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[jazzbo]

Richard Stark "The Dame" (a Grofield novel).

Edited February 18, 2016 by jazzbo

[BillF]

9 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

When I saw Carey's TV documentary based on his "The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880–1939" I found myself punching the air again and again and shouting 'Yes!". Subsequently read the book and his equally entertaining "What Good are the Arts?" He seemed to articulate all my chippy irritation with the world of 'The Arts', whilst still valuing and enjoying what lay within.

This is an autobiography of how he went from a modest background (though not that modest...a middle class family that had fallen on slightly harder times) into Oxford (via National Service) and then a career in academia. As with so many biographies the early years are the most interesting - London in the 30s/40s, Nottinghamshire briefly during the war, National service, life as a student and then his early career. His descriptions of the utterly bizarre rituals of Oxford in the 1950s are hilarious. Amazing to think that the Oxford English syllabus stopped in the early 1800s at that time (Michael Gove would approve!) - part of the book describes how the syllabus was slowly dragged into the Victorian era in the 60s and then into the 20thC. 

 

Too true! I recall reading an obituary a few years ago of an Oxford professor who caused shock and awe around 1960 by moving the English syllabus up to the ultramodern Thomas Hardy (1890s). At the same time I was beginning my English degree at Leeds with Ted Hughes's Lupercal (1960) and the ink was still wet on the page :-). Similar problems happened in Cambridge English studies when the followers of F R Leavis, a 1930s figure, tried in the 1980s to stop Critical Theory, which had swept French and American universities, from entering their domain. So where my subject, English Literature, is concerned, prestige attaching to Oxbridge is completely unmerited IMO.

[A Lark Ascending]

13 hours ago, BillF said:

Too true! I recall reading an obituary a few years ago of an Oxford professor who caused shock and awe around 1960 by moving the English syllabus up to the ultramodern Thomas Hardy (1890s). At the same time I was beginning my English degree at Leeds with Ted Hughes's Lupercal (1960) and the ink was still wet on the page :-). Similar problems happened in Cambridge English studies when the followers of F R Leavis, a 1930s figure, tried in the 1980s to stop Critical Theory, which had swept French and American universities, from entering their domain. So where my subject, English Literature, is concerned, prestige attaching to Oxbridge is completely unmerited IMO.

The internal jealousies and infighting that Carey describes are amazing. He talks of one college where the fellows had to sit for meals in order of appointment, regardless of how well they got on. And an attitude to offering places that preferred a 'good all-rounder' from a public school to a 'bright grammar school boy', not to mention the leg ups given to students who are 'our sort'. He also says at one point that the wild scenes in 'Decline and Fall' that see the 'hero' sent down were not just fiction (no mention of pigs' heads though).  

The redbrick I attended in the mid-70s had a few silly traditions but these seemed mostly aped from Oxbridge (I recall a particular bizarre Christmas ritual that seemed to be a mixture of cod-Medievalism and Carl Orff).  Once you'd found your feet you could do your entire three years completely ignoring them and worrying about important things like when the new Henry Cow album was coming out. 

Another amusing bit is the sacred way Anglo-Saxon literature was treated. Compulsory until about the 70s - Carey is not a fan of what he sees as fragments of dull verse (I rather like what I've read but tend to see it as evidence rather than literature!) - but caused ructions when it was proposed that Anglo-Saxon became optional. 

I've always felt they should build some nice Stalinist breeze block colleges on the outskirts of Oxford/Cambridge for the university and turn the old buildings into Travelodges and Premiere Inns (or Starbucks!!!!). 

Edited February 19, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

41 minutes ago, A Lark Ascending said:

The internal jealousies and infighting that Carey describes are amazing. He talks of one college where the fellows had to sit for meals in order of appointment, regardless of how well they got on. And an attitude to offering places that preferred a 'good all-rounder' from a public school to a 'bright grammar school boy', not to mention the leg ups given to students who are 'our sort'. He also says at one point that the wild scenes in 'Decline and Fall' that see the 'hero' sent down were not just fiction (no mention of pigs' heads though).  

