365. Some Do Not... - Part Two cont.

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Part Two

III. 

This may be my favorite section of the book, where we meet Mark and Mark, for all intents and purposes, meets Christopher.

I had forgotten one of the more brilliant instances of Christopher’s doomed luck. If his becoming the “mascot” of the Wannop family started rumors all over his world, you would have thought it would at least would have gained him credit with his father... wrong. Not only was his father put out at no longer being called on for help and advice, but we also learn, thanks to the omniscient narrator, that his father had thought of marrying Valentine himself.

P202 [Mark] “You had a cheque dishonored at the club this morning?”

Christopher said:
“Yes.”
Mark waited for explanations. Christopher was pleased at the speed with which the news had traveled: it confirmed what he had said to Port Scatho...

Mark was troubled. Used as he had been for thirty years to the vociferous south he had forgotten that there were taciturnities still... he had got into the habit of considering himself almost the only laconic being in the world. He suddenly remembered with discomfort -- but also with satisfaction -- that his brother was his brother.
...

P214 Christopher said [to Mark]:
“I doubt if liar is the right word. He [Ruggles] picked up things that were said against me. No doubt he reported them faithfully enough. Things are said against me, I don’t know why.”

“Because,” Mark said with emphasis, “you treat these south country swine with the contempt that they deserve. They’re incapable of understanding the motives of a gentleman. If you live among dogs they’ll think you have the motives of a dog. What other motives can they give you?” He added: “I thought you’d been buried so long under their muck that you were as mucky as they!”

P215 Tietjens looked at his brother with the respect one has to give to a man ignorant but shrewd. It was a discovery that his brother was shrewd. [Presumably this “Tietjens” is Christopher]

P216 ... Mark said. “You’ve got Groby to all intents and purposes...”

Christopher said:
“Thanks. I don’t want it.”
“Got your knife into me?” Mark asked.
“Yes. I’ve got my knife into you,” Christopher answered. “Into the whole bloody lot of you, and Ruggles’ and ffolliott’s and our father!”

Mark said: “Ah!”
“You don’t suppose I wouldn’t have?” Christopher asked.

“Oh, I don’t suppose you wouldn’t have,” Mark answered. “I thought you were a soft sort of bloke. I see you aren’t.”

“I’m as North Riding as yourself!” Christopher answered.
...

P220 “No. I’m coming in,” Mark said. “I want to speak with Hogarth... About the transport wagon parks in Regent park. I manage all those beastly things and a lot more.”

“They say you do it damn well,” Christopher said. “They say you’re indispensable.” He was aware that his brother desired to stay with him as long as possible. He desired it himself.
...

[They meet Valentine]
P221 ... He added: “This is my brother Mark.”

...she said to Mark:
“I didn’t know Mr Tietjens had a brother. Or hardly. I’ve never heard him speak of you.”

Mark grinned feebly, exhibiting to the lady the brilliant lining of his hat.

“I don’t suppose anyone has ever heard me speak of him,” he said, “but he’s my brother all right!”

[Valentine asks Christopher if he’s “Mrs Macmasters that is’s” lover because Sylvia told her this. Christopher sets her straight]

P223 Christopher said:
“Come along. I’ve been answering tomfool questions all day. I’ve got another tomfool to see here, then I’m through.”

She said:
“I can’t come with you, crying like this.”
He answered:
“Oh, yes you can. This is the place where women cry.” [Where casualties are posted.] He added: “Besides there’s Mark. He’s a comforting ass.”
He delivered her over to Mark.
“Here look after Miss Wannop,” he said. “You want to talk to her anyhow, don’t you?” and he hurried ahead of them....

IV

This is such a Ford Madox Ford section. There are about three pages of Mark talking with Valentine and telling her his father “wanted your mother to be comfortable... He wants you to be comfortable too. . . .” and so solving their pressing financial situation that has been causing Valentine so much stress. Then we are in Valentine’s head for thirty-two pages recalling everything from the start of the war to her recent break with Mrs Macmaster.

V

And we are still in Valentine’s head. We are now brought up to the present including the phone conversation between Sylvia and Valentine at the beginning of this Part that we didn’t quite hear. The one where Sylvia tells Valentine, “Young woman! You’d better keep off the grass.  Mrs Duchemin is already my husband’s mistress. You keep off.” It is interesting that everyone believes all the rumors about Christopher. When he is in their presence people seem to believe he’s pure as the driven snow but he’s instantly pure as the driven slush when there’s gossip.

From page 229 to page 277 it's all in Valentine's head before we finally return to where Valentine is still sitting with Mark waiting for Christopher. And now for the love scene. Ready?

P 279 ...He had led her past swans -- or possibly huts; she never remembered which -- to a seat that had over it, or near it, a weeping willow. He had said, gasping, too, like a fish:

“Will you be my mistress to-night? I am going out to-morrow at 8.30 from Waterloo.”

P280 She had answered:
“Yes! Be at such and such a studio just before twelve. . . . I have to see my brother home. . . . He will be drunk. . . .” She meant to say: “Oh my darling, I have wanted you so much. . . .”
She said instead:
“I have arranged the cushions. . . .”


90 days of pandemic social distancing

The bees have gotten about all they’re going to get out of the flowering bush outside my window. That pretty much signals the start of summer for me. The next change I see will be when the maple tree turns color in the fall. I don’t expect all that much will have changed by then. I will still be social distancing and sheltering in place for the most part. It’s going to be the strangest year of my life.

Excepting errands around the building, like doing my laundry, watering the plants, sweeping and the like, I usually only leave my apartment once a day for exercise or twice if I have to go to the market or a restaurant for takeaway. Next week I’ll be venturing all the way to the bank, which I seem to need to hit once a month.

What I miss most, (not including food) and what I fantasize about attempting if it does reopen this year, is the bank cafe. I have still not had a drop of iced tea (or alcohol) this whole time. I would so like to grab my usual iced tea -- even if it has to be in a disposable cup -- and find an isolated spot to work on some project for several hours. It is a big place with good HVAC, so this doesn’t seem impossible to me.

