The Henry James Update and other stories

In due course, one's preconceptions are confirmed. The Aspern Papers, The Turn of the Screw and, not quite so much, Washington Square, were all great. I like short books. I don't mind long books but sometimes 600 pages don't seem altogether necessary. Except The Portrait of a Lady wouldn't be Henry James if he didn't bury you under the thick eiderdown of his all-enveloping prose.

It's luxurious and, yes, I do have all day to enjoy the luxury but, as I've found in my unsuccessful ventures into Jane Austen, I'm not particularly bothered which of her ardent suitors the heroine is going to marry, if any. Which is not to say one can't enjoy the chapters as they flow ever onwards almost as vignettes full of wit, observation and style. It's just that even life itself is surely not quite as nuanced as Henry James's fiction. Not even Proust, Ulysses or Tolstoy. I don't know yet, I'm only halfway.

There's enough to like, like the,

stone bench...useful as a lounging place to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests anyone who confidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude

or,

'She was born- I always forget where you were born.'

'It's hardly worth while then I should tell you.'

'On the contrary,' said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; 'if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous.'

So perhaps it's this almost Wildean wit that provides the entertainment rather than the stakes race between the varied contenders for the apparently immaculate Isabel Archer's affections.

There surely must be some irony to be had in her ultimate fate, nobody being perfect, because she must either choose one, presumably wrongly, or remain somehow unhumanly above it all.

We will see but, once having seen, it will be time for a break from Henry James.

 

I take breaks from the Complete Works of Bach regularly while still in with a chance of listening to all 172 discs within a year of acquiring them. Due imminently are the Mozart Piano Sonatas played by Mitsuko Uchida. I have to check the shelves before buying anything these days because I can't remember. For years I never knew in what formats I had The Velvet Underground & Nico but now that I do know, I never play it. It's on Spotify, You Tube and generally ubiquitous.

But this morning, the unseasonable Christmas Oratorio showed how irrelevant the time of year is for gloriousness. And hang on, we've had this echo of 'ja, ja' before, in the Cantata BWV 231. I thought it was Handel that plagiarised from himself when needing a good tune in an emergency but Bach did it as well, if not as often.

One notes such highlights as Erbarme Dich in the Matthew Passion, always wondering what advantage music one knows already has over pieces one hasn't. Even if coming to something for the first time has a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to freshly impress. I'm sure Hamlet improves for seeing it a few more times after the first, all other things being equal. 

I press on with the Bach, not realistically expecting to be able to say I played it all in a year. I think it's early July that's the deadline. It's no kind of hardship like in a marathon there needs must be some suffering to achieve the worthwhile aim but there might be times when it's a bit like other bits of it and certainly some of the organ doodling is routine background music to reading. But if listening to Bach ever became dutiful then the point of anything has finally been lost.

I don't know what ultimate reason we were born for but if one reaches a stage where that is unsatisfactory then it is all over. 

Chess- England 0 Hungary 1

This was the scene this afternoon on Southsea seafront where Zoltan was taking on allcomers.

Quick game, five minutes, I said. 

Is okay. I play quicker than you, he said, giving away the advantage by playing with black. Fair do's to him.

His d6 reply to my customary d4 was unusual, as was his subsequent row of five pawns on his third rank. It was real rapid-fire gun-slinging stuff and he made the first blunder.

I was in cruise control, or at least carrying the tray of drinks across the slippery floor.

I'm not sure how I gave back the advantage. Twice I, very sportingly, stuck with moving a piece I'd touched when he might have let me off but if I'm going to win I want to win proper.

It would have been insulting to ask for the draw in an endgame where he still had a bishop to my one pawn advantage.

We shook hands after maybe five minutes under the unforgiving sun.

Are you here next week?

If it's a nice day, I'm here next week.

You're Hungarian.

How you know I am Hungarian?

Because you're called Zoltan.

 

So, first game across the board in many, many years. I very nearly had him, too, but having missed him once I might not get the same chance again. He's probably any good. 

 

An Evening with Philip Larkin

An Evening with Philip Larkin, Goat Star Books, The Century Club, Shaftesbury Avenue, May 26th

A somewhat eventful day yesterday. This is by no means a review of the main event. That might appear elsewhere in due course. But it won't undermine the eventual appearance of that, if and when it does, to praise the presentation by Goat Star Books with guest reader Daniel Wain and the revelation, not mentioned in the published letters or any of the three biographies, that Larkin kept up a correspondance with Kenneth Williams which at first sounds an unlikely prospect but, then again, T.S. Eliot wrote to Groucho Marx.

The journey from Portsmouth wasn't easy with rail delays following soon upon the replacement bus service and, having had well over an hour in hand in the plan, arriving at Piccadilly Circus with only twenty five minutes to go before kick-off. Except the Century Club is not easy to find, being unmarked. One needs to know. I went well beyond it and while retracing my steps, began to ask people with increasing desperation. A bouncer in charge of a theatre queue didn't know. You'd think a taxi driver might but he didn't but someone smoking outside the Century Club overheard, came and helped and told me I was right in front of it. Well, I never. I might be traipsing up and down Shaftesbury Avenue still without such a kindness.

