Michael Johnston's Blog, page 17

Marooned on a lighthouse: No 3 of a series

[To leave a comment, and please do, click on the blog title whereupon a comment box will open at the end of the piece.  I look forward to hearing from you.]

 When, quite late in life, I was reading for a Masters in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, my struggle each end of term was to find even one essay title from among the many offered.  It wasn’t just finding something that would allow me to show how well I had grasped the import of the set texts but, quite simply, I wasn’t even sure I understood the rubrics at all.  One desperate term, I could see nothing at all until I found this: 

 How far do you think prosody and metrical analysis are useful for the study of post-war poetry in English?   Are better methods available? 

 Since I could see nothing else, I went for it and, first of all, found enormous satisfaction from all the poetry I had to read and, secondly, that I warmed so much to the subject that I gained the highest essay mark I ever attained.  One book was invaluable in giving me so many insights and explaining the rules and conventions, traditions and tradecraft of poetry that I went out and bought my own copy; not cheap even second-hand but priceless.  I’m talking about The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism by John Lennard [Oxford: OUP, 1996].

 Lennard wanted to write a book that gave anyone who wanted get more out of reading poetry a better understanding of its craft and technique and he achieved that without speaking down to the amateur but, at the same time, writing an undergraduate (and in my case a postgraduate) primer that makes clear that the basics of poetry are ‘an understanding of, and an ability to judge, the elements of the poet’s craft.  This gave me several pointers and much encouragement to think that one could use prosody and metrical analysis in the study of contemporary poetry.  As I went on to discover, even the most modern of poets love to test their ingenuity and verbal dexterity by writing in verse forms that were well-known anything from 500 to 1,000 years earlier.  Take the villanelle, nineteen lines of iambic pentameter (di-dum five times) with only two end-rhymes, lines 1, 6, 12, and 18 a refrain and lines 3, 9, 15, and 19 a second refrain.  Before you run a mile from seeming complexity, remember that the skilful poet will build something beautiful on this scaffolding such that you cannot see it, only feel it, through the wonder of the language.  One very well-known example is the Dylan Thomas loud lament for the death of his father, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’.

 More of us know about sonnets, another ancient form of fourteen lines and various rhyme schemes and the ‘turn’ that after (generally) eight lines sends the poem off in another direction and to its conclusion.  It is still in wide use today.  Lennard’s cool and clear analysis allowed me to see that, in all probability, better methods are generally not available and not really required if what one is reading is real poetry.

 So marooned on my mythical lighthouse, I will have the leisure to re-read Lennard and, when I am liberated, go back to reading (out loud if possible) even more poetry from across the ages.  Do remember, however, that one man’s metre is another man’s paeon, and we each need to find and enjoy our favourite verse forms.  Stuck on the lighthouse with the storm raging outside, I will turn to the third book I brought along, of which more tomorrow.

Book Reading Groups Recommendation: The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer

For book reading groups with a special interest in foreign languages, this is one to read over time and to use to inform discussions rather than be discussed itself.  See what you think.

To this day, castaways on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs are asked what book they would choose to take with them, apart from a given Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare.  It’s a little-known fact that the (in)famous Dr Beeching who, fifty years ago, slashed our railway network, selected as his book The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer; a book I adore.  So, spurred on by taking it down off the shelf and discovering the bookmark is a boarding pass for Air New Zealand’s flight from Los Angeles to Tahiti (NZ25), spent reading Proust, here is the first of a trio of books that I might choose if I knew I were to be marooned on a lighthouse for a month and wanted to return not only informed but educated and entertained.

In the dark days of the 1930s when the global economy was in recession and the prospect of war loomed in Europe, a Marxist academic called Lancelot Hogben conceived the idea of a series of “Primers for the Age of Plenty”; an age he felt was coming, thanks to the inevitable victory of communism over capitalism – so you can see that, already, we are starting off on the wrong foot. He wrote the first two primers himself: Science for the Citizen and Mathematics for the Million, this latter having an interesting and elegant Chinese version of Pythagoras’s theorem about the square on the hypotenuse.  My father bought them both and in due course I inherited them.

My mother bought the third primer, The Loom of Language: A Guide to Foreign Languages for the Home Student, published in 1944 though written by Dr Frederick Bodmer over the previous ten years or more.  It is one of the few books I know I have read more than four times; so much so that my mother’s copy fell apart and I had to buy the facsimile edition published in 1987 by the Merlin Press in order to go on reading it as I travelled, Business Class, around the world.  The very first illustration, placed at the start of the book, is the famous Rosetta Stone which was discovered during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt.  The Stone has inscriptions in three languages.  Working upwards they are Greek, then a demotic form of readable Egyptian writing where the old ideographic script had lost its pictorial character and, most importantly, above this was the same text written in the ancient pictorial language of the Pharaohs and their priests.  Here at last was a reliable crib that enabled Egyptian hieroglyphics, dating back thousands of years, to be decoded and translated.

