Halfway through - and this has been the hardest of the lot so far! Who would have thought that, "And every fair from fair sometime declines," would prove so troublesome?
Fourteen days. Fourteen lines. Fourteen sonnets. (And, I hope, Shakespeare's pardon for making merry with his work in this fashion. I promise to play with only XVIII.)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day,
Or to the fairest morn of balmy spring?
Or, churlish out of season, shall I say
Thine not the beauty whereof I must sing?
Could I but say, and own it not a lie,
Could I but honour other names than thine,-
But what avail me though I shall deny?
Thine is my verse; naught save my will is mine.
The bloom is fading from the summer's face,
And hoar shall sweep the laurels from her brow,
But thou - no years shall mar thy sweetest grace;
Thou, kept in this, canst never alter now.
Though fading springs and passing suns shall seek,
None now shall steal the splendour from thy cheek.
I intend to be unreasonable. Utterly, irrefutably and unapologetically unreasonable. Because, really, the only way to deal with the threat being posed to the sanctity of language is to meet it head-on.
As far as it goes, preserving the sanctity of language need not refer to the kind of obscure pedantic quibbling that would only interest Henry Fowler and Samuel Johnson. One can pass over conjunctions that begin sentences and prepositions that cavort at their ends (and pronouns which fill in for Mephistopheles), and if one's will is firm enough one can do so without wailing and gnashing of teeth.
However, when a chap intends to say that he stood his old school friend dinner, and says instead that he indulged in cannibalism - which, in addition to being an uncouth practice that is frowned upon in civilized society, is a criminal offence that would draw the stiffest of punishments anywhere in the world - one begins to have strong doubts about the future of the human race.
The worst of it, really, is that people do not care. Tell them that "lesser books" are books whose quality is being called into question, point out that "high time" is either the time just before tempers are lost or time as measured by a giraffe on stilts, and they will look at you as though wondering how you managed to evade the mental-health authorities all this while. What is worse, they will then say, in the tone one uses to calm a hyperactive toddler, "It is all right. Really. How does it matter?"
Partly to blame, of course, is the proliferation of the Internet. I do not deny that it is a useful tool, but I can also not deny that some time ago I saw a website alleging - in cold blood; not referring to it as only one of the many legends surrounding the animal and assuredly not joking - that Bucephalas was a unicorn.
They had proof and everything.
If I had a rupee - and not a bright shiny one-rupee coin but a cheap forgery made of glued-together paper and silver paint - for every time someone has shown me a website maintained by "Cool Guy 01" or "JKSP in College" and used it to back their claim that "red" is a noun or the past tense of "beat" is "beated", I could put all the money in the bank and live comfortably on the interest for the rest of my life.
You can excuse people for not knowing the difference between "your" and "you're" (by blaming it partly on SMS for encouraging them to write "ur" either way and partly on their primary school English teachers for failing signally in their duty to the next generation), but it is difficult to condone their stubbornly continuing not to know, and for no reason other than sheer perverseness.
For some reason, people seem to think that not knowing science or mathematics is worse than not knowing grammar. This has always puzzled me; it seems incredible that being unable to state Boyle's Law would be frowned upon by a society that routinely permits supermarkets to get away with "5 Items Or Less".
Don't get me wrong. I'd be the last one to oppose the pursuit of knowledge in any form, and if a chap wants to know what colour the inside of an electron is then good luck to him. My only objection is to people using a desire to be engineers or scientists as an excuse not to learn good grammar, as though knowing where to put an apostrophe would somehow debar you from joining the Mathematics Club.
If only one could ask for donations of money and time to the Appropriate Apostrophe Society or the Proper Preposition League without subsequently being forced into expensive and unnecessary sessions with a qualified therapist.
I love the game, honestly. Frequently of an evening you will find me engaged in an exciting and hotly-contested game of Scrabble against the computer. (The excitement is mainly provided by my determination to lose by fewer than 200 points one day.) But sometimes - for instance, when the computer places "MAZHBI" strategically on the board and makes more points with one move than I am likely to make in an entire game - I just have to give up.
Incidentally, I don't know what MAZHBI means, just as I do not know what GJU means, or CAJEPUTS, or SUQ, or any of the scores of other incomprehensible and frequently unpronounceable tile combinations that the computer has used to turn the scoreboard into something resembling a Big and Small diagram in a kindergarten classroom.
