'The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare' by G.K. Chesterton

Not my cup of tea. Quite enjoyed the opening bits and the promise and the set-up, but somewhere mid-way in the book, as it dawned on me what is happening and where the book is eventually headed, the feeling turned to chagrin, bewilderment (not in a good way), disappointment, with me going 'really?', and eventually, wtf?

But then this is an allegorical novel. It is what you read in it.

I got nudged towards Chesterton from Borges poetry lectures. And although I like the paradoxical aphorisms or quotable quotes or the general idea of the paradoxical discussions, I do not get this specific book. 

The book began like another of my recent reads, 'The Secret Agent' by Joseph Conrad. The same backdrop of London of broadly the same period (?) and the anarchists. But it is just the takeoff that is similar. After a bit, 'The Man...' falls off the cliff somewhere.  The book borders at the edge of reality; call it surreal, or magic realism or absurd realism or what some people call it: a metaphysical detective story.

(Just an alert here, the following discussion might feel like spoiler to some people.)

This book's purpose is lost to me. Leaving me a bit miffed. At myself? On not being able to understand the point. Or not being able to see what perhaps others see in it. Instead of leaving it as such and not writing about it anymore, however, here I am wondering why am I unable to appreciate the work? What am I missing? The paradox?

May be it is because I am not able to get all his allusions or what he meant to say. A google search will bring across innumerable pages on Chesterton and Christianity. And as per the internet and people better read on Chesterton, this one is the more secular of his novels. My personal familiarity or understanding of Christian symbolism is very limited. Limited to what one has seen and read. Although all my schooling has been in a Catholic school (and the routine of daily morning prayer assembly, lunch prayers, carols through December, nativity scene, the story of Jesus Christ and of course, Christmas) , I understand some things, but I have not really studied Christianity or the Bible, for that matter. 

Secondly, I really do not see things the same way. I understand and respect that every religion has its symbolism and belief system but then it is not an implicit general assumption for a book unless the book is presented as Gospel or religious fiction. There are secular works, there are indifferent works, there are even religious works which say as much, but this one was an implicit religious work (if there is such a genre). I feel there are ways and means of discussing faith without regarding it as given as the sky above us. And here, as I write this, I doubt myself again. What do I know? Most of my reading has been limited to what now I would call secular or indifferent books. But I have mostly stayed away from books that leave no debate. Since then I feel that the point of reading is lost. Who can write gospel truths in these times? Where there is no inherent doubt, questioning or at least an acceptance or acknowledgement or humility that really no-one knows what is and what is not, the writing loses the exploratory magic that most writing is, and becomes extremely narrow and didactic. 

For me perhaps the most important reason of this eventual creeping disenchantment was the plot and the non-resolution. The massive set-up of all the different anarchist agents and their Supreme Council. Followed by a lot of mad chase and shuffle, and illogical sequences. And still, one doesn't end up any wiser and nothing really gets resolved. Why go through that sort of trouble, to do what? Aren't the energies of all the people involved (all the relevant characters in the book) spent somewhere else better. And where do all the real anarchists go? In the end, is it just a discussion on Sabbath and how the days of week came by? But then only so much of the world holds that notion. I respect faith and I believe that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I feel this way, shortchanged or miffed, is because I feel I read a religious novel thinking it was some paradoxical mystery.  

Enough said. May be, I need to reflect a little bit more and revisit the rushed through final pages of the book to understand what the author is getting at. Or maybe the best Chesterton is poems and quotes and reflections on life without getting into the religious domain which of course as a topic carries edge and root of an argument. 

Not sure if I want to watch the movie. Mostly not. 

**

As an irrelevant aside, whenever I looked at the title of the book 'Man who was Thursday', my mind, the random associations it keeps, kept reminding me of 'Man who sold the world'. So much so, throughout the book, and even while writing this post, the song has been playing in my head. And come to think of it, what you hear in the lyrics is not too far removed from the book. 

