radfrac_archive_full

Herein I attempt some deduction.

My edition of Howards End is a decaying Penguin Modern Classics paperback once owned by a Warren Cocking. I don't think he would mind my publicizing this, since he wrote his name the inside front cover, followed by both his address and his phone number.

( In which our hero spends a perhaps surprising amount of time describing a hypothetical felt pen. )

( What I really came here to do, though, was to talk about the blurb on the back of the book. )

I can see what the blurbist is going for: you are meant to really value and appreciate this book, not just consume it. It's just that they seem to be telling you this while backing away, slowly and mournfully, into the void.

Here is someone else's entertaining mention of the self-same blurb (on a slightly earlier edition). In this blog post, Robin Stevens mentions "the 60s, era of charmingly hilarious back-cover blurbs", and a similarly misguided blurb for The Waves.³

Was that a thing? Was it just a Penguin thing? A British thing?⁴ I don't remember my other paperbacks of the era having anhedonic and passive-aggressive blurbs.

What I'm asking is -- where can I find more?


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( more footnotes )
3.So far searching for strange old book blurbs just finds me many, many sites about how to write a catchy blurb for your self-published book, and searching "The Waves back cover" gets me illustrated phone cases.
4. It seems very British indeed, in reflecting that distinctive double-negative-for-positive phrasing, e.g. "not unpleasant".

Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/3521.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

What books are you most glad to have read?

What books are you most glad to have in your mind as objects, if that's how you have books-- to revolve and contemplate --

or as nodes in your web of thought, if that's how you have them -- for their connections to other books or for their illumination of you know Life or science or art --

or as blotches of blurry colour, if that's how you have them -- for the pleasure or surprise or wonder they gave you?

What books would you most wish never to forget? Which have lodged in your spine and made it stronger? The really key keys to your mythologies. The non-negotiables.

I wish to plan my reading better this year, but while I have perhaps two hundred unread books lying about desperate to be taken up, I have limited time and there's a snowy blank where the urge towards the next book might usually be found. (And a snowy blank all 'round.)

So -- off the top of your head -- through old habits of mind or new revelations or sheer perversity -- what would you most not want not to have read?

Sans advice, I will finish Howards End and Party Going and probably go on to Red Shift, since that's what Backlisted recently covered (in n extraoooordinary [DING DING DING] episode, found here.

Cheers for any thoughts at all you care to share.

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Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/3006.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

And one more BPAL review (forgive the self-indulgence -- I'm trying to avoid real work.)

( Peppermint Cream Cupcake )

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Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/2491.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

I don't just write lengthy opinions of books; I write lengthy opinions of perfume oils too, often when I really should be writing something else.

Yet there's something so pleasurably difficult about trying to summarize your sense impressions of something as elusive and under-reported-upon as scent.

I often think I'd like to write short stories in the form of reviews (or other formats I find myself using often), but these are just reviews.

( Pognophobia (Fear of Beards) )

( Salted Caramel Shortbread )

( Socerophobia (Fear of Parents-in-Law) )

A new BPAL perfume oil is like a new poem to read, one in a language I only partly understand. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab was something I heard about on LiveJournal and coveted for years before I took an active role in smelling things with clever names. I keep promising myself I'll retire from buying any more -- save for old age and such instead -- but then the Halloween and Yule releases almost always ensnare me anew.


(Also posted at bpal.org)

Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/1883.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

This eternal virus¹ and the world virus of authoritarianism have made me irritable. In this state (and next door to that one) it's difficult to focus and it's difficult to like things and people.

What better time to review some books?

During my illness, I made very few ventures out, but one was to Sorenson's Books, recently and beautifully rehoused with fellow bookseller Chronicles of Crime in a wonderfully arcane warren more like a dream of seeking than a retail space.

I went to hunt up a copy of Georgette Heyer’s Venetia because they were reading it on Backlisted. I ought to have been looking for Howards End, because that is the next book for book club, but in my fog I could hold only one book in mind at a time. They did not have Venetia. I eventually found it as an abridged audiobook through my local library’s Hoopla subscription, which met my needs perfectly well.

The book I walked out of Sorenson’s with was Loving * Living * Party Going, a Picador omnibus of three of Henry Green’s novels. I was somehow under the impression that they were a series, but Green it seems just loved a gerund.

I’ve been hearing about Green as an under-rated novelist for a good long time, maybe most recently in The New Yorker. He was in my headfiles under to be read (sometime), and this seemed to be bookstore serendipity's signal that it was time.

( Henry Green’s Loving )

( Mad Shepherds and Other Studies by L.P. Jacks )

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Footnotes

1. Which is to say, this cold I’ve had since Dec 22
2. The wealthy family are named the Tennants. Get it?
3. L.P. stands for "Lawrence Pearsall".

Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/1469.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

Thanks for the follow-backs, journalfolk. I have no plan for how to make it worth your while.

I am finished Barchester Towers, and glad to be quit of it.

