Marco Polo on Kubilai Khan

In Marco Polo's Travels, I went straight to the bit about Genghiz Khan but soon found much more follwing that on Kublai Khan, as per the Coleridge poem we learnt at school. It's a remarkable and gripping account. 

As with most history, power is glorified and Marco might not be an objective witness even if he is in some ways reliable. At school the teaching seemed to assume that the likes of Julius Caesar, monarchs, God and their like were to be admired. In the 70's there was still much more residual belief that Britain ruled the waves and that rulers were the great and good like we were. On closer inspection, and in hindsight, it now looks like we too readily accepted the publicity of tyrants and turned blind eyes to their methods.

Marco's in-depth account of Kublai's reign is a tremendous, sustained, overawed account of its immense grandeur. It lacks irony, passes over the methods by which it ruled as if, and because, they were commonplace and to be expected. But now we can see Marco's report as a precursor of President's Trump's chronically ongoing reports on himself, how nobody has ever seen anything like it, it's the most successful presidency ever in the most powerful country ever and all the statistics that can be used to measure it are off the scale. 'Measureless to man', indeed.

Except there is one episode recording an uprising despite the highly organized discipline with which the empire was held in place. The place has maintained the tradition. I hadn't realized that where Kublai ruled from is much where Beijing is now.

But the people eventually had seen enough of how Ahmad, a governor with great influence over Kublai, managed things much more for his own benefit than even any others in such positions did. Having revolted and Ahmad having been assassinated, Kublai turned up to investigate and found out about the 'abominable outrages committed' and, as we might expect, 

caused all the treasure that Ahmad had amassed in the Old City to be brought into the New City; and put it with his own treasure; and it was found to be beyond all reckoning.

But don't all 'great' rulers, or many of them, find the same thing. Piers Gaveston for Edward II, the Duke of Buckingham under James and Charles I, Peter Mandelson, Dominic Cummings, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Surely history is cyclic and doesn't make linear progress.

I'll either go back and start at the beginning with Marco or find another sensational bit but I'm sure he'd be glad to know that, 800 years after writing up what he found on his long holiday excursion, it is still providing enthralling entertainment. 

Take Four Books - Romanticism

Radio 4 has a programme called Take Four Books. In it, an author talks about one of their books and then three others that were 'influences' on it. I can't help wanting to have a go at any questionnaire, desert island or suchlike and so, realizing that my level of celebrity is well below that required to get an invitation, do it anyway, here.

I can't think that my trio of such models for Romanticism will bring in any surprises. Least of all, Philip Larkin.

Some of the ways these 'influences'- terrible word redolent of the 60's, drug culture and being 'under the influence' but it's better than 'influencers'- are consciously adopted and some less so. I arrived at my own method of trying to 'avoid bad practice' before I found a very similar phrase used to describe Larkin and The Movement of the 1950's. For me, thus, not wanting to do the wrong thing, it means irony, understatement rather than anything overblown, trying to avoid sentimentality, being readily understandable and doing so within chosen forms and seeing the poem as, hopefully, a piece of music. Mostly that.

But Larkin is also an example for not writing too much, doing what he does carefully and finding something lyrical and worth having rising from his low expectations. Low expectations of this life, not of what might be written about it.

Situation is a bit like This Be The Verse - same number of lines, same rhyme scheme but I have 10 syllables in a line where he has 8. Finding a rhyme on 'the coastal shelf', I was well aware that it's a simile memorably used in the Larkin and wondered if it was too obviously a steal. But his use of it doesn't mean the phrase can't ever be used in poetry again and it stayed in, becoming an echo in a poem about 'going nowhere slowly' which is what the likes of Mr. Bleaney are doing.

Success implicitly acknowledges a debt to Posterity. One could find further, if vaguer, echoes of Larkin elsewhere but since I'm sometimes unsure whether I'm listening to Beethoven or Mozart, for example, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Sean O'Brien has more than once been credited as a master of iambic pentameter. He undoubtedly makes good use of it and I've seen manuscripts with stresses on where he's been checking he's got it right. I'm less concerned with precise adherence to classical standards and count syllables more than metrical beats but, more than that, only really want the rhythm to flow and find that fitting the stresses over lines of defined length are a great help, not a hindrance.

