McIlvanney's Laidlaw, some quotes

A few short extracts from William McIlvanney's Laidlaw, a book full of witty writing. Laidlaw is the first in a series featuring a Scottish detective named Laidlaw. He's a man with a similar approach to his detecting as Rebus has in the famous Ian Rankin series. These stories were written earlier than those by Rankin and are set in Glasgow, rather than Edinburgh. The other two titles are The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded. 

Sunday in the park - it was a nice day. A Glasgow sun was out, dully luminous, an eye with cataract. Some people were in the park pretending it was warm, exercising that necessary Scottish thrift with weather which hoards every good day in the hope of some year amassing a summer.

The scene was a kind of Method School of Weather - a lot of people trying to achieve a subjective belief in the heat in the hope of convincing one another. So the father who lay on the grass, railing in his children with his eyes, wore an open-necked shirt, letting the sun get at his goose-pimples. Two girls who were being chatted up by three boys managed to look romantically breeze-blown rather than cold. An old man sitting on a bench had undone the top two buttons of his overcoat, heralding heatwave. A transistor played somewhere, evocative of beaches. People walking through the park moved unhurriedly, as if through an air muggy with warmth.  page 23

Just because you've got a wooden leg doesn't mean you've got to go about battering all the two-legged folk over the head with it.  page 167

What I've got against folk like Lawson isn't that they're wrong. It's just that they assume they're right. Bigotry's just unearned certainty, isn't it?  Page 200

The Bean Trees [and The Poisonwood Bible]

While staying at a friend's house I came across a book called The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I'd heard of her as the author of The Poisonwood Bible, a book I haven't read, but that was all. Anyway it turns out that the Bean Trees is her first book and probably rather different to the later more serious Poisonwood.  By all accounts Bean Trees is a good deal funnier, I suspect, from what I know of the story of the late book. Kingsolver's wit and humorous way with words sparks off every page. In fact the humour is pretty much what holds things in place, because there's only a minimal story, and there are times, especially later in the book, when it feels as though she's being quite didactic in telling us what she knows about the Arizona countryside, even though it may be interesting.  Her characters are strongly written, and often quite quirky, but they don't really get a lot to do apart from having conversations and picnics with each other. The attraction between Taylor, the young woman who finds herself landed with an unwanted child in the middle of the Oklahoma flatlands, and the married school teacher from Guatemala, barely smoulders; there's little real suspense in regard to the subplot about rescuing illegal immigrants, and the child abuse motif that lingers in the background isn't deeply explored. Indeed the climax of the book is more of a way of resolving Taylor's issues with caring for the child she's had foisted on her than with any concerns about whether the couple from Guatamala will get away from the authorities, or whether she'll be allowed to keep the child.

For all that, the book is very readable, and Kingsolver's eye on the world is unique and regularly shows us familiar things in startling ways. Her two main characters (the other one is a married woman whose husband has left and who is always on the verge of divorce but never quite getting there) both have a bit of a learning trajectory, but there's not much in the plot itself to push them towards real change. They somehow manage it on their own, as it were.

Lots of homespun wisdom - some of it hilariously suspect - lots of grumpy old women, some weird children, some strange locations. Not quite enough for a book to have real impact but certainly a book with a particular voice that's worth hearing.

I've now read The Poisonwood Bible. Here's the review I posted on Goodreads in April 2014

This is a brilliant book about a clash of cultures, spiritual viewpoints and personalities...until around page 450 (out of 600) when it begins to sashay into a book about how awful American culture is and how interfering American politicians are in world affairs. Those two last aspects have a degree of truth, but they aren't what the book is truly about. They've been implied throughout, but when they take centre stage they distract from what is going on in the real lives of the characters. I found the last hundred pages went nowhere for me: the chief antagonist of the book, the father, had disappeared from the centre of the story, and was replaced by invisible male antagonists at a distance, both Congolese and American. I finished up skimming those hundred pages because they merely detailed more of the three girls' lives and took the story nowhere.

There are many wonderful things in the book: the different voices of the five females, the detail of Congolese village life and the Congo itself, the host of minor characters. The father, who, unlike the five females, never gets to speak for himself but is only seen through the women's eyes, still manages to be a huge force to be reckoned with in the story. Once he's gone, however, the story has no centre anymore. Like him or not, (and he's almost impossible to like) he is the character against whom the women play out their lives, since they don't particularly get on with each other. After the big climax around page 400 or so, he remains offstage, and we only hear about him in passing. His death (still offstage) while it may be justifiable in terms of 'balance,' seems contrived. 

