lectures to the public and what its eight professors are required to offer is six lectures in their own discipline for each of the three years of their tenure.  Six times eight.  Forty-eight free lectures a year.  Oh my soul burnt in anger because of course they are all in London aren’t they and thus, not available to the likes of me.

Wrong!

Well, partly wrong.  With very few exceptions the lectures are all in London, but a quick visit to Gresham’s web-site revealed that for the past ten or so years they have also been made available as downloads and more recently linked through to I-Tunes so that you can order them up as podcasts to drop into your computer week by intellectually challenging week.  Furthermore, it isn’t just the eight tenured professors who give lectures but also visiting academics and people distinguished in their own fields.  Sometimes there are three or four lectures a week.  Of course, they are not all going to be in subjects that appeal to everyone immediately, but don’t you always find that a really good lecturer can make anything interesting to an open and inquiring mind?

Last week The Bears and I settled down to listen to the most recent offering on Four Hundred Years of the Telescope.  Not only did we have access to the lecture itself via our I-pod but on the laptop we also had the 120+ slides that Professor Ian Morison had used to illustrate his talk.  Now, I am actually quite interested in astronomy.  When I was seven I went through a phase when I was going to be Astronomer Royal by the time I was twenty.  But, this lecture was so well put together that anyone could have followed what Professor Morison was saying.  Because the archives are available I’ve now gone back and downloaded more of his work as well as lectures about Haydn and London in the Early Modern Period.

If there is a drawback it is that the Professors are still in the same fields as they would have been when the College was founded over four hundred years ago.  Thus, while there is a Professor of Rhetoric there is no Literature Professor.  Definitely one for the visiting list, I think.  But there is so much else of general interest that this is a small grumble.  Do go and explore for yourselves and see what you think.  I am certainly going to be attending lectures vicariously for a long time to come.

Miscellaneous

The early part of next year, just like the latter months of 2009, is going to be dominated by re-readings as my two book groups have both chosen to discuss works that I’ve already enjoyed. This starts next Monday with a meeting focusing on Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George.  I read this when it was first published and am still at a loss to understand why it didn’t win the Booker that year, let alone why it failed to make the short list.

One of the reasons that I felt so strongly about this book was that it was based on a true incident that happened close to where I live. The George of the title was indicted and found guilty of a crime that he did not commit and as it all happened almost literally round the corner, I felt somehow partially responsible for the terrible things that happened to him. Because of this it wasn’t always easy reading the first time round and I don’t suppose that it’s going to be any easier this time.

It’s also going to raise again the question of how I feel about books that centre on people who really existed. This has been a problem for me during the last year with Nicola Upton’s series of crime novels which feature Josephine Tey as the chief protagonist and as not only George but also the Arthur of Barnes’ novel are very real personages it’s an issue I’m going to have to give some thought to here as well.

The Arthur in question was, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and if Conan Doyle has featured in recent years in a number of fictional works by other authors then Holmes has featured in many more. I have to admit to never having read any of the original stories, although it’s impossible not to know about the great detective from sources such as film and television, but I have just listened to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first of Laurie R King’s books about Mary Russell and her partnership with an aging Holmes at the close of the First World War. It proved to be an excellent listen with more than enough adventure to keep me from falling asleep in the depths of my comfortable new chair. King’s Holmes is perhaps easier to like than Conan Doyle’s original as he is shown as not only having some human feelings, but also as being, occasionally at least, fallible. I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss these for as long as I have, but I’m not going to complain as it means that there are eight more and another on the way to look forward to. There is very little that gives me more pleasure than finding a new author and King looks set to keep me busy for some time to come.

Sunday Salon

Life is still very interesting in the Table Talk household.  While I seem to have an Internet connection most of the time, I am again without an incoming phone line, and although I can make outgoing calls I can’t always guarantee that I’m going to be connected to the number I’ve rung.  This has meant that I’ve had some very surprising conversations over the past couple of weeks with people I might never otherwise have had the chance to become acquainted with but I would have exchanged that pleasure for the certainty of knowing that I can reach those that I want to reach.

There is no point in trying to do anything about this until the annual UK Christmas and New Year shutdown is over in around ten days time, the more so because we have heavy snow forecast for the forthcoming week and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for anyone coming out on the roads simply to deal with my phone problems.

