Monthly Archives: November 2018

November books

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Non-fiction: 1 (YTD 46)
52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, by Ruth Padel
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Fiction (non-sf): 6 (YTD 32)
Baptism in Blood, by Jane Haddam
Burr, by Gore Vidal
The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner
The Prisoner and The Fugitive, by Marcel Proust
And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
All The King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
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Theatre: 1 (YTD 4)
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
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sf (non-Who): 2 (YTD 105)
Hybrid, by Shaun Hutson
Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams
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Doctor Who, etc: 1 (YTD 32)
Doctor Who: Twelve Angels Weeping: Twelve Stories of the Villains from Doctor Who, by Dave Rudden
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Comics: 1 (YTD 25)
Brüsel, by Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten

~5,100 pages (YTD ~67,400)
2/12 (YTD 98/248) by non-male writers (Padel, Haddam)
1/12 (YTD 25/248) by PoC (Hosseini)
2/12 (YTD 22/248) reread (Hamlet, The Prisoner and The Fugitive)

Reading now
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
Outside In: 160 New Perspectives on 160 Classic Doctor Who Stories by 160 Writers, ed. Robert Smith?
Fools, by Pat Cadigan

Coming soon (perhaps):
Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin
The Name of This Book Is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch
Perilous Dreams, by Andre Norton
A Cold Day in Hell, by Alan Grant
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition, ed. Rich Horton
Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
Heartspell, by Blaine Anderson
Bitter Angels, by C.L. Anderson
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanyagihara
The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
“The Queen of Air and Darkness”, by Poul Anderson
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O’Driscoll
Grimm Tales: For Young and Old, by Philip Pullman
Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, ed. Kevin J. Anderson
Lambik, by Marc Legendre
Candide, by Voltaire
Feersum Endjinn, by Iain M. Banks
Secret Histories, ed. Mark Clapham

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And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

“I’m sorry,” Masooma whispers.

I wasn’t totally convinced by the two previous novels I’ve read by Hosseini, but I really enjoyed this one: a narrative from multiple points of view, following the lives of three Afghan siblings from 1952 to 2010, from childhood to old age, across continents and cultures. The youngest brother stays in Afghanistan; the middle sister is adopted by a Franco-Afghan poet and grows up and lives her life in Paris; and the story ends with the oldest in California, which by odd coincidence is where I was travelling to when I finished the book today. I found the shift of narrative between viewpoint characters very effective, and I was able to put my cynicism aside to be moved by the last chapter. Recommended. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white author, my top unread non-genre fiction book and my top book acquired this year. Next on those lists respectively are A Little Life, by Hanya Yanyagihara, Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters.

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Brüsel, by Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten

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Second frame of third chapter:

Second frame with words from third chapter:


Constant Abeels: "Christ, what's all this mess?"

There is actually a comics shop in downtown Brussels named after this volume, and I had assumed for some reason that it was originally in Dutch and a standalone tale. In fact it was originally in French (but I read the Dutch translation) and it's the fifth (at least; counts vary) in a series of works with the overall title Les Cités obscures, which sort-of translates to "The Obscure Cities", set in a succession of parallel conurbations which are closely related to those on our own world. There's no doubt whatsoever as to which city Brüsel refers to, particularly since my edition is prefaced with an angry and well-illustrated essay about how urban development has destroyed communities and heritage in the real Brussels. This frame is a particularly chilling reinterpretation of the Palais de Justice (uncompleted here; apparently the original plan was to put a pyramid rather than a dome on top):

It's a book of polemic rather than plot. Our hero, Constant Abeels, is a florist who has switched from real flowers to plastic ones. He gets drawn into the steampunkish world of the urban developers of Brüsel, led by the sinister Mr De Vrouw (whose name means Mr Woman); at the same time he is subjected to medical treatment for a condition similar to but not entirely like tuberculosis; and keeps encountering the enigmatic Tina Tonero, whose clothes have a tendency to fall off at strategic moments.

I found this sufficiently intriguing that I will try and find the rest of the series, starting from the beginning, in the original French. I would recommend getting this in French too, here.

My only other unread non-English comic (at present) is Lambik, by Charel Cambré and Marc Legendre.

