Author Archives: kheenand

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Discover literature Eagleton style

sheepAnyone with more than a passing interest in studying literature will not get too far into the subject without encountering Terry Eagleton. Former professor of literature at Oxford university, currently at Lancaster University and Notre Dame, he’s the author of some fourty books on literary theory and criticism.

So what is a man considered by many to be the UK’s most influential living literary critic and theorist, doing writing an extended analysis and interpretation of  the eighteenth century nursery rhyme Ba Ba Blacksheep in his latest book How to Read Literature?

Might there be some hitherto unknown political significance to this rhyme revealed by Eagleton’s Marxian view of literature? Or a social comment about racial tensions uncovered by a post colonial reinterpretation?  The simple answer is no. Eagleton’s analysis is far more entertaining than either of these approaches. In his analysis, the rhyme becomes a hilarious encounter between a rude man and a sheep with a chip on his shoulder when he (or maybe she) isn’t afforded the normal courtesy of being addressed by name.

LiteratureDeeply entertaining yes. But Professor Eagleton does have a more serious point to make — that literary works lend themselves to multiple interpretations with the ‘meaning’ depending on the reader’s own perspectives. Nor is the ‘meaning’ fixed in time and. Rather …….

Literary works may best be seen not as texts with a fixed sense, but as matrices capable of generating a whole range of possible meanings. They do not so much contain meaning as produce it.

In How to Read Literature, Eagleton shows how readers can get a deeper understanding of literary works by closely examining aspects such as tone, ambiguity, syntax as well as the formal aspects of character and narrative voice in  five sections  ”Openings”, “Character”, “Narrative”, “Interpretation” and “Value”. He ranges far and wide across different texts, taking in poetry, drama as well as novels, providing insights into a large range of authors as diverse as Shakespeare, E M Forster and J K Rowling.

The introduction describes How to Read Literature as a text  for students new to the study of literature as well as people who want to deepen and enrich their reading experience. To fully appreciate it, does require a fair knowledge of different works of literature but Eagleton never gets so far into dissecting a particular text that you feel overwhelmed. It would be a great companion read to that other classic, David Lodge‘s Art of Fiction. 

About this book

My copy of How to Read Literature, published earlier this week , was provided by NetGalley.

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To Russia with Classics Club Spin

AnnaThe second Classics Club spin machine landed on number 6 which means I’ll be reading that classic of realism,  Tolstoy‘s Anna Karenina.

I’ll be opening it with very high expectations. Some esteemed authors have heaped praise on this novel over the years. Both Dostoevsky and Nabokov considered it ‘flawless’ while William Faulker labelled it “the best  written” and Time magazine included it in their Top Ten list in 2007.

Tolstoy had a high opinion of it also, considering it his first true novel (not to be compared with his epic work War and Peace that he viewed as more than a novel. He’s said to have written Anna Karenina after hearing of the suicide  at a railway station of a young woman who had been the mistress of a neighbouring landlord. Although Tolstoy arrived at the station after the drama was over, so he didn’t actually see the woman, the incident is said to have stuck in his mind.

He turns the woman into the  tragic figure of Anna Karenina, an aristocrat and socialite who turns her back on her insufferably dull and stiff government minister of a husband Alexei Karenin and embarks on a passionate affair with the affluent Count Vornosky.

I first read this novel when I was sixteen and in that phase of life where I read anything I could get my hands on that was written by a foreign author (ie not British or American). Stendhal, Camus, Grass; Tolstoy all passed before my eyes. Actually I probably understood very little but I did feel so superior to my classmates who were all still in Jean Plaidy and Dennis Wheatley phases. All I remember about Anna Karenina was that it was long, had a complicated set of characters whose names kept changing (though not as big a cast as War and Peace which I also struggled through) and I cried at the end.

Will my experience be different second time around? I suspect the names will confuse me once again and I know the length of the novel won’t have changed. But will I cry at the end this time???

Sunday Salon: New book haul

Even though it’s my birthday today and I knew I would be unwrapping some bookish presents (well what else would you buy an avid reader??), I couldn’t resist the temptation yesterday to add to my TBR pile. When you find a title that so many people have recommended and its at the incredible bargain price of £1 (roughly equivalent to 75 US cents) it would be madness to leave it on the shelf wouldn’t it? Particularly when the proceeds are going to a good cause (heart disease research in this case) and I’m making a contribution – admittedly small – contribution to the British economy.

