A little light reading

Silence on this blog does not equal no reading, just that I enjoy reading more than I enjoy writing about reading. During my PGCE, most of my reading was about spiritual matters, as I undertook a discipleship and church planting school at my church. Among other things we read Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster) - beautifully written book about spiritual disciplines; The Church Can Change the World (Jimmy Seibert) - an exciting adventure about the birth of the movement of churches we are part of; and Spiritual Authority (Watchman Nee) - a hard-hitting and thought-provoking classic. It was fantastic, but I am enjoying being able to read for pleasure again!

And for whatever reason, for light reading I have been drawn more and more to the 1920s-1950s, and to three writers in particular: P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Stella Gibbons. Let me tell you why...

I discovered P.G. Wodehouse as an undergraduate, having heard of Jeeves and Wooster and deciding I ought to see if it was any good. It was. However I actually prefer the one-off stories, mainly involving bumbling but well-meaning toffs in monetary and amorous scrapes. One of my favourites has been Laughing Gas (1936), where a young English earl visiting California switches bodies with a twelve-year-old boy movie star. Wodehouse's wit and humour is delightful, and I often find myself re-reading a passage or line that seems particularly appropriate or amusing. The dedication to The Indiscretions of Archie particularly struck me as a good example:

"The fact is, I have become rather suspicious about dedications. No sooner do you label a book with the legend:-
To my best friend X
than X cuts you in Piccadilly, or you bring a lawsuit against him. There is a fatality about it. However, I can't imagine anyone quarrelling with you, and I am getting more attractive all the time, so let's take a chance."

Simon Callow has recorded a lot of Wodehouse books for audio book, and compares reading his prose to singing Mozart, and I can see the similarity - frivolous but elaborate and careful craftsmanship. Try him!!

I had only heard of Dorothy L. Sayers from Suzanne, who lectures in British Christian writers between the world wars at l'Universite Catholique de Lille, and as a first year I proofread a series of radio lectures she had discovered in an archive of an American university, which was published as The Christ of the Creeds (2008). I was very impressed by the clarity of Sayers' writing, but only read one of her detective novels, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, whom she is most famous for creating, last year - The Nine Tailors (1934). Although it took me a while to 'get into', I am now hooked and am slowly reading my way through all of these books. Having grown up on Agatha Christie it was a shock at first - Sayers' books are more detailed, longer, with more precise characterisation - but I now think Lord Peter a wonderful character, and particularly enjoy the constant literary quotations and references throughout the books (those which I am able to pick up, anyway!). I'm surprised these books aren't better known and appreciated, and that no one has decided to re-make them for television (the last production was about 30 years ago, and I don't think all of them have ever been done). I still love some Agatha Christie but am definitely enjoying Dorothy L. Sayers too!

I've blogged on Stella Gibbons before - particularly on Cold Comfort Farm. I think for a long time that's all I imagined she'd written. No! I'd heard a radio adaptation of Westwood a couple of times and decided it was time to read more of her work, so I got hold of Westwood (1946) and Nightingale Wood (1938) and read them both recently. They make an interesting comparison. Nightingale Wood is very light - a reworking of Cinderella - very frivolous, and Westwood doesn't allow for a fully satisfying happy ending in the same way. It is fascinating because it was written so soon after the end of the war - and indeed the novel is set in the war so you really see what it was like for ordinary people in London while it was still fresh in the memory. Perhaps this proximity to the war is what prompts Gibbons to refuse us the 'happily ever after' ending we feel we deserve. Gibbons' characterisation is biting - and at times borders on the cruel - in all of her books I have read so far, but her characters are human - the bad with some good, and the good with some bad, as in real life.


I'm starting to love this period, and these writers, and others. They are the perfect light reading for me - I feel embarrassed both borrowing or buying and reading most 'chick-lit' which I'm supposed to find escapist, and books from this era allow me a window into the past. Additionally, they are much less explicit in terms of bad language etc, which I appreciate. I recommend all of these writers, and welcome suggestions for others! (Please... not D.H. Lawrence... I've read a few and find him depressing and far, far too serious. Besides, who can take Lawrence seriously after they have read Cold Comfort Farm?!).


Of course, I've also been reading The Hunger Games - who hasn't?! But maybe that's a future blog post...

"Learning never ends"

As of this Wednesday, I am officially a graduate from the University of Sheffield with a 2.1 in English and French. It's taken me 5 years from finishing A levels, which I could never have anticipated, but I got there! It's been an unexpected 4 years in many ways (who knew I would end up doing half my degree in French?!) but also incredibly rewarding.

