The Guardian's Blog, page 158

Lingerie, literature's little-seen layer

Underwear provides some useful underwiring in a surprising number of stories, though only rarely for men

In a news story that sounds like an April fool, it's being reported that researchers at Microsoft are working on a mood-sensing bra. But booklovers know you don't need technology to read character from underwear. Remember Mantel's Wolf Hall, where Cardinal Wolsey tells Thomas Cromwell, "Try always … to learn what people wear under their clothes". Stylist magazine recently created a list of 20 works of literature featuring lingerie: but there are many more authors who use underwear to express emotions – disappointment, titillation and a protest against repression.

Nick Hornby's Rob lays it out very clearly in High Fidelity: "Women's knickers were a terrible disappointment to me when I embarked on my co-habiting career. I never really recovered from the shock of discovering that women do what we do: they save their best pairs for the nights when they know they are going to sleep with somebody. When you live with a woman, these faded, shrunken tatty M&S scraps suddenly appear on radiators all over the house." (This must surely be the only paragraph from a novel to have inspired a US TV advert for Diet Coke.)

Another disappointment for men of Rob's kind of age: they have a complete conviction that in E Nesbit's The Railway Children, the girls Bobby and Phyllis take off their bloomers and wave them at the train to save it from disaster. But the truth is that in the book, as with Jenny Agutter and Sally Thomsett in that film, it is their red flannel petticoats they use. Sorry.

In Sylvia Townsend Warner's wonderful book Lolly Willowes, the heroine compliments her sister-in-law on how neatly she has arranged her underwear. The reply is conversation-stopping: "the grave-clothes were folded in the tomb [of Jesus]". It's not an exchange you could imagine Bridget Jones having – she's famous for the big pants – but in Helen Fielding's new book, Mad About the Boy, is helpfully told by a friend that short silk slips are the older woman's best friend in her new sexlife.

In Margaret Drabble's A Summer Birdcage, a character gets married wearing a dirty bra, a proceeding that shocked young female readers of the day (1963) witless, in a way that novelistic divorce, sex before marriage and affairs never could.

You wouldn't accuse of Dorothy L Sayers of going for titillation, but in her 1935 Gaudy Night she comes up with the very unlikely idea that female Oxford undergraduates sunbathe in the quad in their underwear, "a brassiere and a pair of drawers", and that this rather shocks the male dons – the male students are "used to it". It sounds flat out impossible in 2013, never mind the 1930s.

There's never much mention of male underwear in literature, although the hideous Lady Montdore in Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate tells a young engaged woman: "don't go wasting your money on underclothes … I always borrow [her husband] Montdore's myself". In Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, the king of cool, the Humphrey Bogart of the PI world, gets dressed to fight crime and avenge his partner's death – and puts on a union suit. That is, combinations, same as the little girl Scout wears in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Fossil sisters in Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes. Oh dear oh dear, not what we were expecting.

The union suit (though the exact phrase is not used) was thought by Louisa M Alcott to be a freedom garment: she disapproved of corsets, and in her Eight Cousins the bold Dr Alec takes the corsets intended for his young ward and sticks them on the fire, to the horror of her female relations. Gwen Raverat, in the charming Period Piece, a memoir of her childhood in the 1890s, gives a full rundown of what a young woman would wear – eight items of underclothing, including stays and two sets of combinations.

Bras, much less restrictive, slowly took over. Aunt Augusta, in Graham Greene's Travels with my Aunt, remembers in her risqué youth one of her friends being murdered by a man who claimed to be a travelling salesman with a suitcase full of bras – "there was one shaped like two clutching black hands that greatly amused her" (the book was published in 1969 but is looking back 50-plus years). Velvet's mother in Enid Bagnold's very weird 1935 book National Velvet still has to be helped out of her stays and her "princess petticoat like a great cotton lily", but the implication is that her daughters won't be so restricted (though she does intriguingly say "don't get fat" to Velvet). A few years earlier in Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, Flora Poste's great friend Mary Smiling has a huge collection of bras ("it was hoped that on her death it would be left to the nation") and is constantly hunting for the perfect one.

