And yet another goodish day. Archie came. We circumnavigated
Drummond Place Gardens (once) and got some other things done. Not much knitting,
though. I watched Pointless with idle hands, except for a stitch or two.
Reading, Comments
Beth, I don’t know the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, but I
would certainly like to hear Atwood reading Alice Munro so I’ll work at it.
Thank you.
Peggy, Dawn has answered you more than adequately about
flying menaces in Scotland. Midges won’t kill you, but they can certainly make
life miserable. The class I was referring to was just the First Year Latin
class – the “Ordinary” class, it was called in 1954, as I hope it still is.
William Trevor: I’m slightly embarrassed to acknowledge that
I “discovered” him in the New Yorker (as
I did Alice Munro and Jhumpa Lahiri). He’s dead now. Like the other two writers
mentioned, mostly noted for short stories. Gentle, penetrating stories. Highly
recommended. A Protestant Irishman, resident in England for much of his life.
Dawn, thank you for your scholarly researches. Tacitus’ word
in Latin is “solitudinem”. An “emptiness”, perhaps.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am well stuck in to “Wives
and Daughters” and enjoying it even more, I think, than “North and South”.
There's a lot of "Wives and Daughters" to enjoy - it's a long book. It is also much more in the same world as Trollope - the Squire, the titled aristocracy, the local doctor. No mention of the industrial poor here. In some ways it reminds me of "Mansfield Park" in the sense that the moral centre rests with a young girl who is physically rather frail. There is a wonderful
ReplyDeletetv version, very true to the novel and providing an ending which poor Mrs Gaskell was unable to do.
William Trevor has been mentioned here, before, and I have never read any of him. (It's possible a story in the New Yorker, but no memory of it.) Margaret Atwood reading Alice Munro sounds wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI'm embarrassed to admit I cannot set my mind to read NYer fiction. I can remember when general interest magazines had regular fiction features, and yet....
ReplyDelete