Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

Days like yesterday ought to come round more often. Never mind the imminent drought of water, I was suffering from a drought of new reading matter and a first survey of my shelves hadn't offered up much. But New Grub Street by George Gissing became the selection, a bit of an outside chance as it might have been a halfway abandonment first time out a few years ago. Well, maybe we all deserve a second chance.

It's great. It's as if Emile Zola had written Keep the Asipidistra Flying in the style of Maupassant and there's three writers worth having in your literary ancestry. The idea of 'glamour' of writing in the competitive world of publishing is severely undermined by the inverse logic of the market place in which,

it isn't only for the sake of reputation that one tries to do uncommon work. There's the shrinking from conscious insincerity of workmanship - which most writers nowadays don't seem to feel. "It's good enough for the market"; that satisfies them.

Published in 1891, this is 130+ years before the advent of AI and the belief in some places that the human writer will become obsolete in the production of some sorts of writing, and soon.

While Jasper Milvain readily adapts to the demands of writing for a living, Edwin Reardon is more compromised by ideals and hates producing cheap novels that might sell. After Jasper has outlined a busily productive day in his breezy, upbeat way, he is sked,

'And what is the value of it all?'

'Probably from ten to twelve guineas, if I calculated.'

'I meant, what is the literary value of it," said his sister, with a smile.

Obviously, but she's somehow missing the point of being a 'professional' writer.

 

How privileged one is to write what one feels like, to not to have to and for it not to have to be any good. It's an excellent book and the library catalogue has a few more Gissings on it and one or two of them will be coming my way to carry on from where New Grub Street leaves me. You could trust a Victorian to write a novel.

I read it yesterday to the accompaniment of another wonderful pick from my shelves, the Bach Cello Sonatas. Very happy as I am to attend concerts of Ravel, Debussy and Chopin on the piano and write warmly about them, we are always betting without Bach. From its first phrases, the disc by Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich is in a different class. I played it three times yesterday, once again this morning and am left to ponder the deep riches there are on those 'classical' shelves, not to mention the 'pop' spread about elsewhere.  

I thought I might resurrect an old essay with a view to the Larkin Society journal. I wasn't entirely happy with it three years ago but rather than have to re-do it, I found a few bits of adjustment made it quite satisfactory to me in its discursive associations and so I hope it passes muster with the editor. I do so like being in their magazine. It feels like the only place appropriate for me to be by now.

And then I got around to reading a lecture on Gerard Manley Hopkins I'd been, very kindly, sent. That also restored some faith that there are still people about who are not Ocean Vuong and are capable of sense and rigour.

So sometimes the planets align in one's favour and what seem like unredeemable bad times turn into unarguably happy days. Perhaps one only needs to know where to look. And then look there.