Sa-a-aad
October 27, 2008
I am so sad. “Why, Matt?”, I hear you all cry in underwhelmed semi-interest. Well, the world will find out this Thursday whom The Economist has decided to endorse for President. I’m looking forward to finding out with pathetic excitement. And it’s sad because it’ll have no effect on anything whatsoever. Anyway, things seem to be looking good, judging by the last paragraph on here.
I would tell you something about my own life, but I have had to put it on hold in order to finish off this essay which is now due in NEXT WEEK. It’s been in my life for eighteen months and it’ll be out again in eleven days. I went to the Science Library to weed out some of the typos in the third and penultimate draft, but it was so noisy I might as well have gone and set up stall in the nearest blast furnace.
Hope the essay’s coming on well and you’ve found somewhere at least a bit quieter than the Library – Hey I thought the days when a reader was required to tiptoe around a library andahrdly dared whisper a greeting to an old friend were rather opressive, but things have certainly swung through 180 degrees.
I very much enjoyed the Obama photos – he comes across as a caring person who neither patronises nor ignores people.
What do you think of the Brand/Ross situation? seems to be a lot of cow-towing to mob hysteria and a deal of scarcely hidden dislike of Brand. So far as I have heard the BBC has not acknowledged that he has apologised to Sachs and his grand-daughter. Much mention has ben made of Ross’s apology though. And what of the controllers who OKed the stunt? They’re all very hypocritical because they’re very happy to have Brand’s racy kind of humour to catch the audience ratings but squirm with discomfort at the threat to their life-style if things turn nasty in the press.
I’ve not been too well one way and another and I’ve thoroughly enoyed reading some books either named in list of authors we were given when we started at grammar school or that I read as a young woman. I can recommend them. Pearl Buck was the daughter of Christian Missionaries posted in China at the end of th nineteenth century and her novels are all about the life of the people there. I’ve just read The Bondmaid whicih also seems to be known as Peony – the bondmaid’s name.
Have a visitor so wil lwrite some more later. Love – Grandma
Just to finish off – I’ve finished today reading The Bird of Dawning – meaning a cockerel! It’s by John Masefield, born about the same time as my gradparents i.e. about 1875. His parents died when he was 13yrs old and his aunt took him in and she and her husband, very practically, sent him to a sailoring school. At sixteen he set sail on a real voyage but was ill and invalided back home. When recovered he was apprenticed as a sailor and this time he coped well. He must have soaked up the comments and stories of the older mariners and these recollections were poured into his work when he left the sea at about 21 years of age and devoted his life to writing – and an abundance of it too. His language is very rich and poetic, verse prose likely influenced by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ rich poetry. A lot of the language is dialect or specialised vocabulary used at sea and in the sailing ship. Yet Masefield carries us with the action, thoughts and feelings of the men, on ship, in shipwreck and struggling to survive in a small boat. The text has a rhythm to it that sweeps along like the wind in the sails of the ships he describes.
A third book that I want to re-read is Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. Did you know he was a Ukranian Russian who learned to speak English in his twenties and went on to become one the English literary greats. Born in 1857 he is credited with influencing a whole lot of writers like Faulkner and Burroughs. I remember saying to people when I was reading Under Western Eyes in the 60s, that I could visulise it as a film. Looking up on the Internet I found that other novels of his have been made into films- The Heart of Darkness became Apocolypse Now – set in Vietnam rather than the Congo. Conrad came to this country because he was a man of the sea and he too wove his experiences into his writing. Well, I can’t read it now because I enthused about it to your Dad and he has it. So I’m reading a small volume about being a slave – from the records of slaves themselves. It brings immediaicy to the issue. Personal histories seem a good idea to me. Maybe I mentioned to you that I was reading a book composed of people’s diaries of the end of the second world war and the three yeas following, commissioned by the government. Very interesting and based on the acknowledgement of the importance of all our lives.
Must go now – it’s 1.40am and I’m tired, having made a comment to Aunty BBC about Russell Brand, before I finished my missive to you!
All my love and – Good Luck