So I am now the owner of a very good condition copy of Rohinton Mistry‘s A Fine Balance, a novel that won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker prize in the same year.

Here’s what else I acquired.

bookhaulHaving seen the film  84 Charing Cross Road at least a dozen times, I’m hoping the book will be just as brilliant. Helene Hanff as portrayed by Anne Bancroft comes across as a wonderfully dry-witted character that would be a tremendously entertaining dinner party guest. Wonder if that comes across in the book?

Maggie O’Farrell is an author whose work I was introduced to when I friend bought me The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox which I found riveting with its interwoven narratives whose connections only slowly become apparent. The Hand that First Held Mine was just as good so I’m looking forward to reading O’Farrell’s third novel The Distance Between Us. 

There’s been a lot of media attention recently for The Reluctant Fundamentalist which has just been released as a film featuring Kiefer Sutherland and Riz Ahmed. This story of a Pakistani man whose life in the U.S. changes dramatically after the 9/11 attacks, won acclaim from several quarters and was also Was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The last book in my pile, Edward Marston’s The Railway Detective, is a wild card for me. I’ve not heard of this author before or this series but the cover just appealed to me. Maybe there was also a subliminal connection to the reading I was doing earlier this week about the connection between railways and novels for a posting as part of my history of the novel challenge. Hope it proves to be a lucky coincidence.

As for what delights lie in store as birthday gifts, I have to wait unfortunately until Mr Booker Man can drag himself out of slumberland so I can open them…

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The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery: Book Review

It would take a reader with strong willpower to get to the end of The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery without  drooling. The book really should come with one of those Government- style warnings on the front: Read only when you’re not hungry.

images-1It could be Barbery’s description of the sweet yet sharp smoky flavour of grilled sardines or her evocation of sashimi whose texture is “velvet dust, verging on silk” that gets you salivating. Perhaps however your tastes run more to:

Pan roasted breast of Peking duck rubbed with berbère; grapefruit crumble à la Jamaïque with shallot confit.

This is the world of Pierre Arthens, the greatest food critic in France. He has two days left to live, two days in which to find the answer to a question that torments him — what is the most delicious food he has ever eaten. He knows it’s a flavour from his childhood or adolescence, a time many years before  he took up his vocation. It’s a flavour that he feels represents the truth of his whole life.  He  recollects meals eaten au plein air with some farmers, lunches at his grandparent’s house, a stand up snack in the kitchen of one of the world’s leading chefs and mezze dishes in a tiny restaurant in Tangiers. While he scans his memory, those who know him give their opinions on his character.

No-one it seems likes him very much, neither his wife, his children or his mistress. Not even the cat who Arthens adores, has a good word to say for him. In their eyes he’s just a cold, arrogant and self centered man who has put his love of food above everything else in his life. By the end of the book you realise that the story isn’t about food at all; it’s about obsession and pride.

This is a portrait of a deeply flawed character. The style verges towards the florid but that’s the nature of food writing anyway and Barbery mixes it with some snatches of black humour

“How ironic! After decades of grub, deluges of wine and alcohol of every sort, after a life spent in butter, cream, rich sauces, and oil in constant, knowingly orchestrated and meticulously cajoled excess, my trustiest right-hand men, Sir Liver and his associate Stomach, are doing marvelously well and it is my heart that is giving out. I am dying of cardiac insufficiency. What a bitter pill to swallow.”

I enjoyed it for what it was but wasn’t that hooked because the character of Arthens wasn’t developed enough. We never got to understand why this man was so self centered and obnoxious, nor why his wife stuck around with him or why he was so revered. Full of promise but ultimately disappointing.

The Gourmet was Barbery’s first book before she went on to gain acclaim for The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  Maybe this book was simply an amuse bouche before the real thing.

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Classics Club Spinalong Choice

Here we go again – the second Classics Club is imminent. This is where we have to pick a list of 20 books from our Classics Club reading list, and give each a number.

Then with a spin of the virtual roulette wheel, the team at Classics Club will reveal a winning number – all we have to read is to read the matching book from our list by end of July. The rules are open to challenge – so I did think about just putting the same book in twenty times but in the end thought that would be cheating. Tempting though……..

