29/04/14: Literary lately #2

A lot of things in life are unpredictable & unexpected while others, well, aren't. Such is the case (if you'll excuse the pun) when it comes to packing books for a trip away - I often hear of people needlessly justifying their Kindle ownership speaking of its convenience when travelling but, without going into my objection to e-readers (I require very little encouragement on the subject), I often wonder when it was that the modern world decided that a paperback book was such a liability to which as little suitcase case space as possible is dedicated rather than something of infinite value & worth. My books almost outnumbered the number of dresses (my second love) I packed for my two weeks in the States recently &, predictably enough, I didn't get around to reading all of them given how busy I was spending time with family. What I did read, however, mostly in the bath of our hotel room, soaking muscles in steaming water, I found to be very enjoyable & worthwhile choices. Keen to consider context in my decision while avoiding any new purchases (I am already almost set on 'Red Love' as this month's choice, a man's memoir of growing up in East Berlin during the GDR, published by the Pushkin Press whose curated selection continues to pique my interest) & finally settled on Hermann Hesse's 'Gertrude', 'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham' & 'Stoner' by John Williams.

While perhaps not an immediately obvious choice given its lack of Americana, 'Gertrude' by Hermann Hesse had a distinct sense of isolation, both geographical & emotional, that seemed to strike a chord with the uninterrupted calm & quietness of the Colorado mountains. My boyfriend Andrew recently read 'The Glass Bead Game', the last novel that Hesse wrote that envisions a world in which culture has been reduced to an formulaic tournament in which members of society rise to become Magisters of the arts, & he told me that it was due to an interest in spirituality that Hesse came to write such a Modern novel that varied greatly from the work that preceded it. I stumbled across one such novel in a local charity shop &, intrigued at whether Hesse's straight literature was especially different & besotted with the Gustav Klimt portrait on its cover, thought I would give 'Gertrude' a try. 'Gertrude' tells the story of an unfortunate but talented composer, Kuhn, who falls in love with a young girl of the title, the two of them brought together by their love of the arts, but who are romantically detached. The short novel, moving between scenes of Kuhn's rural home town & the bustling society life of Munich, raises questions of the joys & pains of youth as well as the role of art, especially its ability to both inflict & soothe pain. While short & simple in its intent, I found that it followed on well from my reading of Stefan Zweig of late who similarly asks what responsibility art has in its representation of the world, especially one that is at odds with the harmony that the former seeks to create. 

Moving into both familiar & unknown territory, it was to another charity shop edition, Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours' that I turned next, en route from Denver to New Jersey, in anticipation of something wonderful & I was glad to discover that this feeling was not misplaced. 'The Hours', by no means a new book but certainly new to me, refracts Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway' through the lives of three very different women living in very different eras & societies - namely the burgeoning Woolf herself in early 20th Century Richmond, languishing housewife Laura Brown in 1950s Los Angeles & seemingly satisfied society woman Clarissa Vaughn in 1990s New York. Cunningham echoes Woolf's prose with uncanny accuracy & beauty, its cadences & recurrent ebbing & flowing that is similarly reflected in the chapters that alternate between character, time & place. As in the Hesse novel, there was a sense of dislocation in this book - a feeling of profound distance between characters, between them & what society expects of them, what they are supposed to feel satisfied with - that is preserved from Woolf's original story. As an avid reader of the latter, it was fascinating to see the way in which Cunningham was able to add depth & multiplicity to the smallest details of that on which he based his novel - the rare moment of cohesion as strangers are bound together by their interest in a movie trailer on a Manhattan street, a chaste kiss between female friends that sends thoughts spiralling into alternate lives gone un-lived. The simplicity of Cunningham's prose also appealed to me, striking its bareness in a way that drew attention to the minute sketching of character & ultimately made the concluding tragedy all the more affecting. I'm so glad to have not neglected this lovely, slim volume in my reading of Virginia Woolf but would recommend it endlessly even if you aren't an especially ardent lover of her writing as Michael Cunningham has doubtless penned something of similar stature.

