Bryan Islip's Blog, page 33
June 13, 2012
Laugh Out Loud
Like Mr Cameron, until quite recently I didn't appreciate that LOL in an email etc meant Laugh Out Loud. I'd often wondered why folks I hardly knew were sending me Lots Of Love. Nice though.
Last evening LOL really happened. I'm sitting on my own watching a film on telly and for the most part of two hours I really did Laugh Out Loud. What superb entertainment! This movie seems to me in hindsight to be a true expression of the real reason for what people call 'Show Business'. You would be forgiven for thinking its subject is the opposite of funny. There's not much fun in nuclear warfare and the total annihilation of all living things including us. But the creative genius of Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers could make funny The Death March In Saul.
So you already know which movie? Yes, it was called Dr Strangelove and it was made in black and white in the year 1964. If there's been anything of its type as good it since then I havn't seen it and would really like to see it. It made me think that our filmakers should get their heads out of cyber space and back into the hearts and souls of actual human beings. We don't bite and we do want to be amused.
The thing is, Dr Strangelove could actually have happened, in which case I wouldn't be writing this nor you reading it. And it still could.
Last evening LOL really happened. I'm sitting on my own watching a film on telly and for the most part of two hours I really did Laugh Out Loud. What superb entertainment! This movie seems to me in hindsight to be a true expression of the real reason for what people call 'Show Business'. You would be forgiven for thinking its subject is the opposite of funny. There's not much fun in nuclear warfare and the total annihilation of all living things including us. But the creative genius of Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers could make funny The Death March In Saul.
So you already know which movie? Yes, it was called Dr Strangelove and it was made in black and white in the year 1964. If there's been anything of its type as good it since then I havn't seen it and would really like to see it. It made me think that our filmakers should get their heads out of cyber space and back into the hearts and souls of actual human beings. We don't bite and we do want to be amused.
The thing is, Dr Strangelove could actually have happened, in which case I wouldn't be writing this nor you reading it. And it still could.
June 10, 2012
A dangerous freedom
According to the RSPB site the geese arriving here in the north west of Scotland in the spring of every year are probably greylags. I had thought them to be the pink footed variety but the book says no, pink lags are not to be found up here. Whatever, they breed here close to the sea loch. Not in the numbers this year as previous but they do nest. In past times we have seen pairs with up to twelve new-hatched chicks tumbling down over the bouldery foreshore to reach the briny ahead of our approach.
This year however there have not been many adults at all, so the few we've seen with their offspring have been even more exciting, if a little disturbing. Why disturbing? Because the first family we came across a week ago on our daily lochside walk included but one solitary fluffball and a day or two later the second family we encountered had only a couple of little ones. But yesterday things were looking up. Family one with the single and family two with the double had been enjoined by family three, who had five of the tiniest, obviously new-hatched greylags.
All three families hurried down to the sea, the chicks tumbling head over heels across rocks and weeds that must to them have seemed like mountains and forests. Then away paddled the flotilla, always at the speed of the slowest (tiniest). Now, according to the book these three families ought to have included at least thirty babes, rather than the combined total of eight in evidence. What had been happening? Sheep treading on the nests/eggs? Hooded crows' or buzzard's predatory activities? Insecticide poisoning? Shotguns? Who knows
In a couple of months, should they have survived that long we will see the grown up
teenagers practicing their take-offs and landings and their in-flight skills. And as the
days shorten, the skies darken and the temperatures plummet off they
will go on their thousand miles trip to Greenland. We wish them luck. We wish them safe passage and a safe return to Loch Eweside. In a strange way we envy them their freedom. But not their endangerment.
This year however there have not been many adults at all, so the few we've seen with their offspring have been even more exciting, if a little disturbing. Why disturbing? Because the first family we came across a week ago on our daily lochside walk included but one solitary fluffball and a day or two later the second family we encountered had only a couple of little ones. But yesterday things were looking up. Family one with the single and family two with the double had been enjoined by family three, who had five of the tiniest, obviously new-hatched greylags.
All three families hurried down to the sea, the chicks tumbling head over heels across rocks and weeds that must to them have seemed like mountains and forests. Then away paddled the flotilla, always at the speed of the slowest (tiniest). Now, according to the book these three families ought to have included at least thirty babes, rather than the combined total of eight in evidence. What had been happening? Sheep treading on the nests/eggs? Hooded crows' or buzzard's predatory activities? Insecticide poisoning? Shotguns? Who knows
In a couple of months, should they have survived that long we will see the grown up
teenagers practicing their take-offs and landings and their in-flight skills. And as the
days shorten, the skies darken and the temperatures plummet off they
will go on their thousand miles trip to Greenland. We wish them luck. We wish them safe passage and a safe return to Loch Eweside. In a strange way we envy them their freedom. But not their endangerment.
