Added to the reading pile: More fascinating women's lives. . .

So my biography/memoir pile is growing. I have new biographies of Storm Jameson, Elizabeth Taylor (the author), Frances Partridge and Jean Rhys beckoning me. And now I've added Evelyn Sharp: Rebel Woman 1869-1955 by Angela V. John to the list. Her life touches on areas of this historical and literary period that fascinate me; she was a fairytale writer, a suffagette who was imprisoned twice in Holloway, and a pacifist during WWI, plus she had a long affair with the war journalist Henry Nevinson only able to marry him after the death of his wife, when she was sixty-three. There's a review of the book at the Times Higher Education site here. I also ordered Sharp's own autobiography, Unfinished Adventure, which Faber & Faber has reprinted through their Faber Finds series. Not sure which to read first - I may go with the biography first to get an overview and then get lost in Sharp's own voice. Or should I approach the writer first without any autobiographical preconceptions and then read the analysis? It's a tough call.


I can also hardly wait to read The Practice of Her Profession: Florence Carlyle, Canadian Painter in the Age of Impressionism by Susan Butlin. My favourite painting in the Art Gallery of Ontario is Carlyle's The Tiff and I've long been wanting to see other examples of her work (turns out a good number of her paintings are in the Woodstock Art Gallery, so a road trip is imminent). Lots has been written about the Paris art scene at the turn of the century - it will be wonderful to read about the experiences of a spirited Canadian woman among them. I've already spent a rapt hour just gazing at the colour plates of some of her other paintings and my admiration for her work has only grown.

Brown paper packages. . .

Not tied with string . . .

These are a few of my favourite things. . .

Just in time for the holiday weekend - my box of Dalkey Archive books arrived (and in less than a week - very impressive). They are having an awesome summer sale and I just couldn't resist stocking up on their backlist. They publish some fabulous books, including a lot of literature in translation. Their website page listing the details of their sale seems to be down at the moment, but keep checking back. Or start making a list in the meantime. The more books bought, the greater the discount, so I ended up buying twenty (and even then it was hard to cull the titles from the over 50 I initially wrote down as potentials). It makes a nice, meaty pile that I can't wait to dive into.

Not sure if you can read all the titles so here they are with links to each book's enticing description:
The Great Fire of London by Jacques Roubard, The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image by Jeffrey Robinson, Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins, Castle to Castle by Céline, Melancholy by Jon Fosse, The King by Donald Barthelme, Odile by Raymond Queneau, The Journalist by Harry Matthews, Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley, Everyday Life by Lydie Salvayre, Brecht at Night by Mati Unt, Pack of Lies by Gilbert Sorrentino, In Transit by Brigid Brophy, Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford, OULIPO: A Primer of Potential Literature edited by Warren F. Motte, Bornholm Night-Ferry by Aidan Higgins, Foreign Parts by Janice Galloway, Spleen by Olive Moore and I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch. I also ordered Portrait of the Writer as a Domesticated Animal by Lydie Salvayre, but it's not yet published. More than enough to start with though - I think my first read will be this:

On the Booker longlist. . .

There's a lot of cynicism about literary awards but the thing I like most about them are their longlists - I inevitably get introduced to books and authors that I haven't heard about. Plus I can root for favourites such as A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book which thankfully made the Booker longlist and is my pick to win. I loved its complexity, its beautiful writing, especially about the delicate nature of childhood, and its treatment of the First World War. I think it's one of her best novels, along with Possession. I've read a few others on the longlist, but the one that intrigues me the most is Simon Mawer's The Glass Room. Stunning cover, for one thing. And I think its premise - following the fate of a house through the Second World War is intriguing. I'm also keen to read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man. Interesting that the British papers report that the odds on favourite is J.M. Coetzee's Summertime. Hmmm. Would they really give it to the same author three times? I'll certainly read it too, as I liked Youth and Disgrace is still stands as my favourite of all Booker winners. Haven't been that keen on his most recent work though - Elizabeth Costello was an interesting idea that he didn't quite pull off, and it really was an unrewarding slog to get through Diary of a Bad Year.

Reading Challenges - 2009 so far. . .

With the year more than half over, it seems a good time to reassess my lofty reading goals set out here in January. I've made some progress but still have a way to go. I've read 58 books so far this year - my eventual goal of 125 still seems possible. I wanted to re-read all of Virginia Woolf's novels - only been able to tackle one so far, so I may not accomplish this one.

Regarding my Lost in Translation challenge, I wanted to read at least three books in translation in six different categories. Hmm, mixed success here. Looking over my reading diary, here's what I've read so far.

