tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10037290651553203432024-03-13T14:09:27.905+00:00The Literary Critical Detective:A blog of character written entirely in character.Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-3258813973156213652012-07-25T11:15:00.000+01:002012-07-25T11:15:46.083+01:00Dreaming of Reading Projects<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I have never been afraid of
long novels or large-scale reading projects.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have read Samuel Richardson’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clarissa</i>. I have read all of Marcel
Proust’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Search of Lost Time</i>,
albeit in translation. I have read the three volumes of Alan Walker’s immense biography
of Liszt.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
And, of course, I have read
long nineteenth-century novels such as George Eliot’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i>, Charles Dickens’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bleak
House</i>, and Leo Tolstoy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anna
Karenina</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
The pleasure of starting a
large reading project is not one of intellectual or cultural snobbery. There is
no intrinsic correlation between the number of pages a book has and its
quality. Nevertheless, there is a joy there.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have been dreaming recently
of other reading projects. One common idea is to set out to read all the works
of one author in the order they were published. You could, for instance, plan
to read all of Agatha Christie’s 'Poirot' novels in sequence. I suspect, though,
that repetition might doom this particular quest for many.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
In the last week I have read
two stories by Honoré de Balzac: ‘Sarrasine’ and ‘A Passion in the Desert’.
I am now half way through the novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eugénie
Grandet</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
This last forms part of the
author’s great sequence, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Comédie humaine </i>or
<i>The Human Comedy</i>. This run of connected narratives amounts
to ninety or so texts in total.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Such a fact suggests a
stunningly immense project: to read all of the novels that form <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Comédie humaine</i>. This project would be
the work of a lifetime (just as it took Balzac his lifetime to write the
books). I suspect it would also be largely impossible. It would certainly be
extremely difficult to find English translations of all the novels.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I won’t be starting this
reading project. Nevertheless, the very idea of it appeals.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Perhaps I will re-start
the Poirot books after all.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-39168108702850176632012-07-23T12:14:00.000+01:002012-07-23T12:14:38.540+01:00Around The World in Eighty Days: A review that is somewhat late.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--hW-YOyhWto/Tq533fv9yNI/AAAAAAAAAEU/5uHoU6M1QZ8/s1600/Globe+b%252Bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--hW-YOyhWto/Tq533fv9yNI/AAAAAAAAAEU/5uHoU6M1QZ8/s320/Globe+b%252Bw.jpg" width="320" /></a>Whilst it is only a
coincidence that I read Jules Verne’s novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Around
the World in Eighty Days</i> (1873) whilst myself travelling, it is a useful
one and has shed some light on the text for me. Allow me to share my thoughts.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I read the first one hundred
pages of the novel here, amongst the supposed peace of my study; I read the
rest in the real peace of the countryside, the River Wharfe
rushing nearby.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I would not have had to pack
this book if I had got down to the text quicker. I left on my real-world travels
at the appointed hour but had for several days previously been putting off going
on Verne’s literary journey.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If it’s true that I read the opening
of the novel relatively slowly then it’s also true that I picked up the pace towards
the end. This is not insignificant. My own reading speed – created in part, I
think, by the pacing and structure of the text itself – mimicked that of its central
protagonist, Mr Phileas Fogg. The second half of our hero’s voyage is a lot
quicker than the first. For me, then, form and the reading experience mirrored
content.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In actual fact I often found
myself doing precisely what Fogg himself <i>never </i>does – lifting my eyes from the
page and staring out of the window at the world around me. The characters are
placed in jeopardy on nearly every page and episode flashes by after episode with the merest turn of the page. Eventually you run out of reading energy.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I would like to argue that what
this text requires of you as a reader is a kind of sustained inattention.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
The politics of representation
in this book are complex. The episodes set in India, China, Japan and America
are all problematic in their own ways. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
In the end, this is an exciting,
funny, absurd and troubling book. I found myself laughing out loud at that
moment when the narrator compares Hong Kong to a Kentish town. It is also a
little frustrating when Verne chooses to info dump – we are often told how
heavy a ship is, for instance.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
There is, though, fun to be had here.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-88904705068487067442012-07-11T13:17:00.000+01:002012-07-11T13:17:04.790+01:00Summer Reading in the Winter Garden<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Two years ago, during the hot and
stormy summer, I began to read that equally stormy and tempestuous novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Idiot</i> by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
This work, like all Dostoyevsky’s
work, is visionary and hysterical. It exists in a sweltering, sweating heat of
paranoia and obsession.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I took to reading this novel
in the Winter Gardens in Sheffield which, despite its name, is actually a kind
of hothouse full of tropical flora. Here, amongst the ferns and trees, I read
about Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6vJCCcQMJ_c/T_1rhdkC-2I/AAAAAAAAAGo/3ua7-UK1bwI/s1600/Winter+Garden+1+%5Bview+upwards+1%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6vJCCcQMJ_c/T_1rhdkC-2I/AAAAAAAAAGo/3ua7-UK1bwI/s200/Winter+Garden+1+%5Bview+upwards+1%5D.jpg" width="160" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9gcxLrEtDJc/T_1rpZfMeiI/AAAAAAAAAGw/57cnI-EUlsU/s1600/Winter+Garden+2+%5Bview+upwards+2%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9gcxLrEtDJc/T_1rpZfMeiI/AAAAAAAAAGw/57cnI-EUlsU/s200/Winter+Garden+2+%5Bview+upwards+2%5D.jpg" width="143" /></a>I had previously read the
author’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letters from the Underworld</i>
in an old paperback edition that I had bought at a local jumble sale for 10
pence. Come to think of it, I bought my copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Idiot </i>from a boot fair.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Yesterday, in this high English
summer which is really a kind of perpetual autumn, an endless October of rain, I
returned to the Winter Gardens to read some of the letters Franz Liszt wrote during his first residence
in Weimar (at which point, Dostoyevsky was in prison doing hard labour).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I sat there and read under
towering ferns, the great beams of the roof looking like they had been transplanted
into reality from China Miéville’s fictional city of New Crobuzon.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c8f9_Be7Jac/T_1r9DkXnWI/AAAAAAAAAG4/Mr3TgYZAwgE/s1600/Winter+Garden+3+%255Bview+upwards+3%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c8f9_Be7Jac/T_1r9DkXnWI/AAAAAAAAAG4/Mr3TgYZAwgE/s200/Winter+Garden+3+%255Bview+upwards+3%255D.jpg" width="160" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4kWxfNljMd4/T_1sSUnltdI/AAAAAAAAAHM/FwzXhS5jjaE/s1600/Winter+Garden+4+%5Blong+view%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4kWxfNljMd4/T_1sSUnltdI/AAAAAAAAAHM/FwzXhS5jjaE/s200/Winter+Garden+4+%5Blong+view%5D.jpg" width="150" /></a> </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
What a space in which to read.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Although I like to do my
summer reading in the Winter Gardens, I like to do my winter reading in the snug
warmth of a parlour, in front of a fire, dreaming of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wuthering Heights</i> and Poirot’s broken central heating.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3CVdWmAEa2s/T_1sDk8j72I/AAAAAAAAAHA/zWA5bgLpk2g/s1600/Winter+Garden+5+%255Bflower+in+colour%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3CVdWmAEa2s/T_1sDk8j72I/AAAAAAAAAHA/zWA5bgLpk2g/s200/Winter+Garden+5+%255Bflower+in+colour%255D.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-27554586342141021012012-06-30T23:50:00.000+01:002012-06-30T23:50:58.817+01:00Into the Undercroft.<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today I visited what remains
of a Twelfth-century Cistercian monastery somewhere near the edge of Sherwood Forest.