And I've come out the other side still loving literature. The day of my last English literature exam (Modern literature, on which I got a first - another surprise!) the first thing I did was to go to Sheffield City Library and get out a pile of books, and since the end of exams I've pretty much been reading between 3 and 5 books per week. Now's the time to make the most of it, since come September I'll be starting my PGCE (teacher training) to become a secondary school French teacher (who also now has roughly GCSE-level German!).

Why not English? Practical reasons: most of my experience so far has been in language teaching, there is a greater need for language teachers, I get a bursary for it (!). Also I imagine I will end up teaching English some time anyway. Part of me is a little worried at teaching English, that I wouldn't be able to get across my enthusiasm for the subject to teenagers. Also I feel like teaching languages is a more practical skill.

Still, if I ever take the step to do a Masters, I like to think it would be in English. I genuinely love the academic side of the subject, whereas with French I was only ever interested in upping my language skills. Although my favourite historical period in literature is probably now the Renaissance (the Victorian literature module somewhat ruined the period for me... apparently it's all about Darwin; who knew?!) my highest marks were in the 'Enlightenment Britain' and 'Modern literature' modules, which I enjoyed more than I ever expected to.

I suppose what's really fascinating about literature is the way it interracts with culture, history, society and everything else in the world yet creates something new in it and, in some cases, affects those things itself. We had a set of very confusing 'Modern literature' lectures about Modernist art (never Modernist music, oddly) which compared Gertrude Stein to art of the time by comparing syntax to subject and grammar to form (if I remember correctly), so that Modernists are obsessed by form. I still love the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, and finally have lost some of my T.S.Eliot hangups. No-one really understands the guy's poetry, it's all just posturing.

As our Pro-Vice-Chancellor ("tips hat") said on Wednesday, "Learning never ends." I've learnt lots about developing critical skills and analysis at university, but about enjoying literature for its own sake - well, I learned that years ago anyway.

The Word

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
- John 1:1-5

I'd never thought much about God as Word before. But it's vital. Words create. We do it all the time - billions of words creating novels, poetry, plays. Words directing destinies, as James says, for good or ill.

How much more the words of God? As our words create an imaginary reality, His words create in our reality, as if we were characters in His cosmic novel.

I'm convinced God loves language - etymology, neologisms, especially word play.

Poetry

So I just found this blog post that I wrote way back in July and never published on here, so here we go...

We’re back on poetry again. It’s been a while.

In my recent selection from Sheffield city centre library (which was incredibly Lit-geeky and which I’ve already blogged on two texts from – Planet Narnia and O Pioneers! ) I took a random book about poetry: The Strength of Poetry by James Fenton (2001). The contents page promised writing about Philip Larkin, W.H. Auden, Wilfred Owen and Sylvia Plath amongst others so I thought, let’s give it a go. The first chapter talks about Michelangelo and other Italian Renaissance artists; the way they learned from, or were secretive towards, each other. By the end of the first page we feel that Fenton definitely has a unique way of looking at things. His writing can be by turns beautiful and amusing, and he’s always brutally honest. He picks up on usual things about poets – Owen’s juvenilia (hilariously pompous), the way Larkin is credited with expounding things everyone thinks but no one says but how ridiculous that actually is when you think about what he is saying, Auden’s dual influences of William Blake and Henry James. Seamus Heaney’s Irishness is discussed, the influence of life on poetry in Plath and, running through all, what it means to be a ‘poetess’. Fenton points out that feminising nouns like this can completely change their meaning: a ‘priestess’ is not at all the same thing as a ‘priest’ as it has much more pagan connotations. Similarly a ‘poetess’ is not the same thing as a ‘poet’. He charts the struggles and differences of opinion amongst several women poets as to what it means to be a woman and a poet, quoting Germaine Greer: ‘The more women adored poetry, the less able they were to write it... It is less crucial for women to work out how men did this to women than it is to assess the extent to which women did this to themselves.’

All in all, it is at once varied and coherent as a selection of thoughts on modern poetry. It is also amusing, clear and – wonder of wonders for a book on poetry! – interesting. It also made me want to read more Larkin, Plath and Heaney and to discover new writers (for me) such as Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore.