Books by contemporary authors: No problems here; I've already finished more than ten books in this category, so I can cross that one off. My three favourites so far are The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, Censoring An Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, translated by Sara Khalili, and The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Mysteries: Yep, read at least three which I blogged about here.

Classics: Just managed to finish one so far - Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum, translated by Ralph Manheim. Dante keeps staring at me.

Books written during Woolf's lifetime - two read: Irmgard Keun's The Artificial Silk Girl translated by Kathie von Ankum, and I just finished a galley of Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull. Though these short stories weren't published until the 1970s, many years after the author's death, they were written in the 1920s so I think it counts.

Children's books - just one, The Pull of the Ocean by Jean-Claude Mourlevat, translated by Y. Maudet. This was an interesting retelling of the Tom Thumb story.

Books by Quebec authors: None. I'm embarassed about this one, and obviously have to remedy this.

And an update on my latest reading challenge - trying to finish the mammoth Verse Revolutionaries by Labour Day - I'm on page 66!

A tie-in cover that works for me. . .

I'll be seeing all ten of Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30 plays later in September on one of the Shaw Festival's scheduled Mad Dogs and Englishman marathon - all ten on one day. Can't wait. In the meantime, I'm thrilled that Methuen has reissued all the plays in one volume and the cover shows a still from the Shaw's program. There's my favourite leading actor, Patrick Galligan, as Alec in the romantic Still Life.

Reading challenges. . .

Long novels don't scare me; I usually relish them.
I've read Proust and War and Peace. One of my favourite books is A Dance to the Music of Time. Recently, I've tackled Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones and Roberto Bolano's 2666.
But long non-fiction? That's a whole other matter, and I don't know why this is so. It's not the genre of non-fiction itself, just any book that is over 500 pages. I painstakingly crawl through it, even when I'm enjoying the read (I took over a year to read Hermione Lee's terrific biography of Virginia Woolf and then spent another year with her equally impressive bio of Edith Wharton). Maybe I spend too much time reading the footnotes. Maybe biographies (in particular literary ones) send me off on other reading tangents. Maybe the books are too heavy to cart around and so they get relegated to the groaning shelves of my bedside tables to lie on top of more biographies, histories and litcrit tomes all with bookmarks sticking out at various spots. It's a crazy way to read - by the time I get back into the books, I've forgotten parts of what I've already read.

A friend from England just sent me The Verse Revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, H.D. and The Imagists by Helen Carr. This recently published book looks fabulous and right up my reading alley. But . . . it's 982 pages!


I've read the Prologue which is only four pages. It promises "rich drama, involving passion, betrayal, sexual jealousy, literary envy, bereavement, shell-shock, class antagonisms, friendship, adultery, cruelty, bullying and pique". I've looked at the photos. I'm really going to try to break my habits with this one and actually finish it in a reasonable time - maybe by Labour Day? HA!

A Walk Along "The Beach". . .

Had a lovely, lazy summer weekend. There's been a lot of media attention on Toronto recently because we're in the middle of a garbage strike that is nearly a month old, but honestly, this shouldn't stop anyone planning to visit. The garbage is being contained in parks, and the city does not stink. Yes, some of the public containers are overflowing, but this happens even without a strike. It definitely hasn't stopped people from going about their business and enjoying the city.

I felt like gazing at a bit of sand, water and blue sky, so went out to "The Beach" area of Toronto, along Queen St. East. I haven't been in this part of town for well over five years. Some lovely shops and restaurants have sprung up, including this yummy wonder:

Isn't that a great sign? The Pie Shack serves both savory and sweet pies - I had the organic chicken pot pie, followed by a slice of blueberry. The pastry is flaky and buttery and very delicious. Across the street was this:

I bought two skeins of deep red tweed that has flecks of grey and black in it, and have spent most of this afternoon knitting a winter scarf. Yes, I know that sounds like a ridiculous thing to do in the middle of July, but I just couldn't help myself; the wool was calling to me. I'm about half-way done. The Naked Sheep has a lovely blog that shows some of the many projects made during their classes.

Halfway between "The Beach" and downtown Toronto, also on Queen St. East, is an area known as Leslieville which boasts The Tango Palace Coffee Company - a great place to get a cup of java before browsing the many antique and home decorating shops along the street. That' s where I snapped this great store window. I'm strangely drawn to the dressmaker's dummy, but my apartment is just too small for a roommate.

A new pair of laces. . .

