Something New

  We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.    

HUNGUS by Amber Esau [Te Herenga Waka University Press, NZ$30:00] ;  LIFTING THE ISLAND by David Eggleton [published by Red Hen Press, Pasadena, C.A.] $NZ36.79 ; NEW DAYS FOR OLD – Prose Poems by James Brown [Te Herenga Waka University Press, NZ$30:00]

I have to admit that I approached Amber Esau’s Hungus with some trepidation – not because I didn’t like it [it’s great] but because, as well as being a mere palagi, I am woefully ignorant of Samoan mores and traditions and also not young enough to understand all the patois that some younger people now use. Every so often I also had to look at the glossary at  the end, to explain some Samoan words. But having got used to this I was in the swing. Part of the blurb tells me that Amber Esau is  “a SaMoaRish… writer from Tamaki Makaurau” – in other words, she has [I think] some Samoan relatives and some Maori relatives … or have I misinterpreted that? If so, I’d like somebody to correct me.

First question: what is the Hungus which is depicted so vividly on the cover [by Katrina Steak]?   Is it a violent alien creature or an avatar of humanity, part of our own moods? The vocabulary refers to the Hungus as “she”, so maybe Amber Esau is really channelling some extreme thoughts and much youthful angst. Just a thought.  We are told “her Frankenstein tongues are not quite past the bit where the doctor says ‘It’s alive!!!’”  … but despite the early parts of this collection, the Hungus itself soon disappears.

Much of this collection has to do with young people – teenagers and young adults. We are in the area of youngish people jostling in crowds – presumably in Auckland -  and getting foods from MacDonalds and being smothered by television and gossiping or working and hanging out. There are ironic jabs at KFC as seen in the poem @Mantis where a creature is baffled by the way rubbish is thrown about. In this environment,  adolescents are aware of what cliches are. In a brief, sleek poem Amber Esau tells us [recalling her adolescence] “To want or wannabe is the only question Shakespeare / and the Spice Girls were looking to answer. Wanna / say they knew that’s what fia meant, too. / Sometimes, I want and want / and want so succinctly, / I become a cliché .” Esau is clear about the power of dreams, and how different the world looks in the morning. It is made clear in the last of the Hungus: Ulo Bolos poems  “At night, she braids all her heads so they don’t tangle in her sleep and when she wakes up, her heads are wild, scraping with fruit flies.”  A similar idea is given to us in the poem Space Cadet, clearly about a young man, which ends “The man from Mars with lasers in his eyes, glue from his throat. / He’s the threat every parent uses against their kids./ After too much fuel, he’ll blast the doors in, holding all the exit signs, / and slur into the crooks of his sharp corners / wondering where his high score went. / In the morning, the man is just a man, while the space boy is still trying to roll free.” Dreams have to turn into reality.

In this world, there are inevitably the matters of sex and sexuality and gender. On the whole Esau is discreet about these matters, but they are there. And  growing teenagers have their first dealing with drugs in the poem “Quickocrisy”. There are one-off experiences, including the sheer interest in listening to a singer in a pub.

But throughout there is an awareness of Samoan culture and Samoan families.

There are many reflections on the sea and the sky and ships and shores as seen in Samoa. One of the very best is Night at the Neptune which is as much protest and fear as it is about beauty if you can see it. It reads in full “Under a blackboard sky / a plane smears the chalk /and the stars get confused. / Girl, we are trying to accept all / the patterns that we share / but someone keeps shooting / metal from the clouds, / fucking up the water. Isn’t / singing like manu, / chesting like tangata, /  tailing like ika, enough / to remind us we dream / the seams? We massage / the stiches with bone dust, / tuck our feathers behind / out ears, say, ‘E manaia lava ia’ / and we must need it,eh.”  

Dealing with Samoan families in such poems as  Relative Power Cuts, we hear the liveliness and gossip about the things the faifeau’s son [the parson’s son]  has been up to. There are a number of poems about teenagers being mouthy, who would then be told off by nana and other elders, telling them they were “tautala’titi” – basically meaning cheeky. There could be cattiness of teenagers as in the poem Don’t Trust Islanders; not to mention the poem Rainbow’s End, wherein school children are rivals for attention. There are comments about  the Christian faith as in the poem Holding the Hologram Jesus. There are also many references to Manaia – a protector and messenger from the spirit world as in the poem The Uranus Trap.

Esau styles can be many. There are some experimental works. [Is her The Coaxial Triptych really a poem or more of a game?] There are prose poems such as the young woman’s quest 2 Puna Idol. There are many neat brevities, such as Silhouettes which reads in full “It’s possible to see each other’s pain. / Watch the moana pull back / the frothed shore, revealing / the glass we might’ve made with the sun / is still sand.” While some poems are almost cryptic and require careful reading, some of  Esau’s poems are very clear, especially the poem Tasi /Gree, dealing with the killing of baby sharks. And there is almost a surrealist poem which tells us of family waiting for a dinner in the restaurant.

When I consider the whole of this collection, I have to point out that this review covers only some of Hungus, even though I have read it all carefully. It deals with far more things that I could analyse in one review. It is a very detailed book. What I am sure of is that Amber Esau has made a great piece of work, and I see her as balancing carefully Samoan experience and Auckland experience.

 *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

 

David Eggleton has become one of New Zealand’s major poets since the 1970’s and there must be only very few readers of poetry in New Zealand who have not read some of his works. Eggleton has not only produced many collections of poetry but he is also known for his essays and his role in editing and writing for literary magazines. For the record, you may find on this blog my reviews of some of his collections, such as The Conch Trumpet,   Edgeland,   The Wilder Years  - Selected Poems, and  Respirator. Also – given that the publishers are American - there is a glossary at the end of Lifting the Island explaining words that might be unfamiliar for Americans.

Born in Auckland, Eggleton is – says Wikipedia – “of mixed European, Tongan and Rotuman descent”. What is clear in nearly all his poetry is his interest in both the New Zealand context and the Pasifika contest. One blurb describes Lifting the Island as “a kind of lyrical world map of the South Pacific”. This is true in one way as there are many poems that are almost romantic. But Eggleton is also ready to deal with the negative things.  Lifting the Island runs to 160 pages of poetry. It is divided into six parts – Lifting the Island, The Shallows, The Great Wave, The Whale Road, The Wall and Beacon. First point, while the six parts each has its own view of a particular place or island, nevertheless many poems are not dealing with any particular place. Secondly, while I read with great interest all of this collection , there is simply no way that I can analyse everything that Eggleton has written.

So I will deal solely with some favourites. The opening poem Lifting the Island presents people at the beach on an island. It is followed by the poem Flying in Southside, which appears to be presenting the part of Auckland where his father worked and where Eggleton was very young. In a variety of poems he gives his idea of, after an all-night party, Albert Park which is “like an old magnolia’s magnificent candelabrum - / flames of white flowers which gutter and go out - / life goes on without us in particular”.   Or again there is the poem Isthmus which gives a panorama of Auckland, but not entirely a flattering one. I shuddered at the line “a concrete hypodermic lit by gamble fever” which seems to me the most correct depiction of the crass Sky Tower. So there is much of Auckland to begin with. Later the poem Soundings gives us all the noises [some delightful, many annoying] that one can hear in a city. As for Tomorrow, Eggleton writes a list of things about what the future could be, but not in a naïve way – who knows, good or ban, where the future will go?

Turning to nature there are more natural things, such as Moonshine; or wherein “Rain brings Fred Astaire’s tap-tap across the roof, / before a razz of jazz is given tumultuous applause, / the ozone in the air extinguished like snuff / of golden beeswax melted in candles. / Petulant petals quiver in crimson. / Rain bodies forth a spectacular earthworm welcome / from hitherto undistinguished lawn.”  Perfect description. As sound are The Shallows, and The Colour. The long poem Methusalem is a full panorama as seen from one perspective.

When getting further into the section called The Great Wave, we reach some way into the mores of Pasifika. The moods of the sea are all around. Belief in the Pacific does not exactly belittle Christianism and belief on the island, but it does place it against the majesty of the ocean itself. In the poem Brightness we get pure description of the best sort. And speaking of the poem The Great Wave itself there is the torch of a fable that may have been handed down through the ages by the elders. Read it for how carefully Eggleton slides into images of a forbear titanically fighting the currents between New Zealand and more northern Pacific islands.

Odes to Weary Dunlop seems to be interesting and surprising memories of watching movies at the flicks [often movies about war] when he was a kid.

After all these poems I have so far praised, there is one poem which I think should be plastered on every N.Z. high-school blackboard – and be read by adults too. This is The Navigators, a long poem about the migration in ancient times of Pasifika, colonising the South Pacific. It is an heroic story in itself, but the main point comes at the end, reminding us that the seas are now rising, climate-change is here, and some islands are in peril of being drowned.   Quite different is Explorers, which jokingly deals with how different gods quarrel with one other and how they see human beings. As for the arts, there are poems about artists, like Hundert Wasser and Len Lyne’s Wind Wand.

I think it is fair to say that in the section called The Wall, there is a real tendence to deal with moods and what is more sombre. But in the section called Beacon, poems like Distant Ophir and Sunday Songs are a real recall to childhood. Dealing, too, with the South Island [ Eggleton now lives in Dunedin], there is a detailed and moving poem about the Christchurch earthquake Quake, 22^nd February. And, in another thoughtful poem that amounts to a work of protest, there is The Plastisphere, chastising all the plastic junk that is now polluting the seas.

As always, I have done no more than highlighting a selection of the many poems in this collection. As always, very readable.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.

