Books are, to me, the last link with the beautiful in England...the
margins of the page are browned and there's room to read. The sober
blank verse is widely spaced and...easy to the eye because it's so
spaciously arranged on the page.The whole book is as delicately
proportioned as a Greek temple.
----J.B.
God needs the hermit in the forest as much as he does the preacher in the pulpit.
---Denis Johnson, Train Dreams.
Peak-effect. The last few pages certainly gave it a kick but on the whole: didn't do it for me. And the main reason is that the content demanded a different form: more detail, more pottering about, more everything; instead, what we got was a short story, a few moments of someone's life plucked out of the stream. You wanted to see a life, vast and quiet as the surroundings, an epic unfolding itself down through many various paths. touching on wider events in the world...the history of America itself, maybe.
Lesley Chamberlain's got a new book out; was chuffed to be invited to the book launch but I fear I'll be like Rita fretting over what to say at Michael Cain's dinner party, so maybe not. Can't wait for her book on Van Gogh, though.
The posthumous Keats, or whatever it's called, is an incredible bore-so far. But I guess I'll persevere since it might link up with John Gray's fascinating Immortality book and Scheffler's question:
Say you live for a normal lifespan but that you now know that thirty days after your death the whole of human life will come to an end. What difference-if any-will that make to you in terms of your attitudes, feelings, actions?
A rather morbid and abstract thought experiment but one that leads to some interesting reflections.
----J.B.
God needs the hermit in the forest as much as he does the preacher in the pulpit.
---Denis Johnson, Train Dreams.
Peak-effect. The last few pages certainly gave it a kick but on the whole: didn't do it for me. And the main reason is that the content demanded a different form: more detail, more pottering about, more everything; instead, what we got was a short story, a few moments of someone's life plucked out of the stream. You wanted to see a life, vast and quiet as the surroundings, an epic unfolding itself down through many various paths. touching on wider events in the world...the history of America itself, maybe.
Lesley Chamberlain's got a new book out; was chuffed to be invited to the book launch but I fear I'll be like Rita fretting over what to say at Michael Cain's dinner party, so maybe not. Can't wait for her book on Van Gogh, though.
The posthumous Keats, or whatever it's called, is an incredible bore-so far. But I guess I'll persevere since it might link up with John Gray's fascinating Immortality book and Scheffler's question:
Say you live for a normal lifespan but that you now know that thirty days after your death the whole of human life will come to an end. What difference-if any-will that make to you in terms of your attitudes, feelings, actions?
A rather morbid and abstract thought experiment but one that leads to some interesting reflections.
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