The unfairness of it all is that there is no way I can win against the brute force of the machine. By the time I have fiddled with my tiles for a couple of minutes and figured out that RETAILS is an anagram of SALTIER, the computer has evaluated about thirty thousand moves, calculated the probability that I will be able to hook onto any of them, and worked out at least five different ways to make 241 points. There is simply no way to estimate my probability of winning because science hasn't invented numbers small enough.
It really makes you long for the good old days of Scrabble according to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary, when you could feel thrilled if you made 20 points with one move.
The paper tells me that Murder on the Orient Express is celebrating its Diamond Jubilee this year, but Wikipedia insists that such is not the case. Of course you have to keep the million-typewriters principle in mind, but Wiki's dates, at least, are likely to be correct.
It also has a list of novels whose sixtieth anniversary is this year. Most I haven't read. (Although The Queen of Zamba is now on my to-read list... Who could resist "an attempt to reconstruct [Edgar Rice Burroughs'] concept logically, without what [de Camp] regarded as Burroughs' biological and technological absurdities"?)
Of the handful I have read, these are my top picks:
5. Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi (RK Narayan): It must be confessed that I remember next to nothing about the plot, but I do remember Narayan's delightful prose. The glimpses of a forgotten world and the insight into rural India are irrelevant when compared to his deft touch and engaging storytelling. Equally engaging, if in a markedly different way, is...
4. Murder Most Royal (Jean Plaidy): Books about Henry VIII are always interesting, at the very least; the man can be accused of many things, but not of having been boring. Royal intrigues, scheming courtiers, doomed queens... What more do you need? Perhaps...
3. Crooked House (Agatha Christie): If it had been Orient Express, it would have been right at the top of the list, but Crooked House, while far more interesting than such (I regret to use the word in conjunction with Christie, but there is no other) disasters as The Big Four and Endless Night, is not of quite the same calibre as her best work... so much so that despite being virulently opposed to depressing books, I have to give the next spot to...
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell): I resisted reading this for years after I read Animal Farm, but it's one of those things that you eventually have to do. Normally I'd never recommend a book that makes you shiver every time you think of motion-capture cameras at traffic lights, but the very fact that it does make you shiver is a sign of Orwell's genius. This would be at Number One, were it not for...
1. The Mating Season (PG Wodehouse): Practically nothing could be a better read for a winter's day - or for that matter a summer's day, or any other kind of day - than Jeeves-and-Bertie chaos, with aunts, impostors, and Madeline Bassett's theories on what happens when a fairy sneezes (and, as a bonus, her views on Mervyn Keene, Clubman).
Incidentally, this is also (possibly) the four-hundredth anniversary year of Cymbeline (or Pericles, or perhaps both). Scholars may disagree.
Tragedies usually make good reading – classical tragedies, at any rate. You know where you are with those, and you know that even if everyone dies in the end there will usually be some point to it. Hamlet had vengeance, Achilles had everlasting fame, Oedipus… well, at least Oedipus had the satisfaction of no longer having to keep running from his doom.
And, of course, there is the advantage that by the time you get to reading classical tragedy you’re old enough to either revel in the glory or not care about it, and at any rate it won’t depress you.
The Little Match Girl, on the other hand… That was probably the first story I read with the protagonist catching it at the end. I have nothing against Andersen. I like Andersen. All the same, I am forced to ask: is it necessary, or even wise, to tell children of impressionable years a story that effectively comes down to a poor, abused little girl freezing to death one winter night?
Children young enough to be reading it for the first time are quite likely to be unaware of even the concept of mortality yet, and what makes it worse is that it is all so pointless. What did the girl gain from her death other than a paradise that, it must be admitted, she could equally easily have attained at a ripe old age like her grandmother?
In this I approve, like Horatio, antique Roman tendencies. Literature and philosophy are entirely different things, and they need not always find their perfection in their union. Philosophy demands reason. Most of the greatest poets and writers of history are too busy rousing your blood and stirring your soul to waste time on logic. Were Orestes and Electra right or wrong to kill Clytemnestra? Does it really matter, anyway? If the playwright can make you sympathize, the playwright’s job is done.
