The Broad Bean Sermon by Les Murray

Over thirty years ago, I was compelled to study Les Murray's poetry.  It was an ugly encounter.  Let's just say I did not have the ears to hear what he was saying. Even now, after so much time, I find his poems rarely make me feel or think.

On one poem I am willing to shift ground and give a nod of approval, and that is The Broad Bean Sermon.  And what happened to bring about this change?  Answer: I grew my first crop of broad beans and had the joy of hunting through the "thin bean forest", finding "shirtfulls" of the stuff in all their weird and wonderful shapes.

I think joy is the word.  Murray does manage to communicate the sense that a mundane chore, such as picking beans, can put us in touch with something that is greater, perhaps transcendent, and joyous. I suppose it is like an in-joke: only members of the gang get it.  Well, Les, I get it now.  

The Broad Bean Sermon

Beanstalks, in any breeze, are a slack church parade

without belief, saying trespass against us in unison,

recruits in mint Air Force dacron, with unbuttoned leaves.

Upright with water like men, square in stem-section

they grow to great lengths, drink rain, keel over all ways,

kink down and grow up afresh, with proffered new greenstuff.

Above the cat-and-mouse floor of a thin bean forest

snails hang rapt in their food, ants hurry through Escher’s three worlds,

spiders tense and sag like little black flags in cordage.

Going out to pick beans with the sun high as fence-tops, you find

plenty, and fetch them.  An hour or a cloud later

you find shirtfulls more.  At every hour of daylight

appear more that you missed: ripe, knobbly ones, fleshy-sided,

thin-straight, thin-crescent, frown-shaped, bird-shouldered, boat-keeled ones,

beans knuckled and single-bulged, minute green dolphins at suck,

beans upright like lecturing, outstretched like blessing fingers

in the incident light, and more still, oblique to your notice

that the noon glare or cloud-light or afternoon slants will uncover

till you ask yourself Could I have overlooked so many, or

do they form in an hour? unfolding into reality

like templates for subtly broad grins, like unique caught expressions,

like edible meanings, each sealed around with a string

and affixed to its moment, an unceasing colloquial assembly,

the portly, the stiff, and those lolling in pointed green slippers …

Wondering who’ll take the spare bagfulls, you grin with happiness

—it is your health—you vow to pick them all

even the last few, weeks off yet, misshapen as toes.

The Chimes by Charles Dickens

Psst!  This is my 100th blog entry.

Ever had one of those days when it is hard to believe in a loving god, or thought that the good ol' days were surely better than the present day with its trial and troubles, or that those worse off than you have no one to blame but themselves?

Poor Toby (Trotty) Veck is assailed by such thoughts in his mid-winter gloom. Trotty is a ticket-porter (an errand runner) who stands outside a certain church in all seasons waiting for customers; but today is New Year's Eve - "a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, stoney-toed, tooth-chattering" day - and things are going hard for him.

Two things Trotty relies on to cheer him is his love for his only child Meg, and the voices of the church bells, the Chimes, that seem to sing encouragement to him when things are bleak.  This very night, however, when the Chimes are rung, Trotty hears their voices summoning him to them.  He obeys the call, and climbing the church's narrow belfry stairs, comes before the Chimes and their attendant spirits.  It is not a benign meeting, and things go badly for Trotty. Or do they?

The Chimes is the second of the five Christmas novellas that Dickens wrote, the first being A Christmas Carol, the third being The Cricket on the Hearth.  Like its predecessor, The Chimes is a morality tale: Trotty must learn the lessons of hope, faith, and charity.  As in its predecessor, the lessons are doled out by a supernatural agency.  Unlike its predecessor, The Chimes is not a work touched by, shall we say, genius.  The storytelling is marred by extended soliloquies and a lack of action.

Even so, at least once a year we can set aside some time to think about what is what. Christmas-time is as good a time as any.  And in the new year, perhaps we can take up Dickens' challenge and work for a kinder and more understanding world.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, everyone.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

A mysterious slip of parchment containing coded Norse runes falls from an ancient book and lands at the feet of the only person in the world with both the intelligence to decipher it and the insanity to act upon its message:

Descend into the crater of Snaefellsjökull, over which the shadow of Scartaris falls before the kalends of July, bold traveller, and you will reach the centre of the Earth. This I have done. Arne Saknussemm

These words, written in the 16th century by an Icelandic alchemist, are all the prompting Professor Otto Lidenbrock, an expert in mineralogy, needs to drag his more than reluctant nephew Axel on 'the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century'.  Yes, the Professor fully intends to go down a crater of a volcano in Iceland and follow Saknussemm to the centre of the Earth.

Many of us read this tale by Jules Verne when we were children.  For me, it was the very first fiction book that I read that I actually liked, and I liked it a lot.  Although the reader is supposed to identify with the pragmatic Axel, I was much more drawn to Uncle Lidenbrock. He had vision, he had learning, he used reason to solve problems, and he refused to let the doubts or prejudices of other to sway him from his course.  

The difference between us is that I prefer to have vision, learning, reason and resolve in the comfort of my own living-room.  But that is what books can give us: the means to adventure safely through dangerous places without ever leaving our armchairs.  And we can go to places that don't exist, never existed, or will never be attained by ordinary mortals.  Journey to the Centre of the Earth certainly fits the bill.

Set in 1863, the new-fangled technology of chronometers and Ruhmkorff coils mentioned in the books must have seemed a miracle to its readers.  Of course, the intervening 150 years have made the new-fangled old-fangled.  So the Professor had a watch and a flashlight, so what?  

There is something antiquated about Verne's story too.  A lot of narration and explanation intersperses the action, for example, making the story slow by modern standards. But to give the author his due, he gives riddles to solve, dangers to overcome, there is rising action and he does get the reader out into the countryside, out into the ocean, up into the mountains and down into the depths of the Earth.