No matter the nightmare was not enjoyable. We can still save the day, listen to Nirvana playing David Bowie's 'Man Who Sold the World' here. And I am copying-pasting the lyrics from the internet here:

The Man Who Sold the World (by David Bowie)

We passed upon the stair
We spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there
He said I was his friend
Which came as a surprise
I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone
A long long time ago

Oh no, not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world 

I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home
I searched for form and land
For years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazeless stare
We walked a million hills
I must have died alone
A long, long time ago

Who knows?
Not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

Who knows?
Not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

'This Craft of Verse' by Jorge Luis Borges

Another lucky find.

This book is a collection or transcript of lectures by Jorge Luis Borges, given in English at Harvard in late 60s (Norton Lectures). These lectures were in tape form, apparently lost and recently rediscovered, and then printed in the year 2000 in a book form. 

I have had a copy each of the collected fictions and non-fictions of Jorge Luis Borges for years now. But I have not been able to complete either of them. I have finished off parts of these books, books by themselves; however, not the complete collections yet. There are areas where I still find myself stuck. This one, hence, counts as my first Borges, sort of.

After reading a lot of Borges in translation, it is nice to hear his thoughts directly in English. And, it is a short book. What I like is where it takes me. One can read it quickly. Then one re-reads. And then one looks up all the references and poets. And all that takes a bit of time. Time well spent, nothing I complain of. For instance, Borges mentions 'Chestertonian mood', and calls it the very best mood to be in. And I haven't read anything by Chesterton. So after reading all the one-liners and quotes I could easily find online, I am now pretty deep in "The Man Who was Thursday". (As I write this, I am in the final third of the novel). Or all those poem fragments and poets you come across. They all demand a google looking up and then the thread can extend and extend, until you trace back your steps. Like, for some reason, through the web, I found myself reading Ithaca by Cavafy, and then found myself re-reading Brodsky's essay on Cavafy (Pendulum's Song from his collection, Less than One), and then wishing to read more from both Cavafy and Brodsky.

I haven't read a lot of poetry. Just a little bit. And mostly poems that I have revisited often. Some poems reveal what they hold soon. Some take a lot of patience and time, or certain moods when their meaning or what you take away from them becomes apparent. And at times, once the meaning becomes apparent, some poems can form the background music of life itself for months on end; call it a particular poem phase. (I recall my recent Four Quartets phase. That poem has so much in it. One can spend a lifetime dipping in and out and still take something from it). I am still a beginner in terms of understanding poetry.  At the moment, I have a couple of other books next to me which have poetry for beginners kind of titles. But who better to hold your hand as you stare into this new world, than Borges himself.

There is a humility in the book which makes it and him endearing. And then there is this philosophy or ways of looking at life that are interspersed throughout the book. As much about the mechanics of verse - from metaphor to word music, as it soon becomes a larger, deeper, way of looking at life itself. I'll best convey this by directly quoting from the book.

Consider the following from his discussion on Metaphor where he discusses the last stanza from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening". The initial part is an analysis, a discussion on what is happening in these lines. Like any other lecture. But where he takes the discussion, and what you come away with, perhaps very few people are able to convey in such unassuming, simple manner. One feels lucky and privileged to be able to have access to or to come across such thoughts.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

These lines are so perfect that we hardly think of a trick. Yet, unhappily, all literature is made of tricks, and those tricks get - in the long run - found out. And then the reader tires of them. But in this case the trick is so unobtrusive that I feel rather ashamed of myself for calling it a trick (I call it this merely for want of a better word). Because Frost has attempted something very daring here. We gave the same line repeated word for word, twice over, yet the sense is different. "And miles to go before I sleep": this is merely physical; - the miles and miles in space, in New England, and "sleep" means "go to sleep". The second time - "And miles to go before I sleep" - we are made to feel that the miles are not only in space but in time, and that "sleep" means "die" or "rest". Had the poet said so in so many words, he would have been far less effective. Because, as I understand it, anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: Arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments. Then we look at them, we weigh them, we turn them over, and we decide against them.

But when something is merely said or - better still - hinted at, there is a kind of hospitality in our imagination. We are ready to accept it.