While on the subject of poetry, let’s talk Donne (again). In the same lit haul I picked up John Stubbs’ biography Donne: The Reformed Soul (2006), which I’ve been after for a while. ... My main gripe with it is that Stubbs uses Donne’s poetry to prove things about his life. I can understand this in that it is difficult to write a biography about a man who’s been dead for nearly 400 years and who lived in an age where documentation was not seen as especially important (hence why we have so little information about Shakespeare). However we are always being told not to confuse the poet and the voice in the poem, and although it seems reasonable that Donne drew from his own experience and potentially parts of his own personality in his poems – which are known for their startling voices – to use lyric poetry as proof of some particular personal opinion on Donne’s part seems to me a fallacy. Poets don’t always say what they mean in their poems and are notoriously unreliable; we never know when they are using their own opinions or assuming someone else’s and unless we have other biographical evidence to prove our point I feel we would be better off leaving our insights of a poet drawn from his craft out of it.

Planet Narnia

Back from university some time in 2009, my dad told me about a programme he had recorded from the television called ‘The Narnia Code’ (BBC, April 2009), where an academic had come up with a theory explaining the coherence of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series. We watched it together and I thought the premise intriguing. Michael Ward, a Lewis scholar, was reading Lewis’s poem ‘The Planets’ as part of his research when he was struck by the line in reference to Jupiter: ‘winter passed/And guilt forgiven’. He realised this was the premise of the story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and began linking the rest of the books in the series to planets in the pre-Copernican constellation: Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus and Saturn.

I was interested by this theory and emailed a Lewis specialist friend from my time in Lille, France, who sent me a review she had done of his book Planet Narnia (2008). The main argument against it was, she said, that even academics who are familiar with the medieval view of the planets had difficulty connecting them to the books in the way that Ward does.

Summer 2009. I am at Greenbelt festival (see this post) and notice that Michael Ward is going to do a talk about Planet Narnia. Interested, I decide to go along. Unfortunately in 50-odd minutes there’s not much he can say that I haven’t already heard in the BBC documentary, although he does go into a little more ‘academic’ detail than would presumably have been appropriate for television. The bookshop stock the book but at its hardback price I decide against it.

A few weeks ago I was in Sheffield city centre library in the literature section and wondered whether I would stumble across Planet Narnia; it had been in the back of my mind to read for a few months. There it was, and five minutes later I was reading it on the train home for a day. I spent most of that weekend reading when I could, and some evenings while doing a placement in a Sheffield secondary school. It definitely makes interesting reading, if you are at all familiar with Lewis. For me the main problem was the frequent references made to Lewis’s ‘Ransom’ trilogy (another for the ‘to read’ list), but I could follow the main point of what is being said. It did feel as though more time was given to this series than to the Narnia books themselves at times. Ward’s thesis goes further than just linking the books to planets, however; he is trying to prove that Lewis was attempting to make his readers Enjoy the planets rather than Contemplating them. (The difference between Enjoy and Contemplate is the difference between the French connaître and savoir – the first is knowledge gained by experiencing it rather than observing and knowing in the mind) He calls this ‘donegality’; the process of understanding the characters of the planets through reading books which are written in the ‘spirit’ of that planet. I’ve explained that badly.

In conclusion, if you are a Narnia enthusiast and have a bit of concentration (although it’s not written in the highest scholarly style there are some presumptions made about the level of academic knowledge of the reader) it’s well worth a read. Then it’s up to you as to whether you are convinced by Ward’s thesis; personally I’m still on the fence.

Exploring the Wild West... through books

It seems I’ve always been interested in the American West. As a child of about nine I bought a very tattered copy of Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1935) and was instantly intrigued by the life of making do in difficult situations, the resilience of those who pioneered the West, and their attachment to the land. Funnily enough I was never interested in America as an actual place to visit until recent years, during which I have met many Americans from California to New Jersey, Texas to Illinois. I suppose to me the West as a literary concept wasn’t a real country I was interested in visiting; it existed in my imagination and that was enough. It seems a fair conclusion considering the West of my imagination, of the late 19^th century, probably no longer exists, but I do wonder whether this separation of ‘the country in my head’ and ‘the country as it is’ goes further than this, as I’ve read many books centring around India (The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy; A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth) without actually wanting to travel there. I now have been there, however, and can feel the life and colour of India through writing about it much more effectively. What I’m really saying, I suppose, is that to enjoy books about different places, times, cultures, you do not actually have to have been there.

