Humility and the Poets

I was in Arras at the weekend and walked out (in defiance of the tourist office who said it could not be done except at the wheel of a car) to Bailleul Road East Cemetery where the poet Isaac Rosenberg is buried.  A few weeks before he died he wrote (the reference is to a poem by Walt Whitman which remained his gold standard for war poetry): "I have written a few war poems but when I think of 'Drum Taps' mine are absurd."  They are not absurd and ("Break of Day in the Trenches") among the best.  Just a stone's throw away is the (far more populous) German cemetery where several Jewish headstones can be seen among the stark rows of iron crosses.  A rather concrete poem about 'the futility of war'?

PS I would recommend anyone who is interested in war poetry to keep a watchful eye on Tim Kendall's War Poetry blog.  Indispensable.

A Valentine from Samuel Beckett

Hearing that the first volume of Beckett's collected letters had just been published I reached up to the bookshelf and pulled down at random a slim volume of his novellas that I hadn't looked at for years, including, appropriately for today, First Love. This is Beckett on high form, with that exquisitely mordant irony permeating the whole mad tale ("having lunched lightly in the graveyard").  But to my horror I discovered that the pretty little Penguin (see right) was riddled with typos and in some cases whole sentences were mangled and redistributed, making no sense.  For a verbal artist like Beckett, whose words are placed with forensic care, this was lamentable and I flung the book across the room, quickly retrieving the 1984 John Calder Collected Shorter Prose 1945-1980 which had a perfect text.

I know that Beckett is inimitable and that no one now can write like him, or should even try to, but how rare it is to encounter in contemporary fiction such exquisite style, such purity and intensity of focus. Is it that the talent isn't there or that we don't know how to let it speak, to encourage it?  Not a question, I think, that will be troubling the Booker judges.

Should Publishers Take Risks?

One of the famous stories about the novelist, Malcolm Lowry, whose centenary it is this year is about  the loss of the manuscript of his first novel, Ultramarine, when it was stolen from the open Bentley of Chatto editor, Ian Parsons, while he nipped into the office for a minute on his way to Scotland.  The story ended happily when a carbon Lowry had thrown away, but which a friend had fished out of the bin, enabled him to rewrite (which he generally did endlessly anyway).  But reading Parsons' account in Gordon Bowker's fascinating collection of Lowry reminiscences, Malcolm Lowry Remembered (1985) I was struck by Chatto's endorsement of their reader's report which said that it showed more potential than achievement and for that reason they should do him. "I don't think we shall make a penny, and I think he'll get very mixed reviews...He will never, I think, do four-square circulating-library books, but his talent is one to be encouraged."   Would such a memo circulate in Chatto/Random House today?

Atiq Rahimi: A Genuine Winner

Anyone who reads this blog will know that I am sceptical of literary prizes, which are more like a lottery than a reliable critical benchmark but I have just read Atiq Rahimi's Goncourt prize-winning novel, Syngué Sabour, (more about that title in a second) and I found it truly excellent.  Rahimi is an Afghan exile living in Paris and his three previous books were published in Persian.  This is his first in French and, like Kundera, he seems to write like a native.  Something approaching 'controversy' has been stirred up by the fact that he chose to write in French and by a certain smugness (see an editorial in Le Monde) about enlightened  France being the host for this chilling tale of the brutish misogyny of the Taliban).  There are some interesting critical responses on the publisher's website.  

The title refers to a Persian legend about the stone on which all human suffering and misery was projected and which, one day, would explode, scattering grief finally to the four winds.  The French sub-title is Pierre de patience or 'stone of suffering'. I see that most people seem to be translating this as 'stone of patience' which is literally what the French subtitle says but I wonder if the Latin root of 'patience', meaning to suffer is in there somewhere?  It is set in Kabul ("or elsewhere" the author suggests) in a single room where a woman watches the paralysed body of her brutal husband, probably a Taliban fighter, and, since he cannot speak, projects onto him all the pain of her life (much of which derives from him). He becomes her syngué sabour and the final éclat of her repository of grief is powerful and shocking.  It is written in a tantalising mix of Beckettian spareness and Arabian Nights fabulating richness and it is a stunning and shocking read.  One only has to compare it to another short, highly focussed novella, Chesil Beach, to appreciate its remarkable quality.