I can’t imagine returning to the gym. Some of my usual restaurants/cafes I probably could try again, but the calculus of risk might not be worth it. We are probably weeks away from this even being an option and if the cases and deaths continue to rise, as is likely, I may not even be able to consider this by then. 

I do keep thinking of The Magic Mountain -- which should surprise no one who has read any of my blogs. The quality of time under lockdown. The importance of food and exercise and routine and the variation of that routine. All these things from the book are now daily considerations for me. Hans had the advantage in every way. He was really only restricted to his little Alpine valley. I’m limited to my hill, but even on my hill and in my building my actions are limited. And Hans only had to wear a mask for Fasching. I have a variety of masks for different activities outside my apartment, and have been attempting -- still without any luck -- to obtain better masks for several months now.

What I most envy Hans Castorp: His five prepared meals a day. His terrace with a view of the valley. His social life, including dueling mentors. On-site health professionals. If this goes on for over a year I may need to change the order of some of these items.

VI

And another prime example of how Ford chooses to tell a story. For the tale of how Christopher spent his last evening in London before returning to France and the Great War, we start... with him returning home at half-past three in the morning and falling into a chair in the dark,

P280 ...He imagined that no man had ever been so tired and that no man had ever been so alone!...

Their night of passion has come to this,

P281 “...Our hands didn’t meet. . . . I don’t believe I’ve shaken hands. . . . I don’t believe I’ve touched the girl . . . in my life. . . . Never once!... English, you know . . . But yes, she put her arm over my shoulders. . . . On the bank! . . . On such short acquaintance! I said to myself then . . . Well, we’ve made up for it since then. Or no! Not made up! . . . Atoned. . . . As Sylvia so aptly put it; at that moment mother was dying. . . .”

When they finally get her drunk brother home he passes out on the sofa -- where she had arranged the cushions.

P283 ...He had exclaimed:
“It’s perhaps too . . . untidy . . .”
She had said:
“Yes! Yes . . . Ugly . . . Too . . . oh . . . private!”
...

...he had added: “We’re the sort that . . . do not!”
She had answered, quickly too:
“Yes -- that’s it. We’re that sort!”...

And then they are off to talk about the party at Macmaster’s that Valentine didn’t attend as she has broken with Mrs Macmaster. Where Christopher learns that Macmaster has gotten a knighthood for a bit of statistics work Christopher had done as a joke showing that the French had suffered hardly at all if you just counted the bricks destroyed and not the output of the farms, mines, and factories occupied since the war began. This marks the end of his relationship with Macmaster as they can not really stand having him around as they can’t pay back all the money Christopher loaned Macmaster to get him established. That and the fact that Mrs Duchemin that was has always hated him.

And with that whimper, we end the first volume of Parade’s End.

364. Some Do Not... - Part Two

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Part Two

P166 [Sylvia] She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honorable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumors? It made you suspect that honor had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye. . . . 

So this brings up another aspect of this story that I intend to keep an eye on, the Stoic perspective. Christopher is for all intents and purposes the Stoic Job. Entirely honorable and yet everyone suspects him of every kind of dishonor. And he responds in good Stoic fashion by simply keeping on keeping on.

P173 [Sylvia to Christopher] “...But, oh, Christopher Tietjens, have you ever considered how foully you’ve used me!”

Tietjens looked at her attentively, as if with magpie anguish. [??]

“If,” Sylvia went on with her denunciation, “you had once in our lives said to me: ‘You whore! You bitch! You killed my mother. May you rot in hell for it. . . .’ If you’d only once said something like it . . . about the child! About Perowne! . . . you might have done something to bring us together. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“That’s, of course, true!”

“I know,” Sylvia said, “you can’t help it. . . . But when, in your famous country family pride -- though a youngest son! -- you say to yourself: And I daresay if . . . Of, Christ! . . . you’re shot in the trenches you’ll say it . . . oh, between the saddle and the ground! That you never did a dishonourable action. . . . And, mind you, I believe that no other man save one [Christ, presumably] ever had more right to say it than you. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“You believe that!”

P173 “As I hope to stand before my Redeemer,” Sylvia said, “I believe it. . . . But, in the name of the Almighty, how could any woman live beside you . . . and be for ever forgiven? Or no: not forgiven; ignored! . . . Well, be proud when you die because of your honor. But, God, you be humble about . . . your errors in judgement. You know what it is to ride a horse miles with too tight a curb-chain and it’s tongue cut almost in half. . . . You remember the groom your father had who had the trick of turning the hunters out like that. . . . And you horse-whipped him, and you’ve told me you’ve almost cried ever so often afterwards for thinking of that mare’s mouth. . . Well! Think of this mare’s mouth sometimes! You’ve ridden me like that for seven years. . . .”
...

“Don’t you know, Christopher Tietjens, that there is only one man from whom a woman could take ‘Neither I condemn thee’ and not hate him more than she hates the fiend! . . .”

So this is where I got the horse idea. I should have known if was from Ford.

Next Sylvia is talking about how Christopher should “sleep with the Wannop girl to-night; you’re going out to be killed to-morrow.”

“...I’ve been a wicked woman. I have ruined you. I am not going to listen to you.”

He said:
P174 “I daresay you have ruined me. That’s nothing to me. I am completely indifferent.”
...

“I don’t care. I can’t help it. Those are -- those should be -- the conditions of life amongst decent people...”
...

Now we come to the bit about the Groby curse and the heir of Groby which I must include.

P175 Sylvia said:
“You mean that I may bring the child up as a Catholic.”

Tietjens said:
“A Roman Catholic. . . . You’ll teach him, please, to use that term before myself if I ever see him again. . . .”

Sylvia said:
“Oh, I thank God that he has softened your heart. This will take the curse off this house.”