By now, I’ve said enough to whet your appetite or to put you right off the book so I will add only a few words more.  In very readable prose, Bodmer looks at the natural history of language; the very hybrid heritage of English; and the problems of communication in a world with so many thousands of languages. For anoraks like me, there is also a fabulous language museum in which I could wander for weeks at a time.  This book is certainly coming with me to my mythical lighthouse; but I need a couple more for my first visit there.  Look out for these very soon.

Marooned on a Lighthouse: No. 2 of a series

[Welcome to my slim Lighthouse Library.  Click on this blog title to open the comment box and put your books on the shelf.  We’re looking for three books to keep you sane if marooned, for a while, on an imaginary lighthouse.]

 To this day, castaways on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs are asked what book they would choose to take with them, apart from a given Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare.  It’s a little-known fact that the (in)famous Dr Beeching who, fifty years ago, slashed our railway network, selected as his book The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer; a book I adore.  So, spurred on by taking it down off the shelf and discovering the bookmark is a boarding pass for Air New Zealand’s flight from Los Angeles to Tahiti (NZ25), reading Proust, here is the first of a trio of books that I might choose if I knew I were to be marooned on a lighthouse for a month and wanted to return not only informed but educated and entertained.

 In the dark days of the 1930s when the global economy was in recession and the prospect of war loomed in Europe, a Marxist academic called Lancelot Hogben conceived the idea of a series of “Primers for the Age of Plenty”; an age he felt was coming, thanks to the inevitable victory of communism over capitalism – so you can see that, already, we are starting off on the wrong foot. He wrote the first two primers himself: Science for the Citizen and Mathematics for the Million, this latter having an interesting and elegant Chinese version of Pythagoras’s theorem about the square on the hypotenuse.  My father bought them both and in due course I inherited them.

 My mother bought the third primer, The Loom of Language: A Guide to Foreign Languages for the Home Student, published in 1944 though written by Dr Frederick Bodmer over the previous ten years or more.  It is one of the few books I know I have read more than four times; so much so that my mother’s copy fell apart and I had to buy the facsimile edition published in 1987 by the Merlin Press in order to go on reading it as I travelled, Business Class, around the world.  The very first illustration, placed at the start of the book, is the famous Rosetta Stone which was discovered during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt.  The Stone has inscriptions in three languages.  Working upwards they are Greek, then a demotic form of readable Egyptian writing where the old ideographic script had lost its pictorial character and, most importantly, above this was the same text written in the ancient pictorial language of the Pharaohs and their priests.  Here at last was a reliable crib that enabled Egyptian hieroglyphics, dating back thousands of years, to be decoded and translated. 

 By now, I’ve said enough to whet your appetite or to put you right off the book so I will add only a few words more.  In very readable prose, Bodmer looks at the natural history of language; the very hybrid heritage of English; and the problems of communication in a world with so many thousands of languages. For anoraks like me, there is also a fabulous language museum in which I could wander for weeks at a time.  This book is certainly coming with me to my mythical lighthouse; but I need a couple more for my first visit there.  Look out for these very soon.

Creative writing exercise

What eight novels would a creative writing group member take to their own desert island lighthouse!?

“[The] first Desert Island Discs was recorded in the BBC’s bomb-damaged Maida Vale studio on 27th January 1942 and aired in the Forces Programme at 8pm two days later.   It was introduced to the listening public as ‘a programme in which a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you, assuming of course, that you had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of needles’.  Roy Plomley’s first castaway was the popular Viennese comedian, actor and musician, Vic Oliver.” 1

In the days when the radio programme Desert Island Discs began, the listener had to suspend their disbelief, just as we’re all supposed to do at the theatre, looking through that invisible fourth wall.  After all, the celebrity being interviewed is not really being cast away, perhaps to die before he or she can be rescued.  We all had to assume that, somehow, they would survive long enough to listen several times to the eight ‘gramophone records’ they had chosen to help them pass the time.  In those days, you were supposed to change the needle before every playing.  No one was churlish enough to ask where these needles would be stored beforehand and what was to be done with them afterwards.

What are the ‘lighthouse choices’ of a mind focused on creative writing?

Time and technology have robbed us of both Plomley and his pre-supposition.  The whole point is the fictional frame of reference for what an interesting person has chosen in the way of music.  More on that topic another time, perhaps?  For the moment, as one engaged in creative writing I aim to blog over the next few weeks on my own theme of books to avoid boredom, let’s say, while stuck on a lighthouse, assuming of course you had an inexhaustible supply of electricity, food and shelter; so spread the word and pile in there with your own comments.

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/about/history-of-desert-island-discs  accessed 1 April 2013.

Marooned on a lighthouse: No 1 of a new series

[No, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke; at least it isn’t meant to be.]