Just a photo that I like, taken from my recent holiday. I had spent the morning hiking up in the wooded hills behind Lucerne, Switzerland which you can see in the photo below. A lovely place to spend a few days, especially if you just want to gaze at mountains and water. The trails lead out to this lookout point where I was relaxing in the sunshine. I was also wearing my new pair of Campers shoes (the Spanish brand that is one of my favourites) purchased in the town and oh, so comfy, not only for light hiking, but for major city walking. The model is called IMAR and they are black leather with charcoal grey laces and a very solid rubber sole. I love them and have been wearing them everywhere this summer.

Happy Canada Day . . .

. . . and Canada Post now has Bryan Adams on a postage stamp. Love it!

Bike fantasies. . .

This recent post on Nonsuch Book's blog made me giggle, because it's so true! It's all about the fantasy that she, and I, and many of us have, about riding the perfect bike through a European town to buy our baguettes and cheese, our skirts blowing in the wind. This is the bike she is in love with:


I find it very attractive as well and would be tempted by it, if I didn't live in a tiny apartment with no storage locker. But when I was craving a bike again this spring (I haven't had one for about six years due to said apartment), I started investigating folding bikes and ended up buying this nifty little Dahon 7 speed number two months ago. I LOVE IT! It is super fast to fold up, rides very smooth, and goes much faster than I thought, given its small wheels. I have a 22km commute to work with a stretch that has some big hills and no dedicated bike lanes (the Europeans are so far ahead of us on bike-friendly city planning), but I fold up the bike and hop on the bus for that portion. The rest (about 14km) I can do via bike paths. I've christened him Charles Ryder after the character from Brideshead Revisited (another fantasy - bumping into Jeremy Irons riding a bicycle around Oxford). And best of all, this is what it looks like folded up:

The only drawback is its weight - about 26 pounds. Not a huge problem, but if I'm loaded down with a backpack with my laptop and - ahem - books, it feels very heavy. Still, I'm so delighted with it. If I'd had a bigger budget, I would totally have gone for their oh-so-European-looking Ciao model though! Isn't this a beauty?

And I just need to rant for a moment about the idiotic policies of VIA Rail. Last month, I had to work 12 days in Ottawa, which has such wonderful bike paths all along its canal. It's an extemely bike-friendly city. So I was looking forward to bringing my bike along - but wouldn't you know it, VIA doesn't put a baggage car on its Toronto-Ottawa route and so you can't take bikes on the train. Never mind that it's our bloody nation's capital, has several universities, and its bike paths are a major tourist attraction! I can't tell you how frustrated I was with them, and how sad I was to have to leave the bike at home.

On visiting James Joyce, sort of. . .

Back to blogging after a period of intense busyness - work, work, work - but then thankfully followed by a lovely and restful vacation. This photo (one day late for Bloomsday, I know) of James Joyce's grave will give you some idea of where I've been. Yes, I spent nearly two weeks in Switzerland including a few days in the lovely city of Zurich, where one of my first excursions was to hike up a very steep hill (is nothing about Joyce easy??) to visit the cemetary where he, his wife and children are buried. He lies next to another writer - Nobel prize winner Elias Canetti. Is it strange or disrespectful to take photos of graves? Does anyone else do this? I've made several pilgrimages to many authors' final resting places - the Brontes, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, to name a few - and I usually snap away but always with a teensy bit of guilt and a little sense of the ghoulish.

The Little Tramp Goes to War. . .

I've been reading and enjoying Glen David Gold's new novel Sunnyside, which follows three Americans - one of them Charlie Chaplin - during the last years of the First World War. The novel begins with a surreal event - hundreds of apparent Chaplin sightings are reported all over the U.S. including one by a lighthouse keeper, named Lee who tries to rescue him in a storm.

Chaplin spent part of the war touring America to help raise money for liberty bonds, but he also made the silent movie Shoulder Arms in 1918. Having enjoyed Blackadder's take on the trenches, I was curious to see what an early comedy would make of the war. The movie is packaged with other shorts from those early days - including Sunnyside - on a DVD entitled The Chaplin Revue. While studio execs worried that the movie would be negatively perceived as making fun of the soldiers and the carnage, Chaplin was such a star that he could pretty well do whatever he wanted. And I quite enjoyed the movie's portrayal of the absurdity of war. There are scenes of Chaplin trying to keep pace with the marching soldiers while in tramp shuffling mode, scenes dealing with all the rain and mud in the trenches and a hilariously silly episode where he is sent to infiltrate enemy lines disguised ridiculously as a tree. In his dreams he captures the Kaiser and saves a beautiful woman.