In the dim light under growing storm clouds – the like of which had affected my
reading of Kierkegaard only two days ago – I stepped down through a medieval
arched doorway into the undercroft.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nhjCYA7hQzA/T--AJt9J7MI/AAAAAAAAAF8/8QjmhDTgiN8/s1600/Undercroft+Long+View.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nhjCYA7hQzA/T--AJt9J7MI/AAAAAAAAAF8/8QjmhDTgiN8/s200/Undercroft+Long+View.jpg" width="178" /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IwOyQCckku8/T--AXDVXaSI/AAAAAAAAAGE/pjv6pNwH_1k/s1600/Undercroft+Long+View+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IwOyQCckku8/T--AXDVXaSI/AAAAAAAAAGE/pjv6pNwH_1k/s200/Undercroft+Long+View+2.jpg" width="165" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Here, in the cool air protected
by the cold stone, History still felt like History and not a commodity, despite
the attempts to treat it as such.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But of course, my experience
of this space, as a Literary Critical Detective, was not just historical; it
was also informed by the literary and the theological, if not actually the
wholly spiritual.</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U4F6nOixDE0/T--A0JLsHRI/AAAAAAAAAGU/Z5PiqhJV0E4/s1600/Undercroft+Arches+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U4F6nOixDE0/T--A0JLsHRI/AAAAAAAAAGU/Z5PiqhJV0E4/s200/Undercroft+Arches+2.jpg" width="150" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-16l4rtCMyA0/T--Am1oK8nI/AAAAAAAAAGM/41Pi6sk5oT8/s1600/Undercroft+Arches+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-16l4rtCMyA0/T--Am1oK8nI/AAAAAAAAAGM/41Pi6sk5oT8/s200/Undercroft+Arches+1.jpg" width="142" /></a></div>
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<br />
There was a moment when I could
almost imagine myself to be in those medieval spaces so beloved of gothic
romance. If I squinted a little, and allowed my imagination to run away with
itself, I could almost (but not quite) believe that this was what Udolpho
looked like. A moment later I thought such a place could inspire a Poe-like
tale.</div>
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<br />
<br />
I saw no casks of sherry
during my visit.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-77865170619596304612012-06-29T18:24:00.001+01:002012-06-29T18:24:16.695+01:00Not Reviewing Kierkegaard…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have just finished reading
Søren Kierkegaard’s 1849 work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Sickness Unto Death</i>. I read this text in the English translation by
Alastair Hannay.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sickness Unto Death</i> is a short, strange and sombre work. I will
not attempt to offer a review of it here. This is a text that needs to be
thought about carefully and with a certain amount of rigour and quiet reflection.
If I were to comment on it now, having only just put the book back on the
shelf, my comments could only ever be flippant, off the cuff and
ill-considered. And it is precisely flippancy and ill-consideration that
Kierkegaard is so concerned with in this work, and is so quick to warn us
against.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
So, to review the work now
would be to have not heeded the lessons of the work itself.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Instead, I shall review my
reading of the work. In doing so I will really only be reviewing myself as a
reviewer, my reading practice and the structure of my reading life.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I started to read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sickness Unto Death </i>on Wednesday
afternoon at precisely the moment when, after several hours of dank and
depressing drizzle, the sun burst through the clouds. I could not help smiling.
Here was a book whose very title seemed to be suggestive of doom and gloom; and
yet here I was picking the most cheerful moment of the week to begin studying it.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
However, things changed yesterday
morning. The inclement weather set in. The rain struck down hard and fast, pummelling
our roof and the courtyard below as though it were trying to flatten out some perceived
imperfection in their forms. Then the lightening began, followed by claps of
thunder that sounded like thousands of full whiskey barrels being rolled down a
hill.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I could not help but think of that
most ‘literary’ of thunder claps, the one that sounded out across Dublin on
Thursday 16<sup>th</sup> June 1904 and which James Joyce caused to sound again in his
depiction of that day in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ulysses</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I continued to read
Kierkegaard, inwardly pleased at this pathetic fallacy.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Today, my reading of the final
stages of the book was again accompanied by muted sunshine.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
And what of my impressions? This
is a book upon which you must concentrate as a reader. Of course, the setting
in which we read a text is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">always</i> important. When I return to this text in the future I will ensure that I read
it in the quiet, away from the sound of thunder... </div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-34349237094276422202012-06-28T10:00:00.000+01:002012-06-28T10:00:04.742+01:00A Day Out: Inspiration and Clarity<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is important to approach
the act of reading as clearly as possible, and this cramped study, the view of
the courtyard and the noise from the street were proving too great a
distraction. So, with my Literary Critical Detective <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/literary-critical-detective-receives.html" target="_blank">bag </a>carefully packed, I
headed out of the building early one morning a few days ago. I was looking for
both inspiration and clarity.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I travelled into the hills and
villages.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
What a joy it was to be <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/literary-critical-detective-en-plein.html" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en plein air</i></a> once again. Even the
weather was kind - it only rained briefly, albeit just as I sat down to eat my
lunch. It is easy to see how the Romantics became entranced by these northern
landscapes of both rugged and refined beauty.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V_fdEboVk9k/T-iH0MOTH1I/AAAAAAAAAFY/9AD-sDLURWI/s1600/Church+through+trees+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V_fdEboVk9k/T-iH0MOTH1I/AAAAAAAAAFY/9AD-sDLURWI/s200/Church+through+trees+2.jpg" width="150" /></a>There was much here from which
to draw inspiration. Through the trees, up on a hillside, a church suddenly
appeared, its square tower looking to have been cut out of the ground itself.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Opposite, a single gravestone
lay almost forgotten behind an old rusty gate. The weeds had grown up around
its base, so that it appeared to have fallen into the world directly from a
nineteenth-century novel. This stone no doubt first stood tall in the 1800s, so
this impression is only fitting.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5bSGJRlEr6g/T-iH9-un3sI/AAAAAAAAAFg/gyxoKDG_Zwk/s1600/Gravestone+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5bSGJRlEr6g/T-iH9-un3sI/AAAAAAAAAFg/gyxoKDG_Zwk/s200/Gravestone+1.jpg" width="126" /></a> </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Down below, the local houses
and shops were crammed into the small patch of level ground in the middle of
the valley cleft, the buildings’ stone work seemingly clinging to the sides of
the riverbank, worried that at any moment it might give out, let go its grip
and be washed away.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have returned refreshed,
ready to take up my reading once more. The fresh county air still fills my
lungs.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-331437023173055492012-06-27T17:00:00.000+01:002012-06-27T23:01:55.732+01:00A ‘long’ decade – the 1870s<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have recently written about
the <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/gravitational-pull-of-decades.html" target="_blank">gravitational pull</a> that certain decades seem to exert on us at times. I
remarked upon the curious coincidences in my reading - suddenly, the 1870s seemed to loom large.
