Gillian Polack's Blog, page 105

gillpolack @ 2013-08-09T13:08:00

The book guys have come and gone (and needed a truck!) - I'll know on Monday how much money I get for my old books and if that solves the current interesting situation. My finances aren't dire, just interesting. Lots of work has unexpectedly been cancelled, but I still have emergency funds to cover it. If I get some money for the books then I don't need to make as much of a mess of my emergency funds, which is a very good thing. I don't know for certain if my library's down to 6000 volumes, but I think it's quite likely. So, things are happening.

The book guy has a first edition Culpeper for sale, if anyone has $14k to spare. It's the first combined edition of the Herbal and the Physician. I covet it, but even if I were terribly wealthy, I suspect I'd buy a facsimile. I don't have the climate control and etc for really valuable books. He also has an 11th edition Encyclopedia Britannica.

I can't believe how relieved I am to have got rid of so many books! I bet I need six of them over the weekend. Even if I do, my core collection is still intact and my research library is intact and I've kept books by friends, so I'm doing well. I'm doing so well, in fact, that I think I might take a moment and eat some lunch.

I'm very daring today.



ETA: Next Tuesday the boxes of books should be in storage. Today is the day for Grand Organisation. It's also the day for sorting out finances and going to the library and running messages, which is obviously my next step.

gillpolack @ 2013-08-09T00:17:00

I think the moral of today is to not let the bed bugs bite. Or maybe it's to remember exactly which files one had open and what one is doing with them, despite the insertion of lengthy phone calls in the middle of one's work or the insertion of complexiities. Else one makes errors... All bar one of the errors I made were retrievable and are fixed. I will just have to wear the single other. I don't normally make mistakes of this nature, though.

Tomorrow is going to be better. First of all, the pain won't increase again, for the big trigger isn't around for a few days. Secondly, once the book guy has been, I will be able to navigate my loungeroom again (I don't know how many books there are, but there are at least 20 books in each pile and there are 19 piles and they take up a lot of space and I can't find things!) and maybe talk with friends again about getting all those boxes out of my library and my bedroom. That will reduce the feeling of not existing in my own living space and work space, I think. it will also mean I can find missing objects. Having so many small crises didn't help with this afternoon and evening being the time of stupid mistakes.

It all comes down to this being part of a high pain week, really. The big accomplishment of the day was working out the trigger, but the trigger is going to be around a while longer, so I just have to deal.

I've put off the rest of my forms until after the book guy has been, though, just to be safe. One daft and irretrievable error is one too many. At least there is an upside, which is that all the time I spent hunting for objects that are probably hidden under hundreds of books meant that I caught up on mail and even made inroads in various piles of paper. When my place is sorted, it's going to be very sorted indeed. Also, I'm down to only 6-7 litres of home made liqueur. I wasn't drinking it just now (I'm on medication that won't let me, alas) but I located only two stashes of maturing berries while looking for a single missing book (it's ironic, to have a missing book right now) and two missing bits of paper. It's an ill wind...

gillpolack @ 2013-08-08T12:46:00

I can't do any more work on my library until I get the big pile of books out of my loungeroom and til I get some help to get the many packed boxes into the storeroom. It's going to make my research easier (even though that wasn't the initial aim) because I can actually now see all of my books. I can run my eyes along the shelves again!

The rest of my day is filling in forms and writing things I really don't want to write. Today is the day for that kind of thing. I suspect it's also a day for much, much coffee. I was going to go to the library, but I'll save that as a reward for when things are a bit more sorted, which may be as early as Sunday...or it may not be.

And now, to do must-do-but-oh-how-tedious part of my day! Except, maybe, perhaps I ought to have lunch first. I keep forgetting food and I admit, I'm hungry.

gillpolack @ 2013-08-07T23:14:00

Today has been busy. I keep saying this, and then I forget what I've done. I know I've packed more boxes of books to be put in the storeroom, because Ger (who brought me lemons and daffs and jonquils and snowdrops) helped me find more. Tomorrow I should finish packing the fiction I won't be using for a while and making my Medieval stuff actually visible (minimising the doublestacking with books on top!) which means I will be able to use most of my library again. I'm finally seeing some shelf space. It's almost encouraging.

I taught my class the basics of narrative transitions this morning. It was wonderful. What was especially wonderful was seeing that when people get the transitions right between different parts of the story, they don't have to worry about show vs tell: the show vs tell handles itself. It's only when my students didn't get the forward motion right in the narrative that they got the balance wrong between exposition and narrative momentum. The trick was convincing them that they didn't need just a before and after, but a before/pivot/after structure for very short narratives. A couple tried before/pivot and leaving off the denouement, which was interesting, for we got to talk about cliffhangers and when to use them. Structure is a lovely thing.

