‘The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer.’
I once attempted to explain to my screen-addicted son James, then 14, the heady joy of sme‘The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer.’
I once attempted to explain to my screen-addicted son James, then 14, the heady joy of smelling an old book, in this case a 1939 hardback edition of Norman Douglas’s South Wind, printed on beautiful paper in the United States. James looked at me askance, a look with which I am all too familiar.
The passage of time does strange things. The ordinary everyday becomes just a memory: for example, the lending library in a second-hand bookshop. The essential can become passé: reading a book when you could be glued to a screen (I do know I am writing this on a screen). Two things stand out for me with this wonderful George Orwell story, apart from his beautiful writing, firstly, it’s a striking snapshot of a very particular time and place and secondly it illustrates the difference between romance and reality. Customers regularly make inquiries of this type: ‘Do you have Mill on the Floss by TS Eliot?’ Sigh.
Orwell’s bookshop of the mid-1930s might have been frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors, but is replete with old lady customers of vague request, moth-eaten men who may or may not smell of bread crusts, and lunatics, paranoiacs in particular. Orwell acknowledges the difference between the books people buy and the ones they borrow from the lending library; the latter reflecting their actual taste rather than what they think they should be reading.
I really like this glimpse of Orwell’s society at the time, especially with his satirical touch. I have a vivid picture of the colourful habitués, the cold and dust of the establishment, and the perils of losing your love for something when the commercial reality of trade overwhelms the romance of the individual tome....more
A short story does not have to be long, and this one is not, a mere five pages.
Without giving away the twist, the tale starts off one way and ends upA short story does not have to be long, and this one is not, a mere five pages.
Without giving away the twist, the tale starts off one way and ends up going the other, in vintage Saki style, as the greedy protagonists seek to extract treasure from a long sunken galleon.
But what is treasure? One thing to someone and something else to another. And what is more important when all is said and done, stuff that glitters or the good name of the family?
Consistently intriguing. With many questions. The following contains details which allude to the plot.
What has happened to the world? Or just the peopConsistently intriguing. With many questions. The following contains details which allude to the plot.
What has happened to the world? Or just the people? If all the people are gone save a few, why do the fish and birds remain? And importantly why is ‘The Other’ always so well dressed, when Piranesi mostly goes barefoot and wears faded rags which used to be coloured jumpers? Piranesi meets ‘The Other’ at one of their regular scheduled meetings:
He was standing by the empty plinth. He wore a suit of dark brown wool and a shirt of dark olive. His gleaming shoes were a chestnut colour. (p142)
What are the halls? Who built them? Why were they built? Why are they full of statues? What happened at Manchester University in the eighties? What has happened to Piranesi’s lost journals?
The answers to just about all of these questions are revealed in due course as the story unfolds or perhaps unravels, in good way, as Piranesi meets a rare visitor and his perception changes as he learns from each encounter and his own introspection.
It is perhaps a pity that Susanna Clarke has given us only the two novels, her much lauded first, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, published in 2005, and now this one nearly two decades later, as well as some shorter works. However, given her tremendous battle with long-term debilitating illness, rendering her exhausted for much of the time, it is wonderful that she has produced this story at all.
She has created a richly imaginative world and a striking central character of goodness and heart, a journal keeper at the end of the world. Piranesi’s circumstances raise some interesting questions about reality and the state of the mind. (view spoiler)[Initially we are convinced that Piranesi lives in a remnant place where he may be one of two, perhaps three people still alive. He lives by his wits and the bounty of the semi-flooded world and its fish, mindful of the turbulence of the sea and its tides. But there are other people, a few at least, who serve to change his thinking, even if he is ambivalent about the intentions of possible visitors. It does seem that there is a big world after all and Piranesi has, or had, a life in it. But does he want to return to it? Is he in fact delusional and is his watery world imagined? Ultimately, it does not matter, as he achieves a reconciliation, or at least an accommodation in his life. (hide spoiler)].
Quite the most interesting story I have read so far this year....more
In 1985 I was fortunate enough to see Felicity Kendal on stage with Paul Eddington in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers (‘there’s a corpse in the cuIn 1985 I was fortunate enough to see Felicity Kendal on stage with Paul Eddington in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers (‘there’s a corpse in the cupboard!’) at the Aldwych Theatre in London. It was a wonderful production and the leads were as entrancing as one would wish.
So, selfishly perhaps, my interest in this biography of Tom Stoppard is his relationship with said Felicity Kendal, because (a) it was significant professionally and personally and (b) Kendal omitted any reference to it in her excellent and otherwise forthcoming autobiography White Cargo: A Memoir, which I enjoyed, especially her peripatetic childhood in India as the youngest member of father Geoffrey Kendal’s theatrical troupe, celebrated in Shakespeare Wallah.