JD Salinger's Holden Caulfield – always such a charmer – criticises a young woman in Catcher in the Rye for wearing "damn falsies that point all over the place", but this isn't something that comes up in books much, surprisingly. In Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (the book that preceded the TV series) there's a male character who wants to wear his wife's Merry Widow – an item of underwear named after the Lehar operetta, and consisting of a one-piece bra and bodice, with suspenders attached.

There's a lovely detail in a 1950s murder story by the now forgotten team of John and Emery Bonett: the heroine of No Grave for a Lady comes home from an evening's socialising, and "automatically she undid her two back suspenders to spare her nylons". You'd give good odds that the female half of the duo wrote that, something that millions of women would have identified with then, gone with the wind now. Margery Allingham's Albert Campion, asked (in the 1938 The Fashion in Shrouds) how his beautiful fiancée Amanda keeps her stockings up replies "Two magnets and a dry-battery, if I know her, or perhaps something complicated on the grid system" – because she, rather splendidly, is an engineer and much more practical than her future husband.

Amanda worked on aeroplane design rather than high-tech underwear. Apparently, the mood-bra researchers have tried to invent something similar for men, but the sensor was "too far from the heart to be effective". Of course they are being scientific and literal, but there's something about that phrase … Are there any heroes triggering emotions with their boxers, and which other memorable lingerie scenes are there?

FictionHelen FieldingWolf HallNick HornbyMargaret DrabbleDorothy L SayersJD SalingerHarper LeeMoira Redmond
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Why are garden books so boring?

The garden publishing industry is stagnating, but it's wrong to blame the internet, writes Lucy Masters

Once upon a time I used to work in a bookshop, and the gardening section there was really big and bustling - it was one of the most important areas in the shop. The other day I met an old friend who has gone back to work in the same shop and she said the gardening books now take up just a tiny little area behind one of the tills. First I was amazed, and then I wasn't. We both agreed: there just aren't that many interesting gardening books being published.

Garden publishing was brought to the fore at the recent Garden Media Guild Award knees up, as Dr Hessayon (of Garden Expert Book fame) made a rare appearance and a strong speech. He claimed:

"People don't have time for books when they're always on Google, Twitter or Facebook. The garden reference book market has declined because of the internet. In the future I'll offer people gardening advice but I won't write any more .... To write a bestseller now you need to choose something that you can't look up on Google."

Obviously he's not wrong. You can find everything online. However, it can't be the whole story because you can Google any recipe, and yet cookery books are not in decline. I think it goes back to the reality that gardening books are currently boring. It's a statement of fact and also a condemnation of garden publishing that Be Your Own Gardening Expert - which was first published in 1958, sold its 50 millionth copy in 2008 and is still a bestseller.

In fact, the different Garden Expert books still run throughout the bestseller list. However fantastic and classic they are, they are equally old-fashioned. The photos are extraordinarily ordinary and really is there no better, more up-to-date book than these? I look at cookery books and the photography is amazing, the layouts are appealing and interesting. Gardening books haven't moved on since the 1990s. Everything looks and sounds the same and has done for years. So you get - A Something Handbook, The Italian/English/Venetian/Garden, An Alamnac, Something Through the Seasons ...

The layouts are nothing new. I remember when Andy Sturgeon's book Planted came out in 1999. On the front cover it had a man's bald head with a terracotta plant pot and seedling balanced on top. It's was such a striking image. Everything about the photography in that book was refreshing, ground breaking! That was back in 1999 and nothing since has been
remotely as unusual as that. If gardening books had a personality themselves and not just a personality writing it - (and I consider here the RHS as a personality as they feature heavily in the book market and they are have a very traditional take on their books) then perhaps they would be more engaging. I think as things become more challenging in the gardening book market, commissioning editors fall back on safe bets. But that means we have a dull market and the idea of little margin of error means that you end up with a very narrow offering. Is there anything in falling off the beaten track?

