C.S. Boag's Blog, page 3
August 10, 2015
Sun catchers invite you to wonder
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C.S. Boag's review Aug 10, 15 · edit
5 of 5 stars
bookshelves: classics
Read in August, 2015
I am 71 and past pretending. The aim of these reviews are to be helpful. If they're not, or you disagree , please let me know I'm not too old to learn.
We're beguiled by simplicity, avoid the complex. Give us a good rattling yarn by John Grisham and we are happy. He can tell a story, Grisham and no messing about with hidden depths.
Not so Franz Kafka. With apologies to his memory, Kafka was a weirdo . It wasn't in his nature to be simple. But he wasn't a fraud. He really felt what he was writing. And in the short space of 50 pages , in the famous Metamorohosis, he achieves this.
Okay, like any great painting, you see what you want to see. But isn't it wonderful to see the rainbows that are from the little crystals called "sun catchers". They invite you to wonder. So does Metamorohosis.
Gregor Samson wakes up transformed into a giant beetle. He rattles around , frightening his family and other people. Eventually they are relieved when he dies and life returns to normal .
See what you like but look beyond the surface. There fish swimming down there. To me the metamorphosis is from a healthy family member to a sick one. Gregor becomes an embarrassment . He is the son who goes mad, the brother suffering an incurable disease : he's like the grandfather who grows old and suddenly starts throwing things.
To me, the story's saying: " Put up with it. Don't worry what people say- you owe him and for good or ill, you're related."
Forget the absurdity of it- the story and its message is a fine one. That's why it has lasted . It is not a rollicking tale but it's not a hard read, either. The word "Kafkaesque", meaning a bit funny, has worked its way into the English language because of this man's genius. We can benefit from it. 5/5The Metamorphosis
C.S. Boag's review Aug 10, 15 · edit
5 of 5 stars
bookshelves: classics
Read in August, 2015
I am 71 and past pretending. The aim of these reviews are to be helpful. If they're not, or you disagree , please let me know I'm not too old to learn.
We're beguiled by simplicity, avoid the complex. Give us a good rattling yarn by John Grisham and we are happy. He can tell a story, Grisham and no messing about with hidden depths.
Not so Franz Kafka. With apologies to his memory, Kafka was a weirdo . It wasn't in his nature to be simple. But he wasn't a fraud. He really felt what he was writing. And in the short space of 50 pages , in the famous Metamorohosis, he achieves this.
Okay, like any great painting, you see what you want to see. But isn't it wonderful to see the rainbows that are from the little crystals called "sun catchers". They invite you to wonder. So does Metamorohosis.
Gregor Samson wakes up transformed into a giant beetle. He rattles around , frightening his family and other people. Eventually they are relieved when he dies and life returns to normal .
See what you like but look beyond the surface. There fish swimming down there. To me the metamorphosis is from a healthy family member to a sick one. Gregor becomes an embarrassment . He is the son who goes mad, the brother suffering an incurable disease : he's like the grandfather who grows old and suddenly starts throwing things.
To me, the story's saying: " Put up with it. Don't worry what people say- you owe him and for good or ill, you're related."
Forget the absurdity of it- the story and its message is a fine one. That's why it has lasted . It is not a rollicking tale but it's not a hard read, either. The word "Kafkaesque", meaning a bit funny, has worked its way into the English language because of this man's genius. We can benefit from it. 5/5The Metamorphosis
May 27, 2015
The Second Curtain by Roy Fuller
Oh, how delightful. Here is a man who loves language. It carries the story which is a slight one. A man's friend dies- he looks into it and suffers the consequences. There is no slam-bang finale and it proceeds quietly. It is a sojourn in someone's mind. You are not going to be transfixed by this Penguin Crime story, it will not even have you on the edge of your seat. But it's a great example of what a poet can do. Love it and leave it - a gentle little excursion into one man's mind 4/5
May 26, 2015
Life is....
Life is the walks unwalked,
the jobs not done,
the roads untravelled.
The problems unsolved,
the romance not had
and the treasure not found.
the jobs not done,
the roads untravelled.
The problems unsolved,
the romance not had
and the treasure not found.
May 7, 2015
They Don't Make Raymond Chandlers Any More
The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Chandler doesn't falter. His characterisation and sense of place is superb, despite the need to keep up the pace. It is private detective genre and yet it is also highly literate. If you haven't tried Chandler before - and you are a reader- give him a go.