June 5, 2012
We will reproduce
I have just read an extremely well researched piece on human population control - the medical solution. (Contraception etc, and in particular the reluctance of females to use it; not males, you understand!)
The problem seems to me to be that such a huge
majority of good people do not consider that there is one! This is not a case of
the ignorance of the less developed peoples. The overwhelming majority of the
developed world also profess not to understand it - or worse, to believe it does
not - cannot - must not be a brake on their own
sexual/progenital instincts.
Elected governments that should presumably show
leadership are afraid to do so, merely following the majority when it comes to
such personal and population matters, especially at election time.
We all know how difficult a subject is population
control. How many of us are truly incapable of thinking of this thing
subjectively when all that most can or want to 'see' is the loveliness of their
own infant off-spring? (In case you are wondering, I speak as the proud father
of four, albeit engendered in less knowledgable times). Or in the case of, say
Indians and Africans, when all they 'see' is that loveliness plus the number of
their offspring who will be there to support them financially and emotionally in
their old age?
So the answers cannot lie in the spreading of
medical understanding and the private practice of contraception. If
there are any answers other than the obviously cataclysmic ones, they must lie
in the re-modelling of human instinct, emotion and habit. Without Chinese style
government this is probably impossible even for many generations to come -
generations that, logically, may not even exist as things are going right now..
I look out every day over a sea loch and the
ancient Torridian mountains of Wester-Ross. A landscape unchanged since before
the first foot of Man walked this Earth. It will be the same long after our
species has either decided to limit itself or disappears forever in the manner
of so many other life-forms. The big difference
of course is that we are the only species of life on Earth that has been or is
now capable of self-control. Just a matter of exercising it!
The problem seems to me to be that such a huge
majority of good people do not consider that there is one! This is not a case of
the ignorance of the less developed peoples. The overwhelming majority of the
developed world also profess not to understand it - or worse, to believe it does
not - cannot - must not be a brake on their own
sexual/progenital instincts.
Elected governments that should presumably show
leadership are afraid to do so, merely following the majority when it comes to
such personal and population matters, especially at election time.
We all know how difficult a subject is population
control. How many of us are truly incapable of thinking of this thing
subjectively when all that most can or want to 'see' is the loveliness of their
own infant off-spring? (In case you are wondering, I speak as the proud father
of four, albeit engendered in less knowledgable times). Or in the case of, say
Indians and Africans, when all they 'see' is that loveliness plus the number of
their offspring who will be there to support them financially and emotionally in
their old age?
So the answers cannot lie in the spreading of
medical understanding and the private practice of contraception. If
there are any answers other than the obviously cataclysmic ones, they must lie
in the re-modelling of human instinct, emotion and habit. Without Chinese style
government this is probably impossible even for many generations to come -
generations that, logically, may not even exist as things are going right now..
I look out every day over a sea loch and the
ancient Torridian mountains of Wester-Ross. A landscape unchanged since before
the first foot of Man walked this Earth. It will be the same long after our
species has either decided to limit itself or disappears forever in the manner
of so many other life-forms. The big difference
of course is that we are the only species of life on Earth that has been or is
now capable of self-control. Just a matter of exercising it!
Sex and reproduction
I have just read an extremely well researched piece on human population control - the medical solution. (Contraception etc, and in particular the reluctance of females to use it; not males, you understand!)
The problem seems to me to be that such a huge
majority of good people do not consider that there is one! This is not a case of
the ignorance of the less developed peoples. The overwhelming majority of the
developed world also profess not to understand it - or worse, to believe it does
not - cannot - must not be a brake on their own
sexual/progenital instincts.
Elected governments that should presumably show
leadership are afraid to do so, merely following the majority when it comes to
such personal and population matters, especially at election time.
We all know how difficult a subject is population
control. How many of us are truly incapable of thinking of this thing
subjectively when all that most can or want to 'see' is the loveliness of their
own infant off-spring? (In case you are wondering, I speak as the proud father
of four, albeit engendered in less knowledgable times). Or in the case of, say
Indians and Africans, when all they 'see' is that loveliness plus the number of
their offspring who will be there to support them financially and emotionally in
their old age?