Penguin do diverse things with their literature books. Unusual pamphlet-type series that have very attractive covers. It's clever, it's a different way of engaging the reading public. Perhaps this could be something for gardeners too? Slim, cheap volumes that are on hand to stuff into a pocket and carry into the garden. Areas at the back to make notes perhaps? Is this the answer? I don't know, I write here just to say that I think gardening is quite interesting and I don't see why we can't have books that are interesting too.

• Lucy Masters is a plant enthusiast who loves to garden. She founded the website wikigardening.com and has an intermittent blog, Sometimes Gardening.

GardensHouse and gardenLucy Masters
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5: Components of the soul in ancient Egypt

Today, our festive countdown – extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers – delves into mystical realms

The five components are: Ren, Ka, Ib, Ba and Sheut.

The simplest concept is Ren, which is literally your name: it lives for as long as you are remembered, or can be read about on inscriptions, or included in prayers for the ancestors and their achievements.
Ka is also easy enough to translate into modern idiom, for it is that vital essence that makes the difference between the living and the dead, between life and dead meat, between a warm body and cold clay.
Ib is literally the heart, formed from a single drop of clotted blood extracted from your mother's heart at the hour of your conception or birth. By heart, the Egyptians meant not just the organ for pumping blood around your body, but the seat of your soul, the good directing force in your life, searching after truth, peace and harmony.
Ba is that which makes each of us unique and different, that which makes us strive and achieve, the motivator but also the hungry elemental force that needs food and sex. In some form, your ba is destined to survive after death, often depicted or imagined as a human-headed bird, which with good fortune will go forth by day to enjoy the light, but might also end up existing only in the dark, like the bat or the ruin-haunting owl.
Sheut is your shadow, and by extension the other you, as well as being used to describe a statue, a model or a painting of a human.

Tomorrow: Six days of Genesis

Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile)

Reference and languagesEgyptologyBarnaby Rogerson
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Why do young readers prefer print to ebooks?

My generation is umbilically linked to their mobiles and laptops - so why are we so resistant to ebooks?

A recent survey has suggested that 62% of 16- to 24-year-olds prefer reading printed books to ebooks on an e-reading device.

The statistic is interesting to me, as it reflects the opinions of people in my own age group – and let's face it, we're as reliant on mobile phones and laptops as we are on oxygen and water.

Over half of those who preferred print said they "like to hold the product" that they are reading. It turns out (surprise, surprise) that you do actually have to hold an e-reader to use it, but to avoid becoming a pedant of phrasing: I do understand what this is really saying. We have a strong emotional attachment to the physical book, as demonstrated by the qualitative comments made by participants, such as "I like the smell" and "I want full bookshelves".

But surely the experiences which surround the experience of reading shouldn't be prioritised above … well, reading a book. I feel the need to challenge my own preference for printed books, because whenever I begin to think about why I think I enjoy them more than ebooks, I can't give a decent answer. If I can't support my own vague opinions that I like the sensation of reading a physical book with a concrete reason, how can I claim that they're superior? If ebooks contains the same content, aren't they basically the same thing?

What I find interesting is that we seem to dismiss the fact that printing is a technology with a long history of development. In his book 2001 book Paper Machine, Jacques Derrida described the transition his generation had seen from the pen, to the introduction of the typewriter, the electronic typewriter and the computer, noting that "the voyage continues".

He makes a convincing case. The ebook, to me, is just a phase in the evolution of reading technologies – they're no less "natural" than printed books, which just feel that way because they have been around so long (when did you last see a wild printing press roaming the moors?).

Considering that millions of people read and generate billions of words per day on computers across the world, why can't we come to terms with ebooks? We read the news, our mail, advertisements, text messages and recipes in a digital format on a daily basis. When it comes to books, we balk.

Perhaps it's the initial investment that is off-putting? An outlay of between £69 and £400 for a Kindle is a lot if you're eking out a student loan, or if you're one of Europe's 24.4% of young unemployed, even though sites like Project Gutenberg can fill it several times over with free books.