In amongst all the words and explanations, there is this passage about fuel:

Thus were formed those huge beds of coal which, despite their size, the industrial nations will exhaust within three centuries unless they limit their consumption.

Here we are in the age of peak-oil, and there was Verne thinking about something like it all those years ago.

I enjoyed re-reading this book, although nothing will replace the pleasure I felt the first time around.  Well worth the effort both times.

Lollingdon Downs by John Masefield

Ever since I was old enough to go out and look at the night sky, I have gone out and looked at the night sky.  I do it almost every night, noting how the constellations rise and fall with the seasons, how the planets wander in and out of the spangled starscape, how the moon waxes and wanes. Lo! there is Orion the hunter and his faithful dog in summer, and now Scorpio, his bane, in winter; and all the time the Southern Cross wheels about an unseen axis.

At the time of writing, Venus is riding high in the sky as the evening star.  I think of Tolkien and his invented mythology of Middle Earth.  There is Eärendil the mariner in his heavenly ship, and the silmaril bound to his brow and shining with the mingled lights of the two trees. 

And at such times, I think of what it might be like to roam the aether, sailing on invisible tides, the solar winds in my hair, feeling in the rawest form the cosmogonic forces that have shaped us all.

I am not alone.  Tolkien got there before me, as did John Masefield, and the Silver Surfer.  I provide here an excerpt from Masefield's extended poem Lollingdon Downs.  Sometimes, I too wish that my soul might sail for a million years in such a fashion: no death, no tears.

I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.

If I could sail that nothing, I should cross 
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing, 
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss 
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing, 

And rage into a sun with wandering planets 
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed, 
See his last light upon his last moon's granites 
Die to a dark that would be night indeed. 

Night where my soul might sail a million years 
In nothing, not even Death, not even tears.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

"In the latter days of July in the year 185-, a most important question was for ten days hourly asked in the cathedral city of Barchester, and answered every hour in various ways - who was to be the new bishop?"

And who was to be the new bishop? An outsider, so it happened, and thus the equilibrium of the little corner of the world that is Barsetshire is thrown off balance.  New people with new ideas arrive on the scene; feathers are ruffled as a new order is proposed, if not imposed.

Barchester Towers reacquaints us with some of the characters first introduced in The Warden.  There is the aged cleric Septimus Harding, his two daughters, and his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly.  Added to the cast are the weak-willed Bishop Proudie and his domineering wife; the conniving Obadiah Slope, the bishop's chaplain; the shy and scholarly Mr Francis Arabin; and the Stanhope siblings: the wastrel artist Bertie, the match-making Charlotte, and the femme fatale Madeline, better know as La Signora Vesey Neroni.

The action revolves around two poles.  Firstly, there is Eleanor, Rev. Harding's daughter, widowed young and the possessor of a considerable income left by her late husband, and she soon becomes the apex of several love triangles. Secondly, there is the politics of the Barchester diocese as the posts of the Warden of Hiram's Hospital and, later, the Dean of the cathedral become vacant; and as Mr Slope and Mrs Proudie go to war over which of them has control of the bishop.

At about 500 pages, Barchester Towers is a much vaster undertaking than its slender predecessor, but just as enjoyable. Trollope has again created a cast of very real and compelling characters. It is a testament to his skill as writer that, whether they be goodies or baddies, or whether they have major or minor roles, the reader is able to care for all the people on the page.

Whereas The Warden dealt with a good and humble man having a crisis of conscience, Barchester Towers is more concerned with manners.  Whilst the latter book was Trollope's most popular, it could be argued that the former is the superior work of art.  As for the sheer joy of reading a good book, they both have their own charms and are as equally entertaining, which is to say very entertaining. Why not read them both?

A Gull on the Roof by Derek Tangye

How many of us living in large cities, doing jobs we don't like, have had dreams of leaving it all behind and moving to the country? Or how about living in a cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea and growing food and flowers?  

That is exactly what Derek Tangye and his wife Jeannie did in the 1950s when they moved from London to Cornwall.  Turning their backs on paid employment and a lifestyle that saw them rubbing shoulders with the likes of Danny Kaye and Gertrude Lawrence, they (along with their beloved ginger cat Monty) moved into a derelict cottage on six acres of land.  Their challenge: to make their living as market gardeners.  A Gull on the Roof is the tale of what they did and what happened to them in the first five years on their farm at Minack, near St Buryan.

Tangye's story is a pleasing mixture of human interactions, wild landscapes and the secret world of animals.  On the human side, there are the disbelieving friends in London, the practical and flawed people of the districts around St Buryan; and caught in the middle are the Tangyes, who risk making complete fools of themselves in the eyes of both groups should their dream turn into a failure.  On the animal side, there is Monty and his country cousins: foxes, badgers, robins and finches.  And the wild coast of Cornwall and its boisterous weather provide equal measures of beauty and peril.

Tangye, in addition to being a perceptive judge of character, is capable of turning a phrase.  There are many places in the book were he describes his thoughts and feelings about the very unorthodox thing he and Jeannie have chosen to do.  He often compares it to their old life in London.  A brief visit to his friends in London provoked the following:

There is no freedom in twentieth-century achievement for the individual is  controlled not by his own deep thinking processes but by the plankton of shibboleths which are currently in fleeting fashion; and by his [sic] own desperate need to maintain financial survival in the glittering world he has found himself. 

I wonder what he would have made of the twenty-first century?  

Anyway, if you like James Herriot, then you will probably enjoy Derek Tangye too.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey

Set a thief to catch a thief. Better still, set a philologist to catch a philologist. That is exactly what we get in Professor Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. 

Shippey, like Tolkien, has taught English Language at both Oxford and Leeds universities.  As such, he is very qualified to write an extended study of Tolkien's literary output, and of the popular and professional criticism it has attracted.