I don’t do snow.  I get neurotic about not being able to get out and about as I want to.  You’d think the idea of a whole day when whatever I have in the diary I can legitimately ignore and just curl up with a good book instead would fill me with joy, especially as I no longer have anyone else for whom I’m responsible and about whom I have to worry, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.  When I was teaching the children would inevitably get ecstatic the moment the first flake was spotted.  Up would go the cry, “Miss, it’s snowing.”  And grouchy old misery that I am, I would snarl through gritted teeth, “I know it’s snowing.  Get on with your work.”  Once the roads are clear it isn’t so bad, but when people can’t get around safely I find it very disturbing and if the forecasters are right then we’re in for some very nasty roads indeed this week.

Not that I’m lacking reading material.  I’ve just finished the fourth of Katharine Kerr’s Deverry series, which means that I still have eleven to go.  The idea was to read all of these through the Christmas and New Year period, but they’ve proved to be more substantial than I remembered and with everything I have to read for other purposes I suspect it’s going to be another month or so before I finally manage to get to the new one.  I’m very much enjoying the experience of reading them as a whole, though.  There are all sorts of links of which I hadn’t been fully conscious when reading them piecemeal that are now making their presence felt and the encounter is that much the richer for it.  One thing that is particularly apparent when reading the series this way is the very very detailed pre-planning that went into the work.  Do you know, there is one sentence in book one that encapsulates the entire plot of book thirteen.  Not surprisingly, I didn’t realise this the first time through, but meeting it now I can only marvel at the complexity of the mind behind this epic.  Maybe I’m going so slowly because subconsciously I don’t want the series to end.  If you enjoy fantasy and haven’t read Kerr’s work then you have a real pleasure before you.

By Request

As a result of overwhelming demand (well two requests, actually, but who’s counting:)) here is THE chair, complete with Bears.

As you can see, it is really a very ordinary looking chair indeed when it is in its closed up state.   The real fun and games only starts when you begin pressing buttons.

Then you can get it to look like

this:or even, if you’re living dangerously, like

this:

This third position is the one to avoid should you be listening to an audio book that is less than riveting – sleep is almost inevitable.

I’m sorry I couldn’t get a sideways on shot, you would have seen it in all its splendour far better, but I have a long narrow room which doesn’t lend itself to photography.  Still, I’m sure you get the idea.

Some days I even get to sit in it myself!

Re-Connected

Well, I hope I’m now back on-line permanently, although I suppose that is probably too much for anyone to reasonably hope for.  In order to get things sorted, I finally had to free up the phone line so that there was nothing else going out on it at all.  This meant having the existing alarm system taken out and a new one put in.  And, to be fair to BT, that did seem to rectify the fault, so it looks as though the problem did actually lie with the alarm company.  Now, do you think that if I wrote to them and pointed that out they would refund me all the money they charged me whenever I called them in to try and track the fault down?  No, I don’t think so either.  I suppose I’m just going to have to be grateful that I have any connections at all and put it behind me.

So, what has been going on at this end?  (I’ll try and catch up with all of you over the holiday period.)  Well, The Bears and I had a great time last night celebrating our big festival, the Winter Solstice.  We had all the candles lit and The Bears marched round the house chanting, “Come back sun.  Come back sun.”  And, I’m glad to say that it seems to have worked, because it’s been beautifully sunny here today, even though it is very cold indeed.  I’m not going to pretend that I like the cold or that I enjoy it when it’s wet, but I can just about live with those.  The dark, however, is another matter and so the turn of the year, when the days are getting longer, even if it’s only by a few minutes a week, is a crucial psychological moment for me.  From this point on it’s forward all the way.

Then, The Bears have bought me a wonderful new chair for Christmas.  It’s specially designed to support my back and I can change the angle at which it tips according to the needs of the moment.  I’ve had it now for just eight days and already I can’t imagine life without it.  It must have cost them a decade’s worth of pocket money and I’m very grateful to them indeed.  It can also be manipulated to support my legs and so in the evening I tip the leg rest up and the back rest down, turn an audio book on and luxuriate in having someone else read to me.  There is one draw back, mind you.  In this position and at this time of day, if the book doesn’t really grab you, then you can find yourself dropping off.  Last week, there was a certain past Booker winner that proved less than gripping, which was awkward, because I was listening to it for a book group discussion and clearly fell asleep and missed several vital incidents.  In future, I’ve learned to stick to the printed version of anything I have to have a really good grasp of.

Right, I’m off to post this now.  Hopefully, I’ll be back tomorrow, but just in case

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM ANN AND THE BEARS.