There is much to be said for the copyright law.
Especially when its mercenary grip has been loosened on classic texts; specifically those available as e-books.
My trawling through what I can download onto my Sony e-book reader I came across another volume by Nathanial Hawthorne. My opinion of Hawthorne was negative, based I have to admit on my owning a paperback copy of The Marble Faun which sported a rather unprepossessing front cover and had tiny print on rough paper. It was, I felt, enough to own a copy of a book by an acknowledged but largely unread major nineteenth century American writer who I suspected would be even harder work than Henry James. This remained my firm opinion through university and into real life.
Then I read him.
‘The Scarlet Letter’ was a fantastic read - and for those of you who have no intention of reading it but want to appear clued up for Trivial Pursuit I might offer the information that the ‘letter’ in the title does not refer to any epistle but to an actual letter in red which the heroine of the novel had to wear: the letter ‘A’ for adultery.
Twenty or more years of ignoring the writer and he turns out to be worth reading after all!
The latest work of his I have read is ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ of which I had previously heard but never perused. The story is not told in a conventional way and there is not a great deal of conventional action in the basic story line – but there is more than enough to occupy the reader. This is basically a regenerative love story with its roots reaching back to the Puritan bigotry and corruption of seventeenth century East Coast greed. But for me the character of Clifford was by far the most interesting.
Clifford is the decayed remnant of a once important old family. Earlier in life committed some sort of crime which is not fully revealed until the end of the book. Until the final denouement his crime is only hinted at and his description allows Hawthorne the latitude to develop his character in an extraordinary way. Clifford is depicted as morbidly sensitive, always seeking beauty and refined sensation yet its appreciation only illuminating his vitiated character even more clearly. He appears like a washed out version of the ‘aesthetic’ gentlemen illustrated by the limp lily appreciating caricatures of the time of Wilde and Pater.
The final resolution of the novel is something of an anticlimax and Clifford’s guilt and crime are not as exciting as imagination might have painted them, but nevertheless an extraordinary novel and well worth a read.
I have also been reading a book whose purchase was prompted by the ever excellent The Week magazine, ‘Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes’ by Daniel Everett, subtitled ‘Life and Language in the Amazonian jungle.’
This is the story of a missionary who entered the life of a small group of indigenous people in the heart of the Amazon, the Pirahas, with the intention of learning their language in order to write a translation of the New Testament and bring them to god.
The action of the story is an account of his success in being able to speak the language and participate in the life of the people, but also the story of his failure to bring the people to a Christian god and his own loss of faith.
It is a gripping narrative of almost insuperable difficulties in adapting to a very different life style and the effects that the conditions had on him and his family; from the odd tarantula in the lap and life threatening diseases to the realization that the language and life style of the Pirahas were things which posed questions about an accepted way of living in the so-called civilized societies.
Everett describes a society which would be something beyond a nightmare in which to live for a person devoted to sophisticated pleasures like running water, electricity and proper drains!
The language of the Piraha has one of the smallest set of speech sounds known with just three vowels and only eight consonants! The women of the Piraha have only seven consonants – don’t ask!
From this seemingly limited linguistic palette the grammatical formation of the language has prompted Everett to an act of cultural blasphemy – he has dared to disagree with Noam Chomsky about the link of culture with grammar and questioning the traditional Chomsky assertion that recursive speech is an essential component of any language.
That seemingly trivial paragraph is actually of monumental importance – but you have to read the book to discover the lucid and intensely enjoyable path which will encourage you to share the perceptions of the author! But it and see, or you could listen to Radio 4 where it is the Book of the Week from Monday.
Now that Amazon has refunded the inflated postage charge they tried to charge for getting David Starkey’s ‘Henry – Virtuous Prince’ to me I have decided it is possible to read it. Previously I could not have read it without sulking, consciously as I would have been of the money extorted from me by the cynical encouragement of ‘one click’ purchasing by Amazon!
Starkey’s style is chummy and chatty and he asks casual questions which cannot be based on methodology of any academic stringency – but they do make his description of the young Henry VIII bounce along!
The simplified family tree of The Houses of York, Lancaster and Tudor at the beginning of the book is more complex than anything which I can follow with any degree of equanimity and just when I think I have worked out who is whose aunt and which house they are in I realise that I am on the wrong line – figuratively and literally! But I can also see how addictive it could easily become! Give me another few days and I will have a coherent opinion about who had a better claim to the throne that Henry Tudor – or of course I could get a life!