 

Prose poems are a special art. Baudelaire did it brilliantly when he wanted to. T.S. Eliot did it occasionally. Others did it every so often. In New Days for Old, James Brown gives us 185 prose poems. In this collection,  James Brown is many things. He is a jester, a joker, just a feller looking around, a child remembering things, and sometimes an adult deliberately acting like a child. Yes, there are moments of sheer da-da. Yet often enough it adds up to truly thoughtful ideas. To begin with the obvious, New Days for Old is funny, very readable, often silly, enjoyable if you take it prose poem by prose poem, and opens by quoting the words of another writer “Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious.” Quite so.

Take, for example, the outlook of a child when dealing with a disabled man. Here it is in full. “We take lasagna round to John because ‘He’s fallen through the cracks,’ says my mother. That must be why it’s bad luck to step on them. ‘The  trickle-down theory is a plates of pish-posh, she adds. When we arrive, John is sword fighting in the air with a cake fork.” [p.11] Is this as seen through the naivety of a child? Or has there been irony injected by an adult looking back? The same goes for the passages about school days. And much later an adult voice sees a child cringing at the awful noises adults can make. Thus  “They were a loquacious people. Even their ears could talk. I saw a small boy crouched in a corner covering his, trying to make them stop.”  [p.87] 

            There are moments of almost perfect joy….but only sometimes, as said here  “A man, beached like a seal in foam, spoons his flippers through wet sand. Yoga lady salutes the sun. Bookmark woman prolongs a handstand, her landing strip perfectly balanced. In calm days, you can breaststroke through the rocky channel, following your shadow over sand and seaweed. Yes, it is idyllic, but one must return to one’s towel and uniform.” [p.22]

            There is a both jocular and thoughtful statement which is altogether true, at least as metaphoric, but deeply ironic.  Thus “A soft-voiced man in a brown suit speaks to Jesus’s offer of salvation, his hands proffering pamphlets like doves. A young Greenpeace woman with her clipboard. A man outside KFC claims he was once fried chaffinch. The Earth’s rotation is caused by our footsteps. If enough people walk in one direction, they can turn the Earth toward them.” [p.39].  There are the oddities of people’s behaviour. And there is the loneliness of small towns, as in “The small town was as quiet as its museum. I walked the rows of stuffed birds like a general inspecting his troops, each one fixing me with an angry glass stare….”   [p.51]

There are accounts of trying of find work, which may or may not be true and may or may not be part of his autobiography, such as his work as being a “Visual Display Artist” [i.e. one of those people who dress up mannequins for shop-front display]. There is a prose poem which could be true for many people who have experienced Fiordland [me being one of them]. It reads in full “ The sandflies came from my lost decade. We stood topless in a lonely Fiordland shore seeing who could  withstand them for the longest. Neither of us was going anywhere.” [p.69]

There is the perfectly absurd prose poem which tells what could be the true story of  Hansel and Gretel. And let’s face it, James Brown can play silly games. There is an ongoing joke about babies, made by adding the word “baby” to the titles of movies. But then he hits you with things that are all too true. Take this: “The beach is speckled in summer snow. I walk the tideline pecking at the polystyrene globules. A couple of other broilers strut past clucking and tutting. ‘Rubbish’ we agree. Every high tide, all our little chicken come home to roost.”  [p.67].

Much to think. Much to laugh. Much good reading.

Footnote: On this blog, you may find my reviews of two there earlier collections of James Brown’s work. They are The Tip Shop and his earlier Floods Another Chamber  I have to admit that I was rather too severe in dealing with the latter one.

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year ago. 

 “FALTER TOM AND THE WATER BOY” by Maurice Duggan [published in 1957]; and “POBBY AND DINGAN” by Ben Rice [published in 2000]

            Occasionally I read children’s books – a habit I have had not only from when I was a child, but also when I read to my children when they were young… and sometimes I read children’s book just for my own pleasure. Two that stand out for me are these two.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

 

Maurice Duggan [born 1922; died 1974] was one of New Zealand’s best known writers of short stories [he once tried to write a novel but decided it was not for him]. His stories are not whimsical but usually serious and explore facets of New Zealand life, good or bad. But he also wrote two long stories for children. One of them was Falter Tom and the Water Boy. It was given to me as a present when I was about ten. It was dedicated “To Nicky” and I thought that meant it was dedicated to me. It was of course dedicated to Duggan’s one-and-only child Nicholas. [And I add that I personally came to hate being called Nicky, though I’m perfectly happy to be called Nick.]