Tietjens shook his head:
“I think not,” he said, “off  you, perhaps. Off Groby very likely. It was, perhaps, time that there should be a Papist owner of Groby again...”
...

P176 “...I fought your influence because it was Papist, while I was a whole man. But I’m not a whole man any more, and the evil eye that is on me might transfer itself to him.”

He stopped and said:
“For I must to the greenwood go. Alone a banished man. . . . But have him well protected against the evil eye. . . .”
...

178 [Sylvia] “...Your father died of a broken heart,” she said, “because your brother’s best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women’s money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“Oh! Ah! Yes! . . . I suspected that. I knew it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn’t. . . . It doesn’t matter.”

II

This is one of the sections that are slowly built up to where everything finally happens. Strangely though, there’s nothing I feel I need to quote.

But I did have an irresistible thought while reading this again. Keep in mind that I now have both the book and the Tom Stoppard miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch in my head as I read. At the climax of this scene after Christopher has been ruined by Brownie, a banker in love with Sylvia, he goes from being overdrawn for a matter of hours the previous day to having Sylvia being thwarted at depositing a thousand pounds into his account, his brother Mark offering him a thousand pounds a year, and finally Lord Port Scatho, Brownie’s uncle and the head of the bank, saying Christopher can draw on his personal account. 

So it seems to me that they could have done one take of this scene in which Cumberbatch reacts to all this by yelling “I’m rich!” and running out of the room. Then one take of the subsequent scene with Mark and Valentine could be shot with Cumberbatch holding bags of candy and with chocolate smeared on his face. If nothing else it would be the hit of the blooper reel.

362. Some Do Not. . . - Introduction, Part One

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Parade’s End

by Ford Madox Ford, 1924-1928

Introduction by Robie Macauley

I had to go to Wiki to learn who Robie Macauley was. 


An interesting life. He was responsible for the great writing I enjoyed in Playboy back in the ‘60s and then went to Houghton Mifflin when I was in the retail book business. But as much as I would like to praise him here, I can’t really say much for his introduction. I’m sure it is fine and probably contains insights I’m overlooking, but he doesn’t help me understand the political or religious aspects of the work. Like what Ford means by “Tory” and to what extent Chrisopher is a Protestant Christ figure. And Macauley may be a generation too late to grasp the significance of horses in the work, especially with regard to Sylvia and Valentine. This reading, we will see if that insight really holds up.

Interesting to note that the last volume of In Search of Lost Time was published before the last volume of Parade's End. I wouldn't have guessed that.

Some Do Not. . .

by Ford Madox Ford


Part One

P10 The hansom ran through nearly empty streets, it being very early for the public official quarters. The hoofs of the horse clattered precipitately. Tietjens preferred a hansom, horses being made for gentlefolk...
...

P11 When he paid the cabman, in front of a grey cement portal with a gabled arch, reaching up, he said:

‘You’ve been giving the mare less licorice in her mash. I told you she’d go better.’

P12 “The cabman, sith a scarlet, varnished face, a shiny hat, a drab box-cloth coat and a gardenia in his buttonhole, said:
‘Ah! Trust you to remember , sir.’

P14 ...he [Macmaster] hadn’t got over that morning. He had looked up from his coffee cup -- over the rim -- and had taken in a blue-grey sheet of notepaper in Tietjen’s fingers [the letter from Sylvia asking to be taken back], shaking, inscribed in the large broad-nibbed writing of that detestable harridan. And Tietjens had been staring -- staring with the intentness of a maddened horse -- at his, Macmaster’s, face...

P15 He could still feel the blow, physical, in the pit of his stomach! He had thought Tietjens was going mad: that he was mad. It had passed. Tietjens had assumed the mask of his indolent, insolent self...

II

Here we are introduced to Sylvia’s mother, Mrs Satterthwaite, and Father Consett and we first meet Sylvia. Sylvia is presented as utterly hateful but not all that different from her mother when it comes to men. But there’s nothing here about horses so I’m not going to bother quoting... but this would be a good section to reread after finishing the work as there is a huge amount of foreshadowing.

III

Had forgotten that Christopher and I share a dislike for the game of golf.

IV


This is where we learn that everyone already believes Christopher is cheating on Sylvia with Valentine, even though they hadn’t yet met. Since I read that Ford was a fan of Jane Austen, I now see in this the seeming inevitability in many of Austen’s novels. The couples are usually obvious, the question is how will it come about. (I was only able to finish Mansfield Park because I couldn’t see how it was going to end, not realizing how different attitudes were back then towards first cousins marrying.) The difference here is the problem is entirely Christopher's. Or Christopher. It could all be resolved in a chapter or two if Christopher weren’t so much who he is. It’s really a wonder that Valentine doesn’t end up hating him as much as Sylvia does.

352. Reading Proust during a Pandemic

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Reading Proust during a Pandemic

Pvii “As early as 1890 (when he [Marcel Proust] was nineteen years old) he had also begun to take notes for an elaborate work which he was already projecting but none of his friends appears to have taken his literary pretension as anything more than the self-deception of a dilettante. He was universally liked because of a charm to which everyone who knew him has testified and because of a determination, carried to fantastic lengths, to do the considerate as well as the socially correct thing. He had not, however, written anything which displayed conspicuous talent and it was not thought likely that he would. Then, in 1905, his mother died and he began cutting himself more and more completely from the world which was to bring him at last to a strange self-imprisonment in the bedroom from which, after the most elaborate preparations, he only occasionally sallied forth in order to seek some bit of information from the head waiter at the Ritz or, as one lady remembers, to ask to see a hat worn some twenty years before.

“From childhood Proust had regarded himself as primarily a spectator. There were many things which he could know only by watching, and this fact doubtless encouraged him to make watching an end in itself. Nevertheless, contemplation became something much more than merely a substitute for the activities he could not indulge. His theory was that the quality of a direct experience always eluded one and that only in recollection could we grasp its real flavor. Now that the death of his mother had severed the only tie which bound him to the life of the world, he retired in order that he might discover and record what his experience had been...”