So the answers cannot lie in the promulgation of
private medical understanding and the private practice of contraception. If
there are any answers other than the obviously cataclysmic ones, they must lie
in the re-modelling of human instinct, emotion, habit. And without Chinese style
government this is probably impossible even over the generations to come -
generations that, logically, may not even exist as things are going.
I look out every day over a sea loch and the
ancient Torridian mountains of Wester-Ross. A landscape unchanged since before
the first foot of Man walked this Earth. It will be the same long after our
species has either decided to limit itself or disappears forever in the manner
of so many other life-forms. The big difference
of course is that we are the only species of life on Earth that has been or is
now capable of self-control. Just a matter of exercising it!
The problem seems to me to be that such a huge
majority of good people do not consider that there is one! This is not a case of
the ignorance of the less developed peoples. The overwhelming majority of the
developed world also profess not to understand it - or worse, to believe it does
not - cannot - must not be a brake on their own
sexual/progenital instincts.
Elected governments that should presumably show
leadership are afraid to do so, merely following the majority when it comes to
such personal and population matters, especially at election time.
We all know how difficult a subject is population
control. How many of us are truly incapable of thinking of this thing
subjectively when all that most can or want to 'see' is the loveliness of their
own infant off-spring? (In case you are wondering, I speak as the proud father
of four, albeit engendered in less knowledgable times). Or in the case of, say
Indians and Africans, when all they 'see' is that loveliness plus the number of
their offspring who will be there to support them financially and emotionally in
their old age?
So the answers cannot lie in the promulgation of
private medical understanding and the private practice of contraception. If
there are any answers other than the obviously cataclysmic ones, they must lie
in the re-modelling of human instinct, emotion, habit. And without Chinese style
government this is probably impossible even over the generations to come -
generations that, logically, may not even exist as things are going.
I look out every day over a sea loch and the
ancient Torridian mountains of Wester-Ross. A landscape unchanged since before
the first foot of Man walked this Earth. It will be the same long after our
species has either decided to limit itself or disappears forever in the manner
of so many other life-forms. The big difference
of course is that we are the only species of life on Earth that has been or is
now capable of self-control. Just a matter of exercising it!
June 3, 2012
The Highlands of Scotland
Here we are half way through 2012, selling this 2013 calendar like the proverbial hot cross buns and beginning to think about pictures and general design issues for 2014.
As it'says on the tin' our 2013 calendar is a combined operation featuring Eoghain Maclean's wildlife photographs and my own pastel landscapes, each of them, each month, accompanied by my little narrative describing the thoughts and the actuality of what went into their creation.
As I said, local shops report bumper early sales for this product. This of course is particularly gratifying in this time of 'recession' (that I myself prefer to call a 're-alignment'). We are also selling it to Waterstones (in Inverness) and the Scotland stores of the UK's largest stationer / bookseller. In addition we have every reason to expect some good business with VisitScotland. Certainly our Picturebook 2013 Calendar' hanging on a few thousand kitchen walls throughout the UK and as far afield as Australia will not do our local tourist trades any harm. Even our own B&B here in Aultbea.
This is how it looks on the inside. Poor photo of mine but you get the idea.(I hope) The narrative reads ...
White-tailed
Sea Eagle - the photograph
The White-tailed
Sea Eagle is by some way the largest bird
here in the UK.
Local records indicate that ‘the last native sea eagle was killed by gunshot in
1919’. The RSPB re-introduced them to the Scottish Highlands in the early 90’s,
bringing in the chicks from Norway,
Sweden and Poland. For
obvious reasons their breeding and hunting grounds are not generally publicised.
But with the full co-operation of local landowners - including my employers,
Scottish Natural Heritage - the RSPB have been watching over them ever since.
Suffice to say that I know this chap
very well. Furthermore I am honoured to add that this particular photograph has
been chosen for an RSBP magazine front cover. He is some fifteen years of age
and is one of a pair born on an island in one of the sea lochs not too far away
from my home in Kinlochewe. His sibling unfortunately died as a result of an
encounter with an electricity pylon.
I am indebted to three common
seagulls for this shot! This trio were buzzing and generally harassing their
giant cousin, keeping him sitting on that branch instead of taking to the sky
for long enough to allow me to set up my camera.
