What am I doing? I have no idea. Wait! I should check out
WHAT IS DAVE DOING?!?
LISTENING: Tortoise, Millions Now Living Will Never Die
I love the title of this album – almost more than the album itself, which is sort of Ground Zero for Post-Rock. This means that there is pleasant instrumental music interspersed with synthesizer squelches and digital cut ups. After the epic twenty-minute opening track “DJED” the rest of the songs sort of quietly drift past. I enjoyed the music – some of it sounds Beach Boys inspired and there is a certain Zappa-like quality in the xylophone playing. It’s not the sort of album you air drum to though, but I guess that was the point – it IS called “after rock” after all.
READING: Anthony Trollope’s The Three Clerks
I’m sure many of you, after reading my slow, but stately progress through Anthony Trollope’s collected oeuvre are thinking to yourself that maybe you’d like to read an Anthony Trollope book, but before you do PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING:
Things People Don’t Like About Anthony Trollope:
1) I’M READING A BOOK, GODDAMIT, WHY IS THE AUTHOR TALKING TO ME?
Trollope has a habit of putting on the brakes mid-story to point out to his readers that they are only reading a story and the people they are investing all this emotional energy into are mere constructs of the author – sometimes discussing the construction of the novel or sometimes commenting on the characters behaviour (often to defend their actions). To modern readers, for whom it is the author’s sacred duty to create the artifice of reality in a novel, it can be jarring to suddenly find the writer intruding himself into the story. Here’s an example from Barchester Towers:
“We must now take leave of Mr. Slope, and of the bishop also, and of Mrs. Proudie. These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad, indeed, for they want the reality of sadness; but quite as perplexing, and generally less satisfactory. What novelist, what Fielding, what Scott, what George Sand, or Sue, or Dumas, can impart an interest to the last chapter of his fictitious history? Promises of two children and superhuman happiness are of no avail, nor assurance of extreme respectability carried to an age far exceeding that usually allotted to mortals. The sorrows of our heroes and heroines, they are your delight, oh public!–their sorrows, or their sins, or their absurdities; not their virtues, good sense, and consequent rewards. When we begin to tint our final pages with couleur de rose, as in accordance with fixed rule we must do, we altogether extinguish our own powers of pleasing. When we become dull, we offend your intellect; and we must become dull or we should offend your taste. A late writer, wishing to sustain his interest to the last page, hung his hero at the end of the third volume. The consequence was that no one would read his novel. And who can apportion out and dovetail his incidents, dialogues, characters, and descriptive morsels so as to fit them all exactly into 930 pages, without either compressing them unnaturally, or extending them artificially at the end of his labour? Do I not myself know that I am at this moment in want of a dozen pages, and that I am sick with cudgelling my brains to find them?”
It’s amusing, but also very distracting when you first encounter it.
2) I’M READING A BOOK, GODDAMIT, WHY IS THE AUTHOR STILL TALKING TO ME?
Trollope also has a curious habit of apostrophizing or moralizing in the middle of a story; once again, taking the reader out of the atmosphere he has so particularly created. Here is an example from the book I am currently reading, The Three Clerks, as one of the title characters is lured down the road of villainy:
“’Twas thus the devil pleaded for the soul of Alaric Tudor; and, alas! he did not plead in vain. Let him but have a fair hearing, and he seldom does. ‘Tis in this way that the truth of that awful mystery, the fall of man, comes home to us; that we cannot hear the devil plead, and resist the charm of his eloquence. To listen is to be lost. ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!’ Let that petition come forth from a man’s heart, a true and earnest prayer, and he will be so led that he shall not hear the charmer, let him charm ever so wisely.
‘Twas but a thin veil that the Hon. Undecimus Scott threw over the bait with which he fished for the honesty of Alaric Tudor, and yet it sufficed. One would say that a young man, fortified with such aspirations as those which glowed in Alaric’s breast, should have stood a longer siege; should have been able to look with clearer eyesight on the landmarks which divide honour from dishonour, integrity from fraud, and truth from falsehood. But he had never prayed to be delivered from evil. His desire had rather been that he might be led into temptation.
He had never so prayed–yet had he daily said his prayers at fitting intervals. On every returning Sunday had he gone through, with all the fitting forms, the ordinary worship of a Christian. Nor had he done this as a hypocrite. With due attention and a full belief he had weekly knelt at God’s temple, and given, if not his mind, at least his heart, to the service of his church. But the inner truth of the prayer which he repeated so often had not come home to him. Alas! how many of us from week to week call ourselves worms and dust and miserable sinners, describe ourselves as chaff for the winds, grass for the burning, stubble for the plough, as dirt and filth fit only to be trodden under foot, and yet in all our doings before the world cannot bring home to ourselves the conviction that we require other guidance than our own!”