This is from the Introduction, written by Joseph Wood Krutch to the C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation of Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, as it is more commonly called today. 

I don’t know that I’ve ever read this introduction. Usually I don’t read things like this until after I’ve read the book, and in this case by that time I’m a year on and putting down a different volume. So it’s quite possible I never have returned to it. But I think Mr Krutch did a commendable job here. This initial point is one of my favorite things about Proust. And maybe this time through I will remember to note the point in the work, around the time he first meets Saint-Loop I think, when Marcel reflects on how, while we long to share important moments with others, this would actually only detract -- distract us -- from appreciating the moment ourselves. It’s one of my favorite passages and I can never find it when I look.

I’m rereading this at an interesting time, and the paragraphs above remind me that it is in some ways a very appropriate time. Today is the first day of the fourth week we are Sheltering-in-Place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike Proust, I have not chosen to isolate myself in my little studio, but the result is similar though far from the same. I go out walking every day. I occasionally put on my face mask and walk to one of the nearby markets for supplies or to restaurants for take-away food. I can’t wait to spend time in cafes and restaurants again. But for the moment I am forced into social distancing and this could be a perfect time to read Proust.

Pviii “...The first rule for reading him is... complete submission to an author who will certainly take you where you ought to go and who will give you, not only vivid descriptions, subtle analyses, precise portraits and full participation in a strange new sensibility, but also compose all these things into a vast symphonic structure which is probably the most amazing thing of its kind in literature...”

Yes, the connection with music is something that must be mentioned. There follows a sort of preview of what the work is about, precisely the thing I don’t want to read before, and don’t much care to read after, but this next part is interesting,

Px “...No one could possibly be more detached than he and no one could have less faith in anything. Indeed the story of the novel might with some justice be said to be the story of his disillusion with the only thing in which he made even an effort to believe -- namely, that tradition of noblesse oblige which the members of the aristocracy ought to follow but which, so obviously, they do not...” 

So this does go well with Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End. Last reading I went back and forth between these two authors and I think I probably will again.

“...Proust’s greatest invention was the invention of a form, of a method by means of which events could be arranged in a pattern having a formal beauty and a formal meaning capable of replacing the beauty and the meaning lost to those who, like himself, had no moral or religious faith capable of giving them any other kind.”

That reminds me of Adrian in Doctor Faustus.

“Externally the method is one in which the normal chronological order of narrative is often subordinated to a quasi-musical arrangement of material by means of which similar or antithetical persons, situations and moods are rhythmically balanced against one another so as to create a pattern which does not depend upon the order of time but the sense of recurrence. At the same time every presentation of material is dominated by the author’s obsession with Time and the need of the artist to escape it’s tyranny. The past must be recovered; but that is not all. It must be made permanent, and it can become that only when grasped by the imagination in such a way that every moment implies the past and the future because its true significance lies in its being part of a pattern extending from the past into the future. Living experience cannot be fully significant because it is isolated and transitory; it becomes significant only when it is contemplated in connection with those parts of the pattern which Time separates but which really belong together...”

“Proust himself spoke of the various themes whose full significance would not be clear until, in the later volumes, they had begun to combine. This remark of his suggests the analogy with music...”

Thanks to having read Doctor Faustus since I last read Proust, I see a bit of a problem with this, as Adrian points out, the secret of most music is to begin by imperfectly suggesting the theme, but holding off until near the end, the full development of that theme. Marcel’s desperate need for his mother may be the first hint of that theme here, but it is quickly followed by ‘Swann In Love’ which is the full development, later echoed -- but less interestingly in my opinion -- by Marcel’s passions for Gilbert and the others. But this is a quibble. Our Mr Krutch really hits the nail on the head on the next page,

Pxi“...the escape from Time is alluded to on page four where it is immediately followed by the incident of the magic lantern, which, as the first work of art introduced, serves to suggest the technique by which Time is to be transcended. One result of this arrangement is to make the novel in another respect like a piece of music, for of it may be said, more truly even than of most great novels, that the second reading is more rewarding than the first. To know what is coming does not detract from the pleasure -- is indeed necessary to the full enjoyment of it -- since each incident is, like a musical theme, only enriched by a knowledge of the variations to follow.”

And this is why it is so hard to get people to read Proust. I always tell people if you plan on reading it, plan on reading it twice because it is at its best when revisited. And how appropriate to Proust’s purpose is that.

“In the pages of the novel the commonplace fact that faces grow old and characters change becomes... something to be analysed with a fascinated terror. But this change in faces is only trivially important in comparison with that change which takes place in character. Hence it came at last to seem to him that it was folly to speak of Albertine, or Charlus, of himself even, as though any one of them were an entity maintaining its identity while time flowed past; and he realized that if his novel was to attain the full significance which he wished, it must manage somehow, not only to attain timelessness itself, but also to suggest the triumph of Time over the persons and the experiences which the novel alone could rescue.”

Now this I’m not sure I agree with. Do any characters really change over the course of the books? Their status in society changes. I think of them as staying largely the same as their positions change. Marcel’s artistic tastes do change in the course of his education, but he seems to be the same in his relationship with Albertine as he was with Odette or Gilberte or his mother.

Pxiii “Events become, even as he recounts them, already a part of legend and thus life is magically transmuted into art. He himself, as well as M. Swann and M. de Charlus, are no longer mere human beings but analogous to the figures painted upon the slides of the little magic lantern which had fascinated him so long ago... The suffering and the wickedness of his own characters have now ceased to have any significance except as parts of a formal design...”

Mr. Krutch contrasts Proust with Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser -- reminding us that the copyright for this edition is 1934.