Eoghain
Maclean
eoghainmacleanphotography.co.uk
...and this is the narrative for my pastel painting for September ...
‘You think you know
colour', (I wrote)
'until
you’ve seen an early day
over a
cloudless Gairloch.
You think you
know about distance
until
your eyes have roamed around
the
curves and contours of the world
through
air so clear, this clean;
noiseless
save the shushing of the sea,
the
calling of the gulls as if to you and me
‘A
Gairloch Morning’ - the painting
I
painted this on the first Saturday after the infamous 11th September, 2001.
When the twin towers happened I had watched all the horror in a Middle East hotel bar, surrounded by … well, I won’t go
into that. Suffice to say that the contrast between there and what you and I
see here inspired our move north a year later. We’ve no regrets. My little
verse ends …And so they came, our
friends,
and it rained and blew
a gale of wind all week.
(A different kind of beauty!)
This place smiles not, shows not herself
so often, nor to everyone.
And they, as we, will come again.
Bryan Islip
www.picturesandpoems.co.uk
May 30, 2012
Syria v Lindisfarne
Watching the news from Syria just now ... thinking of an extract from my novel in progress, The Book, chapter eight ...
And there! Close in to the shore, unmistakeable,
an otter had surfaced. He or she rolled on to its back, front feet holding, mouth
munching on what could be a small crab. He watched the creature finishing its
snack then rolling and diving again, thick tail looping, disappearing from
sight. Everything, every single living thing must live by consuming life whether
animal or vegetable, he thought. He thought of the ancient Celtic border design
he had seen illustrated in a National Geographic in his dentist’s waiting room.
The Lindisfarne Gospels, that was it. Bird eats bird eats bird eats – all the
way around the edges of the page and so beautifully drawn, wonderfully coloured
with inks that had lasted for twelve hundred years. The magazine piece had said
the monks or more probably one monk living on that Northumbrian island had
taken many years to create the masterpiece. How long would that magazine itself
last in an age of here and now today and gone tomorrow with scant trace left
behind ... '
You can read it all to date and with new chapters each month by clicking here and 'subscribing' free of charge.
But whatever you do, please click the link to Wikipedia's Lindisfarne Gospels. Then ask yourself what has been learned that is of any real as opposed to peripheral value to your life, these last twelve hundred years.
May 29, 2012
If you need to know, just Go (with Gabriel)
This is the back cover blurb on the paperback edition of my novel 'Going with Gabriel' ISBN 978-0-9555193-1-4 from Amazon .... 0r buy it for peanuts as an e-book
Are there simply too many of us? Are we trying to
grab much, much more from our planet than our planet has to give? Many of us
would agree with Gabriel, would know by now that these most acute of problems reach
out to threaten every form of life on earth, even our own. But then in all
probability we would quickly forget about them. Solutions seem either
unavailable or unacceptable.
On the other hand … Dr Gabriel Nicolson has long escaped from the frightening reality of
his team’s bio-scientific discovery into the anonymity of the streets; into the
world of his first love, that of music.
Going
with Gabriel is a
powerfully intertwined story about an exceptional talent and a man’s conscience
and about freedom and the lack of it, love and no love, celebrity and
anonymity. This is a truly thought-provoking literary adventure.
*****
Going
with Gabriel is a thoroughly good read
but also carries a serious message - it provides a ‘wake up call’ as to the
consequences of man’s failure to adequately control human population growth ...
I earnestly hope that this book goes some way to undermining the taboo that
prevents public discussion of socially acceptable ways to limit our numbers
before the fiction of ‘Going with
Gabriel’ becomes a reality.
Paul
Burgoyne, Ph.D,F.Med.Sci
(UK)
MRC Research Group Leader working on the link between sex chromosome anomalies
and infertility.
*****
“Going
With Gabriel” delves into a subject which seems to be something of a
taboo, despite being one of the most serious threats facing humanity in
the 21st century.
The story moves along at a rhythmical pace
following the musical Gabe as he moves from place to place with his
songs, his penny-whistle and his accompanist pal Sonny. His talent gets
him noticed wherever he plays but his desire for anonymity prevents him
from staying in one place. Relationships, the media, greedy
opportunists, secret organisations and his past life all conspire to
bring him out into the open and force him into making some difficult
decisions.
This is a well written book from an author previously
unknown to me. Islip manages to keep a non-scientist like myself
interested in the scientific technicalities and, at the same time,
retain a poetic feel befitting of the song-writing lyricist Gabriel.