However, the more I think about it the more I think that my calculations were
slightly wrong. I actually think that my equations omitted one or two key
factors which would have been evident if I had paid closer attention to my own <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/reading-trajectories.html" target="_blank">reading trajectories</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is now a cultural,
historical and literary-critical commonplace to refer to the ‘long’ nineteenth century,
meaning (roughly) the time from the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lyrical Ballads</i> through to the
beginning of the first world war (or at least until the death of Queen Victoria
in 1901).</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is completely absurd but my
reading in my capacity as The Literary Critical Detective seems to have orbited
around a ‘long’ decade, a long 1870s.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Here are some of the key
events that I might be inclined to pick out.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1869 - Amy Fay arrives in
Germany and begins to study piano with Tausig</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1869 - Alphonse Daudet, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letters from my Windmil</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1870 - Death of Charles
Dickens</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1871 - Birth of Marcel Proust</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1871-72 - George Eliot, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1873 - Jules Verne, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Around the World in Eighty Days </i>published</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1873 - Leo Tolstoy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anna Karenina</i> published</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1880 - Amy Fay, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Music-Study in Germany</i> published</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1880 - Emile Zola, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nana</i> published</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
1883 - Death of Richard Wagner
in Venice</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
The pull of this long decade
has been strong and for the time being I continue to be held by it. I
wonder what I will find at its centre. Will I find a kind of singularity? And
if so, will this act like a passage to some other place and time? After
penetrating to the heart of this historical moment will I suddenly find myself in
another decade entirely? In Paris in the 1890s? In inter-war Britain, the
moment of the classic whodunit novel? Maybe. I might just start back at the
beginning of Dame Agatha’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oeuvre</i>.</div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"></span>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-21589547174171597202012-06-26T17:30:00.000+01:002012-06-26T17:30:00.651+01:00The books that remain ‘To be read’<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is customary for writers of
blogs such as this to discuss the books that remain languishing on their
shelves – the novels that they bought but have never quite got around to
reading. More precisely, they discuss their ‘to be read’ pile.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have always been very
conscious of the books that I haven’t read.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I don’t actually own a vast
number of texts myself as there isn’t much space in my study. Even here,
though, in my own limited library, there are many volumes that I have never opened.
Walking into a large well-stocked reading room or even a local second-hand
bookshop can be an intimidating experience at times.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
With this in mind, I have
decided that I may well start to read some of the texts that remain, for me, ‘to
be read’. In the coming weeks I expect to read some, but probably not all, of
the following books, none of which I have worked my way through before:</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Ngaio Marsh, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Off With His Head</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Jules Verne, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Around the World in Eighty Days</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Edmund Husserl, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Logical Investigations</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Agatha Christie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cat Among the Pigeons</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Alain-Fournier, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Grand Meaulnes</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Søren Kierkegaard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sickness Unto Death</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Leo Tolstoy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sebastopol Sketches</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Thomas Hardy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Written down like this, the
list strikes me as one of great diversity. It is, of course, this very
diversity that is so essential if one is to read fully. And now to begin.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-75456026830616915092012-06-25T20:00:00.000+01:002012-06-25T20:00:05.999+01:00Agatha Christie and Plato in the sunshine:<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
For a short while this morning
the sun burst through the clouds. I was quite taken aback. A beam of light
suddenly beat its way through my half-drawn curtains, lighting up the section
of my book shelf devoted to classic whodunits. There, to my left, the spines of
my Agatha Christies shone out brilliantly, the titles glinting in the unexpected
radiance.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Sadly enough, my first
reaction to this sunlight was to pull the curtains shut – the spines of the
books on my shelves are already damaged enough. Then, I started to wonder
whether I should take this as a reminder to re-read these (mostly) brilliant
novels.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Reading in the sunshine can
often be difficult. The light can glare off of the white page in such a way as
to make it impossible to focus on the words. Sometimes it can be too bright. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have, as it happens, read
Agatha Christie’s books in the bright light of the Mediterranean sun. Several
years ago I had the good fortune to travel to Greece. My reading on that occasion
was incongruous to say the least: the Dame’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallowe'en Party </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mrs
McGinty’s Dead</i>. But, what would have been more fitting? If I had read
Plato?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Actually, about a year ago I
can remember reading Book VII of Plato’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Republic</i> in the English autumn sunshine. The light glared and I found
myself slightly dazed. It was as though I had myself just stepped out of the
cave of the famous allegory.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It has clouded back over now.