 

And later in the book, another reference to the same stanza:

Perhaps I am doing no good for us by pointing this out. Perhaps the pleasure lies not in our translating "miles" into "years" and "sleep" into "death", but rather in feeling the implication.

Through the book, you also get to hear his view on not just the craft of verse, but that of prose too, and how to consider them or appreciate them. And it is a great new perspective (for me). Take the following example. In his lecture on "the telling of the tale" and singing of verse, he reconsiders epic, and that if it can be done, it should be done. Here is him talking about modern epic. 

I have been thinking about the subject only rather late in life; and besides, I do not think I could attempt the epic (though I might have worked in two or three lines of epic). This is for younger men to do. And I hope they will do it, because of course we all feel that the novel is somehow breaking down. Think of the chief novels of our time - say, Joyce's Ulysses. We are told thousands of things about the two characters, yet we do not know them. We have a better knowledge of characters in Dante or Shakespeare, who come to us - who live and die - in a few sentences. We do not know thousands of circumstances about them, but we do know them intimately. That, of course, is far more important.

He talks about himself in the final chapter, called "A Poet's Creed". Here, he is talking about listening to his father reading Keats, from his "Ode to a Nightingale".

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

I thought I knew all about words, all about language (when one is child one feels that one knows many things), but those words came as a revelation to me. Of course, I did not understand them. How could I understand those lines about birds' - about animals' - being somehow eternal, timeless, because they live in the present? We are mortal because we live in the past and in the future - because we remember a time when we did not exist, and foresee a time when we shall be dead. Those verses came to me because of their music. I had thought of language as being a way of saying things, of uttering complaints, of saying that one was glad, or sad, and so on. Yet when I heard those lines (and I have been hearing them, in a sense, ever since), I knew that language could also be a music and a passion. And thus was poetry revealed to me.

(My underline). It is what he takes away from those lines. And what makes poetry so interesting. What one takes away depends so much on how deeply one thinks, and how one sees things. This is as much about the art of seeing. Such beautiful stuff!

What I take away - that I should live in the moment more often.

An awesome read. A book for keeps and for sharing.

**

This was one of those few books, where by reading aloud often from, I have hooked K on to it as well. And he is reading it now.

**

See what I found on google: a recording of Borges giving these lectures. Find them here. 

'Evening in Paradise - More Stories' by Lucia Berlin

I picked up Lucia Berlin on a whim. I was on the look-out for a new, fun read for a short trip, preferably engaging short stories which one can dip in and out of. Now, one of the libraries I visit has a very interesting way to classify books, they put stickers somewhere close to the lower edge of the book spines with colors and images of the genre, with the key to those sticker signs always stuck somewhere close-by - like romance, sci-fi, mystery, short stories. Instead of going through the book names and author names, when in the mood to stumble across something new, one can just glance or scan through the shelves for the genre one is looking for.  I can always carry a list and search the database, but more often than not, I am disappointed since what I seek, I often do not find there. Hence, this approach to serendipity. 

And see where it got me! While scanning the shelves for unread 'Short Stories', I came up on this new book by Lucia Berlin. (New, as in this is a 2018 book, collected posthumously. The author died in 2004). I read the foreword: 'The Story is the Thing', by Mark Berlin, Lucia Berlin's eldest son, who passed away in 2005. Quickly googled her, and got the book home. The title 'An Evening in Paradise - More Stories' suggests that this is perhaps a follow on version, and I need to read what is not here too. Which is 'A Manual for Cleaning Women and other stories'.*

Her short stories are very vivid. As Mark Berlin says, 'Ma wrote true stories'. I didn't understand the significance of that statement until 4 or 5 stories deep in the book, I went to the last pages to read a note on Lucia Berlin, and found echoes of the author's life in the stories. It is not true stories of other people. It is true story of her life. May be not the same characters, or the places, may be different names, different professions, but the thread, or the life recounted in those stories through other characters as instruments, was author's own. Written perhaps as independent episodes, one off short stories, collected here in sequence, making this book very autobiographical. Except perhaps one story (An Evening in Paradise), where we don't see her in any protagonist, all other stories take her life's backdrop.

