RussellinVT’s Comments (group member since Apr 11, 2024)

RussellinVT’s comments from the Ersatz TLS group.

giveusaclue wrote: "Yes, I had heard of that. Here is another one for you:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55...
..."

That is some story. Credit to the BBC.

AB76 wrote: "I'm dipping in and out of a selection of articles that the late Christopher Hitchens wrote for the LRB called A Hitch in Time: Writings from the London Review of Books ..."

The Boys from the Black Stuf epitomizes an era, doesn’t it? I think of Yosser, so memorably played by Bernard Hill, as belonging to the same tradition as Lennie in Of Mice and Men - strong men who are pitiable.

Hitchens, as you say, is more controversialist than scholar, but he’s never less than interesting, and he did do some proper studies, e.g. Unacknowledged Legislators and a long essay Blood, Class, and Nostalgia on the relations between Roosevelt and Churchill and the special relationship generally.

giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Completely off topic but allow me the moment

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/...

Burnley promoted (again). 🥳🥳🍾🍾🎉🎉"
..."

Burnley is having a moment. I recently saw an endearing movie with Rory Kinnear called The Bank of Dave, about a Burnley businessman who wants to set up a bank to make small loans to locals. It's based very loosely on a real story.

Welcome to the new thread. GP’s instructions worked perfectly.

I don’t have much to mention myself on the reading front at the moment. I am in the middle of three separate books:
- Le Docteur Pascal
- The Golden Ass
- The Rigor of Angels (on perceptions of reality)
I’ll post some comments as I finish each of them.

A couple of days ago I heard part of a lively interview with Jo Harkin about her new historical novel called The Pretender set around the life of the supposed 17th Earl of Warwick, better known to us as Lambert Simnel. She said she had adopted the approach of Hilary Mantel: respect all the known historical facts, and otherwise feel free to use one’s imagination. Not sure it’s for me, but it might be of interest to any late-medievalists.

My eye was also caught by a headline in The Times, that there is a new translation of a 1966 novel by Simone de Beauvoir, The Image of Her. A young Parisian is in an existential crisis (which didn’t appear to be an attempt at humour). It is said to be brilliantly incisive.

Thanks for that info, AB.

In an hour or two I will try closing this thread and opening anew thread.

AB76 wrote: "Not strictly related to a book i am reading but a theme i have been looking at for a while is the lesser known Greek diaspora dating from the 1920s..."

Out of interest, do you happen to know when a Greek community started settling in Australia, and did they come mainly from one of the particular communities in the Greek diaspora in Europe?

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Junger's diaries..."

From your posts, AB, they sound like a unique record. Went to the library today and asked them to get a copy through the ILL."

there is so mu..."

I don't know the Sartre diaries, beyond what you've written about them, so that is another TBR down the road. I've been tempted for an age by the NYRB collection of his essays, We have only this life to live, which we have sitting in the bookshop. One day I will buy it for myself. Several of the essays date from WWII, and they would also of course make a nice complement to the memoir of Simone De Beauvoir, which I very much enjoyed.

AB76 wrote: "Junger's diaries..."

From your posts, AB, they sound like a unique record. Went to the library today and asked them to get a copy through the ILL.

GP has kindly sent me some instructions on how to open and close threads. I will make my first attempt on Monday, which is when our current three-week cycle ends. Fingers crossed.

giveusaclue wrote: "An idea. Rather than everyone get upset at one another, why don't we just stick to writing about what books we have read (and perhaps happy things that are happening to us)..."

Sounds good to me too.

GP - I will take over if you can send me some very simple instructions. (Please assume I know nothing about managing any form of social media.) You've done a great stint, thank you very much, and, as a long term user, it's about time I stepped up.

Gpfr wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "Tam wrote: "...I am not getting on with Madeline Millers 'Circe' at all. She seems to have ripped out all sense of the very archaicness, and the geographic identity..."

I think you ought to bump it back up! I loved Circe....

Oh dear - just when I thought I had a respectable reason for not reading it!

AB76 wrote: "Two worrying articles in LRB and NYRB on China ..."