There's another connection between Hollywood and the First World War that is revealed in this entertaining novel: the original Rin Tin Tin was rescued from a bombed building in France during the war by Lee Duncan, an American serviceman (and character in Sunnyside) and brought to America where the dog also became a huge Hollywood star. I'm always interested in contemporary fictional takes on the war and Gold's novel was original, well-written and fascinating in terms of its look at American war propaganda and the part that the rising film industry played.

An Exhibit of Woolf's Own. . .

On a recent buisness trip to Edmonton, I was able to pop into the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library at the University of Alberta and see their exhibit of Hogarth Press Books. Titled"Woolf's Head Publishing: The highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press", the exhibit has now been extended to May 28th.
Apart from the thrill of seeing so many original editions (I was salivating in front of a first edition of Mrs. Dalloway) and the range of books that the Hogarth Press published, I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the accompanying catalogue was - a lovely addition to my Woolf book collection (alas, no first editions there). Written by Dr. Elizabeth Willson Gordon, it uses fonts, paper, and production elements selected, "with the hope of evoking something of the aesthetic feel of the Press books: colourful, exuberant, pleasurably tactile, pleasing to the eye without being precious". The catalogues costs $25.00 and while I don't know if the library will ship abroad, it's worth contacting them to inquire, as I can't imagine a Woolf fan who would not want to own this.

While it does not include a photograph of every book in the exhibit, there is an entry for each one giving some information about the author, the content of the book, the initial print runs, and sometimes a bit on the cover designer. There is also a brief introductory essay. I read the whole thing in one sitting after I returned home and gleaned many interesting tidbits such as:

* The Hogarth Press published 29 books in translation between the two world wars, from Russian, German and Italian.

* The first Hogarth Press book to have a dust jacket was Jacob's Room. The design was by Vanessa Bell and it was not well received. Leonard Woolf is quoted as saying the design, "did not represent a desirable female or even Jacob or his room, and it was what in 1923 many people would have called reproachfully post-impressionist. It was almost universally condemned by the booksellers."

* One of the more unusual books published by the Hogarth Press in 1937 was Diet and High Blood Pressure by Dr. I. Harris. This was part of the exhibit. The catalogue goes on to note however, that a second title by Harris was published in 1942 called The Calcium Bread Scandal. Now, that's the one I'd like to read!

* The Hogarth Press published many writers besides Woolf herself. Reading this catalogue got me interested in looking up the poetry of Joan Easdale, Nancy Cunard's long poem Parallax (I've always meant to read more about her and her own small press, The Hours Press), The Autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoi , Libby Benedict's 1938 novel, The Refugees (isn't that a powerful jacket?) and Different Days by Frances Cornford whose poems purport to "focus on the female view of academic life at Cambridge and the English landscape".

* And finally, is there anything more lovely than this page from the 1927 reprint of Woolf's Kew Gardens with its extra attention on melding art with literature? So, so beautiful.

Cool German reading campaign. . .

Reading and walking (but not at the same time) are two of my favourite activities so I love this German campaign that combines the two, and uses the legs of famous authors to publicize it. Read more about it here in English at the blog love german books, or if your German is a lot better than mine, lesen gehen here.

Dizzy For This Disc. . .

Call me old-fashioned, but I hope what I still call record stores don't ever disappear in my lifetime. It's great to be able to download music and I love my iPOD, but as with books - online purchasing only really works if you know exactly what you want. And I still like the serendipity of coming across something completely unexpected while browsing through CDs, hearing something really interesting playing in the store, and accessing the brains and passion of the staff for recommendations. It's my favourite way to shop. And I'm one of those geeks that actually reads all the notes in the accompanying booklets. I also like having the lyrics handy, although I do wish music labels would stop producing CDs in those non-recyclable plastic cases and go to the cardboard ones instead.

Case in point: I recently went to one of my favourite classical CD shops - L'Atelier Gregorian - looking for a compliation of Maurice Jarre's film scores, as I'd recently been reading his obituaries (he died last month). Well, I didn't find the collection I was looking for, but while flipping through the jazz section, I came across Dizzy Goes to Hollywood, which lo and behold contained his take on Lawrence of Arabia. Now, this is a very upbeat and almost unrecognizable version, but I loved it all the same. The whole disc is great - there's a bouncy, jazzy "Moon River", a sensually moody "Walk on the Wild Side" and it ends with a terrific toe-tapping "Carioca" which got me into the mood for popping Flying Down to Rio into my DVD player. Great music to perk you up on a Monday morning, but don't listen to it just before going to sleep - because you won't!