I liked The Warden very much, and there are many things to like about Barchester Towers, but, having read this novel of his, I cannot say with conviction that I like Anthony Trollope. I wonder if the reason I gave up on the Chronicles of Barsetshire all those years ago was my annoyance with this book and specifically its constant lumbering jocularity about the Nature of Woman.

Some of the good qualities of The Warden are still in evidence; Trollope is very good on the pettier, more self-concerned, but not actually evil side of human behavior -- the way that resentment and pride override charity and compassion, for example. Mr. Arabin, ruefully trying to remake his life at 40, moves me, and the signora, though not precisely adequate as a portrait of a woman with a disability, comes close to being a fascinating character study. I wouldn’t say she tips over, quite, into actually being fascinating, though the ambiguity around her injury and its cause, and the constant speculation about What's Under the Blanket, would provide excellent material for, say, Lacan.

The major characters of The Warden seem to have foregone any further personal growth in the sequel and are content to run the little grooves of their personae over and over, like table hockey characters. That was my feeling; the book group liked them better, and thought that the relentless babbling about the hilarious weakness of women was meant more ironically than I did.

(Some poking at the mass conversation (Look! The Victorian Web is still there!) produces various interesting possible positions on this question.) (When I was a youth nothing pleased me more than nested parentheses, especially if I could wrap them all up together at the end: ((())).)

In The Warden there are really no villains – just short-sighted selfish people, and I like that about it. Barchester Towers is painted in broader, almost Dickensian strokes. Mr Slope is stuck in the begged question of bad guys: why is he the villain? Because he's bad. How do you know he's bad? Because he's the villain. Also, red hair. Watch out.

Next up: Howard's End, last read about the same time as BT, which is to say, a very long time ago indeed.

I got violently winded walking to book group yesterday, though the sticky toffee pudding was worth it. Today a little errand walking similarly exhausted me. It was ten days ago the walk-in clinic doctor gave me the puffer and said this thing would play itself out.

So tired. I think tomorrow will be an ugly shirt day (a day when you're too tired to iron the good shirts).

An invitation, of course, to think about illness and wellness, access and ability. Something to discuss with the senora.

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Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/1082.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

The basement suite gets a fair amount of turnover because it is a basement suite, and a particularly oddly constituted one, being composed of the leftovers of two suites combined when the landlords took over part of one of them for their own use – I think I have that right.

The current guy – my laundry buddy – was away in the summer, and a student – I think of computer science – was subletting. I’d meet the subletter out in public or on the bus and not be sure who he was, only that I recognized him. These days that usually means I’m speaking to a former student, which meant I greeted him with the wrong flavor of solicitude – how are you doing these days? Rather than how’s the basement.

I have a new fridge, because the old one died – this one was standing out in the rain for some weeks, but fridges appear to be sturdy creatures, and it works. It is two inches deeper than my last fridge, so it stands on a pair of narrow boards that jut out from the original platform. It’s not aesthetic, but it keeps my food cold. It is a very noisy fridge, but its particular note is less irritating than the previous one. This one sometimes starts up a bubbling liquid cascade that makes it sound like a giant aquarium.

This LJ is really just an archive – I don’t know why I keep topping it up.

Sometimes I check back with my local friends’ journals, but we’ve all moved on to more ephemeral (or at least harder to recover) social media. I went off to grad school, and by the time I got back the Internet had moved on.

It would be nice if we all had a talky place again, one conducive to thoughtful posts. The journal format is slow and a little bit clunky, but that seems to help with thinking things through a bit.

A big one for elegies, me. An elegy every moment and an extra one, for good measure, for the future, which will also be lost.

Mind you, I have started a possibly regular D&D game at my house, so there's that.

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I have this thing going with the guy in the basement suite. It's entirely chaste, but I think -- I hope -- it's a mutually satisfying exchange.

I live in the magnificent shack in the back yard, but I do my laundry in the entryway to the basement suite in the main house. The suite is a strange knocked-together labyrinth with two bathrooms,s created by fusing a pair of existing suites. Tenancy changes over every six to twelve months. Right now there's a young guy -- an astronomer, I think? Physicist? He told me, but I forget. He has science books lined up on his windowsills (at ankle height from outside). I've run into him once or twice and he seems affable, funny.

Once or twice his laundry's been in the dryer when I needed to use it, as will happen. Instead of cramming all of his laundry higgledy-piggledy onto the small stand next to the dryer, which act seems a little hostile, I use a trick I learned from a tenant in my last building: I fold his clothes.

I don't fold his underwear. My feeling is that you don't want to think about your middle-aged neighbor folding your underwear (unless you do, but I feel confident he doesn't). Instead, I pile it unobtrusively on the towels and put everything else on top of it like, "Oh, was there underwear here? I didn't even notice it." I think these things through. Still, it must be disconcerting to arrive home (or wake up) and find your laundry ghost-folded.

The day after I first folded his laundry, I found taped to the dryer a Ziploc bag with "THANKS" written on it in Sharpie and a five-dollar bill inside.

It seems to me that five dollars is exactly the right amount to create symmetrical confusion between us. Well calculated, Science Guy.