Here’s my list. Many are from the list I did for Spinalong #1 back in March. I’ve tried to include some I’m not that keen on but think its good for my soul as it were

  1. Pamela (ugh)
  2. Canterbury Tales
  3. Wives and Daughters
  4. Dr Thorne
  5. Mansfield Park
  6. Anna Karenina
  7. Daisy Miller/Washington Square (oh no, not James please!)
  8. Things Fall Apart (please, please pick me!)
  9. Love in the Time of Cholera
  10. Half a Yellow Sun
  11. Age of Innocence
  12. L’Assommoir
  13. Grapes of Wrath (if I must)
  14. The Pursuit Of Love
  15. Mrs Dalloway
  16. Silent Spring (need a bit of non fiction)
  17. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
  18. The Infinite Plan
  19. A Parisian Affair and other stories
  20. Old Gariot
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Life and Times of the Novel: Railway Reading

In my dad’s view, a holiday only truly gets underway when he’s in the airport departure area and can Unknownspend an hour browsing in the bookshop. Buying a new novel is as much part of the holiday ritual as the pre-holiday haircut was for me when I was a mere sprog. I’m not really sure why it mattered so much to my mother that the esteemed citizens of Southsea or Bournemouth and later Majorca, should not see me with unkempt hair. But matter it did, just as it matters to my dad that he has a good book to read on the flight. It’s one of the characteristics he’s definitely passed down the generations since I too very rarely leave UK without at least one purchase before boarding.

Wind the clock back a century or more and the linkage between travel and reading seems to have been as strong then as it is for my dad today. Except of course that your average Victorian traveller was buying their reading matter at the railway station not the yet-to-be-invented airport. The story of how the age of the railways transformed many aspects of our lives — from timekeeping to mail delivery and the advent of fresher food — is well documented. But it seems the railways were also responsible for changing reading habits.

The first passenger service in the UK opened in 1825 between Stockton and Darlington. Five years later the first inter-city rail line opened to connect Liverpool and Manchester. From then, progress was rapid. By 1850, Victorian engineers had constructed more than 7,000 miles of track, making it possible to get to almost every sizeable town by train.

National newspaper industry is born

For newspaper and magazine publishers, it meant access to a rapid way of getting up to date information to readers well beyond the capital city. Before railways,  it would have taken about 30 hours to get a newspaper printed in London to readers in Hull; by 1845 it took just eight hours. It meant newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals could be printed in London and then whisked to Hull or any other major city on the same day so the information would still be news when it arrived.  As a result, a truly national newspaper industry was born in the UK as indeed in many other European countries.  It didn’t happen the same way in North America though — with the exception of USA Today, American readers have held very much to the tradition of regional newspapers.

Novels and the trains 

Railways offered a fast, efficient, and inexpensive way to enjoy time off which meant families could enjoy days at the seaside or visit relatives more easily than before. As the novelty wore off a little and they got tired of looking out of the window at passing scenery, these travellers sought other diversions. Newspaper publishers were quick to seize on the opportunity of such a captive market, opening newstands at major railway stations. The firm of W H Smith, which had been sending newspapers to the provinces by mail coach, was one of the earliest to grab a slice of the market, opening their first railway newstand at London’s Euston station in 1848.  

Reading in comfort on the train required ingenuity

But newspapers weren’t enough for these fickle readers. Newspapers didn’t fit easily into the pocket and were hard to open in a crowded carriage.  What they wanted was portable reading. The paperback novel was the the ideal solution for crowded rail carriages, just as it is today though we also have e-readers and smartphones to help while away a journey.

If a novel printed in paperback format was the perfect travelling companion, where could be easier to buy one than on the platform just before you boarded the train?  The smart brains at W. H Smith latched onto the idea by extending their newspaper business to include books, and opening more and more outlets. The era of the railway bookstore was born. W H Smith may have gone through many incarnations since but they’re still at every major railway station and airport in the UK.

The age of the yellowback

yellowbacks_spPublishers too saw they were onto a good thing and began rushing out cheap editions of popular works of fiction specifically for sale to entertainment-seeking travellers that they could pick up for a shilling or two, and even less, at  the W H Smith railway bookstalls.  Some publishers brought out special series with titles that made their target market very clear ,  ‘Longman’s Traveller’s Library’. Others capitalised on the increasing desire for sensational reading material with titles like Zingra, the Gypsy but it was an engraver by the name of Edmund Evans who was responsible for a publishing phenomena uniquely associated with the railways – the yellow paperback .  Evans combined sensationalised  illustrations with a lurid yellow glaze that meant the covers were instantly recognisable at the bookstall. Thousands of what became known as yellowbacks, were published from about 1850 featuring detective stories and authors like Wilkie Collins, Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. The publisher Routledge alone produced more than 1,200 titles in a ‘Railway Library’ series.

