Book Commentary
October 8, 2005
By Michael
Four books published in London, and one written there (by a Canadian).
We have a copy of Cecil Parrott's biography of Jaroslav Hasek, who wrote The Good Soldier Svejk. If you read Svejk, read an unabridged edition, I think Penguin has one of those in paperback. Svejk is an archetypal Everyman, who combats the stupidity of his superiors by pretending to be even denser than they are. The inanity of war is given particularly harsh treatment. Parrott, who was British ambassador to Prague in the '60's, translated that complete edition. Hasek himself was a ne'er-do-well journalist, practical joker and tramp; the biography makes for fascinating reading.
I first came across David Jones as the cover illustrator for my edition of the Mabinogion (an old Penguin paperback). I've since discovered his poetry. The Anathemata is a paean to Britain: Roman Britain, the Arthurian legend, the 1914-18 War (the author was a participant). A wonderful, dense, convoluted work. Auden considered it one of the finest long poems of his time. I would shelve it next to my Tolkien.
Then there's Teach Yourself Bee-Keeping. It is British rather than North American, it is dated; it is utterly charming. There's notes on how to make your hives out of what looks like scrap lumber, and points on bee-keeping etiquette, like hauling pots of honey to your neighbors to keep them on your good side, and perhaps limits to the number of hives in a suburban yard.
Paul Murray Kendall wrote works on 15th century England; his biography of Richard III still quite common in paperback (we have one here, somewhere). The Yorkist Age is not quite so available. This is a fine Allen & Unwin hardcover, in full cloth boards and decent paper for the text. I've always liked Kendall, an academic who comes across as almost conversational in his prose, and even-handed in his treatment of the House of York. And those Allen & Unwin hardcovers from the '50's and '60's are so nicely bound.
As I've mentioned, I'm very fond of Tolkien and went back re-reading The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion after the Peter Jackson films were released. But there isn't much in contemporary Fantasy that I've cared for: some C.J. Cherryh, anything by Jack Vance, then there's Steven Erikson, a Canadian living in London, UK. The brutality in his work makes me a little uncomfortable, but, the sheer extravagance of his imagination! And Erikson bases his work on his own study of Anthropology, in a manner reminiscent of Tolkien's own work based on his study of Philology. Erikson has worked as both an anthropologist and archaeologist, ended up in a desk job in London, England, and wrote his first novel during his lunch breaks. We have a copy in recently of Deadhouse Gates, the second tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. These are not Tolkien ripoffs, nor middle-brow mass-market pot-boilers disguised as fantasy novels. Not to everyone's taste, but definitely different.
The Bad Bohemian by Sir Cecil Parrott. Abacus, London, 1983. $9.
Anathemata by David Jones. Faber and Faber, London, 1979. $13.
Teach Yourself Bee-Keeping by A.N. Schofield. English Universities Press, London, 1951. $15.
The Yorkist Age by Paul Murray Kendall. George Allen & Unwin, London, 1962. $30.
Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. Bantam Press, 2000. $11.50.