war music, not love songs (christopher logue)

updated!

war music is one of the books we'll be talking about this semester, and i have to say i am really enjoying it. this is english poet christopher logue's rendering of parts of homer's iliad (it contains books 1-4 and 16-19). it's pleasantly straightforward to read, with no attempt at archaic language etc, and i particularly like the little anachronisms and unexpected images. even though i am not in the least bit interested in war-themed stories, this book drew me in.

it's beautifully written poetry; at times it feels old, at times new:

Fearful as the toad in a python's mouth,
The priest, as if the world was empty, walked away
Beside the sea, then hung his head and prayed
Wet-cassocked in the foam
(9)

and in contrast, there are passages like this:

Nod.
Look. 
The gate. 
The compound.
Then:
Achilles' tent, a moonlit, Cubist, dune.
(26)

what is this story? here is what i've pieced together: the greeks have been trying to conquer troy for years, without success. they are tired of war but cannot return empty-handed, the price paid is too high.

achilles is a key player - not only is he handsomeness incarnate, he is also their bravest warrior. the greek soldiers are cursed with the plague because their leader, agamemnon, has taken the trojan seer chryses' daughter, chryseis, and refuses to return her even for great treasures.

seeing there is no choice (people are dying left and right) agamemnon has to give in and return chryseis. however, his pride is hurt and he will not give up a beautiful woman without getting a replacement. he chooses achilles' beloved 'she', briseis.

briseis is taken from achilles

achilles speaks up because he feels unfairly treated, and finally announces he will no longer fight for agamemnon but rather go home. this is unsettling for the other soldiers because achilles inspired a large part of their confidence in battle.

there is another love story - that of helen of troy, who is wife to the king of sparta, menelaus. she is said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and so paris - who has been promised the most beautiful woman in the world by aphrodite - takes her to troy in menelaus' absence,  giving the greek soldiers a reason to attack the city - they are honour-bound to defend menelaus' and helen's union.

paris with helen

whether or not helen went willingly i'm not sure, and accounts vary. the illustration above suggests she did, though many others do not.

the leaders of both sides - tired, as i said, after so many years of fighting - decide to enter into a truce: the war should be determined by a one-on-one fight to the death, one greek against one trojan. the winner gets helen. of course menelaus is the obvious choice for the greek side, since he is helen's legitimate husband, and so it is determined he is to fight paris. menelaus clearly has the upper hand in the fight, but paris has aphrodite on his side. both survive.

the gods, who look down from their clouds every now and then to see what the humans are doing, mess things up again here: they cause a trojan to break the truce (in a very painful way btw). of course the greek won't have it - general slaughter and bloodshed commences.

patroclus, who is close to achilles, realizes they cannot win without him. when it is clear achilles won't budge, he asks to use achilles' armour, and achilles allows it, on the condition that patroclus only drive the trojans back, not try to take troy. dressed as achilles, he leads his men against the trojans.

they kill many. they drive the trojans back. patroclus will not stop there - something has snapped, and he goes off toward troy to continue his killing. needless to say, since he broke his promise and also since apollo is around (who loves troy), patroclus is killed. trojan leader hector takes achilles' armour off the dead warrior's body - he is mesmerized by it.

achilles is devastated when he hears of patroclus' death and promises vengeance. he has a talk with agamemnon the king, explains he is no longer angry, and the king admits he may have acted unfairly. he is willing to return briseis to achilles if he will return to the battle. of course he will.

with achilles, anything seems possible: when he puts on his new armour (magical no doubt, and given by his mother from the sea) the scene is like the entrance of a super hero:

Though it is noon, the helmet screams against the light;
Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen
Across three thousand years.
(213)

achilles has nothing to lose now. troy will fall.

silver surfer, by cinar (deviant art)

on a side note, i thought this description of odysseus was interesting:

And then,
With his big, attractive belly rounded out
And just a trace of dark grey hair
Ascending and descending to his cloth

Odysseus (small but big)
(73)

he shows up in an earlier scene too, where he is part of a group of warriors listening to the king's account of his dream that they should conquer troy by total war. there is a pause in the king's story, and logue creates this beautifully:

'Make total war today, hero and host, as one,
Troy will be yours by dusk.'

The dawn wind pats their hair.