It is a very interesting and full life that she had. A mother at a very young age, she married thrice, and lived in different places - in the US itself different places, and then outside in Mexico, in South America. As Mark Berlin notes, perhaps never in the same place for a year. And the stories take you to all those places. And they are told from the vantage point of the author at those different ages. The initial two stories have the protagonist at six or seven years old. Moving into early teens, and then first husband, and so on.

Not sure why but the analogy that comes to my mind is that of caramelised onions. if the facts of her life were raw onions, what you have is flavor enhanced, caramelized onions. Delectable. A bit at a time, and savour some more in a bit.

The writing is very engaging. Vivid, colorful. But still sparse, essentials only. No dwelling for long on what she's going through. Perhaps the reader has to do the dwelling on.

How do I feel about the writing? I am no expert, but going by who and what she evoked in my head. Very much like Katherine Mansfield. Just that she wrote of NZ and Europe. And Lucia Berlin writes of herself, and the places she lived in. Also, somehow, kept thinking of Jennifer Egan, and her 'A Visit from the Goon Squad'. Or the Pakistan of Daniyal Mueenuddin's  'In Other Rooms, Other Wonders'. Stories of lives in current times, but still, quite different from the average life. Books I read and then immediately wanted to read more from the author. Really engaging read!

Now hoping to soon find 'A Manual of Cleaning Women and Other Stories', and have queued up my Instapaper reading list with all things Lucia Berlin. And Ali Smith too. And Borges. And so much more.



--

*May be I didn't find this book on the shelves. My memory deceives me. May be it was displayed in the New Books section. After all this is Nov 2018 release. They can't put it up already in the shelves. But then, how does it matter, the story is the thing.

'Artful' by Ali Smith

My first read from Ali Smith. An interesting book to read by an author one has never read before. It is not really a book, but a collection of lectures given by the author at the University of Oxford in 2012. But they do not read like lectures. They are woven into a beautiful fictional story and the poems and thoughts of other people make the point that the protagonists wish to make.

I find the book romantic, wistful, sad, surreal, absurd, yet beautiful. Artful. Talking of people in love. Not new young love. But old love. Not when you are still discovering the other person. But when you get to know them well. 

Take this sentence, a note that the author comes across from her lover. (The book is, in some sense, living in the past, with the shadow of the person who is no more, the lectures sort of imagined conversations or notes from the lover who is no more). The now deceased partner writes:

"...I thought of you when I was writing about Freud's flowers. And there was a quote from a Michael Ondaatje novel I wrote down and was keeping for this talk and haven't used, but it really makes me think of us, well, makes me think of you. 'She had an eager spirit. One mentioned a possibility and she met it, like the next line of a song.'  

Wherever you are all the trees above your heads are flowering."

The Michael Ondaatje novel referred is The Cat's Table (2011). And then this sentence by the author when she is reflecting on this letter,

"To be known by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better."

Not sure that it was intended as a love story: but to me it is. 

And then, as one reflects, one feels silly for getting all sentimental about the book. It is framework to discuss and talk about time, form, edge and offer/ reflection and their role in prose and verse and art and what authors wish to say and what readers understand. It is coming to terms story told through beautiful poems and lots of references to other artists and writers. There is the narrative of the author trying to read Oliver Twist through the book, and hence the title Artful (Dodger). There is the Greek actress Aliki Vougiouklaki. There is Henry James and Golden Bowl. And so many other references. 

The lectures are a good way to get educated about the role of time, form, edge, offer and reflection in art. And for someone like me, who is yet to read so many of the classics and reads in a rather spontaneous, haphazard way, an intro to a lot many authors, and quotes on those authors by other authors.  I came out with a long list of things to read, watch, look at and reflect on. There was a bit of paranoia that came about, as thoughts wandered off to fragility of life, but momentary paranoia, enough to push me back to the value of the moments I do have. 

