stone diaries

You know, just for a moment (well, nearly two hours) I forgot everything. Sitting in a comfy leather chair, sampling books in Foyles, the familiar 'exalted silence' of the book. Stealing time like this makes you feel a bit guilty later...but only later. The secret contract between world and word? I think not.

Wise Blood, Stone Diaries, Wildwood. Glanced through Primo Levi's Periodic Table (which I'd love to re-read; noted his Quiet Star, which I hadn't heard of; searched for Penelope Fitzgerald's Human Voices, checked out Edgelands, Robert McFarlane's Wild Places and Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, one of those slightly eccentric, rambling books that you think of saving for the desert island (along with Rebecca West, of course). Too tired to concentrate now though and the words wash over you.

At Dillons, the slightly disconcerting feeling that there are too many books in the world. Like some sort of nineteenth century nervous temperament or condition. You catch yourself (who said that? Ginsberg?). You sit on the chair trying to read some Raban; a very attractive woman with tight blue denim shorts stands next to you. Not good. It is Ramadan after all. By now my head is full of words and fragments of lines and names and my stomach quite empty; must get some Carver. You read his introduction: always return to life. Yes!

Through the usual parks-which are a different world in summer, the little squares just off Bloomsbury like oases of bourgeois peace and gentle excess. They lived in squares and loved in triangles. A man in a freshly starched pink shirt sits cross-legged, meditating, as two women take their sandals off and tip-toe towards the lazy, gurgling fountain. Past Sicilian Avenue, a little slice of Europe in the heart of the city. Simon, outside Wright's Bar, not happy about Strauss and the cricket. But India lost so we're both okay. Suspect he's like me, happier when we lose...then there's something to look forward to.

Fascinating piece by Raban on 9/11. Link up with Mailer (NYRB) and Hell-fire Nation (LRB).

Then this. Reads like a Kashmiri manifesto!

Raban on P. Fitzgerald:

'the stuff of ordinary civilized conversation'

'She works every inch of her canvas. Her minor characters are as fully realized as her major ones. She is a novelist who watches over the fall of each sparrow...always reminding the reader of the ability of her characters to pursue independent lives behind the scenes, and their offstage activities are as important as those that are performed in public view.'

'The point of view of an amused, highly intelligent, and supremely charitable god.'