This book contains chapters which deal with The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (three chapters, naturally), The Silmarillion, and his shorter works.

Shippey approaches each work differently so that the reader is introduced incrementally and gently to the complexity of the cultural heritage, scholarship and religious thought that underlies Tolkien's work.  And we couldn't ask for a better guide.  Shippey knows his terrain, and he takes the reader through this literary and philological landscape by a most illuminating and varied route.  

Shippey's prose is plain but never boring.  In fact, it is so entertaining, witty and congenial that the reader can easily forget the depth and scope of the learning that lies behind it. I am reminded of a passage in The Lord of the Rings. Saruman, trapped in the tower of Orthanc, has just spoken to Gandalf, Theoden and those who accompanied them to Isengard.  We are told:

Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.

I mean it kindly. Having read this book, I do feel just that little bit wiser and certainly a lot more informed about Tolkien and his works.

I read the 2001 edition published by HarperCollins

The Power-House by John Buchan

Looking for a quick read on a rainy afternoon?  Then The Power-House by John Buchan may be just the thing. 

First published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1913, The Power-House became a favourite of the British soldiers during the First World War.  Short - it is about 100 pages long - it could be read in what little time the soldiers had to themselves.

Sir Edward Leithen, a lawyer and politician, lives in London.  He spends his usually uneventful days shuttling between home, work and his gentlemen's club.  

Nothing exciting happens to him until one day his wealthy friend disappears, leaving behind an incomplete letter hinting at great danger.  A second friend goes to Russia in search of him, and Leithen is left behind to look after things in their absence.  He regrets that he is not the one having the adventure, but he need not worry on that account: adventure comes looking for him in England, and soon Leithen is running for his life.  The future of Western civilization is in his hands, if he can only stay alive long enough.

As is usual with a Buchan story, the action starts almost immediately and does not let off from its break-neck speed until the final climax.  As we have come to expect, Buchan's prose style is beautifully descriptive and evocative without ever being in danger of becoming overblown.  Of course, there are gaping holes in the plot, and coincidences that strain credulity; however, these are all part and parcel of Buchan's style, and if the reader accepts them in the spirit they are given, then a rollicking good time is assured.

The Power-House is the first of the Sir Edward Leithen novels.  While it doesn't have the good-humoured charm of John Macnab, the second in the series, it does have the punch and vivacity of The Thirty-nine Steps, the first of the Richard Hannay novels.  And I look forward to reading the third in the series.

I read the 2007 edition published by Polygon Books.

The Two Towers (Book Three) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Book Three of The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien's masterpiece within a masterpiece. His achievement is remarkable. 

Frodo and Sam have surreptitiously left the Fellowship of the Ring; Boromir is slain, and Merry and Pippin have been abducted by orcs and taken westwards.  Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli must decide their course of action, and they choose to pursue the orcs, in the faint hope of recovering their lost friends.

And from this point Tolkien takes the reader from one end of the land of Rohan to the other.  Where in the previous volume the travellers crept or plodded with stealth across the countryside, they now run and ride openly, desperately and relentlessly in an ever-widening field of action.  We witness court intrigue, a battle and two sieges; and we are immersed even deeper into the history and geography of Middle-Earth.

But perhaps Tolkien's genius is nowhere more conspicuous than in the way he handles branching, overlapping and intertwining strands of narrative.  Friends are parted, reunited and then parted again.  We jump from place to place and from time to time as the story unwinds. Here, we witness the action as it unfolds; elsewhere, we have deeds reported to us in retrospect; the point of view shifts and then shifts again.

The book deals largely with friendships made in the midst of war, and with friendships broken by the thirst for power.  The healing of Theoden kindles a friendship where once there had been enmity; valor in arms in the face of a common foe unites Aragorn and Éomer, and deepens the friendship between Legolas and Gimli.  Merry and Pippin, already bonded to each other by their kinship, meet danger together; and they find a wholly unexpected friend in a wholly unexpected quarter.

As we draw closer to the midway point of the larger work, great deeds are done and are yet to be done.  Tolkien's familiar theme of hope versus despair is never far away.  At one point the White Rider says:

I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory.

No, deeds must play out; and one may win a battle and yet lose a war.  Book Three ends with the friends riding from a victory to what is likely to be their long defeat. 'Run now!' [cried the White Rider.] 'Hope is in speed!’

Pangur Bán by Anonymous

I came across this poem today and instantly fell in love with it.

Pangur Bán is a poem written in Irish Gaelic in the 9th century C.E., and composed in what is now southern Germany.  

The author is unknown, but it is thought he was an Irish Monk who worked as a scribe employed to copy books by hand.  It becomes obvious from the text of the poem that the author loved both his work and his cat Pangur the White.  

Eight clever stanzas draw parallels between the author (and his work) and his cat (and his work): hunting, practicing, enjoying, capturing, trying, and enjoying some more. 

Having said that, I'll let the poem do its own talking.

Pangur Bán

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

(Translation by Robin Flower (1881-1946))

Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut did not rate Slapstick very highly compared with some of his previous novels.  Despite its flaws, this book is well-written, thought-provoking and entertaining.

In a nearby future, most of the human race has been wiped out by two plagues.  Civil government in the United States of America has collapsed, only to be replaced by contending regional warlords.  Meanwhile, something odd has happened in China: the Chinese have embarked on a program of breeding miniaturised humans in order to reduce consumption, and they have developed the ability to travel to other planets without using spacecraft.

Wilbur Swain, a centenarian and a former President of the United States, narrates the story of him and his twin sister Eliza.  Wilbur and Eliza, who are possessed of average intellects, become super-intelligent when they are in close physical proximity with one another.  Their problems begin when they inform their parents of this fact.

