Holmes and Russel, again

Another adventure with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, this time mostly at a huge estate on the English countryside, in "Justice Hall" by Laurie R King. To give you an idea of the atmosphere, think of films like Altman´s "Gosford Park", the recent tv-series "Downton Abbey" or perhaps a Poirot-mystery. As far as I can tell, King has done some fine research on the manners of the upper classes, the fashions and the spirit of the time, just a few years after the Great War.

Russell and Holmes are just come home from Dartmoor, have hardly had time to set their bags down, have a bath, and let mrs Hudson serve them tea and crumpets, when there´s a knock on the door. And back into their lives comes their two Arab brothers Mahmoud and Ali Hazr, from their adventure in "O Jerusalem", and puts a case at their feet that is rather surprising, considering. Can´t tell you more, without spoiling the surprise.

A quick trip to Lyons, an equally fast journey to Canada (by boat and train, no regular airtraffic for the masses at this time!) does not really affect the atmosphere of the Big House, not even flashbacks to the trenches in France and Belgium during the war. Between the investigations Russell is mostly concerned with topics of conversation, the etiquette of fowl hunting and, yes indeed, "Holmes! Whatever shall I do? I haven´t a thing to wear."

King is very good at spicing her 1920´s-brew with small references of things that are so familiar to us now, but were quite new then. Some things are just fads, others stick, and there´s no telling at the time what is which. And some of what was considered eternal before the Great War, disappeared so very quickly, both institutions and ideas. Of course, without the actual use of a time machine there is no way of knowing if she´s got it right, but it feels right. Absolutely right.

Holmes has become, I think, less and less a main character in these stories, and more Russell´s husband. She contributes as much, sometimes more, to the investigations, and, as some people keep pointing out to her, he´s getting on a bit. But he is the apple of her eye, for sure, and for some reason he is constantly getting in and out of a bath, standing in his bare stockings and fiddling with his shirt buttons as he´s getting dressed for dinner. And isn´t this a loving description of a husband: "Holmes slumped down into the hard chair and prepared to listen, fingers steepled over his waistcoat, eyes half closed and glittering in the firelight like those of an observant snake."

Do I need to say I warmly recommend this?

Looking at Art

When I was lately in Stockholm to see an old friend, we went to a favourite place of mine, the National Art Museum. The collections are spectacular, as one would expect, and they have a great shop. I bought three books, one I have already written about here on the blog, and now I have read the remaining two. They are similar in that they are about how to look at a painting.

The Crucifixion with de Rynck

First, I read "How to read a painting. Decoding, understanding and Enjoying the Old Masters" by Patrick de Rynck. He uses one opening per painting, two pages, and explains the different elements of the ikonography. Of course, this is mostly religious art, it being the old masters, but there are also mythological scenes, pastorals, portraits, landscapes and townscapes. It didn´t take long to get through, but a quick calculation tells me that he actually must deal with 179 paintings in there! Thing is, he does not go particularly deep with each picture. I´m sure there is much, much more to tell. I suppose de Rynck´s intention is to offer an introduction for folks who know absolutely nothing about the ikonography of religion, mythology and literature. And I suppose the book has taught me that I actually do!

The Crucifixion with Barbe-Gall

Feeling not entirely satisfied with having learned very little from de Rynck, I continued with Francoise  Barbe-Gall´s "How to look at a painting" and was immediately rewarded. She has divided her presentation into six chapters with headlines such as "Contemplating the Sublime" and "Getting over the shock of our first impression" and she shows six paintings per chapter. Every painting gets six to eight pages and she writes more, she is more of a narrator, she is like a guide gently talking to her audience so that they can begin to understand such oddities Bacon´s Study of George Dyer in a Mirror or Kandinsky´s With the Black Arch. But she also has a few of the old masters here, like Grünewald´s The Crucifixion (as you can see in the pictures). And some paintings that everybody knows, like that girl with the pearl earring by Vermeer and some water lilies by Monet. Fine by me, but these images feel a bit over-commercialized. A shame, really.

