Like Chalk on a Blackboard



Two-Dozen Avocados Not Pictured
(SP top of picture)

 After Bonjour Tristesse, I've just whistled through The Bell Jar for the fourth time. I started reading SP poems some years ago and this being noted by someone at work I was pointed at The Bell Jar as being a very funny book and despite the clipped literary tones and serious events it is indeed hilarious in parts. I'm not sure I'd read it for a laugh as for the more melancholy reader it might cut close to the darker synapses of the brain with which the book has an almost-physical link because of the ECT. You might want to dismiss the whole thing as a middle-class girl's experience of mental illness - nice asylum paid for by rich benefactress - but as Esther herself states early on she does not have the experience to write a novel and so this book is basically autobiographical and I can only imagine it pretty-much describes exactly what happened.

I'd read a couple of the SP biographies before The Bell Jar and to me it seemed like a distillation of the fragments I'd already picked up. It seemed that all that was missing were the footnotes pointing the pseudonyms at the real people. So ignore the Bourgeois backdrop and concentrate on the description of Ether/Sylvia's predicament and the brilliantly-succinct way that a complex state of mind is described in a way that keeps you reading despite the over-whelming sense of ennui about the whole thing. If you are expecting obscure poetic references you will be disappointed - this is basic description born maybe of the detailed descriptions of peeling hotel rooms from the journals, a brilliant mind sharply dissecting both itself and the hypocrisy of others, all the while pointing out without judgement,  the hypocrisy of the narrator herself. There is a lot of what she ought to have said but didn't, times where she just shrugged and accepted the terrible behaviour of those around her. You can find a parallel here between the bright and breezy style of the Letters Home and the dark mazes of The Journals. You might not come away from this understanding any more of Plath's mind but you will feel that you have read a great book masquerading as Airport Fiction - A potboiler as Plath herself described it.

I know that there is a second film version of this in development at the moment. I am not hopeful that this will be any better than the 1979 version which resulted in legal actions and apparently managed to filter out any literary merit leaving the pulpiest of pulp-fiction on the screen.

Edsger W. Dijkstra Was Wrong

Goto Considered a Very Nice Man

Well that was a very short book! I bought Bonjour Tristesse years ago and I've only just got around to reading it. There isn't much to it in terms of plot until near the end but it all sort of makes sense in an inconsequential way. It reads a bit like The Stranger in style - the same dream-like desultory narrative - but a Bourgeois version (for all its outward profession of being Bohemian and anti-normal). The only really likeable person doesn't actually make it to the end and in not doing so returns Cecile and her father to their strange hedonistic lifestyle. It remind me of a less-manic version of Wuthering Heights - strange family happy in their own way have this contentment disturbed by misfit outsiders - violence and dislike ensues - someone dies and everything returns to normal. I think. It is brilliantly written - structured nicely but ultimately none of the potential directions that spatter the story would give any sense of feeling for the characters. Cecile may have been played by Jean Seberg in the film but not even that image can keep from thinking of her as much more than a spoiled brat. Read for the language rather than the story is all I say.

On Completion

The Leaky Cauldron Yesterday

Well we had to do this twice because the thing glitched and left us unable to get the last character with 0.1% to go to completion. Well take that Mr. Lego - 100%. This is the first time I've ever completed a full video game - I am not sure whether the campaign where I was a German Fighter Pilot actually counted as although I got to the end, history does indicate that the ultimate outcome was not good for The Luftwaffe. Anyway - I've hung up the wand now.

Admiral Ackbar, General Bomgar and Field Marshal Tantawi ....

.... walked into a bar.


Of Course it Was a Trap

Where today? Well Semi Finals of Only Connect have ramped up the obscurity to a level that University Challenge can only dream of - lightweights. Vanessa Bell apparently looks nothing like Virginia Woolf. Youngest is still desperate to get one right in OC - it is only a matter of time.

Work involves cross-domain authentication and is not working meaning a re-examination of the options - not many of them to be honest but let's at least fail on the side of not letting anyone in rather than everyone. Our apps would be much better off without having to let people actually use them anyway.

Leisure time consists of approaching the end of Peripheral Vision with an ever-increasing pulse determined not to be surprised by anything which comes out of this Chick-Lit with emphasis on the Lit. Anything can happen in the next half hour and going on what already has probably will.

Och A Vay

On The MetaVentriloqal

The Garden of Arthur "Two Hens" Jackson Yesterday

My mind is full of V. Poor jokes after watching Tim Vine's DVD The Punslinger yesterday, a disk with a very cool picture of the man himself on the front. As usual for TV's stuff - 2 minutes in and you wonder whether you'll be able to take such an awful parade of punning. 10 minutes in and it's drawn you down like a whirlpool with its never-ending stream of jokerage. And then you get hit by the genius of the Ventriloqusim section. I will not explain - just suffer a bit of google-tubing and find it for yourself - you will not be disappointed. One complaint from certain sections of the family is that the extras on this DVD are not as wonderful as such things as "Parade of Sport" or "Video Diary" but said Ventriloquism will more than make up for this.

Kindling

Doorplate at Snowshill Manor

Back off dead-tree books and on the Kindle for Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson. This was one of the choices in A Good Read a few weeks back and I think I've already mentioned it as being in the queue/Stack/Floating-point Register before but now I've actually started it. It is strangely without dialogue which seems to match with its other worldliness quite well. It has many reasons to read on as well as being generally well-written with the promise of plenty of revelations to come. I remember that the reviewers on AGR did agree that it did not need the resolution that actually came along which may reflect the general post-structuralist desire to get away from neat and satisfying parcels of literature but does sometime make for an annoying lack of closure. Head says go with the flow of real life - heart says let them all live happily ever after but let's wait for the end of this one to decide.