He is a beautiful man and - despite all the dead bodies- this is a beautiful story. Find out how people tick and at the same time enjoy yourself. They're not making Raymond Chandlers any more. 5/5
Chandler doesn't falter. His characterisation and sense of place is superb, despite the need to keep up the pace. It is private detective genre and yet it is also highly literate. If you haven't tried Chandler before - and you are a reader- give him a go.
He is a beautiful man and - despite all the dead bodies- this is a beautiful story. Find out how people tick and at the same time enjoy yourself. They're not making Raymond Chandlers any more. 5/5
March 30, 2015
All Hail Edward de Vere
This is the year to read some of Shakespeare. What set me off was a book that insisted Shakespeare was some one else - namely Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, doomed to anonymity by the exigencies of his time, and mainly the Elizabethan era. He was a member of the court and was unloading on his kind. Unthinkable. Hence the invention of Shakespeare, the most unlikely of great writers seeing that he was a very good merchant but unlettered. While Shakespeare- Shakespeare knows it all.
I am reading from an old quarto publication, handsomely illustrated, that spells the playwrights name Shakspeare. It has a lovely feel to it and the drawings make it a pleasure ride. In school Shakespeare was made a chore. No-one liked the plays- they were something to be endured. You learnt them off by heart and regurgitated them in exams. He was out of date and the images were convoluted. Who cared if the plays were soap operas of the time?
Strangely, for me, knowing that Shakespeare could well have been someone else- some one who wasn't a hick from the sticks - has opened his work to me. I see them with a new eye. Admittedly, I am 50 years older than I was a school, but its more than that. Somehow the plays seem much more likely.
So it was with Troilus and Cressida, the first I read in this new light. I read it just after George Johnstone's "Clean Straw For Nothing", where Meredith's unfaithful wife is called Cressida. I see now why.
The story is derived, as much of Shakespeare's, from other sources- in this case, Chaucer. In the interstices of Troy, Troilus and Cressida are lovers. Here a transaction the like of which is still practised today, the Trojans swap Cressida for Antenor, a captured Trojan commander. Vowing fidelity, over she goes, only to prove herself unfaithful. So it goes.
It's a nice story, beautifully told, far beyond the reach of an untutored merchant. The playwright's words are so precise, to my mind he reads better on page than on stage. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful- a love affair intermingled with war, the characters revealed by their words.
Like Troilus, bemoaning the fact their being in love, he has lost the stomach for war: "I am weaker than a woman's tear" he says to Cressida's uncle Pandarus (see panderer)declaiming at the end: "O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despied.
Wonderful. lovely stuff. All hail Edward de
I am reading from an old quarto publication, handsomely illustrated, that spells the playwrights name Shakspeare. It has a lovely feel to it and the drawings make it a pleasure ride. In school Shakespeare was made a chore. No-one liked the plays- they were something to be endured. You learnt them off by heart and regurgitated them in exams. He was out of date and the images were convoluted. Who cared if the plays were soap operas of the time?
Strangely, for me, knowing that Shakespeare could well have been someone else- some one who wasn't a hick from the sticks - has opened his work to me. I see them with a new eye. Admittedly, I am 50 years older than I was a school, but its more than that. Somehow the plays seem much more likely.
So it was with Troilus and Cressida, the first I read in this new light. I read it just after George Johnstone's "Clean Straw For Nothing", where Meredith's unfaithful wife is called Cressida. I see now why.
The story is derived, as much of Shakespeare's, from other sources- in this case, Chaucer. In the interstices of Troy, Troilus and Cressida are lovers. Here a transaction the like of which is still practised today, the Trojans swap Cressida for Antenor, a captured Trojan commander. Vowing fidelity, over she goes, only to prove herself unfaithful. So it goes.
It's a nice story, beautifully told, far beyond the reach of an untutored merchant. The playwright's words are so precise, to my mind he reads better on page than on stage. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful- a love affair intermingled with war, the characters revealed by their words.
Like Troilus, bemoaning the fact their being in love, he has lost the stomach for war: "I am weaker than a woman's tear" he says to Cressida's uncle Pandarus (see panderer)declaiming at the end: "O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despied.
Wonderful. lovely stuff. All hail Edward de
as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight
The guy's a genius. Not only does he construct an intricate plot, he couches the story in language that is not only sharp and witty, but grammatical. He has references to T. S. Eliot and Shakespeare and his hero Philip Marlowe plays chess. Above all, it is informed by ethics- Marlowe doesn't money unless he has earned it, he doesn't spilt on his friends and he doesn't take advantage of women. Sounds a little Like Mister Rainbow.
