Having been so energetic about blogging during the first week and half of my trip through Europe, it behooves me to finish off the story a little.
My original purpose for being in Berlin, other than establishing and reaffirming relationships with various other researchers, was to attend the DSAL workshop, where I was coauthor of a paper with some collaborators from Germany and Luxembourg. That was done by Tuesday, so in theory at least, I was a little more at my leisure for the rest of the week. In practice, it changed little; I wasn't presenting the paper anyway, and we in fact spent more of the week working on a paper submitted the following week.
During the DSAL workshop, in one of the duller talks (yes, there are dull talks at academic workshops - a shocking revelation, I know), when I wasn't plotting running tracks, I discovered that there was a concert in town on Wednesday night by the Shai Maestro Trio.
Shai Maestro is a young Israeli pianist who played on a couple of albums by Avishai Cohen, who has in recent years been probably my favourite jazz performer. Maestro's playing had really impressed me, and I have been looking forward to his new album (now released, in fact), so I was pretty excited at the prospect of being able to see him live. The gig was at 10pm in town, necessitating a train a little after 9, and upon inspection, the conference social event, a boat cruise, was scheduled in the programme to finish at 9, right next to the train station, so I figured I was all good.
The boat cruise was pretty good, out on the lake around which I had run earlier in the week. The company was also good - as I had been for much of the week, I surrounded myself with French-speakers - Jacques, Max, Jean-Marc (who came along for the Wednesday and Thursday morning), Phillipe from Nice and Joerg from Montreal. We had some really interesting discussions, about French politics, Swiss ice-skating, and Dan Simmons novels, and the time passed quickly.
By around 8:45pm, though, I was getting antsy - the boat showed no sign of returning to port, and time was marching on. Time continued its march, and by around 9:30pm, still not ashore, I had resigned myself to missing not only the start of the gig, but most of it. We ended up getting back to shore a little after 10pm, and with a 15 minute wait for a train, I decided that the game was lost, and headed dejectedly back to my hotel.
I felt particularly guilty at missing the concert as I had boasted over Skype to Paul, another Avishai devotee and Shai Maestro admirer, about going to the gig, and telling him I had been in Berlin and still missed it was an unappealing prospect.
As much as I had a good time on the boat cruise, I'd still rather have seen the gig.
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
More running and eating in Babelsberg
I went out for another run last night. Based on advice from a local Oracle researcher at the conference on Monday, I had modified my original plan, of skirting around the northern edge of Babelsberg, to instead head across a bridge and up to Klein Glenicke, and the Volkspark of the same name.
Like my previous run, my route took me along a shared cycling/pedestrian path flanked on one side by the shore of the lake and on the other by forest in the first early blooms of spring. I get the feeling that the Volkspark, like Park Babelsberg, had a few old buildings hidden away in the forest set back and up from the shore. Unlike my previous run, though, I was further from home, so I was a little loathe to take diversions. So I pretty much just stuck to the lakeside, stopping from time to time at the jetties or benches to take photos across the lake. There were a bunch of other cyclists (mostly) and runners (a few) out on the path, and I was in a pretty good mood.
In the end, I probably went a little further than I had planned. I had entertained the idea of stopping at a bar, Wirsthaus Moorlake, squirrelled away in a bay, but I felt good, so I ran on another kilometre or two to another bar at Pfaueninsel, a tiny little ferry stop for people going across to the castles on the island across the strait.
On my way home, I ran past the local soccer stadium, home of the Babelsberg club in the Bundesliga 3 (although possibly not for long). They had a match on against the oddly named Kickers Offenbach (which they went on to lose), and it was interesting to see the enthusiasm generated, in the form of giant flags and the full stadium, and to hear, in the guise of singing and, I suppose, the full stadium. There were police outside the stadium, too, which I guess is the flipside of the enthusiasm (although I'd argue that this is more characteristic of soccer enthusiasm than general sporting enthusiasm), but it was still nice to see.
After the run, I met up with Jacques and Max for dinner. We hit up what I guess is a typical German restaurant, and had pretty typical food, I guess: currywurst, schnitzel, and a giant plate of ribs for me, which almost certainly negated any health benefits of my 12km run, but was a great source of sticky pleasure while I was eating them :)
Like my previous run, my route took me along a shared cycling/pedestrian path flanked on one side by the shore of the lake and on the other by forest in the first early blooms of spring. I get the feeling that the Volkspark, like Park Babelsberg, had a few old buildings hidden away in the forest set back and up from the shore. Unlike my previous run, though, I was further from home, so I was a little loathe to take diversions. So I pretty much just stuck to the lakeside, stopping from time to time at the jetties or benches to take photos across the lake. There were a bunch of other cyclists (mostly) and runners (a few) out on the path, and I was in a pretty good mood.
In the end, I probably went a little further than I had planned. I had entertained the idea of stopping at a bar, Wirsthaus Moorlake, squirrelled away in a bay, but I felt good, so I ran on another kilometre or two to another bar at Pfaueninsel, a tiny little ferry stop for people going across to the castles on the island across the strait.
On my way home, I ran past the local soccer stadium, home of the Babelsberg club in the Bundesliga 3 (although possibly not for long). They had a match on against the oddly named Kickers Offenbach (which they went on to lose), and it was interesting to see the enthusiasm generated, in the form of giant flags and the full stadium, and to hear, in the guise of singing and, I suppose, the full stadium. There were police outside the stadium, too, which I guess is the flipside of the enthusiasm (although I'd argue that this is more characteristic of soccer enthusiasm than general sporting enthusiasm), but it was still nice to see.
After the run, I met up with Jacques and Max for dinner. We hit up what I guess is a typical German restaurant, and had pretty typical food, I guess: currywurst, schnitzel, and a giant plate of ribs for me, which almost certainly negated any health benefits of my 12km run, but was a great source of sticky pleasure while I was eating them :)
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
An evening in Potsdam
On Sunday night I arrived in Potsdam for the second of my four-week swing through Europe (with apologies to British separatists). So far, I have been impressed by how helpful everyone has been. On leaving the airport, I immediately struggled with my extremely weak grasp of German, trying and failing to buy a ticket on the bus. Fortunately, though, a German hostess helped me out, and I managed to navigate my way to Charlottenburg S-bahn and from there to Babelsberg and my hotel. After orienting myself, and not having colleagues to meet (for a change), I decided to head out for a run.
Babelsberg, it seems, and Potsdam more broadly, is surrounded by parks, forests and lakes. According to google maps (thank goodness for hotel wifi), the closest of these green and blue blobs to my hotel is Park Babelsberg, so it was in that direction that I set out, headphones in, and braced against the single-figure temperature.
I had probably run about 300 metres when I became aware of a man running beside me wearing business attire and waving. As I stopped, so did he, bent over puffing and panting to regain his breath, before rising and handing me the key to my hotel room. Apparently it had fallen from my pocket a while back, and he had been chasing me to return it. I think my lack of German made it difficult for him to tell me to be careful as sternly as he would have wanted, and it certainly made it difficult for me to be as effusive in my thanks as his good deed warranted.
Ed: At this point I would love to embed the map for the run, along with the pictures I took, but runkeeper's embeddable maps are broken at the moment. Anyway, it can be found at http://runkeeper.com/user/jimsteel/activity/77584686, including a few pictures.
