Too Late

I've never listened to a One Direction song, I wouldn't recognise them if I saw them in the street, I think I read that they have actually broken up quite recently -  and yet I have just become a fan:

Battered Penguins - The Vivisector by Patrick White

For a few weeks recently, as bedtime approached each night, a sense of dread would begin to creep over me. This was because I knew The Vivisector was there, crouched on the bedside table, waiting for me. Unwisely, I had promised myself I must read at least 10 pages of it every evening before going to sleep.

I discovered halfway through the book - too late - that I had chosen Patrick White's very longest novel as the one to read in order to be able to say I'd read something by him, (which actually I could already say, as I'd been forced to drag my eye over page after page of The Tree of Man in school - but, as so often, in response to trauma, my mind had blanked the whole unpleasant episode, other than the bare fact of it).

The Vivisector  tells the story of Hertel Duffield, a painter, recognised as astonishingly gifted by his poverty stricken parents and sold, essentially, at about six years old to a family better able to provide for him. The book covers his entire life and his various relationships, including one that would now be viewed as disgracefully paedophilic, with females. The one that lasts longest is the platonic one that exists between him and his hunchbacked adoptive sister, Rhoda.

White, it seems to me, owes a great deal to William Faulkner. The book has the same mysterious approach to structure, stretches of time being described in intense detail and then decades being leapt over, with the narration switching from authorial voice to second person stream of consciousness in a way that works brilliantly well. A vivid sense of the strangeness of being alive is conveyed, as well as a feeling of experiencing time as it flashes past Hertel in a succession of intensely felt moments.

Appropriately, the book is at its best with the visual, creating vivid flashes like snapshots in the reader's mind. For instance, I felt I was standing in a room full of Gainsboroughs when I read that from paintings in "stately London art galleries ... lords and ladies directed blue stares out of billowing shrubberies, or proudly reined in their horses before a perspective of park." Similarly, I recognised a London afternoon in the phrase, "it was one of the greyest days, pierced by black monuments". Back home in Sydney, a whole scene is conjured up, as White explains how one "evening at dusk a wind from the south threatened the suffocating warmth from the fire ... blowing ... the cigar smoke ahead of it and, as the long wads of ink-blotted cloud passed overhead, unravelled, then matted thicker than ever, the garden, though stationary was slowly being poured into fresh, coldly boiling forms. It was not yet raining, but the wind in the leaves made them look a liquid black."

White is also extremely observant about people and comes up with rather wonderful phrases. He describes one woman as " a sort of forgettable person. Even living in the same house she mightn't have been there. Like junket". He tells the reader of a foreign couple's conversation: "From time to time the words either of them used in the foreign language came out tentatively, as though they suspected they might be borrowing something which didn't suit their personal vocabulary", a situation I recognise, as will anyone who has to speak a foreign language regularly.I also recognised the sensation he describes when Hertel feels "the sweet gust of gin explore his skull".

Sadly, when it comes to women, White rather lets himself down though. He tends to be bitter and dismissive about them, and his descriptions of breasts, (some are extinct volcanoes, others rotting persimmons), can only remind the reader that he was homosexual. His dialogue is also terrible, especially as he insists on indicating class by making his poor characters say, "yer" and "somethun" and so forth. There are times when the book reads more like a script for Kath and Kim  than the work of a Nobel Prizewinner for Literature.

The central premise of the book seems to be that artists cannot love, because they are always thinking about painting. Hertel ponders how to paint a fried egg, when he should be paying attention to others' emotions. Even when he is almost dying, his major interest is the indigo shade of the sky, (was this scene supposed to be a mirror of the one where Andrei Bolkonsky dies in War and Peace, or is it just coincidence? Probably the latter).