Christian mission plays a huge part in the story (and then this aspect gets lost as the politics take over). I've recently been re-reading Vincent Donovan's Christianity Rediscovered, a book about a Catholic priest who has to rethink his own cultural viewpoints in order to convey the essence of the Gospel to the Masai, and does so successfully. The father in The Poisonwood Bible, for all his vitality, never understands that his cultural view of Christianity is making him miss the mark in trying to convey Jesus to the Congolese. There are other Christians in the story who have better managed to integrate Christianity into the Congolese culture, though they play a relatively minor role. Kingsolver writes rather ambiguously about the Christian aspect of the story: we can see that the father hasn't got it right, but only occasionally do other members of his family get it right themselves.

This is certainly a book that keeps you thinking about it, so I guess that makes it successful!

Michael Head & Robert Farrar Capon

Wikipedia is rapidly catching up on all sorts of information, including biographies of people.  Some of these biographies didn't exist up until relatively recently. Two such are those of the composer Michael Head (1900-1976), and the Episcopalian priest and chef, Robert Farrar Capon - Capon, born in 1925, died earlier this month. 

Michael Head was almost entirely a composer of songs, and I've been accompanying people singing Michael Head songs since I first began this role.  A large number of his songs have survived in the repertoires of singing teachers and their pupils, and as examination works, and so on.  Here's a 'not comprehensive' list of his songs. To my surprise there are far more than I've ever performed, and I'm interested to note that one I heard at the Senior Vocal Competitions the other day, and had never heard before, is actually one of his. When I heard it I said to the person I was sitting beside - that can't be a Michael Head song surely?  I thought this mostly because it was quite different in style and tone to many of those I know.  But there it is: Back to Hilo.

Head was unusual in that he used to present his songs not by accompanying another singer, but as both singer and accompanist simultaneously.  He must be one of the few composers ever to have done this (amongst art song composers, I mean).

I was first introduced to the books of Robert Farrar Capon when I began work at the Otago Church Bookstore. I'd never heard of him before, and was struck by his witty and delightful style, his seeming willingness to go beyond the pale in terms of what might be called orthodox theology (he never went beyond truth, though), and his attempts to surprise us into rethinking parables and stories and Gospel texts we'd heard too many times and had become over-familiar with. I've read most of his books more than once - that is, of the ones I've read once (there are a number I've never got hold of) - and they always bear re-reading. 

Sometimes he overdid the wit, and the surreal approach. Sometimes you have to take what he says with a grain of salt, because he can get a little carried away. Sometimes he was almost so clever that you lost the point of what he was saying, but undeniably he has an important place in teaching people about God's grace to humanity, God's love for humanity, and the importance of the cross. 

My Goodness!

Some time ago, I think, I started reading Tim Parks' novel Goodness.  Apparently I didn't finish it; in fact I may not have got very far with it at all, as the only bit I remembered when I started reading it again a day or so ago, was the beginning.

Like other books by Parks it's subtle in its approach, with any number of twists and turns between the main characters - not in terms of plot but in terms of reactions to each other, and in the ways they hurt or are loving to each other.   There's also Parks' wit and humour - not laugh-out-loud stuff, but wry and witty.

The story is told by George, an upwardly-mobile young man whose life and marriage comes to a major crunch point about half way through the novel - I won't tell you what that is, but I didn't expect it.   We've already seen George's selfishness raging through the book - 'raging' might be a bit strong - outwardly he's a well-behaved Englishman; it's inside where all the raging is going on, and we're privy to it.

The climax of the book is superbly written, and suspenseful in a surprising way.   And then there's the Epilogue, which takes the story off into another realm altogether.   Parks takes your breath away with this one.

The book is essentially moral in tone; it's George's struggle with his own morality and with the faith of others and their sometimes insane optimism that makes it so readable.   The Daily Mail described it as a 'one-sitting book' and that's just about it.  The only reason I didn't read it in one sitting was because I was reading it late at night and was too tired to continue.

PS This cover isn't on my copy of the book and seems to indicate a book that isn't quite the one Parks has written, one that's much more severe in tone.   The cover on my copy, published by Vintage, leaves much more to the imagination, but is still effective. 