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Current
And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
Outside In: 160 New Perspectives on 160 Classic Doctor Who Stories by 160 Writers, ed. Robert Smith?
All The King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren

Last books finished
Burr, by Gore Vidal
The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner
The Prisoner and The Fugitive, by Marcel Proust
Brüsel, by Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten

Next books
Fools, by Pat Cadigan
Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin
The Name of This Book Is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch

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The Prisoner and the Fugitive, by Marcel Proust

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Second paragraph of third chapter of La Prisonnière (NB my translation has no chapters):

Nous étions arrivés devant la porte. Je descendis de voiture pour donner au cocher l’adresse de Brichot. Du trottoir je voyais la fenêtre de la chambre d’Albertine, cette fenêtre, autrefois toujours noire, le soir, quand elle n’habitait pas la maison, que la lumière électrique de l’intérieur, segmentée par les pleins des volets, striait de haut en bas de barres d’or parallèles. Ce grimoire magique, autant il était clair pour moi et dessinait devant mon esprit calme des images précises, toutes proches et en possession desquelles j’allais entrer tout à l’heure, autant il était invisible pour Brichot resté dans la voiture, presque aveugle, et autant il eût, d’ailleurs, été incompréhensible pour lui, même voyant, puisque, comme les amis qui venaient me voir avant le dîner quand Albertine était rentrée de promenade, le professeur ignorait qu’une jeune fille toute à moi m’attendait dans une chambre voisine de la mienne. La voiture partit. Je restai un instant seul sur le trottoir. Certes, ces lumineuses rayures que j’apercevais d’en bas et qui à un autre eussent semblé toutes superficielles, je leur donnais une consistance, une plénitude, une solidité extrêmes, à cause de toute la signification que je mettais derrière elles, en un trésor insoupçonné des autres que j’avais caché là et dont émanaient ces rayons horizontaux, trésor si l’on veut, mais trésor en échange duquel j’avais aliéné la liberté, la solitude, la pensée. Si Albertine n’avait pas été là-haut, et même si je n’avais voulu qu’avoir du plaisir, j’aurais été le demander à des femmes inconnues, dont j’eusse essayé de pénétrer la vie, à Venise peut-être, à tout le moins dans quelque coin de Paris nocturne. Mais maintenant, ce qu’il me fallait faire quand venait pour moi l’heure des caresses, ce n’était pas partir en voyage, ce n’était même plus sortir, c’était rentrer. Et rentrer non pas pour se trouver seul, et, après avoir quitté les autres qui vous fournissaient du dehors l’aliment de votre pensée, se trouver au moins forcé de la chercher en soi-même, mais, au contraire, moins seul que quand j’étais chez les Verdurin, reçu que j’allais être par la personne en qui j’abdiquais, en qui je remettais le plus complètement la mienne, sans que j’eusse un instant le loisir de penser à moi, ni même la peine, puisqu’elle serait auprès de moi, de penser à elle. De sorte qu’en levant une dernière fois mes yeux du dehors vers la fenêtre de la chambre dans laquelle je serais tout à l’heure, il me sembla voir le lumineux grillage qui allait se refermer sur moi et dont j’avais forgé moi-même, pour une servitude éternelle, les inflexibles barreaux d’or. We had arrived at my door. I got out of the carriage to give the coachman Brichot's address. From the pavement I could see the window of Albertine's bedroom, that window which had always been dark in the evening when she did not yet live in the house, and which the electric light from the inside, sectioned by the slats of the shutters, now striped with parallel golden bars. This magic spell-book was as clear to me, presenting to my untroubled mind precise images, close at hand, of whose reality I was shortly to resume possession, as it was obscure to the half-blind Brichot, still seated in the carriage; it would, in any case, have been incomprehensible to him, since the professor was no more aware than were those friends who came to see me before dinner, when Albertine had just got home from her outing, that I had a young girl waiting just for me in a bedroom close to mine. The carriage moved off. I stood for a moment alone on the pavement. Certainly, the luminous stripes I could see from below, which would have seemed insignificant to anyone else, had for me a consistency, a plenitude, an extreme solidity which came from the meaning with which I endowed them, from the treasure, if you like, a treasure unsuspected by others, which I had hidden there and from which these horizontal rays emanated: a treasure, however, for which I had given my freedom, my solitude, my thoughts. If Albertine had not been up there, or even if I had been concerned only for pleasure, I could have gone and found it with unknown women, in Venice perhaps, or at least in some unknown corner of night-time Paris. But now what I had to do when the time for caresses was at hand, was not to embark on a journey, nor even to leave the house, but to go back there. And not to go home at least to find solitude, not, after leaving the others who provided from outside the matter for one's thoughts, to be forced to find it in oneself, but on the contrary, to be less alone than I had been at the Verdurins', since I was returning to the person to whom I surrendered my personality, handing it over completely to her, without having a moment to think of myself, nor any need to think of her, since she would always be beside me. So that lifting my eyes for the last time to the window of the room where I should shortly be, I seemed to see the cage of light that would presently close upon me, and of which I myself, for my eternal enslavement, had forged the golden bars.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Albertine Disparue (NB my translation merges this with the next paragraph from the original French):

