Hieronymous the Anonymous

What I'm reading

I finished two books late yesterday.
 
The first was the The Summer Game, by Gideon Haigh. Haigh is the foremost cricket writer in the world today. His journalism is always interesting and incisive, and the series of cricket books he has written widely acclaimed.  He is a local Melburnian, but travels the world following the cricket – when he’s not playing for his amateur side, the Vincibles.
 
This book was about Australian cricket in the period between 1950 and 1970 – which roughly equates to the immediate post-Bradman era to just before the Chappell era, with WSC looming darkly somewhere on the horizon. By and large it’s very much an amateur era, with the players paid a pittance and setting off on long overseas tours on ocean liners. It’s an era of great and resounding highs – the Windies tour of 1961/62 being the exemplar – amid unremarkable and dull lows of defensive cricket and slow scoring. And sprinkled throughout the era were some great players: Miller, Lindwall, Harvey, Hassett, Benaud, Davidson, O’Neill, Lawry, McKenzie, Chappelli and so on.
 
This book was the very compelling story of all that. I found it fascinating and raced through it. Given his cred in the industry Haigh had great access to past players and they were very candid with him. It was a very different time in our history, I knew that, and I knew the cricket, with some exceptions,  was reflective of the quieter, more conservative, less commercial times. Still I managed to be surprised. I was surprised at the bureaucratic shenanigans and incompetence in the background which did very little to advance the game – and which led ultimately to World Series Cricket. I loved reading about the old players, most of which I knew, but some I knew by name only. It was interesting to hear their story and to see it in the context of the times. Just as it was fascinating to hear the background stories, the gripes, the tensions, the pranks, and most of all, the strategies.
 
There are a lot of heroics in this book, but reading it now it seems quaint. Looking back it was an era sandwiched between two momentous times – the war, and Bradman and his invincible; and the inevitable commercialisation of the game, one day cricket, WSC, coloured clothing, and the elevation of cricketers from struggling amateurs to professionals idolised the world over. No doubt this is why Haigh chose this era to focus on.
 
The other book was The Hidden, by Tobias Hill. I have to admit some disappointment in this. I was looking forward to reading it because it sounded fascinating: an archaeological dig in Sparta and the tensions/mysteries arising out of that. It was well written, but unsatisfying. A day after finishing it what strikes me is that the motivations where never adequately articulated. What led them to do what they did? How did the leaders enlist the others in the cause? It also seems somewhat prosaic in the end, a bit like listening to a great joke in the telling only for the punchline to fall flat.
 
The writing is top notch, but somewhat murky. It ‘s the sort of writing that lends itself to a story like this, but I think is also more characteristic of European writing: not murky so much as closed in. I think in general you can hypothesise and suggest that most European writing in general is inward looking, where as writing from the ‘new world’ countries (America, Canada, Australia), looks outward, is more expansive. You can hypothesise further and suggest that is symptomatic of the different cultural and geographic heritage. Europe is crowded with history, much as it is crowded with people. They have centuries of struggle and enquiry behind them, of wars, plagues, of kings, queens, popes, and the general rise and fall. There is much to reason out, at the same time the only real space one finds is inside. There is little sanctuary in the wider world all crammed in together.
 
This is in complete contrast to the writing of the new world. To start with our countries began. Despite the existence of indigenous peoples, in terms of western culture these were uninhabited lands. They were discovered and settled by a combination of adventurers and refugees and people seeking a new start - and in the case of Oz, built on the back of convict transportation. The concept of our nations is very different, even now. On top of that these settlers found a lot of untamed space, room to explore and to ramble within. It must have been revelatory for those early settlers, and though we have become accustomed by it in the generations since we view a world from the broader perspective an untrammelled sky presents to us. And so we look outwards looking to continually extend the boundaries of our own personal world. Over time that perspective has infused our writing. There’s a lot of blue sky in the writing of the new world.

I digress. Looking back at The Hidden the writing is darker and has a lingering shadow of menace which is perfectly in tune with where the story was presumed to be going. More problematic for me was the lead character. For the story to work he had to be of a particular character, gullible, yearning, confused, aimless. There’s no way a Hemingway character could have played this role, and in fact the protagonist is very much an English, almost archetypal, character.