Perhaps visual artists are constantly framing what they see into works of art, rather than getting on with living. I don't know. Perhaps they do, as White puts it, "thrust against the virgin board" on which they are painting, (can't imagine what he is trying to imply at all). Certainly, I am thankful that White never became a painter himself; his imaginings are quite enough, thanks. Take this description of something by Hertel, in which "all the women he had ever loved were joined by umbilical cords to the navel of the same enormous child. One cord, which had withered apart, shuddered like lightning where the break occurred; yet it was the broken cord which seemed to be charging the great tumorous, sprawling child with infernal or miraculous life" - or, worse still, take the canvas in an earlier episode, which Hertel decides to complete by rubbing it thoroughly with his own excrement.

And here we come to the central reason for my nightly dread. Whatever else the book is, it is reliably and repetitively squalid. Hertel spends an awful lot of time straining in the vine-clad dunny at the end of the garden or back in the house thinking about how constipated he is, (partly because he has a habit, when busy, of subsisting almost entirely on hardboiled eggs.) White justifies this by saying of the constipated Hertel that "a smooth velvety stool might have been the great rectifier", adding, probably truthfully, (but so what?), "much more depended on the bowels than the intellect was prepared to admit." He can never resist mentioning that there are "shit smells" in the offing or bringing in references to such things as "slivers of dog shit". At one point, he has Hertel contemplating public masturbation, for no reason I can really see, other than out of an irrepressible desire to epater la bourgeoisie, (and, judging by White's treatment of females, this ambition is aimed almost exclusively at the female of the species).

All the same - even though the book was never an enticing or appetising prospect, (and not exactly replete with laughs - I counted four instances that could, if you were extremely generous, be described as attempts at jokes), I cannot deny that it is full of a strange, glitteringly intelligent - if very unloving - vigour. I also retain from it a few marvellous phrases that I think will come in useful. For instance, one unctuous figure is described as "visibly streaming with flattery" - I've met people like that, and I will be better protected against them henceforth, with that set of words kept firmly in my mind. Additionally, I picked up the odd intriguing aphorism, such as the statement that "pity is half-hearted love". I don't know if it is true, but I look forward to thinking about it.

In conclusion, while there is a great deal in the book's content that I will be hoping to forget forever, I would, with reservations, recommend it overall. It is an astonishing, original, if very peculiar, novel. Having said that, I must also point out that I'm very relieved it is no longer in my bedroom. Furthermore, I doubt I will be rushing to take it back down from its current position, safely upstairs, on a very high shelf.

What a Hottie

More from my new favourite book, Guardian Notes & Queries, 1992:

Question: An advertisement for a new kind of gel-filled hot 'water' bottle states: "According to figures published by the DTI for 1987, over 80 per cent of reported accidents involving hot water bottles were scalds or burns caused by boiling water." What were the other 20 per cent?

Answer: "My paternal grandmother died on 6 August 1970, as a result of injuries sustained when a hot water bottle (full) fell 15 floors from a tower block in Hulme, Manchester, hitting her directly on the head. She was from Sverdlovsk, USSR" (Mr) Beart Sry, Caton, Lancs

What I want to know is whether Mr Sry's story was true or actually some kind of dead drop (geddit?) message from a Soviet spy.

Learnings

In a quest to catch up with my learning-something-every-day schedule, in which I have fallen pitifully behind over many, many decades, I have been reading a 1992 edition of the collected questions submitted to the newspaper by Guardian readers, together with the answers other readers supplied (a kind of pre-Internet Wikipedia system seems to have been operating via the column, which was called Notes & Queries; possibly it still exists).

One thing I've learnt is that there is an alternative to Esperanto. It is called Volapuk and is, apparently absurdly difficult grammatically. Its inventor, one Monsignor Schleyer, "had no grasp of the practicalities of creating a language" but had a "proprietorial attitude" to Volapuk and would not countenance change. "The first Congress of Volapukists was also the last. The participants found that they could not speak the language and that when they attempted to do so nobody understood them."

I've never understood why there is any need to create an international language. Italian is incredibly easy - if we want an international language, I'd vote for it. In fact, it appears that bad English is actually going to be the global lingua franca for the foreseeable future, which is a pity.

