A corner of the artist's room

In a playful homage to Gwen John, on a day that promises no more than rain, I've been taking (very inexpert) photographs.

Here is John's 'A Corner of the Artist's Room in Paris with Open Window' (1907 - 1909)



And here is a corner of my room just now:

A corner of the artist's room in Wongavale with open window (2012)

The erotic nose

Yesterday, as I was walking through Lismore on the way to renew my driver's licence, I had the urge to sneeze. There was the tell-tale tingling in my nose - so I was prepared for it and reached for a hanky (yes, I use hankies, not tissues - many forests have been saved). The sneezing continued all the way to the Motor Registry.

I thought about how sneezing was actually rather pleasurable. That itchy feeling in the nose - and then the relief of the sneeze. I hadn't considered this before - I probably found sneezing a nuisance previously - but what caused me to think about it was a book I've read recently.

It's Sir Vidia's Shadow, by Paul Theroux, a book I've had for years and have now read at least three times. It's about Theroux's 30 year friendship with Naipaul, and the ending of it. It's delicious, gossipy, a bit bitchy, and a pleasure to read.

The sneezing part involves a dinner party at Naipaul's, where the writer Antonia Fraser is a guest. Theroux finds her attractive, and has fantasies about being on a tropical island with her ...

'I love to sneeze,' Lady Antonia said. 'I wonder why that is.'

This was my chance. I said, 'The reason it's so pleasurable is that there is erectile tissue in the nose - even a woman's. The nose is also a sexual organ. It's very sensitive. I mean, it can become aroused and swollen. There are some people who can't breathe through their nose when they're sexually excited.'

Everyone stared at me.

'It says so in Krafft-Ebing,' I went on, blabbing. 'Psychopathia Sexualis. Sneezing and sex.'

Lady Antonia smiled, but her husband was frowning in contemplation at his big hands, and his face was darker as an uneasy silence descended on the table. I had probably said too much, but I didn't mind. I was thinking of nakedness on a hot island.

On other matters Naipaul, Sir Vidia is someone who knows immediately if a piece of writing is by a man or a woman (that famous puzzle about whether women or men write differently).

Do books change your life? This one certainly made me re-think my feelings about sneezing. I had thought it a nuisance, an embarrassment, slightly painful sometimes - and now I know why. I will enjoy sneezing from now on, even in public.

Thank you lady Antonia Fraser. Thank you Paul Theroux.

In which I ponder Enid Blyton and George Macdonald

You're probably tired of hearing me talk about my deprived childhood in the 1950s, but consider this:

I did not read The Wind in the Willows, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or Charlotte's Web till I was adult, though all books were in publication at that time.

 I only encountered Pooh Bear in Year Two, when the teacher in our little two-teacher school handed me a copy and sent me into the Kindergarten and Year One class to read to them while the teacher was out of the room. I was a little confused: there was a character called Tigger, but he was (I kept looking at the illustration) a tiger. Had they spelt it wrong? Sometimes Milne's humour is lost on children. He's a bit condescending at times.

At home, we did have a copy of May Gibbs' Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and I had Madeline.

And then there was Enid Blyton. We had The Adventures of the Wishing Chair, and the Folk of the Faraway Tree books, and the naughtiest girl books. I'd spend hours lost in them, reading them to myself from an early age. I loved them.

Only one still exists.

I don't love Blyton any more: she's twee and the books are badly written, with too many exclamation marks!

'I say, Mollie, can you hear a flapping noise?' said Peter. 'Has the chair got wings anywhere?'

Mollie peeped cautiously over the edge of the chair. 'Yes!' she said. 'It has a little red wing growing out of each leg, and they make the flapping noise! How queer!'

But when I was a child I was enthralled by the magic of them, spending hours reading and rereading them, caught up in their worlds.

 I didn't give them to my own children. There were so many other great books for them. The Adventures of the Wishing Chair was first published in 1937, and Blyton was probably the biggest name in children's books at the time (I won't call them literature). But she persisted, and it's still possible to buy new copies today. When I was lecturing in the 1980s in children's literature my students always asked me what I thought of Blyton. I think I said  I considered her dated, and there were so many better books around.

I have another old book, which I bought for $7.50 in the 1980s, about the same price then as a new Penguin paperback of the same title: The Princess and the Goblin, by George Macdonald.  The illustrations are by Arthur Hughes, one of the best illustrators at a time of great illustrators. It's not for nothing that Victorian times are called a Golden Age of children's literature.

My copy is inscribed with the words:  Peggy from Betty July 22nd 1898.

One very wet day, when the mountain was covered with mist which was constantly gathering itself into rain-drops, and pouring down on the roofs of the great old house, whence it fell in a fringe of water from the eaves all round about it, the princess could not of course go out. She got very tired, so tired that even her toys could no longer amuse her. You would wonder at that if I had time to describe to you one half of the toys she had. But then you wouldn't have the toys themselves, and that makes all the difference: you can't get tired of a thing before you have it. It was a picture, though, worth seeing - the princess sitting in the nursery with the sky-ceiling over her head, and a great table covered with all her toys. If the artist would like to draw this, I should advise him not to meddle with the toys. I am afraid of attempting to describe them, and I think he had better not try to draw them. He had better not. He can do a thousand things I can't, but I don't think he could draw those toys. No man could better make the princess herself than he could, though - leaning with her back bowed into the back of the chair, her head hanging down, and her hands in her lap, very miserable as she would say herself, not even knowing what she would like, except it were to go out and get thoroughly wet, and catch a particularly nice cold, and have to go to bed and take gruel.