In the prologue to the book, Vonnegut states that Slapstick is the closest thing to autobiography he has written: "It is about what life feels like to me."  Subtitled Lonesome No More, the novel's central themes are intimacy, loss and loneliness.

We see these aspects of the human condition as Wilbur unfolds the tale of his long life.  There seems to be little comfort in what Wilbur has to say, and the reader can perhaps be forgiven for feeling a little cushioned from the full impact of the themes by the bizarre, perhaps comical, circumstances under which they occur.

I have called it “Slapstick” because it is grotesque, situational poetry—like the slapstick film comedies, especially those of Laurel and Hardy, of long ago ... The fundamental joke with Laurel and Hardy, it seems to me, was that they did their best with every test. They never failed to bargain in good faith with their destinies, and were screamingly adorable and funny on that account.

Whether Wilbur and Eliza (or any of us) live up to the standard set by Laurel and Hardy is for the reader to decide.  We can but try; and that, I think, is a large part of the project of Humanism.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

What a pleasure it is to read The Wind in the Willows.  For the most part it is just shear fun; on the other hand, it also deals with the vital themes of life: food, friendship, conflict, self-control, and our relationship with nature and with the deity.

Grahame gives us a mixture of animal fable and adventure story to tell the tale of Mole and his new-found friends: Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad.  The action takes place in a fictional slice of the English countryside called River Bank.  Bisected by a wide stream, River Bank is bounded by the Wild Wood on one side and a more settled and civilized precinct on the other.

There are many episodes within the story, and Grahame skillfully changes the pace from pure adventure (such as the timid Mole's uncharacteristic excursion into the Wild Wood), to festivity (such as Ratty providing an impromptu mid-winter feast for some caroling field mice) to ruminations on the nature of instinct (as in the tale of the sea rat), to an encounter with the deity on Pan's Island; and of course there are the uproarious hijinks of Toad sprinkled throughout.

Grahame is more than capable of providing us with a memorable image or turn of phrase.  My favourite comes from a passage where Toad is sleeping rough on a cold night and has a dream of being in bed:

... and his bedclothes had got up, grumbling and protesting they couldn't stand the cold any longer, and had to run downstairs to the kitchen fire to warm themselves ...

The Wind in the Willows evolved out of the bed-time stories Grahame told to his vision-impaired son Alastair, the inspiration for Mole.  Many of Grahame's own childhood experiences inform the setting and characters in the book.  It is a credit to Grahame that he took what could be viewed as a sad situation and turned it into a joyous, sensitive, reflective and hopeful tale for all those who happen, whether by chance or by choice, to stroll along his River Bank.

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

What an interesting book this one is.  Where to start?

Listen: there is always the plot. But there really isn't one. On the other hand, there is a general conception of the story.  The universe is hit by a timequake, and time is rewound by ten years.  Everything then starts to run forward again, exactly in the way and order it had happened before the timequake.  Exactly the same way!  The big casualty is free will.  Humans have memories of the ten years that now lie ahead of them, but they are unable to change a single word or a single action as their lives unfold a second time.  They just have to go on auto-pilot until the re-run, well, runs out.

Vonnegut gets up to more of his post-modernist tricks as the pages turn. Timequake was first published in 1997; however, the narrator tells the story from the view point of 2001 (then four years in the future), not long after the supposed re-run has finished.  Is the narrator Vonnegut, or a fictional Vonnegut? We are given clues but we can never be sure.  The narrator interacts with other characters, some fictional, and some who really existed.  Kilgore Trout, the failed science fiction writer and Vonnegut's alter-ego, is a major character in the story.  Trout frequently slips in and out of his role as a fictional construct and his role as someone known personally by the narrator.

The narration blurs the boundaries between fiction, memoir and polemic. The narrator tells us Timequake will be his last novel.  As he looks back on a long life, one that has been made ten years longer by the timequake, he tells us quite a few things about his politics and philosophy of life, which are basically socialist and humanist:

[Uncle Alex] said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it ... Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: 'If this isn't nice, what is?'

He quotes his son Mark: 'We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is.'

Eugene V. Debs (1855 - 1926), the American union leader, is a favourite of the narrator, and his words have been quoted in previous Vonnegut novels:

While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

As in a few of Vonnegut's previous books, there are suicides in this story.  It is notable that there are an awful lot of them; and the narrator also tells us of the deaths by illness and misadventure of many of the people he has known and loved.  Tolkien said that the inevitability of death was the key spring of his stories, and this would seem true for Timequake's narrator, too.

The reader can rest assured that the narrator leavens his dark themes with wit and compassion; and he has this to say about the consolation of literature:

Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone.'

'You are not alone.'  Yes, I think that is the real reason why I read Vonnegut, and why I will continue to read and re-read him.  Between you and me, this is the second time I have read Timequake.  I like it that much.

Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell

Another stroll down memory lane.  In the early '70s, Channel 7 used to screen a weekly horror movie double bill in a program called Creature Features.  I was quite the addict and never missed it.  Looking back on those days, the movie I best remember was The Thing from Another World (1951), an adaptation of Who Goes There? Not that it was a great movie.  Few of those cheap '50s films were very good.  Still, despite its cinematic shortcomings, it scared the willies out of me.  Those were the days.

So, my interest was piqued when I stumbled across a copy of the original short story by John W. Campbell.  I was pleasantly surprised.

A group of researchers in the Antarctic discover an alien spaceship frozen in the ice and, nearby, the preserved body of an alien.  They are inattentive when they thaw the body of the alien, and the thing escapes inside their base.  The group realise the fate of the entire planet is in the balance when they come to understand the alien's prodigious biological and mental abilities: most notably, it is a shape-shifting mimic par excellence.  Now they must confront the fact that at least one of them may be the alien.  But who, and how many?