Some participants in the study thought that ebooks were priced too high, and I can sympathise with that. If you buy Alex Ferguson's autobiography in hardback for £12 on Amazon, you can share it with as many friends as you like; get it on Kindle edition - for just £2.51 less - and you'd have to lend your ereader out in order for anyone else to see it.

But it's the same story, with the same Fergie facts and the same Beckham hairstyles. So surely we should learn to love our ebooks – and recognise that we should get aboard for this latest leg in the voyage of reading.

EbooksAmazon.com
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Black Francis's graphic novel joins rock's cartoon tradition

The Good Inn, Pixies' frontman's turn from sound to visions, follows numerous other musicians, and makes natural sense

The news that Black Francis of revered US rock band Pixies is writing a book for UK independent graphic novel publisher SelfMadeHero is both welcome and aposite. Black Francis (aka Frank Black aka Charles Michael Kitridge Thompson IV) is known for his vision of off-kilter Americana, and there seems a synergy with the outer limits of the comic book form in Pixies' music. Since their 1987 debut Come On Pilgrim, the band has turned out some of the most wacked-out, grungy sci-fi rock masterpieces ever laid down, coming over like a cross between Los Bros Hernandez's Love and Rockets and the most lurid 1950s invaders from space drive-in movies.

SelfMadeHero has just announced it has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The Good Inn, which will be illustrated by the Guardian's own Steven Appleby, whose absurdist style suits the Pixies ethos perfectly. Described as "a fantastical piece of illustrated fiction based on a yet-to-be-written soundtrack to a movie that doesn't yet exist", The Good Inn sounds a treat – a teenage protagonist known only as Soldier Boy flees from an explosion in Toulon, France, and embarks on a picaresque journey across the country.

The publisher's pitch adds: "Navigating past homicidal gypsies, combative soldiers and porn-peddling peasants, he takes refuge in a secluded inn, where he finds himself centre stage in the making of the world's first narrative pornographic film."

The Good Inn is co-written by Josh Frank, author of the Pixies biography Fool the World, and will be published in hardback in the UK in May 2014.

The worlds of rock music and comics have always had a close relationship, probably dating back to May 1959 when Pat Boone made a guest appearance in issue number 9 of the DC Comics title Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.

But the media of rock and comics were bound together utterly in 1977 when KISS – themselves comic-booky characters with face-paint and super-stacked heels – featured in their own comic book produced by Marvel … and some bright spark had the idea of mixing actual blood from the band in with the ink on the printing presses. With comics in the blood – or vice versa – KISS frontman Gene Simmons went on to launch his very own horror comics line, with contributions from UK comic creators Leah Moore (daughter of Alan) and her husband and collaborator John Reppion.

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way is almost as well-known for his comic work these days as he is for his bombastic nu-prog. A pal of Grant Morrison (who appeared in the video for MCR's Art Is The Weapon), Way is the creator of the critically-acclaimed comics series Umbrella Academy from Dark Horse.

Another comics-rock friendship was that between Alice Cooper and Neil Gaiman, the latter recruited in 1994 to write a three-issue comic based on Cooper's album The Last Temptation, with art by Michael Zulli, which was originally published by Marvel Comics. After passing through the hands of Dark Horse, who released it as a collected trade paperback, the comic fell out of print but new-ish publisher Dynamite is planning a 20th anniversary remastered re-release next year.

And Rob Zombie – founding member of White Zombie and latterly a solo artist – has developed an alternate career as a slasher-movie director and comic book writer, with his output, including Rob Zombie's Spookshow International and Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock, being pretty much just as you'd expect from a guy called Zombie...

And while rock and comics seem to share a certain synergy, musical collaborations are not limited to the axe-wielding heavies – this year saw a six-issue series published based on Wu Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah's solo album Twelve Reasons to Die.

Black Francis's effort sounds a more cerebral affair, SelfMadeHero having carved a niche for itself with a roster of quirky and thought-provoking releases. But it will be interesting to see which musician dips a toe into the world of comics next... One Direction the Graphic Novel, anyone?