Odysseus gazes at his big left toe.
His toe. 
(65)

anyway, i can recommend this book for people like me, - not necessarily into history and all that war, but interested in people and words and images. the characters logue presents us with are credible and interesting. this is a great re-telling of the story, or re-writing, or whatever you want to call it.

i can see why those keen on historical accuracy may be alarmed by this book, (which is one of several btw, though they can stand alone) but for anyone else i think this might be a fine read.

puppets without strings: the magic toyshop (angela carter)

it's a little ironic, really, that i bought this book in autumn 1999 (when i first came to reading university) just to carry it around with me / have it wait in boxes and on shelves until last saturday, and then read the whole thing in two days. but i am glad it waited for me!

virago edition, "the magic toyshop"
by angela carter

this is quite the book - it really drew me in. the main character, a fifteen year-old english girl named melanie, the oldest of three siblings, is an introvert teenager who longs to figure out her place in the world, who she will be, who she could or should be - and she has, from the outset, quite a specific idea of what she wants from life: 

She stuck moon-daisies in her long hair and looked at herself in her mirror as if she were a photograph in her own grown-up photograph album. 'Myself at fifteen.' And, following, the pictures of her children [...] and pet dogs, and summer-snapped future holidays. [...] the pet dogs, would they be Yorkshire terriers or corgis; or noble, hawk-nosed Afghan hounds or a pair of white greyhounds on a golden chain? 

She said to the daisy girl with her big, brown eyes: 'I will not have it plain. No. Fancy. It must be fancy.' She meant her future. A moon-daisy dropped to the floor, down from her hair, like a faintly derisive sign from heaven. (p.7-8)

melanie is at that point where she wants to shed her childhood self like an old skin. her secretly trying on her mother's wedding gown is more than just a private rite of passage, - her entire life changes from here.  like the wedding gown, the life that she is cast into seems too large, bound to trip her up and take away her freedom of moving, running, climbing. finding herself suddenly orphaned and forced to move, with her brother and baby-sister, to london to live with relatives she has never met, melanie suddenly finds herself in a whole different world, where she does not have her own perfumed bar of soap or even hot running water. the baby and the younger brother are quickly integrated into the new 'family' but melanie feels like an outsider. She feels that somehow she has caused all this.

Eve must have felt like this on the way east out of Eden,' she thought. 'And it was Eve's fault.' (p.94)

the central conflict in this book is - as i experienced it - between melanie and her uncle philip, the toymaker. secretly, he is also a puppeteer, he not only makes elaborate, almost life-size puppets, but also performs plays for his captive family audience. this is exactly why melanie draws his attention on herself - because he cannot control her like, for instance, he controls his wife, who has been mute since the day of their wedding. how interesting is the description of the necklace he gives to his wife on the day they are married:

The necklace was a collar of dull silver, two hinged silver pieces knobbed with moonstones which snapped into place around her lean neck and rose up almost to her chin so that she could hardly move her head. It was heavy, crippling and precious and looked as though it might be very ancient, pre-Christian or possibly even pre-Flood although, in fact, it was not. [...] Wearing the collar, Aunt Margaret had to carry her head high and haughty as the Queen of Assyria, but above it her eyes were anxious and sad and not proud at all. (pp.112-113)

there is so much going on in this book in terms of human relationships, family and love relationships, in terms of symbolism (birds, muteness, etc), in terms of recurrent motifs (dogs, christian references, etc etc), that i don't want to try and touch on all if it, because it would just be skimming the surface while giving away too much of the plot. it is an intense book, without being graphic. this is powerful, startling writing. even though this book has been around since the late 1960s it is certainly no old hat.

She splashed the shreds of the absurd night out of her eyes with cold water. The well-iced shock of water did her good as it took her breath away; it impinged on her, it was palpable. Water is water. You can't argue with water. There it is. (p.182)

melanie herself is like water - when her family is broken up, she goes on, she runs through the cracks, and somehow goes around the obstacles her uncle constructs. in the end, the water runs through his fingers, he cannot hold it. by the time he realizes it, it is too late, and melanie's influence has dissolved the foundations of his regime of terror and forced silence. it is good not to see an attempt at explanation of especially the uncle's behavior. this story is not about guilt and innocence, good or bad. it is much more complex.

this is a coming-of-age story if you want to throw it into a category. i thoroughly enjoyed the book, - it scared me, it touched me, it made me awkward, it made me think. it is also a love story of sorts - not the soppy kind, but an awkward, detached, somewhat apprehensive but curious sort of relationship develops. at the end, we see a changed melanie, one who has taken charge of herself.