The more I teach writing, the more convinced I am that good writing is closely connected to good narrative skills. Working on fundamental skills is far more useful than following someone's ten point guide to how to write. Today was a case in point. Develop the particular skill and the rest takes care of itself.

I also made my students write snarky poems about sport, because a basketball tournament provided our background noise. This taught us that even sport-haters can write well about sport. It's such a good narrative framework, like writing novels about putting on theatre productions.

I want to joke about sitting back and smelling the flowers, but I have a bit of work today if tomorrow isn't going to be too crowded. I shall smell the flowers anyhow, for they remind me that today started really badly and is finishing delightfully. It's all in the narrative.

In the Olden Time - Andrew Sanders

The book I’ve just been reading is a welcome change from our fascination with the Victorian fascination with the Middle Ages. In the Olden Times: Victorians and the British Past http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml?format=light(Andrew Sanders, 2013) is about the Victorian fascination with history, but starts with the Elizabethan. It’s historiography mostly seen through art leading into literature, with historical writings themselves playing a subordinate role. And the attraction of a random die cut to it (and the die cut must have fallen out of another book of mine, during my various sortings) makes great sense, for this particular die cut is a reproduction of a Victorian girl, wearing some sort of country costume. It’s a different kind of nostalgia, but it’s one that’s surprisingly close to the subject of the book. The die cut is now the book’s permanent bookmark.

This is a discussion of Victorian historical invention. The art of the day provides a doorway, and Sanders uses that doorway to walk through the role of key historical figures and their physical and social surrounds in the public imagination, through major figures in English history. It works very nicely for an interested member of a general audience, for Sanders gives enough background about less-known works. He doesn’t explain who Charles Dickens is, or George Eliot. There are no potted biographies. The works of art and literature and what they tell us about historical nostalgia are the focus, not the lives of the various souls described.

I have a caveat (I always have caveats) and that is that you will need larger versions of some of the pictures, to properly see* what Sanders describes. Or you could borrow my magnifying glass. I sometimes think that it’s for books like this that I possess the magnifying glass**.

One thing I really loved about this book was comparing the works and the perceptions of the past to our own (I did this aloud, of which more anon, possibly in a footnote, for today I feel a desire for footnotes). The section on Elizabeth, for instance, tallied rather nicely with Alison Uttley and her story of the Babington Plot, for Elizabeth is treated less than kindly in both and the sense of the Elizabethan manor as a solid and welcoming house is consistent. Or maybe Susan Cooper’s manor house in The Dark is Rising. That’s what I shall use this book for someday – to help me trace the expressions about periods and places other than the Middle Ages. It’s neatly done, and it brings together many major literary expressions alongside the art. It opens doors to readers of other places and times.

It’s not perfect (and here we have a second caveat). Even with my limited knowledge of Victorian England, I note that Sanders underplays the various religious sentiments of the day. He discusses them, but focusses on precise aspects. It would have been fascinating to see how the rather strange interplay of prejudice expressed in popular novels related to popular art, for instance, but that is an aspect he leaves out. In framing his discussing in terms of Cromwell vs Charles, the focus is on how literature and art treat Roundheads and Cavaliers (which reminds me of my schooldays!), and so an opportunity for looking into nineteenth century popular religion is…not lost, but regarded aslant. It’s discussed as an aspect of nineteenth century discussion about St Paul’s, for instance. Architecture and the character of specific major historical figures (expressed through art, literature and historiography) are the vectors, novels are simply used to illustrate and Sanders is careful not to be too provocative, or maybe he’s simply not as interested in this aspect of nineteenth century history as I would like.

What he offers, in fact, is somewhat old-fashioned: he traces the great and good in terms of art and history and links them with each other. He does it in neat chronological form. It’s very easy to follow and it’s delightful to read, but it doesn’t touch upon the popular. I keep using the word ‘popular’ because so many people would have seen the art Sanders talks about, and read the books and wanted to throw their Macaulay at their teacher’s head. The materials he talks about would have been widely known in Victorian England, but his examples are almost all famous (famous art, famous writing) ie elite to our modern thinking, even canonical. It’s opinion-forming and suggests a great deal, but Sanders doesn’t counterbalance his discussion of Thackeray with how equivalent views are expressed by scurrilous cheap near-forgotten novelists.***

The problem with the big topics Sanders introduces is that to cover all of them would require a much larger and quite possibly unpublishable book. Sanders has chosen a selection of specific subjects that roughly follow major moments in British history, starting with Elizabeth. It may not fit my wishes or cover all the subjects I want to read about, but it’s not a bad approach for all that. The book is easy to follow and the sequencing is straightforward, which means that the vast array of information Sanders provides on his various topics is under control.