“...it must be admitted that... the spiritual world of Proust has elements of charm lacking in most contemporary novels because of the fact that the sensibility everywhere exhibited is of an extraordinary sort. He was disillusioned enough with many things -- with morals, for example -- and he had neither any code nor any standards besides those which his taste supplied. [Is this a reference to homosexuality?] Yet in the midst of what might seem to be anarchy there were still capabilities and faiths which he retained... On the other hand, he never, like so many moderns, found himself in a universe limited and debased by the impossibility of escape from psychology, anthropology and Freudianism. The world was still absorbingly, still amazingly, interesting. Women -- most women -- were to him magical and mysterious...”

Pxiv “Most of the novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries felt constrained to take life seriously in a sense that Proust does not, since, and with a clear conscience, he permits himself to live the charmed life of a dilettante, not troubling himself much about the fate of civilization, acting as though there were nothing more important than the careful discrimination between shades of feeling, and devoting himself with the selfishness of the contemplative saint to the achievement of his own private salvation...”

And yet this reminds me of Montaigne and also, dare I say it, of Hans Castorp. This is precisely what Settembrini was always finding fault with. Also, isn’t 1934 rather early to be characterizing the novelists of the century?

“...Charlus, Saint-Loop, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Francoise and Madame Verdurin have definitely taken their places in the not very long list of characters who are more real than reality. Something -- both in the particular sense defined by Proust and in the more general sense in which the phrase is applicable to all great literature -- has been rescued from Time. It is not often that that can be said”

Curious that he leaves Swann off that list. I would add several other family members plus the wonderful M. Legrandin. I don’t imagine Proust and Jane Austen are often compared, but Legrandin ranks right up there with her finest minor characters. Forever captured in a single scene. 


I do believe I am ready to start reading.

124. Cultivating our garden

Previous - 123. Drifting off

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Candide

I've just read the penultimate chapter and am hesitating before reading the conclusion. To no one's surprise, both Pangloss and Candide's love's noble brother have both turned up alive, and Candide has freed them all from slavery with his remaining wealth from Eldorado. It is a pity there are no more red sheep. The no longer enthusiastic lover has offered to marry Cunegonde but her brother the Baron refuses this notion because of Candide's low birth. Pangloss continues to believe this is the best of all possible worlds since changing his mind would be poor form for a philosopher. Both Pangloss and the Baron have experienced every imaginable loss and yet have learned nothing at all. 

I like that Voltaire portrays the nobleman and the philosopher as equally stubborn and prejudiced. I can't wait to learn if Candide has changed. Tomorrow.


"...we must cultivate our garden." These are both the final words and the conclusion drawn by Candide, and presumably by Voltaire. (This can also be seen as the conclusion of the fourth volume of Parade's End.) 

Since this is the Norton Critical Edition I'm reading, we are now less than half way though the content. We'll see if these commentators are as interesting as the ones who commented on Faust.

Sugar and oil

In the news at the moment: A Swedish woman is preventing her child from consuming sugar because it affects the child's behavior and sleep; and activists are trying to resume the fight against the oil pipelines Trump is supporting. These stories resonate for me as a veggie and as someone who has boycotted cars for 47 years. 

I gave up my car for environmental reasons and I gave up meat for ethical reasons. But it turns out that there were just as valid ethical reasons to boycott oil (it has funded Islamic fundamentalism), and just as valid environmental reasons for boycotting meat (the process of raising meat and delivering it to the consumer includes a heavy cost to the land and the air. Including a high carbon cost.)

I'm sympathetic to the Swedish woman's position, I think it would be hard to argue that sugar is good for children and there are plenty of reasons to suspect that we are currently underestimating the damage it does to everyone, but especially children. However, as a veggie of 47 years, I'm also aware of the social costs of a decision like this. (This applies to both meat and oil.) It can be done, and there's little doubt you will end up healthier and, if done right, you will be no less happy, but it's also not a trivial change. In this mother's place, I would want to do the same thing but I'm not sure I would. Though banning sugar long enough to see the effect certainly makes sense. Perhaps there can be a generation of children who are "social" sugar consumers -- though that means going through the detox process again every time. There's no easy answer here.

Both on Facebook and in my Webmail, I'm currently inundated by requests to join the fight against the oil pipelines planned or being built up in the border Red States. I've been fighting oil pipelines since 1970, bitch! To what extent are my liberal friends incensed about this issue because they know these pipelines are being built to supply their need for gasoline? It's like a drug addict protesting the crimes of his dealer and his dealer's source of supply. Give me a fucking break.

Vertigo, again

I should have known this would happen. I thought I'd just start again from the beginning to see what it was like after having finished the book once, and of course there's lots I didn't notice before. Here Beyle (Stendhal) is recovering from a serious illness following the retreat from Moscow in 1812, p23 "... A curious lightness such as he had never known took hold of him, and it is the recollection of that lightness which informs the account he wrote seven years later of a journey that may have been wholly imaginary, made with a companion who may likewise have been a mere figment of his own mind." This description could apply to this book as a whole, especially the chapters after this one.

Bank Cafe

I realized I didn't need WiFi this afternoon so I decided to take advantage of the Bank Cafe dollar discount on iced tea. So of course the WiFi is actually working for the moment. (Still slow as shit, so not that much of a change.) I've only been here twice since early October but I recognized the entire crew behind the Peet's counter -- I'm surprised how stable their workforce is. The only noticeable difference I see is that there's now a security guard by the front door. I'm actually surprised it took this long for them to make that change -- would be interesting to hear the story of what finally provoked this addition.

Sorry for the delay

This should have been published last night but I did my taxes instead.

Next - 125. Books for Living

117. The Dashwoods

Previous - 116. Abusing QCD & synesthesia

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Food dislikes

Here's the kind of thing the internet is so handy for. In "real" life I've ran into any number of people with odd (to me) food preferences -- a dislike of mushrooms is common, also of cilantro and green bell pepper -- but someone in my online group brought up foods people can't stand and the list amazes me.

