I went to Evensong at Exeter Cathedral yesterday. Wednesday seems to be the childrens' day off, and you just get the adults from the choir, and no organ, so they often sing plainchant and Elizabethan church music. The way they blend their voices into a smooth rich noise is wonderful. Yesterday for the first time ever I heard one of Tallis's tunes for Archbishop Parker's psalter sung for a whole psalm, and not just for the first phrase. I've often thought it a shame that people don't use them as intended, but I expect that one of the things holding them back is that Parker was not a gifted poet. And indeed at the cathedral yesterday his words had been bumped for George Herbert's translation of the 23rd Psalm.
Poor old Parker. His Psalter book is actually rather wonderful, full of relevant translations, little tables about which Psalms are relevant to which thoughts or emotions, even Augustine's wonderful thing about how music stirs the senses and whether this is good or not, which is pretty honest of Parker as not entirely fitting his case. (I think someone once said that the Reformation was an argument in the mind of St Augustine, and sometimes he seems to be a high-church ritualist and an austere Puritan in the space of a page.) I looked it up to see how Parker translated the 23rd Psalm:
The Lord so good who geveth me food
my shepeheard is and guide.
How can I want or suffer scant
when he defendth my side?
To feede my neede he will me lead
in pastures greene and fat.
He forth brought me in libertie
to waters delicate.
My soule and hart he did convert,
to me he sheweth the path
Of rightwisenes, in holiness
his name such vertue hath.
Yea though I go through death hys wo
his vaale and shadow wyde
I feare no dart, wyth me thou art,
wyth staffe and rod to guide.
Thou shalt prouyde a table wyde
for me agaynst theyr spite:
With oyle my head thou hast bespred
my cup is fully dight.
Thy goodnes yet and mercy great
will kepe me all my dayes
In house to dwell in rest full well
wyth God I hope alwayes.
He's not well served by his rhyme scheme here -- too bouncy. But I'm not so sure George Herbert's is drastically better:
The God of love my shepherd is,
And he that doth me feed:
While he is mine, and I am his,
What can I want or need?
He leads me to the tender grasse,
Where I both feed and rest;
Then to the streams that gently passe:
In both I have the best.
Or if I stray, he doth convert
And bring my minde in frame:
And all this not for my desert,
But for his holy name.
Yea, in deaths shadie black abode
Well may I walk, not fear:
For thou art with me; and thy rod
To guide, thy staff to bear.
Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine,
Ev’n in my enemies sight:
My head with oyl, my cup with wine
Runnes over day and night.
Surely thy sweet and wondrous love
Shall measure all my dayes;
And as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise.
"In death's shady black abode" isn't great. Neither is as good as the prose translations, either Coverdale's in the Book of Common Prayer, or the King James Version.
Someone must have noticed that Herbert's translation fitted the meter of the Tallis setting, and put the sixteenth-century tune with the seventeenth-century words. But I would put money on this having been done no earlier than the twentieth century, because of all the settings Tallis wrote at Parker's commission, the chosen tune is the third. This is the one which is given as an example the words "Why fum'th in fight?" a.k.a. Why do the nations furiously rage, but it's most famous as the one that Ralph Vaughan Williams took up and turned into a famously English piece of music, his Fantasia on a theme by Tallis. This isn't the right tune for Psalm 23 -- Parker marked all the Psalms with symbols to show which tunes were appropriate, and to put it simplistically, Psalm 23 is a happy Psalm, and tune 3 is a sad tune. That's why it's so English.
Yesterday was the day when George Herbert is celebrated in the Anglican church. He gets rather fetishised as the ideal vicar, though for myself I find his troubles and doubts more interesting and admirable than his certainties. His poems are often very angry at God. I don't think Matthew Parker gets a day, but he ought to have one, as a tribute to all the church people who have been mauled between the opposing jaws of Anglicanism -- for him it was vestments but I expect Rowan Williams could sympathise. And for all the people who put good and useful things together using the best resources they have, even if they're not very good poets.