The redbrick I attended in the mid-70s had a few silly traditions but these seemed mostly aped from Oxbridge (I recall a particular bizarre Christmas ritual that seemed to be a mixture of cod-Medievalism and Carl Orff).  Once you'd found your feet you could do your entire three years completely ignoring them and worrying about important things like when the new Henry Cow album was coming out. 

Another amusing bit is the sacred way Anglo-Saxon literature was treated. Compulsory until about the 70s - Carey is not a fan of what he sees as fragments of dull verse (I rather like what I've read but tend to see it as evidence rather than literature!) - but caused ructions when it was proposed that Anglo-Saxon became optional. 

I've always felt they should build some nice Stalinist breeze block colleges on the outskirts of Oxford/Cambridge for the university and turn the old buildings into Travelodges and Premiere Inns (or Starbucks!!!!). 

Nice one, Bev!

I have to confess that compulsory Anglo-Saxon did survive as a small element in the first year at Leeds in my time, though it was seen as a laughable chore by almost all students, who couldn't wait to get to nothing-but-Lit in yrs 2 & 3. A tiny handful of geeks opted for Old Icelandic, etc in yrs 2 & 3 while the rest of us got on with everything from Chaucer to Arnold Wesker.

The ghastly atmosphere of Oxford colleges which you describe is well captured in C P Snow's novel, The Masters.

Edited February 19, 2016 by BillF

[A Lark Ascending]

33 minutes ago, BillF said:

The ghastly atmosphere of Oxford colleges which you describe is well captured in C P Snow's novel, The Masters.

The only Snow I've read is 'The New Men', an 'A' Level text. I re-read it a few years back. 'The Masters' is one to put on my list.

One of the joys of reading people like Amis (the older one) and David Lodge is the way they satirise this sort of world. 

My first experience of Oxford was being taken there one evening along with a fellow six former by a kindly English teacher to attend an Oxford Union debate (I suspect this was an early outreach programme!). I don't recall anything about the debate, even the topic; I do recall being petrified about how to behave in the restaurant beforehand (I suspect it was just a cafe). We never went to restaurants, we brought our own sandwiches (child of the last austerity!). I was much happier going to see King Crimson and Genesis there in the New Theatre a few months later.   

I do like the olde worlde feel of Oxford but then I've never had to experience the inside - apart from one occasion when a group of us went to a concert there (Caravan/Renaissance, about 9 months before punk swept in) and slept on the floor of a mate of one of my friends. We had to leave very early in the morning to avoid being spotted by a batman or whatever they call them - I can still see the early morning mist swirling round the heads outside the Sheldonian. 

Edited February 19, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[Jazzjet]

I've just finished Anthony Powell's 12 volume masterpiece, 'A Dance To The Music Of Time', my equivalent of tackling 'War And Peace'. It's a social chronicle of British middle and upper class life between the late 1920s and the late 1960s. Parallels include the novels of Evelyn Waugh and Henry Green and even Proust, although Powell is much less introspective. Part of the fun is identifying the real life models on whom the fictional characters are based. These include George Orwell, Lord Beaverbrook, John Galsworthy and many others. I can now look forward to the Channel 4 late 90s TV adaptation which attempted to squeeze it all into four 2-hour episodes.

My next challenge is to read C.P. Snow's 'Strangers and Brothers' sequence from the beginning (I've read a few novels, eg 'The Masters' but never the whole thing). Only 9 novels so it should be a piece of cake!

[Simon8]

Reissued by NYRB, coming out next week. Haven't read it yet: how is it ?

 

[jlhoots]

I don't know, but that's a great cover.

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, Simon8 said:

Reissued by NYRB, coming out next week. Haven't read it yet: how is it ?

 

Not to be trusted for historical accuracy but great fun. 