This makes it, let me say again, a handy book for the well-informed general reader. Also a very pretty book, with lots of nice illustrations. Just don’t read the pages under a bright light, for the paper is very glossy and it does glare. When I wanted to argue with an idea, I had to stop and rethink, for I found the page glaring at me**** and daring me to say something. So I bit my tongue and will argue at greater length with other books.




*I split an infinitive. I shall burn in historian’s hell. Or not.

**This is an outright lie. I possess a magnifying glass because it makes looking at things medieval so much easier. I admit, though, it makes a difference when looking at small reproductions of big pictures.

*** His discussion did remind me, however, that I haven’t read Lorna Doone since I was ten years old, and it’s about time I gave it another go. I suspect I wasn’t quite ready for it at ten. Lorna Doone was on the shelf next to The Children of the New Forest, in the family room. I read it from beginning to end and decided it wasn’t very exciting.

****I can’t be entirely serious today, I’m afraid. Today was…odd. If anyone finds this review and doesn’t know my work from anywhere else, let me take a moment and give you my heartfelt apologies. But yes, I do argue aloud with books. It’s one reason I read them. It’s a lot of fun. It’s especially fun on a crowded bus…

gillpolack @ 2013-08-05T17:55:00

High pain days are more unusual than they have been, but they do intervene from time to time. My new medication helps a great deal, and I am functional, but very, very slow. Except when I'm teaching. I must be a kind of energy vampire, for students give me the wherewithal to function on days like today. Alas, however, I don't teach until Wednesday, so today has been...tough.

I've done some housework (if I can wash some dishes and cook dinner, then I'll be pretty much OK for a few days) and almost finished sorting my books (1/10 of my library can go, but reluctantly - it's a lot of work, deciding what to lose and why) and finished with three books (ie reading - I now only have three more books to read this week), but of serious work today, there has been none. I will still have some discussion about a book for you, hopefully later tonight, but if not, then tomorrow. And I have to write book reviews, today and tomorrow, for a place other than here. Then I will be caught up on today and can tackle the serious work that has waited.

I now have two scholarly papers I need to write, not one. I have a very bad draft of one (it needs doubling, I think, but the material's ready) and just an outline of the second. The outline I did yesterday, after the pain started, so my life is not an entire waste.

I've also eaten much chocolate, as one does. And I've been watching the West Wing.

It's a very antagonistic culture built up in the West Wing universe. I love watching it, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Also, I want to get rid of the word "OK" from the script. It's often very powerfully used, but it signals the single biggest problem with Sorkin's writing: he gets the liveliness of his dialogue from creating a kind of dialect. It's as if all his characters are family, with very similar speech patterns. It creates a unity to the world, but it also means that there's a sense of one culture speaking and a lack of the spark of idiosyncrasy (except for CJ - Janney manages to overcome this, most of the time, and yes, I do think that it's her acting, rather than the character's lines being more precise). In an episode in Season 2, a 19 year old's speech is punctuated with the sort of things one associates with some fractious teens, but it's encased in the family speech patterns. There are lots of thoughts that belong to particular characters, but far too little in the way of idiolect. Although I do admire the way grand errors are delivers with such assurance. Which takes me back to it being an antagonistic culture. It does not admit of error.

One day I need to compare direct statements of fact in Connie Willis' books with direct statements of fact in Sorkin's scripts. Inaccuracies might be irrelevant. It might be a declaration of cultural superiority. Or it might be a lack of interest in checking data. Or it might be something else entirely. When I get bored, I shall explore this. Right now, I may be hurting a great deal, but boredom is not anywhere close.

Voting is coming!

I'll post about a book later. Right now I'm in memoryland. My father refused to ever tell us how he voted, so we never discussed who we actually voted for. The idea was, I think, that we make up our own minds. The problem is that without that discussion at the dinner table, we didn't get to discus politics nearly enough and so some of us found our political sophistication elsewhere and some didn't. Lack of pressure can backfire, sometimes. I think I'm making up for it on my blog.

Anyhow, Australia now has a new election date and it's not Yom Kippur and I've probably missed the boat for enrolling to work on matters electoral (because it was no use putting my name down if I then had to say "Sorry, I'm Jewish"), but I'm relieved in all other respects.

I've already revised my voting strategy. I was going to vote Labor, simply because Gillard needed the support. I didn't like all her policies (in fact, some I loathed intensely) but I wanted to make a stand against a whole bunch of hatreds that were partly manifesting as misogyny. Now that the misogynists have won and Rudd has replaced Gillard, I'm not voting Labor. The hatreds still manifest, but I shall address them differently.