dusty answer (rosamond lehmann)

i finished dusty answer, and just in time too - while the book was in impeccable shape when i found it, it had been sitting on shelves in this family for the past 75 years or so and, well, i am guessing that i was its first (and probably its last) reader. the glue of the binding is breaking and the paper cover has begun to peel a little, despite my usual carefulness with books.

anyway, let me tell you about the book!
(spoiler alert: you might not want to read this if you still want to read the book for the simple enjoyment of it, because i am going to tell you what happens and how it ends!)

rosamond lehmann
(1901-1990)

the plot of "dusty answer" is simple, if you like: judith spends the duration of the novel trying to figure out who she loves, should love, should be loved by, or should not be loved by. her fixation is on roddy, although both martin and julian, who also lived next door to her as children, were kinder and nicer to her. when they grow up, judith is in for a bit of a surprise, - roddy sometimes plays along with her secret dreams, but also keeps odd company:

Tony Baring sat opposite and stared with liquid expressive blue eyes. He had a sensitive face, changing all the time, a wide mouth with beautiful sensuous lips, thick black hair and a broad white forehead with the eyebrows meeting above the nose, strongly marked and mobile. When he spoke he moved them, singly or together. His voice was soft and precious, and he had a slight lisp. He looked like a young poet.

so far so good, but -

Suddenly she noticed his hands - thin unmasculine hands - queer hands - making nervous appealing ineffectual gestures that contradicted the nobility of his head. She heard him call Roddy 'my dear'; and once 'darling'; and had a passing shock. (pp98-99)

not that roddy himself acts "unmasculine" - a little later he tells her about his past lovers: he's had "a French, an Austrian, a Russian - countless mistresses." (p.216)

then, there's jennifer baird, a stunning creature she meets at cambridge.

'Have you got a cigarette? Never mind... I've just learnt how to blow smoke-rings. I'll teach you.' More whistling. 'It's terrible to be so swayed by appearances. I'm afraid it's a sign of a weak character. Ugly people rouse all Hell's devils in me. And beautiful ones make me feel like the morning stars singing together. I want beauty, beauty, beauty.... Don't you? Lovely people round me, lovely stuffs, lovely colours - lashions and lashions of gorgeous things to touch and taste and look at and smell.' She flung her head back on its round white throat and took a deep sighing breath. 'O colours!... I could eat them. I'm awfully sensuous - I look it, don't you think? Or do I mean sensual? I always get them muddled; but I know it's unladylike to be one of them.' (pp.121-122)

jennifer's lust for life and her careless spontaneousness mesmerize judith.

'You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?'

'I love nobody.'

Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....

'You mustn't love anybody,' said Jennifer. 'I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.' Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith's lifted face. 'I love you.'

And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power. (p.134)

when jennifer leaves cambridge, dropping out of school for mysterious reasons (to be with geraldine), she leaves judith a copper bowl that judith apparently had admired, with the comment that it was the nicest thing she'd ever owned, and more:

'It's all of me,' whispered Jennifer. (p.186)

left with questions, the promise of a letter with answers, and a copper bowl, judith focuses on roddy once again. she finally finds out, the hard way, that he is not the person she has been imagining for all these years after he takes offense at her passionate admission of her feelings towards him. after a romantic, secret midnight canoe-trip to a small island where he intends to say goodbye forever, and for some reason tells her he loves her (and they kiss passionately), she sends him a letter, which is causes the following exchange:

'Well,' - he hesitated. 'If a man wants to ask a girl to - marry him he generally asks her himself - do you see?'

'You mean - it was outrageous of me not to wait - to write like that?'

'I thought it a little odd.' (p.235)

they decide to never see each other again. heartbroken, still waiting for jennifer to explain herself in the promised letter, she moves on to martin, who introduces her to his mother and shows her his farm. he shoots a rabbit right in front of her, which reminds her of roddy who, unable to bear her sadness at the sight of a dead rabbit when they were children, buried the creature for her. reduced to a pile of sobbing misery, she lets martin comfort her and when he, too, tells her he loves her, she suggests he marry her, saying she would be his wife.

she knows it is the wrong thing to do, she does not love him, and breaks up the engagement a day later. they part, and never meet again. finally, julian, the last of the boys next door, finds her in paris, explaining that he had been waiting for his turn, and courts her. they have a great time together until they hear martin has died. their ways part. julian writes to her to tell her they also must not meet again.

finally, judith is on her own, and the long-awaited letter from jennifer arrives. jennifer also wants to not see judith again, explaining that while she still loves her, she does not deserve judith's love and concern. judith wants to see her again and they arrange to meet in cambridge. when jennifer doesn't show up, judith realizes she has come full circle and is now free.


i have to say the first hundred pages or so were tedious. the style, the character of judith, her thought patterns took some getting used to. the middle part, where she is at cambridge, is much more readable, more enjoyable because of all the beautiful descriptions and because things actually happen, while in the first part, it's mainly judith thinking about stuff.

why did i read the book in the first place?
because i was curious. the book itself, the physical object, was interesting to me (see previous post about albatross books), and seeing that rosamond lehmann was involved with the bloomsbury group and also quoted by simone de beauvoir made me even more curious. also, i will admit that the comment (on wikipedia) that "dusty answer" was a succes de scandale was a selling point. :)

this book is all about emotions, muchly so because judith is nothing but emotions and wonderings.

the men we meet in 'dusty answer' are unmasculine (tony), plain (martin), and hypermasculine (roddy), its women childlike (mariella, who even after having born her son still acts and looks like a child), unfeminine (geraldine, mabel) and hyperfeminine (jennifer).

judith is trying to find her way through this maze, and it is only toward the end that she realizes how much power she holds over how people react to her, how they see her. in the end, she realizes she as one single person had enough power to break apart the circle of familiar friends of the kids next door.

books from strangers / whistling for elephants

i am reading. a novel. and loving it. i got this book from a complete stranger, via the public bookshelf the mercator foundation set up downtown. the whole thing is simple enough:

it's a simple construction that keeps the books safe from wind and rain, while still letting you see what's there.  people can just take what they're interested in and / or drop of books they no longer need or want to share. of course a fair share of the books are lame old things but i continue to be surprised by some of what i find there. i stop by there at least once a week, have a look and tidy up the shelves a bit. i think every city, every town should have one of these! what a brilliant idea!

anyway, this is what i found on the public bookshelf yesterday:

1967 ladybird book, good shape

which, while fiction, is not the book i was talking about in the introductory sentence of this post. :) but i did want to mention this, because it is a neat little item - i remember when i volunteered at the reading oxfam bookshop we had a number of customers who came in for these little books especially; collectors who were looking for specific editions and many of whom found at least some of what they were looking for on our shelves. finding this on the public bookshelf was a big surprise for me - sure, i can see where the english-language romance novels, thrillers, and chick lit might come from, but to my knowledge these old ladybird books would have come from - a british / anglophile family or collector (more likely a collector, since it is in such good shape). 

anyway, this is the "real" find for this week:

whistling for the elephants
by sandi toksvig

part of what piqued my curiosity here was that i had heard neither the title nor the name of the author before, and it did not look like chick-lit. i opened the book at the beginning and ran into the main character, a girl named dorothy:

I was ten. Almost certainly I was wearing a short tartan kilt (Clan McLadybird), a white shirt, a very neatly tied tie, a blue blazer and a peaked sailor's cap which hid my long curly ginger hair. No-one made me dress like that. It was a kind of school uniform I had invented for myself. In the photos the combination tie and skirt made me look a strange boy / girl hybrid. My face, born with a frown, was obscured by the peak of my hat. I had spent most of my early childhood shielded from a full view of anything. The cap and I were inseparable. I was, even in my tender years, trying to develop a rakish look. I spent many hours trying to persuade people to call me Cap'n instead of Dorothy. It didn't work. Not a popular child. Not even with my parents. 

by then i knew dorothy and i would be fast friends. :) she is a truly intriguing girl who is not so much raised as she just sort of grows and raises herself. her most prized possession is a "piece of illuminated manuscript" that illustrates the structure of the animal kingdom according to (supposedly) 10th century chinese thought. reading up on this just now, i found this is a direct quote also cited by borges (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge's_Taxonomy to read this thing - quite poetic really!) first it seems that the reason dorothy (never dottie!) sees this item as a treasure is because it was the only gift she ever received that was unasked for, even unexpected, but this whole theme of animals is deeply woven into the fabric of this novel and no doubt will play a vital role in her story. the "real" relationships, actual rapport, happens only between humans and animals here, among people who are just figuring out how to live after WW2.

dorothy's british family move much and, as we join her, have just moved to america, and for the first time, they could become a real family in a real home - maybe. probably not. the relationship between her and her parents is somewhat... antiseptic.

the book is full of great character descriptions and little observations dorothy makes concerning those around her, such as this when she has entered an (assumedly) abandoned grand house and admires a large painting full of animals:

"We shall have a Chinese Garden of Intelligence." I jumped as a voice spoke behind me. I thought for a second it came from the picture. "A Great Menagerie. Like King George at Windsor or the Duke of Bedford. Tropical princes shall come and bring us barbaric offerings of tigers, leopards and creatures no man has ever seen before. We shall have such a collection that the Emperor of Abyssinia will hear of it and wish to come." 