We had stumbled on avocado and raisins before, many people in the group detest both. Now we're adding olives, ham, ketchup & mustard. And today we've added cherries -- at first Maraschino and then all cherries -- and marzipan!! 

Gustatory synesthesia! (Everybody downs a drink.) I shouldn't be surprised at any of this since my mother never tasted any of the items on this list -- though that puts her dietary preferences in an entirely different (not taste-based) category. But some of the items on this list I consider to be among life's greatest small pleasures: avocado, cilantro, real cherries, marzipan. And if you told me I would have to live the rest of my life without raisins or mustard I would not be happy.

My point is that these taste based differences are as striking to me as the more conventional forms of synesthesia. They are at least more comprehensible than the emotional synesthesia I wrote about last time -- someone pushing away a bowl of guacamole is puzzling but it also means there's more for me. Someone doing a good job but not being able to acknowledge that, or feel any pride in the accomplishment, is much harder for me to get my mind around. 

An excellent example of this for me was that recent Women's March in Oakland I greened. As a "good dog" (in a previous life) I thrive on pleasing whoever is in charge. For that event there was no one else around for most of the day so I had to please myself, and I can be something of a perfectionist. I can nit pick any number of aspects of my work that day (and have done so) but I can also see that I did more than could reasonably have been expected of me, and I can feel pride in my work (while still keeping in mind a short list of things I would have done differently and will try to do differently if I'm ever in that situation again.) To not be able to correctly assesses my performance would be as scary as Oliver Sacks' list of freakish neurological conditions like being unable to recognize faces, or read words, or speak, or imagine color. 

Sense and Sensibility

I'm watching the most recent mini-series version of this again. So delightful. This time, as I watch, I've been thinking of "parade." In the first of the three parts there was one instance of parade in the usual sense -- a funeral parade in this case -- but I lost track of the instances of parade in the other sense. (And yes, I have in mind Parade's End here.) We see the Dashwoods on parade first at the head of their establishment at Norland Park and then in their reduced circumstances at the cottage and at the home of their cousin, where we also see that landed family in welcoming parade. Every social visit requires a degree of parade.

This would be hard to defend, but I rather think this degree of parade is related to the way people, within living memory, would dress up to go to town -- or go downtown. Gloves and hats. Dressing for church may be the last of this sort of parade. My (Boomer) generation was probably the death of all this, and I was never a fan of it in any case, but now one has to wonder if this was also part of the path that lead to Donald Trump. 


Jane Austen's works are spiced with memorable minor characters (Sophie Thompson has nailed two of these parts), but one that I never thought of in this way was Anne Steele, until Daisy Haggard took her in hand. There should be special prizes for running away with a part like that.

I've finished my re-watch, and I would also like to praise Dan Stevens. I don't think anyone could play Edward Ferrars better than this. That penultimate scene where he has to play through the awkwardness of the Dashwoods thinking he -- rather than his brother Robert -- had recently married Lucy Steele was brilliant. 

I would even praise Mark Gatiss. John Dashwood is one of the most thankless parts, as he is so weak and it would be so easy to turn him into a joke. Fanny knows very well what she is about, but John, I think, truly thinks himself to be a an honorable man. Mark gives us a character who is shallow and conventional, but decent in his own way. He truly believes the advice he gives Elinor.

And I'm sure I've written about this elsewhere, but I do prefer this Maryanne to the one Austen wrote. For one thing she actually grows as a character over the course of the novel, as a young woman of 17 ought to do, and as the written Maryanne (to my recollection) fails to do. Elizabeth in P&P, and Emma, and Catherine in Northanger all develop as characters. Even Anne Elliot grows a bit of a backbone. But Elinor seems to be perfect from the start. We will not speak of Fanny Price. 

Next - 118. Evola & the Alt-right

29. Chatty

Previous - 28. Random

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Bad Swifty

One really should confess ones shortcomings, both to others and to oneself, so here goes: The other day I discovered a cache of longer versions of Glee covers (with lyrics) on YouTube. I finally made it to Santana's (Naya Rivera's) cover of Taylor's Mine and it was a revelation. I've heard Taylor Swift's version of her song many times and there are some great parts, but Naya's version was so much stronger. 

Mine is a classic Country song. This tune is from earlier in Taylor's career when she was still in Nashville, and it shows. But I never noticed just how good, and Country good, the song was until hearing Naya's version. Now, the virtue of Glee is that they most often framed their covers in an emotional context -- in this case the troubled relationship between Santana and Brittney -- so some of that rubs off on my reaction to Naya's singing. But I really don't think that's the key ingredient. It could also be that I'm just hearing the song with fresher ears in this new version. But, again, I doubt it. 

On We Found Love, Naya does an amazing job of capturing the little vocal things that Rhianna does that makes that song so memorable. I can't speak to her cover of I Love You Like a Love Song, because I don't know the original version, but Naya's cover, in its long form, is now one of my favorite Glee songs. 

Here's Naya's Glee version of Mine for your consideration: 

Faust

Really, Doctor Faustus. I'm re-reading my blogging of this book from February of last year. This is the first time I've reviewed this material since reading The Brothers Karamazov, and especially Ivan's dream sequence. I might as well say that it's the first time I've re-read it since the last time I read it, as you always bring that to a re-reading as well.

I envy my friend who is into the double digits of her re-readings of Proust, both because she started before me, and so can recall what it was like to first encounter this world as a quite young woman, but mostly because she can read it in French. 

Am I at four readings? I'm not entirely certain. But I can't imagine getting into it again for at least a decade. I'm much more likely to re-read Parade's End (almost certain, in fact) and even The Magic Mountain. I was thinking, after Doctor Faustus, that I didn't need to go back to TMM, but now I'm thinking it would be interesting. That was the original plan after all -- to tackle Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy before blogging TMM. And instead Doctor Faustus and The Brothers Karamazov turned out to be even more important. 

I just realized I haven't blogged Parade's End, either. And that would be especially challenging as I would want to talk about Tom Stoppard's screenplay as well as Ford Madox Ford's original text. Just the other day I was thinking about some of the things Ford did in his final book that revised or undercut assumptions from the earlier books. And as wonderful as I think Stoppard's screenplay is, it couldn't capture the literary marvels of the text. What's compelling about Parade's End is both the story and the way it is told. 

My aunt, who passed away last year at 94, never read a book twice. She saw it as a waste of reading time. I could see going the other way and only reading books I had read before. Not that I would, there are still too many important books I've yet to read. But I do think that would be a reasonable plan. For one thing it would guarantee that you weren't wasting your time on books you wouldn't end up liking.

And, as long as I'm reflecting back on earlier blogs, a friend is traveling around the south of England and today posted photos of Exeter cathedral on Facebook. I immediately thought of the fictional Henry Ryecroft and his snug cottage not that far from Exeter. I really should go back and add links to my later posts about disease and genius in Doctor Faustus (what I was reading last night) and autism and genius in Thinking In Pictures. George Gissing and Mann, I suspect, would have gotten along just fine, but it's hard to imagine what Gissing would make of Temple Grandin, in her Western outfits, designing more efficient (and more humane) slaughterhouses in America. Would either Gissing or Mann have been receptive to her science based interpretation of her world? That is hard to imagine.

Tiny 

After attending my only boat show, in the mid-1960s, I became enamored of sailboat interiors. I still look at mid-size boat tours on YouTube, but have added RV tours and, more recently, Tiny Houses.

I think what appeals to me, beside the intimacy and efficiency of these spaces, is the attention to detail. In larger spaces you can waste space or not pay much attention to entire walls or even rooms. In a tiny space every cubic inch has to justify itself.

Of course I've also argued that often these spaces I see on YouTube are in fact over-designed. Intensely planned and crafted fixtures often mean that there is only one way to use the space. A Lamborghini is a thing of beauty and perfectly designed for its purpose, but if you need to pick-up a purchase or take friends to dinner, a Tesla X is far more flexible and -- dare I say it -- practical.

If I ever had the opportunity to design a tiny space (I forgot to mention container conversions, which may be my favorite) I would start by subtracting as many of the features you commonly see as possible. I would try to introduce functional minimalism as well as aesthetic minimalism (the decorative details of many of these designs would make the Victorians blush.) I could even demonstrate this concept in my own tiny apartment except that making marginal improvements in such an awkwardly small space simply isn't worth the bother. And so I read Dwell magazine instead.

Next - 30. Less chatty

20. "My weekend?"

Previous - 19. QCD musical speculation

"... I'll tell you about my weekend." (Extreme violence)

Another Blade Runner reference. Honestly it wasn't that bad. I'm not on a ventilator for example.

The Art & Soul Festival in Oakland was a little smaller in area -- not a bad thing for us -- and the performance stages were shifted around this year. I didn't hear as much music as in the past. (Last year there was a great set by Sheila E and the entire Escovedo family including her dad, who was on stage celebrating his 80th birthday. I just happened to be sorting the back stage area when they were performing -- just as I just happened to be working the center of the audience area for Kelly Clarkson's set at Summerthing and for Emmylou Harris's set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. It could happen.)

But this year my focus is working the food vendors, and most of the food vendors were a street over on Sunday, so I didn't hear much, but I did pretty much stay on top of the vendors trash sorting needs.

Let's go back and start with Saturday. Who better to assign to sort the BBQ competition area than the vegetarian? Actually this was not an accident or mistake, a block lined with semi-professional BBQers was the obvious place for me, because they required the most help since -- compared with the usual vendors who don't understand and don't really care about sorting their waste -- these guys had no fucking clue.

We are supposed to do "education" as well as divert waste, but, having done this now for over eight years, I know educating vendors is like strangers trying to educate toddlers on good manners. "Don't throw the latex gloves in with the compost" is translated in their heads (I can see it happening) to "Don't let the people in green shirts see you throw gloves into the compost." They invariably save up the worst shit and either drop it off at one of our stations just as they are leaving or else leave it semi-hidden behind where they were set-up. It's like Easter in hell trying to finding where they are keeping the stuff we will eventually need to sort. That's the professional vendors, the people and organizations who enter festival BBQ competitions are worse.

For every BBQ vendor at an event there is a certain amount of wasted meat. Maybe it wasn't prepared correctly, maybe the health inspector called them on some violation, maybe they just over estimated demand -- whatever the reason, lots of cooked meat goes into the trash (almost never into the compost where it belongs) and we have to fish it out. In addition to the meat, there's also bones and a surprising abundance of viscera. Cooked meat is at least easy to handle, but viscera is a slimy mess and is inevitably at the bottom of any bag it's placed in -- so it's the first thing to fall out if the bag tears. (I'm not speculating about this.) So that's the norm with one or maybe two BBQ vendors at an event. On Saturday there was a block lined -- both sides of the street -- with BBQ vendors, each with their own contribution of viscera and bones and left over cooked meat. Damien Hirst could have built a whole heard of mutant cattle and pigs with the meat that passed through my hands.

On Sunday I was a block away working two clusters of regular food vendors separated by almost a block of the usual street fair non-food booths. This worked fine until the end when I had to choose the busier cluster to focus on and leave the other area to others. The area I chose also had the busiest trash stations for the public, so I kept them sorted and eventually closed them down (with everything sorted) while making forays behind the vendor booths to find and retrieve the black bags of everything-mixed-together they inevitably leave us. 

About black bags. I was very wrong before when I compared vendors to toddlers, they are really more like under 12 month infants in that if they put something inside a black bag so you can't see it, they think it's now gone. If a vendor ever really did sort their trash properly into a black bag, we would still have to open up the bag because we can't see what's inside. So I grab the black bags and drag them to one of our compost/landfill/recycling stations and sort the bags into those bags. Usually I can dump the black bag into the landfill container and fish out what doesn't belong. The black bag itself is then added to the landfill. Everything ends up in the proper bag which, when full, I mark with my initial so that when it is hauled to the dumpsters our people know it can be tossed -- or emptied in the case of recycling -- into the proper dumpster with no further sorting.

