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Recent reading
Sep. 22nd, 2024 09:17 amFirst, a few more comments on Witching Hill that didn't fit into my last post:
'I never believe those blithering blighters who attribute their crimes to the bad example of some criminal hero of the magazines or of the stage. Villain-worship doesn't carry you to that length unless you're a bit of a villain in the first instance.' —Hmm, this looks like a comment on some contemporary opinions of Raffles :D
I love how gratuitously and unceremoniously this book avoids the 'best friend's sister' trope. Amy is introduced; she's there in the background throughout... she and Gilly never develop much of a relationship, and then she marries someone else offstage. Great stuff.
As with the Raffles books, I love the sense of future-narrator!Gilly as a character that comes through in the narration (and the implication of Gilly's continuing close relationship with Uvo). But unlike the Raffles stories, here the character who is a writer in-story and the one actually writing the stories are not the same character. I wonder if Uvo encouraged Gilly to have a go at his own profession and tell the story of Witching Hill?
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1845; translated by Robin Buss, 1996). This is a hugely famous classic novel about which I had oddly failed to osmose anything beyond 'it's extremely long' and 'there are cool lesbians in it'. Well, both of those were accurate! 1,240 pages in this edition, and the lesbian side character Eugénie Danglars and her girlfriend are not only very cool but really remarkably textual for 1845. What I had failed to osmose, and was pleasantly surprised by, is how completely bonkers and how much fun the book is. The basic idea, in case you've also failed to osmose it: Edmond Dantès, a young sailor, gets accidentally mixed up in some Bonapartist conspiratising; his companions, jealous of his professional and romantic success, turn him in to the authorities and he's unjustly imprisoned for many years; eventually he escapes and acquires a massive fortune through improbable plot contrivance; he then takes on a new identity as the Count of Monte Cristo (...among others) and dedicates himself to taking an elaborate, precisely-plotted, devastating, triumphant revenge on the men responsible for his imprisonment. There's far too much in there to comment on all of it (some highlights: serial poisoning; romantic Italian bandits; the wonders of the East, including a) a dramatic fictional plot grafted onto the story of a real Ottoman ruler and b) lots of hashish; the opera; is the Count a vampire???; a character who, paralysed following a stroke, uses an elaborate system of communication involving eye-blink signals and identifying words from a dictionary to talk to his granddaughter; are the sins of the fathers visited on the children???; the Count's fifteen million alter egos; the actual real-life clacks (i.e. the semaphore telegraph; I don't think I'd ever seen that come up in old fiction before, to the point that it was a bit of a surprise to hear characters casually talking about 'the telegraph' in 1815); the memorable Carnival of Rome; the above-mentioned totally textual operatic crossdressing lesbians; the dramatic consequences of failed infanticide; a subverted duel; &c. &c. &c.), but it was amazing fun to read and I enjoyed the whole thing very much.
I found the narrative style took a bit of getting used to; Dumas combines a sort of pedantic over-explanation of small details with a disorienting lack of explanation of big, important things which the reader is left to piece together—occasionally to the length of having the omniscient narrator make clearly false statements. I also found the prose pretty clunky on the whole, although that may be partly the fault of the translation.
Speaking of which: Buss includes a 'note on the text' explaining his approach to translation which slightly baffled me. He spends several paragraphs criticising earlier English translations for misrepresenting, bowdlerising and leaving out parts of the original (indeed, why I chose a recent translation; I didn't want to miss any of the lesbianism!), and says that in contrast, he's aimed at accuracy; then follow several more paragraphs that amount to 'well, some people think translators should never change or leave out bits of the original, but obviously that's silly, and I haven't refrained from doing so'. ...I assume I'm misinterpreting something here, but, er, maybe it's not really a faithful translation? Buss does annoy me by singling out the earlier translations' use of 'said he' dialogue tags as a fussy Victorianism; but Buss is fond of 'Name said' dialogue tags, which conversely sound more modern and American, presumably not accurate to the original! And I did find the more general use of words and phrases which wouldn't have been used in the English of 1845—not to an egregious extent, but enough for someone who reads a lot of Victorian fiction to notice—distracting.