Unlike Wikipedia contributors, responders to Guardian questions were allowed to be facetious, which makes the volume enjoyable. Thus in response to the question, "Do wasps serve any useful purpose", one reader wrote: "Wasps are agents from outer space appointed to keep an eye on the progress of human beings. They soon discovered that human beings didn't serve any useful purpose on the planet so they turned their attention to rotting plums and open-air cream teas and have been having a whale of a time ever since", and, in response to the question, "Would it be better for the environment if I were buried or cremated when I die?", one person replied, "Undoubtedly, yes."

Most usefully of all, in answer to the question, "How long is a piece of string?", something I've always wanted to know the answer to, one reader quotes the Arabian Nights, which supplies this answer: "From end to end". The character who used that answer had to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for it, which doesn't seem like a good deal at all to me.

I haven't got far into the book. If there are any hidden gems further along, I won't hesitate to share them here.

Moral Confusion

Most of my friends are convinced that the people moving across Europe's borders in unprecedented numbers should be welcomed and taken care of by our various governments.  As a female, having spent a bit of time among some of them at Keleti Railway Station recently, I was a bit disturbed by what might at best be described as the "unenlightened" behaviour I observed among the males seeking asylum rather aggressively there.

Of course, as a Christian I know I should go with the whole "bring me your poor huddled masses" vibe (not that that is from the Bible; it's a poem by Emma Lazarus). The problem is that, as a pragmatist, I wonder whether, if all the poor huddled masses do come over here, we won't just end up recreating the conditions they have run away from in their own country.

In response to that concern, some people I've met have wanted to know what is so worth preserving about our own society, where American presidents can't be elected without amounts equivalent to the debts of various smaller countries being spent to win them votes and where big corporations buy influence and the young get so drunk they are sick in the streets of country towns on Saturday nights.

These are all flaws, I agree, but, as well as establishing well-run nations, with good health systems, roads et cetera (which some argue is something we've only managed as a result of our exploitation of other less advantaged countries - this whole field of argument is one that involves so many 'what-ifs' that I don't think either side can ever definitively prove that it is right), our culture has also produced wonderful things that are worth preserving. Yet these achievements of ours, in the last few decades, seem to have been increasingly ignored - or even denigrated. The argument that has been put to me often is that we should stop being so stuffy and embrace other cultures, opening ourselves to the vibrancy brought to us by foreigners.

I wonder whether the fact that a lot of our greatest cultural achievements are either associated with Christianity or the upper classes - both of which since, I suppose, the 1960s have been portrayed as pretty much entirely bad - has anything to do with their current undervaluation. European cathedrals, the Ghent altarpiece and the Book of Common Prayer are all marvellous but they were only created because of one or other branch of the Christian church. Mozart operas, Holbein paintings, the stately homes of England are equally reprehensible, having all been funded by Royalty or aristocracy. Literature gets away a little less scathed (if it is possible to use such a word), but even it is a bourgeois preoccupation generally, as is that other immensely important, rapidly disappearing element of Western civilisation: good manners.

I should point out that I do understand that embracing other cultures doesn't necessarily mean one's own culture needs to be extinguished. My recent impression though is that, in our eagerness to show a willingness to take in migrants, we do seem inclined to politely allow behaviours that offend our own principles, thus eroding our own way of life. The widespread acceptance of Halal butchery -for example, as far as I can tell all meat exported from Australia is now Halal, presumably because the main market for it is the Middle East - and the apparent acceptance that in predominantly Muslim areas of European cities it is virtually impossible to buy an alcoholic drink - go into any of the food shops within a half mile radius of Munich station and see if you can find a bottle of wine for sale if you don't believe me - may be seen as very minor things, but neither of them improve our society, in my opinion

To confuse matters further, in the midst of my muddled groping about for an intelligent and humane point of view about the migrant crisis, I took the Eurostar from Brussels to Britain last week. It was one of the ones that stops not just at Lille but also at Calais. Everyone in the carriage peered out, slightly furtively, at all the new enclosures and at the soldiers on the platform with alarming looking weaponry. It felt uncomfortably as if we were part of the elite moving through the countryside on the train in the film of The Hunger Games. That terrible question, posed by David Mitchell, formed itself in my head: "What if we are the baddies?":