Et pour aller chercher maman qui avait quitté la fenêtre, j’avais bien en laissant la chaleur du plein air cette sensation de fraîcheur, jadis éprouvée à Combray quand je montais dans ma chambre ; mais à Venise c’était un courant d’air marin qui l’entretenait, non plus dans un petit escalier de bois aux marches rapprochées mais sur les nobles surfaces de degrés de marbre, éclaboussées à tout moment d’un éclair de soleil glauque, et qui à l’utile leçon de Chardin, reçue autrefois, ajoutaient celle de Véronèse. Et puisque à Venise ce sont des œuvres d’art, des choses magnifiques, qui sont chargées de nous donner les impressions familières de la vie, c’est esquiver le caractère de cette ville, sous prétexte que la Venise de certains peintres est froidement esthétique dans sa partie la plus célèbre, qu’en représenter seulement (exceptons les superbes études de Maxime Dethomas) les aspects misérables, là où ce qui fait sa splendeur s’efface, et pour rendre Venise plus intime et plus vraie lui donner de la ressemblance avec Aubervilliers. Ce fut le tort de très grands artistes, par une réaction bien naturelle contre la Venise factice des mauvais peintres, de s’être attachés uniquement à la Venise, qu’ils trouvèrent plus réaliste, des humbles campi, des petits rii abandonnés. C’était elle que j’explorais souvent l’après-midi, si je ne sortais pas avec ma mère. J’y trouvais plus facilement, en effet, de ces femmes du peuple, les allumettières, les enfileuses de perles, les travailleuses du verre ou de la dentelle, les petites ouvrières aux grands châles noirs à franges. Ma gondole suivait les petits canaux ; comme la main mystérieuse d’un génie qui m’aurait conduit dans les détours de cette ville d’Orient, ils semblaient, au fur et à mesure que j’avançais, me pratiquer un chemin creusé en plein cœur d’un quartier qu’ils divisaient en écartant à peine d’un mince sillon arbitrairement tracé les hautes maisons aux petites fenêtres mauresques ; et, comme si le guide magique avait tenu une bougie entre ses doigts et m’eût éclairé au passage, ils faisaient briller devant eux un rayon de soleil à qui ils frayaient sa route. Then as I went to meet Mama, who had left the window, I felt the same sense of coolness on leaving the midday heat that I had experienced at Combray when I went up to my bedroom; but in Venice it was wafted by a sea breeze, and not up a small, narrow wooden staircase but up the noble surfaces of marble steps, constantly splashed with flashes of glaucous sunlight, adding the lesson of Veronese to the useful lesson of Chardin, which I had learned on a previous occasion. And since in Venice it is works of art and magnificent monuments that are entrusted with conveying the impressions of everyday life, it would distort the nature of the city, if, on the pretext that the most famous examples of the Venice of certain painters are coldly aesthetic (except for some superb studies by Maxime Dethomasl, we were to represent only its impoverished aspects, at the points where its habitual splendour fades, and if, in trying to make Venice more familiar and true, we were to make it look like Aubervilliers. Reacting quite naturally to the artificial Venice produced by bad painters, we could reproach the greatest artists with studying only the Venice that they found more realistic, with its humble campi and deserted side canals. This was the Venice that I explored in the afternoons, if I did not go out with my mother. For this was where I found it easier to meet women of the people, match-sellers and bead-stringers, glass- or lace-workers, young working-girls whose long black, fringed shawls were no barrier to my love, since I had nearly forgotten Albertine, yet some were more attractive than others, for I did still remember her a little. I wonder if anyone could have told me exactly how far, in this passionate perusal of Venetian women, what was due to them, and what to Albertine, or my former desire to travel to Venice. Our slightest desire, although striking its own, unique chord, contains within it the fundamental notes on which our whole lives are based. And if perchance we suppressed one or other of these notes, even unheard, even unconscious, a note bearing absolutely no relation to the object of our pursuit, we would none the less feel our whole desire for this object fade away. There was much that I did not attempt to elucidate in the midst of my excited pursuit of Venetian girls. My gondola followed the side canals, as if the mysterious hand of a genie were guiding me through the byways of this oriental city, the more I advanced along the canals the more they seemed to show me the way, slicing through a neighbourhood that they divided, as their narrow and arbitrarily traced furrows barely perturbed the tall houses and their small Moorish windows; and like a magical guide holding a candle between his fingers to light my passage, they cast ahead of them a ray of sunlight and opened a pathway for it.