I’ve opened the curtains once more. I no longer run the risk of being dazzled.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-15698786214448139102012-06-24T18:20:00.000+01:002012-06-24T18:20:16.477+01:00Approaching the final furlong…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I am now reading the final
stages of the novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nana </i>by Zola. I
am inclined to say that I am in the final furlong as I’ve just read the amazing
sequence set at the Grand Prix de Paris horse race at Longchamp. This occasion
is a crucial turning point in the novel as it marks a high-water mark in the
eponymous hero’s social ascent. Moreover, the horse that bears her name comes
home first in defiance of the odds, a result which eventually leads to the
death of her lover, its owner, Vandeuvres.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This sequence is wonderfully
written (I should say that I’ve read it in translation). It is an exhilarating piece
of prose that manages to capture the thrill of the occasion whilst
simultaneously offering a devastating social portrait. During the depiction of
the race itself I actually found myself caring about which horse won.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This sequence reminded me of
an equivalent scene in an even more brilliant novel – namely, the horse race in
Leo Tolstoy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anna Karenina</i>, which
was published just three years earlier. Tolstoy’s prose is, in this passage,
viscerally exciting and filled with danger.</div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Now I’m trying to think of
other great sporting scenes in classic literature. I’m thinking here of texts
that are not explicitly sporting texts. There is, of course, the great Poirot novel
by Dame Agatha Christie, <i>The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Murder on the Links</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Can you think of any others?</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-37341698652036575622012-06-23T14:54:00.000+01:002012-06-23T14:54:40.697+01:00Some rushed thoughts on narrative pacing…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I have started thinking about
the question of narrative pacing or, to phrase it another way, literary rhythm
and tempo. This rhythm is at work at the level of the sentence, the paragraph
and the text as a whole. It is vital to the success of any piece of writing.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The best texts show an
awareness of this. Just think of the way that the rhythm of Elizabeth Gaskell’s
‘condition of England’ novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mary Barton</i>
(1848) markedly changes in its final third. Here, we find a kind of literary
accelerando as the characters set off on a river chase. Think, too, of
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length, manages to engage with the reader every subordinate clause. For the mature Marcel,
of course, this was simply a question of style.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Classic murder mystery texts
can be a little one-paced at times. Whilst there is an inevitable speeding up of
events as we approach the great detective’s gripping dénouement, the tone is too often
too even, the beat just a little flat. From the opening line clues are
scattered in front of us. Everything is important, even the unimportant red
herrings. And, let's admit it, in this genre the writing is usually quite workmanlike. Neither Dame
Agatha Christie nor Dame Ngaio Marsh were great prose stylists. Description is
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(although far from being the last written), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Curtain:
Poirot’s Last Case</i> (published 1975). This has an altogether different
structure and pace. This is a murder mystery that for the most part lacks a
murder. This a text of foreshadowing and nostalgic reminiscence.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
For all that I love the classic
mysteries I often wish that they were more stylish.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-19805587445073708892012-06-22T14:27:00.001+01:002012-06-22T14:27:48.197+01:00The Gravitational Pull of Decades<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is a critical and
theoretical commonplace that our choices of reading materials are not as free
as we might initially think. When we choose a new novel to put on our
nightstand that decision is more or less consciously informed by a number of personal,
socio-political and economic factors. Indeed, even the choice to read a novel
at all is one that is conditioned by a variety of things.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
In October last year I noticed
that my reading had started to follow an interesting <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/reading-trajectories.html" target="_blank">trajectory</a> – I had,
without really realising it, read a whole sequence of novels in a row that had
been set in Paris. These ranged from Alexandre Dumas <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fils</i>’ melodramatic novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
Dame aux Camélias</i> (1848) to Cara Black’s breathless thriller, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Murder in the Marais</i> (1999). Of course,
there had been a certain element of chance involved in all this, which I was
quick to acknowledge.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
When I cast my eye over the
texts that I’ve recently been reading I can see a new kind of connection
emerging. This is a link not based on space but time.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
A few weeks ago I read Amy Fay’s
wonderful memoir, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Music-Study in Germany </i>(first
published in 1880). Fay, an excellent pianist, records the time she spent in
Europe studying with the greats of the piano between 1869-1875. Her teachers
included both Carl Tausig in Berlin and Franz Liszt in Weimar. It is, quite
simply, a wonderful book, full of life, immediacy and music.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I am currently reading Emile
Zola’s novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nana</i> (also 1880), which
charts the rise and fall of the eponymous character. I expect to finish this
text in the next few days. This novel is set in Paris in those strained moments
at the end of the Second Empire, immediately before the Franco-Prussian war
(1870-71).</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
This is a coincidence I know
but… both of these texts were originally published in the same year: 1880. They
are also both ‘set’ at the same moment in time (the turn of the decade from the
1860s to the 1870s). Yes, one is a memoir and the other a novel but the fact
remains. And, interestingly, as both looked backwards they both involved acts
of memory.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I had not planned any of this –
the dates of publication played no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conscious</i>
part in my choices. Indeed, I only started to read Zola’s text when I did as I
had received a copy for free. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Nevertheless, it makes me
wonder whether we might add one more entry to that list of factors governing our
choices of novels. I wonder whether specific decades, in fact any given moment
in time, might exert a kind of gravitational pull on us.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I’m not sure. It would be
interesting to know what you think.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In any case, I will soon be setting
off on an altogether different course. After I have completed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nana</i> I intend to read one of Jules Verne’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">voyages extraordinaires</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Around the World in Eighty Days</i>. Although,
now that I think about it, this text was first published in 1873, which was the
very year during which Amy Fay studied with Liszt.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-6706886838718778742012-06-21T10:55:00.002+01:002012-06-21T10:55:43.161+01:00A Writer Retreats: or, A Writer’s Retreat.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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It is now two days since I
decided to largely retreat to my book-lined study.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
My intention was simple: to
force myself into calm; to find a level of purpose and concentration that would
allow me to think and, above all, to write. I wanted to establish a new habit
of creativity. And in order to help me achieve that, I promised myself I would
<a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/blog-post-day-project-for-june.html" target="_blank">update this online journal everyday</a> until the end of the month.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
So far, I have spent my time variously
reading, thinking and staring out of the window, although not necessarily in
that order.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
In the last forty-eight hours
the weather has turned from a reluctant sunshine to dank and rainy English
summer conditions. Today, a persistent drizzle bothers the rooftops across the
courtyard. The grey clouds overhead seem to have made themselves at home, as though
having made the effort to arrive here they are now reluctant to leave, and
consider this place as good as any other to dump their burdensome load.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
A springer spaniel barks a
regular intervals, a living clock that has taken over time-telling duties from
the stopped watches collected in my drawer. I can hear the sound of bins being
dragged across potted paving slabs. Yesterday, a horse and carriage made its
way, unseen by me, along the main road, its shod feet clattering on the
surface as it went.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
No artist’s room is ever
disconnected from the world around him or her. Life still intrudes. Even Proust
was beset by thousands of letters and social callers after he withdrew from the
Parisian social whirl. In my study, too, the lines of communication remain
open.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I
intend to pick up my pen or, what amounts to the same thing, dust off the
keyboard, and begin writing.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Until
tomorrow…</span>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-87522765902652449672012-06-20T11:11:00.001+01:002012-06-20T11:24:20.515+01:00A Blog Post a Day: A Project for June<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is so hard to think
clearly, with subtlety and deftness. It is even harder to articulate one’s
thoughts in a nuanced manner.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
When I’m working on a new
literary critical case it sometimes seems as if the books that line my study
walls are leering down at me like so many grotesques, mocking me and my meek efforts.
