Twitching

26 May 2009 – 11:52 pm

Charles Ryder is on the move in A Twitch upon the Thread, which delivers a remarkable sentence just two pages into chapter one as he travels through Central America:

I used to stuff a bundle of letters into my bag and read them when I felt inclined, which was in circumstances so incongruous — swinging in my hammock, under the net, by the light of a storm-lantern; drifting down river, amidships in the canoe, with the boys astern of me lazily keeping our nose out of the bank, with the dark water keeping pace with us, in the green shade, with the great trees towering above us and the monkeys screeching in the sunlight, high overhead among the flowers on the roof of the forest; on the veranda of a hospitable ranch, its chain on the mown grass — that they seemed voices so distant as to be meaningless; their matter passed clean through the mind, and out, leaving no mark, like the facts about themselves which fellow travellers distribute so freely in American railway trains.

When I get to the period I have to read it again, if only to admire the lovely jab at American small talk. As soon as I convince myself that Charles Ryder is vapid and shallow, a character is introduced — his wife! — who is even more shallow. Who will win my trust? At least she writes letters when her spouse is away.

By glenl | Posted in Books, Brideshead Revisited | Comments (1)

Revisiting Brideshead Yet Again

10 May 2009 – 4:03 pm

Like our narrator, I find myself “awed and bemused between two realities and two dreams” (15, last segment of the Prologue). And I am looking back on earlier encounters with the text and the PBS mini-series through the same sort of aged and, possibly, jaded lens with which our narrator revisits his own past associations with Brideshead. The book’s subtitle (in my American edition, and I know it is American because ‘whisky’ is spelled with an ‘e’ in it) is “The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.” It fits well. There is a certain sacredness to our memories of a youth that does not quite seem our own yet the memories still thrill and wound us in ways they can only if we actually lived them.

The Author’s Note, “I am not I; thou art not he or she; they are not they,” is a curious tease pointing to the possibility, the opportunity to read the text as a roman a clef, a semi-autobiographical review of the author’s own experience. I have in the past read critical works that suggest it is just that: a looking back on Waugh’s own life through, of course, a fictive lens.

I am, of course, struggling NOT to hear Jeremy Irons’ voice or see his face as I read the Prologue. The PBS mini-series is remarkably faithful to the text and, even years since having seen it, prior re-readings of the book were colored, fleshed out by the wonderful characters of the series. I have a copy of the recently made movie version; I both dread and look forward to seeing it.

Among the many things seen clearly for the first time during this reading is the irony with which Ryder early on casts himself as one always caught in the middle and, in some sense, subject to the whims of those around him. Consider first Hooper’s words to (and reported by) Ryder when Hooper is late because he made up his own kit rather than having his servant do it: “But you know how it is. He had his own stuff to do. If you get on the wrong side of these fellows they take it out of you other ways” (10). Then, not more than a full page later, the sergeant-major uses exactly the same words to characterize the possible outcome of Ryder’s intentional rebuff of his superior officer: ” . . . you know how it is. If you get on the wrong side of senior officers they take it out of you other ways” (11). Charles is stuck in the middle, a Captain between the junior officers and the senior officers, in the middle class fascinated with (and in some regard wanting to be among the) landed and wealthy.

As narrator, he has effectively set the stage for us.

By Randy Fromm | Posted in Books, Brideshead Revisited | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Ramblin’

26 March 2009 – 11:57 am

Under new management but with previous bad experiences behind me, I decided to give the new barber in town a chance. This town is small enough that no matter where you go you are in the company of somebody you know or a relative of somebody you know, so I sat down and chatted with the son-in-law of the realtor who managed the purchase of our home on the island. But this story is not about that; it is about the gentleman who came in while I was under the scissors.

Coy (the barber, not the fish) was chatting about my previous place of residence — Mendocino County — and this old fellow asked if I had ever been to Boonville. I had, as a matter of fact, been routed through Boonville from Cloverdale on my way to Willits. I don’t know Boonville other than the way you remember picturesque places when you don’t intend to be there and all you want to do is get home. His very next question struck me.

“Have you ever heard of Ramblin’ Jack Elliot?”

“Well, sure. But…” and it turns out this guy was an old friend of Ramblin’ Jack’s whom he met when he crewed on Pete Seeger’s sloop, Clearwater. (Everything around here eventually relates in some way to boating.) They ended up for a time in Boonville, CA, and the old man had once given Ramblin’ Jack a ride to Marin to record an album. The studio owner wasn’t there when they arrived (apparently this was a common occurrence) so they went to Sausalito, drank beer and watched the boats. Jack was from New York, wanted to be a cowboy, but could just as well have ended up a sailor.

And now the awful truth: I had never owned a Ramblin’ Jack Elliot album until after sitting through several hours in a muddy football field in Fort Collins trying to hear the Rolling Thunder Review and finding out later that “he might have been there.” I was there for Dylan and probably missed Ramblin’ Jack. For the first time that I can remember I wish my haircut would have taken more time.

By glenl | Posted in Notes | Comments (1)

Reading in a well lit room: Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida

6 July 2008 – 11:38 am

So . . . our first foray off of the Time Magazine list. And one which has some relevance to the book just finished: Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. But, to that in a bit . . .

Barthes is attempting to get at the idea of Photography or the Photograph (capitalized whenever used in that sense), the Heideggerian thing-in-itself (a variant of the Kantian Ding an Sich). It is interesting that—at least in the first several sections of the text—there is dancing all around Heideggerian ideas, yet there is no mention of him. But the same could be said for the work of the Marxist critic Walter Benjamin; his seminal piece “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is evoked (if not invoked) when Barthes notes:

The first thing I found was this. What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially. [4]

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By Randy Fromm | Posted in Books, Camera Lucida | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)