Comics and graphic novelsPop and rockPixiesKissDavid Barnett
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4. The four suits of a pack of cards

Our numerical festive countdown, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, continues with the cultural history of card suits

♣ Clubs
♦ Diamonds
♥ Hearts
♠ Spades

If you count up the numerical value of a whole pack of cards – reckoning on 11 for a jack, 12 for a queen and 13 for a king – you reach 364, which with the addition of one for the joker makes 365, the number of days in the year. The four suits can also be read as symbols of society and human energy: clubs representing both the peasantry and achievement through work; diamonds, the merchant class and the excitement of wealth creation; hearts, the clergy and the struggle to achieve inner joy; spades, the warrior class institutionalised into the nobility and the fractious problems of life.

The pack of cards came to Europe sometime in the 14th century, imported by Italian merchants who discovered their use during trading missions to the cosmopolitan cities of Mameluke Egypt. The symbols they imported – swords, batons (or wands), cups, and coins (or rings) – are still used in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy. The modern four suits seem to have evolved in France, specifically Paris and Rouen, in the late-15th century and were quickly taken up by the English. The French also added the concept of the Queen, for initially the court cards were based on the sequence of king, cavalier and servant – or, as the original Mameluke Egyptians had it, malik (king), naib malik (viceroy) and thaim naib (deputy). The triumph of the ace was another French innovation, traditionally added after the revolution in honour of the rabble toppling the king.

The Egyptians themselves seem to have developed the pack of cards from China, where numerically printed sheets grouped into four divisions can be traced back to the concubines of the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Tomorrow: Five components of the soul in Ancient Egypt

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile).

Reference and languagesPokerBridgeBarnaby Rogerson
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Who says children's books can't be great literature?

The University of Kent did. But any serious reader should know that this is preposterous

It's been a strange few days. On Friday afternoon, I uploaded a screenshot of a university website to Twitter. A few minutes later, it went viral; over the weekend, the internet went ballistic. On Monday, the university changed its website.

It was all started by Richard Cooper (@RichardHCooper), a University of Kent graduate who was considering taking a creative writing course there. But he was troubled by a statement on their site.

"We love great literature," it said. "We are excited by writing that changes the reader, and ultimately – even if it is in a very small way – the world. We love writing that is full of ideas, but that is also playful, funny and affecting. You won't write mass-market thrillers or children's fiction on our programmes. You'll be encouraged to look deep inside yourself for your own truth and your own experiences, and also outside yourself at the contemporary world around you. Then you'll work out how to turn what you find into writing that has depth, risk and originality but is always compelling and readable."

By the time I saw this, a number of children's writers including Philip Reeve had already protested. At first, the University couldn't see the problem. I tweeted the screenshot so everyone could see it and judge for themselves. It was picked up by the Guardian Children's Books feed, then by writers such as Patrick Ness and Michael Rosen, and is still being retweeted every few minutes, often accompanied by expressions of outrage and dismay.

It's not hard to understand why. The statement sets up a rhetorical system that places "great literature" in opposition to children's fiction and thrillers, making them mutually exclusive. It implies that children's fiction cannot be great literature, and appears to belittle children's fiction as a form that by definition cannot do the things great literature can.

And yet, by every criterion listed, children's fiction is entirely capable of being great literature. Indeed, if you're looking for writing that changes the reader and the world, there may be no better form. I work with the CLPE (Centre For Literacy in Primary Education). I've visited countless schools and seen for myself the life-changing power of children's books. It's impossible to overstate the transformative effects they can have upon individual readers – and collectively, across generations, upon the world.

I already suspected this from my own experience. The books I read as a child shaped my deepest beliefs. When I was at university, my friends and I were thrilled to discover that our childhood favourites seemed even more powerful than we remembered. This was true of classic authors such as George MacDonald, Rudyard Kipling, E Nesbit and Tove Jansson; or 1960s writers like Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Peter Dickinson and Ursula Le Guin.