I turned but couldn't see anyone. Then, amongst the great drapes which covered the walls, something moved. A giant insect woman. All in brown. Its wings closed about itself. It spoke to me. 

"No one, not even in Egypt, China, India or Rome, will be able to boast of such exotica."

The huge bug shimmered toward me. She was maybe in her late thirties but when you're a kid everyone just looks old. She was probably as old as Mother, just less set in aspic. 

in any case, since i got the book yesterday i've read almost half of it and can't wait to read on. i am glad i checked the bookshelf yesterday, and - thanks, stranger, for sharing this book with me!

chill poetry for eyes and ears (Jean Sprackland)

so... today was definitely the right day for reading jean sprackland's collection Tilt. the wind, the temperature on the train to work, the mutterings of the tracks. but before i tell you about this book, just a quick note on the side - a site i came across when looking up jean online - this might be interesting to you if you like poetry and if you are, like me, curious.

i believe poetry is about as personal as writing could possibly get, so hearing the voice of the poet is always interesting to me. i remember when, in school, a teacher played us a recording of dylan thomas reading "fern hill," "do not go gentle," and - most of all - "death shall have no dominion" - i was stunned. (the links will take you to youtube videos with audio recordings of thomas reading these poems)

anyway. here is a site that has lots of recordings of english language poets reading their own work: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/poetWelcome.do (and the link to jean sprackland is, she is also involved in the making and running of this site)

and now the book. it is a fine case of packaging matching content. the book itself is slim, with a cool, simple cover design. the title poem is quite something. so are pretty much all of the others, too! poems containing cows, crime scene investigation, anesthesia, love, miracles, loss, pirates and sandcastles. you will run into fish and chips and babies and waterfalls and shards of ice on a beach. the strength of her poems are in the simplicity of the images, and the chilling moment when it all falls into place.

there are many "cold" images here, so maybe that's why reading this today, on an autumny october day, felt so right. here is an example:

...

But thirty miles south,

in another town, [the ice] creaks

under the pier, where someone kneels,

staring down like a god

through a damaged sky, onto wilderness

of ridges and blue shadows.

(from: Ice on the Beach)

what i also found very interesting was the sequence of poems titled Miracles. six poems look at the ministry of Christ from an angle that is tangible, surprising, anachronistic - sprackland transplants doubting thomas onto a bridge across the M6 (a busy english motorway), translates the first miracle of water turned to wine (at the wedding in cana), and lets the reader witness the casting out of an evil spirit. i personally really enjoyed the way these stories - handed down over generations and generations - take on a new life in a new light.

the book begins with lying down, waiting, and ends with moving about, an engine, a powerful force for good, "breathing in the spoilt air, / and breathing it out clean."

i was going to put another snippet or two here but... i don't want to give too much away. it would be difficult to pick out bits and pieces and still do the book justice. i guess you may just have to read it yourself...

staying at the migraine hotel

i went on a two day trip to england last week on the joyous occasion of an old friend's wedding and... i brought back a bunch of new (to me) books.

there are two places you will likely find me if i say, in reading, "i am going shopping." those are: the reading oxfam bookshop (i got the bloodaxe and the lewis book from there, GBP 2.99 each) and the waterstones in broadstreet - the inside of this building is amazingly beautiful. a kind of chapel.) chris j. wood took a great picture that gives you an inkling of what it's like in there: (image used under creative commons, thanks!)

now, THAT'S what i call a proper bookstore!

you will be hearing more about the books as i go along... here are the mugshots:

elif shafak: the forty rules of love (novel)
- recommended by a friend

luke kennard: the migraine hotel (poetry)

jean sprakland: tilt (poetry)

katharine kilalea: one eye'd leigh (poetry)

jeni couzyn, ed: the bloodaxe book of contemporary 

women poets - eleven british writers

colin brake: dr.who decide your own destiny 

- the spaceship graveyard (just for fun)

gwyneth lewis: parables & faxes (poetry)  

(this one i couldn't find the cover art for online...)