I like the author's language and writing. Maybe I read translations too much. But it is very few authors I've read have that racing, flowing prose that takes you from one page to next seemingly without an effort, and you keep making mental notes to re-read bits because they are so beautiful and you want to spend more time with the author but here you are, flying through the pages. The only solution is to revisit and look at the text again, the sentences, the mechanics, what makes it all so beautiful. Take this sentence: 

"We make form and form makes us. Form can gladden us, teasen us, worry and madden us." 

It is a beautiful read. One of those books I was very glad I stumbled on. Come to think of it, that way, this Christmas season has been awesome in terms of discovering and enjoying never before read authors (to add).       

Here before I close the post, I'll quote Ali Smith quoting Ciaran Carson from Fishing for Amber (1999) on the art of storytellling:

"Or sometimes, plagued by his children for yet another story, my father would appear to yield, and begin, It was a stormy night in the bay of Biscay, and the Captain and his sailors were seated around the fire. Suddenly, one of the sailors said, Tell us a story, Captain. And the Captain began, It was a stormy night in the bay of Biscay, and the Captain and his sailors were seated around the fire. Suddenly, one of the sailors said, Tell us a story, Captain. And the Captain began, It was a stormy night in the bay of Biscay, and the Captain and his sailors were seated around the fire. Suddenly, one of the sailors said -"

And here is Ali Smith quoting Wislawa Szymborska's six-line poem (translated by Cavangh and Baranczak), called, Vermeer:

So long as that woman from the Rijkmuseum
in painted quiet and concenteration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn't earned
the world's end.

And then, while writing about 'On Edge', Ali Smith quotes William Carlos Williams, "The rose is obsolete...". I am quoting a little bit more than what is in the book. The whole poem is worth reading, and re-reading. Here, part of it:

It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness--fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching

What 

The place between the petal's
edge and the 

From the petal's edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact--lifting
from it--neither hanging
nor pushing-- 

The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space

Diaries, journals and memoirs

I enjoy journals and diaries. Writing by other people about their daily lives, about the humdrum, and then meditations on things occupying them, or what they are working on. Brings you so close to other people's minds and how they think and what they think. I often enjoy them as much as, if not more than their books. This exposure to the authors' innermost (but must be curated for publishing) thoughts. Sometimes the thoughts can resemble what you’ve been thinking. Sometimes the thoughts are so unique.  I can understand and identify with some bits. I find them interesting. I agree with. But some of the experiences can be so foreign. And it is intriguing to read about them.

What attracts one to diaries? To get a sense of how they see life. What they note, what they register, what they mull about.  They fall in  the category of reading around the author. To get a better context of the author's books. But at times, the diaries are all I read from the author.

I recently spent a long afternoon browsing through Sylvia Plath's letters. And don't think I have the time and space to read them completely. But the volume of writing and work done in that short life is amazing. For a really good 5-minute summary of the letters/life, see this: "Whatever she set out to do, she did it."(This is by Summer Pierre at the New Yorker).

Then there is Virginia Woolf and her diaries. They have been always a source of random dipping pleasure. Read wherever you want and it holds you. Once in a while, on and off. When you are not sure what to read. How much life do people live! How much can they read and write and do and then write about it.

Most of the diaries or such books are of people not there any more. Of times and ages past.

However, one of my recent reads was Heidi Julavits' "A Folded Clock - A Diary" is of current times. She is a writer, a parent, lives in Maine, and Manhattan. It is a collection of entries from a year or two of the author's diaries. It is not really a diary as in they do not flow sequentially in time recording day after day, but a continuous series of Todays, mixed up from over a couple(?) of years. Todays of the current time and age. When people talk of internet and emails, and not telegrams and post.  All the entries start with 'Today I..'  prompt. And then get on to share something about the author's thinking, life or work. Often, prompting me to record the passing of the time.

I have not read anything by Heidi Julavits before, although I do often land up on Believer Mag pages, and then I looked her up, and read this essay by the author which I found interesting as well. The essay however is a different style than the diaries. May be, the diaries show you more of the person than a book or an essay?