Barbe-Gall engages the reader´s entire brain, she wants you to feel as well as see. I suppose that is why she chooses the word "look" instead of "read" in the book title. And her selection is wider, she prepares you for any kind of art experience, while de Rynck has a very narrow selection and well, he risks loosing the reader at an early stage, simply because he does not have a very personal voice. He just staples facts upon facts. By this I´m not saying I´m sorry to have de Rynck´s book, but I think it will serve more as a kind of dictionary, rather than a book that I go to for inspiration. However, I can be wrong. First impressions aren´t always right and a few years on I might find that de Rynck is a winner in the long run.

If you want an excellent introduction to all kinds of art (and why shouldn´t you?), I would heartily recommend Barbe-Gall. If I may briefly take a stand on the soap box I would like to say that art should be a concern for anyone who aspires to be a Mensch.

The Silver Mask

I have spent a few days reading a short little book about the Swedish 17th Century queen Kristina, "Silvermasken" (= the silver mask) by Peter Englund, who is a famous Swedish historian and member (secretary, actually) of the Swedish Academy. The book was written for the Academy, actually.

I didn´t know much about her, not more than anyone else: that she was the daughter of Gustav II Adolf, who died on the battlefield in Lützen in 1632 (a fat king got lost in the mist), her mother became mad with grief, she was probably homosexual and she abdicated in favour of her cousin Karl X, and became a Catholic, and moved to Rome, where she died. Englund puts a bit more flesh on her, makes her a bit more complex.

She tried to get a new kingdom for herself, mostly because her allowance from Sweden was rarely paid out to her, as the new king needed every crown for his warfare. She wanted Neaples, and when that fell through set her sights on Poland, but mostly it was to her disadvantage that she was a woman and she had no heirs. There were lots of rumours about her and a cardinal Azzolino, but she was adamant that she died virgo intacta, and there is nothing substantial to contradict that.

She was also an entusiastic writer, she had at least two secretaries, and sat for hours every day with pen in hand. But she finished very little, and her memoirs became more and more fiction the more she worked with them, apparently. It seems to have been a lot about keeping up appearances, she was always a queen and she tried to live like one, even when she was rather poor. That image I had of a humble religous woman seems to have been completely wrong.

The title refers to her death mask, that was laid over her face in the grave, but also to the many reinventions of herself that she undertook during her life. It was only in the 17th Century that philosophy came up with the idea of the individual, with an ability to think freely, and break away from the predestination of one´s birth. Kristina had, from a very young age, been very interested in these ideas, and she was very influenced by them. Without them, she probably could never have acted the way she did.

So, an easy, educational and entertaining read. A great way to spend a few evenings.

Dungeons and Detectives

It´s the final week of December 1918, when a 54-year-old Englishman and an 18-year-old American girl are secretly set ashore in Palestine, recently occupied by the British. They are recieved by two Bedouin Arabs who are not too eager to have them tagging along. Of course it turns out that Sherlock Holmes is already fluent in Arabic, and through his relentless tutoring of Mary Russell, by the time they are going home, she can pass herself off as a Bedouin boy even in conversation. Yes, there is something of the savant about both of them. I often feel, when I read about this sleuth couple, really happy that they have found each other.

The book is "O Jerusalem" by Laurie R King, an up-graded boy adventure story, the kind I loved to read when I was little. The Americans are naive, the English are heroic and stout, the Arabs are noble vicims, the Jews too, and the Turks are swarthy villains. There are a number of dungeons, no dragons, but instead heaps of d... no, I won´t spoil it for you, and the clock ticks awfully close to Dead-line. Not all is as it seems, and Sherlock Holmes is a man who does not miss the small, infinitely important details...

What is there not to love about this? They seem to think so at my local library as well, since the last few books I requested in this series have been bought rather than sent after from another library. And I have become so Holmes-enthused that I have dug out my entire small collection of episodes from the tv-series with Jeremy Brett that I have randomly recorded and never watched. I wish now I had been more diligent and got the whole series, but no doubt it will be reprised anytime soon.