While I cannot offer as thorough an overview of the third novel, I would like mention it all the same, if only to finally appease all of the people who have relentlessly enquired as to whether I've read 'Stoner' by John Williams. Recently (&, as far as I can tell, quite arbitrarily) retrieved from relative obscurity, 'Stoner' is a novel that tells the story of a very ordinary man living an unremarkable life - one of a university professor, growing from a boy living on a farm in estrangement from his singularly unambitious parents, going on to study & teach at Columbia & marrying a woman to whom he is devoted but who treats him with entirely unprovoked & persistent contempt. I am only just short of halfway but my impression of the novel thus far is that it is one of great sensitivity & insight into the human condition, of ordinary lives played out in quite ordinary fashion, but it is the nuances of Williams' descriptions of character that lift them from the page:
'She was educated upon the premise that she [Edith, Stoner's wife] would be protected from the gross events that life might thrust her way, and upon the premise that she had no other duty than to be a graceful and accomplished accessory to that protection, since she belonged to a social and economic class to which protection was an almost sacred obligation.' 
This is also the case with Williams' descriptions of Stoner's most adored English tutor at the college & the professor's attitude towards his students which, having recently graduated from university, I found to be particularly amusing &, without naming any names, true to life:
'The instructor was a man of middle age, in his early fifties; his name was Archer Sloane, and he came to his task of teaching with a seeming disdain and contempt, as if he perceived between his knowledge and what he could say a gulf so profound that he would make no effort to close it.'
I am looking forward to seeing the way in which Williams further reveals the facets of these characters, some maddening, others quite affable, & whether everyone's imploring me to read it has been worthwhile.

In anticipation of a postgraduate reading list falling with a heavy thud upon the hall matt any day now, I think it will likely be one of my thrifted Persephone editions that I turn next, although that US Import of the first volume of Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' is eyeing me from my bedside table. I started reading older books with good intentions anyway, whoops...

What've you got your nose in?
Speak soon - O.

26/04/14: New York, New York

What a difference a week makes, huh? I have been back in London for exactly seven days today - inevitably, it feels like much longer & my having been in New York seems like a dream, a well-thumbed copy of 'The New Yorker' & a full memory card the only things that have managed to convince me otherwise. While it seems unreasonable to me, I suppose it's about time that I got around to writing this blog post, compiling those wonderful four days, accepting that its over, resigned to memory, & reacquaint myself with the ordinariness of everyday life, of tube strikes & washing up. While I was lucky to be able to holiday far & wide from being quite little with my Dad, it's only lately that I, frankly financially independent & of more limited means, have become more appreciative of the ability to travel to new places & experience new things. Given that this trip was also my little sister's first to the States, I was also grateful for us to be able to have these adventures together & for her to see much more outside of the little market town that she calls home.

Places, cities in particular, have always been particularly evocative for me, often storing parts of myself in street corners & recalling particular feelings in the thought of summer rain by Berliner Dom. Constructing early impressions of places from photographs or books, sometimes you're able to get a sense of the kind of relationship you might have with a city, one of intimate affection such as Paris or near constant wonder as in Rome but I found New York harder to pin down. My first visit to the city was nearly four years ago now on a sixth form politics trip - we stayed in a huge, daunting hotel just off of Times Square that I don't remember the name of, &, having to stay in groups despite those consisting of eighteen year olds, I didn't see much outside of Wall Street & the cosmetics department of 'Saks Fifth Avenue'. I, however unrealistically, had wanted to immerse myself completely in the city but found that my initial experience hadn't represented anything like an authentic picture of NYC. Returning this time, I was weary of pitching my expectations too high & simultaneously conscious of travelling with family & their multitudinous demands, especially in consideration of the New York that eleven-year-old Sofia would want to see (namely the inside of 'M&Ms World') My obsessive self-awareness paying off for once, I found myself surprised at just how different an impression I got of the city, finally falling for its blossom lined streets, the individual character of each block & the roar beneath our hotel room well into the night that contrasted so sharply with the muffled silence of the Colorado mountains from which we'd come.

The view from our hotel window on Lexington Avenue (New York is a city of windows) - Queuing for the Mecca of MoMA - Sofia & I outside 'Sarabeth's' where we ate breakfast two mornings in a row - Boating in Central Park

By way of another comparison, I was greeted with oh-so-familiar rain on the first morning of my rolling up the blind in our hotel room, still with fresh memory of bundling up my coat sleeves in the muggy, airless heat of the taxi from the airport the afternoon before. London having taught me well, Sofia & I dressed in layers & headed out for breakfast via Grand Central Station - while Paddington & St. Pancras have their own magic, nowhere have I seen such a well-preserved vision of the golden age of railway travel, ticket booths ensconced in alcoves still alight, the famous clock gleaming in the centre of the ten am bustle. I could imagine the opening of Edith Wharton's 'The House of Mirth' when the protagonist makes her way to yet another country house, so clearly, stood on those station steps. With the rain unrelenting, it was suggested that we head towards 'MoMA' which was top of my list of places that I didn't want to miss out on this time. While primarily taking an interest in the collections of art held so far away from my own Tate, I was also interested to see where one of my favourite poets, Frank O'Hara, had held a position at the front desk & as curator, for so many years. Despite the huge crowds seeking shelter from the rain & my having to admit it would take a week to see everything under their roof, I was still held in a state of awe for the three hours we were there, especially enjoying the Pollock, Rothko & Warhol that was quite a surreal experience to see. 