PS. Later - Wouldn't you know it - The Graun has a piece on unresolved fiction this very day.

It looks like Christmas Day may well be marred in the deWeyden Household in that it seems that there will be no Schott's Almanac for 2012 and worse, no QI Annual either. I think I read something from Mr Schott himself about the lack of Almanac but there is nothing about the QI Annual and I am worried that they have gone for the Board Game instead which just seems a cop-out. Maybe they are just saving it up to go for concentrated sales.

What is coming out and what will not wait for Yule unwrapping is this - oh and also this, so a certain amount of pre-Christmas happiness will be had. I'll just have to hope that there is plenty of Lego to keep me occupied on the day itself.

My God it's Full of Xs!



A Fiendish Thingy Yesterday

Daughter had a friend for tea yesterday and during the standard "What did you do at school yesterday?" interrogation around the table she replied that she learnt something that she must "add to her algebra poster" which had us all boggling. I wouldn't be surprised if our youngest starts on the same thing as maths is his favourite subject and he has already come out with some instant replies to his sisters homework, which is slightly worrying. I wish I'd got that excited by maths when I was at school. Algebra has only recently become cool and only then amongst a certain group of kids who delight in the name and the business of geeks (they are not nerds - they ARE geeks as I keep getting told). It is only a pity that there isn't some sort of work they could be doing for national security between the manga obsessions and the music lessons.

Voldemort is the ... shhhh .... Bishop of London

Not You Know Who

Nice to see the rehabilitation of Harry Potter's Nemesis in Rev last night though daughter had trouble getting used to his new nose. And what with all the activity around St Paul's it is somewhat apt though could he have been more wet? Not like the real one I'm sure. So with two Episodes of The Big Bang Theory and then Rev we have  both Science and Religion covered in one evening. What no Politics?

Growth! What is it Good For?

I'm not really sure that anyone is qualified to pronounce on the current apparent crisis. I certainly am not and what I suspect about this is that as usual eventually for all of us will settle down to the standard situation - us in the west relatively well off and the rest of the world either mired in a swamp of fear and loathing or scrabbling to drag themselves up to the crowded pinnacle of Liberal Capitalism. For however much the admirers of Mrs T. and Mr R. say that the woolly hippies of the broadcast media and the statist minions have destroyed what made this country great, the gradual drift to a more caring and tolerant society cannot be reversed. I hear mutters of "believe that you'll believe anything".

I have a problem with growth which I suppose is the way that uber-capitalists - the receivers of bonuses beyond the dreams of any Biblical characters - justify their existence and their nasty ways and means. Of course here in this Shangri-la, on the whole we should be thankful that we don't have to walk miles for water or go hungry for more days than we don't. What follows is only a feeling and you would catch me out if you asked for evidence but I do wonder whether we would better off without struggling for growth for a bit. Some will say that human advances are the result of growth which provides cash and facilities for investigation and forward-thinking but in times of crisis maybe we should stop the mad paddling for a while and look at picking up those who fall in the wake of such messes. And then ensure that we remember what brought us so low in the first place.

I;m also not sure whether Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature has any of this in it and I'm reluctant to buy it at the moment after failing to get through the drier bits of a previous book by the man but a discussion between Pinker and a strange, woolly philosopher - Anthony O'Hear - on Thinking Allowed last week was intriguing and did suggest some of the above.

Anyway I have to end here after starting a long and tedious rant about advertising and the X-Factor which shows me up as the shallow, wannabe elitist that I really am.

... and I Feel Fine

Beekeeping Paraphenalia at the Natural History Museum - Oxford

Listening to Drumming by Steve Reich.

Some books finished and on the go - selection follows.

Second Volume of Michael Palin's Diaries completed at second attempt - much is interesting though I always get the feeling that they have been edited far away from what they look like on the raw, white page of the original notebooks. Just started Tickling the English by Dara O Briain which is such an easy read that I'm tempted to jettison it as too easy even for a palette-cleanser. To read in future is the Kindle Edition of Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson which was one of the books on A Good Read last week and was made to sound intriguing - at 288 Earth Pennies what is to be lost?



Musical Instruments at Snowshill Manor

 I was pleasantly surprised to discover that flashless photography is now allowed at Snowshill Manor where previously it was by appointment only. The house is somewhat dark and meant that only certain pictures came out as I'd not brought a tripod - must remember for next time. The boy seems to have lost his clock obsession which has heavily indulged when he was carried around last time we visited. He seemed more interested in the fact that you could see the lower storeys through the holes in the floors of the upper ones.

Dad Rocks

A Rock Yesterday

Please give a big welcome to the Information Superhighway to my dad who finally got connected last week and with any luck will be reading this in between various birding websites - stop sniggering you lot at the back. As you can see last week was spent in the deep south just down the road from that Nice Alex James' Cheese Farm in the sunny Cotswolds. We did indeed try some Blue Monday which being a cross between a great Stilton and a super-soft Brie was heaven to this reviewer though I do of course have to avoid any dairy products for a month to get back to a safe level of lipid intake.  Other places visited include Oxford (Bikes everywhere) for the Pitt Rivers Museum, Avebury for the hippy vibes and lots of pictures of stones and the Cotswold Wildlife Park for the cute and fluffy stuff like this - all together now - awwwwwww ...

Dotty - or maybe not

.. which is an opportunity to relate the Lemur story from Bristol Zoo ... oh - you've heard it.