I'm voting my usual method, with just one small adjustment.

Each election, I find out about all the local candidates. I rank them very carefully and vote under the line for the Senate, filling in every single box. One election I think I had to fill in 87 boxes, but it was worth it. It's always worth it, especially the years (like this) which are very plaguish on both houses.

My technique is simple. Candidates with truly foul politics share the bottom of the ballot. This time, they will do so along with the Liberals. I do not actually dislike the Liberal Party, but they've kept a leader with those truly foul politics in for so very long, that I cannot trust their decision-making and so otherwise tolerable candidates will go near the bottom. Since Zed is standing for the Senate, I might put him right down the bottom just because his name is the last letter of the alphabet and it means I don't have to distinguish between who is worst quite as carefully as usual.

I work up the list and the least offensive goes at the top. Except this time if the least offensive is Labor, they'll go after the next least. I'll make sure preferences flow to them (for this may be an election where preferences count) but I won't give even the most delightful Labor candidate #1 ranking, or even #2 ranking. I am, after all, female, and they have publicly demonstrated their lack of support for women in power.

It's all very straightforward, really.

There was a time in my life when three different parties wanted me to be join and do things with them and a bunch of friends said "You'd be good in politics." The parties backed down when I explained my method of voting. It appears I'm not a party player...



ETA: I went to the Electoral Commission website and it's not too late to put myself down. They don't accept applications that don't have a mobile phone number, though, so I still can't work. I know what phone I want (they finally make phones I can see!) but it has to wait until I have fulltime work. There's irony in there, I fear. My life as usual. (I suspect it's a design flaw on the form rather than a conscious decision to not employ people who only have landlines. It's an odd one, however.)

gillpolack @ 2013-08-04T09:03:00

I didn't finish my yesterday's list. I finished a bunch of things that weren't on the list, though, so the end of the world is not yet quite nigh. Isn't that exciting?

I have two books on my today's list, one post-apocalyptic (with dirty snow) and one... other. I'll be reporting on the other as soon as I finish it, so that one you;ll hear more about. The one with dirty snow must wait, for it's the last book in my current Aurealis pile.

When the books are done, it's paperwork the whole day. This is why I've already done work today. I want time out with friends! (I really don't get to see most of my friends very often at all) and K is going to the market this morning. Market! Friends! One hundred more pages and I shall have earned it, too.

gillpolack @ 2013-08-03T11:43:00

I might be able to get my book collection down to 6000. It's actually possible. How I'm achieving this is through great toughness, enormous emotional resilience and by having booked a date with a bookdealer. I have 16 piles of books in my lounge, now, waiting for him, but I've still got a few shelves to sort. That's OK, though, because I have until Friday.

I actually have my sorting shelf back, now. It's taken a lot of books gone into boxes and a lot (though not as many) in piles waiting for their next home, but I have my sorting shelf back.

This is good, for I've nearly finished my first batch of Aurealis reading. This year they will be able to be stored in my library, and not in my loungeroom, which means my friends won't look at them and put things back on the wrong pile. This will save me some small angst.

I'm apparently due new review books, so the sooner I get this sorted the sooner I can get back to usual states of book confusion!

Today is equally split between sorting books, reading books, and applying for jobs. I have an article to write next week and the Middle Ages to return unto, and I'll be very glad when I'm a bit caught up.

gillpolack @ 2013-08-02T22:59:00

I've been ratty for hours and spent the last little while explaining this to Sharyn. Something she said made me check the date. It's my father's yarhzeit. I'm always ratty on my father's yarhzeit. He died in 1988 and I still miss him and every year, on the anniversary of his death, I look at the world with more than a touch of jaundice.

There's a candle burning for him in the kitchen, now, and when that burns out, my life will be back to its normal placid self. Well, as much of normal placidity as my life usually has.

I find it a little odd that I can be so aware of the two calendars that I live with that I can react to the yahrzeit with such emotion every year, without fail, and then discover that it's the anniversary. I also react on 8 August, for he died on 8/8/88, just before midnight - if he had died after midnight then the date would not have been amusing and, as I say every year, that would have been unLeolike, to avoid making a bad joke when one was possible.

I think I shall drink a toast to him. I have some of his favourite alcohol (Rutherglen fortifieds, always) and it would be appropriate if I disposed of it in a way that honoured his memory.

This is not the time for bad jokes (I save those for his birthday) - it's simply the moment for memory. And to miss him. Which I do.

It's as if he died yesterday, and yesterday is too soon. Twenty-five years ago was far, far too soon. I think I need that drink now.