Mercer is the sort of diffident character that Americans probably find charming, but which Australians just find plain annoying. He frustrated me no end, to the point I had no sympathy for him. He was just a gullible soft-cock walking into trouble – which, I guess, is what he was supposed to be. I just think it might have worked better had he not been such a cliché.

There other book I have started is Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table. Levi is one of the great characters. He was a Jewish-Italian chemist who survived Auschwitz and who came out of it writing lucid prose about it whilst returning to his career as a chemist. He wrote a number of books notable for their intelligence and objective humanity and was widely lauded; then one day he fell, or jumped, from the top of the stair well in his apartment building. This is generally accepted to be suicide.
 
The Periodic Table is basically a series of essays, stories, memoirs that begin with a description of a chemical element before broadening into a piece thematically sympathetic to the qualities of chemical. I’ve only just begun, but have read other works by him, and find him a very intelligent, highly sympathetic writer. I don’t doubt that he is one of the most important writers of the last century for his work interpreting the experience of the holocaust in a humane but scientifically precise method. His life as a chemist is hardly incidental. It was important work for him, and the scientific approach he learned as a chemist was applied when he wrote of his experiences in Auschwitz.

Better the butcher than the dragon

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I’ve been biting my tongue about this for a long time, but I’ve now been finally roused to comment. For the last couple of years there has been a kind of literary craze about the crime novels of Stieg Larsson. Now Larsson has a good personal story – he was a Swedish journalist who one day sat down to write a bunch of novels based on two divergent characters. And then he died, unexpectedly and suddenly, before the first of his novels, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, was released to almost hysterical acclaim. Good for him, sad he died, etc.
 
Now I’ve had a lifetime of resisting trends, occasionally for stupidly perverse reasons. I have, for example, refused to read any of the Harry Potter books despite having them pressed on me by all and sundry. I was in a bar in St Kilda the other week where an impassioned stranger insisted I start reading them now, such is the fervour with which they’re held. Mmm, not likely. Quite aside from considering them children’s fare I was put off when they first came out by the sight of every man and his literary dog reading the damn thing on every tram and train I caught like a kind of literary variation of Being John Malkovitch. Sure, maybe I’m a bit sniffy but I had no desire to become one of the drones following fashion, and have had no inclination since to join them.
 
I was a late-comer to Stieg Larsson pretty much for the same reason: fucked if I’m going to fall into line. It was only when the initial clamour died down that I bought his first book in a momentary impulse on a book buying spree in Albert Park. You know, it was an ok read, but definitely nothing more than that. Reviews and readers had commented on the tension, but I felt none of that. I thought the eponymous girl, Lisbeth Salander, was in fact a great and interesting creation, as all the blurbs said. Unfortunately Blomkvist, her crime fighting compadre and clearly Larssons alter ego, is a dull and pretentious character. I didn’t care a whit about him, which is fatal, and finished the book without any desire to read any more – which is strange because the books continued to be published and continue to be literary sensations (though more than one person has whispered to me that they don’t know what the big deal is all about: sacrilege, I know).
 
In contrast I read a book over the weekend I couldn’t put down: the fact that I read it in a single weekend speaks volumes. The Butcher’s Boy was released to great acclaim also, but that was nearly 30 years ago. It has been re-released recently with an introduction by the great American crime writer Michael Connelly. Now this is a good book, written by Thomas Perry, a fascinating plot involving a resourceful hitman, a department of justice agent, and the mafia it fairly races along. It’s sharply written with clearly defined characters and no fat on the frame, just as novels of this ilk should be written. Reading it you can’t help be caught up in the action and finding yourself hoping that the hitman gets away with it as the plot convolutes away. This is a book I will recommend: forget Larsson, check out Perry.

What I remember, though not why

After a succession of late nights I woke slowly this morning, the radio playing classic rock while Rigby snuggled up beside me. When I got out of bed Rigby happily collected the newspaper as he does every day, I made my coffee, gave him breakfast, then returned to bed with the paper. All pretty standard.

Somewhere amid all this there came a small grain of obscure remembrance. Maybe I had dreamt something I had forgotten on waking, or perhaps had read something in the paper that had triggered an unconscious memory. In any case before I knew it I was reflecting on a Melbourne academic from another era, Dinny O'Hearn.

Dinny O'Hearn will be unknown to most readers, even those from Melbourne. Once upon a time he figured very largely in the local arts scene, and in fact this was the cause of my puzzlement. What had happened to him, I wondered? I had liked him, and had always seen him as a very Melbourne sort of character both in personality and outlook. For a time he was the public intellectual, the gruff, occasionally outspoken, larrikin spirit who also enjoyed the vitals of life, the food, the drink, the local pub. For those such as me he was almost impossible to dislike, the refined mind married that sat beside a lust for life and a cheeky, charming and occasionally provocative manner.

I was moved to investigate, and found that he had been long dead (1993), prematurely so I would think. I experienced then that rare insight about the constant passage of time. He was of another era now long gone, but an era that had distinct shape and feel. He, and his counterparts, where part of a firmament that seemed as fixed as day followed night. They were and you gave no more thought to it than that. Now he is gone and largely forgotten outside of literary circles, and all that was taken for granted now departed. This has been happening forever.

Time brings things into the light and carries them forward, before inevitably taking them back into the darkness. I felt suddenly old thinking this, felt my life being carried forward remembering all that I had witnessed (and sometimes forgotten), and which now was lost.

This sense of loss was exacerbated as I continued to read, following - in the very modern way - one link after another online. More memories were recalled at the mention Andrea Stretton, another figure who had loomed large in the arts scene here as a commentator, and who had partnered O'Hearn for years on a book program.

Out of sight out of mind they say, and it's true, I had not thought of her for years because I had not seen her for years. The reason I had not seen her came as a great shock to me. She too was dead. I read how she had died of cancer in 2007. I felt unaccountably sad. Her death was certainly premature, and as I considered that I recalled her vividly to mind.

It's fair to say that she was one of the TV commentators I was most attracted to. Forget the soap stars and the fly by night celebs, they do nothing for me in their obvious charms. As a man I found Andrea Stretton much more alluring.

She was attractive, flame haired and elegant with a warm, kind, sensitive face. She had a lovely voice, like velvet, which she employed to talk-up passionately the latest book. That was part of her great appeal, the obvious love of the arts and the passion she exhibited in promoting them. I remember the exchanges she would have with O'Hearn, she gracious, and him amiably dogmatic, and the humour shared between them. Above all I remember her as a woman of great intelligence and erudition, and a woman of true grace.

This is the way of things of course and one shouldn't be surprised. One day I'll be gone to and all that'll be left of me will be my living words. More curious ultimately is why I should remember these people now. I always find that curious, like dreams, how and why things come to us, and what they leave behind.

I'll leave it to you to wonder if there is a purpose to it.

Fahrenheit 451

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The other night I watched Fahrenheit 451 on TV. I settled down on the couch and watched for near on two hours enjoying every minute of it. It's the classic story written by Ray Bradbury about a society where books are banned and firemen go about starting fires - burning books - rather than putting them out. It follows the familiar dystopian path, the unquestioning hero (Montag), a fireman, leading a comfortable life with his shallow wife within the system, conforming without ever stopping to wonder how it all adds up. Then that changes. Slowly Montag begins to wonder and to question. His curiosity is piqued and a kind of consciousness dawns as he begins to read the books he is charged to destroy. He finds they are not the disruptive evil the pervasive voice of society would have him believe. On the contrary he discovers that books contain knowledge, history, context, wisdom even. In his growing knowledge he realises that his life is empty, and in place of real feelings and real thoughts society has been fed a thin pap to keep it compliant and ignorant. Inevitably he rebels, and there is the story.

I imagine this story being made today and the variety of special effects that would be employed. Truffaut did not have the benefit of those in 1966, but then he was not a director interested in effect - his was a study of character. I suppose the movie is a little dated in parts now, but overall it has aged well because Truffaut kept it small. I don't know if a modern version were made if it would have the same simple power. Though it is an allegory Truffaut did not make it overtly political, and the moral of it - if that be the word - is not spelled out to us (as it doubtless would be today), but is shown for us to witness and understand.

Truffaut is helped by his two leads in this movie, which just so happen to be two of my favourite actors from this era. Oskar Werner has such a sensitive face, and was a very sensitive and accomplished actor. I watch him on screen and can't help but think the man portraying these roles was himself a gentle, intelligent man of discernment. Off screen I gather he could be fiery, and he died an alcoholic, but I don't doubt that he had lovely depths.