All right, it's a little old fashioned. yet the great writing - and the mind that informs it keeps alive, 60 something years after it was published.
Set in Hollywood, the story starts with a drunk hanging out of a Rolls Royce. Marlowe does the right thing by the drunk and the story goes from there.
There are lines like: "He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight", "A different thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it's safe to jump up and down on," and ' She had an iron smile and eyes that could count money in your hip wallet."
All right it's crass, ugly, violent post-war detective work. But it floats on wings of a dove. No smile is clichéd, no phrase hackneyed, so much of it is a delightful experience.
Read Chandler and learn how to write. he even gives lessons:- says the popular author Roger Wade of writing: " When its good it comes easy. anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of MISH-MASH".
All right, it's a little old fashioned. yet the great writing - and the mind that informs it keeps alive, 60 something years after it was published.
Set in Hollywood, the story starts with a drunk hanging out of a Rolls Royce. Marlowe does the right thing by the drunk and the story goes from there.
There are lines like: "He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight", "A different thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it's safe to jump up and down on," and ' She had an iron smile and eyes that could count money in your hip wallet."
All right it's crass, ugly, violent post-war detective work. But it floats on wings of a dove. No smile is clichéd, no phrase hackneyed, so much of it is a delightful experience.
Read Chandler and learn how to write. he even gives lessons:- says the popular author Roger Wade of writing: " When its good it comes easy. anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of MISH-MASH".
March 23, 2015
I Love Iris
Rain is pattering down on the roof and in my hair is wet because we've just been for a walk in the rain. Thats reality. Unreality is the world of books where you're invited to suspend belief for while and imagine the raindrops in your hair.
Iris Murdock can do this with the ease of a dog scratching fleas. In the this way, The Nice and The Good is a work of utter genius. Be it kids or adults Murdock gtes inside them as no one else can, delving about their psyches like a mischievous imp. There is no sense of self-the writers not there, no one's cavorting and preening- she's got a bunch of interesting characters and a story and she just gets on with it.
Throughout, the ghost of the Murdock in "Iris and Her Friends" by her husband John Bayley, hovers. It is a sad end, a mind thats just let go, an elderly brain in the grip of alzheimers. You can't help thinking of it as you read- she's so generous with her imagination, and in the end its her imagination that lets her down.
Read this book and delve into the lives of others. Read it and be intrigued by a masterful plot. Above all, suspend disbelief- those raindrops in your hair are real. I love Iris.
Iris Murdock can do this with the ease of a dog scratching fleas. In the this way, The Nice and The Good is a work of utter genius. Be it kids or adults Murdock gtes inside them as no one else can, delving about their psyches like a mischievous imp. There is no sense of self-the writers not there, no one's cavorting and preening- she's got a bunch of interesting characters and a story and she just gets on with it.
Throughout, the ghost of the Murdock in "Iris and Her Friends" by her husband John Bayley, hovers. It is a sad end, a mind thats just let go, an elderly brain in the grip of alzheimers. You can't help thinking of it as you read- she's so generous with her imagination, and in the end its her imagination that lets her down.
Read this book and delve into the lives of others. Read it and be intrigued by a masterful plot. Above all, suspend disbelief- those raindrops in your hair are real. I love Iris.
Becoming a Writer By Dorothea Brande and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
These are the two books that aspiring writers must read. Lukeman to discover what you must do and avoid to get published; and Brande to achieve the magic that gets those words on paper.
All my life I thought I could do both- live a normal life and write. It's only now that I realise I can't. It is a heady time I am 71.
In the last few years I have had five books published, before that it has been journalism and a few short stories. It has taken all this time to realise that writing is a full-time business.
I follow Brandt's precepts. I have place set aside for writing, there are no books there and no windows. I go there to write; when I stop writing I leave. In addition, there are two other rooms: a library and a study. The library is no more than a store room for several thousand books. The study is where I read, research and dream and plot- it has windows, three of them all beautiful; a twenty volume dictionary and music. Some would say and I agree I am a fortunate man.
I read Brande a long time ago. She says- and she is right- that you must have dedicated time and place for writing. You must know how to get yourself in the mood for writing, and you must take all you need for the duration- including the all important thermos of coffee.
Lukeman is new to me- but, oh, how right he is. He is an agent and knows his way round both manuscripts and publishing houses. He doesn't waste words. It is all covered(bar, for some odd reason, plotting) in 200 pages. Get is right, writers,he says: and this is how you do it.