Campbell has given us an exciting psychological drama in a few short pages.  The characters don't know who to trust, and neither does the reader.  Experiments need to be devised and conducted in order to tell friend from foe. Campbell builds the tension into several climaxes before the denouement in the final two chapters.  Given the shortness of the story, it is surprising how much has been packed into it.  This more than makes up for the slight clunkiness of the prose style.  Still, Campbell was writing pulp fiction in the 1930s, and there probably wasn't the time or the money for too much polishing.

Overall, Who Goes There? is an exciting and suspenseful story, and I am glad I read it.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

I first saw the film My Fair Lady (1964) when I was five years old, and I have viewed it many times since.  I liked it then, and I like it now. The film is an adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion (1912). It surprises me that I hadn't read the play earlier, but there it is (2013).

Henry Higgins makes a handsome living by teaching the nouveau riche to speak with a cultured accent so they can pass into polite society.  Two accidental meetings present Higgins with the opportunity of teaching the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle and passing her off as a duchess; it is a challenge he finds irresistible.  Eliza and Higgins develop a love-hate relationship in the process, and the young, good-looking but penniless Freddy Hill provides the third point of the eternal triangle.  Two questions are posed: Will Higgins succeed in his plan for Eliza? Will Eliza choose Higgins or Freddy?

The title of the play refers to the ancient Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion who falls hopelessly in love with one of his creations, a statue of a beautiful woman whom he calls Galatea.  Pygmalion prays to the gods to bring his statue to life.  His wish is granted, but does it make either him or Galatea happy?

George Bernard Shaw's play has certainly given life to some very memorable characters.  There is the intelligent, talented but socially inept Henry Higgins, a "confirmed bachelor".  With him is the kind and mostly thoughtful Colonel Pickering.  Eliza is a resourceful, almost ambitious, young woman with a firm moral character.  And her father Alfred Doolittle is a honey-tongued cadger of the first order.

The banter in the play is sparkling and, at times, profound.  Shaw has endearingly rendered Eliza's versatile Cockney expression of surprise and disbelief as "Ah-ah-oh-ow-ow-ow-oo!", and there are more than a few of them in the play.

Higgins gives us some nuggets of wisdom:

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!

and

It is these little things that matter, Pickering. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves is as true of personal habits as of money.

and

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

Eliza  grows as a person.  Early on we are treated to her less than eloquent judgements on the world:

What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.

Later, she is able to sum up her difficulties with Higgins in razor-sharp terms:

... the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

And, of course, there is the ever-philosophical panhandling Alfred Doolittle:

I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

A great point of interest for me was comparing the ending of Pygmalion with the ending of My Fair Lady: one entices speculation, while the other, frankly, palls.  I'll leave you to work out which is which.

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

I have a book of knowledge that I have kept from my childhood.  It has a chapter on literature.  Five of its pages are devoted to illustrations of scenes from famous literary works: one for classical mythology, one for Dickens, two for everything from Shakespeare to Victorian times, and one for what it says are 'Books of Recent Times'.  

Among the illustrations on this page is one which shows a young boy walking through an Indian bazaar with a Tibetan lama.  The caption reads: 'Kim by Rudyard Kipling'.  By the time my book of knowledge was published, Kim had been in print for sixty years, which makes the usage of the word 'recent' very odd.  It is now over a hundred years since Kim hit the book stores, and I have been meaning to read it for a large slice of that time.

Kim is a picaresque novel in so much as its eponymous hero, a young orphan boy, is a lovable rogue.  We meet Kim when he is about thirteen and has been fending for himself on the streets of Lahore in the years since his father died.  Although he dresses as a native and has been tanned by the sun, Kim is actually of Irish descent.  Two things happen to him almost simultaneously: he enters the service of an itinerant Tibetan lama and becomes his chela (acolyte), and he is conscripted into the British Secret Service by a Pathan horse-trader and spy.  Kim's story, then, becomes divided by his desire to be with his beloved lama who is searching for the mythical River of the Arrow, and the part he plays in the political machinations of the empires of Britain and Russia, the so-called Great Game, as they vied for control of what is now Afghanistan.  Kim is also divided by his upbringing as a cat-witted urchin in Lahore, the imposed weight of his duty as the son of a white man, and his spiritual sojourn with the lama Teshoo.

On face value, Kim is a likeable story.  Its two central characters, Kim and the lama, are quite endearing, and they are surrounded by an ensemble of secondary characters who are exotic and intriguing.  The action takes place in a world that is also exotic and intriguing, and Kipling brings it all to life with a precise but vivid prose style.  All the senses are engaged as we explore Kim's slice of the sub-continent as it was in the 1880s.  

Or, better still, how Kipling would have us believe it to be.  One needs to be wary of the surreptitious (and not so surreptitious) anglophile sentiments expressed by the native Indian characters and the absence of countervailing voices.  And we could make note of the sweeping  statements (some positive, many jaundiced) made about the racial characteristics of the Easterners and the gender characteristics of women.  

I was greatly assisted in my reading of this text by the two extended and very informative introductions by Edward W. Said and Jan Montefiore that appear in the Penguin Classics eBook of Kim, which I both commend and recommend.  We are all prisoners of our times and of our personal and political temperaments, and Kipling is no exception.   Knowing this, and being forewarned, perhaps we can still enjoy Kim for what it is was essentially meant to be: an adventure story of a resourceful boy in a strange land in a strange time.  I know I did.

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

When I was a child who had not long learned how to read, I found I had not patience for the books my cohort was supposed to be reading at that age because a) I thought they were simple and childish, and b) I preferred non-fiction - just the facts, m'am, just the facts. 

Then I discovered Jules Verne.  Journey to the Centre of the Earth, it was.  I'm sorry, but bears and piglets and magic puddings couldn't compete with Iceland and volcanoes and storms and dinosaurs, not to mention trusty chronometers.  I so wanted to be Professor Lidenbrock, with his amazing learning and resources.