 “[The] first Desert Island Discs was recorded in the BBC’s bomb-damaged Maida Vale studio on 27th January 1942 and aired in the Forces Programme at 8pm two days later.   It was introduced to the listening public as ‘a programme in which a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you, assuming of course, that you had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of needles’.  Roy Plomley’s first castaway was the popular Viennese comedian, actor and musician, Vic Oliver.” 1 

 In the days when the radio programme Desert Island Discs began, the listener had to suspend their disbelief, just as we’re all supposed to do at the theatre, looking through that invisible fourth wall.  After all, the celebrity being interviewed is not really being cast away, perhaps to die before he or she can be rescued.  We all had to assume that, somehow, they would survive long enough to listen several times to their eight ‘gramophone records’ they had chosen to help them pass the time.  In those days, you were supposed to change the needle before every playing.  No one was churlish enough to ask where these needles would be stored beforehand and what was to be done with them afterwards.  Time and technology have robbed us of both Plomley and his pre-supposition.  The whole point is the fictional frame of reference for what an interesting person has chosen in the way of music.  More on that topic another time, perhaps?  For the moment, I aim to blog over the next few weeks on my own theme of books to avoid boredom while stuck on a lighthouse, assuming of course you had an inexhaustible supply of electricity, food and shelter; so spread the word and pile in there with your own comments.

 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/about/history-of-desert-island-discs  accessed 1 April 2013.

I’ve known worse (and better)

With all our grumbling about the weather this March, as compared to last year’s semi-tropical temperatures, as I did my mandatory 30-minute brisk walk with only a jersey and jacket rather than furs and an ice-pick, I got to recalling weather I’ve experienced here and there. 

Driving off in clear weather from Edinburgh in the 1970s, heading for Biggar, I quite suddenly ran into blowing, blinding snow; a real white out with no bearings, no points of reference.  Stopping and (with a silent prayer nobody else was on the road) I managed to turn round and, almost like driving out of snow-bound Narnia, found the road outside the white envelope both dry and black.  I returned home in 15 minutes and nobody could quite understand what I was complaining about and why I hadn’t simply pressed on.

Driving back in 1957 from the airfield on on Christmas Island where I had been taken on a tour of the Vulcan bomber that would drop Britain’s new H-Bomb, I was enjoying the fun of a tropical sun and an open topped Jeep.  Out of a clear sky, it started to rain so heavily that within three minutes the inside of the Jeep was so full of water my posterior was below the surface.  I stopped and opened the door to let the water out and then sat for a quarter of an hour in torrential rain until it eased off.  Once again, when I reached Port of London, as the little bay was called, I was ready to tell everyone my troubles but since I had dried off in the sun and the Jeep was dry I was hard pressed to get anyone’s attention.

In Tuscany in the 1980s, I was struck a nasty blow by a monster hailstone but, as ever, I was told I had been daft to be outside at the time.  On the same trip, I had to stop at the road side until the deluge stopped as the windscreen wipers could not clear the rainwater off the screen enough to see outside.

In the really cold winter and spring of 1963, I had to take the overnight sleeper train from Galashiels to St Pancras.  The train arrived from Edinburgh and such was the sheet of ice that overflowing water tanks in the roof had created over the usual entrance door to the sleeping car, we had to board at the other end.  The sleeper was like a fridge and the bed like a marble slab.  I put my pyjamas on over my clothes and put my overcoat back on before lying down and shivering all night.

Visiting Rotorua in New Zealand, I enjoyed bathing in the naturally heated pool; just like lying in a warm bath without ever needing to try and turn on the hot tap with my toes.  When my skin was wrinkly and it was nearly time to go, I climbed out and was heading for the cubicle when it started to rain.  Like everyone else, to shelter from the cold rain I climbed back into the pool.

Today, I’m looking out of the window waiting on my graddaughters coming to visit.  To cover all eventualities, I have made two different ice creams and a hot rice pudding.  Welcome to my busy world.

Christopher Brookmyre’s “Bedlam: Let the games begin”

My own introduction to Chris and/or Christopher was through two crime thrillers, Quite early one morning and Where the bodies are buried, both of which I found gripping, page-turning and often very funny.  I felt the author or his characters were on my side politically and humorously.  So I ordered his latest book Bedlam pre-publication, and kept an eye on the letterbox.

 The publicity describes this book as Brookmyre’s first wholly SF novel and, as a fan of Philip K Dick, Asimov, Bradbury and that ilk, I looked for great things.  Some I did find but this ludic book, with its subtitle ‘Let the games begin’ but it made me work for my pleasure.  Good SF requires the writer to set his parameters, his procedures, protocols and rules of play and then to operate within them.  Brookmyre does this but at a cost of a somewhat clunking plot that is not finally resolved until a series of very short ‘so that explains it’ chapters at the end.