You can buy some of these titles as original copies today though they’ll cost you rather more than the cover price of a shilling. Abe Books has a few available though the cheapest seems to be  around £55 and some titles are upwards of £300.

Maybe I’ll tell my dad he should hold onto that John Grisham book he just bought. It might just be worth something a few hundred years from now……

 

About this article

This is the fifth in a series of articles on the history, characteristics and the changing attitudes to the  novel during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. It’s in support of a resolution I started in 2013 to understand more about this particular form of literature. All posts on this topic are indexed here

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Sunday Salon: Life Changing Books

sundaysalonCan reading a book change your life? It’s a phrase that seems to get trotted out by marketing departments fairly frequently, especially when they’re trying to flog the latest self help manual that promises everything from marital bliss to millionaire status. But I also noticed that Goodreads has a list of books that readers have classed as ‘life changing’ – some you might expect like Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird though there are an astonishing number who claim Harry Potter has a transformative effect.

A recent posting on Book Riot along the same lines got me thinking whether, out of the hundreds if not thousands of books I’ve read in my lifetime, have there been any which have made such a huge impact on my life that they could be said to have changed it? After digging deep in the dusty attic of my brain, I realised that there is indeed one that had a marked effect on my life, though it’s a play rather than a novel: Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. 

Merchant

Title page of the first quarto of Merchant of Venice (1600)

Our first set text for English that year was The Merchant of Venice.  It was our first experience of Shakespeare. For some stupid reason the education ‘experts’ had ruled that Shakespeare would not be introduced earlier in our school system so we were fed instead on the deadly dull School for Scandal and The Rivals, both by Sheridan.

Reading the Merchant in advance of our first class must have been the proverbial light bulb moment for me. Because when the class began, I found myself quoting from it, not just the odd line or two but whole speeches. Without ever having intended to, I had memorised large chunks of the main speeches much to the astonishment not just of my classmates but the teacher. Fourty years later and I still remember a good portion of that speech by Shylock where he accuses Antonio of dual standards:

You call me misbeliever, cut throat, dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help.

From that day, I couldn’t get enough of literature, consuming book after book from my local library (though many times without fully understanding what I was reading) and desperately keen to continue studying it through school and university. Even today I can’t get enough of it, taking an extra degree with the  Open University. Maybe it’s too much to claim that  The Merchant, completely changed the course of my life but I like to think it did make a significant difference to the quality of my life. So I will raise a toast to the Bard of Stratford and say a heartfelt thanks.

Are there any books that have made a difference to your life? I’d love to hear your story……

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An Accidental Life: Review

She’s the golden girl of the New Orleans legal circle. He’s senior assistant district attorney for one of the Louisiana districts and is being tipped as a contender for the top office at the next election.  Babies are not part of their game plan – they’d just interfere with their march to the top of the career ladder. But then within days of achieving a lifetime ambition to make partnership status, Rebecca Jacobs discovers she’s pregnant. And then a case emerges which could prove to be a career defining moment for her husband.

It’s a sensitive and emotional case involving a doctor who is accused of letting a child born as a result of an abortion, to die when it could have lived. Both situations force Rebecca and Peter to confront questions about faith and ethics and to re-assess their ideas about their personal priorities.

This in essence is the plot of An Accidental Life, due for publication in September. It’s a plot that has good dramatic potential and in the hands of an accomplished writer would make a thought provoking, challenging novel. Unfortunately this isn’t how it turned out.

The characters of Peter and Rebecca seldom rise beyond the predictable and the cliched and the story takes too long to get going because it’s bogged down in irrelevant detail, Had this not been a review copy, I would  have given up at a fairly early stage. Things only perked up when we got into the meat of the murder investigation and particularly the court room scenes which were written with good pace and skill. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the author Pamela Ewen was a practising lawyer for some twenty five years because the arguments for both prosecution and defence have clearly been well researched. It’s not easy to make detailed and complex legal arguments easy for laypeople to follow and keep a strong narrative thrust at the same time but Ewen succeeded well on both counts.

Maybe with a really strong editor, the flaws in the rest of the narrative could be remedied. But as it stands, this wasn’t my cup of tea at all.