Maybe more another time about the excellent show where I unknowingly met and shook hands with the nephew of Rosemary Tonks. That alone was worth the heat and hardship and paying possibly about £20 for a pint of lager. Three bottles at £7.88 each but it is only money and they were essential supplies. 

But the almost supernatural occurences had only just begun. The 22.30 out of Waterloo was initially packed but across the aisle, a lady had put what looked to me like a violin case on the luggage rack. I obviously wanted to know all about that while not wanting to be reported to the guard and thrown off the train for a misunderstood, inappropriate advance. However, the crowds thinned out and I soon heard myself asking, is that a violin, have you been playing in London and, if so, what.  

Yes, yes and the Bach B minor Mass, were the answers.

The conversation rapidly took off and it transpired that I had reviewed her only a few weeks ago, most enthusiastically, of course. So, do you know him and her and them.  

Yes, yes. 

Bach's B minor Mass is mostly in D major.

Good Heavens.

 

And then she spotted a memory stick on the floor and established whose it was from the label on it and some internet detective work and undertook to return it through the available channels to the musician whose score of the Bach it had on it. By which time I was beginning to wonder if it we were in an episode of The Uncanny.  

It all seemed like a far-fetched concatenation of events.

The replacement bus stopped at Hilsea at about 00.15 so I walked from there. Not a soul to be seen all the way down the Copnor Road which was gorgeous for one unaccustomed to the dizziness and busy-ness of Soho of an evening. I made some connection with the poet who lived at the end of the line, away from cosmopolitan London and made a virtue out of being provincial. I've long sympathized with that. I don't know how much I could withstand of that hectic way of life. I'd rather by now be thinking of high windows, the sun-comprehending glass and things like that. 

Sounds of the 70's.

 Bob Harris is clearly still not well and we all wish him the best. Meanwhile, Shaun Keaveny, with a bit of help from Mark Radcliffe, has been making Sounds of the 70's sound much more like the decade I took part in. I was in Gloucester and then Lancaster, not hanging out in Nashville or California.

One gets the impression that Andy Burnham wants to be Prime Minister and feels no shame saying as much and so, on that basis, I want to do Radio 2's Sounds of the 70's. Equally blatantly, I've never made any secret of it.

My calling card sample show, put together this afternoon, is at Spotify now.

Sounds of the 70's

 

If only there could be a pop wireless show as good as that.

And yet, there could be and Version 1.0 is there already.  

 

Best Pianist Ever

 The Times yesterday, in marking 125 years of Wigmore Hall, published the 'ten greatest classical pianists', as chosen by an invited list of some current acknowledged stars. My contribution is not worth having but, as Portsmouth's answer to the musical question that nobody asked, I must pass a Sunday afternoon by putting in my tuppence worth. Me commenting on pianists is somewhat less appropriate than having an American tell me about cricket or a bricklayer advising me on poetry but one never can tell and one mustn't stereotype these people.

The Times panel surprised me somewhat by making Sergei Rachmaninov no. 1. He came with the sort of physical advantages that put him already ahead of most others, all other things being equal. There's no way I could have won a Tour de France up against the heart rates, lung capacity and other attributes of the likes of Miguel Indurain. And, a perennial second in the sports day sprint races at school, I wasn't Usain Bolt either.

Rach had such big hands he wrote music that was beyond others. Claudio Abbado had to help out Yuja Wang with a note she couldn't reach with her lesser spread. But he was a force of nature, too. The Times list goes 2. Richter, 3. Horowitz, 4. Radu Lupu, with Martha Argerich at 8 the only one still living. No Gilels, Gould, Arrau, Brendel, Ogden, etc, etc. but one could presumably make a list of fifty and still miss some.

On the basis of her Bach and Shostakovich, going in with my preferred repertoire, I'd be voting for Tatiana Nikolayeva. I spent formative years with two Mozart concertos played by Barenboim. I've always liked Mitsuko Uchida and hearing a Mozart Sonata, no. 5, the other day means her set of those will be ordered soon. In the flesh I've seen Steven Kovacevich, Emmanuel Ax, Isata Kanneh-Mason and local stars Angelina Kopyrina, who never fails to take the roof off, and Béla Hartmann. I'd have to have Angelina in any top 10 of mine.

I wouldn't be having Glenn Gould. While technical perfection would never be an important consideration for me, I'm not sure how far I'd go with innovative interpretation either. I'm listening more to the composer than what the performer does with their music so I will be all across Tatiana  whose 40-disc box-set has all the right pieces in it and, come a suitable windfall, all £100's worth of it will be given a home here.  

As ever, with such list-making, it's an unhealthy obsession and yet insists on being done from time to time as soon as one concedes that one thing is better than another. If Bach is a better composer than Piazolla then it figures that they can all be put in order of superiority. But aged maybe 13 or 14 and applying devoutly communist principles to anything I could think of, I took all the teams out of my football league ladder because none should be put above any other. Teams should play nicely, pass to each other and socialize pleasantly at half time and afterwards.