I ran on, past the local football stadium and across into Park Babelsberg. Almost immediately I was greeted by what a naive Australian would call a castle, but which I suppose in reality is just one building amongst some kind of feudal estate. As I ran on I encountered more, and more various, buildings, in very good condition and with scatterings of people wandering around looking at them. I ran on, along the edge of the lake (the Tiefer See), past a bar serving cyclists watching the sunset over the lake, around to a small bridge near a university embedded into the forest.
Running back, I abandoned my simple and easily followed route, and just wandered amongst the little trails winding through the park, heading towards and around towers and stately homes at whim. By the time I got back, I had racked up 7 or 8km, which I was happy with, given how long I had gone without running.
After showering, I again headed out, in search of dinner. I wandered into an Italian restaurant near the hotel, and sat down. Throughout the meal, I answered the waiter's fairly predictable questions in stuttering, broken German. He obviously knew I didn't speak much, but he humoured me and allowed me to struggle on, which I liked. The food itself, some bruschetta followed by tagliatelle with a gorgonzola, spinach and walnut sauce, was pretty good. I made the mistake, though, of ordering Lambrusco on the strength that it was the only red wine I recognised. I should perhaps have considered that the basis for my recognition was more of notoriety than renown - it was a pretty ordinary excuse for wine, especially for my Australian palate. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy sitting there, as the other patrons chatted away in German and I stared contentedly out the window at the sleepy boulevard.
Babelsberg, it seems, and Potsdam more broadly, is surrounded by parks, forests and lakes. According to google maps (thank goodness for hotel wifi), the closest of these green and blue blobs to my hotel is Park Babelsberg, so it was in that direction that I set out, headphones in, and braced against the single-figure temperature.
I had probably run about 300 metres when I became aware of a man running beside me wearing business attire and waving. As I stopped, so did he, bent over puffing and panting to regain his breath, before rising and handing me the key to my hotel room. Apparently it had fallen from my pocket a while back, and he had been chasing me to return it. I think my lack of German made it difficult for him to tell me to be careful as sternly as he would have wanted, and it certainly made it difficult for me to be as effusive in my thanks as his good deed warranted.
Ed: At this point I would love to embed the map for the run, along with the pictures I took, but runkeeper's embeddable maps are broken at the moment. Anyway, it can be found at http://runkeeper.com/user/jimsteel/activity/77584686, including a few pictures.
I ran on, past the local football stadium and across into Park Babelsberg. Almost immediately I was greeted by what a naive Australian would call a castle, but which I suppose in reality is just one building amongst some kind of feudal estate. As I ran on I encountered more, and more various, buildings, in very good condition and with scatterings of people wandering around looking at them. I ran on, along the edge of the lake (the Tiefer See), past a bar serving cyclists watching the sunset over the lake, around to a small bridge near a university embedded into the forest.
Running back, I abandoned my simple and easily followed route, and just wandered amongst the little trails winding through the park, heading towards and around towers and stately homes at whim. By the time I got back, I had racked up 7 or 8km, which I was happy with, given how long I had gone without running.
After showering, I again headed out, in search of dinner. I wandered into an Italian restaurant near the hotel, and sat down. Throughout the meal, I answered the waiter's fairly predictable questions in stuttering, broken German. He obviously knew I didn't speak much, but he humoured me and allowed me to struggle on, which I liked. The food itself, some bruschetta followed by tagliatelle with a gorgonzola, spinach and walnut sauce, was pretty good. I made the mistake, though, of ordering Lambrusco on the strength that it was the only red wine I recognised. I should perhaps have considered that the basis for my recognition was more of notoriety than renown - it was a pretty ordinary excuse for wine, especially for my Australian palate. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy sitting there, as the other patrons chatted away in German and I stared contentedly out the window at the sleepy boulevard.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Oslo a go-go
My doubts about my visit to Oslo were quickly allayed by being in Oslo. The first few days of meetings were a little dry, but with enough interesting presentations, and more importantly enough opportunity to meet the people doing interesting things, to keep my attention. In between, I managed to get out to see a little of the town, principally in the evenings.
Monday night I went down to the harbour for dinner with a couple of other people from the conference, which drove home both the expense but also the appeal of the Oslo waterfront.
Tuesday we had a dinner at a cultural museum on the curiously-named presque-île of Bygdøy, a strange affair whose central feature was the passing around the room of a bowl of beer, from which everyone drank.
Wednesday night found us at what seemed to be Norway's national construction industry awards night, an incredibly kitch affair with what could only be characterised as "cock rock", each category's nominees being ushered in by "We are the Champions" or similar. As it happened, this was the only English used for the night, and the combination of kitch music, plentiful wine, and the complete incomprehensibility of the dialogue made for a pretty good time at our table.
Friday saw an end to the official conference proceedings, leaving me to my own devices for a few days. I had arranged to stay with Franck and his family, and he also invited me in to SINTEF to give a presentation on Friday morning. I cobbled something together, and had a good time discussing the mix of MDE and BIM with Franck, Arnor and others in their group. In the afternoon, at Franck's recommendation, I took a T-bane to its terminus at Frognerseteren, high up in the hills above the harbour.
I imagine that in years less warm than this, there would have been more people up there using it as a base for cross-country skiing, as there were a handful of pretty little trails radiating out away from the train platform. Despite the facts that (a) the warm weather had made the trails simultaneously less than ideal for both skiing and walking, and (b) I was wearing town shoes rather than skis or even hiking boots, I was determined to see some scenery, and set out down a trail in the general direction of the appealingly named Tryvannstua. I wandered pretty randomly, to be honest, and learnt a lot about types of snow, specifically which types of glistening snow were slippery, or were likely to admit my wholly inappropriate shoes to wholly uncomfortable depths. In the end, I called a halt to proceedings and did an about-face what must have been only a few hundred metres short of Tryvannstua, but not having attained my randomly selected destination did not take away from my enjoyment of the surroundings. I suspect that had I been there a month earlier, on skis, or a month later, with leaves on the trees and flowers on the ground, it would have been more pleasant, but after a week in meeting rooms staring out windows, I certainly appreciated being outdoors.
On the way down the hill I stopped at Holmenkollen, site of Oslo's skijump, likely built for a long-past Winter Olympics, but looking a little forlorn without its coating of snow. Next door there was a track set up for some sort of nordic skiing sprint event, with lots of people walking around preparing TV gear, ticket offices and the like for the finals on the Saturday, while what I presume were the lesser skiers went down the hill attempting to qualify.
Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning I spent with Franck, Valentine and their son Sacha, much as I did on my visit there last year. I really like hanging out with their little family, even if at times I feel like a bit of a third wheel, when Sacha plays up (I suspect sometimes for my benefit), or when real life just takes a hand. I hope that one day I'll be able to return the favour with some of my European friends, and share my life in Australia with them as well.
Monday night I went down to the harbour for dinner with a couple of other people from the conference, which drove home both the expense but also the appeal of the Oslo waterfront.
Tuesday we had a dinner at a cultural museum on the curiously-named presque-île of Bygdøy, a strange affair whose central feature was the passing around the room of a bowl of beer, from which everyone drank.
Wednesday night found us at what seemed to be Norway's national construction industry awards night, an incredibly kitch affair with what could only be characterised as "cock rock", each category's nominees being ushered in by "We are the Champions" or similar. As it happened, this was the only English used for the night, and the combination of kitch music, plentiful wine, and the complete incomprehensibility of the dialogue made for a pretty good time at our table.