Of Liza and Huxley and a Real New World. . .

I was browsing the newspapers a couple of weeks ago, rolling my eyeballs at the mediocre reviews of Britney Spears' concert and wondering why anyone would shell out so much money to basically watch someone lipsynch on a jumbotron. And then I turned the page and there was an ad for Liza Minnelli's concert and I thought well, now there's someone real - she'll be belting out every word herself, backed by a great band and in a venue where you can actually see the star without having to squint at a huge video screen.

I immediately went and ordered a ticket. And how glad I am that I did. The concert was last night and it was terrific. What incredible energy! I was exhausted by intermission, just from watching her. She was funny, gracious and the power in her voice was incredible. I feel very privileged to be able to say I've now heard her sing "Cabaret" live. And I teared up, both when she sang about watching her mother perform, and during the encores where in complete contrast to all the flamboyant, powerful numbers, she beautifully sang "Everytime We Say Good-bye" with just a piano accompaniment. During her last encore, she was completely alone on the stage, sequins replaced by a t-shirt, high heels shoes kicked off, lit by a lone spotlight and then, "I'll be seeing you in all the old, familiar places. . . "

Of course another great reason to go to Roy Thomson Hall, is to check out their music store in the lobby where I always find the most unusual stuff. Last night's find was a 1956 radio dramatization of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where Huxley himself plays the narrator, and with an original score by Bernard Herrman (which is really why I bought the CD - Herrman is an incredible composer doing the scores for lots of Hitchcock movies such as Vertigo and North by Northwest, but also Citizen Kane, Fahrenheit 451 and so on). I've only listened to a bit of it, but I'm enjoying it so far. Huxley's voice has an old-fashioned, but elegant school teacher tone to it and the score is like a mysteriously sinister lullaby. In the accompanying booklet, they quote from a Time article describing the challenges of getting the sound effects just right:

"It took three radio sound men, a control-room engineer and five hours of hard work to create the sound that was heard for less than 30 seconds on the air. The sound consisted of a ticking metronome, tom-tom beats, bubbling water, air hose, cow moo, boing! (two types) oscillator, dripping water (two types) and three kinds of wine glasses clicking against each other. Judiciously blended and recorded on tape, the effect was still not quite right. Then the tape was played backward with a little echo added. That did it. The sound depicted the manufacturing of babies in the radio version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World."

The notes also talk about how this production was an attempt to revive CBS's Columbia Workshop which had produced a lot of experimental radio drama in the late 1930s before television arrived to lure the audience away. I however, am going backwards and rediscovering the joys of radio. I've just recently cancelled my cable tv, deciding that there was nothing worth watching that was worth the $500 annual fee and I was wasting far too much time on my couch, lazily sucked into persuing inane programming. So my television set now exists solely to allow me to watch DVDs. I don't think I'll miss it. The older I get, the more I crave real experiences - theatre, live music, travelling, walking - and if I'm lazing on my couch, I want to be accompanied by a good book, or be listening to great music. Or perhaps now, a radio drama.

Nothing artificial about this reality. . .

Many thanks to Dovegreyreader for this post, in which I first read about the German writer Irmgard Keun. I just finished her novel The Artificial Silk Girl, which first appeared in English translation in 1933 and was reissued (and is still in print) by Other Press in 2002 with a new translation by Kathie von Ankum.
Doris - a pretty, young, ambitious girl who wants to be a movie star and famous - scribbles her adventures in a notebook covered with white doves: "I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I'm an unusual person. I don't mean a diary - that's ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. But I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it's going to become even more so." She lies her way into working as an extra in the theatre, schemes to get a line in the play, steals a fur coat from the cloakroom and then confidently escapes with it to Berlin to seek her fortune. The introduction calls Doris a precursor to a Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw, but while she has some of the same cheerful optimism as her fictional heirs and is also constantly searching for love, her experiences on the street, basically working as a prostitute to support herself, are far more serious than anything you'll find in the chicklit of today. I'd compare this more to Alfred Doblin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz - Keun is articulating the female voice and reality behind the many prostitutes that pop in and out of that novel. Or even to Stefan Zweig's The Post-Office Girl, in which a bored and frustrated woman also engages in an unhealthy fantasy life. All these novels do illustrate the real and desperate economic options placed on unmarried women in the post WWI era. Doris has a great and admirable talent for making the best of situations, and this comes through her gutsy narrative voice, so that the reader keeps rooting for her. But though she attempts to conquer her fear and loneliness behind her writing, it becomes another facade, another "pose" to help her get through the daily grind. Mind you, it's her best talent; her observations are frequently quite funny and yearningly childlike as in the following. She's describing the party goers in a Berlin restaurant to a blind WWI veteran:

" a handsome man just kissed a woman fat as a tadpole - old men are kissing each other - the music goes one-two, one-two - there are lamps hanging from the ceiling that look like Paul's starfish collection stuck together - the music is covered with flowers like a chiffon dress which tears very easily - let me tell you, Herr Brenner, a woman should never wear artificial silk when she's with a man. It wrinkles too quickly, and what are you going to look like after seven real kisses? Only pure silk, I say - and music - "

That phrase - "seven real kisses" - oh, the longing in that. I found this novel fascinating to read and I certainly want to explore more of Keun's work. There's a brief biography at the back and her life also reads like a novel. While The Artificial Silk Girl became a bestseller, her books were later banned by the Nazis. She left Germany during the beginning of the war, met authors Stefan Zweig and Ernst Toller, had an affair with Joseph Roth, and then returned to Germany hiding under an assumed name. Like many Virago authors, her work was rediscovered and republished in the 1970s during the feminist movement. She died in 1982.

Women Writers, Women's Lives. . .

Coming soon are three new biographies that I'm extremely interested in reading.
Once upon a time, I had grandiose notions of writing a PhD thesis on Storm Jameson (abandoned alas, because a gal has to pay the rent). I'm always fascinated by writers - particularly women - who lived through, and wrote about both world wars and Jameson's additional work in publishing and for PEN made her all the more fascinating to me. So I'm very excited about Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life by Jennifer Birkett. I've read Jameson's own memoir, Journey From the North, but while beautifully written, it's a bit coy about her personal life and doesn't focus as much on her books as this biography promises to.

I've dipped into Frances Partridge's diaries from time to time and have come across bits of her story as a minor figure in the biographies of Carrington, Lytton Strachey and various other members of the Bloomsbury Group. But I'm delighted she'll take center stage in Anne Chisholm's upcoming book, Frances Partridge: The Biography. I first heard about it listening to this delightful podcast from the Guardian, interviewing the indomitable Diana Athill, whose latest book, Somewhere Towards the End, is also on my to-be-read pile. At one point Athill talks about her love affairs with married men and mentions she is reading a proof of Chisholm's book. She admires Partridge's tolerant attitude to her husband's affairs and her disdain of the "geometrical approach to emotional relationships". This, Athill contends, closes one to the "tender curvaceousness" of life and love that is everywhere in the world. I love that phrase and as Athill acknowledges, "there was plenty of tender curvaceousness going on in that set!".

And finally, I can't wait for Nicola Beauman's biography of writer Elizabeth Taylor, being published by her own Persephone Books. There's no information yet on the Persephone site, but The Other Elizabeth Taylor is coming out in April, so I imagine one will be able to order it soon. I've read a few of Taylor's novels - Blaming, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, and At Mrs. Lippincote's - and have several more on my shelves. In particular, I want to read Angel, as I just saw the movie version, directed by François Ozon and starring a rather stunning Romola Garai. The story follows the rise of Angel Deverell, a poor girl with a vivid imagination who finds fame and fortune writing bestselling romances, but who lives in her own fantasy world, constructed like one of her plots, and face up to the reality that surrounds her, particularly turning a blind eye to her philandering husband who has only married her for her money. Ozon filmed it completely over the top - Anne Shirley meets Scarlett O'Hara - but I thought it worked wonderfully as a visual metaphor for the type of books Angel inhabited. And the costumes and make-up were incredible. If you liked Ozon's 8 Women, you'll enjoy this; it has some of the same - almost camp - humour. I find Ozon to be a very interesting director who clearly is fascinated with the ongoing relationships and resonances of the written word. I love his movie Under the Sand (the wonderful Charlotte Rampling plays a professor who teaches Woolf, trying to cope with the grief of her husband's disappearance) and The Swimming Pool (Rampling again, playing a thriller writer who escapes to a French house to try and write her next novel, but encounters more than she'd bargained for). Rampling also has a role in Angel.

Recently watched: Our Man in Havana. . .

Despite also being directed by Carol Reed, this doesn't come close to the brilliance of his Third Man, but regardless, there are certainly worse ways to pass a couple of hours. I'd never seen this film before and always wanted to, if only because of Noel Coward's appearance as Hawthorne. The scenes between him and Ralph Richardson are delicious - especially a moment towards the end when Coward is trying not to insert vacuum cleaner puns into the conversation. And I always enjoy Alec Guiness in whatever movie he appears in. Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, based of course on his novel. Good fun.