The more I try to think, the more the thoughts form an <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/fog-of-my-stupor.html" target="_blank">impenetrable fog in my mind</a>, a fog that gets everywhere, even in this muggy, muddy English summer.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
In order to extricate myself
from these difficulties I have made a rash decision. Yesterday evening, having
posted my <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/on-reading-and-not-reading-agatha.html" target="_blank">review</a> of Agatha Christie’s ‘The Big Four’, I promised myself that I
would update this online journal everyday until the end of the month – and possibly
even beyond.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I hope that by setting myself
the task of writing something new on a regular basis I will disperse the critical
and creative torpor that hangs over me and, it would seem, this whole building. Moreover,
I hope that I will instigate a new practice of writing.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I bumped into <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/literary-critical-detective-meets.html" target="_blank">Thistleton</a>
yesterday. He expressed some kind thoughts about the project, although he
doubted the possibility of engineering creative insight through practice.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I would really appreciate it
if you, dear Reader, were able to support me in my endeavour by following this
blog (click the button on the right) and by checking in each day to see what I’ve written.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">à demain…</span></i>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-8949346293650258982012-06-19T11:09:00.000+01:002012-06-19T11:09:30.144+01:00On reading and not reading an Agatha Christie novel<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
I have recently finished
reading Agatha Christie’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big Four</i>
– one of the early Poirot novels (it is actually the fifth book in the
sequence).</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is easy to devour The Dame’s
murder mysteries in one or two sittings: on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps or, as is
more likely in my case, shut up in the peace of my book-lined study. The prose
is simple enough and the plots well-constructed enough that you can read them
very quickly.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RvMM_g62IYo/T-BOb0s9jKI/AAAAAAAAAE0/B2z05hNlGXs/s1600/Steam+Train+of+Thought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RvMM_g62IYo/T-BOb0s9jKI/AAAAAAAAAE0/B2z05hNlGXs/s200/Steam+Train+of+Thought.jpg" width="200" /></a>My reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big Four</i> was slightly different. Instead
of reading it at home I worked my way through the text in that most
Christie-like of locations: the train. The book accompanied me on a series of
research trips that I recently took by rail.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
And what a delight it was. The
sun streamed in through the carriage windows and, as we sped past, the
countryside seemed to unfurl itself before us. The book itself was great fun. It
is an intriguing, entertaining and occasionally absurd novel. What is more, the
characters are placed in serious jeopardy on a number of occasions, which is
actually quite unusual for a Poirot novel.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
The nature of my rail journeys
meant that I was forced to read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big
Four </i>in several sittings. I was able to mark off the chapters by the
stations at which we stopped.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Strange to say, though, that
whilst I enjoyed reading the novel immensely, I was actually a little reluctant
to pick the text up at the beginning of each of new trip. Having put the book
down I felt no compulsion to pick it up again. This despite the desire to know
what would happen, to learn how it would turn out, and to discover how Captain
Hastings would extricate himself from his latest scrape. And I ask myself: Why?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
One obvious and well
documented fact is that, outside of the main detective characters, the
participants in murder mystery novels are only functions of the plot, counters
moved around in a board game of motives. As a reader I hadn’t invested in the
development of the characters’ story arcs.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Then there is the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big Four</i> reads like a series of
short stories. It is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very</i> episodic –
perfect for reading between railway stations but not conducive to sustained
reading over a long stretch of time. It is also a surprising book. It is a
novel that reads more like a spy thriller than a classic country house whodunit
in the typical Christie mould. It is a book that defeats generic expectations.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">In
the end, it was worth reading to the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Big Four</i>. And if you expect to travel by train anytime soon I would
heartily recommend it as your travel novel.</span>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-17596424040850005282012-04-28T16:04:00.001+01:002012-05-02T19:40:13.433+01:00Reader, I finished reading it.<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
It is true that even weary,
book-learned literary critical detectives were young once. Many years ago I
attended a fine and respectable school in the south of England. I was a diligent
and purposeful student, prone to over-seriousness and anxious to achieve good marks. There was always something about the image of the scholar to which
I aspired.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
My usual diligence forsook me
when, aged about 14 years, my fellow pupils and I were asked by our teacher to
read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jane Eyre</i> by Charlotte Bront<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">ë</span>. The
fact that I was unsure at first which of the two names on the cover belonged to
the author and which to the central protagonist did not augur well. This initial
confusion was slowly replaced by apathy. I rarely read the passages we had been
set; I contributed little to class discussions. I think that I finally stopped
reading the text after about one hundred pages. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
My failure to finish this
novel had always concerned me. I had been left with a vague sense of having
failed to meet the high standards that I set myself. Worse, I felt that I owed
something to the text: it deserved better.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Then, a few months ago, I saw
a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jane Eyre </i>on the bookshelf
in a local charity shop. It was on sale for a mere £1. Seeing the volume there,
abandoned and slowly awaiting its fate in stock rotation, my conscience was piqued.