[Larry Kart]

On February 19, 2016 at 11:21 AM, Jazzjet said:

I've just finished Anthony Powell's 12 volume masterpiece, 'A Dance To The Music Of Time', my equivalent of tackling 'War And Peace'. It's a social chronicle of British middle and upper class life between the late 1920s and the late 1960s. Parallels include the novels of Evelyn Waugh and Henry Green and even Proust, although Powell is much less introspective. Part of the fun is identifying the real life models on whom the fictional characters are based. These include George Orwell, Lord Beaverbrook, John Galsworthy and many others. I can now look forward to the Channel 4 late 90s TV adaptation which attempted to squeeze it all into four 2-hour episodes.

My next challenge is to read C.P. Snow's 'Strangers and Brothers' sequence from the beginning (I've read a few novels, eg 'The Masters' but never the whole thing). Only 9 novels so it should be a piece of cake!

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Powellian, have read the entire sequence at least twice, favorite individual volumes more than that, actually interviewed Powell back in the '80s (a delightful experience), and am even, Heaven help me, a member of the Anthony Powell Society, which is worth joining  if you're interested (it's easy and there's an Organissmo-like board) because, as one might expect, a lot of people who know a lot about Powell's work spend time there. That said, neither George Orwell, nor Lord Beaverbrook, nor John Galsworthy are models for any of Powell's characters. I assume you feel that Lord Beaverbrook = Sir Magnus Donners and John Galsworthy = St. John Clarke (I have no idea who you think is modeled on Orwell, certainly not Warminster/Erridge or Quiggin either). In any case, Donners and Beaverbrook are far apart (the former an industrialist-magnate who is fairly secretive about his affairs, the latter the most prominent British press baron of his time and a man who fed upon publicity), while the mostly forgotten novelist Hugh Walpole and another mostly forgotten litterateur Logan Pearsall Smith (he was of American parentage, lived in England,  and wrote a good many aphorisms) would be much closer to St. John Clarke than Galsworthy was. Also, Sillery is not at all modeled on C.M. Bowra, a mistake that many have made. The closest jobs of character modeling I can think of in "Dance," would be composer-conductor-author Constant Lambert as the model for Hugh Moreland and Barbara Skelton (ex-wife of Cyril Connolly, former mistress of King Farouk, with a whole lot more to her credit or discredit) as the model for Pamela Flitton. Field Marshall Montgomery and Lord Alanbrooke of course appear as themselves, and Isobel Jenkins seems to be very close to Powell's own wife, Violet.  Alick Dru, pioneering translator-advocate of Kierkegaard among other things, is to a fair degree the model for Pennistone. Leftist publisher Victor Gollancz  is close to the model for Howard Craggs. Somewhat rackety American publisher Donald Friede is close to the model for Louis Glober.  Ralph Barnby shares several traits with Powell's longtime friend Adrian Daintry -- both were painters and womanizers in the top class. One real-life exchange between Powell and Daintry was transferred directly into an exchange between Jenkins and Barnby. Powell once asked Daintry -- whose experiences with women  both in number and variety far exceeded those of Powell, and indeed those of most men -- whether he agreed that a good many women were surprisingly unsensual. "Do you know," Daintry replied, "I've never noticed."

P.S. If you can find a copy, Hillary Spurling's "Invitation to the Dance: A Guide to Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time," is a great and often entertaining resource.

[A Lark Ascending]

10 hours ago, medjuck said:

Not to be trusted for historical accuracy but great fun. 

I enjoyed that one many years ago. 