My
only real gripe is the underlying religious zeal that some of the
characters display, which at best is unnecessary, and at worst seems
unrealistic given their profession and the work they are undertaking,
which would surely make such beliefs unlikely. Maybe my atheistic mind
is getting the better of me here, and anyhow the impact of this on the
whole story wasn’t enough to spoil my enjoyment.
Overall this was
a thoroughly enjoyable holiday read and raises important questions that
mankind is going to have to face up to sooner rather than later.
Reviewer on Goodreads - John Webb
May 28, 2012
Weasel, stoat, otter, rabbit
Today a weasel watched us. No, I don't mean we watched him, he watched us. Or was he or she a stoat? Grey/brown fur, pale creamy bib, twentyfive centimetres in lenghth including tail, give or take. We were sitting in the sun in our usiual picnic spot close by the crumbling remnants of a WW2 gun emplacement, sea Loch Ewe quietly eroding shards of concrete ten metres away.
Out of the corner of my eye a movement! I see him, neck upstretched, standing stock still, blackbead eyes observing our every minute action. And then he was gone, only to reappear from a hole in the rubble even closer to us. And then he was gone to reappear no more.
What was he doing here, almost at the edge of the tide? Searching for birds nests I would guess. Great eaters of eggs are these muscalids. Or rabbits perhaps were his quarry. There are some of those around here. Anyway I hope for his sake that his big brother the otter doesn't catch him on his territory. The weasel may be weight for weight reputed as amongst the fiercest of fighters in the animal world. I have seen one strangling to death a big buck rabbit twenty times its own weight. But an otter is another kettle of fish altogether. No contest.
Must remember to take my camera on these lunchtime walks of ours.
Out of the corner of my eye a movement! I see him, neck upstretched, standing stock still, blackbead eyes observing our every minute action. And then he was gone, only to reappear from a hole in the rubble even closer to us. And then he was gone to reappear no more.
What was he doing here, almost at the edge of the tide? Searching for birds nests I would guess. Great eaters of eggs are these muscalids. Or rabbits perhaps were his quarry. There are some of those around here. Anyway I hope for his sake that his big brother the otter doesn't catch him on his territory. The weasel may be weight for weight reputed as amongst the fiercest of fighters in the animal world. I have seen one strangling to death a big buck rabbit twenty times its own weight. But an otter is another kettle of fish altogether. No contest.
Must remember to take my camera on these lunchtime walks of ours.
May 27, 2012
Cheek by jowl
The more of us there are on this planet, the bigger and bigger grow our cities.When writing my novel
Going with Gabriel
I often asked myself why it is that humanity seems universally to want to conglomerate itself into the densely packed areas it calls cities. Here are a few possible answers ... with my personal responses ...
Safety in numbers. Really? Crime against the person is invariably more prevalent in cities than rural areas.
That's where the work is. Chicken and egg. If the hired help lived in the country that's where the factories and offices and shops would be.
There's more to do in the cities. Museums, theatres, sports stadia etc etc. In an age of TV, how many times in your last year, say, did you go to a musuem, theatre or sports stadia? Could you not just as well have travelled there from your home in the country? (And do you remember the film 'Field of Gold? Motto, "BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME").
I feel more personally important, somehow, with an address in the city. No answer to that one, sorry.
You meet people in cities, have more friends. Sorry again, but wrong. Country people tend to befriend each other more than do city folk - and to worry about a neighbour's visible status less as well. Which helps to make life for everyone more comfortable.
I find the wide open spaces threatening. See my answer to (1) And try getting closer to all that we call Nature. You'll probably like it! You should. It's your God-given inheritance.
It's the herd instinct. Sheep live in herds, lions in families.
No, I don't consider myself misogenistic. I actually like my fellow Man, but one at a time or in small groups, not in massive crowds. I like Him / Her enough, in fact, to worry about how we are busily over-breeding ourselves into extinction without wanting to admit it; like an acoholic who refuses to stand up and declare, "I am an alcoholic".
There are already far too many of us, all wanting far too much of our mother Earth, and most of us are living cheek by jowl in cities.
Safety in numbers. Really? Crime against the person is invariably more prevalent in cities than rural areas.
That's where the work is. Chicken and egg. If the hired help lived in the country that's where the factories and offices and shops would be.
