It's a pleasure

 The report, somewhere below, that Yuja Wang's Rachmaninov had arrived proved to be premature. The envelope contained some Elgar. It is not always a good idea to guess. In fact, that order for the much anticipated Yuja discs is not going to be fulfilled and Amazon, for why I don't know, can't promise to get it here before mid-October, from America.

However, Presto are all their name suggests they are and, augmenting the order with Errollyn's Piano Concerto and then the first recordings by Daniel Barenboim to treat oneself to some Shostakovich rather than pay postage, I can't see why I won't be putting more business their way.

My favourite literary website, Anecdotal Evidence, brought Stevie Smith back to notice today which, to my surprise, led to the ordering of her best-known novel, that on yellow paper, a biography and some stories and essays in Me, Again. I hadn't regarded her as much beyond a kindly eccentric but, as a reading crisis emerges on the horizon, she is going to get her chance.

The Rembrandt book stays firmly on the front room floor, being more than I really need to know, and Vasari is lively in the translation by the Bondanella's who make him sound suspiciously contemporary but already the lives are beginning to sound similar and I might, possibly wrongly, edit them down to the famous names.

However, that Uccello sacrificed so much of his talent in pursuit of perspective and didn't know the difference between a camel and a chameleon is worth reading about, as is the opening paragraph on Duccio (c.1255- c.1316), that,

No doubt those who are the inventors of anything notable attract the greatest attention from historians, and this occurs because new inventions are more closely observed and held in greater amazement, due to the pleasure to be found in the newness of things,

 

in which I think he's endorsing incremental progress, in such things as perspective and technique, rather than anything superficially radical. Brought forward to now, rather than his own time - died 1574, he surely must mean how Beethoven developed from Mozart, James Joyce from George Moore or Shakespeare from Marlowe rather than any idea that anybody turned up and successfully started doing anything in an entirely new way. He's good and I'm glad to see how he makes 'pleasure' such a priority in art appreciation. I might miss much worth having by skipping a couple of hundred of the 500 pages that end with Titian but it will always be there to go back to which is the perennial beauty of one's own library. Not only are books, and records, immensely good value to read or listen to once, but they will always be there for as long as one wants them. Unless one temporarily loses all reason and lets one's pop vinyl go for a mere £120.

That was madness and I regret it more every time I think about it.