Widdershins by Oliver Onions (1911). A collection of horror stories which drew my attention because I'd seen the story 'Benlian' recommended as particularly slashy. It is indeed slashy (and so is the final story, 'Hic Jacet', in fact), in a nicely disturbing horror-story sort of a way. Altogether the stories are sufficiently effective horror that I was going 'brrr, I think I need to read something a bit nicer next' by the time I got about halfway through—although undermined in a few places by period-typical prejudices. Several of the stories, including both the two mentioned, deal with questions of Art, its nature and integrity, as expressed through supernatural horror; this was an interesting angle, although I did think the ideas about True Art vs. commercial trash in 'Hic Jacet' got just a bit silly.
Crossriggs by Mary and Jane Findlater (1908). The copy of this on the Internet Archive which I read was digitised from a book donated to Harvard University Library from the collection of Sarah Orne Jewett, which was an unexpected crossover—I wonder what she made of it. Anyway, this was my idea of 'something a bit nicer': gentle domestic fiction set in a village in Lowland Scotland in the late nineteenth century, following Alex Hope*, a thirty-year-old single woman who struggles with poverty and work in helping to bring up her widowed sister's children, while taking part in a complicated and tragic love pentagon. I liked the book very much, on the whole: Alex is a great character, lively and deep and frustrated and thoughtful as she is, and the setting and background, the sense of passing seasons, the emotional descriptions and the historical details are all enjoyable. The book is ambivalent about spinsterhood, work and independence for women in an interesting way, and is certainly a good sympathetic portrayal of a single woman's life, although not immune to a rather crass sexism at times. One of the major het relationships is badly let down by that baffling, depressing habit in period het of conflating selfish, possessive objectification with love in writing about men who can't have the women they want (conflating as in, most of what's on the page is a convincing and touching portrayal of unrequited love—but the man briefly acts in a way which is not believably consistent with actually loving someone, which rather undermines the whole thing). However, the central unfulfilled love between Alex and a married man is better-done and lovely. I was not at all sure how it was all going to end, but it eventually finds its way to a resolution and happiness which does work well. For much of the book I was wishing Alex might find a like-minded, understanding female friend in whom she could confide and who might open up her horizons a bit; disappointingly, that never happens.
*It's interesting that, as far as I can see, the nickname Alex was generally understood as definitely a girl's name at this time; Alexander was shortened to Sandy (indeed, Alex mentions having been called Sandy as a child because she was a bit of a tomboy; there's no suggestion that Alex is similarly gender-ambiguous).
'I never believe those blithering blighters who attribute their crimes to the bad example of some criminal hero of the magazines or of the stage. Villain-worship doesn't carry you to that length unless you're a bit of a villain in the first instance.' —Hmm, this looks like a comment on some contemporary opinions of Raffles :D
I love how gratuitously and unceremoniously this book avoids the 'best friend's sister' trope. Amy is introduced; she's there in the background throughout... she and Gilly never develop much of a relationship, and then she marries someone else offstage. Great stuff.
As with the Raffles books, I love the sense of future-narrator!Gilly as a character that comes through in the narration (and the implication of Gilly's continuing close relationship with Uvo). But unlike the Raffles stories, here the character who is a writer in-story and the one actually writing the stories are not the same character. I wonder if Uvo encouraged Gilly to have a go at his own profession and tell the story of Witching Hill?
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1845; translated by Robin Buss, 1996). This is a hugely famous classic novel about which I had oddly failed to osmose anything beyond 'it's extremely long' and 'there are cool lesbians in it'. Well, both of those were accurate! 1,240 pages in this edition, and the lesbian side character Eugénie Danglars and her girlfriend are not only very cool but really remarkably textual for 1845. What I had failed to osmose, and was pleasantly surprised by, is how completely bonkers and how much fun the book is. The basic idea, in case you've also failed to osmose it: Edmond Dantès, a young sailor, gets accidentally mixed up in some Bonapartist conspiratising; his companions, jealous of his professional and romantic success, turn him in to the authorities and he's unjustly imprisoned for many years; eventually he escapes and acquires a massive fortune through improbable plot contrivance; he then takes on a new identity as the Count of Monte Cristo (...among others) and dedicates himself to taking an elaborate, precisely-plotted, devastating, triumphant revenge on the men responsible for his imprisonment. There's far too much in there to comment on all of it (some highlights: serial poisoning; romantic Italian bandits; the wonders of the East, including a) a dramatic fictional plot grafted onto the story of a real Ottoman ruler and b) lots of hashish; the opera; is the Count a vampire???; a character who, paralysed following a stroke, uses an elaborate system of communication involving eye-blink signals and identifying words from a dictionary to talk to his granddaughter; are the sins of the fathers visited on the children???; the Count's fifteen million alter egos; the actual real-life clacks (i.e. the semaphore telegraph; I don't think I'd ever seen that come up in old fiction before, to the point that it was a bit of a surprise to hear characters casually talking about 'the telegraph' in 1815); the memorable Carnival of Rome; the above-mentioned totally textual operatic crossdressing lesbians; the dramatic consequences of failed infanticide; a subverted duel; &c. &c. &c.), but it was amazing fun to read and I enjoyed the whole thing very much.