Friday saw an end to the official conference proceedings, leaving me to my own devices for a few days. I had arranged to stay with Franck and his family, and he also invited me in to SINTEF to give a presentation on Friday morning. I cobbled something together, and had a good time discussing the mix of MDE and BIM with Franck, Arnor and others in their group. In the afternoon, at Franck's recommendation, I took a T-bane to its terminus at Frognerseteren, high up in the hills above the harbour.
I imagine that in years less warm than this, there would have been more people up there using it as a base for cross-country skiing, as there were a handful of pretty little trails radiating out away from the train platform. Despite the facts that (a) the warm weather had made the trails simultaneously less than ideal for both skiing and walking, and (b) I was wearing town shoes rather than skis or even hiking boots, I was determined to see some scenery, and set out down a trail in the general direction of the appealingly named Tryvannstua. I wandered pretty randomly, to be honest, and learnt a lot about types of snow, specifically which types of glistening snow were slippery, or were likely to admit my wholly inappropriate shoes to wholly uncomfortable depths. In the end, I called a halt to proceedings and did an about-face what must have been only a few hundred metres short of Tryvannstua, but not having attained my randomly selected destination did not take away from my enjoyment of the surroundings. I suspect that had I been there a month earlier, on skis, or a month later, with leaves on the trees and flowers on the ground, it would have been more pleasant, but after a week in meeting rooms staring out windows, I certainly appreciated being outdoors.
On the way down the hill I stopped at Holmenkollen, site of Oslo's skijump, likely built for a long-past Winter Olympics, but looking a little forlorn without its coating of snow. Next door there was a track set up for some sort of nordic skiing sprint event, with lots of people walking around preparing TV gear, ticket offices and the like for the finals on the Saturday, while what I presume were the lesser skiers went down the hill attempting to qualify.
Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning I spent with Franck, Valentine and their son Sacha, much as I did on my visit there last year. I really like hanging out with their little family, even if at times I feel like a bit of a third wheel, when Sacha plays up (I suspect sometimes for my benefit), or when real life just takes a hand. I hope that one day I'll be able to return the favour with some of my European friends, and share my life in Australia with them as well.
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Jetlagged in Oslo
I find myself lying in bed at 5am in an Oslo hotel room, having been irretrievably awake for the past 4 hours. Normally when I travel (which isn't to suggest that I travel particularly often), I am fairly good with managing my body clock, but the last two nights have been less than optimal. So, I guess I'll blog.
This is a work trip, basically, and I'm really torn about whether I like the idea of it. On one hand, I get to catch up with lots of really good friends - Franck here in Oslo, Jacques in Potsdam, hopefully various people in Rennes, and Meg in London - but on the other hand, it comes at a fairly inconvenient time.
On a personal note, I finally finished the at-times tortuous process of buying an apartment, and moved my things in on Friday. By leaving so quickly, I'm deferring, and in some ways losing, the process of discovery that comes with moving to a new suburb - finding out where the good places are to eat, which spaces in the apartment I want to hang out in, what I like about it and what I don't. It was with some longing that I read reports from my family members who are doing some of this discovery on my behalf.
From a work point of view, its a mixed blessing. The 4 weeks preceding my departure had been truly insane, with my teaching, research and service commitments all ramping up at the same time, and I had been running around trying desperately to keep my head above water, in a way that really wasn't sustainable. I needed a break of some sort. Heading overseas allows some of those commitments - service, for example - to subside a little, but others, teaching in particular, are deceptive. Although I'm free of lecturing, lecturing really isn't the draining or stressful part of teaching, and I still have course coordination duties which are probably slightly harder in absentia.
This kind of equivocation about travel is new to me, and I'm not sure what to think of it.
This is a work trip, basically, and I'm really torn about whether I like the idea of it. On one hand, I get to catch up with lots of really good friends - Franck here in Oslo, Jacques in Potsdam, hopefully various people in Rennes, and Meg in London - but on the other hand, it comes at a fairly inconvenient time.
On a personal note, I finally finished the at-times tortuous process of buying an apartment, and moved my things in on Friday. By leaving so quickly, I'm deferring, and in some ways losing, the process of discovery that comes with moving to a new suburb - finding out where the good places are to eat, which spaces in the apartment I want to hang out in, what I like about it and what I don't. It was with some longing that I read reports from my family members who are doing some of this discovery on my behalf.
From a work point of view, its a mixed blessing. The 4 weeks preceding my departure had been truly insane, with my teaching, research and service commitments all ramping up at the same time, and I had been running around trying desperately to keep my head above water, in a way that really wasn't sustainable. I needed a break of some sort. Heading overseas allows some of those commitments - service, for example - to subside a little, but others, teaching in particular, are deceptive. Although I'm free of lecturing, lecturing really isn't the draining or stressful part of teaching, and I still have course coordination duties which are probably slightly harder in absentia.
This kind of equivocation about travel is new to me, and I'm not sure what to think of it.
Monday, 13 February 2012
the plot
It seems that this blog has devolved in recent times into a series of brief summaries of the books I've been reading. Now, this is far from the worst of the various one-note themes to which it has clung - "I'm homesick and don't speak the language" and "This is what I did on the weekend" spring to mind - but its not as wide a subject matter as I would like to imagine myself capable of writing. Nor does it really paint a representative picture of what I spend my time on, though its resurrection as one of my leisure activities is something I enjoy.
"... discussing post-war US literature
with a girl whose upper arm read 'Fiction'
like it might have been type-written.
When I asked her its significance
she said she sometimes took reminding
what she wanted to be doing
whether reading it or writing."
One of the things I like about fiction, or at least about the books I have been reading, is the presence of a dominant storyline. There isn't always one central character, and there isn't always one location in which the story takes place, but typically there is one thread of activity, or overriding theme, which serves as a spine to give the story structure and direction.
This is not something that can be said of life. Or, at least, not of my life at present.
My work life, in particular, seems at present to be, and for the past year to have been, an exercise in juggling a dozen or more little endeavours at once. Preparing for lectures, dealing with assignments and exams, keeping up with administrative stuff (I handle Masters admissions and credit assessment for transferring students), helping PhD students, undergraduate project students, Masters project students, reviewing conference and journal papers, writing papers, and trying to develop and sustain the handful of international collaborations I have. It often seems like I spend my time just pecking away at each of these enough to keep them from burying me, and I'm left with little time to actually focus on and make inroads on significant problems.
The same is true to a lesser extent of my life outside work. I give snatches of time to sport, or to reading, or to TV or games, or these life measures that other people seem to find so important, like buying a house or getting a car (I find it a little baffling that others consider either of these an achievement). I spend time with friends, but not nearly as much as I should. I visit my family, but not as often as I should. But in neither my work nor my personal life do I feel like I have a dominant storyline, a central quest, a single light on the hill to which my time is contributing.
Now, I should make it clear, I'm not having some kind of existential crisis, bemoaning a lack of meaning in my life. I'm not suggesting that others have a strong sense of their role in life, of some focal point (vanishing point?) towards which their endeavours are leading. Nor am I saying that I'm doing too many things, really. I do feel like there is value in these things I'm doing. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing them (or in some cases, I'd be able to stop deluding myself that I will get around to them). Its just an interesting contrast between the stories that I read, and the story that I'm writing with my days and hours.
Monday, 6 February 2012
negligence in reading
It has been months since I blogged about my reading. However, this indicates a negligence of blogging, rather than a negligence of reading. In fact, I've gotten through a pretty decent pile of books since I last wrote, about A Moveable Feast. As I've done in the past following such periods of silence, I'll fall back to a list of brief summaries rather than trying to cover the backlog a post at a time. So, in chronological order ...
- Rabbit, Run (John Updike): Updike tells a nice portrait of the American mid-life crisis, or perhaps really early-life crisis, of a middle-American man struggling with the prospect of an ordinary life with an alcoholic wife and a second baby on the way. He picks up and leaves, but struggles with his sense of duty to his past life, and ends up going home, which has its own problems. I felt like this book had a lot in common with Continental Drift, but with a sharper focus on the protagonist rather than the time, although it certainly does have commentary on the evolving nature of community and the relationship with the church. It won't go on my list of really great books, but its certainly enough to make me go back for the others in the 4-book series at some point in the future.
- His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman): This was an anthology of the 3 books in the trilogy (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass), which I bought on a whim, having seen it a list of significant books and not having read it during my teenage years, during which this genre was my bread-and-butter (so many years wasted reading David Eddings and Robert Jordan). I'd seen the movie, which was actually pretty good, but unsurprisingly, the books are better. Their extra length lends the opportunity for more depth and breadth of characters, which both expand as the series progresses (although the first book was probably still my favourite). Some of the comments I'd read had lead me to fairly strong atheist/anti-religious themes, but they weren't there, or at least were subtle and strongly focussed on the narrative and not on an external agenda, and I think in this case the books are stronger for it.
- Down Under (Bill Bryson): My mother had given me this book while I was in France, as a gift for someone, but for one reason or another I never gave it. To be honest, I was slightly apprehensive about reading it, and only picked it up because I wanted something light to pass the time on a bus trip. Despite that, I have to confess I quite liked it. I like to think I know a fair bit about Australia already, but I still found lots of things in the book I didn't know about, and I enjoyed it for that. Having said that, it really was the Australian content I liked, and I can't see myself going out of my way to chase more Bryson stuff. There were parts of this book where he made generalisations that really annoyed me, and generally I had a sense that his way of looking at the world would become increasingly annoying. Still, no real regrets.
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn): It has long been on my list to "read some of the Russians". There are some great Russian names in literature: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Nabokov, and many more, and to date I think my only foray into their work had been an aborted attempt at Crime and Punishment (against which I still hold a grudge). I found this novella on my parents' shelves, and like so many of the "big names" in 20th century literature (Steinbeck and Hemingway come to mind), I found it really very easy to read. The story does what it says on the box; Denisovich is a prisoner in a Russian gulag, and the book tells the story of his day from waking up in the cold, through a day spent laying bricks on a power station, to his return to camp. Its very matter-of-fact, and doesn't wallow in his situation, which I suppose is instructive in itself, but it does paint a good picture of Denisovich and various other prisoners, how they came to be in the prison and how they pass their time and interact.
- Eucalyptus (Murray Bail): I had read another Murray Bail book, Holden's Performance, last year, and enjoyed it a lot, but it is Eucalyptus for which he is probably best known, so it had been on my list. To be honest, I probably didn't enjoy it quite as much as the previous one, but it certainly is an interesting read. Bail is a very elegiac writer - his stories kind of float, and at times tread the line between this world and another, more whimsical world, and this is more true in Eucalyptus, which is at times part novel and part fairy tale. I actually bought this book as a present for my mother; like the father in the story, my mother's block is littered with eucalypts, and part of the book's structure is a series of descriptions of different eucalypt varieties. For me, though, without my mother's knowledge of native Australian flora, this was no barrier; as much as these descriptions guide the structure, they in no way dominate the text or affect the story, of a father who promises the hand of his beautiful, cloistered daughter to whoever can name all of the eucalypt varieties on his property. I didn't find the ending 100% satisfying, but it was certainly an interesting read.
- A Room With A View (E.M. Forster): Forster is another of those many names that I've seen on great books/authors lists - typically for this book, or Howard's End, or A Passage To India, but had never read. I had seen him written off in one or two interviews with other authors - possibly Nabokov in his Paris Review interview, although the overwhelming impression from that review is not of Nabokov's opinions, but of his opinionatedness - but I went into this book with a fairly open mind. I wasn't excited by its first half, of Lucy and the other expats and their time in Italy (most Florence). The picture of an expat community living alongside, but apart from, the local Italians, rang false with my expatriate experience. I don't doubt its authenticity, but it represents for me the "wrong" way to go about living in another country. As the story moves back to England, Forster develops more his themes looking at class and propriety, and the English reserve, but although I'm sure at the time these were valid and pointed criticisms, for me it all seems a bit tame and tentative. By the end, as much as Lucy seemed to attain her liberation from these things, I couldn't help but feel like she hadn't really moved that far. I also felt like Cold Comfort Farm, admittedly a very different kind of book, made some of the points better.
- In The Winter Dark (Tim Winton): I've read a few books by Tim Winton, and not yet been disappointed. Even those without the reputation of a Cloudstreet, I've found pretty satisfying, even just as an easy read, so I was pretty comfortable picking this one out from the library. The story is of 4 people living besides one another in the Australian country - not farmers per se, but by no means in a town - and the way they react to the arrival of a beast, never revealed, preying on livestock. Its somewhat darker in tone than Winton's normal fair, but after a slow start - the stuff about seeing other people's dreams never really worked for me - it picks up pace, and reaches a nice climax, before finding an unexpected but not incongruous conclusion.
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John Le Carré): The only other John Le Carré book I have read was The Constant Gardener, back in 2005. In that case I went on to see the movie, which was an interesting experience - an important one, even, in terms of the way I think about movie adaptations. This time was not dissimilar. Although I had heard of this book - along with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, it is perhaps Le Carré's best-known - and despite an enthusiasm for Le Carré, it was the book's recent adaptation into a feature film which prompted me to pick it up. The story follows the recently, but not voluntarily, retired intelligence officer George Smiley, as he investigates a report of a double-agent inside the British secret service, which leads generally to a retrospective investigation that lead to his retirement. Le Carré does such a nice job of weaving details, and mixing in enough jargon to really immerse the reader in the spy milieu, and the result is a very compelling story, and entirely befitting its reputation.
- Camouflage (Murray Bail): Perhaps it wasn't the size of this book that made me pick it up, but it didn't hurt. At just 85 small-format pages, this is a curious edition of 2 short stories, the first about a piano-tuner who is drafted to work on camouflaging a WWII air base in the red centre of Australia, and the second about a boy's memory of the development of a relationship between his sister and a neighbour. The latter story, in particular, reinforced my impression of Bail as a fantasy writer, as it manages a lovely little transition from a real-world scene into what feels a dream sequence.
Monday, 24 October 2011
A Moveable Feast
I've been sitting on this one for a while. There are many reasons why I sometimes delay in writing up my thoughts on a book. Sometimes I don't know how I feel about a book until it has digested for a while, but that was not the case here. Sometimes I don't feel strongly enough about a book to be moved to write something, but that was not the case here. Here, rather, I suspect I was worried that by writing about the book I might lose some of the marvellous escapism I felt while I was reading it, that somehow in putting my feelings down on paper [sic], I might somehow lose them.
I loved this book. I really did.
Its a funny sort of book when I think about it structurally. Its basically a series of Hemingway's memories about time spent living and writing in Paris with his wife in the 1920s. The stories he tells are short, and are mostly centred about his interactions with other artists, poets and especially authors either living or passing through Paris at the same time: Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others. Much like the other Hemingways I've read, I just felt so at home in his Paris. Its a city far removed from any I've lived in, and he fills it with activities far removed from those I prefer - betting on horses, in particular - and yet I felt such a strong connection.
That this was a book published later in his career shows through in the writing, which carries his trademark simplicity and economy of words, but with more mastery than he had shown in the other of his books I've read this year. What is lovely, too, is that much of what he writes about is his writing; he discusses his philosophy of le mot juste, and many of his practices, exemplified here by their very own description.
Ebert, or some other commentator of film, used to say that "No good film is too long, no bad film is short enough", but after reading a great novella like this one, it is tempting to suggest that a book this good is too short. We shall never know; all we have is what we are given, but like the food of the city it describes, it is a dish whose perfect flavours make any paucity of volume irrelevant. I will forever be indebted to Nicole for recommending it to me.
Next up on deck: continuing with Hitchcock/Truffaut, and starting on Pullman's His Dark Materials. Also, in a moment of weakness at Wellington airport in the early hours of Saturday, I picked up a copy of Updike's Rabbit, Run.
I loved this book. I really did.
Its a funny sort of book when I think about it structurally. Its basically a series of Hemingway's memories about time spent living and writing in Paris with his wife in the 1920s. The stories he tells are short, and are mostly centred about his interactions with other artists, poets and especially authors either living or passing through Paris at the same time: Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others. Much like the other Hemingways I've read, I just felt so at home in his Paris. Its a city far removed from any I've lived in, and he fills it with activities far removed from those I prefer - betting on horses, in particular - and yet I felt such a strong connection.
That this was a book published later in his career shows through in the writing, which carries his trademark simplicity and economy of words, but with more mastery than he had shown in the other of his books I've read this year. What is lovely, too, is that much of what he writes about is his writing; he discusses his philosophy of le mot juste, and many of his practices, exemplified here by their very own description.
Ebert, or some other commentator of film, used to say that "No good film is too long, no bad film is short enough", but after reading a great novella like this one, it is tempting to suggest that a book this good is too short. We shall never know; all we have is what we are given, but like the food of the city it describes, it is a dish whose perfect flavours make any paucity of volume irrelevant. I will forever be indebted to Nicole for recommending it to me.
Next up on deck: continuing with Hitchcock/Truffaut, and starting on Pullman's His Dark Materials. Also, in a moment of weakness at Wellington airport in the early hours of Saturday, I picked up a copy of Updike's Rabbit, Run.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
The Ginger Man
Yesterday I finished the Ginger Man, probably the most distinctive book I've read so far this year, and probably the most difficult to review (if these little reflections can be called reviews). This was another book I'd come across via my late uncle Mick, but unlike others, one for which I had absolutely no context, in that neither title nor author were at all familiar to me (although I have since seen it in some lists of prominent books from the 20th century).
This is a striking and divisive book. The story, such as it is in what is very much an impressionist book, is essentially a year (perhaps) in the life of Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, an alcoholic, womanising, entitled, 20-something law student living, for most of the book, in Dublin. For the most part, he's thoroughly dislikable. The women of the story - Marion, Chris, Miss Frost and Mary - are often fairly insipid characters, and although Sebastian does seem to genuinely love them, he treats them appallingly, leeching and stealing from them, beating them, neglecting his son, charming them into things they either don't want or shouldn't do, and moving on to other pursuits at a moment's notice. The other characters who drift in and out of Sebastian's world - O'Keefe, Percy Clocklan, Tone Malarkey, etc - share many of his reprehensible characteristics, and serve only to reinforce the reader's sense of Sebastian himself.
There is no denying, though, the really vital energy with which Donleavy tells the story. His style of writing reminds me of Joyce, in the pace and perhaps setting, or Thompson, or even Kerouac, in its stream-of-consciousness style, yet its somehow very different. The intensity and consistency of the style throughout the book's 350 pages is admirable - it never lets up, right through to the story's conclusion (inconclusive though it is) in London.
There were times when I wasn't sure whether I was liked the book or hated it, but it is certainly memorable, and at no point did any dislike diminish my eagerness to keep reading. As it moved towards its close, I genuinely didn't know whether it was gravitating towards a tragic but just come-uppance, a repentant redemption, or rescue for Sebastian's sorry soul, and to the author's credit, he steers clear of any archetypal resolution, and stays true to the impressionist style.
A book I won't quickly forget.
Next up: continuing with Hitchcock by Truffaut, and resuming my Hemingway journey with A Moveable Feast.
This is a striking and divisive book. The story, such as it is in what is very much an impressionist book, is essentially a year (perhaps) in the life of Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, an alcoholic, womanising, entitled, 20-something law student living, for most of the book, in Dublin. For the most part, he's thoroughly dislikable. The women of the story - Marion, Chris, Miss Frost and Mary - are often fairly insipid characters, and although Sebastian does seem to genuinely love them, he treats them appallingly, leeching and stealing from them, beating them, neglecting his son, charming them into things they either don't want or shouldn't do, and moving on to other pursuits at a moment's notice. The other characters who drift in and out of Sebastian's world - O'Keefe, Percy Clocklan, Tone Malarkey, etc - share many of his reprehensible characteristics, and serve only to reinforce the reader's sense of Sebastian himself.
There is no denying, though, the really vital energy with which Donleavy tells the story. His style of writing reminds me of Joyce, in the pace and perhaps setting, or Thompson, or even Kerouac, in its stream-of-consciousness style, yet its somehow very different. The intensity and consistency of the style throughout the book's 350 pages is admirable - it never lets up, right through to the story's conclusion (inconclusive though it is) in London.
There were times when I wasn't sure whether I was liked the book or hated it, but it is certainly memorable, and at no point did any dislike diminish my eagerness to keep reading. As it moved towards its close, I genuinely didn't know whether it was gravitating towards a tragic but just come-uppance, a repentant redemption, or rescue for Sebastian's sorry soul, and to the author's credit, he steers clear of any archetypal resolution, and stays true to the impressionist style.
A book I won't quickly forget.
Next up: continuing with Hitchcock by Truffaut, and resuming my Hemingway journey with A Moveable Feast.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Continental Drift
I bought Continental Drift on a whim last year when I was starting to get back into reading. A bit over ten years ago, Russell Banks was one of my favourite authors, mainly on the strength of The Sweet Hereafter, which I picked up after loving the film, and Trailerpark, a book of short stories. I tried to read Cloudsplitter, but couldn't get through it. So last year when, in an idle moment, I was looking for something to read, I jumped online and ordered Continental Drift. It took a while for me to get to it (I actually leant it to a friend before I read it, something I've not done before), but it was worth the wait.
The story is written from two ends. The main character is Bob Dubois, who is a heater repair-man in New Hampshire with a wife and two young daughters, who has an existential crisis and picks up everything to move to Miami in pursuit of the American dream. The other end of the story is that of Vanise and Claude, two Haitians, also on a migration, from Haiti north towards Florida in pursuit a different, but more deeply held, American dream.
The story reminded me a little of The Grapes of Wrath - the families picking up everything, driven to migrate across the country (or the sea) in pursuit of prosperity and finding opportunity not as simple as the stories say. The text is at times intermingled, like in TGOW, with more general observations about the time and theme, here that of migration of people around the globe, and its analogy to the inevitability of continental drift.
Bob Dubois as a character is fascinating. He is deeply, deeply flawed, at once childlike in his spontaneity, and weary in his view of the world. He is difficult to love, with his superficially held view of himself as a good husband and father, his short-sightedness in his plans, and his fast temper. At the same time, though, he's difficult not to relate to, with his anxiety about where his childhood dreams have gone, and his restlessness with his life as it is. The Haitians are never as fully developed, which makes more sense as the book goes on - Banks is more concerned in their story with painting the shocking circumstances through which they push north in search of their false promised land of America, and the strange transplanting of culture that they take with them.
Having recently rewatched The Sweet Hereafter, I knew not to expect a happy ending, and the tragic conclusion of that book is true to form. Like The Sweet Hereafter (although perhaps not with quite as much veritas), though, the tragedy doesn't feel forced - Banks establishes the forces acting on the characters, and what befalls them makes sense, not in a shallow karmic way, but as a consequence of the world in which they find themselves. This, too reminded me of Steinbeck's masterpiece - there are no bad guys here, just people doing whatever they can to struggle upwards in the world, or at least keep from sinking below the waterline, and the societal forces that work against them. Like Tom Joad unable to find someone to fight over the loss of his family's farm, Bob Dubois isn't angry at his brother, or at his old friend; he's just angry and confused, all the moreso because there is no easy target for his anger and frustration, and that's what makes this book great. Writing a great villain is hard, but writing a story in which there is no readily identifiable villain, just the conspiracy of circumstances that work against you, is probably more impressive.
Next: The Ginger Man, by J.P. Donleavy, in parallel with Hitchcock by Truffaut.
The story is written from two ends. The main character is Bob Dubois, who is a heater repair-man in New Hampshire with a wife and two young daughters, who has an existential crisis and picks up everything to move to Miami in pursuit of the American dream. The other end of the story is that of Vanise and Claude, two Haitians, also on a migration, from Haiti north towards Florida in pursuit a different, but more deeply held, American dream.
The story reminded me a little of The Grapes of Wrath - the families picking up everything, driven to migrate across the country (or the sea) in pursuit of prosperity and finding opportunity not as simple as the stories say. The text is at times intermingled, like in TGOW, with more general observations about the time and theme, here that of migration of people around the globe, and its analogy to the inevitability of continental drift.
Bob Dubois as a character is fascinating. He is deeply, deeply flawed, at once childlike in his spontaneity, and weary in his view of the world. He is difficult to love, with his superficially held view of himself as a good husband and father, his short-sightedness in his plans, and his fast temper. At the same time, though, he's difficult not to relate to, with his anxiety about where his childhood dreams have gone, and his restlessness with his life as it is. The Haitians are never as fully developed, which makes more sense as the book goes on - Banks is more concerned in their story with painting the shocking circumstances through which they push north in search of their false promised land of America, and the strange transplanting of culture that they take with them.
Having recently rewatched The Sweet Hereafter, I knew not to expect a happy ending, and the tragic conclusion of that book is true to form. Like The Sweet Hereafter (although perhaps not with quite as much veritas), though, the tragedy doesn't feel forced - Banks establishes the forces acting on the characters, and what befalls them makes sense, not in a shallow karmic way, but as a consequence of the world in which they find themselves. This, too reminded me of Steinbeck's masterpiece - there are no bad guys here, just people doing whatever they can to struggle upwards in the world, or at least keep from sinking below the waterline, and the societal forces that work against them. Like Tom Joad unable to find someone to fight over the loss of his family's farm, Bob Dubois isn't angry at his brother, or at his old friend; he's just angry and confused, all the moreso because there is no easy target for his anger and frustration, and that's what makes this book great. Writing a great villain is hard, but writing a story in which there is no readily identifiable villain, just the conspiracy of circumstances that work against you, is probably more impressive.
Next: The Ginger Man, by J.P. Donleavy, in parallel with Hitchcock by Truffaut.
Monday, 12 September 2011
Between US Open wins - remembering 10 years ago
I had tentatively decided not to engage in the whole "Where were you?" thing today, but I'm having second thoughts. Over breakfast this morning, though, I was watching Sam Stosur's win in the US Open tennis, which took my mind back 10 years, for reasons which had very little to do with the day's more significant context. It was an interesting time for me, so I looked back to what I had written about it in what, at the time, passed for my blog. What I found was a very disappointing:
I left Australia, I guess, around the first of september, flying via Sydney, Honolulu and Vancouver to Seattle, where I spent the week at the EDOC 2001 conference, accompanied by Kerry and Zoran. I presented my first full conference paper, and made really good connections with people like Jean Bezivin, Xavier Le Pallec, and bunch of others. The following weekend I flew to Toronto for the OMG Technical meeting, getting in, I think, on the Sunday, and checking into the OMG meeting hotel near the airport. I remember I had a horrible room, all glass facing west, or perhaps south. The weather was hot in any case, and the room was borderline uninhabitable once the sun hit it. I remember resolving all week to request a room change, but never got around to it.
I remember sitting in it, though, on Sunday afternoon, marvelling that I was able to watch a US Open Tennis final at a sensible hour, for the first time in my life. Lleyton Hewitt had had a storied run to the final, and played what was, at that point, the match of his life to beat Sampras in a dominating display which presaged his rise to number one in subsequent years.
I was watching Stosur's match this morning, partly via a tweet stream from Bethlehem Shoals, one of my favourite sports writers. For someone who, in his basketball writing, has always fought against "Homers", sports fans who blindly support their home teams, he certainly overly obsessed with the "Serena winning for America" storyline, and in fact failed to mention Stosur at all in his comments. This really rubbed me the wrong way. For me, Stosur's win has so many great storylines to it.
A two weeks that I couldn't begin to document. Being the reluctant photographer, I think my total picture count was 3 (all of the same thing), so I can't live up to Chris' example of lots of piccies. Suffice to say that it was an adventurous trip, being so close to the US during such a weird time.I have to say that doesn't really do justice to what was, indeed, a very interesting trip, so I thought I might write it up here.
I left Australia, I guess, around the first of september, flying via Sydney, Honolulu and Vancouver to Seattle, where I spent the week at the EDOC 2001 conference, accompanied by Kerry and Zoran. I presented my first full conference paper, and made really good connections with people like Jean Bezivin, Xavier Le Pallec, and bunch of others. The following weekend I flew to Toronto for the OMG Technical meeting, getting in, I think, on the Sunday, and checking into the OMG meeting hotel near the airport. I remember I had a horrible room, all glass facing west, or perhaps south. The weather was hot in any case, and the room was borderline uninhabitable once the sun hit it. I remember resolving all week to request a room change, but never got around to it.
I remember sitting in it, though, on Sunday afternoon, marvelling that I was able to watch a US Open Tennis final at a sensible hour, for the first time in my life. Lleyton Hewitt had had a storied run to the final, and played what was, at that point, the match of his life to beat Sampras in a dominating display which presaged his rise to number one in subsequent years.
I was watching Stosur's match this morning, partly via a tweet stream from Bethlehem Shoals, one of my favourite sports writers. For someone who, in his basketball writing, has always fought against "Homers", sports fans who blindly support their home teams, he certainly overly obsessed with the "Serena winning for America" storyline, and in fact failed to mention Stosur at all in his comments. This really rubbed me the wrong way. For me, Stosur's win has so many great storylines to it.