About the novel

Publishers: B&H Publishing Group, Nashville Tennessee

Due for publication September 2013

My copy of this novel was provided as a review edition via NetGalley

 

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Sunday Salon: Review dilemma

sundaysalonSavidge Reads triggered a discussion this week on the art of reviewing. The question posed was whether reviews have become more ‘samey’ because bloggers feel compelled when they receive a book for review, to make their comments ‘fair and nice’ rather than reflecting an honest opinion.

The question couldn’t have been more timely because it’s one I’ve been wrestling with over the last few days.

During the past week I’ve been reading an advance copy of a novel supplied to me via NetGalley. The beginning was so bad I would have abandoned it had I got it from the library or borrowed it from a friend. But the fact it was a review copy somehow made me feel obliged to plough on. And it did get better eventually – not great – not even good, just better. It’s still a deeply flawed novel. So now the dilemma I face is how to provide feedback.

Do I let the publishers know about the basic factual errors such as having your main character  wear a silk dress where five paragraphs earlier she was wearing velvet?  Or referring to a waiter as male in one sentence, and female in the next (maybe the quickest sex change in history)? Or should I just let these pass in the belief the publishers will spot these kinds of errors in final proofing stage and really wouldn’t appreciate hearing from some clever clogs pointing out the obvious to them. I would hate to be one of those people who delight in contacting television or film drama producers with lists of factual and historical inaccuracies.

The bigger dilemma however is striking the right balance between criticising the fundamental problems of narration and characterisation and yet not demoralising the author who has put heart and soul into this creation? Easy for me to be critical maybe when all I’ve written is a few short stories (none of which I have ever had the courage to subject to public scrutiny). If I fudge the issue however and just focus on the positives, then the review is not going to be a true reflection of my opinion of the novel.

I could play chicken and simply not write a review or submit any feedback. I know the terms of NetGalley mean there is absolutely no requirement on me to write anything at all but I wouldn’t be comfortable with that – I somehow feel my comments are a fair exchange for the proof copy. So I need to write something – but just what, I don’t yet know.

How do you deal with these situations? Any tips and advice would be very welcome…

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Dancing with Jane Austen

Still from the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice

Still from the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice

If you’ve ever watched the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, you’ll easily recall the key scene of the ball at Netherfield Hall.  The balls in Austen’s novels are important devices by which she reveals aspects of the main characters and how they interact with each other. But they also give us insight into the society in which the stories are set and some of the prevailing conventions. So in the Netherfield ball for example, the clumsy Mr Collins not only manages to make a hash of dancing by turning the wrong way and stepping on his partner’s toes, he commits the ultimate faux pas of engaging with Mr Darcy without the benefit of a formal introduction. One of the younger Bennett sisters is chastised for hogging the piano so that other females don’t get their own chance to ‘exhibit’ their piano playing and singing skills.

A new BBC program to be broadcast this week takes a look at some of those conventions and how such events would have been experienced by families like the Bennetts. The program Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball, was designed as an experiment in which the BBC set out to re-create a full scale Regency style ball as part of the bicentenial celebrations marking the publication of Pride and Prejudice. One of the questions the producers were interested in discovering was whether ‘every savage can dance’ as Mr Darcy maintained.
According to one of the participants, the answer to the latter is a resounding No!
The Miss Bennetts and Miss Caroline Bingley might have made them look easy, something they could do without even the slightest hint of a rosy cheek by the end, but the truth apparently was that they were devilishly difficult and strenuous. Even though many of the cast in the new BBC program were dance students and well used to strenuous routines, after 15minutes (the length each set piece lasted typically)  they were perspiring freely.
Broadcaster and journalist Alastair Sooke who took part in the program commented on his experience:
Regency dancing involved lots of skipping and prancing – I spent most of my time on the front parts of my feet, so that afterwards my calf muscles were clenched like cricket balls. It was also very boisterous. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I ever really got the hang of some of the steps, one of which was a kind of quick rhythmic flutter of each foot followed by a pert hop. It was so physically demanding everyone was glistening by the end.
In addition to recreating the dances, the BBC tried to visualise every aspect of the grand occasion – from the 300 plus candles with which the rooms would have been lit, to preparing a  63-dish banquet with the help of an expert on Regency style food.
Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball will be shown on BBC2 on Friday, May 10 at 9pm for those of you lucky enough to live in Europe.  I know I’m going to be glued to the screen for this one.
If you’re interested in the significance of the ball in Austen’s novels, you might want to take a look at The Guardian which has an interesting article on the subject written by John Mullan, author of What Matters in Jane Austen: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved or this article by the Jane Austen society on how women prepared for these events.