Falter Tom and the Water Boy is in many ways a sad story, but one that children can understand. Falter Tom is the name given to an old man because he limps and therefor falters. He lives alone. He is an old seaman, now retired, but he often spins tales about his days at sea. His accent suggests that he came from Ireland. He lives near the beach of a shore in New Zealand, and he loves to walk along the beach every morning. One morning he sees a strange creature, almost a boy but also a sea creature, swimming near the shore. The creature calls himself a Water Boy… and he shows Falter Tom how to swim under water simply by following him. So, even in full dress, Falter Tom can follow the water boy, even at the top speed of the fastest ship. Most of the story is simply all the things that can be seen in the depth of the sea, the fish and the sharks, the ships that have sunk, the corals and other wonders. The Water Boy has apparently lived for thousands of years. But the time comes when the Water Boy tells Falter Tom that he has to choose. Does he want to become a Water Boy himself, forever living deep in the sea; or does he want to return to the beach. He chooses to live in the deep. But, as in many stories, the ending is ambiguous, as  Falter Tom has left his cap on the beach. And any intelligent child would understand that Falter Tom had simply drowned. If you like, this is the story of a man who loved the sea so much that he thought he could live forever in the sea. When I was a child, the story puzzled me a little, much as I liked it. Now I take it to mean that death is inevitable. Yet the way Maurice Duggan wrote it Falter Tom and the Water Boy shows how wonderful the sea is and all the things that it contains… yet there is a sense of loss.  

By the way, it is interesting to note that Falter Tom and the Water Boy was published in New Zealand by the old Paul’s Book Arcade ; but it was also published in Faber and Faber in London, so it clearly had a good readership. But even more important, it had earlier been published in the old New Zealand School Journal, one of the many worthwhile things that no longer exist.  

 *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

 

            There is a sense of loss in Pobby and Dingan too, but also with an awareness of achievement. Pobby and Dingan was Ben Rice’s first book - a novella -  published in 2000, and it was immediately a hit. Apparently it was made into a film… but I hate to think what the film was like, as the novella is written in the first-person by a young boy; and his unique voice carries it along. Since writing Pobby and Dingan Rice has produced only a few works and some poetry. Rice was born and raised in England, but he was interested in Australia and Pobby and Dingan is set in Australia.  Rice now lives in Australia.

            A simple synopsis: In the harsh Aussie outback, in a mining town called Lightning Ridge, men are digging in the hope of hitting precious opal. Kellyanne Williamson is the daughter of a miner. She is a little girl who has two imaginary friends called Pobby and Dingan. She is so often seen walking around, introducing people to her imaginary friends, that people play along with her and politely talk to Pobby and Dingan. Her brother Ashmol, some years older than her, makes fun of her and says Pobby and Dingan are just made up nonsense. One day, her father says she will look after Pobby and Dingan when Kellyanne is at school. But when her father comes home from work, he has completely forgotten about the imaginary people.  At which point Kellyanne becomes very sick… and continues to get worse and worse. In fact she has to go to hospital.  And from this point on, Ashmol does his very best to find, or at least to be able to say what has happened, to Pobby and Dingan. Ashmol can swear and usually speak in a very Aussie crude way, but he is a real and believable young kid. There are other issues in the tail [Ashmol’s dad gets in trouble with another digger who thinks he is trespassing on his land]. But the backbone of the story is what can only be called the dogged heroism of the boy who realises that he has to do something for his little sister as her condition gets worse and worse; and who tries to rally others to help him.

            In this case I will not give away exactly how it all ends, but like Falter Tom and the Water Boy it does touch on the inevitable nature of death. Is it a tear-jerker? In a way it is, but it is also true to the way children think about life and death. 

 

 

Something Thoughful

    Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.  

                                              WEATHER MAKES FOR MOODS

            In the 18^th century a poet called James Thomson decided to write a long poem about The Seasons – yes, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and a closing Hymn thanking God. The whole poem covers over one hundred pages of tight print. In the 18^th century, this over-long poem was greatly admired and seen as a classic. It was the type of book that could be given to erudite people to read, and it was lauded by parsons and those with great patience. For the fact was that Thomson wanted to describe every flower, every snow drop, every tree that lost its leaves when the cold came, every cloud that changed, in minute detail. When I was a teenager, I thought I should read it and I diligently ploughed my way through it. I won’t belittle poor old Thomson. Occasionally he came up with some good lines. Helen Gardner, when she edited The New Oxford Book of English Verse in 1972, was courteous enough to include three of Thomson’s moments which she headed as A Winter Night, Spring Flowers and The Autumnal Moon… and they are pretty good. But oh woe! How hard it is to read all of The Seasons.  By the end of the 18^th century, James Thomson’s poem was very out of favour. I think it was sarcastic Oscar Wilde [I might be wrong]  - in the late 19^th century – who said that Thomson’s The Seasons was what you would give as a present to somebody you didn’t like. Very few people now read all of The Seasons. My own view is that you would get more pleasure from listening to Vivaldi’s bright and sharp Four Seasons than from trying to read all of James Thomson’s The Seasons.

Now why am I grumbling along about the seasons? It’s because I am aware of how my moods can change when the weather changes.  And I am sure this is true of everybody else. So here is my story.