It’s a commonplace over here that Trump’s climb-down on (some of) his tariffs has exposed a vulnerability that was apprehended in a general kind of way but never previously experienced as a very unwelcome hard reality – that the world might one day lose confidence in the US dollar and no longer regard US Treasury bonds as the ultimate secure investment. China, as the holder of one half of all the Treasury bonds bought by foreign central banks, and a quarter of all Treasury bonds issued, has found itself in possession of a weapon of extraordinary economic power. And yet, I can’t help thinking it was well past time that China’s drive for manufacturing dominance received a determined response. If this translates into sudden and widespread economic difficulties within China itself, we may find – to come to your point - that the CCP’s grip on the population is not unbreakable. There was a moment late on during Covid when the Party had to bend to the will of the people and abandon a fresh draconian lockdown. We could see the Party destabilized again, and more lastingly, if now millions of factory workers are laid off, millions of graduates are unable to find a job, millions of homeowners fail to pay their mortgage, businesses go bust by the hundred thousand, and growth in GDP evaporates. All the cyber-surveillance in the world would be unlikely to save a government in that position. East Germany had the pre-digital equivalent, a pervasive police state, and it simply collapsed when Soviet funding was withdrawn.

But I haven’t read the articles.

Tam wrote: "...I am not getting on with Madeline Millers 'Circe' at all. She seems to have ripped out all sense of the very archaicness, and the geographic identity, of the story...."

It was already pretty low on my TBR long list, and you’ve sent it down several places. One of those books you feel you ought to read without really wanting to.

Robert wrote: "... Another I liked was Browning, including his "Caliban Upon Setebos."

Another by Browning I didn’t know at all, and a good accessible example of his style.

Looking it up I was reminded of his prodigious output. He just overflowed with ideas and language.

I see I got myself mixed up with Harold/Roland.

giveusaclue wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "A couple of days ago the library came through with The Rockpool Murder..."


Glad you are enjoying it. You will have to ask your library to provide the others in the series...

I finished The Rockpool Murder and enjoyed it a lot. The plotting was seriously impressive. My main conclusion is that, while she may write about murder, Emylia Hall, to give us some of the scenes she does, must be a very nice and thoroughly warm-hearted lady.

Yes, I'll be reading the two previous ones - and I see she has contracted to write three more in the series - how does anyone know they can do that?

Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "Robert wrote:
"For God and King Charles..."

Great detective work, Robert. I’ve been thinking about Browning since discovering he was the source for Love among the Ruins, the title borrowed by Angela Thirkell. I never managed to get through any of his longer pieces, but he was a master of the shorter lyric, e.g. the equally mysterious Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came (that magical line coming in turn from Lear), and the apposite Home Thoughts from Abroad:

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there……
That’s the wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

April in Vermont will be beautiful in a couple of days but right now is not very spring-like. Today we are getting six inches of wet snow.

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i like that idea of abridged shakespeare, i wonder how they fared, i would imagine they were popular with the working class..."

Thanks, GP. Bang on point.

AB76 wrote: "i like that idea of abridged shakespeare, i wonder how they fared, i would imagine they were popular with the working class. .."

There's nothing specific in Stubbs about post-Restoration theatre and the working class (as distinct from all the "working girls" who came out at night), though a comment from the time that Davenant "chiefly civiliz'd the Stage" for respectable society suggests that this was his main target audience. Stubbs does say that Davenant, who collapsed and died while at work at the playhouse, left a thriving business for his widow and nine children and step-children to dispute over.

A good recent find in a second-hand bookshop was Centuries and Men, a collection of occasional essays written in his signature punchy style by JH Plumb, whose surveys of 18th century England I have always enjoyed. These were varied and entertaining – the Grand Tour, Chatsworth, Bath, political leaders, literary figures (Defoe, Pope, Fielding, Goldsmith) and so on. Several are sidelights on Sir Robert Walpole, said to be the last minister of the crown to make himself seriously rich while in office. (Plumb’s two-volume biography dating from the early 1950s still seems to be the standard work, despite stopping short, in 1734.) Some essays are on Africa, an interest I didn’t know he had.

A couple of days ago the library came through with The Rockpool Murder by Emylia Hall (thank you, giveus) and it’s so engaging, everything else has been put aside just for the moment, until I find out who did it.

Stubbs is actually pretty good on Davenant, who was famous among his mocking contemporaries for having a rapidly decomposing nose, from the mercury treatment for syphilis. But he married three times, he was the man who energetically organised the King’s munitions, and he had enough political skill to survive under the Lord Protector, and enough daring to keep a form of theatre going, staged recitations in his own home, which couldn’t really be attacked as licentious public performances. Come the Restoration he was one of two impresarios who brought proper theatre back to life. Among his most popular productions were Shakespeare plays ruthlessly cut to eliminate any line that was difficult to grasp, except, apparently, King Lear, which he staged successfully in full.