The 'rainy Wednesdays/ In suburbs where the library's always closed then' could perhaps have come from O'Brien with its rain, library and the sense of ennui on long afternoons. It doesn't, though. It comes out of real life as part of an objective correlative for a kindly relationship that doesn't aspire to love. That's Larkinesque, too, in a way but I'd much prefer to define the gradations of acceptable equilibrium than aspire to some hyperbole of high passion and be found wanting. Which is what Romanticism, the poem, is about. Keats and his accomplices found themselves entranced by anything transcendent but, actually, were at least as much in love with the ruins of it.

 

So I needed a third influence. A poet who moves between rhyme, unrhymed lines, metrical lines and 'free verse' if need be. That would be Thom Gunn, for a very long time a great hero of mine, but this book isn't as Gunn as I've sometimes thought I've been before. And I'm never going to be as Rosemary Tonks as my liking for her might make me want to be because I'm not the world's most passionate guy and her trademark exclamation marks are dramatically intended whereas I'd never do such a thing unless, as in Escape Artist, as pastiche or with other second-hand inferences.

But her dissatisfaction with this life, or the world as she finds it, is somehow akin to mine, as it is in their own ways for Larkin and O'Brien and I wouldn't want to pass her over even if, as pastiche often remains, Escape Artist can't help being still more Green than Tonks.

So,

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems 

Sean O'Brien, Ghost Train 

Rosemary Tonks, Bedouin of the London Evening

 

but, having just done that, I'd no more go on Take Four Books than I'd take up any other quite so public exposure. Larkin was ambivalently equivocal about such exposure and Rosemary went to extraordinary lengths to try to extricate herself from it. Talking about oneself could be a stage further on towards madness from talking to oneself. One is better leaving such work as one sees fit for whatever attention readers want to apply to it. It's for commentators to do the commentating.   

The Rest of West and other stories

Moving on to the two lesser known of Nathanael West's novellas, proved to be more of an excursion into the exotic than Had been expected. The Dream Life of Balso Snell and A Cool Million are both picaresque, a bit like Don Quixote and Candide, but also grotesque.

The introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition says of Balso Snell that,

To call this a work of precocious undergraduate humour might seem ungenerous to both undergraduates and their literary efforts. One critic, Daniel Aaron, reviewing it in 1947, called it 'scatalogical and pretentiously wise' and this is such an exact judgement that it demands little elaboration. 

Snell's adventures having entered the Trojan horse via its posterior aperture result in encounters with literature and ideas that are ingenious in parts, taken to extremes and sometimes cleverly funny. That doesn't add up to a satisfactory work but it's only 20000 words and so one can stay with it. If it's a critique of literary endeavours then its gaucheness can be explained away as an element of its methods. If it is deliberately appalling some might count such appallingness as part of its success. The thing about 'experimental' writing is that there is no need for it to see print unless the experiment came off. As such, it's hard to like but of interest in its strangeness.

All of West's stories end in violence, as if some terrible end is inevitable. In A Cool Million, Lem Pitkin sets off to New York to make his fortune, as promised by the American Dream. Through a terrible series of misadventures he loses an eye, half a leg, his teeth, is scalped but remains undaunted as his ongoing disfigurement proceeds. It is a cartoon-like inversion of the myth that anybody can make it in New York. His death is not the end of his debasement, though, as he is taken up as a symbolic hero by the National Revolutionary Party, the vehicle for an ex-President that has loud echoes in the USA today, who proclaim that,

'He did not die in vain. Through his martyrdom, the National Revolutionary Party triumphed, and by that triumph this country was delivered from sophistication, Marxism and International Capitalism. Through the National Revolution its people were purged of alien diseases and America became again America.'

That sounds familiar and if the current incumbent was thought to have read any literary fiction, you'd think he'd read that. Thus, while The Day of the Locust is a fine book and Miss Lonelyhearts a success, it's almost in West's more dubious books that he's more interesting. Neither Balso Snell or Cool Million add much to his literary reputation but the former adds the dimension of surrealism and a genuine shock value and the latter by now looks prescient about MAGA and all the unhinged mania that comes with it.

I don't need to make room for West in the top echelon of my favourite prose fiction writers. It's by no means as fixed a list as its poetry equivalent anyway. But there was enjoyment to be had in reading him and I'm glad I did.