I found the narrative style took a bit of getting used to; Dumas combines a sort of pedantic over-explanation of small details with a disorienting lack of explanation of big, important things which the reader is left to piece together—occasionally to the length of having the omniscient narrator make clearly false statements. I also found the prose pretty clunky on the whole, although that may be partly the fault of the translation.
Speaking of which: Buss includes a 'note on the text' explaining his approach to translation which slightly baffled me. He spends several paragraphs criticising earlier English translations for misrepresenting, bowdlerising and leaving out parts of the original (indeed, why I chose a recent translation; I didn't want to miss any of the lesbianism!), and says that in contrast, he's aimed at accuracy; then follow several more paragraphs that amount to 'well, some people think translators should never change or leave out bits of the original, but obviously that's silly, and I haven't refrained from doing so'. ...I assume I'm misinterpreting something here, but, er, maybe it's not really a faithful translation? Buss does annoy me by singling out the earlier translations' use of 'said he' dialogue tags as a fussy Victorianism; but Buss is fond of 'Name said' dialogue tags, which conversely sound more modern and American, presumably not accurate to the original! And I did find the more general use of words and phrases which wouldn't have been used in the English of 1845—not to an egregious extent, but enough for someone who reads a lot of Victorian fiction to notice—distracting.
Widdershins by Oliver Onions (1911). A collection of horror stories which drew my attention because I'd seen the story 'Benlian' recommended as particularly slashy. It is indeed slashy (and so is the final story, 'Hic Jacet', in fact), in a nicely disturbing horror-story sort of a way. Altogether the stories are sufficiently effective horror that I was going 'brrr, I think I need to read something a bit nicer next' by the time I got about halfway through—although undermined in a few places by period-typical prejudices. Several of the stories, including both the two mentioned, deal with questions of Art, its nature and integrity, as expressed through supernatural horror; this was an interesting angle, although I did think the ideas about True Art vs. commercial trash in 'Hic Jacet' got just a bit silly.
Crossriggs by Mary and Jane Findlater (1908). The copy of this on the Internet Archive which I read was digitised from a book donated to Harvard University Library from the collection of Sarah Orne Jewett, which was an unexpected crossover—I wonder what she made of it. Anyway, this was my idea of 'something a bit nicer': gentle domestic fiction set in a village in Lowland Scotland in the late nineteenth century, following Alex Hope*, a thirty-year-old single woman who struggles with poverty and work in helping to bring up her widowed sister's children, while taking part in a complicated and tragic love pentagon. I liked the book very much, on the whole: Alex is a great character, lively and deep and frustrated and thoughtful as she is, and the setting and background, the sense of passing seasons, the emotional descriptions and the historical details are all enjoyable. The book is ambivalent about spinsterhood, work and independence for women in an interesting way, and is certainly a good sympathetic portrayal of a single woman's life, although not immune to a rather crass sexism at times. One of the major het relationships is badly let down by that baffling, depressing habit in period het of conflating selfish, possessive objectification with love in writing about men who can't have the women they want (conflating as in, most of what's on the page is a convincing and touching portrayal of unrequited love—but the man briefly acts in a way which is not believably consistent with actually loving someone, which rather undermines the whole thing). However, the central unfulfilled love between Alex and a married man is better-done and lovely. I was not at all sure how it was all going to end, but it eventually finds its way to a resolution and happiness which does work well. For much of the book I was wishing Alex might find a like-minded, understanding female friend in whom she could confide and who might open up her horizons a bit; disappointingly, that never happens.
*It's interesting that, as far as I can see, the nickname Alex was generally understood as definitely a girl's name at this time; Alexander was shortened to Sandy (indeed, Alex mentions having been called Sandy as a child because she was a bit of a tomboy; there's no suggestion that Alex is similarly gender-ambiguous).