Grudgingly acquiescing to everyone else's wanting to wander Fifth Avenue for the rest of the afternoon, I'll instead turn to the next day & another early start & indulgent breakfast at the beautiful 'Sarabeths' on Central Park South - pancakes with strawberries, coffee & orange juice one morning, their thick sliced & maple syrup soaked French toast the next. Another morning of just a single degree, it was through a leafy Central Park that we decided to wander to warm up, stopping alongside the famous boating pond for the two children to try their hand at catching the wind to sail their own vessels around the water's edge. As is my habit when travelling to any new place, I wanted to just walk & walk & my Dad duly accompanied me on walking almost the length of Manhattan, from Central Park to Battery Park, that afternoon. Quite amazing in her endless supply of energy & enthusiasm, my eleven year old sister also joined us as we walked through neighbourhood after neighbourhood, down Broadway, past the Flatiron Building, through the Washington Square, Greenwich Village, Tribeca, Wall Street & to Lady Liberty in time for the sun to be setting at seven o'clock. 

Pops & I by the boating pond - The Flatiron Building - Sat by this indie cinema eating sushi on Wednesday afternoon - Sofia up on the high line

Thursday was our last full day before making our way home on Friday evening so the five of us resolved to, after aforementioned breakfast, walk the high line - a disused railway line turned into a walkway/garden that runs above the city from the bottom of Hell's Kitchen all the way to the Meatpacking District. Beret pulled down firmly over my ears, we walked the length of it in the whipping wind, me stopping at every quintessentially New York junction to take a photograph of the combination of canary cabs, wide pedestrian crossings & fire escapes that zigzagged across every building. Reaching the other side & concluding that the high line is a brilliant bit of repurposing that had really rejuvenated an otherwise dispirited part of the city, we headed to a cafe with a pretty tiled floor & plenty of dogs strolling by, for coffee & the chance to get the feeling back in our hands. From there, we wandered back through my favourite district, the West Village, & its streets of pretty town houses polka-dotted with coffee shops & bakeries, art galleries & vintage shops, all the while, me imagining returning with my boyfriend & maybe never coming back. Although I had the address scribbled in the back of my notebook, it was purely by chance that I stumbled upon the 'Strand Bookshop' on Broadway & East 12th Street, & we spent a blissful two hours on its three floors, my mostly being fascinated at the plethora of different US covers (#booksellerbehaviour) & trying to rationalise 'investing' in new editions of books that I already owned. Audibly impressed at my own self-restraint, I eventually surfaced with just one book, 'My Struggle: Book 1' by Karl Ove Knaussgaard, which I have wanted for a while & whose US cover is infinitely better than that in the UK. I've not been able to start it yet but I'm intrigued by the sheer amount of critical acclaim the series has already received (especially with the third volume of six only just translated) & at the audacity of a man writing something of such length & flagrant self-interest in 2014. I'll report back.

Just two of many beautiful views from the high line - Warming up with rosy cheeks in a cafe on Hudson - The John Lennon memorial in Central Park, just opposite where he was shot

That Thursday evening was spent sadly packing up our suitcases back at the hotel but in anticipation of making the most of our last morning in New York. Breakfasting early in the hotel, I left my Dad & Stepmum behind, swimming in the dirty laundry of their own hotel room, & took Sofia & Henry to 'Dylan's Candy Bar' on Third Avenue to spend the last of their dollars on jelly beans. Learning the lessons of earlier days, I suggested that we part ways as a group for the afternoon, Jo heading to Bloomingdales, Henry & my dad to a model aeroplane shop they'd spotted earlier, & Sofia & I to 'The Dakota' hotel alongside Central Park where John Lennon was shot. A whole lot of blocks later, we arrived at the towering building, built like a medieval castle, where no semblance of the event really remained - I figured that they didn't like to attract attention to having hosted the murder of a Beatle. Still, it was amazing to have seen where such a momentous thing had happened & my little sister insisted that I tell the story of it over & over. Paying a visit to the 'Strawberry Fields' memorial in the park opposite the hotel, avoiding the Spanish tourists posing with roses by its mosaic, I felt glad to have made the time to just sit in the sunshine before our final, farewell lunch up on the Upper West Side. 