Dada, what did you do in the war?. . .

I celebrated St. Patrick's Day by having a bit of an encounter with the Irish, although a few countries removed. Last night I saw Soulpepper's production of Tom Stoppard's very challenging play Travesties, which imagines James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara in 1917 Zurich. Joyce is working on Ulysses; Lenin is working on a book about imperialism and trying to get back to Russia and the revolution and Tzara is creating poetry out of random words pulled out of a hat and establishing the Dada movement. Commenting on it all is Henry Carr, who works in the British consul and has a tiny footnote in Joyce's bio - he took part in a production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, organized by Joyce, and later was involved in a lawsuit over the cost of a pair of trousers. Stoppard makes the most of this quirky encounter and inserts some of Wilde's best lines right into the context of Travesties.
Oh, the whole play is brilliant - non-stop verbal puns and in jokes about artistic movements, political schemes and some very poignant and observant bits about the war. Wonderful language to listen to, and I'm very impressed that Soulpepper tackled this play. It wasn't an outstanding production - in particular the weak link was David Storch who played Joyce somewhat cutsy - he reminded me of a leprechaun challenging his inner Lytton Strachey. But the rest of the cast was very good, even if their accents, alas, tended to roam all over the European map. The set and lighting were gorgeous and the director added a clip from a 1920s surrealist movie that opened the show very effectively. A great start to Soulpepper's ambitious season. I'm looking forward to their next offering - David Mamet's great Glengarry Glen Ross.

Woolf's Hogarth Press Books on Display. . .

Many thanks to the Woolf listserve which alerted me to this exhibition running until the end of April at the University of Alberta. On display are a number of books published by Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press. Since many of the dust jackets were designed by artists such as Carrington, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, this promises to be a very interesting and beautiful exhibit. And perfect timing - I'll be in Edmonton briefly for work in April and will definitely try to drop by. The exhibition booklet is also for sale - just contact the library.

I'm in a New York state of mind. . .

Just back from a lovely week of vacation spent in New York City - I hadn't been there in over a decade and I was so lucky with the weather (the city had a huge snowstorm right after I got back). It felt like spring - sunny and 5-10 degrees - perfect walking weather, and I pounded those pavements, let me tell you. Visited a lot of bookstores and museums, saw two films, drank a lot of lattes, ate far too much chocolate and pastries (there seems to be a bakery or cupcake store on every corner) and managed to avoid many Deborah Kerr moments by keeping my feet firmly on the pavement every time I craned my neck to look at an interesting bit of architectual detail.

I also went to the theatre every night and was lucky enough to catch the first preview of Blithe Spirit (of course I had to go!) starring Angela Lansbury and Rupert Everett. It was a fairly traditional production - lovely use of music, standard drawing room set (bit too much fussing with a small table that was not only used for the seance, but also breakfast the next day), and decent performances from all the cast. It was such a treat to see Lansbury on stage (there was huge applause at her first entrance and at every scene exit) - she played Madame Arcati as wonderfully dotty and slightly ethereal, getting big laughs as she eccentrically moved around the stage in her swirling velvets. Yes, she forgot some of her lines but so did Everett, and Lansbury hid it much better (it was a preview after all). The most solid actor in the cast was Jayne Atkinson who played Ruth and it nicely showed what could be made of that part - in some ways the most interesting, as it doesn't depend on theatrics. I found myself listening much more closely to her lines, than I have in previous productions. All in all, a very enjoyable evening, although I prefer the Soulpepper production done in Toronto a few seasons ago, which was more daring in its interpretation - the dead ghost of Elvira showed up in a striking red dress for example, instead of the traditional white or silvery grey. If I have one big beef with the New York Blithe, it's with the artwork used for the posters and the programmes (which I normally like to frame but I don't know if I can bring myself to do it with this one).

Ghastly, isn't it? It looks as if the cast is about to make an appearance in a Scooby Doo cartoon. I wish they'd had time to take a photograph of the cast instead of this silly rendition.