One Verne novel led to another, and so it was that Around the World in Eighty Days was the second fiction book I read that I actually liked, all those years ago.  And this weekend, all these years later, I had a copy of the book and an afternoon and evening free in which to race down Memory Lane.

I reacquainted myself with the story of Phileas Fogg, a fastidious and punctual man of habit, who abruptly departs London because of a wager: twenty thousand pounds will he win if he can circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less.  Fogg takes with him Passepartout (his newly hired man-servant) and a carpetbag stuffed with newly printed pound notes.  Everything goes well for master and man until they are intercepted in Port Said by a plain-clothes police detective called Fix who suspects Fogg of being a fugitive bank robber.  And that is when the true adventure begins.

I liked this book on second reading for what it is: a ripping yarn from bygone days.  It was much as I remembered it.  I also remembered the little boy who read this book.  Yes, I can still remember being as inflamed as Passepartout when we - he and I together  - discovered the plight of poor Aouda in the jungles of India.  On the other hand, while I remembered the leg of the journey across the United States of America, I had no recollection that both the writing and the sentiment of this part of the story were so bad.  In this respect, at least, both the reader and the times have changed, mercifully.

All in all, I spent an enjoyable evening with this short book: one that takes less time to read than to watch the 1956 film adaptation.  Well, almost less time.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ah, the joys of unfortunate compositing!

Seriously now, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of eleven short stories featuring the famous consulting detective, and is a sequel to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The stories, for the most part, follow a set format; the quality of the writing is of a high order; however, the quality of the stories is uneven.  The collection starts with 'Silver Blaze', which is perhaps the strongest and most enjoyable story.  'The Musgrave Ritual' has a Gothic quality to its tale, while 'The Crooked Man' is a tale of revenge and redemption.  Some of the others don't really work.

I enjoyed the previous collection more, but I still had a good time with this one (despite the duds).  As usual, I stood no chance of solving the mysteries. There was one where Sherlock Holmes put forth a solution identical to my own, only to dismiss it as sloppy first thoughts.  And that was about as close as I got - sloppy first thoughts.  Luckily for me, the enjoyment I get from trying to solve a sleuthing problem far outweighs the disappointment of my feeble deductive abilities.

The Penguin eBook which combines the two collections is sometimes marred by poor transcription: for example, '... by no means the opinion one forms of a Russian nobleman' becomes '... by no means the opinion one form sofa Russian nobleman'.  (I think that is a wee bit LOLworthy.)  The well-written and informative footnotes made up for the boo-boos in the text.  All in all, this edition by Penguin was worth the price of admission.

Life of Pi (2012) Directed by Ang Lee

What I thought was an unfilmable book has been brought to life - brilliant, beautiful life - by director Ang Lee and his team.

Yann Martel's 2001 novel tells the story of Pi, a teenage boy from India.  For one reason or another, Pi is the only human survivor of a  mid-Pacific shipwreck.  Fortunately, he has a lifeboat.  Unfortunately, for one reason or another, there is also a Bengal tiger on board.  The two survive each other, the weather, thirst and hunger for an incredible seven and a half months.  Film that!

That is just what Ang Lee did.  Well, that is what he partly did.  What couldn't be filmed was created by visionary digital artists using powerful computers and ultra-sophisticated software.  Marry the visuals to an intelligent screenplay (written by David Magee), mix it with some adroit directing and editing, and the film Life of Pi has to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing films ever made.

Yes, there are ocean-loads of beauty in this film, and I won't even begin to describe any of it.  But how much of it was real and how much was CGI?  This question parallels the one asked in the book - which of Pi's two accounts of his voyage is true?  Unreliable narration.  It's not always a bad thing.  Life of Pi - the book and the film - bears this out. 

10 out of 10 for the film.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012) Steve Carell, Keira Knightley

Have you ever wondered what you would do if your doctor said you had three weeks left to live?  Imagine what it would be like if every single person on earth was given similar news on the same day: y'all have three weeks before a giant asteroid strikes the earth.  That is the scenario facing the characters in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

When the last space shuttle sent to the asteroid explodes en route, humanity knows its days are numbered.  People react in different ways.  Dodge (Steve Carell), abruptly abandoned by his wife, wanders through his daily routine in a benumbed daze; those around him are drinking, bonking, looting and/or committing suicide.  He then meets Penny, who inspires Dodge to look for his childhood sweetheart.  In return, Dodge tries to help Penny get back to her folks in England.  So starts their road-trip and the exploration of their characters.

Carell gives us a nice, quiet and understated portrait of a nice, quiet and understated Dodge.  Knightley's Penny is a more complex, deep and energetic character than Dodge.  Despite their differences, the two forge an amicable and functional alliance.  Luckily for them, Dodge and Penny confront no real trials (apart from their 21 day deadline).  

It may have been better for us if they had, just to spice things up a bit; however, there were enough quirks of various kinds in this movie to make it both enjoyable and confronting.  It's just a pity that the story was not of the same calibre as the question it poses.  You can't win them all.  

What did Shakespeare say? "Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play."  I did enjoy this movie and I am glad that I saw it; it deserves more than a passing grade.  6.5 out of 10

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Moby Dick is a long book: it is also a big book.  Melville sets out to immerse the reader in the world of 19th Century whaling industry while telling the tale of a man ruined by madness.

"Call me Ishmael" is the famous opening line of the novel.  Ishmael narrates his own story about how he went to sea aboard the whaling ship Pequod.  His story does not have much of a plot, and it progresses very slowly.  Ishmael 's narrative is mostly split between telling what he saw and experienced aboard the Pequod,  and what he learned about whales and the whaling industry through the research he undertook in the years after the events being described.

