The Consolations of Art

Dostoevsky, at least in Crime and Punishment, might be heavy on ideas like C19th Russian novelists tend to be, but he's essentially Alfred Hitchcock this book is more memorable for its suspense than its questions of morality. Not that the title offers much suspense about what will happen in the end. Or will it? I've still got 60 pages to go.

It's been no hardship reading it but how soon I'll be continuing with more Dostoevsky remains to be seen. 

 

It will be Vasari's turn next and some C16th art appreciation from he who invented it. Along with other things looked at recently, like Michael Donaghy's essays and utterances, or C18th Tom Disch, quoted at Anecdotal Evidence, he looks as if he knows what he talking about. Or at least that he says what I'd like to say if I found better words for it than those that I do.

Donaghy has little time for such things as avant-garde posturing, academia, even the poetry workshop. He sees through much of the 'pseud's corner', as he calls it more than once, school of poetry commentary. Disch looks similarly sceptical about whatever was the currency in such language in his day and it's heartening that they add in their more thought-out ways to the straightforward dictum, 'all you have to be is any good', which wasn't mine in the first place but I adopted it.

 

One is reminded of just what 'the arts' can do for one with last week's three concerts in five days as the Autumn season sprang into life. Compiling DGBooks Wireless, above, has caused a frisson of life being so worth living, considering all there is to consider in 'curating' a playlist. Not least because one can't go wrong, one only hopes that others will come at least some of the way with you.  

It makes for generous consolation after a couple of weeks of being the Racetrack Dumbguy. While I often say that confidence can be a bad thing, so can a lack of it. Having got a few things wrong, I decided against the treble on the first three races at Leopardstown on Saturday and they all went in and paid about 14/1. Then, gormlessly trying to get back on the bandwagon on Sunday, Ylang Ylang came last, City of Troy was a non-runner and Kyprios came second. But I say to myself it really doesn't matter at all because it doesn't and I'm almost convinced.