Not even the greatest writers can keep their political and philosophical views entirely out of their works, nor should they even try. But stating views and then getting on with it is one thing. Those who set out to prove points are usually forced to chase logic with such assiduity that there is little possibility of blood-rousing and soul-stirring – much as Homer would have been, had he stopped every few paragraphs for a commentary, however neatly inserted and beautifully written, about the relative merits of desires of the flesh and excellence of the soul.
Perhaps, in this as in most things, greatness is in knowing what not to do.
I was reading Mary Renault's chronicles of Alexander a few days ago, and she very specifically mentions the fact that kings should feel sorry for Hecabe.
This is all very well, and I feel Hecabe's grief as strongly as the next person, but what strikes me is that nobody ever wastes any sympathy on Cassandra. On Hector, yes, on Priam, plenty. And even though Paris generally comes in for a good number of "served him right" comments, at least he comes in for something.
Part of the problem is that Cassandra is such an insufferable know-it-all. If you had been the king who had his curtain drawn in the dead of night to be told half his Troy was burned, would you have been thrilled to have a daughter raising her hands and eyes to heaven as though to ask Apollo what he would have done if surrounded by such idiots? (Or, worse, turning back to shout, "I told you so!" as she was dragged in chains to the enemy ship?)
Cassandra's real tragic flaw is that she doesn't have one. She was the Seer fated to be disbelieved; had this been because of some girlish crime you could have winked slyly and said, "Ah, the girl's one of us!" But this was because she was so good and pure and virtuous that she refused even Apollo's advances, and commendable though this might be, it does give you the feeling that her shade is watching you from Hades with an air of pious disapproval. You can't really feel sorry for someone like that.
That, I think, is why so many people have a bit of sneaking sympathy for Clytemnestra. If your husband brought home a younger wife and she flaunted her nubile charms in the face of your mature but true affection (I'll do Clyemnestra a kindness and forget Aegisthus for the moment) you could at least have the satisfaction of calling her names. If she looked at you with large sorrowful eyes that saw every frivolity and transgression you had committed (here we bring Aegisthus back) while her city was being reduced to smoking ruins, and in all likelihood saw all the frivolities and transgressions you would commit in all the rest of your life, it would probably infuriate you even more than the bare fact of her existence.
The moral of the story? If you do know what's inside that nice big horse that the Greeks just happen to have left on the beach, don't tell people about it. They won't believe you, and when the warriors burst out of it and attack they'll only be annoyed with you for having been right.
Not to be a Tolkien Nazi (I did spring for the Extended Edition DVDs!), but there are legitimate simplifications of the plot that are necessary to take an epic to the screen, and then there are baffling alterations that leave you thinking that either the director foresaw some insurmountable wrangle that you cannot imagine or he simply wanted to play in the sandbox. My top half-dozen from Fellowship:
1. Bilbo Baggins Whining: The Bilbo in the book is a cheerful Hobbit who doesn’t snivel and who seems remarkably capable for his age and valiant after his own fashion. The Bilbo in the movie switches from senility to fecklessness to, sometimes, a combination of both. He snivels in Bag End and he snivels in Rivendell and you see in him not the slightest vestige of the happy-go-lucky protagonist of The Hobbit.
2. Aragorn Whining: The role is reasonably well scripted on the whole, but there are times when you wonder – especially after watching Bilbo snuffling over the harm the Ring has caused – why it is necessary for everyone to whine. The man is eighty-seven. He’s just a little too old for teenage angst. He knows that he is going to be King of Gondor and Arnor, and if sixty-seven years haven’t been enough for him to get over moping about something that happened three millennia ago then it’s hard to see how he’s fit to lead even a village with a population of two.
3. “If you want him, come and claim him.”: I can accept Liv Tyler as Arwen – after all, casting Arwen and Galadriel is like casting Helen of Sparta; you’re never going to please everybody. But need she ride around on Asfaloth brandishing her sword at the Nazgûl like a female Horatio Hornblower? You could, just possibly, take Galadriel riding to the rescue. Not Arwen, especially when it means no Glorfindel.