Last Thursday the rain rained and rained and rained over Auckland. It was not that awful battering rain that struck us all three years ago when there was the Cyclone Gabrielle where the rain was relentless and very destructive. Rather it was an endless pitter and patter strong enough to being annoying all day and bad enough to make it difficult to control an umbrella. Above all day where dark grey and black clouds. And what did I do? After one visit to the supermarket, coming home wet, I stayed indoors. And I remained grumpy. And listless. And not wanting to do anything. And finding all the books on my shelves uninteresting. And wondering what was the point of anything. And having a coffee. And having a tea. And not being satisfied. And wondering what was the purpose of life. You get the idea, don’t you? It’s the weather that makes you either happy or morose.

But Lo!! Friday [the following day] there was no cloud whatsoever over Auckland. The sun shone brightly. The sky was pure blue all day long – no clouds whatsoever. The temperature was warm and mild. And I was busy, and happy, and taking a long walk, and thinking up ideas, and reading some good poetry [and some bad ones], and watered the flowers [not that they needed much water after the previous day], and happily helping make the dinner and doing the washing-up whistling and seeing life as wonderful….

And in the following days, the weather was half-and-half. Bright sunlight… then a little drizzling… then some sunlight and a nice breeze… then some drizzling… and so on. Everybody knows the old joke about  Auckland “If you don’t like Auckland’s weather, just wait  half-an-hour”. 

 I have cheated in writing this post. After all, these events happened in one season… but the moodiness of weather is a reality. I wonder how moody Thomson was when he wrote about winter even if he sweetened it up?

Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.   

                “THE BLACK MONK” by Charlotte Grimshaw  (Penguin, $NZ38:00)

 

The Black Monk is the first novel that Charlotte Grimshaw has produced since ten years ago. A prolific novelist, she has spent those ten years considering other matters, in particular the family she came from. In 2021 she produced The Mirror Book [reviewed in this blog] - non-fiction and giving a largely negative version of her parents, C.K.[Karl] Stead and his wife Kay. When I had read the first twenty pages or so of The Black Monk, I thought I was a very clever chap because I twigged that many of the main characters were really the Steads and their friends but given fictitious names. Before I crowed, however, my weekly copy of the N.Z. Listener arrived with a good review of The Black Monk by the very capable journalist Philip Matthews, and he hit most of the points that I was going to make.

So let me give you a simple synopsis of a part of The Black Monk.

Alice Lidell writes books for children. Alice is concerned that her brother Cedric [nicknamed “Ceddy” ] is becoming a hopeless addict and alcoholic. But when she tries to tell her parents about it, and pleads that they should do something about it, they say that Alice is being too concerned or even hysterical; and Cedric is fine. They deny the truth. But Cedric is getting worse.  Alice’s mother is Rula [as in “Ruler” – a domineering person], a would-be painter. Alice’s father Thom is an M.P. and is often away in Wellington. They are, in effect, in a state of denial.

Denial in the face of the obvious is what Charlotte Grimshaw said about her parents in The Mirror Book. Her mother Kay claimed that she wasn’t in the least upset by her husband Karl’s philandering… when in fact she was often desperately upset. She wanted to present her home as peaceful as befits a much admired academic and novelist and poet.

In The Black Monk, Alice Lidell tells us that her mother Rula often belittled her; and when Alice was a teenager Rula encouraged her to be a sort of teenage “rebel”, ridiculing teachers, consorting with deadbeats and getting into trouble. And Alice witnesses her gay friend Ezra being killed by a hit-and-run car. All this is almost the same in The Mirror Book.

So I could continue pointing out other characters who are important in The Black Monk, such as the psychotherapist Dr. Botherway [a deliberately amusing name] ; the German woman Javine who may be a friend of Alice but who is severe in tone and carries the guilt of having parents who had been Nazis; the cousin of Alice who is almost the same age as Alice and who can update her on doings in her family etc. But all this is not the core of the novel.

If Alice Lidell writes books for children, Charlotte Grimshaw writes for adults and much of The Black Monk is really her examination of her own mind, her attempt to understand what or who she is. Alice decides to write a book called The Black Monk and Charlotte Grimshaw is writing a book called The Black Monk. As I see it, this is a novel about a novelist who has sometimes lost reality and then has to look back and see if she has made a mistake. Did she really remember things accurately? Do novelists think they have heard  a conversation, made use of it in a novel, and then realise that it was merely something the author had made up? Then, of course, there is the matter of “the black monk” itself. Who or what is this? As used in this novel, it is a mysterious person who sometimes meets Alice especially when she is in distress and who then is no longer seen. Is this the man sometimes called Anton? Or is it simply another fantasy of the author? Sometimes also this novel refers to Jung’s idea of  “the shadow” within us – that is, the negative side of human beings, including our capacity to hurt other people, lie etc. but which we try to suppress.

I apologise in advance to Charlotte Grimshaw for my conclusion;  but I see this novel as largely an exercise in psychotherapy, gradually healing personal wounds. “Rula” [Kay], who blighted her young life, died in 2023. Charlotte’s older brother Oliver died in 2024. I do not know anything about how or why Oliver died so I am only guessing that he was the basis for  “Cedric”. But the healing comes towards the end when “Alice’s” mother “Rula” dies and “Alice” now sees her as somebody who had gone through hard times and who had some qualities to be admired.