- She's the first Australian to win a slam since Goolagong in 1980, a win which heralded a transition from the glory days of Smith/Court and Goolagong/Cawley into a dry spell that lasted so long.
- It breaks the impression that so many, myself included, had of Stosur being someone who would crack under pressure. When I saw Stosur break in the second set, my heart went into my mouth as I wondered whether she would stay strong or go to water the way she seems to have done so often before, most notably in the French final against Schiavone.
- Hewitt came from nowhere to win his first slam by beating Sampras, an American favourite who had won 13 slams already (he would win a 14th at the US the following year). 10 years later, Stosur wins her first by beating Serena, another American favourite, who had also won 13.
I had two purposes in Toronto. The first was the see through an uncontroversial vote to recommend my HUTN work for adoption, and the second was to be a technical expert for a very controversial vote on the EDOC spec. On Tuesday morning I gave my HUTN presentation. As I remember it, I think I was presenting either as or just after the towers went down. Suffice to say the audience was small and somewhat distracted. I can remember being kind of amazed. Not distressed, but very conscious that this was something pretty significant.
The rest of the meeting was kind of weird, but went on nonetheless - for the most part, people couldn't leave anyway. HUTN passed easily and I was appointed FTF Chair. EDOC passed fairly easily - I was stopped from answering technical criticisms of our submission by Kerry - "speak softly and carry a great big stack of proxies". UML Action Semantics got their semantics stripped out, and I can remember them being in the hotel bar at the same time as the EDOC group, the groups alike in size but not in spirit.
I have other memories of the week, less coherent. I remember a US$400 bill at an Outback Steakhouse, as I went with a big group and was surprised at what Americans think (perhaps) constitutes Australian food (blooming onions, Prime Minister's prime ribs). I remember catching a bus into downtown Toronto with Keith and Michi Henning and lying on the grass next to the lake.
I can remember worried exchanges of emails with DSTC about flights home, uncertain not only because of the closure of US airports, but of the demise of Ansett in Australia. Kerry's flight was re-routed through somewhere strange in Canada - Winnipeg or Calgary or somewhere. American OMG members paired up and hired cars to drive across the continent home to Florida, Arizona, California. As I went to the airport, I walked past hundreds or thousands of people sitting waiting for flights, anywhere they could, trying to get out of Canada and back to their homes, wherever they were.
Being an international trying to leave the continent, I was a priority, and my flight actually didn't change. Transiting through Honolulu, we were forced to collect our bags and walk outside the terminal along the road to check in again, but it was a pretty small imposition in the circumstances. As our flight finally touched down in Sydney, the passengers applauded, a show of nationalism I've never seen on an "Australian" flight. The Ansett drama was resolved without incident as Qantas picked up all their flights, and I was back to Brisbane as scheduled.
It was an interesting trip.Others will have reminiscences today which go on about how September 11 changed them forever. I don't think it changed me, either temporarily or permanently, but it was certainly a memorable trip.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
two of four
Back in April, when I was preparing for and embarking upon my holiday through Europe, I read the first of the four tomes of Le Comte de Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Recently, having read 7 very satisfying English-language books in the interim, I returned to the great task I'd set myself, and yesterday I finished the second tome. Having reached this half-way point (give or take), I though I'd reflect a little on the book, since its likely to be a number of months at least until I reach its conclusion.
Its length is significant not only in the period of time it takes me to read it. The length, and episodic form in which I assume the book was originally written, affords Dumas the luxury of going off on tangents at the slightest provocation. This leads to strange chapters for smoking marijuana in a cave, the life and love of a Roman bandit, ways to build resistances to poison, whose relevance to the main storyline range from minor to dubious to none. I have to say that I really like this as a change from my normal reading. Knowing that a book is a certain length gives the experience pretty reliable indications of how the story is progressing along the normal story arc, and that details that are included are likely to be relevant later on. The gun on the wall in the first act will be fired by the end of the third. This isn't true in a book as long as this. The gun on the wall might actually just be a gun on the wall, and there is something liberating as an experienced reader in not always having a clear idea of how things fit together, of just reading and discovering.
In terms of the language, everything is obviously contingent on the fact that I'm reading in French. I like to think I'm a fluent speaker of the language, but I would never claim to be a fluent reader, and the reading I've been doing has been accompanied by frequent consultation of a dictionary, and sometimes, in order to look up specific terminologies for 19th century French or Italian clothing, or nautical terminology, or consultation of Wikipedia for references to ancient Greeks and contemporary European authors, which might have been relevant to readers when Dumas wrote the book, but aren't to me. I probably check more than I should, on both counts - indeed, I still have raft of highlighted phrases where the dictionary proved insufficient, and which I will go back to at some point to work out what the phrases or references mean. The going is very slow, but I really enjoy learning new turns of phrase, or some obscure Greek reference about an obscure God or philosopher, or the leading authority on physiology from 19th century France.
So I guess that's some of the observations that I've had about the story so far, more meta than most of my reading, and perhaps missing reflection on the characters or story, but that can perhaps wait until I finish the book some time later this year or, more likely, next year. For now, I will return to reading English-language books, beginning with Continental Drift by Russell Banks, an author I got into a decade ago and put aside for absolutely no good reason.
Its length is significant not only in the period of time it takes me to read it. The length, and episodic form in which I assume the book was originally written, affords Dumas the luxury of going off on tangents at the slightest provocation. This leads to strange chapters for smoking marijuana in a cave, the life and love of a Roman bandit, ways to build resistances to poison, whose relevance to the main storyline range from minor to dubious to none. I have to say that I really like this as a change from my normal reading. Knowing that a book is a certain length gives the experience pretty reliable indications of how the story is progressing along the normal story arc, and that details that are included are likely to be relevant later on. The gun on the wall in the first act will be fired by the end of the third. This isn't true in a book as long as this. The gun on the wall might actually just be a gun on the wall, and there is something liberating as an experienced reader in not always having a clear idea of how things fit together, of just reading and discovering.
In terms of the language, everything is obviously contingent on the fact that I'm reading in French. I like to think I'm a fluent speaker of the language, but I would never claim to be a fluent reader, and the reading I've been doing has been accompanied by frequent consultation of a dictionary, and sometimes, in order to look up specific terminologies for 19th century French or Italian clothing, or nautical terminology, or consultation of Wikipedia for references to ancient Greeks and contemporary European authors, which might have been relevant to readers when Dumas wrote the book, but aren't to me. I probably check more than I should, on both counts - indeed, I still have raft of highlighted phrases where the dictionary proved insufficient, and which I will go back to at some point to work out what the phrases or references mean. The going is very slow, but I really enjoy learning new turns of phrase, or some obscure Greek reference about an obscure God or philosopher, or the leading authority on physiology from 19th century France.
So I guess that's some of the observations that I've had about the story so far, more meta than most of my reading, and perhaps missing reflection on the characters or story, but that can perhaps wait until I finish the book some time later this year or, more likely, next year. For now, I will return to reading English-language books, beginning with Continental Drift by Russell Banks, an author I got into a decade ago and put aside for absolutely no good reason.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Following a brief sojourn with David Malouf, I returned to Ernest Hemingway, to read For Whom The Bell Tolls. I bought this book in the airport in Paris, in anticipation of reading it on my Euro-Australian flight, but was, regrettably, seduced by in-flight movies. It was worth the wait.