-

Next up, seized upon in the Chichester Oxfam shop because I was in the market for it anyway, Marco Polo's Travels. I'm expecting something picaresque and unlikely-sounding from him, too.

--

But last night. well on the way to justifying the licence fee on its own, the Radio 3 concert was Tenebrae with the Britten Sinfonia doing James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross, the Allegri Miserere and other almost as compelling pieces. 

It must be approaching thirty years since the MacMillan was broadcast late one night and the first disc of it subsequently appeared. It comes now with the big advantage of being familiar but that brings with it no trace of contempt, only a deeper thrill, if anything. A colossal piece that is both austere and shines forth. There is The Protecting Veil, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Errollyn Wallen, the Philip Glass Violin Concerto but MacMillan, with Veni, Veni and Isobel Gowdie to be taken into consideration, has provided music as memorable and powerful as any living composer.

Worth looking up. 

Southampton

 The daylight needs to be disposed of, the bus pass can take you anywhere. At the pace of its own choosing, admittedly. I lived and worked in Southampton for a time circa 1983 or 84 and then more happily worked there 1987-91. While I go through it on trains from time to time I've not got off much in the last ten years. Eight years ago for the Jess Davies Band on the release of the one and only record I had a hand in writing and then to see/hear Isata Kanneh-Mason play Clara Schumann. I'd have to check older diaries to see when it was we went to see Bowling for Soup. A free bus ride to see it again, then.

It was never an unpleasant place but it's always lacked charisma. Two 'careers' that I only ever regarded as jobs sent me there but I never wanted to stay. I arrived just in time to find a Corals and see Planters Punch, the only runner for Mr. Henderson at Bangor, steered home by Nico. Then it was lucky I went to the Art Gallery first because it closes at 3pm, somewhat weirdly. They have an early Hambling, an Auerbach, Van Dyck, Renoir, Gainsborough. There was an exhibiton by Emma Richardson but sadly the painting about ghosts isn't available on the internet to put here. It was far and away the most captivating. 

But, all these years on, the places where I lived and were employed are all gone. The dive where I lived has been replaced, or maybe only remodelled into an updated building of similarly compact living spaces. I followed the walk into Above Bar and wasn't sure of the precise premises where I'd suffered the indignities of junior retail management in an unsuitable job with wildly incompatible colleagues. While they seemed to think salesmanship was an honourable profession, it was clearly pathologically absurd to me. 

And the office block I worked in later in the first glory days of a life in the civil service has been replaced, as have so many buildings, with apartments. And yet there is still a housing crisis.

At first I thought it was The Dolphin we sometimes had our liquid lunches in and it seemed like the ultimate degradation that it is now a gym but on the way back The Red Lion was still there. But all trace of the imposing administrative centre overlooking the park has vanished, as by now have several of the friends I had in there 35 years ago. At least in Nottingham the houses, school and church I knew were still intact along with Trent Bridge, Meadow Lane and the City Ground.

But, notwithstanding those golden years of introduction to the civil service culture to which I owe so much, Southampton never had it for me. I'm not saying I feel at home in Portsmouth but one loses such affiliations by moving about too much and instead become a ready-made outsider, especially if one's temperament suits it so well anyway.

So, no, in spite of the several good people I ever knew who had Southampton allegiances, I'll know to keep on passing through and not go back. It featured on my university applications as first choice in 1978 for reasons that are hard to think of by now. I'm not convinced I missed much, or that Southampton University did, when nothing came of that.  

Nathanael West

 Forty-five years ago, my forage into the C20th American novel for the sake of unit 305 included some Fitzgerald, Catcher in the Rye, Saul Bellow, The Bell Jar and The Sound and the Fury. A despairing look at Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Not much else. My essays were on Eugene O'Neill/Tennessee Williams and Sylvia. I wish I'd read Nathanael West but I think I imagined The Day of the Locust was science fiction, as per that of the triffids, and even then that was a genre I disparaged with the utmost gusto.

One great reason for reading West would be that his books can be read in a day. Four of them fit into a neat little paperback. A better one is that he's tremendous.

Miss Lonelyhearts is almost shockingly cruel in places. I'd say 'cynical' by way of praise, where it is a good thing when understood properly, but most seem to take it as a negative the way it's come to be used. Since the whole theme of C20th American Lit seemed to be the 'American Dream' and its casualties, heaven knows where we are by 2026 when this tawdry view of it was available in the 1930's. The broken lives, the commodification of misery, maybe it's a shame it ends so dramatically but, as with Gatsby, it's as if it's not tragic enough unless it does.