This is delightful writing that will never date. More importantly, an adult with a love of words can read it aloud with pleasure.  I will read this book to my grandchildren (when I get them). Enid Blyton: never!

Divesting myself of books

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s I never had enough to read. I had a fair number of books compared to most people, but there was no bookshop in our town, only a newsagent, which sold a few books down the back. Like most book lovers, I consider a book to be a precious thing, though I do write and comment in them. I like to have a good conversation with a book, and things can get heated. Like Sophie, in My Candlelight Novel (see sidebar) I have thrown a book across a room. Even books I can't finish (Madame Bovery) I have a reverence for. On the other hand, if I really don't like a book I get rid of it pronto.

I once found myself in possession of a promotional copy of a book I couldn't read, from a new women's publisher in the UK, and couldn't even think of giving it to a friend. I have never stolen from a library, but I can say I have sneaked a book into a library, and that's what I did with the above title. I shelved it in the appropriate spot - later on I saw that the library had given it an accession number. I think all books deserve to find their readers.

I have got rid of quite a few books over the years - donated them to libraries, given to charity, given away to friends, book-crossinged them, sold to 2nd hand dealers - and now I find I want to get rid of quite a lot more.

A radio program on hoarding the other day made me think about why I'm hanging onto so many books I know I'll never read again.

One reason is inertia - I can be disorganised and untidy, and I let things gather. Dust, weeds, papers, old mss, old anything, underwear, all has a tendency to collect with me.

Then there is the In Case scenario. I imagine myself an impoverished old woman, housebound, with nothing to do but read. I can re-read all those old books! Years of happy fun.

Some books I've kept because I cannot imagine living without them. These are the ones I'm keeping still. The others - perfectly good books, many of them newish, well-written, brilliant, even - but I can't imagine wanting to re-read them. I may already have done so.

So: I've sussed out someone to take a hand-picked selection of the best and most beautiful: she can then hand them on if she likes. The others will be going to Lifeline in Lismore, who have a huge annual book sale.

So: what me keeping?

My Kerouac and beat collection. Novels, letters, journals, biographies, poetry ... including Ginsberg, of course.

Japanese books: old and new. Murakami, Yoshimoto, Tanazaki, etc etc etc. My Japanese phase has not ended - and some I haven't got round to reading yet.

Margaret Drabble. I've already got rid of her 'middle period books' (The Gates of Ivory, for eg), which I don't much like, but am keeping the early and late Drabble.

Gertrude Stein.

Virginia Woolf. Except for The Waves (ditched ages ago)  - could never get into it.

Penelope Fitzgerald.

Elizabeth Taylor.

Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields. All Canadian, shouldn't be lumped together as they're chalk and cheese.

A few young adult novels. Ursula D, Martine Murray ...

The classics. Dostoyevsky. Some Tolstoy. Dickens. The Brontes.

george orwell, james joyce (sorry, just go sick of capitalising). And biographies of writers.

And other odds and sods.

Quite a lot, really.

And I suppose I'll have to keep the Proust, all 6 or 7 vols which someone gave me on a indefinite loan years ago - I'm up to the beginning of Vol 2. That will keep me busy in my dotage.

What are you reading?

I'm interested in this. Many people pass through this blog, maybe on the way to somewhere else, and I wonder who you are, and what you're reading right now.

(Let me say that I'm interested in all sorts of minutiae about people. I find the contents of the supermarket trolleys of the people in front of me quite interesting - it passes the time and stops queue rage. If you want to tell me what was on your most recent grocery list I'll listen to that too.)

So me: I've been rather distracted lately with Life and writing, so my reading has been very slow. But what I can't stop reading (and I've almost finished it) is this very odd book called Troubles, by J G Farrell.

It's set in Ireland in about 1918-20, and concerns major Brendan Archer, an Englishman just back from the War, who thinks he may be engaged to a woman named Angela (she dies early on), who lives with her family in an enormous crumbling hotel in rural Ireland called The Majestic.

The Majestic is in a way really the main character of this book. It's so enormous and rambling that people are always getting lost, so dilapidated that they routinely change rooms when the one they're in ceases functioning. A place so vast that even the owner gets lost in it; people wander fruitlessly down corridors searching for each other and missing each other; a huge and increasing tribe of cats has taken up residence - one room is described as 'boiling with cats' - who are later slaughtered and carried in sacks dripping with blood downstairs (luckily the carpets are red).

This is a book that teeters on the edge of humour and farce, yet it is violent and tragic. Throughout are newspaper reports of 'troubles': in Ireland, and India, and other parts of the British Empire. There are troubles nearby in the village as well, as the aftermath of the Easter uprising of 1916 is played out.

