barely posted in this thread recently, so thought it was worth updating gradually with a few of things i've been reading, in no particular order:
Plastic Emotions - Shiromi Pinto, a novel freely interpreting the life of 20th C architect Minette de Silva, and a relationship with Le Corbusier. I am not enjoying this book and don't think I will finish it. Lots of short sentences starting pronoun verb.
She scans the parking lot... She wonders at her audacity... She sighs... She will not offer...
Endless paras of the stuff, and it's not at all clear a lot of the time why you are being told this stuff.
It's a voice that reminds me of 'what i did in the holidays' school essays, and a proxy some writers use to convey a privileged sensuous immediacy with the world - I assume because the voice is somewhat childlike. I tried to resist this immediate reaction – my learned critical instincts were forged largely around white male western writers. I'm super wary of dismissing a woman writer, with Sri Lankan background, because of voice. I wrote a bit here about how we may need to reconfigure or work a bit harder at what our conception of 'good' is if we are to allow other types of writers into literary spaces.
However, wherever on the scale of personal irritation or critical annoyance this is, I'm struggling. I was drawn to the book because i quite liked the idea of a romance framed through architecture, which is what the title and brief description suggested. I continued despite immediately recognising that I was going to struggle, because I happened to pick up at the same time Seeing Like a State by James C Scott, which is part covers Chandigarh, which as designed by Le Corbusier also features in Pinto's book. and the coincidence piqued me to think that approaching the same subject from two radically different angles wd be interesting.
The imaginary letters to Le Corbusier are painfully bad, as they are part filled with exposition and narrative, for the benefit of the reader. It's hard to read them as letters.
I will persist for a bit longer. Maybe skim a bit.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 22 March 2020 17:10 (four years ago) link
I've been trundling through Wolf Hall again, struggling again, ahead of reading The Mirror and the Light, but in the knowledge that I never finished Bring Up the Bodies. I wish I knew why I struggled. I'm clear from the quality of the writing it only reflects badly upon me. it may just be that i've got lazy. In fact I have an inkling, but i'll leave that for the moment, because this paragraph is utterly wonderful, the very best writing and almost a poem in itself:
There was a moment when Anne gave him all her attention: her skewering dark glance. The king, too, knows how to look; blue eyes, their mildness deceptive. Is this how they look at each other? Or in some other way? For a second he understands it; then he doesn’t. He stands by a window. A flock of starlings settles among the tight blackbuds of a bare tree. Then, like black buds unfolding, they open their wings; they flutter and sing, stirring everything into motion, air, wings, black notes in music. He becomes aware that he is watching them with pleasure: that something almost extinct, some small gesture towards the future, is ready to welcome the spring; in some spare, desperate way, he is looking forward to Easter, the end of Lenten fasting, the end of penitence. There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn’t. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
a paragraph of pairs - anne and henry, now and just then, now and beyond. it starts with a single quite powerful observation - how do two people you know who are intimate look at each other? he sees it momentarily, instinctively, which note is then sounded at the end again. in between those two notes, the paragraph breaks out through the flocking starlings, into the future, into prescience and the beyond, before returning to that single contemplate note, but not in the same place where you started – reflecting the meaning of the paragraph.
the paragraphs Plastic Emotions regularly seem to be about nothing - this paragraph is about many things, it bursts open then closes neatly again, but moved on. in the well-captured moment when something very lucid slips from your mind immediately, it contains one of the great strengths of the book and of Cromwell as a character – the very close perception of psychology, allowed because its so well materialised, like the historical context around it and conveying it.
it reminded me of a paragraph i've read a number of times - i'll quote it in the excellent translation's english, but it's really in the french that it comes alive, so i'll quote that after, and I'll also give it the context of the para before:
IIt is to some secondhand chronicles, to the General Statistics of the Vendée published in Fontenay-le-Comte in 1844, and to a belated happenstance in my own life that I owe the tale I am about to relate.
It is the year 976. Ancient Gaul is a hotchpotch of names bolted to lands, which are themselves names: Normandy belongs to Guillaume, Guillaume Long-Sword; Poitou belongs to Guillaume, Guillaume Towhead; France belongs to Eudes, duke of France; the crown, that trinket, belongs to Lothaire, the king, which is to say squire of Beauvais and Laon. For Anjou and the Marches it's Robert the Calf and Hugues the Abbot. Alain of the Twisted Beard controls Brittany. And the diocese of Limoges is in the hands and under the miter of Èble, brother of Guillaume, not the Long-Sword, but the fair-haired, frizzled Towhead. The towhead has two characteristics: it is too fair and too full; it blazes up in an instant. Guillaume is too fair and his anger gallops like fire. Èble has his brother's towhead but without the tow's two qualities: beneath the miter of the one and the helmet of the other you can see the same hirsute swirl of frosted locks, the same frothing fuzz, the same crushed straw with short curls, but on Èbles head the tow does not catch fire at the least impediment; on Guillaume's head it does.