4. No Quest for the Sun: This is undeniably a bit demanding of me, but I loved that scene in the book. You can just see a disgruntled Dwarf muttering imprecations under his breath when Legolas runs off, leaving him beard-deep in snow, “to find the Sun.” What do you get instead in the movie? Twelve seconds of Elven shoes on the white stuff and a completely redundant scene about how the Ring is starting to claim Boromir.
5. Seventeen Missing Years: We know that it is the One Ring to Rule Them All and so on. All the same, the effect it had on Frodo was because he had possessed it for seventeen years; in the movie you’re left thinking it was more like seventeen days. The point about its insidious evil is that it is insidious; it doesn’t ambush you like a panther on a jungle trail.
6. Rivendell and the Hall of Fire: Yes, it’s a movie. Yes, it has to be short because if people are expected to sit in the theatre through five intermissions, they’ll probably discover more interesting things to do. All the same, a few minutes to establish that the Last Homely House was in fact home to somebody other than Elrond and Arwen would have caused no crisis. Besides, it’s all very well to create a general-purpose characterization for all Elves involving being aloof and cryptic and staring enigmatically into the distance, but without some music or art or poetry they are not really Elves.
Of course it sounds very cool to say – you imagine a large air-conditioned room filled with glass cases bearing a first-edition Gutenberg Bible, the very same copy of Romeo and Juliet that Shakespeare used to learn his lines, and possibly the lost plays of Sophocles.
Right. What I’m likely to end up with, if I am extremely lucky, is a couple of worm-eaten first editions from the nineteen twenties and a scrap of paper that looks aged enough for me to claim that it once belonged to Keats.
But how, when you get right down to it, do you start? Going to Crossword and asking the salesperson for an original copy of the First Folio is clearly a bad idea (especially if, as is no doubt the case, some enterprising person in this latter day has written a novel entitled First Folio about how reading the twenty-third line of each play in reverse chronological order will prove that the Dark Lady of the Sonnets was really Cleopatra in disguise).
The ideal – and Calvin-esque – way to begin, naturally, would be to print TIME MACHINE on the side of a large cardboard box, sit inside it, mutter strangely, and emerge an hour later with Cardenio under your arm.
Unfortunately that only works in comic strips.
I could go to Christie’s or Sotheby’s and buy whatever was coming up for auction. I could also have myself declared Empress of the Universe, and appropriate all old books everywhere on earth in the name of intergalactic peace or defending ourselves against the Bonga-Bongas planning to attack from Dimension X or something.
The Vertically Different Brothers returned from their day’s labour to find Sparkie spread-eagled on the floor. Try as they might, they could not wake her.
Vertically Different Brother Grumpy (who had never been fond of Sparkie and had strongly resisted all her attempts to make him change his name to Temperamentally Different) said, “Well, what now? Anyone fancy running like the wind to the fairy godmother’s cottage and asking her to sort it out?”
The Brothers stood in uncomfortable silence. None of them wanted to be the first to point out that running like the wind through ten miles of thick forest shrubbery was the kind of thing meant for people who were Vertically Different in the opposite direction.
“I propose,” Vertically Different Brother Doc said at last, “that we start a campaign. It’s what Sparkie would have done. The Queen is responsible for this, and the Queen must find a way to wake her.”
The Brothers built a plinth outside their house and laid Sparkie on it, and then stood around it brandishing boards demanding that the Queen send for the most experienced fairy godmothers in the realm to cure Sparkie. Along with them were two deer, a brown dog, a parrot, three cats and a duck, all of whom stood to have hard-won rights revoked if Sparkie were not there to plead their cause.
However, since gold does not mine itself, the Vertically Different Brothers had to abandon their vigil after a couple of days and return to their shovels and pickaxes. They were swiftly followed by the three cats, who decided that in any case dozing on warm rugs with saucers of cream was more important than having the right to their own law board.
By the time the lone figure on the proud black stallion approached the glade, it was empty except for Sparkie’s prone form and the parrot.
As the horse neared, it was possible to see that the rider was the kind of man who would never have appealed to Sparkie at all. He was probably the most different creature in all humanity. He had an imposing figure and noble bearing, and the wisdom gleaming in his sculpted face would have put Socrates to shame.
He leapt lightly from his horse.
“What fair maid is this?” he asked.
“Equal rights for feathered friends,” said the parrot, which had never been taught to say anything else.
