Other Stories and other stories

 There can be times when one wonders if one should be reading books and whether one ought to have better things to do. Not everything one picks up lives up to expectations and there can be a sense of duty about it. For some people who don't regard the written word as their main interest it must be that one reads as a last resort when there really is nothing better to do, rather than grudgingly doing those other things rather than read.

Well this morning I came to the end of a major, ongoing household project and so felt worthy enough to read all afternoon without the usual guilt of the non-practical chore avoider.

Last week ended with two days spent with Vita Sackville-West's All Passion Spent which impressed enormously for being no Virginia but great in a different way. If one is accustomed to novels about young people becoming what they become, like Philip Pirrip, Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver, Michael Henchard, Stephen Dedalus or Holden Caulfield, it was relatively unusual and by now timely to read of an old person, Lady Slane, enjoying a new life at the age of 88. There are three more Vita's on their way.

Many more pages, albeit not long pages, made Graham Swift's The Sweet Shop Owner more of an achievement to see off in two days, probably one day's worth of solid reading. I can't go on reading books at that rate or a further room will have to be given over to the library. But, if anything, it was better than Vita, better than any other Swift and, as I put it down, surely one of the most enjoyable novels I've ever read but that verdict will have to shake down a bit before being confirmed.

Whereas I thought Swift had developed, refined and improved until arriving at the near perfect Mothering Sunday, this was actually his first novel and he possibly did the opposite thing and did his best work first. If only his books didn't invariably depend on bereavement for their theme. Nonetheless, The Sweet Shop Owner takes a very high place among contemporary fiction and I'll be recommending it to anybody and everybody who ever reads books.

With an additional order of Shuttlecock diligently placed I think that will add Graham Swift to that august list of artists of whom I am a junior completist, that is having all that they did that is sensibly obtainable in some form or other. Thus, from T. Rex to The Magnetic Fields, from Buxtehude to Chopin, Philip Larkin to Thom Gunn and Julian Barnes. Rosemary Tonks will get there as and when the horses run fast enough to pay the exorbitant prices of three more out of print novels.

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That might be soon. The superb performance to recover from a bad midsummer deficit to equity for 2020 has been augmented by springing into profit for 2021 and adding that bit of giveaway swagger in one's step that identifies a man who seriously thinks he knows what he's doing. See below for tomorrow's sound advice (at your peril). 

But then Sunday's intense hour of chess tournament at Lichess saw me go LWWWDLW to finish in the top 9% and, if one can stay clear of the dreaded plague for just a few more weeks I will be most grateful if my advancing years qualify me for a vaccine and maybe life will be reprehensibly as perfect as it can sensibly be expected to be.