Julie Christie by contrast was just straight out beautiful. She was one of the movie actresses I first fell in 'love' with, particularly in Dr Zhivago. She has the most beautiful cornflower blue eyes and a beauty that can appear both refined and common. There was a period of about 10 years from the mid-sixties where she was a great star and appeared in a score of iconic movies. I could watch her all day. 

It was a good night for TV. Straight after the movie of another classic book, Slaughterhouse 5, appeared. It was a great night to be on my couch.

Finding the arc

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It's a home day today, but that doesn't mean I take it easy. So far today I've had someone come clear out the gutters, I've confirmed I'll extend my lease by another 12 months, sent a couple of work related emails and fielded a couple of related calls. I've posted a entry here first thing and I'm not long back from having a morning coffee at the cafe around the corner.

I'm in one of those creative writing phases I get taken by. I've long since stop trying to figure out the why's and wherefores of it, and come to accept the fact: there are times when I bubble over with ideas and creativity like a spring in an oasis, and other times I'm as parched of inspiration as an outback stream in the middle of a drought.

I've been doing a lot more writing lately, and a lot more thinking about writing. The 'thinking' shouldn''t be discounted. One of the shortcomings of my writing previously was that I did not think on it enough. I was a natural writer, I put pen to paper and wrote whatever came to mind. When I revised I did so mainly to clean up and refine what I had previously written. I gave little thought to the actual arc of the story.

Perhaps with age I have become more patient. I now find myself stopping to consider where I am going and asking questions of it. Often that means I come to a stop all together because the answer is not always immediately clear. I sit on it, often sleeping on it, and if that doesn't work will move on to other things confident that the answer will come to me. Invariably it does.

One outcome of this is that I am writing in a different way. The story I am working on right now is an example of that. It's a story that has been around for years, close to my heart but never finished to my satisfaction. The most recent completed version of it was about 35 pages. After umpteen revisions I decided to virtually re-write it from scratch, using the previous versions as the skeleton for a much more deeply considered version. The result thus far is that I am about halfway through the story and have written about 30 pages - virtually double the previous version. 

The extra stuff is due to a number of factors. In the first place the story is told in the first person. In this version I have adopted a style much more in keeping with how people really think and talk. The voice - and hence the character - is largely the same, but is much more digressive, and occasionally questioning, as if in relating his tale he comes across unexpected angles he too must stop to consider.

A result of this is a much deeper contemplation of the facts. It's not necessarily more wordy, it's just that as the protagonist looks back in telling his story he peels back the skin to see what is beneath. Not just what happened, but why.

In short my ambitions in writing this story are much more ambitious than before, something I seem helpless to prevent if I want to do it right. I have expanded the story whilst putting more detail into it. And so at halfway through I am double the length and growing - this will be a 70 page story I think.

My visit to the cafe this morning was more than just an opportunity to ogle the yummy mummies having their morning coffee. I have been stuck at a critical point of this story and sought to break free by varying the environment. I sat at my table drinking a latte and chewing on a friand. I chatted to the proprietor and pulled out the de Montherlant book I had stuck in my bag. I read a couple of paragraphs just to get in the right mind space - much like a drummer counts in the band, I sometimes need to read first to get the words flowing. Then I began to randomly write.

Did it work? Well, sort of. Some okay stuff there, but not the stuff I was after. It will come though, and given my expectations, it will be good.

Without apologies

I spent another hour reading de Montherlant yesterday. I'm now up to page 180, and the way I'm going it wouldn't surprise me reading the whole 600 odd pages in gradual increments, picking it up occasionally to browse and dipping through the pages.

It's pretty easy reading. He's a very good writer, and an interesting one. And despite his indifferent rap I find the protagonist -  Costals - a very attractive character. He was widely described as a misogynistic, but I think that is inaccurate. He may be cynical and sometimes less than completely honest, but it is not directed at women only. He is a writer, one of those characters who sits on the edge of society and describes it with an acerbic eye, while maintaining his own affairs in a fashion consistent with that perspective. He's much more a misanthrope, though I think he is a decent man at heart.

One of the reasons I like Costals so much is that I identify with him. We're very unalike in some ways, but often there are words coming from his mouth that I could easily have said myself. Sure he plays the angles sometimes, but he is also witheringly honest. He has no shame as they say, and no embarrassment at his more predatory ways. I like that. I don't like hand-wringing of any sort, and least of all the hypocritical sort.