This can definitely give an old-fashioned air to Trollope’s novels (even if you agree with what he wrote – which I do). Maybe they seemed old-fashioned even in their day.
3) THE WORLD’S CLUNKIEST SENSE OF HUMOUR
Trollope has been described as socially awkward by his biographers and with someone who lived such a rich interior life as his novels prove it’s easy to believe. Perhaps his awkwardness is reflected in a sense of humour, which for mid-Victorian England, was rather crude (although its crudeness is a blessing for the modern reader who isn’t as refined as his rigid forefathers). Like Dickens, Trollope thought it was rather hilarious to give his characters funny names that reflected their personalities or roles in the story. I guess no one had the heart to tell him that this was the corniest of corny humour – worse even than my penchant for puns. I don’t remember there being many names of that type in the Irish novels, but they start to appear in the Barchester novels – much to the reader’s dismay. Charles Dickens, for instance, in The Warden becomes Mr. Popular Sentiment – which isn’t even a name! Trollope really lets it fly in the The Three Clerks though: Mr. Gregory Hardlines, Mr. Neverbend, the lawyer Chaffanbrass, Mr. Manylodes. The sequence of the civil service examination is particularly painful with such examination candidates as Mr. Uppinall, Alphabet Precis and Mr. Minusex.
Once again, a habit that can bring you up short and take you out of the book as you shake your head at another outrageously silly name.
4) WHY DO I WANT TO READ ABOUT BOURGEOIS MIDDLE-CLASS BRITISH PEOPLE?
Finally, this is not a stylistic problem, but a reflection of social change. Many of us do not want to read stories about middle to upper-class British people anymore. We are uncomfortable with their privilege and unsympathetic to them. Modern writing is more cynical and emotionally reserved than it was 150 years ago. This is a matter of taste, which I cannot change. Let me just say though that few authors have recorded the hopes and dreams and struggles of anyone with as much skill and sympathy as Anthony Trollope.
So if you can get past what some might call Trollope’s deficiencies (I prefer to call them stylistic tics) or put away your Communist manifesto for a few days, you probably would really enjoy an Anthony Trollope novel. Many would recommend that you start with Barchester Towers and it is very good. I would personally recommend Can You Forgive Her? as his very best.
Anyway, I’m reading The Three Clerks right now. It is a very interesting study of the British Civil Service for which Trollope drew on his own experiences as a junior clerk. The embarrassing money troubles of one its title characters were said to have been drawn from Trollope’s own humiliating experiences. It is also a critique of the then-new examination system for positions within the Civil Service – a change Trollope was not a fan of. I have yet to finish it so my fingers are still crossed for Charley and Katie’s ill-starred romance.
LISTENING: The Monochrome Set, The Strange Boutique/Love Zombies
An art-rock band who rose to some prominence during the post-punk indie boom when 
catch-as-catch-can ruled the British music scene. Their cynicism, retro musical stylings and (most unforgivably in music) sense of humour guaranteed them the merest cult popularity. This CD collects their two albums for the Virgin offshoot DinDisc. Songs about love zombies, everyday French phrases (“RSVP”), Miss Universe, a man with a black moustache, the lead singer (“B-I-D Spells Bid”) and at least two instrumentals per album (including one that repeats itself over and over called “The Etcetera Stroll”) means I like it very much.
WATCHING: Supernatural
Upon Myllis’ recommendation I am watching the complete run of Supernatural and am now at Season Five, where the genie (i.e., Lucifer) is out of the bottle (i.e., Hell). (I always thought of it as a show for teenage girls so it seems strange to me that the two hunky guys are almost always wearing two or three layers of clothes including heavy jackets – very Puritanical!) I’m finding all the angel/demon plot elements a bit dull. Basically the angels are superpowerful bullies and boring and the demons are jerks and entertaining. As usual, the devil gets all the best tunes. (I guess it makes sense to introduce angels if you already have demons as supernatural beings, but it creates a very difficult “have your cake and it too” problem for a secular, of-course-we’re-atheists-we’re-nerds show to have to address the Creator at the centre of this mythology. They address it by not addressing it so God becomes the absent/possibly non-existent elephant in the room. It’s a bit of a cop out.) Although the end of every episode can get a little emo with a lot of lip biting and the making of the soulful eyes, the shows themselves are mostly angst-free and even the heaviness of the season arcs rarely intrude episode to episode in an obnoxious way. So far my favourite season was the third with Sam’s demonette Ruby and the heartless supernatural object hunter Bella, and Dean doomed to Hell. Such fun!
I love a show that has a sense of humour. I’ll leave you with this bit of silliness: