A Christmas Carol

and Other Christmas Writings

Charles Dickens, 1835-1854

(December 2017)

  

Every year I mean to read this book at Christmas, and every year I forget until about December 29^th, at which point the moment has rather passed. I finally got the pitifully small affair that represents my act together this year, and it was in no way worth the wait.

  

He’s not subtle as a writer, is he? Soporific at points, certainly (though this is as much about the influence of the passage of time on prose style as Dickens’s writing itself), but never afraid to assert and reassert and rereassert the Moral of the Story until the reader has been bludgeoned into shame-faced coma of ethical contrition. The most notably thing about reading A Christmas Carol—having obviously been exposed to adaptations of it in various other media for as long as I can remember—was how Scrooge has basically repented of all his sins by the midway point of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Past, yet we’ve still got two-and-a-half more apparitions’ worth of spectral hectoring to go.

Swann’s Way

Marcel Proust, 1913 [Lydia Davis, 2002]

November 2017

OK then. Yes. What to say about this, apart from that the very act of reading it is something of an exercise in eating my own words?

Summer Lovin’

Well, that was an abortive attempt at a summer. It’s been the wettest, shortest, and sickest that I can remember in a long time. And now I’m back in school.

Wallowing

Having kids makes it worse, I think. It's a cliché to say that "they grow up so fast," but it's true, and that can't help but emphasise the passage of time and the long absences it entails. These are the choices we make though.

I'll get over it. Back to the schedule and everyday mini-challenges. The trick is to watch the saplings grow and also keep half an eye on the forest stretching out all around you. Anyway, here's a slightly too trite song that still manages to make my throat catch a little every time.

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway, 1929

(September 2012)

At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.

Who's The Daddy?

I am. I’m the Daddy. Don’t get too excited, I’ve nothing new to report on that front yet. But in my efforts to keep this place ticking over during the quieter summer period a lot of the stuff I’ve churned out has ended up to being fairly worthy and po-faced. Dull, frankly. And because we all deserve a break from that, here’s something a little more cheerful. ‘Sappy’ some might say.

A Visit From The Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan, 2010

(August 2012)

A nice book, that’s all I want. Not always, just once in a while. A nice book about nice people having a nice time because nice things are happening to them. But no. Literature has decided that all people in all books ever must be irrevocably damaged and irritating, because that’s art.

Bring me my Arrows of desire

This clip. Have a look. It comprises an impressively large number of things I can’t fucking stand. The petty middle-class jingoism we English do so very well. Hyper-idealized cod-religious guff about a place that never has and never will exist. Smug, self congratulatory pride in an idea which is well past its prime, if you can count centuries of subjugation and conquest as ‘prime’. Small minded, Little Englander parochialism played out in the faded grandeur of an empire which was obtained, like all empires, through the murder and exploitation of millions.

Stations

I fucking hate stations.

It doesn't matter how much practice you get at saying goodbye, it never gets any fucking easier.

Here's a completely unrelated picture of Vladimir Putin -

Normal service will resume on Wednesday.