in which I wrap up January
(1) Things which I have read.
It’s been a fairly slow reading month, despite a ten day holiday — in part because I am trying to get into and through Ducks, Newburyport. I’ve made it through 11% and when I’m reading it I’m enjoying it, but I’m not desperate to pick it up. The other part is that I left a few books at home part read when I headed off to Colombia, so my ‘currently reading’ pile is terrifying me.
Anyway, I started the year with Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin, which is a fabulous novel about Lavinia, who became Aeneas’ wife when he landed in Italy at the end of the Aeneid. It’s a great novel about a woman in that time and place and all the political machinations and alliances that are in place, but it’s also fabulous about mythical history and poetry and what and how characters like Lavinia’s get transmitted by poets like Virgil. It’d been on my shelf for ages, and I’m so glad I finally read it.
Then I read Forgetfulness: making the modern culture of amnesia by Francis O’Gorman, a quite grumpy book about how focusing on the future and on progress creates forgetfulness about whole areas of life (not just history - but thinks like values and communities as well). It has some interesting things to say, and I was particuarly interested in his argument that Christianity’s early focus on heaven as both future and elsewhere (in Augustine), but in the end I felt it petered out. I’m currently reading Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting: Getting past the past, which is working for me far more.
Finally, while I was away I read Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I found Uncanny Valley a really easy read, but also quite lightweight. It felt like it pulled its punches in analysing what it is in us that makes us willing to be complicit in working for and using and therefore enabling some of the less savoury elements and effect of tech in favour of “I was naive, and secuirty is harder to find now so…” The Woman in White was a total melodramatic riot. I’d seen a TV version of this in the 90s, but couldn’t really remember any of it, so I had a fun time reading it. It did feel long though - in a way I don’t find Dickens, generally, or Collins’ own The Moonstone, which is not massively shorter. Everyone in it is essentially bland and/or terrible, with the notably exception of Marian, who is both brilliant and the unfortunate bearer of a whole load of misogyny, and I’m pretty sure that Collins isn’t commentating on her internalisation of the misogyny of Victorian culture, sadly.
(2) Things which I have watched
I started the year with a trip to the cinema to see the new Guy Ritchie film, The Gentlemen. I did this on the basis of the fact that I have enjoyed his more recent films (the Sherlock Holmes’, Man from UNCLE, and even King Arthur), and I was sadly disappointed. It wasn’t especially involving, and the casual racism (in particuar) was horribly offputting, and frankly, irresponsible when put in the mouths of actors as charasmatic as Charlie Hunnan and Hugh Grant.
Fortunately the year has got better. I went to see 1917 which I enjoyed far more than I was expecting to. I was worried it would go all Saving Private Ryan and whack an unnecessary, overly-sentimental, story onto a really strong depiction of the brutality of war - and I certainly didn’t find that with this story. I also didn’t think it was quite as good as it thought it was (or as many critics have), it was absorbing and the way it was filmed is remarkable, but it didn’t go deep with me - and I found the music, in particuar, punched me out of the story, because it reminded me that it was a film trying to pull my emotional strings.
And finally I got to see The Personal History of David Copperfield. I had no idea this was coming until the moment the trailer was released and I fully shrieked with joy when I saw that. I first read Copperfield when I was nine or ten, and several times since — but probably not in the last 10–15 years — and I felt that this was both familiar and refreshing for me. The script did a marvellous job of compressing the novel, but also expanding some of its emotional world. In particular it gave David some of Dickens’ potential for carelessness and cruelty in his observation and humour without erasing the fact that David is generally quite sweet and fluffy (if not as pathetic as Oliver or annoyingly damp squiddy as Pip) . I felt it handled both Steerforth and Dora well - but my complete highlight was Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick, with his kite.
(3) A recommendation of some kind
Other than going to see The Personal History of David Copperfield? Well, this is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday, so maybe we should spend the year listening to Beethoven. Start with the Ninth Symphony. If you like Brexit, you can be glad that you’re no longer tied to the final movement. If you really really don’t then get yourself some catharsis.
Also, I would fully recommend visiting Colombia.
(4) In the pile for February
Well, I’m still going on with Ducks, Newburyport which I am enjoying it but I’m not sure if I’m enjoying it enough to keep going for 1000 pages. We’ll see. I’m also half-way thorugh Sarah Ruden’s translation of the Aeneid (Lavinia-inspired) and Lewis Hyde’s Primer for Forgetting, and I started re-reading William Gibson’s Spook Country. I’m also reading Ted Chiang’s Exhalation as short stories before bed. I will, however, be getting myself into Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel The Water Dancer on its UK publication (finally!)
At the cinema I’ll be seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood and almost certainly Emma and Parasite, and I’m going to see the Royal Ballet’s Onegin.
(5) A photo from the month gone by
Morro Amarillo, Jardin - Colombia