Cart and Cwidder

Carrying on with my Diana Wynne Jones reading phase, I finished the first (as in first published) of the Dalemark Quartet series last night. Like most of Jones' series, these books weren't written consecutively, but over a period of years. In this case, some twenty years. The one I've just read comes second in chronological order, but was the first written. Taking into account the fact that C S Lewis also wrote some Narnia series 'out of chronological order' I don't think this matters much, and for me it's better to read the books as they were produced, since this is how the author initially conceived them.

That aside, this is a different kind of story to the more magical ones that I've read previously (the 3 in the Howl's Castle series, and Black Maria.) There is magic in it - the climax is brought about by it, in fact - but in general this is mostly more of adventure yarn than a magical story. Like the other Jones books, it delves into human nature and personality more than many children's stories - into the 'why' of how people behave, and whether that's always for the best.

Here the main character is named Moril: he's a boy of about ten or eleven, the third and youngest child of a couple of travelling performers. The father is the showman, full of bluff and stories and the old songs; the mother is quieter, but not at all a wallflower, and extraordinarily decisive when the chance is there to be seized. The older brother is a composer of 'new' songs, but more retiring in his demeanour - or so it seems. And the sister - the middle child - takes after her father: capable of facing an audience and having them eat out of her hand but not so good when it comes to saving her skin, or that of her younger brother.

The family is travelling in their cart (something like a covered wagon) with all their worldly goods, which include some very valuable musical instruments - the cwidder of the title is one such. Incidentally, cwidder seems to be a made-up word (as several of the words in the book are), though it has a kind of Welsh ring about it, especially in regard to the spelling. Jones tells us, in the glossary, that it's similar to a lute, but with some features of the acoustic guitar. (Her glossary appears to be authoritative, but is as much fiction as the rest of the book.)

Though it isn't obvious to the two younger children, there is more going on at each performance by the family as they come to each town - and after - than meets the eye. The consequences of all this provide a nasty shock for the reader about a third of the way through the book. Not long after, the three children - along with a fourth who's been picked up by the father earlier on - are on their own. Their struggles to get to the North (the 'safe' part of the country) from the dangerous South, and to provide for themselves, form the remainder of the book.

Moril matures considerably during the course of the book: he's a dreamer, but instead of that being a disadvantage, his father knows that it's a gift. Moril still has to discover how it's a gift, and playing the large cwidder is part of that discovery. Part of Jones' skill as a writer is to show that while Moril uses his gift for the benefit of those he's with, and to save the people of the North from an invasion, he doesn't use his gift truthfully. On page 167 Moril realises the following: If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever. It's to Moril's credit that he not only learns from his exhilerating but wrongly handled experience, but understands that he is still immature, and needs someone to keep teaching him.

This book takes a little longer to grab hold of you, compared to the others I've read. It seems too down-to-earth at first, and not fantastical enough - and there's less of Jones' wit and humour. It'll be interesting to see what the rest of the Quartet is like (though they'll have to wait, as I'm now reading another book that was recommended to me by the same people who enthused about Jones - The Theif, by Megan Whalen Turner.)

Banksy

A colleague gave me a book for Christmas (Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything) which unfortunately I already had and had already read. (Hey, that last phrase is rather cute!)
So she swapped it for a $40 gift card which I promptly forgot about until she mentioned it a week or so ago. Today I went off to Whitcoull's just to check what they might have of interest, and came across Banksy's Wall and Piece, which I didn't have and now have.

I already had and had already read;
I didn't have and now have.

Anyway, Banksy's style is fairly familiar, in the sense that it's copied a good deal around the place through people using a similar stencil approach to graffiti - although seldom with Banksy's rather anarchic wit. Check out his website, where there are plenty of examples of his work. He's probably become a bit more respectable in a way, since most of the art on the website has a more permanent look than a lot of what appears in the book. Without photos, many of his art works would have vanished.
The great thing about Banksy is that he's a peace anarchist, and a man with a sense of humour. The book is full not just of his witty paintings, but also his witty texts. And he can certainly paint, something he says all graffiti artists should learn to do....

Banksy remains anonymous (to the general public) and supposedly has written: "I am unable to comment on who may or may not be banksy, but anyone described as being 'good at drawing' doesn't sound like banksy to me."