More than you wanted to know about waste diversion.

"Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig"

After eight hours of this on Sunday (15 hours over the weekend), I arrived home around 9pm and had to take out the trash and recycling for my building. This shouldn't have been a problem except that someone moved out at the beginning of last week which means our toters were full to overflowing. The landfill toter was too heavy for me to pull up the steps -- I made it up two steps before realizing this wasn't going to work. So I took it back down and had to empty out a bag full of trash to get it light enough to pull up our stairs. I can't tell you how much I hate sorting through the trash of the residents of my building. Most of what is in the landfill shouldn't be there, but they are as bad as the food vendors as far as paying attention to instructions. 

Here's the funny part: One of the things I pulled out of the landfill was a nice case full of a virtually new, and very elaborate, BBQ set -- all the tongs and knives and brushes and specially made thingys you can imagine. And heavy, too. I put a "Free" sign on it and left it where our contractors can see it. A waste diverter's work is never done.

You probably think that's it. That that is the reason I (as Leon) am primed for extreme violence. Not quite.

FUBAR

Here's the way it's supposed to work: I drag the large toters of landfill and recycling up to the alley on Sunday night. On Monday morning, usually between 5 and 6am, guys from Recology race around our alley collecting our toters and similar toters from three other buildings. They then empty the toters into their giant truck out on the street (with the charming cable cars passing them up and down the hill) and return empty toters to more or less where they picked them up -- but not the same toters because they rotate them to save themselves a trip (think about it). This is what I was expecting to happen this morning and I set my alarm so that I could fetch the empty toters back down into the laundry room before the contractors started parking their cars and trucks in the alley. None of that happened this morning.

First I realized that it was 7am and I hadn't heard the Recology symphony in the alley. I went out to confirm I hadn't slept through it (as I often do, but usually not when the seismic contractors are part of the picture) -- the toters were still full. I went back to bed. Next I heard the distinctive beeping of the porta-potty pumper truck backing down the alley toward our building. This was an unexpected piece of bad news as I hadn't expected them until Wednesday. 

This is why it's generally a bad idea to generalize from a single sample. For Phase 1 they serviced the porta-potty on Wednesday so I assumed that was the norm for this neighborhood. Instead (generalizing from a sample of two) I now think they make a first service call three days after installing the porta-potty so they can judge how much it's getting used. 

In any case, I went out in the alley (again) to talk to the guy, first because I was concerned he would be blocking the alley when Recology finally showed up, but also because I assumed (correctly) that he would not have a power tool to undo the bolts our contractor is using (this time?) to secure the porta-potty over night. My plan had been to charge up my driver Tuesday night so I could remove the bolts if necessary. Even when you foresee a problem and devise a back-up plan, if your timing is off you're still screwed -- though not me personally in this case. 

So I went back to bed, again, only to hear another vehicle in the alley. The electrician arrived early to beat the commute traffic. I explained the situation to him and staged him in one of the few street parking places out by the cable cars. Still not having noticed the pattern, I got into bed one final time before I had to get up again to deal with another contractor vehicle. This time two guys with very little English in a really nice car. The best I could come up with was to pull all four toters at my the end of the alley out to near the middle and then let him back in again to the end. (Neurosurgeons could learn a thing from the care this guy took backing his ride between the plants on either side of our narrow alley, with scaffolding on one side.)

When Recology finally did arrive, the guy with the nice ride had to pull forward again so I could drag in our toters and place our neighbor's toters next to the porta-potty where they had originally been. Then all I had to do was return the bag of trash to the landfill toter and open all the doors, turn on the lights, and turn off the alarm for the contractors. 

The other owners in our HOA are always saying they don't know what they would do without me, but they really have no idea.

And yet, a very good day

Given how my day started you might think today was a bad day for me, but no. This is also the anniversary of my mother's death, so I went out to Lincoln Park and sat on the bench -- where my mother's ashes fell out of their container... whoops -- overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Some foreign tourists arrived at almost the same time I did and were snapping photos. Since they hung around for longer than the usual quick snapshot, I volunteered the information that this was a good place to spot hawks. I even pointed out where they tended to hunt. Less than a minute after the tourists drove off two hawks appeared exactly where I had pointed. I would have been viewed as a sage of the natural world if only they had been more patient. 

Fog

For years I've thought that San Francisco needed a special language for fog -- like the Eskimo language for snow. Today, for whatever reason, the terminology came to me.

In the spirit of the Emperor Norton (I may have to concoct a uniform) I HEREBY DECREE that fog passing entirely over the towers of the bridge will now be called SOPRANO fog; fog hiding the tops of the towers but not the deck, is ALTO fog; fog covering the deck but not the top of the towers, or approaching the water, is TENOR fog; and fog passing entirely under the deck is BARITONE fog. There will, obviously, also be medleys when these fog conditions overlap.


This decree will be enforced by the spirits of Bummer and Lazarus.

Another world

The essence of both In Search of Lost Time and Parade's End is that the world that was, was gone forever after the Great War, and it's hard to argue with that. A friend of mine recently posted an image from Czechoslovakia from 1927 that, along with that National Geographic with photos from 1937 or 1938 I've alluded to before, makes the same argument for the 2nd World War. 

When we read these books (or A Nervous Splendor) we long for the imagined past just as National Socialists and Communists longed for an imagined future. But just as Michel Foucault was constrained in his Marxist enthusiasm by his forbidden homosexuality, I, being white and male and, at least nominally, protestant, when viewing the past reject it because, as a vegetarian, there would be almost nothing for me to eat. 

Next - 21. The Italian Connection