Sunday 30 December 2012

Orwell spotting in Barcelona



I don’t read a great deal of historical fiction.  This isn’t because I’m not interested in history.  I am.  Very much so.  But I find most historical fiction grindingly awful.  For a start, like Sci-fi, which is something else than I can take or leave (and usually leave these days), it is dreadfully prone to bulk but mainly it’s because of the numbing flatness of the characters.  Just as with sci-fi and fantasy I find it so difficult to engage with the characters of historical novels and to feel as if they really do have inner lives, that they eat and drink and live and love and, dare I say it, have sex lives.  Add a good dose of portentousness to that and I generally switch off.

That’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions.  I have devoured most of the Flashman books, which leaven their learning with a wicked humour.   I devoted a month a decade ago, when I was all washed up in East London with hardly anything other books to hand and no television, to an end-to-end read-through of the Patrick O’Brian naval novels, which seemed at the time to avoid most of the great clunks of the genre.   And right now I am halfway through reading Wolf Hall, having put it off until now on account of a (possibly unfair) Hillary Mantel aversion.

But, exceptions apart, me and historical fiction don’t really get on and so I have only myself to blame for being disappointed by the Cathedral of the Sea and of laying it aside, unlikely to ever be completed, forgoing  even the heavily foreshadowed onset of the Black Death.   My reason for picking up this (predictably)dreary tome was that when I go away on holiday I like to have a book with me that provides some supporting colour for the place that I’m visiting, which in this case, in October, was Barcelona.
 
I was all set for Barcelona a couple of years ago, with flights and hotel booked and guidebooks bought, until the whole trip was put paid to by the surprise intervention of that Icelandic volcano and the resultant ash-cloud debacle.  Trading tapas for cream-teas, a hastily organised trip to Dorset had to do in Catalonia’s stead.

To do Dorset justice, that turned out to be a very nice little break, staying in Hardy’s Dorchester and visiting Lyme Regis and Weymouth, with its marvellously gaudy statue of George III, and going off to Bovington to visit T.E. Lawrence’s cottage, the spot on the road where he was killed on his motorcycle, and the beautiful tiny churchyard where he is buried.  The, then, Significant-Other didn’t take too kindly to the Tank Museum at Bovington, being remarkably unimpressed when I explained about how my grandfather had helped to build Churchill tanks and very much less than impressed by banging her head while clambering out of a Mark V tank.  In retrospect this may have been where things started to go wrong. Certainly, it has been with shock and awe that friends have asked “You took your girlfriend to a tank museum?”  *

 


 

But Barcelona remained unvisited.  And like Amsterdam and Dublin and New York it is one of those places that everyone expects you to have visited and somewhere that I genuinely wanted to see.  I had been thinking of Berlin but October in Northern Europe didn’t hold out the prospect of great weather and, since work had been rather fraught, I was looking for a more languid charm than Germany probably offers, and so I dug out the guidebooks and rebooked the same hotel that I had identified previously (thus saving several weary hours on Trip Advisor) and jetted off over the Pyrenees.

Well, it is a beautiful city, Barcelona and I ‘did’ most of the usual sights – the Block of Discord, the Sagrada Familia, the Palau Guell, the Parc Guell, the Miro Museum, the Cathedral, the Bari Gotic, and Santa Maria de la Mer (as featured in the lumpen book I was dragging about with me), all interspersed with liberal coffees and beers and tapas.

I learned a thing or two.  Firstly, that, judging by the number of times I was accosted by ladies of the night and by purveyors of rare herbs and chemicals, Barca is a marvellous place to go to if illicit sex and drugs are your thing.  Secondly, that one should never attempt to eat deep fried shaved artichoke out of doors in anything above a light breeze.

But as a confirmed Orwellist, the most interesting aspect of the trip was the tracking down of the places associated with the great man.  I took coffee at an outside table at the CafĂ© Moka on Las Ramblas, where in 1937 the Civil Guards had holed up in the face-off with the POUM militia, George among them, up on the rooftop opposite.  I found my way to the rather down-at-heel Placa George Orwell in the Bari Gotic and was pleased to discover (and eat) the sandwich named in his honour.





*I would, if pressed, go to a frock museum so I’m not sure that I see what the problem is.