In the work of such authors, we found stories that were compelling and readable; that had depth, risk and originality; that offered all the imaginative space and possibilities we wanted from literature. Garner and Cooper made connections between ancient myth and contemporary reality; Dickinson dealt with human origins, with politics and war; Le Guin with the interconnectedness of all life. These books were tackling the biggest ideas and questions imaginable.

That was the kind of literature I wanted to write, and that was when I made the choice to do it in children's fiction. I may or may not succeed, but I've never doubted the form itself. That's why I found the Kent statement so hard to take.

The twitstorm showed me how many other people share my feelings. Authors, critics, publishers, teachers, booksellers, librarians, readers around the world: suddenly, there were hundreds of voices expressing exactly these beliefs. I'm far from the only one enthusing about Philip Pullman and JK Rowling, David Almond and Meg Rosoff, Malorie Blackman and Jacqueline Wilson, MT Anderson and Sally Gardner …

The list could go on. But Kent has now apologised for its statement, changed it, and asked for children's literature recommendations. If you have some, please tweet them @UniKentWriting. I'll be following them on Twitter, but now I think it's time to get back to actually writing books.

Children and teenagersJK RowlingUrsula K Le GuinRudyard KiplingJacqueline WilsonPhilip PullmanMeg RosoffMalorie BlackmanSF Said
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December's Reading group: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

At an appropriately chilly time of year, we're going to be taking a close look at 'something nasty in the woodshed'

In a triumph of synchronicity, Cold Comfort Farm has been plucked from the hat, neatly tying together our theme of family with December's chill and this month's forthcoming series about comfort reads on the books blog. Better yet, it's a superb book. It's funny, it's dark, it's strange and it's eminently quotable. Yes, "there's something nasty in the woodshed" – and this month we're going to set about finding out what it is.

As usual, I'd welcome suggestions about themes and ideas to tackle. It might be interesting to look at the inspirations for the book and writers like Mary Webb , and especially pleasing to revisit DH Lawrence who so blighted us back in June. But for now, of course, there is the simple pleasure of reading this splendid book.

I'm pleased to say that we have 10 copies to give away to the first 10 UK people to post "I want a copy please", alongside a nice comment relevant to the book. And if you're lucky enough to get in early, don't forget to email Ginny.Hooker@guardian.co.uk as we can't track you down ourselves. Be nice to her too.

FictionSam Jordison
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3. Tricolons

Today in our festive numerical countdown, extracted from Barnaby Rogerson's Book of Numbers, the rhetorical flourish that builds, enthrals, inspires

Tricolons are a rhetorical flourish – a sonorous list of three concepts, often escalating in significance. The most famous is Julius Caesar's proud despatch to the Senate of Rome following his expedition to the near-mythical, mist-clouded isle of Britain: "Veni, Vidi, Vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered").

But Caesar's tricolon is run close by those great orators Lincoln and Churchill, while in recent years Barack Obama has revived the form, sometimes going for a double tricolon, as in this speech echoing the Declaration of Independence:

"Our generation's task is to make these words, these rights, these values – of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – real."

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people": the threefold manifestation of a fully functioning democracy as defined by Lincoln. He also, apparently in casual conversation, made a masterly analysis of the limits of the dark arts of political life: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Churchill was an enthusiast for the tricolon, promising "blood, sweat and tears" as all that he could offer the people of Britain if they were to follow him in offering uncompromising opposition to Nazi Germany. It was matched only by his tricolon of praise for that handful of gallant knights of the air who defended the shores of Britain: never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

But perhaps most glorious of all is the inscription on the Statue of Liberty at the entrance to New York, taken from a sonnet by Emma Lazarus: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Tomorrow: the four suits of a pack of cards

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson (Profile)

Reference and languagesWinston ChurchillBarack ObamaBarnaby Rogerson
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Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading this week?

The space to talk about the books you are reading and the authors and topics you would like to see covered on the site

Guardian readersHannah Freeman