When I first read this in 2008, I wrote:

The prisoner, overtly at least, is the narrator’s girlfriend Albertine, who moves in with him at the start of the book and (spoiler alert!) moves out at the end of The Prisoner, and then suddenly dies a few pages into The Fugitive. The translator says in her foreword that she thinks it entirely unrealistic to portray a young single upper-class woman cohabiting with a man she isn’t married to at the time period in question, even under the very secretive circumstances described in the novel (hence Albertine being described as a “prisoner”). I am not so sure. There was an awful lot going on under the radar screen in real life – indeed Proust is full of illicit and secretive love affairs, both gay and straight – and in a world where he thinks she is being sought after by every woman they meet, her secretly shacking up with him is not especially implausible.

There are some wobbly bits (again, the translator notes that Bergotte, a minor character, dies dramatically at one point but is being talked about as if still alive a few dozen pages later), but some great bits of description. That goes even more for the second part of the volume, The Fugitive, where the identity of the titular fugitive is much less immediately apparent, and the book starts off with loads of vicariously reported hot girl-on-girl action, and then spins out into a detailed and honest examination of the psychology of loss, with some very good sentences that almost qualify as one-liners. (But not quite. This is Proust, after all.)

Maybe I’m only now really getting into it, but it seemed to me that this was the most approachable volume yet of the five I’ve read, and I think I would actually recommend that someone wondering if Proust is for them should start here rather than with the first volume. It’s not as if the narrative is all that linear anyway.

On this reading, I found the book/books much tougher going than I did first time round. In particular, the narrator's behaviour is pretty creepy. His treatment of Albertine in the first book is borderline coercive; he doesn't especially even like her, but at the same time he is jealous of her other friendships and relationships. He simply exploits unnamed women in the second book (including getting summoned to the police to account for his interactions with an underaged girl; since he is a gentleman, he is let off without even a slap on the wrist). However, the portrayal of the psychology of obsession in the first book, grief and loss in the second, and jealousy in both is very well observed, and if you can distance the author from the narrator maybe it's a bit more enjoyable. You can get it here.

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The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner

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Second paragraph of third story (“The Aimer Gate”):

The sky was coming light. It was going to be a hot day, but now it was cold.

I was a big fan of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen as a child, and Red Shift as a teenager, and enjoyed The Owl Service more recently. Somehow this had passed me by. It’s a set of four novellas, set in the same family across five different generations but in the same place, Garner’s home ground, Alderley Edge in Cheshire; each story is about a turning point in the life of a child, who then turns up as an adult in the next. It’s understated, lyrical, not really about very much but very beautifully done. Garner himself apparently regards it as his masterpiece; not sure I’d completely agree with that, but I enjoyed it a lot, and it has a lot of bang for a very short book. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2012. Next on that list is Bitter Angels, by C.L. Anderson.

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Burr, by Gore Vidal

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Too long?’ I had given him a straighforward [sic] two-page description of the wedding, scribbled on the ride back to New York. The newly wed couple had departed at dawn in Madame's yellow coach with six horses to visit the Colonel's nephew, Governor Edwards, at Hartford, Connecticut. Yes, I am trying to be a journalist, mentioning all facts.

This turned out to be a surprisingly timely read. Gore Vidal tells the story of Aaron Burr through a young journalist, Charlie Schuyler (“not one of the Schuylers”), who downloads Burr’s version of his career in the months before his death in 1836. It’s a nice alternate take on the received version of America’s founding story (which has been reinforced by Hamilton), rather like his novel about Julian the Apostate (who has however had rather better historiography than Aaron Burr). The book is rather long, but there is a lot of story here, including also young Schuyler’s ultimately doomed relationship with a sex worker.

When this was published in 1973, it was seen as commentary on Watergate. I’m sure that Watergate was in Vidal’s mind, and I have seen contemprary reviews complaining that he portrays Washington and Jefferson as less than heroic. For me the most insteresting nuance was Andrew Jackson, the president of the day in 1836, who had come to power as a revolutionary and failed to really deliver much more than patronage for his friends; Burr remembers him as a young and fairly mainstream political actor, who only later decided that it suited him to be anti-establishment.

