(The value the BBC provides is extraordinary, blah, blah, blah. Yes, there are numerous bits of it I could do without but presumably they cater for others whose taste differs from mine and it's not all about what I want. Otherwise, there'd be no jazz on Radio 3.)
The Autumn has its usual parade of exciting new titles lined up which this year include new poetry by Don Paterson and Roddy Lumsden and James Shapiro's 1606, the Year of Lear. I've been looking forward to the Paterson ever since he read some of the poems that I anticipate will be among his 40 Sonnets at Cheltenham a few years ago, a new Lumsden is always unmissable and this one has a potentially interesting angle to it and if Shapiro does for the year of Lear what he did for the year of Hamlet then that will be essential, too.
Meanwhile, back on the George Eliot trail, the Bank Holiday weekend was enough to read Jenny Uglow's biography, missing out the chapters on Felix Holt and Romola because I haven't read those yet. It is not overly detailed on the biography but outlines the significant events of her life, with some contemporary accounts of her character and others, effectively as an introduction to excellent readings of each novel. It is an invaluable volume to have alongside the main works with well-judged analyses of the themes and methods of each.At first it might have seemed as if it might be going to be an entirely feminist approach to a feminist icon who was sensibly, by her own example, but not vociferously a feminist Victorian female. While our contemporary attitude is almost a legal requirement of correctness to all things gender, race, belief or sexuality-related, it immediately diminishes any great artist to read them as a representative of any single issue when an artist needs to go well beyond any such thing in order to be great. And George Eliot was well ahead of any radical agenda, as Jenny Uglow explains,
Part of George Eliot's aim...is to celebrate diversity, to pick out the cygnet among the ducks, and deny the existence of a norm.
Which is still all that diversity needs to do, if only its adherents would do it. Some boys are a bit like girls and some girls are a bit like boys. Ray Davies, in Lola, was not breaking any new ground in pointing it out. It's only that George Eliot is much too clever to deal in stereotypes and was much cleverer, by all accounts, than I can even imagine.
But one disquieting aspect of reading these commentaries on Daniel Deronda and other books I read only a few months ago was how much of them I've already forgotten, or contained themes that entirely passed me. They mention significant minor characters that I barely remember, find much more profound motivations and meanings than ever occurred to me and I worry that I can't carry quite so many books in my head at one time to write my own account one day.
I have been previously impressed by academics who can immediately say something useful about, it seems, any given writer one cares to mention and I know I could never do that without reference to some secret cache of notes. On the other hand, once talking to a major poet who I knew had made mention of the poet in their journalism, I asked if they had read Wislawa Symborska (because I had some profound point to make on the subject), but, no, they hadn't.
But it would be a scary old prospect, having to write some all encompassing but concise summary of George Eliot for my own satisfaction and for something to put on here. I'm thinking that if I can do 1000 words or so, based on the broad themes I have, backed up by some of the apposite quotes I have made note of along the way, I might get away with it.