I tried to buy the next book in the series, "Justice Hall", for my e-book-reader, but copyright reasons (why do they only want to sell this book in the US?) prevented this. However, someone made a smarter deal about the next one, so now I have "The Game" in my reader and a request for "Justice Hall" at my local library. I want to read them chronologically, but I´m not sure I can keep myself off "The Game". This is a really excellent whodunnit-series, highly recommended. As far as I can tell, only the two first books in the series has been translated to Swedish: "Drottningfällan" and "Det monstruösa kvinnoregimentet".

Personally, I think if you know a language well enough to read an author´s original text, you should. With a few exceptions. Some authors are really well translated and I remember giving up on Antonia S Byatt once, getting the Swedish version instead. Reading shouldn´t be a chore, after all...

I´m sorry, this is boring

I have just finished a short one: Stewe Claeson´s "Mördaren är död" (= the murderer is dead). I suppose it´s a murder mystery, in a way. The mystery is not who killed whom, but why. Except the reader has it solved way, waaay before the six brothers, whose father posthumously has confessed to murdering a priest.

Actually, this is a rather boring book. I imagine it´s supposed to be deep - the detective story format employed to say something profound about life - but it´s not. Not that I can detect, anyway. Page up and page down, the author drones on with dialogue that´s, ok, maybe we talk like that in real life (some of us), but just because a dialogue is real it doesn´t necessarily mean that it feels real in a work of fiction. At quite a few places there also seems to be unmotivated repetitions, like the author wrote two versions of a dialogue and then forgot to delete one of them.

I remember vaguely reading another work of Claeson´s, "Tiro", a few years back. It was about an aging roman, probably deep as well, I remember being slightly bored that time too, but not irritated, as I am now. Maybe there is a subtle greatness to these books. I just can´t see it.

I have googled the reviews and I think they are, for the most part, undeservingly positive. I imagine Claeson has a lot of literary capital, has probably done some great work in the past. Not that I´m particularly curious. Perhaps I´m missing out. And perhaps not.

Into the void

I am very fond of Jenny Diski´s travel stories. She has written quite a few novels as well, but I haven´t yet read any. The first one I read was "Stranger on a train" ("Främlingar på tåg") and I just loved the contradictions. Diski does not like to travel, she does not like to meet new people. She´d much rather be left alone at home, doing nothing. Still, she travels, and she travels a lot, and not because she has to write about it either. She started out with this book, her first non-fiction, "Skating to Antarctica" ("På tunn is, en resa till Antarktis"), because it was the only way she could afford to go.

This is also a memoir, a story about her parents, the father who died in 1966, the mother who vanished only a few weeks later after a terrible row. Diski was 18 years old and had since never heard from her mother, to her great relief. Now, her own daughter was 18 and wanted to know. At least this: was the grandmother still alive? Diski entertainingly uses the analogy of Schrödinger´s cat to describe how she´d rather not know, how she preferred to keep her mother, so to speak, inside the box.

The trip to the Antarctic is a quest for a whiteout, for nothingness, for oblivion, for blissful emptiness. But even Antarctica proves to be full of colour and life, not to mention a bunch of (mostly American) fellow travellers. In the end, what she takes home with her is the experience of being inside her cabin, a most perfect cabin, not a cruiseship cabin with flowery carpets and colourful bed cloths, but a pure, white, research ship´s cabin, a perfectly functional space. Here, Diski finds the peace she craves and a severe cold allows her to stay in there for a few days without having to go up on deck. Being in her cabin, looking out the window at the icebergs passing by, becomes a piece of heaven.

In between the passages that recounts her journey, she remembers her past. Her parent´s violent rows, her mother´s childish demands for love, her father´s charming lies, the threats from both parents to kill themselves, the stays at boarding schools, foster parents, drugs, being hospitalized for years. Some of the things her parents call her she even agrees with, understanding their point of view, however unjust that point of view is. She is unsure whether she has actually processed her past or if she has just fled from it. She doesn´t really care. She just tells it.