I enjoyed the Little House books for many years – and probably would still do so now if they weren’t in a box somewhere in the attic with many of my other favourites from childhood (Enid Blyton, What Katy Did etc). While at secondary school I found a book in the library: These Is My Words (Nancy Turner, 1999) which I read several times. It is now one of my favourite books and, I feel, shockingly overlooked. I now have my own copy, and I have lent it to perhaps six or seven different people, all of whom were completely captured by the spirit and passion of the story. It is the diary of a young girl – Sarah Agnes Prine – whose family have been living in the West since she can remember. Her father decides to move back East but on the way misfortune strikes. To say much more would to be giving away the story, but I think what makes it for me are the two main characters – Sarah and the man who appears in her life over and over again, Captain Jack. Sarah is an incredibly resilient, strong and humorous woman and I think there is something about her that I want to be. Captain Jack is one of the most compelling male characters I’ve ever read; discussing the book with a friend we decided a film should be made of this book starring Hugh Jackman as the Captain! Apparently there are sequels to this book, although I am still trying to get hold of copies.

The latest of my adventures in the West has been quite different. Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) is the second book she wrote, and the first where she felt ‘This was the first time I walked off on my own feet – everything before was half real and half an imitation of writers whom I admired.’ It is the first book by her which I have read, and despite my initial uncertainty it completely drew me in. It centres around a Swedish family living in the West and struggling to make the land pay. As the story opens we are shown Alexandra, the eldest of four, being left the responsibility of the farm by her dying father who has ‘spent his first five years on the Divide getting into debt, and the last six getting out’. The novel makes several skips of time, focussing eventually on a time twenty years later when Alexandra has made the farm prosperous and her youngest brother, Emil, is deciding how to make his way in the world. Alexandra, like Sarah Prine, is resilient and strong, but she does not have Sarah’s spark of brilliance and fire. This does not make her any less likeable; her deep attachment to the land and the steadiness of her character and opinions also make us sympathetic. Like many stories centring around life in the West, the book is marked with tragedy but also with hope. The prose itself is sparkling and expressive; Cather is definitely on my ‘to read more of’ list.

Poetry in a foreign language...

It's been an incredibly long time since my last post; I imagine this is because the more you leave such things, the greater the task of returning to it feels. In any case, a lot has happened since my post on Cold Comfort Farm, Bright Star and various other things. I am now back in the UK, my 'year' abroad in Tours finished and my year abroad project written (it was about the roles of women on three chateaux in the area around Tours if you are particularly interested!). Although I've got used to it again I do miss France and speaking French. I hope to go back at some point in August, though.

In a weeks' time I start something called the Student Associate Scheme; a project to encourage students in Higher Education to take up teaching, specifically in 'shortage' subjects (maths, science and modern foreign languages). I'll therefore be spending three weeks as a classroom assistant, learning about the British secondary school system from the opposite perspective. Should be interesting! It will be especially intruiging for me to compare teaching English in France to teaching French in England.

One thing I tried once or twice while an 'assistante' was to use poetry. We are fortunate to have such a broad and beautiful range of poetry in our language, and it would be a shame for my students to have missed out on it. I used a few different ones - 'little tree' by e.e.cummings at Christmas and 'i carry your heart with me', also by cummings - amongst them, and got some really positive responses ranging from poetical analysis to emotional response. I was expecting to give a Shakespeare lesson to one particularly bright class but it sadly didn't happen; I was planning to look at a sonnet or two. I did one exercise a few times with a couple of different classes, using Jenny Joseph's famous 'Warning':

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.


I didn't give it to my students like this, though; I gave it to them in pairs on a piece of paper, with some words blanked out. For example:
'When I am an old woman I shall wear ______
With a red _____ which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me'
I asked them to fill in the gap with words they felt were appropriate to make their own poem. I supplied some words if they asked - 'spit', 'brandy', 'beermats' - but in general the vocabulary isn't too demanding. At first it took a while for some students to understand what I was asking. They whispered with panicked faces, "But Madame... we don't know the words, we will be wrong!". I tried to explain that they should use their imaginations; there is no wrong answer as long as the poem makes sense. After a few false starts almost everyone finished and we read them aloud.

I wish I'd kept some copies because some of them were truly hilarious, updating the 1961 poem with a real 21st century feel. I seem to remember hearing things like:
'When I am an old woman I shall wear a leather skirt
With a red g-string which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me'
and:
'And eat only hamburgers and fries for a week
And hoard money and drugs and alcohol'
Even the students agreed that their versions were better than the original!

------

In other news, I've been reading a lot more blogs in the past year. Five of the best are without a doubt:
http://www.cakewrecks.com/
http://1000awesomethings.com/
http://www.trufflegirls.com/
http://bookshelfporn.com/
http://thxthxthx.com/

Some of my favourite blogs are the ones my friends write; from spiritual reflection to journalism they remind me what wonderful, interesting and talented people I know. I feel like I would like to make this blog more interesting and accessible; perhaps the answer is to write shorter but more regular blogs on random literature-related things. We'll see how that goes...!