Going back a bit, I was interested by the reflections on the Revolutionary War, particularly the story of the Arnold/Montgomery invasion of Canada and the general critique of Washington’s leadership. The Burr defensive account of the election of 1800 is of course revisionist. But there are some nicely done twists at the end which remind us that Burr, like everyone else, is an unreliable narrator.

I enjoyed this, and I would positively recommend it as an expansion of the Hamilton universe; not so much to readers who are not interested in early American politics. Also it shoudl be said that Vidal does not give the women of Burr’s story much voice. You can get it here.

This was my top unread non-genre fiction book. Next on that pile is Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin.

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52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, by Ruth Padel

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Second stanza of third poem ("Swineherd", by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin):

I intend to learn how to make coffee, at least as well
As the Portuguese lay-sister in the kitchen
And polish the brass fenders every day.
I want to lie awake at night
Listening to cream crawling to the top of the jug
And the water lying soft in the cistern.

Second paragraph of Padel's commentary on this poem:

In [poem] No. 2, Derek Mahon approaches the Troubles through the parallel of Dutch art; many Irish poets also approach them via Homer. The Trojan War and its aftermath offer a more familiar parallel for the years of conflict and their after-effects. The last nine books of Homer's Odyssey are about having to go through more conflict on your own home ground, in Ithaca, just as you've got back from a ten-year voyage from hell and, before that, ten other years of war. If you looked at this poem 'Swineherd' without Ní Chuilleanáin's other Odysseus poems, the title and all this in the first line would not absolutely have to speak to Odysseus's home island in the Odyssey. But modern life is not overstocked with swineherds, and literature has only two famous ones I know of: the Prodigal Son and Odysseus's servant.

I am not especially well-read in poetry, so I learned a lot from this. It's a revision of Padel's weekly columns from the Independent on Sunday of almost twenty years ago, explaining what is going on in each poem, not at too great length but enough to make the reader feel (or at least this reader feel) that a better understanding of how poems work is possible.

From the structural point of view, I was struck by the fact that quite a lot of the poems Padel looks at are sonnets, or at least have fourteen lines with roughly five beats to each. She's also very good at looking at the way in which poets use sound as a way of conveying meaning, whether it be vowels or consonants, going beyond the basics of rhyme and alliteration that we were taught at school.

From the political point of view, she makes the strong assertion that poetry in Britain and Ireland has been urgently informed by the Troubles; Heaney, Muldoon, Mahon, Longley, McGuckian (the last two being those who I personally knew back in the days when I was a Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies in Belfast). She cunningly front-loads the book with Northern Irish poets, so that we read the rest of the poems having started with an Ulster emphasis. I must say I hadn't dared think of my own corner of the woods having an outsize influence in any literary area; but I was ready to be convinced by her arguments. Here is Michael Longley's Ceasefire, drawing again from Homer (and Padel's commentary):

I

Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

II

Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands Achilles
Made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,
Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

III

When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,
Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

IV

'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.'

I was also very glad to encounter an old favourite, U.L. Fanthorpe's "Rising Damp" (here is Padel's discussion, which sadly loses the formatting):

‘A river can sometimes be diverted but is a very hard thing to lose altogether.’
(Paper to the Auctioneers’ Institute, 1907)

At our feet they lie low,
The little fervent underground
Rivers of London

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

Whose names are disfigured,
Frayed, effaced.

There are the Magogs that chewed the clay
To the basin that London nestles in.
These are the currents that chiselled the city,
That washed the clothes and turned the mills,
Where children drank and salmon swam
And wells were holy.

They have gone under.
Boxed, like the magician’s assistant.
Buried alive in earth.
Forgotten, like the dead.

They return spectrally after heavy rain,
Confounding suburban gardens. They inflitrate
Chronic bronchitis statistics. A silken
Slur haunts dwellings by shrouded
Watercourses, and is taken
For the footing of the dead.

Being of our world, they will return
(Westbourne, caged at Sloane Square,
Will jack from his box),
Will deluge cellars, detonate manholes,
Plant effluent on our faces,
Sink the city.

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

It is the other rivers that lie
Lower, that touch us only in dreams
That never surface. We feel their tug
As a dowser’s rod bends to the surface below

Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx.

Not every poem of Padel's selection worked for me, but enough of them did to rekindle my enthusiasm for the genre, which probably means it had the desired effect. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2010, the shortest unread book acquired in 2010, and the non-fiction book which had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next respectively on those lists are The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, Heartspell, by Blaine Anderson, and The Secret Lives of Garden Birds, by Dominic Couzens.