Footnote: This thing about The Black Monk. The blurb reminded me that Charlotte Grimshaw had written a short story some years back called The Black Monk and now her novel of the same name. Both were inspired by a novella by Chekhov. The Black Monk was published in 1893. It concerns a young man called Kourin who has delusions of greatness. He tries to shake off his delusions by going to a rural area where he can cool down. But in the twilight he meets a black monk who questions his sanity. He believes he will save mankind… … but in the end his delusions kill him. Again, it’s up to Charlotte Grimshaw to interpret what the black monk means to her. But I think in this novel it signals how authors can also have grandiose ideas and mis-interpret what they had seen, just as “Alice” does.

 

Something Old

    
Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year ago. 

“THE LITTLE CHRONICLE OF MAGDALENA BACH” by Esther Meynell (First published under a pseudonym in 1924; then published in 1925 under her own name)

 

Very well – see me as an eccentric if you will, but I have this awful habit of  trying to catch up with books which have sat on my over-crowded shelves for eons and which I have never read. Case in point is Esther Meynell’s The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach. So I got to it and read it, sometimes while listening to CDs of Bach’s works. Is it a masterpiece? Not at all, but in its day it was very popular and sold very well. Who was Esther Meynell [born 1878 – died 1955]? Before she was married she was Esther Moorhouse, but she married a man whose cousins were the well-known literary Meynell family [I won’t go on about them]. She wrote many books, mainly guides to quaint rural areas, but she was also interested in classical music and she wrote a number of short books about composers. The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach is told in the first person by Magdalena, the second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach, who outlived him. The opening dedicates the book To All Who Love Johann Sebastian Bach. So here is the life of Bach as seen by his wife. And one interesting thing is that this novel, written by an English woman, was translated and published in Germany where it was also much admired. But, at the very end of the novel, there is what I would call a warning. It reads “Those familiar with the known and authenticated facts of Bach’s life will realise that certain episodes in this book are imaginary.” Ah yes. If we are alert we will realise that The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach is partly fiction. The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach was written by a prim and polite lady, Esther Meynell, whose tastes were more of the Romantic era rather than of the 20^th century. But let us be charitable. In its own way it is charming, and it does tell us much about Bach’s work and achievements.

Magdalena begins by telling us that she is writing after her husband has died at the age of 67. She is 57 years old and she lives in Leipzig. Bach’s first wife was Maria Barbara who had given birth to seven children, some of who had died in infancy, and Maria Barbara had also died. Magdalena tells us that the first time she saw Bach was when he was playing the great organ in St. Katharine’s Church in Hamburg where he was Capellmeister and, she says “his brilliance with the pedal-board was as though they were wings”. Magdalena’s father was a trumpeter and her family were all musicians. Magdalena herself was a soprano and had sung in royal courts. But she was unsure of Bach when he first spoke with her. She says “Now I could not claim that he was handsome – few of the Bachs are that – but he had a countenance that set forth the power of his mind.” [Page 11] In 1721 he proposed to her. They married. And from this point on, she speaks of Johann Sebastian Bach as if he is a saint. She also notes that, while she regarded his The Well-Tempered Clavichord as beautiful, he saw it as mere practice for his students.

Magdalena then goes back to talking about Bach when he was young and before she knew him. He was born in Eisenach. He wrote oratorios on Saints Matthew, John, Mark and Luke before she knew him. He always cried when he wrote about Golgotha. She first heard his St. Matthews Passion in Leipzig on Good Friday – but at first his St. Matthews Passion was not regarded as his best work. He learned Latin thoroughly, as every scholar then did, and life-long he read the works of Martin Luther. As a boy he had a fine voice as a choirboy.  As a youngster he played the violin in inns for pennies [or rather the German equivalent]. Soon he was adept at the Organ and he had the advantage of having “large hands” – meaning that he could spread his fingers across the key-board…. And while all this seems true, Magdalena can’t help telling us a sheer fantasy tale about young Bach being hungry and after a long walk and having no money or food, and he had to eat a fish that had been thrown out a window. And lo! The fish had swallowed a coin, so he was able to buy some real food…. Anyway, back to reality, Bach got his first post as an organist when he was 19, at Arnstdt. He was greatly impressed  by the chorales of Buxtehude which he heard at Lubeck but, she says, he once almost got into a fight when he was accosted in the street; and he also was very annoyed when a woman wanted him to set her mediocre poetry to music. And naturally he was often angry when choirboys did not practice. It was about this time that he married Maria Barbara. At the age of 22 he moved to Muhlhausen, then moved to the court of Duke Whilhelm of Saxe-Weimer, where he became the Court Organist. He greatly admired the music of Handel but Handel had moved to England – even though he was a Saxon too – and so he consoled himself by reading whatever scores of Handel he could get. He could be very severe with Organ builders who were lax and did not produce the type of sound that he demanded. He moved from Saxe-Weimer to Cothen -  and it was in Cothen that his first wife died.  