I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> buy this book and I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> finish it.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Two weeks ago I set about
reading the novel. And what a wonderful novel it is. It has accompanied me on
the many journeys I have since undertaken. As Jane travelled from the fictional
Thornfield to Morton I travelled to the very real Nottingham by train; as she arrived
at Ferndean to find Rochester I returned home on a dark rainy
evening – my experiences as reader neatly mirroring those of the characters in
the text.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Then, last night, I finished
it. A wonderful piece of writing, without doubt, superbly Romantic and touchingly
romantic.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
As I finally shut the covers I
felt that I had at last repaid my debt to this text. And, I didn’t doubt, with interest
– for wasn’t my reading of it now so much more sophisticated than it ever could
have been all those years ago? I began to recall the different things we had
once been taught to say and think about the book at school. Yes, I was sure
that I now disagreed with many of them. However, my mature analysis of the text
will have to wait for another day.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">The
book that had, until last night, been my most embarrassing DNF (‘did not finish’)
is now one of my most cherished novels.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"></span>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-88155078637229423382012-03-25T16:27:00.000+01:002012-03-25T16:27:52.688+01:00The Literary Critical Detective on Trains<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">My work as the Literary Critical Detective normally requires me to sit patiently and quietly, here, in the study, surrounded by my scribbled notes, <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/colour-and-consistency-of-amber.html">the amber glow of my lamp</a> and the smell of old books. However, over the last two weeks I have been forced to leave my room and travel. More specifically, I have had to take the train. I have spent days dashing across concourses to make connections – an act in which I have taken a curious kind of pleasure, and which I have interpreted as simply another version of the Literary Critical Detective’s work.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">I made use of the time to read. Despite the purposefulness of my journeys these trips have actually taken me away from my planned <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/reading-trajectories.html">reading trajectory</a>. I sat and read Virginia Woolf’s masterful novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mrs Dalloway</i>, a text that is itself more concerned with planes and omnibuses than trains.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">Françoise has insisted that such journeys are pointless. She begrudgingly waved me off one morning whilst muttering about the number of books that I already owned and the impossibility of needing any new materials.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AIZh-OJz-Kw/T284xsl_NoI/AAAAAAAAAEs/Kjy9APYJYcA/s1600/Steam+Train+of+Thought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AIZh-OJz-Kw/T284xsl_NoI/AAAAAAAAAEs/Kjy9APYJYcA/s200/Steam+Train+of+Thought.jpg" width="200" /></a>For my part, I have always enjoyed train travel. In an instant I feel like all those literary characters. Remember that Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson are always jumping onto trains and heading out of London at a moment’s notice. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">And so I have begun to think about the best ‘train’ scenes in literature. Here are some of my favourites. What are your favourite ‘train’ scenes or novels? (Comments below are welcome).</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">1. Leo Tolstoy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anna Karenina</i> – this novel begins and ends with wonderfully moving train scenes.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">2. Marcel Proust, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sodome et Gomorrhe</i> – in this novel Mme Verdurin’s social circle travel by train to her house for the summer season. Here, the train carriage itself becomes a salon on rails.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">3. Agatha Christie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Murder on the Orient Express</i> – a wonderful mystery whose action and detection works its way through private carriages and public cars alike.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-10906702497290397262012-03-04T11:23:00.000+00:002012-03-04T11:23:31.720+00:00On not setting myself ‘reading goals’.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I have never set myself ‘Reading Goals’ – you know the kind of thing: ‘I will read 50 books this year’; or, ‘I will read 25 “classics” this year’.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mGxkJuv9uTE/T1NNCeqfp4I/AAAAAAAAAEc/BwmTSm7CLpo/s1600/Reading+Goals+%5B1%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mGxkJuv9uTE/T1NNCeqfp4I/AAAAAAAAAEc/BwmTSm7CLpo/s320/Reading+Goals+%5B1%5D.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Many other readers do and I am not criticising them for it. I am glad that those readers are reading so voraciously. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The reason I do not approach my own reading in this manner is that it presupposes I have a certain number of set outcomes that I wish to achieve. It presupposes that I know in advance what I want to find in the chosen texts and that I will, without question, find it there. The novels piled up before me have, as it were, made plain their meaning to me in advance.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">At worst, this attitude to reading threatens to turn a careful and attentive approach to meaning into an exercise in which you simply place ticks on a kind of cultural checklist. (Although it doesn’t do this as a matter of course.)</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">In my work as the Literary Critical Detective my approach to reading is not without purpose. Far from it. In each of my 'cases' I solve literary-critical mysteries that were not even mysteries. I can only do this through a structured response to image and metaphor. However, I am happy to pursue the vicissitudes of study.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i7m__-0hPJM/T1NNUwmTNWI/AAAAAAAAAEk/8fH_KS-zXGQ/s1600/Reading+Goals+%5B2%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i7m__-0hPJM/T1NNUwmTNWI/AAAAAAAAAEk/8fH_KS-zXGQ/s320/Reading+Goals+%5B2%5D.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">An example of my reading: at the beginning of 2011 I reread the first half of Samuel Richardson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clarissa</i> (1747-8), a text that I had first read in its entirety 13 years earlier. Once I’d reached the half way stage in this miraculous novel, and Clarissa herself had been firmly established in London, I put the book down and picked up another – namely, Thomas Pynchon’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Crying of Lot 49</i>. This in turn caused me to return to Freud and then, in a sharp turn, to read Hermann Hesse’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Steppenwolf</i></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Those of you who kindly pay attention to my scribbled thoughts will know that I have written of ‘<a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.com/2011/10/reading-trajectories.html">readingtrajectories</a>’. Now that I think about it, I find this term uncomfortable. It lacks the appropriate level of uncertainty. Perhaps I can only know in which direction I am travelling but not exactly where I am.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">At the moment I do not know entirely know where I am. I have lost my book mark. However, I do know where I am heading. When I have <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.com/2012/02/resumption-of-reading-my-reading.html">finished reading</a> Dostoyevsky’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crime and Punishment</i> I will read:</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Agatha Christie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hercule Poirot quitte la scène</i> (Librairie des Champs-Élysées).</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">This is the French language translation of Agatha Christie’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case</i>. I shall read the two texts (original and translation) alongside each other, with a French-English dictionary to hand.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I then expect to read:</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Albert Camus, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L’étranger</i>.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">However, we shall see.</span>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-10011708641475975842012-02-25T18:41:00.000+00:002012-02-25T18:41:29.052+00:00The Resumption of Reading: My Reading Trajectory Reappraised<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">Those of you kind enough to pay attention to these scribbled notes will know that towards the end of last year <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.com/2011/10/reading-trajectories.html">the path of my reading</a> had lead me, ineluctably, to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crime and Punishment</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As the dark nights stretched out I began to make may way through the great length of this great novel. Only, somehow, in the darkness of those evenings I lost my way and eventually ground to a halt. I feared I would take a wrong interpretative step. The light from the lamp on my bureau guttered and flickered. It then became dim, turning from an <a href="http://theliterarycriticaldetective.blogspot.com/2011/11/colour-and-consistency-of-amber.html">amber glow</a> to a sickly pallor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I admit that I had made myself a map along the way – a list of character names. However, it was no good returning to this document without a compass and the time to re-orientate myself.