[Jazzjet]

10 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Powellian, have read the entire sequence at least twice, favorite individual volumes more than that, actually interviewed Powell back in the '80s (a delightful experience), and am even, Heaven help me, a member of the Anthony Powell Society, which is worth joining  if you're interested (it's easy and there's an Organissmo-like board) because, as one might expect, a lot of people who know a lot about Powell's work spend time there. That said, neither George Orwell, nor Lord Beaverbrook, nor John Galsworthy are models for any of Powell's characters. I assume you feel that Lord Beaverbrook = Sir Magnus Donners and John Galsworthy = St. John Clarke (I have no idea who you think is modeled on Orwell, certainly not Warminster/Erridge or Quiggin either). In any case, Donners and Beaverbrook are far apart (the former an industrialist-magnate who is fairly secretive about his affairs, the latter the most prominent British press baron of his time and a man who fed upon publicity), while the mostly forgotten novelist Hugh Walpole and another mostly forgotten litterateur Logan Pearsall Smith (he was of American parentage, lived in England,  and wrote a good many aphorisms) would be much closer to St. John Clarke than Galsworthy was. Also, Sillery is not at all modeled on C.M. Bowra, a mistake that many have made. The closest jobs of character modeling I can think of in "Dance," would be composer-conductor-author Constant Lambert as the model for Hugh Moreland and Barbara Skelton (ex-wife of Cyril Connolly, former mistress of King Farouk, with a whole lot more to her credit or discredit) as the model for Pamela Flitton. Field Marshall Montgomery and Lord Alanbrooke of course appear as themselves, and Isobel Jenkins seems to be very close to Powell's own wife, Violet.  Alick Dru, pioneering translator-advocate of Kierkegaard among other things, is to a fair degree the model for Pennistone. Leftist publisher Victor Gollancz  is close to the model for Howard Craggs. Somewhat rackety American publisher Donald Friede is close to the model for Louis Glober.  Ralph Barnby shares several traits with Powell's longtime friend Adrian Daintry -- both were painters and womanizers in the top class. One real-life exchange between Powell and Daintry was transferred directly into an exchange between Jenkins and Barnby. Powell once asked Daintry -- whose experiences with women  both in number and variety far exceeded those of Powell, and indeed those of most men -- whether he agreed that a good many women were surprisingly unsensual. "Do you know," Daintry replied, "I've never noticed."

P.S. If you can find a copy, Hillary Spurling's "Invitation to the Dance: A Guide to Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time," is a great and often entertaining resource.

Good to hear from a fellow fan, Larry. My comments on character models was actually based on a page of the Anthony Powell site, eg George Orwell as Erridge/Lord Warmisnster, St. John Clarke as John Galsworthy etc. However, I'm sure that any comparisons are far more nuanced than that. Dr Trelawney is supposed to be based on Alesteir Crowley which I find unlikely. Hugh Walpole is an interesting possibility for St John Clarke. As you say he's largely forgotten figure today although I've recently got hold of some of his books which I haven't read for ages and of course his 'Rogue Herries' is a great companion if you ever visit the Lake District. Thanks for the tip about Hilary Spurling's book. Here's the site :

Models for characters in Anthony Powell's Dance To The Music Of Time

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, Jazzjet said:

Good to hear from a fellow fan, Larry. My comments on character models was actually based on a page of the Anthony Powell site, eg George Orwell as Erridge/Lord Warmisnster, St. John Clarke as John Galsworthy etc. However, I'm sure that any comparisons are far more nuanced than that. Dr Trelawney is supposed to be based on Alesteir Crowley which I find unlikely. Hugh Walpole is an interesting possibility for St John Clarke. As you say he's largely forgotten figure today although I've recently got hold of some of his books which I haven't read for ages and of course his 'Rogue Herries' is a great companion if you ever visit the Lake District. Thanks for the tip about Hilary Spurling's book. Here's the site :

Models for characters in Anthony Powell's Dance To The Music Of Time

The two men who assembled that list of models are major Powellians, but I still don't like Galsworthy for St. John Clarke. Dismissible though Galsworthy's fiction might be, it's not in a class of moldy banality with St. John Clarke's. Also, I'm not aware of Galsworthy becoming a voguish Left-winger, as St. John Clarke does. Further, the  merry-go-round where St. John Clarke dumps his assistant Mark Members  and replaces him with Quiggin, who is eventually supplanted by Guggenbuhl, is IIRC taken fairly directly from stuff that happened with Logan Pearsall Smith and his assistants. Finally, in the time period where St. John Clarke figures prominently in "Dance," he is a distinctly outmoded figure, not only in literary circles but also with the general novel-buying public; Galsworthy in the '30s had not yet been relegated to the dustbin I don't believe, not in the second category. 