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Current
The Prisoner and The Fugitive, by Marcel Proust
Burr, by Gore Vidal

Last books finished
Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams
52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, by Ruth Padel

Next books
The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner
And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

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A visit to the ruins of Sirmium

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As previously mentioned, I was in Belgrade last Sunday; and checking my flights as I ate my breakfast, I realised that my departure was three hours later than I had thought. (Which is better than the other way around, of course.) This left me with an opportunity to explore somewhere in Serbia I hadn't been before, as long as it was reasonably close to Belgrade.

Sirmium was one of the biggest cities of the Roman Empire, now the provincial city Sremska Mitrovica, giving its name to the Srem region of southwest Vojvodina and the neighbouring part of Croatia. It's conveniently along the motorway, less than an hour out of Belgrade. It's where Marcus Aurelius lived and possibly died; it's certainly where he adjudicate the bizarre trial of Herodes Atticus, which culminated in the deaths of the defendant's two young maidservants in a lightning strike on the outskirts of town, following which he was acquitted out of sympathy for his grief. (The full story is much nastier and weirder.)

Almost 200 years later, in 361, it was the scene of one of the most daring exploits of Julian the Apostate. Having marched his main force around the south of the Alps, he himself sneaked more quickly around the north and managed to kidnap the Prefect of Illyricum from his capital, ie Sirmium. Here's the palace as envisaged by Ken Broeders in his graphic novel series:

The classic account is by Marcellus Ammianus:

Count Lucillianus, who then commanded the troops stationed in those regions, with headquarters at Sirmium, having some slight intelligence of Julian's move, gathered together such forces as regard for speedy action allowed to be summoned from the neighbouring stations and planned to resist him when he should arrive. But Julian, like a meteor or a blazing dart, hastened with winged speed to his goal; and when he had come to Bononea, distant nineteen miles from Sirmium, as the moon was waning and therefore making dark the greater part of the night, he unexpectedly landed, and at once sent Dagalaifus with a light-armed force to summon Lucillianus, and if he tried to resist, to bring him by force. The prefect was still asleep, and when he was awakened by the noise and confusion and saw himself surrounded by a ring of strangers, he understood the situation and, overcome with fear on hearing the emperor's name, obeyed his command, though most unwillingly. So the commander of the cavalry, just now so haughty and self-confident, following another's behest, was set upon the first horse that could be found and brought before the emperor like a base captive, scarcely keeping his wits through terror. But when at first sight of Julian he saw that the opportunity was given him of bowing down to the purple, taking heart at last and no longer in fear for his life, he said: "Incautiously and rashly, my Emperor, you have trusted yourself with a few followers to another's territory." To which Julian replied with a bitter smile: "Reserve these wise words for Constantius, for I have offered you the emblem of imperial majesty, not as to a counsellor, but that you might cease to fear."

Then, after getting rid of Lucillianus, thinking that it was no time for delay or for inaction, bold as he was and confident in times of peril, he marched to the city, which he looked on as surrendered. And advancing with rapid steps, he had no sooner come and the suburbs, which were large and extended to a great distance, than a crowd of soldiers and people of all sorts, with many lights, flowers, and good wishes, escorted him to the palace, hailing him as Augustus and Lord. There, rejoicing in his success and in the good omen, and with increased hope of the future, since he believed that following the example of a populous and famous metropolis the other cities also would receive him as a health-giving star, he gave chariot races on the following day, to the joy of the people.

The hippodrome of Sirmium has been located, mostly under later housing. What has also been located, and is on nicely conserved display, is the imperial palace of Sirmium, where Marcus Aurelius and Julian would have sat.

The museum does its best to orient you with respect to both ancient and modern geography.

One entire mosaic floor, with fountain inset in the wall, survives (and many other bits and pieces).

For some reason three later Orthodox saints (Irenaeus, Demetrius and Anastasia) keep an eye on things.

Further to the west, some ancient foundations near to the old city walls have been attractively laid out in a park.

Lizards clamber over the old Roman plumbing.

Sremska Mitrovica has seen better days.

