New Year, Old Books

One of my many resolutions for the New Year is to try to bring this blog back to life, even if in a slightly different form. I'm going to try (ah, hostage to fortune!) to write more, rather than simply posting pictures and links, although I suppose pictures and links are pretty and informative on certain levels. The blog died away a little bit in 2014 for two main reasons: first, because I've been doing a lot more work this last year, which has mean that I have had less time to post things, and secondly, my general postage and linkage has migrated almost entirely to Facebook. So from now on Trunt will try to have slightly longer posts with a little more effort put into them. Oh well, it's an experiment, and if it doesn't work then I'll think about something a little different later on down the line. Anyway, today is slightly cheating: one final post (pictures and links!) of the books I liked the most in 2014. Five books I'd never read before, plus one I reread with more pleasure than I read it the first time. Maybe the first few steps into longer-form writing will be to say a little bit more about why I liked these books so much. Promises, promises…

Jacqueline Harpman, The Mistress of Silence (Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes, 1995, trans. Ros Schwartz 1997). More about Harpman here (in French).

Sophie Calle, Fantômes (2013). More about Calle here (in French). 

Steve Ely, Oswald's Book of Hours (2013). More about Ely here.

Bengt Jangfeldt, Mayakovsky: A Biography (Med livet som insats, 2007, trans. Harry D. Watson 2014). More information about Jangfeldt here (in Swedish). My review of the book in the Literary Review here.

Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic, Ein Ghetto im Osten-Wilna (1931). More information about Raviv-Vorobeichic here.

Jack Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008, ed. Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian). More about Spicer here.

Rodolphus Agricola (1444-1485)

'Ut doceat, ut moveat, ut delectet'. More information here.

The Books I Read in 2013

My favourites of the year. In no particular order.

Ármin Vámbéry (1832-1913)

More information here, but the only thing you really need to know is that he is considered by some to be the model for Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula (1897).

Current Favourite Mental Collapse

'The previous year, Carlota had returned to Europe to plead for support for her husband's failing regime. Napoleon III was unwilling to back up his Mexican ambitions with the necessary military force, so Carlota went to Rome to beg for help from the Pope. On the way she began behaving strangely. Modern psychiatry would doubtless have a more precise diagnosis, but the language of her day seems more appropriate. Carlota went mad. She became convinced that an organ grinder on the street was a Mexican colonel in disguise, and that spies of every sort were trying to poison her. As a precaution she ate only oranges and nuts, checking the peels and the shells for signs of tampering. She made her coachman stop at Rome's Trevi fountain so that she could fill a crystal pitcher with water certain not to be poisoned. In her hotel suite she kept a small charcoal stove and, tied to table legs, several chickens, to be slaughtered and cooked only in her sight. With her obedient staff in despair, her rooms slowly filled with feathers and chicken droppings.

Flushed and weeping, Carlota burst in on the Pope one morning as he was finishing breakfast, dipped her fingers in his hot chocolate, and licked them hungrily, crying, "This at least is not poisoned. Everything they give me is drugged, and I am starving, literally starving!" A cardinal and the commander of the Papal Guards manoeuvred her out of the room, whereupon Carlota gave the guards' commander a list of her staff members who should be arrested for treachery.'

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (1999)

Javier Tomeo (1932-2013)

More information here.

The Books I Read in 2012

My favourites. As always, if you asked me tomorrow, I might pick different titles. One point: I tried to reread all Dickens's novels this year. I got quite close, but still have Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood pending. Dickens is not included in this list, because a list that read Bleak House, The Pickwick Papers, Barnaby Rudge, Little Dorrit, David Copperfield, would look, to the untrained eye, a little monotonous.

Maria Moravsky (1889-1947)

Great captions, Batman! More information here.

Han Suyin (1917-2012)

Pen-name of Rosalie Elizabeth Kuanghu Chow. I read And The Rain My Drink over the summer, without knowing anything about the author, another one of the miscellaneous orange Penguins I picked up in fistsfull on first returning to England.

Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913)

More information here.

Alasdair Gray (1934- )

More information here.

Unexpected Insertions

This certificate (a bit too big for my scanner, so offered here in two halves), awarded for achievement in Socialist Competition between working groups, and with a space for you to fill in your own name, was folded up into the front cover of Volume One (of thirteen) of the Complete Works of Mayakovsky. I've spent a dedicated morning unpacking the six boxes of books that arrived from Cambridge last week, and surprises keep on appearing.

Timothy Mo (1950- )

More information here.

Grand Days (1993)

By Frank Moorhouse (1938- ). If you only read one novel about a young woman's sexual and political awakening as she works for the League of Nations in the 1920s and 30s, make it this one. If you only read two, it has a sequel, Dark Palace (2000), but I haven't read it yet. More about Mr. Moorhouse here.

The Mackerel Plaza (1958)

By Peter De Vries (1910-1993). More about him here.

Andrew Sinclair (1935- )

Author of, among other novels, The Breaking of Bumbo and My Friend Judas (both 1959), and director of the 1972 film version of Under Milk Wood. More, slightly patchy, information, here.

Betty MacDonald (1908-1958)

Author, among others, of The Egg and I (1945). More information here.

Charlotte Cory (1956- )

It doesn't happen very often, but every now and then you pick up a book at random, completely at random, without knowing anything about the author; and something, maybe the cover, or a blurb, or the first few pages read as you stand by the shelf in the second-hand bookshop; something, anyway, gets a hook in you, you can almost see the skin standing upright, and you read the book to see if your instincts are still working and if it is as special as you allowed yourself to think it might be; and it usually is not, because instinct is a funny set of wires, always leading us to leap away from danger or towards interesting things when, as my cats will tell you, there is no danger, and nothing more interesting than a cork, or a balled-up and unwanted piece of paper. But every now and then instinct gets it gloriously right. I picked up this book on the offchance, in fact I read the first few pages and left it and then came back a week or so later and it was still there and I thought what the hell archy, and it is absolutely amazing. The Unforgiving (Faber and Faber, 1991). You can read more about it here, and can learn more about the fascinating Ms. Cory here, and here is a sample of her equally attractive art.

Mr Baptist - tea-pot!

They began to accommodate themselves to his level, calling him 'Mr Baptist,' but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his lively gestures and his childish English - more, because he didn't mind it, and laughed too. They spoke to him in very loud voices as if he were stone deaf. They constructed sentences, by way of teaching him the language in its purity, such as were addressed by the savages to Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs Plornish was particularly ingenious in this art; and attained so much celebrity for saying 'Me ope you leg well soon,' that it was considered in the Yard but a very short remove indeed from speaking Italian. Even Mrs Plornish herself began to think she had a natural call towards that language. As he became more popular, household objects were brought into requisition for his instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying 'Mr Baptist - tea-pot!' 'Mr Baptist - dust-pan!' 'Mr Baptist - flour-dredger!' 'Mr Baptist - coffee-biggin!' At the same time exhibiting those articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

Papas (1927-2000)

The major bonus of Pressburger's novel was that it was illustrated by the great Papas, which is enough to make even the most predictable prose enjoyable. Below: fascists and priests.