Saturday 29 December 2012

2012 - My bookish year


From memory*, here, interspersed with a few thoughts, is a fairly comprehensive list of what I’ve grazed my way through during 2012. (RR = Re-read).


Dave Eggers – Zeitoun

I’m afraid to say that I found this somewhat under-whelming.  I had hoped for so much more.  The In Cold Blood of our times it is not.


Norman Mailer – An American Dream

A sweaty wank-off of a book.  I detested it and, so, was tickled to read the following in an LRB review of the DFW biography:  “It’s possible to see Wallace’s career as the inversion of that of another great American novelist who wrote journalism that was pervaded by his personality: Norman Mailer. Monstrousness was the thing Mailer was always trying to enact and the thing Wallace was always trying to deflect or recover from. Wallace was consumed by guilt even on the page; Mailer never seemed to feel a pang. Wallace couldn’t stand Mailer’s books: ‘Unutterably repulsive. I guess part of his whole charm is his knack for arousing strong reactions. Hitler had the same gift.’”



Alan Hollinghurst – The Line of Beauty (RR), The Stranger’s Child

The Line of Beauty comes close than anything else I’ve read in years to capturing that wallowing about in honey feel of Brideshead Revisited and, of course, there are strong similarities in the plots of the two.  Sorry to say, though, that while I looked forward to The Strangers Child and was fully prepared to embrace the conceit of the book I just didn’t get along with it.  I will probably give it another go but, for now, it stands in the let-down camp.


George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia (RR)

Colm Toibin – Homage to Barcelona
Robert Hughes – Barcelona
Ildefonso Falcones – Cathedral of the Sea
The first three read in advance of a long overdue trip to Barcelona, which I made in October.  The latter, which is a historical novel set in medieval Barcelona was a mistake – I had forgotten how much I don’t get on with great tomes of portentous historical fiction and I erred in lugging this brute about with me as I trudged around the Gaudi sites.  It will be going to the charity shop.

Kate Summerscale – The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
There is a great book in this Victorian murder mystery.  Unfortunately, for all of its critical and popular acclaim, this, in my opinion, isn’t it.  


Philip Roth – The Ghost Writer, I Married a Communist, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Plot Against America
If this is Newark then it must be Philip Roth.  For years and years I had an unaccountable block on Roth, never picking up any of his books.  I don’t know why.  Well, I admit it now that I was mistaken and I’m so glad to have belatedly corrected that situation.  I did have a “What…” moment that sent me reading back over a couple of chapters when I hit the Ann Frank bit in The Ghost Writer and the deus-ex-machina  of the plane-crash in The Plot Against America had me grinding my teeth but PR’s definitely on the agenda for further examination in 2013.


Ben Fountain – Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime walk
Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding
The best fiction reads of the year.  I hear that Billy Lynn is going to be filmed.  In the right hands that could be something to look forward to.



Will Wiles – Care of Wooden Floors
A little macabre humour never goes astray.  


Clive James – A Point of View
Because I’m something of a completist and I’ve got nearly all of his earlier (better) books.  I wonder if he will get around to writing about his wife kicking him out for playing-away.


David Edgerton – Britain’s War Machine
An interesting, though possibly over-justified, corrective to the popular consensus that Britain was unprepared for war in 1939.


Luc Sante – Low Life
Joseph Mitchell – Up in the Old Hotel
The first read in advance of my trip to NYC back in April.  It was so-so.  If I hadn’t seen the film I might feel tempted to get hold of Gangs of New York.    Mitchell, though, was excellent.  The best non-fiction I read all year.



Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Another belated discovery.  I thoroughly enjoyed both of these.  The counter-factual in TYPU was intriguing and as for TAAoKaC – Comic Books, The Golem, New York, Nazis at the South Pole – what’s not to like?



Kazu Ishiguru – When We were Orphans, The Remains of the Day (RR)
I re-read the very good Remains of the Day just to convince myself that Ishiguru was a good writer after reading the very bad When We Were Orphans.  It is so bad that I almost convinced myself that I was being obtuse.  But, no.  It is a very bad book.  Charity shop.