 The hero, medical researcher and computer game addict Ross Baker finds himself transmigrated digitally into the games he has played over the years and having to battle their against his enemies, from the real  world and their digital doppelgangers, in order to win in the end.  He has a series of digital adventures that become more and more fantastic, though quasi-credible within the plot’s rules.  The extent of double-crossing builds up the reader’s curiosity very successfully and this is combined with the real world author’s wit and prejudices to make for a great deal of satisfying reading.  Take, for example, his attitude to that well known fiction writer, the Daily Mail and its credulous readers.  ‘It’s like a print equivalent of Fox News and self-aware is not an expression that would ever apply to either.’

 SF fans with a yen for computer games will certainly enjoy this.  Other admirers of Brookmyre will have something to be going on with and their appetite whetted for the next Jack Parblane or Jasmine Sharp book.

Should Scotland be independent?

After a short visit to my home country and to the Scottish Borders in particular, I am finding that I have to re-examine my earlier attitudes.  As a Liberal Democrat, the party line is one of opposition to an independent Scotland and to encourage a NO vote in the independence referendum in 2014.  However, every time I have tested the strength of No arguments, such as the assertion that Scotland is subsidised and could not afford independence or that Scotland as a region rather than a country was too small to be viable in a global world, I have found either those who disagree or, more significantly, those who are able to show me evidence to the contrary: that Scotland is not too small nor too dependent on the ‘English’ Exchequer.  There is also, it seems to me, an argument that Scotland’s track record in innovation, ingenuity and sheer intelligence is the equal of many and better than some.  I am going to have to reassess my position.

Frank Bascombe’s “small life lived acceptably”

Last night, I laid down the third of Richard Ford’s novels about his suburban anti-hero with a sigh of satisfaction.  The Lay of the Land (2006) follows on from The Sportswriter (1986) and Independence Day (1995).  The books not only share their narrator and central character, Frank Bascombe, and follow his life over a span of around twenty years from his thirties to his fifties, but they each do so by being structured around the events of one short period of time – the Easter weekend; America’s Independence Day in July; and Thanksgiving – but allow Bascombe not only to review, reminisce and reflect on his own life but also to document, describe and dissect suburban America as it is to be found in that fascinating state, New Jersey. 

 The trilogy is living and vibrant proof of the fact that it is through the selective and creative lens of fiction that that the truth is often revealed.  The effect of the three books has been heightened for me by two things: first, that I do know New Jersey after a fashion and secondly, and more importantly, that I was able to read them in sequence over the past few weeks.

 It may seem a bold statement but I think it is fair to compare favourably Ford’s Bascombe’s trilogy with Proust’s magnum opus of a century earlier.  While Proust’s set of seven novels run to three thousand three hundred pages of ornate language and Ford’s trilogy takes a mere fifteen hundred pages of lyrical yet down-to-earth poetic prose, the point of the comparison is their authors’ ability to sustain the melodic line and forward momentum of the narrative while, like descant or counterpoint, exploring all the restless memories and reflective meanders that their different stories trigger in the mind of their very different narrators. 

 Richard Ford can take a moment – for example that period after the realtor (estate agent) Bascombe has shown off a house he is trying to sell and is driving along the network of almost identical, in their repetitiveness, New Jersey roads – to let the narrator’s mind wander.

 I love this post-showing interlude in the car […].  It’s the moment d’or which the [Jersey] Shore facilitates perfectly, offering exposure to the commercial-ethnic-residential zeitgeist of a complex republic, yet shelter from most of the ways the republic gives me the willies.  “Culture comfort,” I call this brand of specialized well-being.  And along with its sister solace, “cultural literacy”—knowing by inner gyroscope where the next McDonald’s or Borders, or the next old-fashioned Italian shoe repair or tuxedo rental or lobster dock is going to show up on the horizon – these together I consider a cornerstone of the small life lived acceptably.  I count it a good day when I can keep all things that give me the willies out of my thinking, and in their places substitute vistas I can appreciate, even unwittingly. (Lay of the Land, p. 430)

 Recently, Ford spoke to a packed house at the Royal Society of Literature where his topic was ‘How novels are smart’ which was his take on the art of fiction.  As a fellow American Southerner, Ford admires the boldness of Faulkner’s decision to have the first 90 pages of The Sound and the Fury told by an idiot.  What is to admire in Faulkner and top rank novelists generally is their willingness to choose an almost incredible point of view and framework and then to develop a work of art that still manages to observe and obey these given rules.  Richard Ford’s exploration of the life and times of Frank Bascombe is a work of art in the top rank.

Invasion of the Word-Snatchers

How this has happened, I really do not know but someone or something has invaded my web site.  No text is altered but selected words, like University, have been highlighted and linked to pop-up advertisements for college classes.  None of these ads were invited in by me and as soon as I find out how to get rid of them I’ll do so.