She turns to telling us of his life with her [Magdalena]. She says he sometimes smoked and sometimes he wrote works for Magdalena, but he was very diligent . She says: “Save for such brief interludes, through all our married life I never knew him to waste time, which he always said was one of the most precious gifts and would have to be accounted for before His throne. Day after day he taught, he composed, he conducted, he played the Organ, the clavier, the viola, and other instruments, he instructed his family, and whenever he had spare time he would read in the many books he had slowly collected, especially in those books of theology, which so interested him, though my weaker mind found them somewhat difficult, not to speak of some of them being in Latin.” [Page 35] Yet there were also times when: “There were certain things about him that made me afraid at times , especially at first – a rock-like sternness that underlaid his kindness, but more than all a strange longing he had all his busy life for the end, for death. I only glimpsed it now and then, for I think he felt it frightened me, and I was younger than he and much less brave.” [Page 61]. To put it another way, he was obsessed by the rule of God.

Magdalena looked after the surviving children of the late Maria Barbara, “So I had a complete little family to mother from the very first, and, owing probably to the kind example of their father, these young ones soon began to love me and to confide in me their little pleasures and troubles, though Friedemann, as the biggest boy and responsible companion of his father was at first a little more aloof from me.” [Page 74] Friedemann was to be a rascal in every way for the rest of his life – at one point, too tired to write a sonata commissioned for another city, he simply past off one of his father’s works as his own. Yet Friedemann and his brother Emanual were to be Bach’s greatest offspring. As Magdalena says, for years after her husband’s death, Friedemann and Emanual were admired more than the forgotten Johann Sebastian Bach…. and of course they are both still admired. Magdalena says Bach never wrote any music without showing his work to her before anybody else. As the years went by Magdalena gave birth to 13 children, so Bach had sired 20 children. But much later she says: “All this time our young family increased around us, though alas, when the cradle had been replenished it was so often made empty again by the grudging hand of death. There were times, I confess, when I felt it cruel to bear children but to lose them – all the hopes and love buried in the little graves beside which Sebastian and I have often stood hand in hand, silent.” [Page 159]. Child mortality was terribly common in the 18^th century - and earlier and later.

And at this point we have two of those rather too-true-to-be-true comments that Magdalena sometimes makes about Bach. She says of Bach “… he was deeply attached to his family, and cared much for the society of his children. Occasionally he would flare up if they made too great a noise with their playings when his mind was full of music…” [Page 78] She also says “Even in our bedchamber there was a clavichord and I have known him to rise up at midnight and, wrapping an old cloak about him, play very softly for an hour or more. It never disturbed the sleeping children, only sleeping their dreams….” [Page 181]. Frankly I can’t believe that Bach didn’t often blow his stack when his children were being rowdy as he was trying to write or compose, and I would be very surprised if some of his children didn’t like their father making noises when the midnight hour was approaching.

Bach and his large family left Lothen and went to live in Leipzig in 1723, where Bach spent his last 25 years. He was at first upset by the poor singers he was to direct and he found the main organ in Leipzig to be inadequate. He had difficulty with the boys at St.Thomas Schule, where he put down the law that every choir should have at least three trebles, three alti, three tenors and three basses, and they should all be scholars. He very nearly got into a fight with Herre Gorner who was playing the organ so badly that – says Magdalena – Bach  “flew into a rage, snatching off his wig, flung it at Gorner’s head, telling him that he could have done better to be a cobbler than an organist.”  Bach was interested in an early version of the pianoforte, but he rejected it because he found the hammer-action to have heaviness to the touch. He became the Director of the city’s Musical Union. He did not like amateurs who wanted to be given lessons when they had no talent, but he did take in many who did have at least a little talent.

Magdalena says “There was a curious contradiction about Sebastian: in the things of daily life he was careful and meticulous and economical, in the making of music he had a marvellous prodigality and richness. But it must not be forgotten that this richness, though truly the gift of God, was based on hard and unceasing work and study all his youth, indeed, fully until he was thirty years of age – or, I might say with greater truth, till the day of his death. His mind never slumbered in the lethargy of self-satisfaction, and he never ceased the task of revision of his music – he was engaged on that work of his dying – and I always felt the words of Ecclesiasticus belonging to him, ‘For a dream cometh through the multitude of business.’ ” [Page 150] There is no doubt that he was a very religious man. She lists all the major works that Bach had achieved. They were organ music, chamber music, church cantatas, great Latin Masses, five different sets of music related to Gospel accounts of Our Lord’s Passion, suites, partitas, and many others. But in his last years, he lost his sight. Being blind, he wasn’t able to perform in front of the King of Prussia in Berlin. He died on July 29, 1750.