Which is, of course, even more ridiculous because it would abnegate the whole point of football. By now, I'd gladly accept that but not the abnegation of music because if we did that it would follow that I'd be just as likely to appear at the Menuhin Room, singing pop songs out of tune, as any proper musician doing something they are good at and all the great work that has gone into building the series would be demolished at a stroke.  

the twice-washed tablecloth

 

Some genius here, from a recent Private Eye in their resident poetry correspondent's tribute to J. H. Prynne.

I need to say, firstly, that Private Eye is passed on to me by a mate, that I'd not spend my own money on it, but, secondly, that once in a while it gets it right.

This is a tremendous effort at pastiching Prynne, the very forefront and paragon of subverting what we were led to believe was poetry. Some of us might have got beyond that already by not accepting such things as that poetry must be made of rhythm and/or rhyme.

Regular, or longstanding, readers here will know that 'all you've got to be is any good'. 

Prynne and his like had a point but possibly suffered from labouring the one point they had at the expense of all others. It is potentially brilliant, definitely hilarious, but ultimately only of interest to its adherents if it refuses to come back to Planet Meaning.

Private Eye's uncredited pasticheur risks enchroaching on the brink of meaning in line 6, where Bowie is brought to mind, and the last three words that suggest Dover Beach. That might not be entirely their fault even if an editor in a position to do as much could have pointed out that they were at risk of meaning something not entirely untangential.

It's great how, trying to write about such writing, one is led into the same dead ends as theirs does. In a way, I'd so like to be convinced that theirs was an ever expanding universe of potential but I'm not. I think it's a party game and no more than that. I'm thrilled by the twice-washed tablecloth.

Is it old and thus a bad thing that it's only been washed twice or was it only bought last week and has been washed twice already. We are not to know and it is in such wondering that 'poetry' can sometimes be found. Elusive, 'thought-provoking', generative, lush.

The satirist, in one phrase, did for me more than my brief looks at real Prynne ever did. So, maybe I could go back to real Prynne, informed by that, and enjoy his poems more. And that's what I'd call 'irony'.        

The Richard Yates and Henry James Collections

In 2008, The Times reviewed The Collected Stories of Richard Yates so enthusiastically that I was persuaded to get myself one. It turned out they were right. I did my best to get involved in the Yates revival and collected all the novels via abebooks, most of them having to be sent from America. The film of Revolutionary Road appeared and a few months after I was about as complete as one can get in Yates, all the titles were re-issued in Britain. Still, my library has more interesting editions.

Now, last Saturday, Jem Calder celebrates The Easter Parade in the same paper's 'Rereading' feature and the great joy and benefit of having every worthwhile book one knows about was being able to go upstairs to fetch it and reread it myself. Explaining about him to a bookshop proprietor on Tuesday, she said he sounded like the American answer to the Angry Young Men and in some ways she's got it except maybe Yates is more middle class and a better prose writer than Alan Sillitoe. 

The Easter Parade follows Sarah and Emily, two sisters, through their disintegrating lives. Sarah, the elder, stays in a twenty year abusive marriage while Emily trawls her way through a litany of men who all seem suitable to begin with but prove not to be. As Yates invariably is, it's relentless in its downward spiral, the compensation only being the women's hope, or belief, that it will be for the best. It's heavy irony, it's brilliantly written. I'm not sure, as Jem Calder diagnoses, that,

the horror is just time's passing.  

That can be applied to most lives, or stories. In Yates it is more specifically the almost wilful self-deception of the two main characters and that they don't appear to have other options.

But that's what all those books upstairs are there for. To be returned to exactly as and when required. Yates remains right up at the top end of prose fiction and this latest return to him only proved that he's not going to be shifted from such a position.  

--

The Yates collection has been in place for years whereas the Henry James collection has sprung up in the last ten days. Following the immense success of The Aspern Papers/The Turn of the Screw, part of my mission on Tuesday in Chichester was to load up on whatever was to be found. I hadn't realized that the newly reopened premises where once were three storeys of second-hand books was now independent and new books. Impressed with her knowledge and charm, which I realized later is the salesmanship necessary to survive in the perilous world of retail books, I returned to pay the going rate for The Golden Bowl after a quick excursion to Oxfam where I was glad to find four other titles for only a bit more than the price of the pristine copy. I don't suppose she needed me to show her what she's up against in her admirable custodianship of the bookseller's dream life. Spending similar amounts in two bookshops and the flapjack shop, the flapjacks lasted three days, The Golden Bowl will last two or maybe three weeks and the four titles from Oxfam two or three months but I'll always be able to have the books again, which can't be said for the flapjacks.

At first sight, Washington Square isn't as good as the two novellas but it's still fine. It possibly anticipates at least Emily's story in The Easter Parade in how Catherine's relationship with the apparently feckless Morris Townsend doesn't work out, with some help from her severe father, who might have been right.

But, on further consideration, it's an open question. At first thinking it owed something to Jane Austen, or what I imagine Jane Austen to be like, it is perhaps anti-Austen in its beautiful, unrequited, possibly even Larkin-esque ending. Excellent reading.

And now, with all reason for hope, I go intrpeidly towards the big books. The Portrait of a Lady is all but 600 pages with James presumably indulging himself in his reams of prose but, as with Proust, that may not be a bad thing.