David Halberstam – The Best and the Brightest
Karl Marlantes – Matterhorn
If there are any liberal interventionists still out there then they ought to be forced to read The Best and the Brightest along with A Bright Shining Lie.  I am tempted to get hold of the Johnson biography by way of comparing and contrasting.  Matterhorn was recommended to me by a pal.  Having grown out of the gun-porn of Sven Hassel some considerable time ago, I approach war novels with some trepidation.  I needn’t have done in this case.  A fine novel.


A.D. Miller – Snowdrops
So-so Thriller set in post-soviet Russia.  Charity shop.


George MacDonald Fraser – Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, Light out at Signpost
You can’t beat a bit of Flashie.  Well-researched enormously incorrect romps through the Victorian world.   The latter is his autobiographical recollections of his Hollywood career interspersed with meditations on why the world is going to hell.



Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King
I have blogged about this.  I don’t understand why it is supposed to be good but then I don’t understand why Willa Cather is supposed to be good either.


Henry James – The Spoils of Poynton, What Masie Knew
If you’re in the mood for HJ these are both pretty good and digestible too.


Yavgeny Zamyatin – We (RR)
I get what he’s doing and I understand why it is an important book and I appreciate how influential it is.  Maybe it’s the translation but I still don’t actually like it.


Shelby Foote - The Civil War Volume 1
Like many others it was the Ken Burns documentary that brought me to Shelby Foote.  Narrative history at its very best and two more to go.  Definitely another one for 2013.


Roger Lewis – What am I Still Doing Here
I think I read this curmudgeonly affair with a hangover.  Good stuff.  I highly recommend his biography of Anthony Burgess. 


David Peace – The Damned United
Must be read in the voice of the sainted Brian Clough.



Siri Hustvedt – What I Loved
A bit over-played, I thought.  There is 75 % of a very good book here. 


David Foster Wallace – Consider the Lobster
I think you either like DFW or you don’t.  I do, though Infinite Jest has made me seriously consider an e-reader.


Rachel Lichtenstein, Ian Sinclair – Rodinsky’s Room
If you’re interested in patterns of migration and the old Jewish East End.


Roland Camberton – Scamp
Stands well alongside early Kingsley Amis.  Funny tale of the fagged out late-40s London literary world.



Pauline Kael – I Lost it At the Movies
Another disappointment, I’m afraid.  It took me years to get around to reading Kael.  Underwhelming.


Robert K Wittman – Priceless
Robert and Dayna Baer – The Company We Keep
Charity shop.  Not particularly well written non fiction about the FBI and the CIA respectively.  Interesting in parts.



Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger
Gothic chillers are not my usual fare.  This wasn’t half bad.  The Turn of the Screw for our times.



Anthony Powell – Books do Furnish a Room (RR), A Writer’s Notebook
The notebook is definitely for fan-boys only.  As for BDFAR, it’s a few years since I last re-read the whole of A Dance to the Music of Time from start to finish but I had a touch of flu a while ago and, although I didn’t actually go sick from work, I was going early to bed every night and needed a ‘comfort book’ – an old friend to keep me company.


Jack Kerouac – On the Road (RR)
You either like it or you hate it.  I still like it.  This re-read was on account of going to see the film, which was much better than I had expected.  That said, a faithful adaption does not necessarily make for a good film, in the general sense.  I’m not sure what someone would make of the film if they hadn’t already read the book.  I mooched along to the British Library on the same day as I saw the film and halfway through my re-reading of the book so that I could take a look at the exhibition of the On the Road scroll.



Umberto Eco – The Prague Cemetery
It will take some strong persuasion to get me to read another Umberto Eco novel.

 
Mark Haddon, Michael Rosen, Zadie Smith et al – Stop What You’re Doing and Read this
Anne Fadiman – Ex-Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Signs of bibliomania Pt 16: reading books about reading books.


Kevin Powers – Yellow Birds
This has been raved about.  I am not convinced but I will re-read it to make sure.


Hillary Mantel – Wolf Hall
It is very good.  I resisted for a long while.  Partly on account of my problems with historical novels in general, partly on account of getting thoroughly sick of Hillary Mantel appearing in the Guardian in one guise or another week after week after week. 



*I’m not (yet) so anal as to diligently keep an on-going list of what I’ve read