The Spanish civil war is one of those strange historical events for me that floats indeterminately within my understanding of the 20th century. The Boer war, the two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, are all conflicts with strong dates and context for me. The Spanish war, though, has no date that I could immediately offer, and features in my memory more for impression of the way it attracted people from other parts of the world to fight, on both sides, not at the behest of their governments (with some exceptions - the soviet union, perhaps), but for individual, ideological reasons.
One such person is Robert Jordan, Hemingway's protagonist, an American university teacher who has been in Spain fighting for a year when the book's story takes place. Remarkably for what is a substantial book, the story takes place over the course of perhaps 4 days, with only occasional flashbacks to fighting earlier in the war or to Jordan's time spent in Madrid. Jordan is sent to a small encampment of rebels in the hills to rally them and destroy a bridge in order to support an attack. The action sequences, mostly in the final third of the book, are detailed and compelling, but the reason they work is because Hemingway does such a wonderful job of drawing the characters and their relationships. We get a really strong sense of Jordan, and the small group of rebels with whom he fights - Maria, the damaged girl with whom he falls in love, the worn-out rebel leader and his fiery but protective wife, and the old man who accompanies him the camp. We learn how they each got to where they are in the war, why they are fighting, and when they do what they do in the combat sequences, we know why, and we care what happens.
Like The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway does a remarkable job of conveying a sense of place and the character not just of the individuals, but of the people as a group. He uses simple language, but the reader comes away really sensing the pine forests, the snow as it falls on them, the hills and the bridge. Once again he uses this wonderful device of writing in literal translation from the Spanish. It gives a strange impression at first - the text is littered with thees and thous - but it is distinctive and feels true, and I loved it.
Having read the book, I am no more able than I was before to tell you in what year it was set. I couldn't tell you details about major battles or the significant figures on each side. But I come away with a stronger sense of why some of the "little" people were there, and what the battles, atrocities and losses meant for them.
I'm on a bit of a run of Hemingway at the moment, but I'm trying hard to pace myself. I have A Moveable Feast in my pile, but before getting to it (or the other 5 or 6 books awaiting me), I have returned to Le Comte de Monte Cristo. Because it is such a massive endeavour - because of its length, and because of the extra difficulty of reading it in French - I will probably post some sort of rundown when I finish my current sprint on it. The French version is presented in four tomes, and I will soon come to the end of the second, which hopefully will precipitate a half-time report. It certainly bears discussion.
Johnno
After finishing The Sun Also Rises, I read an Australian book which had been recommended to me by a friend. Johnno is a partly autobiographical novella beautifully written by David Malouf. To be honest, I'm not sure I've read anywhere that its autobiographical, but it has a strong feeling of truth, and a description of Brisbane that came across as very personal. Having said that, although the depiction was very personal, I should stress that the view of Brisbane is quite different from mine. Partly this is because the book is set 30 or 40 years ago (Brisbane has changed fairly dramatically in that time), and partly its because I came to Brisbane for university, rather than growing up here. Its perhaps because of this latter distinction that Malouf, or at least his narrator, seems to have a very conflicted view of the city, sometimes, implicitly, seeming very fond of it, but at other times quite explicitly expressing his disdain of the town and his longing to get out to see the real world. I certainly held that view of the town of my adolescence, Mareeba, for a long time, although in recent years I've softened my view.
So I've spent a long time talking about the way that Brisbane is presented in the book. That isn't by accident - its certainly the strongest opinions I have about it - but there is a plot nonetheless. The story is told by a sometimes passive narrator as he reminisces about his relationship with Johnno, an extroverted character from his school days whom he follows through adolescence and youth, including meetings during travels to Europe. Many of the traits of the characters and their friendship are closely tied to the place and time in which they live - particularly their diversions in Brisbane, and some of the revolutionary things in Europe in the 60s. Others remind me of some of my experiences, meeting college friends in Europe and taking in the different perspectives we have on the world, reflecting on the pilgrimage so many Australians make to live in Europe (usually the UK, much to my disdain), and the paths that we take through our teens and twenties.
Monday, 8 August 2011
distance, disappointment, distinction
I ran my first half marathon yesterday.
I started running regularly late last year, and a few months later, I resolved to build up to a half marathon. Specifically, I picked the Brisbane Running Festival, and over the last 3-4 months I have been building up my distance, from 5km to 8, 10, 12, 15, to 20, in order to be confident about being able to do 21.1km for the actual event.
I woke up early, in order to get to the race start at the Riverstage in time to meet my friends Meg and Tom for the start. With 3000 or so people signed up to run, the start was chaotic, although nothing like my bad experience with the Bridge2Brisbane a couple of years ago. Starting with 2 laps of the botanical gardens made things very crowded, particularly once the front-runners started lapping people. I had intended to try and follow the 1:50 pacerunner, but by the time we were over the Goodwill Bridge, I had long lost sight of him. By the time I did catch a glimpse of the bobbing red balloons, I was 4km into the race, and it was 8km until I actually caught him.
When we turned near the West End ferry stop, and I passed Meg and Tom, who were both running nicely behind me, I felt good, and was well ahead of the 1:50 pacerunner (and could even see the 1:45 runner, which should have rung some alarm bells). Over the next few kilometres, though, I flagged badly, and I essentially cracked at about 13km. For the remaining 8km coming back through Southbank and around the base of Kangaroo Point cliffs to the Storey Bridge, I was reduced to a mix of walking and jogging, all the while being very frustrated at myself1, for not having the fitness and/or not having judged my early pace better.
The many supporters along the route, either manning drinks stations or just standing by the course calling out words of encouragement, helped me to run more often and longer than I otherwise might have, and did much to lift my spirits. The occasional photographer also gave me a lift, as I dug deep to avoid being photographed walking, but despite these things, I probably walked a couple of kilometres, on and off. Meg and Tom caught me coming back past Kangaroo Point with a shade over 2km to go, and I got a bit of a lift, running with them for a few hundred metres before I soon flagged and had to walk a little longer.
I eventually crossed the line in a "gun time" of 1:56:20 or so, and a "chip time" of 1:55:13.6 (results are here). Before the race, I had really struggled to set myself an aim, hovering between "just get across the finish line" and the dream of challenging Lee's time of 1:48 when she ran her first half. To be honest, I'm still hovering. I feel like I had a pretty bad run, walking a lot more of the race than I wanted to, and cracking much earlier than I had hoped. I feel like with some better judgement, I could have run somewhere close to 1:52 or even 1:50.
To be honest, one of the things I've learnt while building up my distances is that I probably get more enjoyment out of a 10km run than I do out of a 22.1km run. That might be down to my level of fitness, but I like the idea that I can push myself a little bit. If I was to be asked whether I'd do another half, my reaction before the race would probably have been no, that I'd stick to shorter distances. Having run it, though, and not run it as well as I would have liked, my competitive instincts would probably make me lean towards doing another, just to prove to myself that I can do a better job than I did this time.
As a final word, I should give a huge qualification to what probably comes across as a bit of a whiny post. I am very proud of having done the race. Even if it wasn't my best run on the day, when I started running last year there was no way I could have done a run like this, and I'm really satisfied at the dedication (which has never been my best attribute) I've been able to sustain in running regularly to prepare myself. I didn't break any records, but its not everyone who can run a half marathon in under 2 hours, and I'm proud to be able to count myself in the group that can.
1: As Emily very astutely pointed out earlier this year, getting annoyed at myself is something I do a lot. I very rarely get angry at others, but I quite frequently get angry at myself.
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