Through the year, I read Doris Lessing and Simone De Beauvoir's memoirs and of course Elizabeth Von Arnim. Then there is Knausgaard with a memoir style of writing (what I've read of him). Or Orwell with Down and Out in Paris and London. Recent magazine issues - New Yorker December Archive issue had extracts from Dawn Powell's New York journals (link). And then read Jan Morris (she kept a 188 day journal at age 90), in the Paris Review. (link). All these artists and their journals!

The Golden Thread

I recently read "The Golden Thread - How fabric changed history" by Kassia St Clair (Published 2018). One of the most riveting reads of the year for me. I quite enjoyed my time with the book and the journeys it took me on, both on its pages, and down the memory lanes.

I enjoy reading history. The new perspectives are fodder to my imagination. History does not repeat itself they say. But it does widen the possible. It opens up more territory, unlocks a lot more of the landscape and let your view roll over a wider place. May be not for the repeat value, but just to understand how narratives evolve. How stuff has evolved over times, come to take on different meanings and different contexts.

The book looks at history from the perspective of fabric, rather than empires or countries, or gold or other metals or famous people. The history as well as the economics. Of linen and flax and Egypt. Of silk and the China which made that silk, and the silk roads. Of wool and the role it played in Viking expansion and history. Of Spider silk, and man-made fibres. An interesting perspective given that it is one of the less documented aspects of history but which has captured the time, imagination and underpaid labors of most of the women of those times, if not many men. At times, the book can seem like a record of lots of facts, but more often than not, the narrative structure takes over and recreates the world of bygone times. 

For most of history, clothing was not easily and cheaply accessible as the current times of fast fashion and weekly drops. The time and effort that went in making a woolen sail, or fine silk, made these textiles as valuable in certain cases as I would think real estate is to people in current times. Then, lives were limited, things were limited, a good outer layer/ cape was as valuable as renting an apartment for several years in modern times, when people valued everything that they had because they had only so much and everything came with extreme effort, not from a sale at the local mall. Talk about mindful minimalism and clutter free living. (To get a sense of the mindless consumption  age we live in, watch this video from the Economist). The business of fashion is big business. Somewhere in the book it mentions that the number of new clothing manufactured globally is equivalent to everyone on earth getting 20 new items!

The book took me back to my roots as well. I have grown up in India, in a town where the main industry is textiles. Everyone I knew had something to do with textiles or fabric. Making them, trading in them or working for firms that were doing that. Yarn, weaving, spinning, processing, fabric - mainly synthetics. I learnt about warp and weft when I was quite little, and saw looms in action churning out fabrics. I saw spinning mills full of spindles and rotors, and got reminded of the presence of fabric processing units through the chemical stench when one crossed them on the highway. In the town, there was even a devoted college teaching the engineering that goes in making modern textiles. That was part of our school outing: a trip to the textile college. The way kids are taken to Canberra here in Australia.

Then summer holidays at grandparents. They lived in their mill compound. The mill was cottonseed mill. Part of the facility was ginning, taking out the seeds from cotton before it was wrapped up in some really big bags to be sent to yarn factories and part of the mill was devoted to making cotton-seed oil and cakes (for animal feed?). Most of my long, hot summer days were spent on big cotton mounds with my cousins, imagining ourselves as skiers on cool, snow covered mountains, or inventing new games to be played on the fluffy mounds (these white mounds in a dusty compound - such non routine, random thing in a routine existence), stray sounds of the mill workers (mostly women) talking over the sound of the ginning machines, shouting to get themselves heard over the racket; sounds wafting to us with lint wafts. To the chagrin of the parents, we roamed around with lint covered clothes, and often sticky thorns from raw cotton sticking to everything.