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is now starting to get a little lighter. The crocuses have emerged from the ground. And now, in this growing brightness I am resuming my reading. Although the text is a dark one – thematically, and in terms of its setting, I feel that this new springtime light will help guide me to the end of the text.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m picking up the action with 100 pages to go. Raskolnikov has just chatted to Porfiry, who has shown his hand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will write again when I’ve finished the novel.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-74972985758889541702011-11-15T21:57:00.000+00:002011-11-15T21:57:06.480+00:00The Colour and Consistency of Amber<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">It is too dark in here. The light that my brass lantern causes to seep across the desk <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>seems to have the colour and consistency of amber. I cannot turn it up any brighter so I have just lit a number of tall candles. However, the wicks are already starting to burn low and the flames are guttering and flickering. The dark shadows next to the bookcases seem to be growing deeper and denser with each passing minute. They are pulling things into obscurity even as I write. I cannot see the corners of my room anymore.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">It is not light enough to read with any care or precision. Françoise has already chastised me for attempting to work in this gloom. ‘It will only damage your eyes. You have to wear those glasses as it is because of all that close work you do. I wouldn’t work in this light.’ Of course, she doesn’t realise the obligation that these texts have placed me under this evening. How could she? I am only just beginning to realise it myself. And in any case, I am starting to believe that this darkness could bring with it some enlightenment. Maybe by losing my bearings, by being unable to see the critical and theoretical signposts, I will happen across a new path to meaning. Maybe.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">A draught has just blown in through the sash of my study window. For a moment it seemed as though it had brought some of the night sky in with it. Actually, I can see that it just blew out one of the candles.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-83018802971571999652011-10-31T10:38:00.000+00:002012-06-20T21:02:18.866+01:00Reading Trajectories<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
My reading is usually fairly wide ranging – both by necessity and by choice. This attitude has not made for a very coherent bookshelf but it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has</i> helped me immensely in my work as a literary critical detective.</div>
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However, over the last few weeks a certain pattern seems to have emerged from the vagaries of my choices.</div>
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The last few texts I have read are:</div>
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1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Alexandre Dumas <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fils</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Dame aux camellias</i></div>
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2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Alphonse Daudet, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letters from my Windmill</i></div>
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3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Anatole France, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crainquebille</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Putois, Riquet and Other Profitable Tales</i></div>
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4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Anatole France, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard</i></div>
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5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Cara Black, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Murder in the Marais</i>.</div>
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The next book I will be reading will be Jean-Paul Sartre’s classic, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nausea</i>.</div>
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I drew up this reading record last night for my own benefit. When I did so it occurred to me that all these volumes have one thing in common. And that one thing, or place, is Paris.</div>
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I will limit myself to just two comments about this fact.</div>
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Firstly, let me say that I hadn’t really intended to read two books by Anatole France at all. I bought one in a small shop in Oxford, the other on an antique stall in Yorkshire. Strangely enough, they each cost the same amount – £4. They were also in a similarly poor condition: their spines were ripped and their pages slightly damp to the touch.</div>
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They are just the kind of volumes that Françoise chastises me for buying. ‘But why,’ she says, ‘do you insist on filling your study with these musty old books when you could buy pristine new copies of the same texts.’ She is right as always. I am sure that I could have bought modern critical editions of these works.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sS_0sZOpM1Q/Tq531i9k8YI/AAAAAAAAAEM/xmnVbDjFcQA/s1600/Anatole+France+books+%255B2%255D.00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sS_0sZOpM1Q/Tq531i9k8YI/AAAAAAAAAEM/xmnVbDjFcQA/s200/Anatole+France+books+%255B2%255D.00.jpg" width="150" /></a>My interest in old Anatole really only lies in his complicated and somewhat patronising relationship to Proust – he wrote the ‘Preface’ for the younger man’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pleasures and Days</i>. France’s style is easy going and at times quite lyrical (at least in these translations) but is nothing compared to that of his one time acolyte. It lacks the insight, precision and even the directness of Proust. </div>
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The second thing I would wish to say about this unlooked for connection is that my own writing has caused me to think about Paris. So perhaps the coincidence is really no coincidence at all.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--hW-YOyhWto/Tq533fv9yNI/AAAAAAAAAEU/5uHoU6M1QZ8/s1600/Globe+b%252Bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--hW-YOyhWto/Tq533fv9yNI/AAAAAAAAAEU/5uHoU6M1QZ8/s200/Globe+b%252Bw.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Now, however, my focus has shifted. Another text lies in front of me – and it is one that is set in a different city in a different country. St Petersburg. (I am looking at the small globe in my study as I write these words. Leaning the candle towards its surface I can see the dot that represents the city).</div>
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The text is Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crime and Punishment</i>. This is a text that has, in a sense, always been there ahead of me. It is now almost time to confront it.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-84502138565376619602011-10-22T14:08:00.000+01:002011-10-22T14:08:02.178+01:00In the Clearing: a space to think and write.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I have finally managed to create a kind of clearing in my study. I will now be able to look around me and get my philosophical bearings.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I thought I had understood the literary materials I had been working on. I had made perfect kinds of non-sense of them. The case was almost closed. It soon sprung open again. The more I thought, the more I had to read. And the more I read, the more I needed to read. And the more I needed to think and write.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The mystery novels were soon buried under a mass of other materials. Texts piled up on texts. I pushed various objects to the back of my desk. The photos of Proust and the old Broadwood piano were shoved away. One old postcard fell down the back of a bookcase. I did not retrieve it.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">There, on the floor, were copies of works by Plato and Aristotle, arranged in piles. To my right, all the documents relating to one of my previous projects had spilled out of a folder and had not been replaced. Sheets of lined paper covered in faded, hand-written notes; copies of paintings; music; manuscript paper; the letters of some great author.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Now, though, I have got everything in something like an order.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Françoise is very happy with this change. She attributes this miraculous event to her own influence, her own pervasive sense of propriety. When she came into my study a few moments ago she almost fell over herself with surprise. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s about time. I told myself you needed to have a good sort out. How could you ever have expected to get any work done with all that paper sitting around?’ I told her that I was a critic, a detective-critic, and that all these documents were essential to my thinking. Her face lit up with a smile that told me that she felt nothing if not sorry for me. ‘You call yourself a writer,’ she continued, her tone one of supreme condescension, ‘and yet you never write. You tell me that you are reading and yet you never read. All you ever seem to do, so far as I can see, is take books off the shelves – books that I will only have to put back.’ These were, I admit, hard words to hear – hard because true. Françoise sees through me.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I’m sitting in the clearing I have created for myself. I am calm.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The philosopher Heidegger speaks of standing in the clearing – a space in which Being is revealed. My clearing is not that kind of clearing. It is just a space in which to write.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-37386783917808381602011-09-04T16:05:00.001+01:002012-03-04T11:39:24.218+00:00The Notebooks of Fictional Detectives<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I have become increasingly interested in the notebooks of fictional detectives.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, the central character in Ngaio Marsh’s mystery novels, is always writing in his. And then there is Columbo, who makes scribbled notes whenever he can remember which pocket his book is in, and whenever he has a pencil.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">How I would love to pour over these hasty memorandums, these jotted references to times and dates, names, lists of clothing and motives.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Of course, in one sense I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> been reading these notebooks – they are the classic murder mystery itself, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en abyme</i>. The whole of the plot is worked out between their covers.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bz6qvd5i7Eo/TS4Dyh76GwI/AAAAAAAAACg/1dykFGfszF0/s1600/In+the+field+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bz6qvd5i7Eo/TS4Dyh76GwI/AAAAAAAAACg/1dykFGfszF0/s200/In+the+field+2.JPG" width="199" /></a>As a literary critical detective I am a compulsive keeper of notes. As regular readers of this blog will know, I have been given two splendid books especially for use in my critical investigations (see the post for 12<sup>th </sup>January 2011 below). They are on my desk now, next to my mug of tea and a Ngaio Marsh omnibus.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I record odd metaphors, flashes of creative-critical insight and echoes between texts and contexts. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">And this blog is itself a kind of notebook.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-63714273721392467692011-08-30T18:57:00.002+01:002011-08-30T19:12:10.954+01:00Clues...<div style="text-align: justify;">I am in a fevered state of intellectual activity. My mind is beset by a series of critical, literary and philosophical problems. I find that even the piano keyboard cannot now calm my nerves. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The clues are scattered all about me, here in my study. It is just that I cannot yet see how all the ideas fit together. When I know that, the case will be closed and all that will remain will be for me to write up my findings.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Below is a list of some of the clues I am busy analysing.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">1. Sherlock Holmes’ plunge over the falls of Reichenbach in ‘The Final Problem’</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">2. Franz Liszt’s trip to the Swiss valley of Chamonix in the summer of 1836, on which vacation he was accompanied by Countess Marie d’Agoult, George Sand and her family and Major Adolphe Pictet.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">3. The name ‘Mr Fellows’.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">4. The concept of the empty house.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">5. The figure of Hamlet on the castle walls.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">6. The train journey from London to Canterbury.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">7. The difference between the abstract and the concrete.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Some of these clues might turn out not to be clues at all; the sole purpose of others might be to lead the critic astray. This is something that I will have to contend with as I pursue my investigation. And of course, there remains the possibility that amongst these fragments of ideas there lies the one thought that will unlock the whole case.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">I shall continue to think.</div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1003729065155320343.post-614076032658862762011-07-10T12:54:00.000+01:002011-07-10T12:54:18.826+01:00The Road to Whitby. The Road to Sherlock’s.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The road dropped away beneath us. About two hundred yards ahead it turned sharply to the right and vanished behind a mass of green. I confess I was anxious that we might not make it to our destination, that our little carriage might not survive the journey. I enjoy conducting research in the field but being thrown bodily onto the moors would not have been ideal.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">I had escaped the claustrophobia of my study once more, perchance to read, to think and detect. I was on the hunt for clues and found them in abundance. My travelling companion and I were heading for the sea.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In York, the gothic Minster throws long shadows.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr8XRZ5m_Q4/ThmO7fe8T8I/AAAAAAAAAC0/rLx7gSKNTx8/s1600/York+Minster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr8XRZ5m_Q4/ThmO7fe8T8I/AAAAAAAAAC0/rLx7gSKNTx8/s200/York+Minster.jpg" width="150" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">To my delight, there are great, musty stores of texts hidden in these patches of gloom, shops where you can find yellowing volumes whose stitched spines are coming unpicked. As I rummaged through the shelves a pattern of correspondence seemed to emerge. I bought a copy of the letters of Felix Mendelssohn and, most crucially of all, texts on Liszt. The green covers of old murder mysteries spoke out but were in no condition to be handled. They lay as dead on the shop tables as the bodies they describe slumped at the bottom of staircases. Their backs were broken.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span> <div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">From York we struck out into the wilderness, braving uneven road surfaces and uncertain conditions. We remained undeterred, however, and eventually came to rest in a strange hall of mirrors, a room of kitsch reflection and cultural detritus that stirred the imagination.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">And then, finally, we arrived in Whitby. I stood on the East Terrace and looked across to the ruined Abbey, much as Mina Harker does in <i>Dracula</i>. I effected the literary pose. However, there were no eyes piercing the night, no ‘brooding presences’, no entranced women in white.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v96yDpPrCkE/ThmPeUNiB8I/AAAAAAAAAC4/rQJpuNHpAPc/s1600/Whitby+Abbey+view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v96yDpPrCkE/ThmPeUNiB8I/AAAAAAAAAC4/rQJpuNHpAPc/s200/Whitby+Abbey+view.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">We, too, examined those gravestones, worn by the weather to look like melted stone. We too sat on Lucy’s favourite seat and looked at the harbour as the storm clouds passed out at sea. The gulls carved ever-widening gyres in the sky.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eqVGNUmsjU8/ThmRBHLCYkI/AAAAAAAAADE/X2A-gzPx9Ls/s1600/Whitby+Gravestone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eqVGNUmsjU8/ThmRBHLCYkI/AAAAAAAAADE/X2A-gzPx9Ls/s200/Whitby+Gravestone.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;">Whilst in Whitby, whilst living inside its literature, we took tea, my companion and I, in Sherlock’s Coffee Shop. Here, a violin was suspended from the right hand wall. A shelf was covered in medical bottles and jars. A deerstalker hung on a coat peg. And the cake...</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2t3Quu3Ogzc/ThmQLof_VjI/AAAAAAAAAC8/moG4p_fTpdw/s1600/Sherlocks+Outside.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2t3Quu3Ogzc/ThmQLof_VjI/AAAAAAAAAC8/moG4p_fTpdw/s200/Sherlocks+Outside.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Even though the literary critical detective, like the literary detective himself, can exist on little rest and even less food, cake never hurts. And here, in Sherlock’s, I had my fill.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CEC3vcwYaYY/ThmRhzQ2QUI/AAAAAAAAADI/j9v5bFMcL3w/s1600/Sherlock%2527s+Cake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CEC3vcwYaYY/ThmRhzQ2QUI/AAAAAAAAADI/j9v5bFMcL3w/s200/Sherlock%2527s+Cake.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;">That night I slept with the curtains open so as to be able to see the abbey.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">We have returned. I am back at my writing desk and find myself dreaming of gravestones. My thoughts are rolling like thunderclouds and here in this room lit by a solitary candle. I might just experience the lightening strike of a critical idea.</span></span></div>Dr Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14813929891557341676noreply@blogger.com1