Orwell disguising himself as a tramp in order to explore "conditions" does rhyme with one bit of Warminster/Erridge's behavior, but that's the only point of resemblance I can see.  Orwell of course did many adventurous things in his life, wrote a great amount that was worthy and influential; Warminster does little but be cranky according to his own basically crabbed reclusive lights and essentially has an effect only on his relatives. Also, Powell and Orwell became fairly close friends; there's a wonderful portrait of him in Powell's memoirs.

Forget to mention that, as the list makers say, X. Trapnel is modeled on Julian McLaren Ross.

I thought that Crowley and Trelawney were a pretty close fit. When Powell was a young man in publishing, he met a by then decrepit and semi-mad Crowley and found him immensely creepy. He writes of the encounter in the memoirs.

[Jazzjet]

18 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

The two men who assembled that list of models are major Powellians, but I still don't like Galsworthy for St. John Clarke. Dismissible though Galsworthy's fiction might be, it's not in a class of moldy banality with St. John Clarke's. Also, I'm not aware of Galsworthy becoming a voguish Left-winger, as St. John Clarke does. Further, the  merry-go-round where St. John Clarke dumps his assistant Mark Members  and replaces him with Quiggin, who is eventually supplanted by Guggenbuhl, is IIRC taken fairly directly from stuff that happened with Logan Pearsall Smith and his assistants. Finally, in the time period where St. John Clarke figures prominently in "Dance," he is a distinctly outmoded figure, not only in literary circles but also with the general novel-buying public; Galsworthy in the '30s had not yet been relegated to the dustbin I don't believe, not in the second category. 

Orwell disguising himself as a tramp in order to explore "conditions" does rhyme with one bit of Warminster/Erridge's behavior, but that's the only point of resemblance I can see.  Orwell of course did many adventurous things in his life, wrote a great amount that was worthy and influential; Warminster does little but be cranky according to his own basically crabbed reclusive lights and essentially has an effect only on his relatives. Also, Powell and Orwell became fairly close friends; there's a wonderful portrait of him in Powell's memoirs.

Forget to mention that, as the list makers say, X. Trapnel is modeled on Julian McLaren Ross.

I thought that Crowley and Trelawney were a pretty close fit. When Powell was a young man in publishing, he met a by then decrepit and semi-mad Crowley and found him immensely creepy. He writes of the encounter in the memoirs.

The only other thing in the Erridge/Orwell comparison is the trip to the Spanish Civil War which both Erridge and Orwell made. I'm not too sure about the Crowley/ Trelawney comparison. Crowley was a much more evil and dangerous personality than Trelawney seems to be. On the general point of these character models I'm sure the inspiration that Powell took was a lot more nuanced than it appears with parts of the characters and personalities known to Powell combined to form the characters in the novels. Didn't Powell say something about fiction invoking a higher truth than biography?

Thanks again for the Hilary Spurling recommendation by the way. I managed to get hold of a cheap used copy via Amazon.

[BillF]

Returned to Bellow after a gap of several decades. Used to be a big fan of Bellow's in my twenties. Now see this one as flawed, but with a magnificent ending. Have taken more off the bookshelf for future reading.

[alankin]

Donald E. Westlake as Richard Stark – Lemons Never Lie (Hard Case Crime) — Grofield novel

 

[Larry Kart]

I love Westlake's Richard Stark novels, have read them all. (Can't deny Westlake's overall expertise, but I have no taste for the more whimsical sort of crime novels that he wrote under his own name.) I believe that "Lemons Never Lie" was my first Stark, which in retrospect felt like a somewhat odd point of entrance because it's essentially a Grofield novel.