One theatre company that did it right is Roundabout's production of Hedda Gabler, starring Mary-Louise Parker which I also saw. See their poster here. I went in with some misgivings as it had received mixed reviews due to its modern translation, but while I can quibble with the set design and some of performances by the supporting cast, I thought Parker was magnificant and completely embodied the spirit of Hedda. She owned the stage and the music and costumes were terrific. I also sat (suffered) four hours of a rather dreadful Mourning Becomes Electra, saw one of my favourite British stage actors - Simon Russell Beale, along with an excellent cast - in Sam Mendes' production of The Cherry Orchard, and ended my stay on a really high note with a new play called Becky Shaw, written by Gina Gionfriddo. This incredibly sharp and funny comedy about complicated family dynamics, a blind date that goes horribly wrong and debates about how honest one should be in relationships, had me in stitches. The writing was just so fresh and clever, and it was well served by great ensemble acting and a very inventive and effective set. I will see anything in the future by this playwright!

The Essays of Virginia Woolf: Volume 5

What a glorious day. I now have my copy of the recently published fifth volume of The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932, edited by Stuart N. Clarke. I'm not alone in thinking Woolf one of the best essayists (as well as novelists) of the twentieth century and while many of these pieces have previously appeared in her Common Reader: Second Series collection, or in other anthologies, I'm still pretty excited to add this 700 page tome to my shelves. As Clarke notes in his introduction, "The essays fertilised the fiction, and vice versa" (his emphasis) and he's noted the parallels in the footnotes. Woolf was writing The Waves and Flush during this period and if I ever get around to starting my 2009 resolution of re-reading her novels in chronological order, I will definitely be dipping into a similar selection of her essays alongside the fiction.

You can hear a radio interview with Clarke here (scroll down a bit).

A Flock of Holman Hunt comes to Toronto. . .

There's a great exhibition on at the AGO which I saw last weekend - Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. And to my great delight, one of my favourite paintings was on display (Our English Coasts painted in 1852, and pictured above). I always go to pay homage to it at the Tate when I'm in London and now that it's hanging in Toronto until May, I'll definitely be making multiple visits to see it again. One of the best things about being a Cinematheque member is free admission to the AGO with every film ticket stub. This exhibition is also part of the regular admission price, so if you haven't yet checked out the renovations, here's one more great reason to go.
It was fascinating to learn about Holman Hunt's Canadian and even Toronto connections (there's a stained glass window in one of our churches that is based on one of his paintings) and I enjoyed viewing many of his other paintings, particularly a striking piece called Isabella and the Pot of Basil, based on a Keats poem which depicts a beautiful woman clutching a wild and healthy pot of basil containing the skull of her murdered lover. Alas, in the poem the pot is taken away from her:

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,
Imploring for her Basil to the last.

Can I ever look at pesto the same way again?

My kind of love story. . .

There was a recent article in The Globe and Mail about Michael Ignatieff, our Leader of the Opposition, and how he and his Hungarian wife Zsuzsanna, recently read War and Peace to each other (a similar article definitely couldn't be written about our Prime Minister Stephen Harper - he'd doubtless think reading books was too elitist, never mind reading them aloud). Meanwhile, single booklovers across Canada are sighing, and suddenly a dozen roses on Valentine's Day looks pretty ho-hum.

I've always thought the most interesting love stories are cross-cultural, especially when literature becomes a common point of reference. Such is the case with Tokyo Fiancée by Amélie Nothomb, translated by Alison Anderson. It's published by Europa Editions, which is also responsible for translating Muriel Barbery's wonderful The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the two novels, though very different, make wonderful reading companions. Again we have the story of a friendship between a French woman and a Japanese man, though Nothomb's story involves younger characters who are more romantically involved, and instead of sharing a passion for Tolstoy, it's Marguerite Duras's Hiroshima mon amour that is referenced(about yet another French/Japanese couple).

Amélie first meets Rinri when he answers her ad offering French lessons. She has come to Tokyo to work, learn about the country and improve her Japanese, and while their initial encounters are full of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings, they quickly become a couple and end up spending a lot of time together, though never at Amélie's own flat. But even as she revels in the beauty and customs of the Japan that Rinri introduces her to, her increasing uneasiness about the future of their relationship dampens her enthusiasm and independent spirit. In the end, she is forced to make a decision about both the man and the country that she loves.

This is a lovely, wistfully funny novel for world travellers, romantics and those who ponder (or obsess about) the "what ifs" in life. There's a beautiful chapter describing the climb up to the summit of Mount Fuji (definitely high on my list of things of things I want to do someday) and an instructive chapter on why tiny live octopuses are best avoided on the menu. Nothomb has a very breezy, personal style of writing - I read most of this delightful tale in one sitting. She's definitely an author I want to read more of, but I think I want to try and tackle her next in French. I have a copy of her earlier novel Stupeur et tremblements (actually referenced in Tokyo Fiancée) sitting on my shelves.