In the Consumer Cathedral

You pass through the front entrance into a large, high-ceilinged space with worshippers at the side aisles busily making their devotions and a packed and reverent congregation filling the centre aisles.   Acolytes in their distinctive vestments move amongst the faithful, dispensing solace and wisdom.  I refer of course to that great cathedral of modern consumer culture, The Apple Store, in London's Regent Street.  For those of us who know nothing about the insides of computers, external appearances are all we have to go on, and five years ago I was seduced, as so many have been, by the sleek white lines of Apple.  Five years of constant hammering, with the letters wiped off some of the keys, and the white now a rather dirty shade of grey, my iBook finally gave up the ghost last week and so I put on my pilgrim's garb and headed for the basilica of St Apple the Martyr to buy a new MacBook. 

The Apple Store is a vast space and what greets you when you enter it is a busy scene of activity dominated by three holy orders of "concierge" as they call themselves.  At the bottom of the hierarchy are the ones in orange sweatshirts bearing the legend: "Help is my middle name." These are your first port of call and, if they can't help, they guide you to the next level, in pale blue sweatshirts which read: "I could talk about this stuff for hours."  But beyond these are the highest form of life, the masters of the Apple universe, the Geniuses who stand importantly at The Genius Bar.  They wear dark blue sweatshirts which read: "Not all heroes wear capes", or, in one case, simply the single word: "Genius".  My genius had the awesome brain of one of Apple's advanced data processors, managing to conduct, simultaneously, the cases of about ten people, multi-tasking at a speed actually faster than any computer I have seen.

The word 'cool' is mandatory in every sentence and there is an atmosphere of the happy converted boosting each other.  It is all very Californian and funky and you can forget all that stuff about there being some sort of recession, this cathedral is packed with eager worshippers, queueing to spend more money and bearing off white bags, with that distinctive logo of the bitten apple, full of Apple product.

One fashion-tip before I leave you: a beanie is a great help if you are thinking of making a visit, and if it is chocolate-coloured, your passage through the Apple-rite will be as smooth as a hot knife passing through butter.

Have a nice day!

Martin Amis and His Friends

To the National Portrait Gallery for a small exhibition of photographs by Angela Gorgas called: "Martin Amis and His Friends." You think I am pulling your leg? A spoof? No, it's true. That is indeed the subject of the exhibition. Angela Gorgas, the photographer, was a friend of Amis in the 1970s and you have to say he takes a good shot. There are images of Martin with a fag, Martin with a fag...Martin in a cloud of cigarette smoke, Martin with a white mini which was known as "the ash-tray" because it was full of fag ends...And there is Christopher Hitchens ("the Hitch") of course, and James Fenton and Mark Boxer and lots of rich and clever people with nicknames like "Tory". There is a younger Ian McEwan, looking a bit scary actually, and overall it is interesting but would confirm the prejudices of anyone who had a certain view of the metropolitan literati. This little world revolved around, at that time, a left-wing magazine, The New Statesman, which lends an extra piquancy. I remember walking into their offices in around 1979 with my first little piece, about some Labour Party shenanigans in south London, and being received by the political editor, Patrick Wintour, in a cramped office where I was warned about the springs erupting from the torn upholstery. Our confab was interrupted by the arrival of the Hitch who , I must say, did a very passable imitation of Wildean languour. They must all have had such fun.

Christopher Reid: a new collection

One of the finest and most moving collections of poetry this year may well turn out to be this new one from Christopher Reid, A Scattering, launched in Oxford last weekend and published by Areté Books. The book is a tribute to his wife, Lucinda, who died in October 2005 and it consists of four poetic sequences, the first written during her final illness, and the other three at intervals after her death. It is highly recommended.

The book can be ordered from Areté, postage free, for £9 from Areté, 8 New College Lane, Oxford OX1 3BN