Reading last night I thought at one stage that this would be a good book for women to read, if only to get some idea of how men really think. But then I thought there would be many men up in arms at that, and not just because they might feel exposed. Many would feel slandered, and by their lights possibly with good reason. Not every man is like Costals, not by a long shot, and many would be aghast at the comparison - yet I would contend that most men have some Costals in them, even if only occasionally or in the past. Most men would not be nearly as smooth with it as Costals is, and fewer still reconciled with that aspect of themselves.

Once upon a time I wanted to be the 'best' man I could possibly be. Without being aware of it it is something I have given up in recent years, and not just because it is impossible to know what 'best' is. There are certain standards I wish to conform to and there are principles that will always be important to me - which I could summarise perhaps as being honest, fair, objective and true. They're well enough even if they sound like a boy scouts oath.

There is another side of me though that I have long since let off the leash. It worries me not one iota, and in fact I take a lot of pleasure from it, and not just because pleasure is the object of it. I see little point in dressing up something as noble when in fact it is something just about primeval. I've given in to my natural instincts, allowed myself in many circumstances to go the way I feel. When I've got in trouble in the past it's often been because I've gone against those instincts and tried to act according to a higher standard. No more.

I enjoy this book so much because I relate to it very strongly. I'm not Costals and I'm not living in 1920's Paris, but not much changes in the passage of time and space. I know myself well and that's the first step towards any kind of contentment. The next step is accepting yourself for what you are. What I love about Costals is that he is so completely and unapologetically himself, with little regard for what others think of him. This doesn't make him a monster - he is capable of tenderness and kindness, but they are what they are, not affectations but simply another part of his complex self.

Ultimately you don't do anyone any favours by being anything other than utterly yourself. Sure, there are constraints on how we can act, just as there should be, but I'm giving you the tip - happiness comes from accepting who you are and being true to it.

The wisdom of old books

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As the dark falls I lay on the couch with Rigby curled into me, sleeping. Outside the rain falls in a pleasant, soothing hush. The only light comes from the flickering images on the TV I am watching, a movie, Knowing, better than I expected until the end of the world unexpectedly arrives.

It feels early still when the movie ends. I feel restless, as if there is something unfinished. I wander up the hallway with Rigby in tow, check my emails and follow up on a couple of sites. I get up and walk over to the bookcase in the hall, opposite the front door. This is where I deposit my daily things, keys, loose change, sunglasses. the headphones for my iPhone. There is a large smiling Buddha on top, his hands clasped together, and a tall stylised figure made from metal - a straw hat sits on its head, my headphones slung over an arm.

I get down on my hands and knees as Rigby watches curiously. He's wondering if I want to play. Instead I peer into the books arrayed on the wooden shelves of the bookcase. My eyes pass over the titles on the well worn books, not searching for any book in particular, but searching for something. I'll know when I find it. Then I reach in and pluck from the shelves a thick book with a black spine striped with white from all the occasions it has been opened and closed, all the times it has been read. I wander back into my study and put it onto my desk, and turn.

I pad back down the hallway and to the kitchen. I pack the dishwasher and turn it on. I wipe the bench and close the back door. On impulse I pour myself a glass of port. It seems the right thing to do. I flip off the lights and in the loungeroom turn off the TV - Whitney Houston is singing.

In the silence I return to my study. I sit down in front of my PC and after glancing at it pick up the book from my desk. It is a collection of four novels by Henry de Montherlant entitled The Girls. It was famous in it's day, but that day is more than 50 years previous, and it was in Europe, France particularly, that that day shone brightest. It is a book I have read three times perhaps. There are 639 yellowing pages in it.

I flick through those pages, reading the first few words of the introduction before moving on. It is a book about a famous author and the relationship he has with the four women in his life. One, I remember, is a religious virgin who writes obsessive letters to him. He is cynical, world weary, he enjoys his life even if he doesn't think much of it. Pierre Costals is his name. It's a great book.

As you mature all sorts of things influence the person you become. Much of that is family and friends, the environment you grow up in, the seminal moments of your bourgeois life. Music is there too I guess, at least as a soundtrack, and for me books also. This book was one of those that stayed with me for reasons I could never explain. Perhaps I saw something of my burgeoning self in the character of Costals. Perhaps it is the time it is set in, and the place, Paris, that captured me and drew me back again and again.