Whether Èble's towhead might blaze for other reasons, this tale will tell.
I think it's the pace at which it moves from the dry context and that brief 'It is the year 976' and then it just explodes through a family tree that circles and repeats until it catches ablaze through its fantastical names and images. look how Michon gets from 'It is the year 976' to 'Whether Èble's towhead might blaze for other reasons, this tale will tell', and look at the manner in which he gets there - an exuberant chronicle, completely showing off.
The reason it's worth quoting the French is that what is added to the mix is a beautiful poetic economy and rhythm, almost lyrical. I also struggle with the word 'towhead' and while it's quite clear that's pretty much the only translation, its absence in the original is welcome. I should add before I quote that my french is execrable, and i had to pore over this with a dictionary in hand *and* the translation above to get anywhere. it is written in the literary historical tense, which is not spoken, which i imagine gives it a certain flavour all to itself. I have not got to the bottom of 'Je tiens', with which every one of the stories in Abées starts - I am holding, yes, but is this rather in the meaning we might (at a push) say 'It is held that...' etc? Not sure. For those of you whose French is even worse than mine, I think you get a perfectly decent impression of the poetic lyricism and concision by seeing the rhythm of the punctuation and the comparatively few words between the punctuation and the names, the balance of the clauses:
Je tiens de chroniques de seconde main, de la Statistique générale de la Vendée imprimée à Fontenay-le-Comte en 1844, et d'un hasard tardif de ma propre vie, le récit que je m'apprête à raconter.L'an 976. Le vieille Gaule est un fatras de noms enclavés à des terres, qui sont elles-mêmes des noms: La Normandie est à Guillaume, Guillaume Longue-épée; le Poitou est à Guillaume, Guillaume Tête d'étoupe; la France est à Eudes, duc de France; la couronne, le colifichet, est à Lothaire, roi, c'est-à-dire sieur de Beauvais et da Laon. Sur L'Anjou, sur la Marche, c'est Robert le Veau et Hugues l'Abbé. Alain à la Barbe torte tient la Bretagne. Et l'évêché de Limoges est entre les main et sous la mitre d'Èble, frère de Guillaume, non pas la Longue-épée, mais le frisé, le blond, la Tête d'étoupe. L'étoupe a deux qualités: elle est trop blonde et volumineuse, elle flambe d'un seul coup. Guillaume est trop blond et sa colère galope comme le feu. De son frère, Èble a bien la tete d'étoupe: sous la mitre de l'un comme sous le casque de l'autre on voit le meme tourbillon hirsute de poils gelés, la mousse crêpelée, la paille concassée à boucles brèves; mais sur la tête d'Èble l'étoupe ne prend pas feu à la moindre contrariété; sur celle de Guillaume, si.
Que l'étoupe d'Èble s'enflamme peut-être pour d'autres causes, le récit le dira.
Three examples - I think all in a sense to do with positioning and balance:
'Sur L'Anjou, sur la Marche' - the gliding, rather full 'L'Anjou' followed by the strict iambic taps and heavy final word of 'sur la Marche' - it creates real momentum for the next roll of names, it's a delight to say, to read.
Same trick, extended, here, after a rather prosaic section starting 'Et l'évêché de Limoges'...
'frère de Guillaume, non pas la Longue-épée, mais le frisé, le blond, la Tête d'étoupe' <- after the 'frère', a long-ish clause, then the sharp short clauses, then the final rat-tat-tat emphasising the key image of 'la Tête d'étoupe', and look at the almost palindromic sounds in that phrase.
and immediately after the analytic, forensic: 'L'étoupe a deus qualities' - needs to be said I think with that lovely and slightly airy precision 'kali'tay' (sorry for the barbarous phonetics).
So, yes, add to the wonder present in the english translation, the cadences of the original french.
anyway both paras seem to fill you up and then deposit you back down, ready to continue, but with very much more than you had before. both are fantastic pieces of writing.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 22 March 2020 19:52 (four years ago) link