As a girl growing up in a conservative Indian provincial town, I learnt what was usual for kids to learn, what one would call, a lot of 'craft' with fabric, tie and dye and crocheting and a bit of sewing which I couldn't catch on to, and embroidery (which I enjoyed), and painting on fabrics (which I loved) and weaving woolen scarves (found it monotonous) and batik/block printing, and all such ‘crafts’ associated with fabric. It is a way to get the creativity channeled and the process and the output, both can be satisfying. Even now, a trip through villages in India will bring one face to face with crafts and methods of working which can easily link one to ages gone long, long ago. Fast vanishing, but still there.

The book took me to all those places, and more (modern textiles, and my recent work was about investing in that space, about the business of fashion). Perhaps I never associated much to those lint-like wafting memories of textiles,  but come to think of it, it doesn't take long for things to vanish. It sounds so far removed even to my child. What kind of fluffy cotton mountains will he keep in his childhood memories? In need of explaining things to him, I bought a bit of crocheting yarn, and set up some paper clip covered cardboard to try to recreate a bit of loom at home. The warp and weft resulting more in a net than fabric! 

**

The reading was joyful and the time spent was as pleasing and delectable as a good novel. I read some sections to my son too: the fascinating facts about silk worms and about flax fibres and found him as riveted. We then looked up videos to see how linen  is made, and that is how we are connecting with the stuff around us right now.

I enjoyed the book. Enjoyed where it took my thoughts, and the new terrain it opened up. Between history and science, the joys of reading are in trying to find answers to the most visceral or fundamental questions - that what is all this? This world, this universe, all of us. And how we perceive our lives and our realities, and the measure of our lives or the way we define a good life. What and how? How it changes through history. How our eyes are just always trained on the immediate. How generations before have come and gone. And how they’ll do in the future.These books, in their own way channel one's thoughts on that direction, bringing in a lot of wonder and thinking - a lot of personal meditation. And for that reason, reading such books leaves me content,  satiated. 

Recommended to anyone who enjoys reading history.

**

Also, a small note on the typesetting: Loved the way the notes were presented - the formatting, the spacing. Made me want to read the notes in detail. Beautiful stuff.

'The Secret Agent', 'The Enchanted April' and other current reads

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Engaging, enjoyable read. This was one of the most unputdownable read of the year for me. Once I began it, I read it wherever and whenever I could. I picked this up from my bookshelf (Collected Conrad), and then downloaded it to my phone and at times read it off my laptop screen too.

Set in London, written over a century ago before any of the World Wars, inspired by a real event (and here inspired is the correct word as it works as the take-off point for the author to weave the story from), the book is a political novel, a story of a secret agent. It covers themes of terrorism and anarchy, and the politics of police and agents and media and politicians and the element of randomness and misalignment of objectives and interest. As much a book about secret agents as about the whole industry around them.

Early on during the read, I stumbled across a spoiler (sort of) on the internet which colored the reading experience. Left me a bit annoyed. How do you un-know what's going to happen in the book that you are so devotedly reading? Still, on second thoughts, it is no page turner, and it was no spoiler. I was in the novel's grip even though I sort of knew where it was leading.

I don't often read books like these. Instead, I watch a lot from such genre: Spy/Agents/Heist.  I love the fast pace and the intrigue most of these shows depict, and the grip that the characters as well as the plot can exercise. The fantastic-ness of their lives. Or the different-ness of their existence and meanings they assign to stuff in their life. Keeps all my thoughts engaged imagining and trying to fathom their worldview.

For isn't it that their worldview is different that makes them appealing for further contemplation? Often the ideology that the rest of the world keeps in 'good to have' bucket, they make it their mission in life. And the whole life is defined around it. Such people are not routine characters. And the books that are set up around such characters are not routine. I am trying to think what would be similar books? They are not soldiers drafted to put their lives on line for a war (and here, most war books fit in). They are not even unique extraordinary individuals (like Sherlock Holmes). They are normal people who choose to walk this not-normal path.

Let me quote the following from the book itself:

There are individuals of character amongst that lot too,” muttered Ossipon ominously. “Possibly.  But it is a matter of degree obviously, since, for instance, I am not impressed by them.  Therefore they are inferior.  They cannot be otherwise.  Their character is built upon conventional morality.  It leans on the social order.  Mine stands free from everything artificial.  They are bound in all sorts of conventions.  They depend on life, which, in this connection, is a historical fact surrounded by all sorts of restraints and considerations, a complex organised fact open to attack at every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked.  My superiority is evident.”