Watching the sun sink behind the Manhattan skyline as our taxi speeded towards JFK that evening, I felt as if I had finally gotten a sense of this impossible, beautiful city & that I still had so much to discover of its streets.

Thanks for having me, NYC.

Magnolia Bakery rules, OK

(As I fall back into a semblance of routine, I'll be back here more often & I'm already planning another literary lately of sorts. For now, & in consideration of the number of cupcakes I've eaten in the last two weeks, I'm going to make some late night pasta puttanesca & shake off the last of this jetlag.

Speak soon - O.)

20/04/14

Emerging, bleary-eyed, from that first jetlag-induced, twelve hour sleep to two & a half week's worth of laundry & remembering to buy milk, I thought that now was as good a time as any to put an appearance in on this little blog of mine. You see, I've been away on a family holiday (resolutely deciding that I'm not yet too old for such excursions) to Vail, Colorado for ten days worth of skiing & then for a further, wonderful four in New York City, both of which already seem world's away. I began writing a blog post before I left as, contrary to my contributions to this blog (read: nil) would suggest, March was actually a rather busy month for me, & pleasantly so too. 

As such, it would be unfair to bemoan my busy-ness as not extending beyond obligatory earning of rent money as the month of March is always one of occasion in my family with a series of birthdays: my little sister's, my stepmother's, my old jack russell's &, not least, my own. It was almost four weeks ago now but I'm still not sure how I feel about twenty-two, I'm uncertain that I like the way it sounds. I do, however, like its symmetry when written down & it hasn't been unkind to me thus far. The day of my birthday I, alas, had a very busy day at work (albeit including chocolate cake & being sung to) but left promptly for an evening of presents, pizza & plenty of red wine with the boyfriend. Proving once more that he knows me too well, I was so excited to be met at the station with a bunch of blooms & then wander home to unwrap some pretty Rifle Paper Co. recipe cards (a small business I declared my love for here), an 'O' Scrabble mug out of which much tea has already been drunk, & a critical biography of Simone DeBeauvoir whose spine I'm looking forward to cracking. The two of us were so excited to discover our favourite 'Franco Manca' had opened on Broadway Market so we found ourselves gladly nestled at a corner table for dinner on that bustling Tuesday evening.

The next day was Sofia's eleventh birthday &, despite my spending most of the day trying not to have too much of a crisis about her turning the age I was when she was born, it was lovely to see her so excited at the prospect of being a year older, from the perspective of someone for whom the prospect of growing up is now a more frightening one. Birthday have always been family occasions for me & often ones that revolve around food - a single candle in the middle of a slice of Bovril toast before school & a birthday tea when I got home from school with caterpillar cake & bowls of crisps & homemade party hats, so it was on the weekend of that birthday week that I looked forward to, planning on a joint celebration of our birthdays & Mother's Day on the Sunday. After a usual Saturday spent moseying around nearby charity shops (I am definitely out of luck as far as secondhand clothes go at the moment but I did spot a copy of Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours' for £1.99 that I am about two-thirds through & adore) & lending a hand repainting the laundry room in readiness for selling the house, Sofia & I spent a few hours of Sunday morning (& afternoon) tidying the garden room for lunch, stringing up bunting & putting yellow tulips in vases, Sofia making vanilla buttercream cupcakes & me, sticking to my strengths after the lemon drizzle, making a pancetta, leek & Gruyère quiche (thanks Gordon!) & walnut, stilton & courgette tart (cheers Rubes!) Served at three o'clock alongside yet more cheese, fresh bread & a pot of blackcurrant jam, the four of us (me, Mum, Sofia & Grandy) enjoyed eating far too much & appreciating each other's company.

Adjusting back to home life this afternoon while resisting the pull of sleep, flipping through the hundreds of photographs taken over the last few days, reading new recipes to try as I, with relief, return to being able to cook for myself, I also have memories of the last two weeks spent with the other half of my family, my Dad, brother & stepmother, that I am not so lucky to see so often. I'll be back with a post of photographs & stories detailing these adventures soon but, in the meantime, I'll leave you with a picture of my most treasured birthday present, a beautiful, heritage Roberts radio from my mother, that's had me dancing around my bedroom all afternoon.

Speak soon - O.