I left the money in place for several days, but he didn't take it back. Finally I took it, because, well, five dollars. I went to the store, bought some stain remover, and put it in the laundry room with a sticky note that said "FOR COMMUNAL USE".

Yesterday I again had occasion to remove his laundry and fold it. I am learning some good tricks, like the way you can let the shirt drop against your knee, quickly fold the sleeves in, and then double it over, all in one movement. Very satisfying.

Later that same day: another baggie, another five dollars. This time I bought some Febreeze.

I hope he's enjoying this as much as I am.

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(Warning: someone telling you about that dream they had)

I'm in a fancy hotel and they're saying the giant is coming. This has happened before -- in the dream I know this is a recurring experience, an episode that replays. I know how it works, and I know it will be a good thing, yet I'm afraid to see the giant.

I'm hiding upstairs in the dark lounge, which has a balcony overlooking the atrium. I'm hiding from seeing the giant (not from being seen by him) in an almost self-indulgent way, delaying the gratification of the moment when I do see him and it's actually a good thing. As a distraction, I'm trying to watch an educational multimedia piece about Pluto, on an apparatus built into the table (kidney-shaped, dark glass), but it's loud and I can't mute the sound and I'm embarrassed. I minimize how big the giant will be. He probably won't be that big. Just big enough to be a giant.

Footsteps vibrate the earth (see T-Rex in Jurassic Etc). The giant is coming. (Outside in the real world, the storm shakes my little house.)

The giant does come, and he's huge. Just his head is visible going by. His head must be six feet across. He looks like a National Geographic mock-up of early homo sapiens. He doesn't speak. He looks straight ahead and walks smoothly and carefully through the hotel. Then he's gone. Now I chase after to finally meet him.

I go down a back stairway and there's a crowd outside. Among them is a young woman who's sad -- she knows the giant, or is his friend or counterpart somehow, his wife. So I bring her inside.

I take her upstairs to an apartment with my family and friends. Now she's a baby or toddler crawling all over the beds, but there's something creepy about her -- she's got these weird goggles on.

She becomes a grown woman and for a while we're being pleasant but finally I blurt out that I can tell she hates me and wants to destroy me. This delights her. It is true, but she is doing it through psychological warfare -- isolating and alienating me and keeping me away from the giant.

I'm going to call her the monster now because she's the monster of this dream. She's like one of those undefeatable arch-villains who always know what you will do next because, well, she's a part of your own psyche, isn't she.

She is, I think, competing with me to be the partner of the silent giant.

I think about who can help me, and the name of a friend flashes up, so I go to find her in the kitchen, but she's with her mother and they're busy with something oppressive to do with diets and charts, something obsessing, so I wait and the monster is sort of flitting around happily because she knows I'm helpless to oppose her.

So I go down the hall and find a group of my friends sitting in the dark watching TV and I try to explain what's happening, but they're not really paying attention -- they're hypnotized by the TV. I ask them for "wards", for words that will ward me from her power. Someone sort of passively gives me the word "ward" (thanks, kids) so I say it over and over and make a sort of shield around myself of the word written in blue light, but it isn't very effective and I know she can still get through. It was given me by someone with characteristics a little like the monster (or anyway someone sort of annoying) and I'm not sure it will work at all.

About there I wake up. I walk around my little house. No monster, no giant. I'm not afraid, but I wish my psyche had come to a cleaner resolution.

Allow monster and giant to merge into one being? Accept monster and giant as complementary parts of myself? It is not quite five in the morning and the proper symbolism eludes me, but I wanted to make a record. And now I have. Thanks for your time.

I want to record that we threw chunks of ice onto the frozen pond and it made the most amazing sound, a cascade of cheeping and chiming echoes. The ice would shatter and make the whole pond ring. The fragments shot and skidded, striking other chunks of ice and sending reverberations in every compass direction, singing to the north and south and east and west and all the fiddly slivers in between.

This was the Harrison Yacht Pond, specifically designated for radio-controlled boats.* All the little docks were frozen into a thick sheet of ice. There were pockets of other people around the edge also throwing ice on ice.

I want to record that it was cold and bright on the walkway atop the breakwater, but that when some of us climbed down below (I was one of the last) the air was still and warm. We were shielded from the wind, though we could see it shoving the sailboats sideways across the water. We sat there a long time.

Also, L. played "Jesus Take the Wheel" out loud on her device and discussion ensued of the practicality of such an action as compared to pumping the brakes (or, in the case of anti-lock brakes, applying steady pressure).

I've an artist friend who told me she celebrates Christmas until February 1, and while the idea of a five-week Christmas per se makes me feel queasy, the notion of prolonging the idea that we are doing Something Special into January -- bot jsut living through the ghastliest and longest month of the year -- seems like a very good one.

Therefore, I think from now on I will celebrate a secular Epiphany on January 6th and read lots of short stories that end with moments of sudden insight.

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*It seems to me that I know this poind was donated by someone unlikely like the Prince of Monaco, but I can find no record of this online -- only a Mayor Harrison -- and the pond itself is too far away for a quick check (I do not think the plaque would show up on Google Street View).