Kendal first met Stoppard in 1981. He subsequently cast her in his adaptation of a German play On the Razzle, (1981) as a boy; Annie in The Real Thing (1982); the aforementioned Jumpers, as Dotty; and Hapgood (1988) in the title role. Their personal relationship spanned the years 1989 to 1997, give or take, during which she was Stoppard’s ‘leading lady on and off the stage.’ (p248):
Not only did she fulfil the roles he created for women but she began to shape them. Her influence as a possible muse was exceeded only by her influence on the kind of woman Stoppard created in his plays, including Flora Crewe in In the Native State, the 1991 radio play dedicated to Kendal. Hannah Jarvis in Arcadia is perhaps the quintessential Kendal role: energetic, inquisitive, strong and possessed of The Good Life vibrant celebration of nature. (p319)
Kendal was also cast as Flora Crewe in In Indian Ink, the expanded version of In the Native State, about an English poet who visits India in 1930.
We don’t learn much about Stoppard and Kendal’s life together, which is, I suppose, fair enough, it’s their business. We do learn that their association began professionally in 1981 and spanned nearly two decades until Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekov’s The Seagull in 1997. Their personal interregnum was shorter and as they say, they maintained separate residences. At one stage Ira Nadel has to content himself with a detailed real estate discussion of their various separate abodes during the years 1993 to 1997. One is nevertheless glad their lives intersected, and admiring of their pledge never to talk about each other.
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Stoppard has been a playwright for half a century, but he has also done some scintillating film scripting, including two favourites: Empire of the Sun and Shakespeare in Love, for which he won the Academy Award. Both films contain exemplary characterisation. He also helped along the way with Schindler’s List and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It is said Stephen Spielberg sent him a bonus after the latter became a substantial success, of one million dollars. (p359)
This is not unprecedented: Alec Guinness received from Spielberg associate George Lucas, an extra quarter percent, making two and a quarter percent all up of the director’s royalties for Star Wars. The reported amount Guinness ultimately received varies, but is generally thought to be in excess of 50 million pounds, well and truly more than he received for the rest of his films put together....more
Reading Roger Lewis’s Introduction to his biography of Peter Sellers is disheartening.
The author condemns his subject as a vain, selfish man, devoid oReading Roger Lewis’s Introduction to his biography of Peter Sellers is disheartening.
The author condemns his subject as a vain, selfish man, devoid of a personality of his own, mean-spirited, always blaming others but never himself, shallow, prone to brief and expensive obsessions, cars and cameras in particular, uncomfortably close to his mother and generally a lousy human being.
All of this may be true, to a greater or lesser extent. This exhaustive and exhausting biography takes this line remorselessly throughout, but I wondered how it was that a man so apparently dislikeable could entertain me and countless adoring fans from the time of The Goons through to Being There, via The Ladykillers, Dr Strangelove and the Pink Panther Films. The only time I have fallen off a seat laughing in the cinema is watching Sellers in The Return of the Pink Panther, in the scene where Kato jumps out at him from the fridge.
There must be more to him than Roger Lewis makes out, I thought. Well, apparently there is not.
I grew up with The Goons, they were re-broadcast on the ABC for years after they actually finished. I loved the inspired anarchy and absurdity of the show and the way the three principals, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Sellers combined to tell their boisterous stories. They were clearly having the time of their lives. To remind myself what they were like, I listened just now to African Incident, originally broadcast in 1957, a lampoon of The Bridge on the River Kwai, where Sellers does an uncanny Alec Guinness as well as his usual voices. It is still fantastic six decades later. Sellers maintained this was the happiest period of his working life, but it still didn’t stop him from eventually disparaging Milligan. They were not so much soulmates as moved by a similar spirit, but Milligan rather more maturely.
The Return of the Pink Panther and the sequels (the ones he was still alive for) showed signs of the old magic and Sellers gift for accents remained unimpaired, but the tiredness is beginning to show. He did make me laugh though.
***
For a brief time in the nineties I had the good fortune to be friends with Mike Sellers, Peter’s nephew, who lived in Australia. We met playing tennis against each other. Our teams (two boys and two girls each) got on very well socially, so well in fact that our Annie and their Mike fell in love. So sadly, both were killed in July 1998, when the seaplane they were travelling in with family members crashed into a headland on the Hawkesbury River after engine failure. For the record Mike was affable, generous company and quite funny....more
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