It's going to be quieter here for a while with no concerts to review and not many new books expected. There's Sean O'Brien due in May but otherwise, it's upstairs to find the re-reading.
La Peste proved even better than the exemplary Camus was remembered, much of it looking true but, out of all its brilliant passages, none seemed wiser than the last, that it doesn't really go away. Like the Nazism that the plague is an allegory of, it is always capable of coming back. The innocence of having lived plague-less lives thus far is no longer with us,
And, indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.
Then it didn't take long to enjoy Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time, about Shostakovich, again. And having put that back, I've come back down with Proust vol. 1 so wish me luck with my second attempt, the first since 1984. I reached aboutm page 1300 then but think I'd better start over again.
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But if it's quiet here, it's weekdays daily at The David Green Show, as per the link above, a vanity project originally intended for colleagues, friends and family for the duration but, of course, join in if you want to.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I published booklets of my own poems. The original allocation of ISBN numbers is used up now, though. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become, often more about music than books and not so often about poems. It will be about whatever suggests itself.
