Thar She blows!!!!

Simone de Beauvoir is officially depressing me now. Whatever happened to the intellectually curious and sociable young woman of her younger books? The attitude that prevails in the last quarter of Force of Circumstance is that of a jaded appetite for life and a constant bewailing of the descent into the tomb. And she's only in her fifties.....not significantly older than myself. I guess she must have burned herself out. I am forcing myself to complete it, but am finding her gloomy introspection having a negative effect on me and can't wait to get it over and done with. I might have to go and reread some of her earlier stuff, when she was at the Sorbonne and started to knock around with J-PS in the Flore cafe to jolly myself up! Having said all that, her reflections on life often hit the mark: perhaps that's why I'm finding it such hard going - she's relating the unpalatable truth about ageing and loss of vitality. I sha'n't lend it to my mother, who dwells quite a lot on the implications of loss, old age and death.
It occurred to me that I am woefully under-read when it comes to classic novels, so in a futile and belated attempt to remedy this shortcoming I've bought Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Shallowly enough, I was prompted to do this by the recent rescreening of an episode of my favourite cartoon series Futurama, The Day the Earth Stood Stupid, where the earth is invaded by giant disembodied brains which attempt to wipe out all thought processes in the universe. It's too complicated to relate in detail, but a battle ensues where the plots of classic novels are employed to trap, in turn, the Chief Giant Brain and the unfortunate Fry and Leela. The Chief Giant Brain utilises the plot of Moby Dick, crowing triumphantly 'You shall remain trapped forever in this dense symbolist tome!' They don't, because Captain Ahab (who identifies the chief GB as 'the great grey thinky whale') and Queeqeg and (don't ask) Tom Sawyer help them to escape into the plot of Pride and Prejudice (again, don't ask!). Soon after, in desperation Fry writes his own appallingly spelt novel whose lack of logic causes the Chief GB to have a mental breakdown and 'leave earth for no good raisin'. Hilarious stuff.
Anyway, I invested in a 'Wordsworth Classic' version whose merits I have sung before (cheap, and with an excellent introduction and notes). Complementary to this, I also picked up Leviathan, or The Whale by Philip Hoare which is shortlisted for the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. This should add vital background.

I was a young but ardent whale conservationist in the seventies, for many years sporting the ubiquitous 'Save the Whale' badge on a succession of shoulder bags (it didn't get any less theoretical than that, I'm afraid), and I was quite transfixed by a recent visit to the whale exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. So I shall enjoy a voyage of the imagination onto the high seas: and doesn't it have one of the most thrilling opening lines of any novel? I don't know quite why, but 'Call me Ishmael...' sends a thrill of anticipation and excitement down my spine.....

I'll Be Damned...

I rather like the wall of black Penguin Classics in my local Borders book shop. They look....well....pretty serious and intriguing. I think Borders has a Bit of a Problem knowing what to do with 'the classics', be it either of the Aristotelian or the Brontean sort. They started off a few years ago with a pretty good collection of Greek and Roman stuff (better than Waterstones, which doesn't even have a Classics section), including a few Loebs (drool, drool), general histories and Classical texts (but only major authors) in translation, all arranged in broadly alphabetical order. It seemed to work quite well. 'Classic' authors like Tolstoy and Hardy could be found slotted into the fiction section where alphabetically appropriate. That seemed to work quite well too. Over the past few years there has obviously been a rethink and subsequent revamp, and all the works by 'classic authors' (be they 4thcentury BC or 19th century AD) were lumped together, the Oxford Classics translations cheek by jowl with the Wordsworth Classics (very cheap and not to be underrated- my Aeneid was more faithful to the Latin than quite a few others I could name!), the stark black Penguin Classics and the lurid lime green bargain classics (which i can't bring myself to look at). This motley assembly obviously offended whoever is in charge of the shelf displays, and more recently the books have been divided by publishing houses. The Oxford Classics now present a wall of white, with red tips (a bit bland); the Wordsworths - a wall of blue, with cute little cameo pictures on the spine; the lime green monsters just look hideous, but the Penguin Classics look sombre and studious and rather lovely. I like riffling through them for unknown (to me) gems, and it was this approach that led me to find and buy Huysmans' 'Against Nature' which I absolutely loved, enjoying every rich and bejewelled sentence. Last Friday, my duties discharged for the week, I took a copy of 'The Damned' up to the in-house Starbucks with the intention of leafing through it over a cup of de-caf Americano. But, as luck would have it WHO was sitting across the room from me but a priest acquaintance, who waved at me cheerily. Thinking that 'The Damned' was probably on the Index of Banned Books, and not wishing to give offence, I turned it over and covered it surreptiously with my copy of the Independent. So I did not get a chance to skim through it as I had wished.

I returned a few days later, however, and bought it, as the half-term holidays were coming up and I have the rare chance to read first thing in the morning for a week. I hope it will be as intriguing as 'Against Nature' - I've read a few online reviews and many of the people who 'get' Huysmans' writing (and there are many who complain that 'Nothing Happens' - well, duh!), rate it just as highly, and some even more so. He was such an encyclopaedically knowledgable writer. His discourses on the various topics within his books are fascinating lectures in their own right: I loved the chapter on the decay of Latin literature and envy his breadth of learning. Only this morning I read a wonderful description of the Grunewald Crucifixion.

Incidentally, whilst walking out of the book shop, who should I see walking in but my priest-acquaintance, who again waved cheerily at me. Fortunately I had my purchase secreted deep in my bag.