There's more to do in the cities. Museums, theatres, sports stadia etc etc. In an age of TV, how many times in your last year, say, did you go to a musuem, theatre or sports stadia? Could you not just as well have travelled there from your home in the country? (And do you remember the film 'Field of Gold? Motto, "BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME").
I feel more personally important, somehow, with an address in the city. No answer to that one, sorry.
You meet people in cities, have more friends. Sorry again, but wrong. Country people tend to befriend each other more than do city folk - and to worry about a neighbour's visible status less as well. Which helps to make life for everyone more comfortable.
I find the wide open spaces threatening. See my answer to (1) And try getting closer to all that we call Nature. You'll probably like it! You should. It's your God-given inheritance.
It's the herd instinct. Sheep live in herds, lions in families.
No, I don't consider myself misogenistic. I actually like my fellow Man, but one at a time or in small groups, not in massive crowds. I like Him / Her enough, in fact, to worry about how we are busily over-breeding ourselves into extinction without wanting to admit it; like an acoholic who refuses to stand up and declare, "I am an alcoholic".
There are already far too many of us, all wanting far too much of our mother Earth, and most of us are living cheek by jowl in cities.
May 26, 2012
Fiction is truth as is no other art
Although I did The Tempest for my English Literature School Leaving Certificate examination at age 14, I failed to fall in love with the works of Wm Shakespeare. In fact I consigned him to the back burner of my life for the following forty years.
Then, at age 54 I came across a slim and dusty volume in an antiquarian bookshop in Winchester. It was called 'On Reading Shakespeare' and was written by one Professor (American I think) Logan Pearsall-Smith, published in 1928. The professor posited, in some of the most perfect prose, that you should read the plays rather than see them acted out on the modern stage. Why? Because the man's genius was / is not his stories - nearly all filched from previous, mainly Roman storytellers - it was his use of language to drill down into the very core of our human existence, as has no other before or since.
You can understand this much better, the professor considered, if you read the plays in the order in which most of the scholarship believes them to have been written, and peferably in the Arden edition with copious explanatory footnotes. You need to 'learn the language'. So that's what I did. For more than a year and a half I read all the plays to the exclusion of all else, re-read several of the the tragedies and re-read many times certain passages that resonated and moved me - occasionally, even, it has to be said, to actual tears.
And now Mr James Joyce has, for me, reinforced Pearsall-Smith's dictum. You see, I'm reading Ulysses and have reached the extensive passage in which Stephen Daedelus is debating the great playright's life, sources, merits and demerits with his Dubliner friends Mulligan, Eglinton, Best etc. They demonstrate not simply a great knowledge of the works and the characters, but a huge if controversial understanding of the man himself and the life of the man. And all this in a few years after 1914, so without benefit of the massive Shakespearean academia of the last one hundred years.
Hemingway remarked that fiction can be truer than the truth. Shakespeare and Joyce would have agreed with that. And with my belief that fiction written well and truly enriches human life as can no other art.
Then, at age 54 I came across a slim and dusty volume in an antiquarian bookshop in Winchester. It was called 'On Reading Shakespeare' and was written by one Professor (American I think) Logan Pearsall-Smith, published in 1928. The professor posited, in some of the most perfect prose, that you should read the plays rather than see them acted out on the modern stage. Why? Because the man's genius was / is not his stories - nearly all filched from previous, mainly Roman storytellers - it was his use of language to drill down into the very core of our human existence, as has no other before or since.
You can understand this much better, the professor considered, if you read the plays in the order in which most of the scholarship believes them to have been written, and peferably in the Arden edition with copious explanatory footnotes. You need to 'learn the language'. So that's what I did. For more than a year and a half I read all the plays to the exclusion of all else, re-read several of the the tragedies and re-read many times certain passages that resonated and moved me - occasionally, even, it has to be said, to actual tears.
And now Mr James Joyce has, for me, reinforced Pearsall-Smith's dictum. You see, I'm reading Ulysses and have reached the extensive passage in which Stephen Daedelus is debating the great playright's life, sources, merits and demerits with his Dubliner friends Mulligan, Eglinton, Best etc. They demonstrate not simply a great knowledge of the works and the characters, but a huge if controversial understanding of the man himself and the life of the man. And all this in a few years after 1914, so without benefit of the massive Shakespearean academia of the last one hundred years.
Hemingway remarked that fiction can be truer than the truth. Shakespeare and Joyce would have agreed with that. And with my belief that fiction written well and truly enriches human life as can no other art.
