2018 Summer: A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and What Are You Reading?

I'm reading the Confessions of Augustine in the new Sarah Ruden translation. The translation is great: jazzy, punchy, and thoroughly unstuffy. The work itself can be repetitive at times and elusive at others, rather like a stream of consciousness, despite the overt devotional character of the work, I do picture Augustine indulging in a tipple while leisurely dictating this to an amanuensis, but at times it snaps into focus and you feel like a bit of historical vertigo as you catch a personal glimpse down through the centuries.

The Unforeseen by Dorothy Macardle. A woman, Virgilia, staying in isolation in a cottage in the Wicklow mountains, realises she's developing second sight. Her daughter, Nan, is trying to decide whether she's in love with Perry, a dick, or should be dedicating herself to her art. There's a combination of building dread, confined hysteria, and uncertainty, within a lovingly depicted Wicklow countryside and its bird life, which is striking. In fact one of the successes of this book is how Virgilia's visions and the nature surrounding her are seen to participate in each other.

As the main characters attempt to come to decisions about their futures you are shown them probing the future in different ways, whether it is the predictive force of hereditary traits, a sense of unease, being able to visualise yourself in alternative futures successfully or common sense. The way these interact and compare with the dangerous certainty of second sight is well done.

It has a terribly glib resolution though, which squanders the building unease. The scientific seriousness with which the male characters take everything makes this feel, as an introduction also suggests, that this is doubling up as an assault on scepticism about second sight and paranormal things generally. The overall lingering message – that which is unforeseen is sometimes the most important thing, in our previsions and attempts to make decisions based on a perception of the future – is a decent one.

And the shadow of the war sits within this book (published 1945, set summer 1938), with so that the decisions the characters are trying to make are laced with a presentiment of death:

'And, you see, for our generation, life is not going to be a summer holiday. What we've got to find out is whether we shall want one another when things are frightening and terrible.'

It's written in what I would call an Edwardian fashion - that is to say it's pretty stately, but i quite like that mode of writing, which is well done here at least, and which made this perfect reading while convalescing, and the descriptions of Wicklow and Dublin Bay made me wish I were there rather than blowing my nose in London.

also started forbidden line by paul stanbridge. in many ways it looks like the sort of thing i should like - a mixed plate of history, pseudo-religion and the arcane, - but it’s written in that facetious, garrulous style that seems like its intended to be described as pynchonian but which also seems to be the congenital style of a category of well-educated young male tyro, and to be lacking in any sort of constraint that might make it interesting.

am ambivalent. will continue with it for a bit.

That Dorothy Macardle book is going on my wish list.

Same.

Robert Harris's enjoyably sprightly SELLING HITLER, about the fake Hitler diaries, is lots of fun

That Dorothy Macardle book is going on my wish list.

Hey, it’s fall

so it is.

Oh yeah, basis of the Ray Milland movie The Uninvited (made during WWII, I think). Never watched the whole thing, but have seen it compared to Val Lewton signature films re (post-Turn of the Screw?) supernatural as lens/prism of character development.

I just started 2018 Autumn: The Rise and Fall of What Are You Reading Now?. Feel free to commandeer the throw pillows and stretch out on the sofa.