I am not an expert on the life of Bach, so I accept most of what Esther Meynell says about the central facts of Bach’s life, and I found The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach    to be very informative in many ways as well as being very charming. But all the time I am aware that Magdalena’s writing was fiction – a diary that never was. I think it is likely that the lives of Bach and Magdalena with a very, very large family would have had more quarrels and arguments than Esther Meynell suggests. But it does not deter me from listening to more of Johann Sebastian Bach.

  *.  *.  *. *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *   *.  *.  *.  *.  *

Footnote: I am a barbarian. I have never played a musical instrument and I cannot read musical notes. By contrast my wife teaches piano and she has to explain to me what certain musical terms mean. But one thing we have is our love for classical music… and good jazz. Sometimes I rile-up our [adult] children by telling them that the only music worth listening to is classical music and jazz – but of course I am a little bit of a hypocrite as there are some pop songs I like, not to mention old-time ditties and show tunes. Still, classical and jazz music are our greatest delight. And sometimes, when we are driving along in our car listening to the Concert Programme, we might come in halfway to a classical work, and then we play a game of seeing what the name of classical work is. Sometimes she gets it first and sometimes I get it first. So at least I know what classical music sounds like and am well acquainted with it. By the way, back in the 1960’s many jazz-men decided that Johann Sebastian Bach was one of their heroes. Old Bach, they said, was the first guy to really swing. Too true.

Something Thoughtful

     Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

                      ANNOYING THINGS IN T.V. AND “SOCIAL MEDIA”                      

Yes I worry about these things. I’m sure there are some things worth watching and/or listening to on T.V. and “social media”, but most of the time we are confronted with sheer dross. Of course the answer is to turn off the switch, sit down and read a good book. But there are far too many things that seem to be worth watching. So in we plunge.

Consider first one part of  “social media” known as Facebook, originally intended to be a place where people could express their views and discuss things in a reasonable way. In no time it became a place where people would verbally shout or swear at each other with insults rather than with anything like a genuine debate. There are still occasionally some items in Facebook that are worth watching, including old interviews or clips from the works of some comedians. More likely, though, there is gossip about movie stars, statements about which film actor has the most money, long “biographies” about actors, and inane nonsense about which actor is  “the greatest of all time”. “Greatest of all time” is one of those phrases that  Facebook loves to use. Facebook is also notorious for using the wrong photo when writing about a well known person e.g. an article about the American actor Graham Green is presented with a photo of the English novelist Graham Green, a completely different person. It happens all the time. At the same time, let us remember that much of Facebook is put together by A.I. , so I suggest that we are really watching what robots have put together.

In fairness there are much better T.V. channels than Facebook, in which one can find intelligent debates, documentaries, matters of history, news, and worthwhile music. And remember there is always Al Jazeera to give you a far better balanced view of current international news than we get in New Zealand.

Speaking about T.V., tired of predictable British detective sagas we decided to look out for foreign T.V. shows on Netflix  – requiring sub-titles, and therefore probably turning away people who don’t like reading sub-titles. We hit on two very interesting  Spanish serials.

The first was “based on a true story”. That phrase is often misused; but this one seemed to stick with facts. It was El Caso Asunta [The Asunta Case], a case that was widely followed in Spain. A Spanish couple had adopted a young Asian girl; but the girl went missing. Her body was later found. She had obviously been murdered. Who was the culprit? The skill of the series was the way it examined not only the people who could have been the culprits, but it looked carefully into the psychology of the couple who had adopted the girl. The pace was slow but very believable.  Given that Spanish law is in some ways different from English or American law, it was interesting to see how carefully in the final court-room both defence and prosecution made good and careful cases. Almost documentary in part, but not stilted. Good watching.

The other Spanish T.V. series was a different kettle of fish. Respira  [Breathless] is set in a hospital in Valencia. It is crowded. It is lacking in space. It is a public hospital, not a wealthy private hospital. Patients all swarm in. The hospital has not been properly funded and there is growing anger among interns and some of the doctors. One outspoken surgeon is in favour of calling a strike… but there is the old dilemma. Do doctors have the right to leave patients untreated when the hospital is partly shut down? So far, so persuasive, and much of the hustle and worry of the hospital is believable. Some side issues are real issues. The gay doctor who foolishly has had sex with a younger man who might have had a contagious disease. The fact that the spokeswoman for the hospital is sceptic about the way the hospital is run; but as she has cancer she feels she should be treated in the public hospital rather than in a private hospital because she does not want  to be seen as a hypocrite. The way surgeons and other doctors are often extremely bossy when it comes to interns etc. etc. etc. So far so believable. Unfortunately the series very quickly falls into sheer soap-opera with love stories and very, very explicit sex scenes. And to make us even happier there are many, many close-up images of patients being sliced open during surgery so there is blood, blood, blood all over the place.  Maybe this could be called realism, but I do wonder how many viewers will be able to stand the course.