Major Archer is a strange man; he seems almost trapped in the hotel,  too apathetic to leave. After Angela dies, he falls in love with a dreadful woman named Sarah, the Catholic daughter of the bank manager in the town; he finds the linen room, one of the only warm places in the hotel, and regularly lies there on a nest of sheets in its fug from the heat in the kitchen and fantasises about her. Repressed sexuality is one of the themes running through the book.

Then there are the twins, Faith and Charity, Angela's younger sisters, who hint at a less repressed time coming in the 1920s; and there's Padraig, the grandson of the local doctor, whom they enjoy dressing up as a girl (as does Padraig.)

All very metaphorical ...

This book won the delightfully named Lost Booker Prize a couple of years ago, a once-off prize  for books published in 1970 that slipped through the Booker net when the dates for eligibility  were changed. I became interested in it when I read a piece about Farrell by Penelope Fitzgerald in a book of her collected writings.

And you? What are you reading? How did you get to hear of it?

Favourite books of 2011

Wet day ... sniffles ... last day of the year ... and I can't resist a list:


The Golden Day, Ursula Dubosarsky

One of the few books I read that was actually published this year. I've read it three times, so far.
I love the way it's written, the humour, and the threads and patterns of the fabric of it. It's coloured with the light of memory and childhood. Reading should be an experience akin to actually being somewhere, and this is. If it was a dream (and it is dream-like) I'd try to go back to it. As it's a book, I can simply re-read it.

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro

This pretty well describes my experience of getting hold of this book. It had slipped beneath my radar: I think it came out in 2009. It's currently down on my writing desk - I read a few of her sentences to push-start my writing on days when words don't come gracefully. Munro and I go back a long way - at least 30 years, and she just gets better and better.

Thanks to the Queanbeyan library: when I was minding rabbits there for 3 weeks I tried to do a temporary membership: theoretically possible, but the person on the desk was so reluctant that I said 'Forget it!' and left a copy of this book that I'd discovered on the shelves behind. There are no bookshops in Queanbeyan. When I got home to Wongavale I ordered a copy online.



The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Found on a table at Aldi - a Collins Classic.

Had I read this before? I thought I had, but remembered none of it (the goldfish method of reading, you simply forget what you've read and go round and round rediscovering things), although of course I knew what it was about - how can you live in the world of books and not?

Wilde's only novel, this reminded me of why I love him so much. He's compassionate and so intelligent - his sheer intelligence is what I noticed most in reading this.

Many of his best-known aphorisms come from this novel. I will (naturally) read it again.





Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger. 




I hate Catcher in the Rye. I read this because another blogger wrote about it.

Can this guy write!

Come back, J.D. All is forgiven.


Underground, by Haruki Murakami




Another old book I hadn't read. This isn't a novel, but an account, through interviews, of the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

It's a fascinating study of the way various individuals were affected, the way the authorities responded (and failed to respond) - a story of muddles and incompetencies, bravery and survival, and, as the subtitle suggests, the 'Japanese psyche'.

The character of Murakami, as interviewer and commentator, comes across too. I like him.  I received 1Q84 (its themes not unrelated to this book) for Christmas, and I'm looking forward to reading it, when I've finished reading:





The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky


Can you count a book as read in 2011 if you haven't finished reading it yet?  I have less than 14 hours left of this year, so I can't see it happening.

I kept reading other books in between, not because I didn't like this, but because I read multiple books at a time (you know how it is).

But this is possibly my top book of the year. I struggle with the Russian names, the way the characters seem to have many titles that refer to them, and the fact that I'm not a 19th Century Russian, or indeed a 20th or 21st Century Russian and doubtless don't get all the nuances.

But I think I may feel Russian by the time I've finished it, because the world of this book is so addictive and all- consuming and detailed, the characterisation so subtle and precise.

I love some of the women in this book! Dostoyevsky is an hon woman, in my estimation, along with James Joyce. The eccentric  Epanchin women, for example:

The three daughters of General Epanchin were blooming, healthy, well-grown young women, with magnificent shoulders, well-developed chests and strong, almost masculine arms; and naturally with their health and strength  they were fond of a good dinner and had no desire to conceal the fact.

Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford




What a delightful comedy. I read this about 30 years ago after the TV series with Judy Dench in it, and had lost it (I think I may have lent it to my sister, from whence no books return).

A month or so ago I saw she had a new Penguin Classics copy, and borrowed it.

I don't think I'll give it back.

Flynn

Over Christmas, my children were showing me Facebook (how old-fashioned am I?), and I discovered that About A Girl (called Flynn in the Netherlands) has its own Facebook page (so do I, but it's not really mine, just the page of the author Joanne Horniman, who at times seems quite removed from me).

Anyway, I'm sure the publisher La Vita won't mind me stealing a picture from Flynn's page, of two lovely Dutch women with the book ...

... and what looks like a pink flamingo.

Which just goes to show that books are like children. They grow up and have lives of their own, and you need to keep track of 'em on Facebook if you want to know what they're really up to.