Maybe we are. Maybe it is unfair to turn anyone back - if they've made the journey, they must be desperate, and if they are desperate, who are we to say that they shouldn't come in? As someone born with the privilege of both an EU passport and an Australian one, I am more aware than most of the extreme good fortune handed out to me by the accident of birth. The people all that barbed wire topped reinforced fencing at Calais is designed to keep out drew the short straw in the lottery of life, so who can blame them for wanting to make up for their initial disadvantage? Is it right to deny them what we have chanced to have been born into? Should we all commit ourselves to living equally, even if it means we all live miserably, or should those of us who unarguably live a more comfortable way of life than those in some other countries fight to protect that privilege? It's tricky, isn't it? Or is it just me?

Learning Something Every Day

I am greatly in favour of the doctrine that says we should each learn something every day. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I manage to put it into practice, particularly as, even when I do learn something, I'm awfully inclined to forget it. I feel like the woman in a New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago who is shown removing the files marked Renaissance Painting and History of the Civil War from inside her head, so enough room  can be made for files marked Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston: Will They Get Back Together and 6-Week Diets for a Bikini Body.

In fact, the main reason I keep (rather haphazardly, I admit) a blog is to try to keep a vague hold on what I've been doing and reading and seeing and thinking.

And what I've been doing lately includes going to Ypres yesterday.

And while I was there I learnt a new thing. Which is why I'm on here now, writing it down quickly before I forget it.

The thing I learnt yesterday,  I did not actually learn in Ypres, if we're going to go for absolute accuracy. I learnt it in Zonnebeke at the Passchendaele Museum, which I have been to before and which I never find it possible to get through without weeping a bit - quietly, discreetly, of course, no howling, but still it's embarrassing, On the other hand, I defy anyone to contemplate the awful losses that occurred in that part of the world and not get upset.

Anyway, the thing I learnt was something everyone else may know already, but I didn't - it was that military tanks are called 'tanks' because when they were first being developed people didn't want outsiders to know that they were developing a military transport device and so they pretended they were tanks, as in tanks for water.

Well, I thought it was quite interesting. Sorry, if you don't agree. Perhaps I can placate you by suggesting you look at the photographs I took in Zonnebeke and in Ypres, which you can see if you look me up on Instagram under my user name of zedmkc

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge

I like the way that when you are living in a foreign country your book buying becomes directed by what you find in second hand bookshops, rather than by what happen to be the momentary darlings of a marketing department somewhere.

My latest discovery in my local second hand place is The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge, which I bought in a pristine hardback edition, complete with dustcover, for 1 (One O-N-E, just a single one) Euro.

The book, which tells the story of Captain Scott's last expedition, via the voices of the men, (including Scott himself), who went on the expedition with him, (each one taking up the story around the time of his own birthday, hence the title), is a masterpiece. I am awed by how successfully Bainbridge conjures up the five very different personalities in the ill-fated final team. Each of them is created as a fine-tuned tangle of their upbringing and indoctrination and their own private obsessions and defects. Their faults are clear, but they are still extremely sympathetic. She portrays their humanity, and also somehow - did she spend any time in polar regions? - conveys astonishingly vividly the strange icy world they are determined to pit themselves against. The book is, of course, immensely sad, but Bainbridge captures the futile beauty of the men's doomed quest, so that what one experiences is poignance rather than complete pointlessness.

I wish the author were still alive so that I could write her a fan letter. I suppose this post must stand in lieu. I've always enjoyed her books, but, until now, I thought she was mainly an autobiographical writer. This book shows her to have had magnificent imaginative powers and human understanding. It is hugely good.

(Incidentally, if you want to get an idea of the woefully inadequate nature of the equipment the expedition was using, I seem to remember that some of the belongings of one of the team can be seen at the Cheltenham Museum - there were kitchen things, plus I think I recall some kind of dreadful sealskin garment that became impossibly heavy when wet or icy. Sadly I cannot find the Cheltenham Museum online. I hope it hasn't been closed due to budget cuts. It is some years since I was there.)