[alankin]

Yeah, the Grofield novels tend to be a bit less, um, stark than the Parker novels.

[Larry Kart]

34 minutes ago, alankin said:

Yeah, the Grofield novels tend to be a bit less, um, stark than the Parker novels.

Doesn't Parker come in toward the end of "Lemons Don't Lie"? Also, what happens to Grofield eventually in one of the later Parker novels hit me hard. What a nice character Grofield is, kind of a link to the tone of Westlake's Bernie the  burgular books.

Oops -- Bernie the burgular is a Lawrence Block creation. What I meant was Westlake's Dortmunder novels.

[jazzbo]

I myself can't answer those questions as I've been reading the Stark novels sequentially from the beginning and am finishing up "The Dame" right now. After the Parker novels the Grofield novels are fun but like a diet meal rather than a full calorie delight.

[medjuck]

40 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Doesn't Parker come in toward the end of "Lemons Don't Lie"? Also, what happens to Grofield eventually in one of the later Parker novels hit me hard. What a nice character Grofield is, kind of a link to the tone of Westlake's Bernie the  burgular books.

Oops -- Bernie the burgular is a Lawrence Block creation. What I meant was Westlake's Dortmunder novels.

Isn't there a novel where Dortmunder reads a Richard Stark novel and tries to imitate Parker?

[Larry Kart]

30 minutes ago, medjuck said:

Isn't there a novel where Dortmunder reads a Richard Stark novel and tries to imitate Parker?

I believe I've heard of that, though I haven't read much Dortmunder.

Westlake liked to set himself odd challenges as a writer. One of my favorites comes in the Parker novel "Ask the Parrot," where an entire chapter is told from the point of view of that creature. Reading it, I had no doubt that this is what a parrot -- or better, that particular parrot -- would be thinking at that point. And it's not just a writerly trick; the novel might not work unless we knew what that parrot was thinking.

[paul secor]

Alec Guinness: A Positively Final Appearance

I didn't want this one to end, though all things must, and his life ended shortly after writing this book.

[alankin]

5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Doesn't Parker come in toward the end of "Lemons Don't Lie"? Also, what happens to Grofield eventually in one of the later Parker novels hit me hard. What a nice character Grofield is, kind of a link to the tone of Westlake's Bernie the  burglar books.

Oops -- Bernie the burglar is a Lawrence Block creation. What I meant was Westlake's Dortmunder novels.

Yeah, there is an intersection between Grofield and Parker in a couple Parker books.  Both the Parker book Slayground and the Grofield book The Blackbird start with the same botched robbery in chapter one of each book.   The books then tells the separate stories of what happens to each character after the get away from the robbery scene.  Maybe that was another challenge.

And  the first Dortmunder book, The Hot Rock, was originally supposed to be a Parker book, but the story veered off in a more comic direction and Westlake decided to go along for the ride, as it were.

5 hours ago, medjuck said:

Isn't there a novel where Dortmunder reads a Richard Stark novel and tries to imitate Parker?

Yes, "Jimmy the Kid" - the third Dortmunder book which is one of the few I haven't read yet.

[ejp626]

I just finished Mukherjee's Miss New India, which is probably best described as Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick in Bangalore with the additional twist that the main character is female.  The secondary characters are all more interesting that the main character.  (One could easily say the same thing for most of Dickens' novels that star a juvenile lead.)

I'm partway through Alain Mabanckou's Broken Glass.  It's short, so I'll probably be done with it tomorrow.  It's basically a bar patron writing down the stories of a seedy bar in the Congo.  It's not bad.  There is a scene early on that seemed inspired by Monty Python's Splunge sketch.

After this Lem's Solaris.  I'm quite interested to see what I make of this.  I've seen the two film versions but know that the book is a bit different.