Gibbon writes of its eventual fall in 582:

Without the hope of relief, the defence of Sirmium was prolonged above three years; the walls were still untouched; but famine was enclosed within the walls, till a merciful capitulation allowed the escape of the naked and hungry inhabitants. Singidunum, at the distance of fifty miles, experienced a more cruel fate: the buildings were razed, and the vanquished people was condemned to servitude and exile. Yet the ruins of Sirmium are no longer visible; the advantageous situation of Singidunum soon attracted a new colony of Sclavonians; and the conflux of the Save and Danube is still guarded by the fortifications of Belgrade, or the White City, so often and so obstinately disputed by the Christian and Turkish arms.

There's a lot more Roman stuff to be seen in Sremska Mitrovica/Sirmium today than there is in Belgrade/Singidunum. In fairness to Gibbon, most of it has been uncovered only very recently.

Here's an nice video from the BBC about the rediscovery of Sirmium, and another from Balkan Insight. Well worth a detour. My only regret was that the town's main museum was not open, due to the 11 November public holiday.

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Hamlet (1948)

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This is an unusual case where though I had never seen this particular adaptation before, I am pretty familiar with the source material. Hamlet, directed by and starring the recently knighted Sir Laurence Olivier, won the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of 1948, the first ever non-American film to do so; Olivier also won Best Actor, and the film picked up two more Oscars for Best Art Direction – Set Decoration, Black and White, and Best Costumes, Black and White. The film was made 384 years after the birth of the main script-writer, a record which is unlikely to be surpassed, unless he does it again, or there is a resurgence in enthusiasm for older literature. The other contenders for Best Motion Picture of 1948 were Johnny Belinda (which had the most nominations, 12 to Hamlet’s 7), The Red Shoes, The Snake Pit and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I have seen none of them.

Hamlet ranks 8th and 13th for the year on the two IMDB ratings systems, with Bicycle Thieves, Rope, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, Red River, The Red Shoes and Fort Apache ahead of it on both systems. I have seen none of them either. I have very unclear memories of having seen parts of The Fallen Idol, Scott of the Antarctic and The Three Musketeers, but am really not sure that I watched any substantial chunk of any of them, so Hamlet is definitely the first 1948 film that I am sure I have seen from beginning to end. Here’s a trailer, emphasising the cinematography and claiming that it won five Oscars (my count, above, is three):

So we have jumped from the social realism of the last few Oscar winners (anti-Semitism, alcoholism and demobilisation) to classic literature. Olivier has stripped the four hours of the original script down to two and a half, by dropping Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Fortinbras and the Second Gravedigger, and making some judicious cuts in some of the longer speeches. Shakespeare purists have been complaining about this since 1948, but really I think even in Shakespeare’s time it would have been treated as a living text, adapted afresh for each new run, and Olivier is perfectly entitled to tell the story he wanted to tell. There are a lot of screen versions of Hamlet (including with Patrick Stewart as Claudius and a Time Lord in the title role – Derek Jacobi in 1980 and David Tennant in 2009, both shown on BBC TV though the latter was an RSC production). Four years ago, we went to see an amateur “Hamlet Unplugged” production in Brussels which had four actors taking turns speaking Hamlet’s lines and miming all the other characters. It was electrifying. Interesting to note that rather than featuring any of the the actual performers, the poster for that production used a photograph of none other than Laurence Olivier from this film.

Doctor Who fans will note that this is the only Oscar-winning film featuring two Doctors, Patrick Troughton being silent but very visible as the Player King, and Peter Cushing putting in a rather camp Osric.


As usual I’ll start with the things I didn’t like so much about the film, but this will be pretty short because I did like it a lot, and it’s going into my top five, ahead of The Lost Weekend but behind The Best Years of Our Lives. First off, the cast is entirely white. We haven’t had a black speaking character in an Oscar-winning film since Dooley Wilson in Casablanca six years ago. Sure, there were fewer black actors around in the UK (the film was released a month before the Windrush arrived), but choosing an all-white cast is still a choice. The first sound film version of Hamlet was in Hindi/Urdu translation, released in 1935, over a decade earlier (it has sadly been lost).

Second, the one bit that Olivier adds to the script is intensely annoying. Immediately after the opening credits, we get the “So oft it chances…” soliloquy, with the words helpfully flashed up on screen.

And then Olivier adds his own words, “This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.” I mean, really! Is the story so difficult to follow that we need this (inaccurate) framing before it gets going? There is a lot more to the story than Hamlet’s indecision. (See a good piece by Erica Moulton on how much more.)

I won’t complain too much. Otherwise, Olivier owns the film completely, tremendously watchable as the Prince. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but I liked the use of voiceover for some of the soliloquies, exploiting the cinematic medium.