I enjoyed the writing, the story, the portrayal of the characters. The way the randomness or the accidental factors intersect with the seriously planned lives of so many people. And the way the circumstances and events themselves become characters. At some point, planning to watch the BBC adaptation. On my list as I look for shows to watch during the holidays.

**

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

This book is one of the most popular of Von Arnim's fiction books. It is about four women (two of them are wives, one a younger unmarried lady, and an older widow) wishing to escape their normal realities and daily lives to spend a month, an enchanted month in a little old castle on the Italian coast. Hence, the enchanted April.

A very quick read. Over in a day. I must note here that I am not a fast reader. I invariably end up spending a few days with most fiction books. Few days imply that the amount of headspace that these books can occupy can be so much more. (Although some short books too have the power to stay in thoughts for so much longer). This one took just a day. A day when I was specially seeking a light-read. And given the nature of the book, it is just that, a light read. I have little else to note here.

It is interesting in the sense that it quite evokes the place for you in all its glory, the blue sky, the blue sea and the beautiful flowers. But that is about it.  The premise not as much, and the people, they seem to have less dimensions than what you would wish to read about. Sort of like fairy tales, or kids' books. The writing is laugh-out-loud funny at places.  But the whole idea that the women need to make such elaborate plans to get away (mainly from their husbands) is sad. Even respecting that it is a book of different time and age, the outcome or the niceness or the saccharine level reaches quite high towards the end. Just like a fairy tale, everything quickly resolves and falls in place. No complications at all.

Incidentally, around this time, I asked my child to try reading Little Women, having enjoyed it at the time when I was of the same age as Jo or Beth. And since it is at times a challenge to get him to read books that don't have adventure, superpowers, magic, dragons or spies, I decided to make a project of it, and read it together since I remember loving it when I was younger. And I must admit, that it is very different to read that book in your thirties from reading it in your teens. The saccharine, fairy-tale niceness in both these books seems difficult. Impractical. There is one thing to be kind. But other to have direct cause and effect relationship between kindness and a happy outcome. And that got me reading about Louisa May Alcott and her life, and how what is portrayed is more a fairy tale (again), and what should be, then what is.

Seems like a warp in which the lives portrayed in these books exist.

Anyhow, back to The Enchanted April. Easily skipped.  I love her diaries far, far more than the fiction. (More on her diaries, here)

**

Currently reading

The reading pile keeps changing - some get finished, and new ones keep getting added, and I drift away from the slow ones. From my last post on current reads a month or so ago, I finished a few. Added a couple more (the above two), and finished them. But out of that pile, Tristram Shandy is exactly where it was. What the Dog Saw too. As to the others, I am still reading Zweig's Shooting Stars - somewhere in the middle. Have given up on 1688 for the time being.

A few new ones added to the current reads. I picked up The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. I have not made up my mind yet. Not being a major fan, I know not whether spending time trying to work my way through such a massive book is something I want to do. But I am intrigued, and enjoying meanwhile the dipping in and letting it take some mind space. He was, after-all, a writer that expanded the boundaries of possible. And the things talked about are quite fantastic. So much thought fodder! Slows me down while reading. I end up day dreaming.

There are other couple of fun reads: journals and memoirs. The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits - I had not heard of her or read her before. But loving the diary. Just opened it for the first time yesterday. And then Susan Hill's reading memoir,  Howard's End is on the landing. I may not finish that one, reading for exploring, and the pleasures of book-list-making. As an aside, the first book that I wrote about on this blog was Howard's End.  The first book that I 'kindled'.

Then there's this book, The Golden Thread - how fabric changed history by Kassia St Clair which looks at history in an interesting way: through the thread of fabric. Enjoying it so far. This and so many other books in my immediate view that I wish to read. It takes so much time!

Let's see what gets logged in 'recent reads' before the year ends.