Ishmael paints a vivid picture of life at sea on a whaling ship.  We see a cosmopolitan world in the microcosm of the ship and crew.  Here is a set of men of action who have to thrive in each other's company - for years on end - in cramped conditions.  We hear their conversations, their anecdotes and their songs.  In between times, they take to their boats and hunt down whales.  There are casualties that must be dealt with and griefs to be borne.

Throughout the narrative, Ismael ponders the nature of the universe, of humans, and of the Deity.  His outlook is generally bleak compared with those of his companions.  He does have the power of hindsight on his side, and we start to get some kind of inkling of dark times ahead when Captain Ahab stumps into the story.  The Captain is mad, but what will his madness bring down upon himself, his ship and his crew?

Overall, I really admire the job Melville has done with this book.  Yes, there are over-long passages devoted to cetology, but he was writing for an audience that had no Wikipedia or T.V. documentaries.  On the other hand, Melville succeeds superbly in conjuring up the strange and particular world of ye olde whalers - with its taverns, churches, docks and ships, with its heroes, villains, prophets and seers.  I was shown it all, and I was shown it incredibly well.

It took me a few months to get through Moby Dick, but I'm glad I took the time. It was a very rewarding experience.

. 

The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It was one of those days: at a loose end, I needed something to while away the time.  I settled on The Sign of Four.  It is the second of the Sherlock Holmes novels.  It turned out to be an entertaining afternoon's read.

Sherlock Holmes is bored and is shooting up cocaine as result.  As luck would have it, a young lady, Mary Morstan, comes to enlist his help in solving an intriguing mystery.  This is what Holmes needs: an intriguing mystery to engage his mind and talents.  Why is somebody sending flawless pearls anonymously to Mary?

As Holmes and Watson investigate the case things get more intriguing and, of course, more dangerous. Holmes uses his deductive logic to solve the puzzling situations confronting them.  Step by step they come closer to unmasking and apprehending the perp.  Will they meet their maker before they can bring the guilty to justice?

I had a lot of fun trying - unsuccessfully - to stay a step ahead of Holmes.  I suppose that is why he is a fictional consulting detective and I am not.  Although The Sign of Four is more of a novella than a novel, there is plenty of action to be had.  Apart from the over-long "I did it" speech in the last chapter, the story moves along at a fair clip.  

Let's face it, what we have here is a yarn, and character development takes second place to action.  That's the deal.  Buy into it and you are assured of a good time.  If you are looking for something for a rainy weekend, this may be your book.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

A friend in need is a friend, indeed.

Scotland, 1751.  It is five years since the failure of Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite rebellion.  The Hanoverians still hold the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, and their armed forces are in the process of pacifying the Scottish Highland clans.  The Highlanders are not permitted to bear arms or to wear their traditional kilts.  Of course, some Highlanders are still putting up a covert resistance in the name of the Jacobite cause.

Meanwhile, in the hinterland of Edinburgh young David Balfour has come into his majority.  Upon the death of his father, he seeks to claim his estate which is currently being held by his uncle Ebenezer.  Ebenezer has other ideas, and he arranges for David to be kidnapped and placed on a ship bound for the Carolina colonies where David will probably be sold into slavery.  However, the ship is wrecked on Scotland's west coast, and David teams up with a Jacobite warrior called Alan Breck Stewart.  The two start off on foot and head across the highlands, making for Edinburgh: David to reclaim his inheritance, Alan to sail for France.  But first they must negotiate the dangers on the road: robbers, traitors and the King's soldiers.

Stevenson tells a gripping story of two men, strangers to each other, who combine forces in order to beat the odds.  One is a fresh-faced youth who stands to gain by the new order being brought into Scotland; the other is a wily defender of the old order.  Although they do  not share the same political views, David is won over by the charm and talent of Alan Breck, while Alan comes to admire David's courage, candour and decency.

While David Balfour is a fictional character, Alan Breck is real figure, and Stevenson gets them both caught up in a real historical event: the roadside murder of Colin Campbell, the King's Factor in Alan's clan homeland of Appin.  Although David witnesses the murder, he only sees the murderer from afar and he can't be sure if it was Alan Breck or not.  His suspicions causes a rift between the two friends.  Will the two come to be friends and allies again?

Stevenson adroitly moves his characters across the Scottish countryside, enmeshing them in danger and intrigue.  Despite the tale being narrated in the first person by David Balfour, who comments a lot on his own psychological state, the action never bogs down in introspection.  Much of Alan Breck's character - and he is an extremely likeable fellow - we learn through dialogue rather than narration.  Stevenson manages to balance to perfection these two forms of storytelling, both of them providing the necessary exposition and character development.

Kidnapped is supposedly a children's classic, but as an adult I found it to be an enthralling read.  There is never a hint of condescension in the proceedings; and the language is both familiar and challenging, so there is plenty there for both kiddies and adults.  Thank you, R.L.S.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

There's one thing worse than reading a novel by Oscar Wilde...

Yes, the celebrated playwright and short-story writer wrote one novel and The Picture of Dorian Gray is it.  Wilde wrote this book before his plays, and many of his famous witticisms that we may know best from his plays appeared in this book first.  They are mostly spoken by Lord Henry Wotton; and once they start, they don't stop whilst Lord Henry is on the scene.  The book fairly sizzles with them.

[Spoiler Alert] Most people who are familiar with the name Dorian Gray will know that this book contains the story of a far-more-than-handsome young man who does not age; rather, his commissioned portrait starts to show the lines and wrinkles.  Worse yet, or better still for Dorian, the portrait also bears all the marks of Dorian's dissolute and debauched life, until it's visage becomes hideous to behold.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is such a multifaceted book that I can hardly do it justice in the limited scope of this review.  On face value, we have a fantasy story of a wish come true; however, dig beneath the surface and it can be read as a satire, a tract about the nature of art, of morals, of love, of homosexual love, and of taking pleasure in clandestine behaviour abhorrent to the so-called right-minded people of the Victorian Age.