In the end, when her daughter tells her that the mother is dead, when her old neighbours tell her about the rows and how bad it was, when her mother´s later neighbours tell about her rows with the new husband, Diski is relieved. Relieved that it wasn´t just her, that her mother actually was this really horrible person she remembers, other people can confirm it. And in that realization, the guilt she has felt all along but never acknowledged is finally laid to rest. Actually, I think guilt is at the core of this story, at the core of the longing for peace.

There was an article in the paper a few weeks ago about the urge to write to tell one´s life story. Apparently, this is something many people want to do. I have met a few, and they all seem to think that their story would somehow be healing to others. I´m sure they are right, or at least: they, themselves, have been healed by other people´s stories and now they want to give back. I understand that, I have myself found a lot of clues and comforts in biographies and biographical novels. However, I´m not sure I would want to do anything like that myself, even if I had a dramatic tale to tell, which I don´t. It takes a special gift, I think. Some people can write interestingly about a perfectly normal life, others tell boring tales about very unusual circumstances. I´m not sure what that gift is.

Diski has both talent and a special story. Most of all, she is completely devoid of sentimentality. She is brutally honest, which I appreciate. And, she has a sense of humour. Her life may have been tough, but never tragic. She is made of sterner stuff than that. She is a survivor, and as such, she can inspire anyone to do anything.

I also warmly recommend "On trying to keep still" ("Den motvillige resenären"), where she travels to my neck of the woods, Swedish Lapland. Hugely entertaining.

To be more interesting than one´s work

Since I was passing by the Gcz-shelf at the library (authors, life and works) this book about Göran Tunström also kind of stuck to me. I have been a fan of his ever since I read "Skimmer" (= glitterings) and I have since read "The Christmas Oratorio" (can actually be bought in the English version at amazon.com), "Berömda män som varit i Sunne" (= famous men having been to Sunne) and "Försök med ett århundrade" (= attempts at a century). I started "Tjuven" (= the thief) but failed, couldn´t get through it (bad timing on my part). I own it, so I suppose I will try again.

This book, "Prästunge och maskrosboll" (= preacher´s kid and dandelion ball) by Rolf Alsing, is a labour of love. In the preface he writes that Tunström, who lost his father at age twelve, helped him through his own grief after a dead father, by way of literature. Reading this just after all that diving into Olof Lagercrantz makes me think of him, of course, and I imagine that if someone else wrote a book about Tunström, perhaps the theme of grief would not be as emphasized. And indeed, Alsing quotes Lagercrantz in his preface, so he is by no means unaware of this. It´s not an academic study, this, it´s a kind of friendship book (like "Vårt behov av Olof"), a celebration of a man´s work, a hard-worked 'thank you'-note and an introduction for curious, new readers.

Unfortunately, the book does not make me want to read more of Tunström. Can´t really put my finger on why. However, I only have to go up into my library, pick up "The Christmas Oratorio" and read a paragraph from anywhere and I feel the magic again. Funny that, with other writer´s it´s the other way around. I have read plenty about Virginia Woolf, for instance, but one page of her books is often enough for me. She doesn´t grab me, but she has grabbed others, who in their turn manage to write so enthusiastically about her that I feel she should grab me, too. In this case, Tunström advertises himself better than Alsing manages to do. And good for Tunström. He outwrites at least this admirer. (I don´t mean by this that Woolf is outwritten by her admirers and biographers, I´m sure it´s just me...)

Anyway, it´s a shame so little by Tunström has been translated. With lesser writers translated left and right, you´d think... At least there is "The Christmas Oratorio". A wonderful novel. Magical. About love, death, grief, madness, music. Mercy. Tunström is a writer who´s life will never outshine his work, and I´m sure he would not have wanted it any other way.