The Day of the Locust is possibly more substantial although both belie their low word counts with big themes and quality writing. Here is the first famous fictional Homer Simpson and one wonders at the reference point because surely Matt Groening would have rest West. 

He is an awkward, downbeat character finding himself among the community of Hollywood extras who live with more hope for their film careers than their talents justify,

Faye's affectations, however, were so completely artificial that he found them charming. 

....

He believed that while she often recognized the falseness of an attitude, she persisted in it because she didn't know how to be simpler or more honest. She was an actress who had learned from bad models in a bad school.

 

There is a great deal to like about West and I'll pile straight into his other two novellas, grateful to have caught up with this element of a reading list from all those years ago. I did once add Sherwood Anderson, and Carson McCullers. I'd read some Hemingway before I got to university, and Ken Kesey. I don't remember Edith Wharton being on the list. The C20th was only 80% through. 

I'd like to think that eventually I will have read enough, and maybe even 'got it' enough, to be worthy of the B.A. (Hons) that, quite honestly, seemed like an underwhelming achievement but that might not be my fault. They seemed happy enough to present me with a certificate. I suspect that the conferring of degrees is not quite the great thing that those who don't have them imagine. Not in 1981 and maybe not in 2026 either.

But I'm here to celebrate Nathanael West, not denigrate educational qualifications. It's another victory for following one clue after another. I arrived at him via Weldon Kees and, yes, one can make the connection.

Audio

The Studio Album.

Piece of cake with this simple, home use technology. I'll knock up some sort of document to go with it, whether or not it amounts to sleeve notes, see if I can think of a better title than Audio and a picture for the cover and there it will be.

It looks like it e-mails okay, the file size not being too big to go, so it could be made freely available. It remains to be seen if I'll re-record it before doing that. It comes in two parts because, as recording engineer, I accidentally began a new file before track 3.

George Martin put Cilla through numerous takes for Anyone Who Had a Heart and Burt Bacharach wanted even more for Alfie before they were happy. I maybe ought to be slightly fussier than using my first takes without being quite so perfectionist but I'm not trying to make a million-seller.

The track listing is,

Twilight
Piccadilly Dusk
The Cathedrals of Liverpool
Starý židovský Hřbitov
Fiction
Move Over, Darling
Herbstregen
Situation
Rainyday Woman
Windy Miller
Romanticism
Success 

 

Twelve poems approximating to the greatest hits without that being a suitable title because I'm not claiming greatness for them, or even that they were hits. There is always a borderline area where one or two look lucky to get in ahead of one or two others.

But it's an enjoyable thing to do while also making one feel as if one is attempting to be a 'heritage' artist, re-packaging the back catalogue or, as the Sex Pistols more forthrightly put it, Floggin' a Dead Horse. But it might have the effect of initiating some rekindling of the motivation to try to produce more of such things. If the right idea shows up, I'd be glad to. Whether it does anything to encourage 'live' performances is another matter.

However, with a few weeks without musical events to report on, at least DGBooks is back to talking about books and even that which the original idea was to do, my poems. 

The Studio Album

     The new laptop promises to be quite a success. Already I've taken it upstairs and looked at a book on it from the safety of my remote eyrie away from the possibility of kids playing outside. I then went on to watch some greyhound racing and landed a modest gamble on the fav in the long distance open race, which always seems the sensible option in dog racing. Thus, while there is still money in the account, I availed myself of 10/1 about Jagwar for the National although if I were you I'd wait until the day when the advertised prices might be better.

However, I found the microphone and sound recording features, too.  

I find this visual representation of my first go at reading a poem a thing of rare beauty. The title and each of the fourteen lines come in similar, but all different, shapes of sound suggesting variety within discipline which is what I like to think it is - like something by Haydn, perhaps. It has immediately given rise to ideas of recording a little album of poems. I've never doubted that poems are to be read aloud, it's just I don't like doing it in public for a number of reasons. But recorded in private without all the protocols of the 'live' reading, much of that is avoided.

So, something to think about. 8 poems, maybe 10, all done on one file hoping it would be of e-mailable size although I have my doubts.