I recall the first time I read it I was embarking on what was to be a troubled relationship. I had to that point lived freely, easily. I felt comfortable with myself, with the man I saw in the mirror, with the man I presented to the world. The days would slide by, work, then the weekends, easy conversations, sunshine, drink, and like a kaleidoscope different experiences, a variety of them, coloured, bright, vivid. I ate them up, feeling myself in every moment and waking the next morning with the sun streaming in through the window and wondering at what had happened, wondering at the wonder of it.

Perhaps I felt something of my life in this book, perhaps I sensed the transitory nature of my life in the descriptions of life Montherlant described in his books. Certainly at times I dwelt on the characters of the women and the relationships between them and Costals and their conversations, the dynamic between them, as if it was something I was learning even as I understood on my own. I lived, I enjoyed, I celebrated and I slept around and toasted it all even as I lay there in the morning light with a smile on my face - and I saw through it all.

Then that relationship I mentioned took off and I saw something else, in me and in the book. As my life changed so to did the way I read. And I suppose it was like that all the other times I read it, a variation on not stepping into the same stream twice. Now, much later, the book lies open on my desk again.

Reading randomly from the pages the story feels real, lived. Much of it is composed of letters and in the intimate, occasionally anguished voice there is something immediate. I can sit here reading this now as I did 20 years ago and be aware that the author is long dead and the characters he created creations only, never real, and even if they had have been they too would be long dead while I go on walking the earth and living my own modern day version of the sort of life he described.

What it is is true though, and truth is timeless. I'm not here to laud the book, that is not my attention. Rather I discover as I write that I want to draw attention to the reality of my life and everyone else's. Well that may seem a bit weird, but it is not really so. There are times you feel more alive than others, and they are times generally when you remember that you are alive, unbelievable as it is really.

Reading the letters in this book I might have written them myself at some time, or more likely received something similar from one of the girls who have careened through my life. Moments of intensity, of intimate importance that slowly fade away into the past. And the stories here, the conversations, even the rueful thoughts of Costals may well have been mine once, or still to be.

If we're lucky we live intensely, and in the middle of the storm. Even bad is better than nothing. To feel is to live; better still to feel and to know it, and seek to understand it. I'm at the midpoint of my adventures and don't know what is to come. I know reading through the pages of this book that nothing is new, everything that is has been before, and that no matter how much we burn up with feeling that this is the central human experience.

Reading William Styron

I had one of those restless days yesterday when I couldn't settle down to anything. After a productive morning I spent the afternoon trying to find my way. I couldn't. At one point I returned to a story I had been writing but found I was creatively bereft. I turned out pure drudge. This added to the sense of restlessness, which in a way becomes self-fulfilling. When there's nothing there it's hard to do anything.

I felt particularly sour about my effort to write. In many ways I'm absolutely impervious to doubt, but my writing is something I feel less certain of. When I think about it it's the things I take for granted that worry me least, which is no surprise. Though the nature of my work often throws me into complex situations I have confidence that I'll manage them - I've done it before after all, and any doubt is quickly quashed by actually doing it. By and large that's pretty characteristic of the rest of my life. If I don't know something I'll find a way, and I never doubt it.

My writing is different. For a start it means much more to me. I might take a lot of confidence from my professional abilities, and some small part of my identity, but my writing really is who I am. I am much more intimately engaged with it, and so when it fails it gives me cause to question something of myself.

Writing is so much harder as well. It's not necessarily difficult to turn out a well crafted sentence - but it's hard turning those into chapters and stories that are actually coherent and mean something. It's delicate work and I've not mastered it yet.

For want of a better word I felt a little despondent yesterday afternoon - an unusual emotion for me. I was restless and so felt lost. I thought to go for a walk but as I did it began to rain. I stood at the window and watched the rain pour down and then the hail, small balls of frozen rain bounce from the deck of the front courtyard. The sky was dark and low and streaked occasionally by lightning which a moment later ushered in the low rumble of thunder. I watched some people hurry by covering their heads with their jackets and knew the sensation. By my side Rigby stood similarly fascinated, unpeturbed by the thunder. Then I remembered the clothes on the line.

As is so often the case I felt myself energised by the rain and the lightning. It had become dim inside without light and it was warm and cosy as I looked out, grateful for the shelter and for the unexpected pleasure of watching the rain fall.