I often comment on odd age differences between actors playing parents and children. So far the best has been Barbara O’Neil, only three years older than Vivien Leigh despite playing Scarlett’s mother in Gone With the Wind. We’re in a whole new dimension now, with Eileen Hertie playing Gertrude to Olivier’s Hamlet, despite being eleven years younger. (Basil Sydney as Claudius is thirteen years older than Olivier.) I must say that unlike in Rebecca, where Olivier didn’t quite convince me playing a character older then he was, I barely thought about the age gap this time.

The other lead, paprt from Olivier, who really impressed me was 19-year-old Jean Simmons as Ophelia. Of course she has the only real character arc of anyone in the play, but she carries it off intensely and with conviction. Checking her career, I think the only other thing I’ve seen her in is Guys and Dolls, where she plays Sister Sarah who falls in love with Marlon Brando’s character, though she also appeared as Admiral Satie in an 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.


And Stanley Holloway’s vignette as the Gravedigger is rather glorious. (Apparently he was drafted in at the last moment when the actor originally contracted for the role unexpectedly died.)

It will be apparent from the pictures above that the Oscar for Best Costumes was well deserved. The sets are great as well, and I think the direction is rather magical – nothing terrifically original, but Olivier behind the camera does as good a job of convincing you that you are watching something special as he does in front of the camera as the lead character. Here’s a good piece going into that in more detail. I thought it surely must have been filmed on location somewhere, but apparently not; all done in studio.

Here’s William Walton’s music for the film, arranged as an orchestral suite with voiceover by John Gielgud (who contrary to myth does not appear in the original film). I think it’s rather good. I particularly recommend the haunting music for the Play-within-a-play at 24:59. (Walton got his knighthood in 1951.)

Here’s an interesting article comparing nine screen Hamlets. You can get the 1948 one here.

Next up in the roll of Oscar winners is All The King’s Men, of which I know nothing at all.

I rate Hamlet as the best Shakespeare play anyway, so it was very pleasant to return to it. The second line of the third scene is Ophelia answering Laertes when he asks her to write to him while he is away:


OPHELIA: Do you doubt that?

You can get the Oxford Hamlet here.

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

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Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

“For the laws I have a certain respect,” he says. “For mercenaries I have none.”

Bought this in the run-up to last year’s Worldcon where the author was a GoH, but didn’t get around to reading it until now. It’s one of the early cyberpunk texts, characters struggling with evil human overlords and the rise of new technology. Cyberpunk doesn’t really do all that much for me, and I got really rather lost in the plot, but I liked the characterisation and appreciate the homage to Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2016. After a re-audit of my bookshelves, next on that list is Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin.

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Baptism in Blood, by Jane Haddam

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The second time Rose MacNeill heard that Gregor Demarkian was coming to Bellerton, she was standing in Charlie Hare's feed store, buying a packet of seed for the basil she liked to grow in pots on the ledge over her kitchen sink&emdash;and then it struck her. By then it was all over, theoretically. The plywood had come off the windows of the stores on Main Street. Maggie Kelleher had even put out a little display stand full of paperback books, horror novels with cutout covers and silver foil letters and pictures of the Devil glaring through fiery eye sockets that had nothing in them but flames. Still, there was no way to ignore the fact that Something Had Happened, the Something at the time being represented not by the debris still scattered over Main Street itself or the number of houses without roofs that could be seen by standing on the front steps of the library, but by the CBS News truck parked in front of Town Hall. Something had happened, all right, and that something was Ginny Marsh and her dead baby and what might or might not have gone on up at the camp while the storm was going on everywhere else.

My fourth and probably last book by Jane Haddam, starring her detective, retired FBI agent Gregor Demarkian. (The others: first, second, third.) Demarkian here is called in to investigate a small-town North Carolina infanticide, where two different Christian sects are feuding over how best to oppose the lesbian feminist heiress who has established a commune in her ancestral home, and a baby has died. I must say I was not very impressed; there seemed to be little evidence of the local police (or indeed anyone) doing boring stuff like taking evidence and working out who was where and when, and the sexual politics of the town seemed awfully suburban and boring. Demarkian himself is a charming character, but I wasn't convinced by his relationship with the more traditional enforcers of law. An easy read though, and generally pleasant, apart from the murders. You can get it here.

This was both my top unread book acquired on 2011, and the work of non-sff fiction that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on those piles respectively are the Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, edited by Kevin J. Anderson, and In Another Light by Andrew Greig, which will wait until I have finished all other books acquired in 2011 (won't be long).

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