I’m in Starkey’s hands!
Especially when its mercenary grip has been loosened on classic texts; specifically those available as e-books.
My trawling through what I can download onto my Sony e-book reader I came across another volume by Nathanial Hawthorne. My opinion of Hawthorne was negative, based I have to admit on my owning a paperback copy of The Marble Faun which sported a rather unprepossessing front cover and had tiny print on rough paper. It was, I felt, enough to own a copy of a book by an acknowledged but largely unread major nineteenth century American writer who I suspected would be even harder work than Henry James. This remained my firm opinion through university and into real life.
Then I read him.
‘The Scarlet Letter’ was a fantastic read - and for those of you who have no intention of reading it but want to appear clued up for Trivial Pursuit I might offer the information that the ‘letter’ in the title does not refer to any epistle but to an actual letter in red which the heroine of the novel had to wear: the letter ‘A’ for adultery.
Twenty or more years of ignoring the writer and he turns out to be worth reading after all!
The latest work of his I have read is ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ of which I had previously heard but never perused. The story is not told in a conventional way and there is not a great deal of conventional action in the basic story line – but there is more than enough to occupy the reader. This is basically a regenerative love story with its roots reaching back to the Puritan bigotry and corruption of seventeenth century East Coast greed. But for me the character of Clifford was by far the most interesting.
Clifford is the decayed remnant of a once important old family. Earlier in life committed some sort of crime which is not fully revealed until the end of the book. Until the final denouement his crime is only hinted at and his description allows Hawthorne the latitude to develop his character in an extraordinary way. Clifford is depicted as morbidly sensitive, always seeking beauty and refined sensation yet its appreciation only illuminating his vitiated character even more clearly. He appears like a washed out version of the ‘aesthetic’ gentlemen illustrated by the limp lily appreciating caricatures of the time of Wilde and Pater.
The final resolution of the novel is something of an anticlimax and Clifford’s guilt and crime are not as exciting as imagination might have painted them, but nevertheless an extraordinary novel and well worth a read.
I have also been reading a book whose purchase was prompted by the ever excellent The Week magazine, ‘Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes’ by Daniel Everett, subtitled ‘Life and Language in the Amazonian jungle.’
This is the story of a missionary who entered the life of a small group of indigenous people in the heart of the Amazon, the Pirahas, with the intention of learning their language in order to write a translation of the New Testament and bring them to god.
The action of the story is an account of his success in being able to speak the language and participate in the life of the people, but also the story of his failure to bring the people to a Christian god and his own loss of faith.
It is a gripping narrative of almost insuperable difficulties in adapting to a very different life style and the effects that the conditions had on him and his family; from the odd tarantula in the lap and life threatening diseases to the realization that the language and life style of the Pirahas were things which posed questions about an accepted way of living in the so-called civilized societies.
Everett describes a society which would be something beyond a nightmare in which to live for a person devoted to sophisticated pleasures like running water, electricity and proper drains!
The language of the Piraha has one of the smallest set of speech sounds known with just three vowels and only eight consonants! The women of the Piraha have only seven consonants – don’t ask!
From this seemingly limited linguistic palette the grammatical formation of the language has prompted Everett to an act of cultural blasphemy – he has dared to disagree with Noam Chomsky about the link of culture with grammar and questioning the traditional Chomsky assertion that recursive speech is an essential component of any language.
That seemingly trivial paragraph is actually of monumental importance – but you have to read the book to discover the lucid and intensely enjoyable path which will encourage you to share the perceptions of the author! But it and see, or you could listen to Radio 4 where it is the Book of the Week from Monday.
Now that Amazon has refunded the inflated postage charge they tried to charge for getting David Starkey’s ‘Henry – Virtuous Prince’ to me I have decided it is possible to read it. Previously I could not have read it without sulking, consciously as I would have been of the money extorted from me by the cynical encouragement of ‘one click’ purchasing by Amazon!
Starkey’s style is chummy and chatty and he asks casual questions which cannot be based on methodology of any academic stringency – but they do make his description of the young Henry VIII bounce along!
The simplified family tree of The Houses of York, Lancaster and Tudor at the beginning of the book is more complex than anything which I can follow with any degree of equanimity and just when I think I have worked out who is whose aunt and which house they are in I realise that I am on the wrong line – figuratively and literally! But I can also see how addictive it could easily become! Give me another few days and I will have a coherent opinion about who had a better claim to the throne that Henry Tudor – or of course I could get a life!
I’m in Starkey’s hands!
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