Currently Reading

China Mieville, Un Lun Dun

This is actually a rereading as I'm currently reading it to my wife.

Dannie Abse, White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems, 1948-1988

This was originally a gift from my Dad, years ago, when I started my undergraduate degree. Some books take a while to come to, long after you've first heard about them or first acquired them. There's just too much I'd like to read in my threescore and ten. I'm glad in a way this took so long to come to me, as it feels like it's absolutely the right thing for me to be reading at the moment. I wouldn't have enjoyed it or understood it nearly as much when I was 19.

Leigh Brackett, Sea-Kings of Mars & Otherworldly Stories

I adore some of the titles of old pulp science fiction, and Leigh Brackett has some wonderful ones: 'Sea Kings of Mars', 'Temptress of Venus', 'Queen of the Martian Catacombs'.

Patrick Parinder, Nation and Novel: The English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day

Nothing to do with my academic work. I'm just becoming more and more interested in representations of Englishness.

E.M. Forster, Arctic Summer

Speaking of which, I've just recently started watching the famous BBC adaptation of I, Claudius. Or 'I, Clavdivs' as the titles have it. What's unexpectedly struck me is just how English it all is. Now this could simply be because of the terribly precise RP accents that most of the actors sport, but it also seems to be something in the language. Of course, the novel from which it was adapted was written by a poet who came from the English middle classes and Oxford and served as an officer in the First World War. Robert Graves was born at a time when the British Empire was at it's height and, not only for him but for the majority of English people at the time, the Empire was simply an accepted part of the cultural and political background. I know nothing about Graves' personal feelings about imperialism, nor do I think his novel was in any way a hidden allegory of, say, the British in India. It just feels as if a story of the Roman Empire has been 'Englished' by it's author's cultural background, for all that Graves was clearly trying to be faithful to his story's history. Again, perhaps this is nothing more than the process of adaptation at work. It could also be the fact that both societies were Imperialist in nature, and that the national identity of Britain and the British Empire was bound up with depictions of the Roman Empire (it goes back further still if we think of King Alfred's visit to Rome as a young boy and the influence it may or may not have had on him).

It may be nothing more than the coincidence of encountering them at the same time which has linked this in my mind with Forster's uncompleted novel. I can see why he might have abandoned it. The Italian scenes it begins with feel like a retread of his earlier Italian novels and the general theme embodied in the two main characters of reason vs. romanticism is close to that of Howard's End. Forster's fiction has been a love of mine since I first encountered it at 17. Something about his depiction of the chivalric ideal in a modern (early 20th century) scene resonates with I, Claudius for me. They're both conflating the past and present in really interesting ways. They're both fictions of Empire (Forster's uncompleted novel references the Empire at several points) even though on the surface that's far from apparent.

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

I'm going to be teaching Book 1 next term and though this was as good a time as any to finally read a book that's been sitting on my shelves since I was an undergraduate when I only read one or two of the opening cantos and the 'Bower of Bliss' episode from later in the poem. It also gives me the opportunity to post one of my favourite reviews of anything ever. Someone posted this on amazon in 2000:

One of the greatest fantasy novels ever - seriously!

Literature was never this easy! If you enjoyed Lord of the Rings or similar, this is the book for you. The Olde Englishe takes a little getting used to, but it's easier to read than Shakespeare, and the poetry only adds to the vividness of description. All of the standard fantasy elements: giants, dragons, knights, temptations, virtues etc. are present, but in unconventional forms in wonderfully original stories. It really is great fun, and a real treat for the regular fantasy reader. I wish we'd done it at school.

I honestly don't mean to sneer here. I think this is a wonderful review. It amuses me simply because it seems to describe an honest enthusiasm for a book that so many undergraduates studying English Literature must have either cursed or else avoided entirely, assuming they had the opportunity. I love the way this reviewer is able to appropriate Spencer's allegory of Elizabeth I and Protestant poetics to the canon of modern fantasy fiction initiated by Tolkien's famous trilogy.