For once I went to bed early last night and as I reached for the book I was reading I paused. Instead I went to the bookcase and got a book of stories out by James Salter, and another - A Tidewater Morning - by William Styron. I lit a tea light and set it up beneath the oil burner in my bedroom. Then I climbed into bed to read while the sweet perfume of the scented oil infused the room.

I read Salter first. Though I admire his writing I felt uninspired. Then I opened the Styron.

Styron is an author I greatly admire. I guess he is best known for Sophie's Choice, which is a marvellous book (a million times better than the movie, though Meryl Streep is perfect as Sophie), but he is the author of many other very good books.

A Tidewater Morning is one of those, a kind of fictionalised memoir of his early life growing up and going to war. It is an immensely intelligent and beautifully written book - it is authors like Styron who both intimidate and inspire my own writing aspirations. It is also the book which has become a talismanic touchstone to me. I read it when I wonder about things, I find myself reading it when I find my own writing go off track.

More than anything it is the quality of writing that draws me back again and again (though I find myself identifying with the sensibility of the young Lieutenant in the first of these stories). I read taking it all in as if it is a gorgeous piece of art. It reads so easily, so artlessly, so authentically, and with nothing left out and nothing out of place. This is how to write I think, simply, economically, honestly. It feels so true, so lived, that afterwards I sit back and watch the shifting shadows on the wall and simply ruminate on all I have read.

As I hoped I found something in the reading, found myself reconnecting to what I really wanted to say in my story, rather than what I thought I wanted to say. I turned and began to write in the notebook I keep by my bed the scene I had been trying to write so unsuccessfully earlier in the day. This time it flowed and felt real rather than contrived. Whatever I had lost earlier I had regained in the night, and I slept feeling content and with all my restless urgings vanished.

Perfect stories

Last night I read a short story so good it's worth recommending. I read a lot of short stories, and I read some pretty good ones along the way, along with the less good. Mostly the stories are by authors I follow, and it is only in the random collections I read that I stumble across less celebrated authors. This is the case with this story.

The story is The Rotifer by Mary Ladd Gavell. She was American, the managing editor of Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, and obviously a part time writer on the side. She never lived to see her story published. She died of cancer in 1967 and the story was published in Psychiatry by her colleagues as a tribute to her a few months after her death. It was picked up by The Best American Short Stories of 1968, and may well have languished there forgotten except that John Updike, the editor of the best stories of the century, chose to select it - which is where I read it.

There's no point in describing the story except to say it is a gracefully written, beautifully weighted piece that is almost the perfect example of what a short story can and should be - life in miniature but complete in itself. You read, perfectly convinced, and shut the book to think about what you have just read and what it means for you. As in all the best art I think there is something in it you recognise, tucked away deep inside, and brought to the surface by the genius of these artists. There it breathes, and there you feel the connection to something indefinably sublime. That's a great moment.

The tragedy, aside from her early death, would be if she had never written anything else. The good news as I discovered is that more than 30 years after her death all the stories her husband had put away where published into a book, I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly and Other Stories.

It's quite possible - likely even - that none of her other stories measure up to The Rotifer, but I intend to find out.

Worth sharing

I like a lot of things about traditional Japanese culture and art. I like the delicacy, the elegance, the minimalism. Haiku is a great example of that. Here's a lovely haiku I came across recently:

It is the time of rain and snow

I spend sleepless nights

And watch the frost

Frail as your love

Gather in the dawn.

- Izumi Shikibu

It’s just right, isn’t it?

By contrast C.P Cavafy was a Greek poet who spent most of his life living in Alexandria. I came across him before I went to Egypt a little while ago, wanting to get a flavour of the place, and in particular Alexandria. Cavafy was gay, but that shouldn’t impede anyone from enjoying his poetry – desire, love, are universal emotions no matter to whom they’re directed:

Body, remember not just how much

you were loved,

not just the beds where you have lain,

but also those longings that so openly

glistened for you in eyes,

and trembled in the voice--and some

chance obstacle arose and thwarted

them.

Now that it's all finally in the past

it almost seems as if you gave

yourself to

those longings too-- how they

glistened, remember, in eyes that looked

at you;

how they trembled in voices, for you;

remember, body.

- C.P. Cavafy

Mmm, worth remembering.