These two books are the keys to the magic portals.
Read them, heed what they say and write.
All my life I thought I could do both- live a normal life and write. It's only now that I realise I can't. It is a heady time I am 71.
In the last few years I have had five books published, before that it has been journalism and a few short stories. It has taken all this time to realise that writing is a full-time business.
I follow Brandt's precepts. I have place set aside for writing, there are no books there and no windows. I go there to write; when I stop writing I leave. In addition, there are two other rooms: a library and a study. The library is no more than a store room for several thousand books. The study is where I read, research and dream and plot- it has windows, three of them all beautiful; a twenty volume dictionary and music. Some would say and I agree I am a fortunate man.
I read Brande a long time ago. She says- and she is right- that you must have dedicated time and place for writing. You must know how to get yourself in the mood for writing, and you must take all you need for the duration- including the all important thermos of coffee.
Lukeman is new to me- but, oh, how right he is. He is an agent and knows his way round both manuscripts and publishing houses. He doesn't waste words. It is all covered(bar, for some odd reason, plotting) in 200 pages. Get is right, writers,he says: and this is how you do it.
These two books are the keys to the magic portals.
Read them, heed what they say and write.
March 11, 2015
Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking
This is a book by the wife of the well known astronomical genius, Stephen Hawking, an unfortunate way to be known, but it reflects the purpose of the book. After wiping his bottom for years ( Stephen was paralysed by motor neurone disease)Jane is replaced in Stephen's affections by his nurse. Jane is understandably bitter and, also understandably, this book is one long whinge.
At least she's honest- up to a point. That point is reached when she pretends to be brilliant herself, with lots of talk about music etc that she could have got out of a book. Don't read it for any insight into Stephen Hawking either, because you won't get one. He was selfish and brilliant and that's about it. Oh and her dishonesty extends to her relationship with her fellow companion -in Christ, the shadowy Jonathon. Who of course is brilliant in his own right, as well as extremely self-effacing.
While written as a justification for her own actions, you come away wondering why he didn't leave her sooner. I suppose its hard to escape in a wheel chair.2/5
At least she's honest- up to a point. That point is reached when she pretends to be brilliant herself, with lots of talk about music etc that she could have got out of a book. Don't read it for any insight into Stephen Hawking either, because you won't get one. He was selfish and brilliant and that's about it. Oh and her dishonesty extends to her relationship with her fellow companion -in Christ, the shadowy Jonathon. Who of course is brilliant in his own right, as well as extremely self-effacing.
While written as a justification for her own actions, you come away wondering why he didn't leave her sooner. I suppose its hard to escape in a wheel chair.2/5
The Partner by John Grisham
I read this hot on the heels of Iris Murdock's "The Nice and the Good" and they're as different as fish and fowl. Murdock's an intellectual- uses big words and intriguing insight. Grisham on the other hand is a machine- and in this novel the plot runs like the engine of a Ferrari.
How good he is. From the opening words, "They found him in Ponta Pa..." to the end; "Surely, one day she would find him," the story ticks over without missing a beat. The partner disappears with $90 million, a goodly sum- after faking his death. Through a series of beautifully logical stages, he's found - but the money isn't. Thus the story develops.
Unlike in Murdock's novel, you don't really give a toss about the characters. And by the end, you find yourself to have been singularly unmoved. But the writer's ability leaves you breathless. Grisham, there's his picture on the inside back cove, smart-looking, sassy, knowing-knows how to do it- through all the natural twists and turns of the plot, to the hinted at, but still unexpected denouement.
Raindrops in the hair it's not - reality is never present, But he keeps you reading by unassailable logic. Clever boy, but different by far from Murdock. For what he does- 5/5
How good he is. From the opening words, "They found him in Ponta Pa..." to the end; "Surely, one day she would find him," the story ticks over without missing a beat. The partner disappears with $90 million, a goodly sum- after faking his death. Through a series of beautifully logical stages, he's found - but the money isn't. Thus the story develops.
Unlike in Murdock's novel, you don't really give a toss about the characters. And by the end, you find yourself to have been singularly unmoved. But the writer's ability leaves you breathless. Grisham, there's his picture on the inside back cove, smart-looking, sassy, knowing-knows how to do it- through all the natural twists and turns of the plot, to the hinted at, but still unexpected denouement.
Raindrops in the hair it's not - reality is never present, But he keeps you reading by unassailable logic. Clever boy, but different by far from Murdock. For what he does- 5/5