Whatever it is, Wilde has told the story magnificently.  Lord Henry Wotton is a totally unforgettable creation: a debonair and cynical man of leisure who has an acid wit and a sparkling turn of phrase.  Dorian's gradual but finally absolute corruption proceeds ruthlessly.  There is human collateral damage everywhere.  In the meantime, the reader is challenged about how to think and feel about so many important matters.  Just to finish off, here is Lord Henry in one of his more serious moments:

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable.  They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar.  But their own souls starve, and are naked.  Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us.  And yet -

 What do you suppose the 'And yet -' leads to?  You will have to read the book.

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

'Tis a pity that he should not have recognized the fact that in this world no good is unalloyed, and that there is but little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly.

The Warden is a charming book peopled with characters who are neither wholly good nor wholly evil.  They are vividly imagined and realised beings, each with their own particular set of virtues and foibles; and the main characters are set a problem that exercises their sense of discrimination of right from wrong. 

The scene is Victorian England.  The Reverend Septimus Harding is enjoying his twilight years.  As the Warden of Hiram's Hospital, a hospice for disabled rural workers, he receives a substantial stipend in return for no work whatsoever.  His problems start when  someone points this out to the local newspaper.  Is it right that one man should receive twice as much as twelve invalid pensioners combined for no other reason than this is the way the Church of England has seen fit to administer a centuries-old bequeathment? 

This is the main moral question for the characters in the book. The Reverend Harding is stung by the accusation and wrestles with his conscience.  Archdeacon Grantly leads the Church's defence against the claims of the pensioners to a fairer treatment, while the Bishop vacillates about the matter.  

In The Warden, Trollope has created a gentle, thoughtful and likeable Reverend, a decisive but bullying Archdeacon and an ineffectual Bishop.  Set against these are a socially-minded suitor, a crusading newspaper man, and a dozen damaged and ill-educated pensioners.  These characters are so skilfully drawn that the reader can engage with and care for them all.  And even though the setting of the action is now more than 100 years in the past, it is easy for the modern reader to be immersed politics of the little world of Barsetshire.

I liked this book a great deal, and I look forward to reading the sequel, Barchester Towers.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The word on the street is that Disney made a film adaptation of this book, they called it John Carter, and they lost a snoot-load of money on it.  I saw the film.  I can understand why.  So it baffles me how a good book can make a not-so-good movie.

John Carter is a derring-do survivor of the American Civil war.  He goes prospecting in Arizona after the war and disappears for ten years.  What folk don't know is that he was transported to the planet Mars and had a lot of adventures there before he was returned to Earth.

A Princess of Mars is the first Edgar Rice Burroughs novel I have read.  It was first published in 1912, and Burroughs is considered to be one of the early pulp fiction writers.  I can see how he would have been popular with his audience.  His prose is plain yet eloquent; the narrative never bogs down in any one place, and the action is kept moving along.  The plot is simple in its broadest sense, and yet there is enough sub-plotting to allow for some nicely executed twists.  And there was a novelty in Burroughs' vision of a Martian civilisation.

Yes, the Mars that John Carter visits has quite a few cultures, and he has direct experience of a few of them.  In a way, Carter acts as a kind of amateur anthropologist, relating to the reader his discoveries about the strange races of Mars and their histories.  Of course, the century that has elapsed since the debut of A Princess of Mars has given us many repetitions of the novelties this book contains, and it is a generous reader who keeps in mind how original Burroughs might have in his day.  It would seem that Burroughs keyed into the zeitgeist as radium features prominently in the story as a wonder material.  Today we know the hazards of radium.

I enjoyed A Princess of Mars.  It is a little tame by today's standards, but it is a good story and one well told.

Ruby Sparks (2012) starring Zoe Kazan

What do you get when you combine RomCom with Magic Realism and mix in some human failings?  You get a film like Ruby Sparks.

Calvin was a child genius of the literary world, having written and published a best-selling book by the time he was nineteen.  Now in his twenties, things are not going so well for Calvin:  he has writer's block, and he is love-lorn.  His psychiatrist innocuously asks Calvin to write one page about the kind of person he would like to meet.  Calvin does as he is asked, and to his astonishment his dream girl becomes a 3-D living young woman who calls herself Ruby Sparks.  Can an ideal fantasy become the ideal reality?

Haven't we seen this kind of thing before in the myth of Pygmalion and in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo?  Well, yes. Does Ruby Sparks give a fresh spin on this sub-genre?  Yes and no.  What we do see is how Calvin, having had his dream come true, botches this chance for happiness. That is nothing new; however, we are shown a vision of what an insecure, self-centred person may be capable of should they gain a god-like control over another individual, especially when that individual is a young woman who is showing signs of having a mind of her own.  Interest lies in how this 'problem' will play itself out.  Will there be a resolution beyond the usual trope of boy meets girl/loses girl/gets girl again?

Zoe Kazan, who wrote the screenplay, does a sterling job as the likeable and wracked Ruby Sparks.  Paul Dano is quite unlikeable as the unlikeable Calvin, while Chris Messina ably plays Calvin's brother Harry (perhaps the linchpin character of the movie).   Steve Coogan and Elliott Gould make understated cameos, while Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas play two hippies (who may as well be straight from central casting).  A lot of the action takes place indoors; as a result, the photography tends to be dark, and the atmosphere claustrophobic.  The choices of music and songs for the soundtrack are very good.

Overall, this is a film that has capacity to provoke thought as well as feelings.  What we think and feel is not always pleasant, but sometimes it is challenging to go there.  In this case, perhaps we are not too challenged.  If you liked Being John Malkovich, you may like this film.  6/10