Thursday 28 February 2019
Tuesday 1 January 2019
Reading in 2018
So I did read some books in 2018. I'm pretty sure it's not entirely helpful to keep such close track of what I read, as I end up thinking of my reading in terms of number of books read, which is clearly one of the least important things about what I've read. It puts me off big, difficult reading projects. But now I'm addicted and it would take quite a big effort to stop.
When I was an undergraduate, a first-year I think, there was a Guardian column with the premise that you could only read 3000 books in your lifetime, and I remember complaining about this to someone who couldn't understand why I found it so annoying. Perhaps I need to concentrate on letting that long-lived annoyance go...
Anyway it hasn't been a vintage reading year, but there have been some very good things. Early in the year, I enjoyed Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire, about what the British did in India. He puts cricket, tea, and something else I forget on the plus side, and points out quite how much damage was done by milking the country of its profits to benefit Britain. I'm pretty sure the other positive thing isn't trains -- he points out the cost that India paid to get them, and how they were only built to make the extraction of resources more efficient.
Paul Beattie's Booker winner, The Sellout, is very funny in an angry way. It's about a black man who ends up reimposing segregation in his black neighbourhood. I like books that are angry and funny. I would like to write an angry funny book myself.
Hideously memorable was Emmanuel Carrère's The Adversary. It's a true story about a man who suddenly murdered most of his family, but it reads like a nightmarish thriller. I can't get out of my head the image of a student who one day doesn't bother to get up for an exam, and whose life then gets more and more complicated as he refuses to confront the consequences of his actions.
I remember enjoying Olivia Manning's Levant Trilogy, which I didn't realise was a sequel to her Balkan Trilogy. I also can't remember much about it now, apart from that I enjoyed it... Perhaps that means I am safe to read the Balkan Trilogy at last?
Lucy Hughes-Hallett's Peculiar Ground is an extremely good novel set in two time periods in the same country estate. This is another sort of book I would love to write.
Mohsin Hamid's Exit West has a pleasantly mythic quality about it. The premise is that doors are opening up in cities, doors that lead to some random other place in the world. It follows a young couple whose city descends from normality into civil-war-ridden chaos, and their experiences as refugees.
Marian Keyes' The Break is classic Keyes, to the extent that I read it twice this year. She writes reliably humane and funny chic-lit, unpretentious but well-written and the best the genre has to offer. It's about a woman whose husband suddenly decides he needs a break from their marriage and sets off round the world, and how this affects her and her teenage children. There's a bit where a young woman has to have an abortion which, as this is Ireland and before the 2018 vote, means that she has to travel to England, with all the expense and stress that involves. I do love Marian Keyes.
Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding is brilliant and an excellent revival. It's about the difficult relationship between sisters, one of whom is getting married, to the other's dismay. It's extremely well-written.
Andrew Sean Greer's Less was one of my favourite books of the year. It's about a middle-aged writer who wants to avoid his ex-boyfriend's wedding, so accepts lots of random invitations around the world. It's funny and quietly touching.
Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy was probably my other favourite. It's a memoir by the woman who wrote Rape Joke, and is very funny. It's about when she and her husband had to move in with her crazy parents for a while because of medical bills. Her father is a Catholic priest -- he was ordained and married with children when he converted -- and is very eccentric. Her writing is honest and unobvious -- I particularly appreciate that when people write about religion. As a married man her father is sometimes sent to parishes where the previous priest has abused children, and Lockwood is well aware both of the damages the church can do and of the honest love it can show to a community. Mainly it's just a very funny book though.
Valerie Martin's The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, though not as brilliant as her sinister Property, was very good and not quite what I expected. I think I will seek out other things she's written.
Lydia Millett's Mermaids in Paradise is quite brilliant, perhaps third tying for my favourite. It's about a bright and cynical woman on honeymoon with her lovable jock husband. They discover mermaids in the bay by their resort, and then try to protect them from exploitation. It has an amazing ending.
Jakob Wegelius's The Murderer's Ape will definitely be given to my god-daughter, niece and/or nephew at some point. It's a very readable children's story about Sally Jones, a hard-working and clever gorilla who works as an engineer on a boat. When the captain is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit she travels over the world trying to clear his name. The book is very nicely presented too, with maps and illustrations of the main characters. It's an excellent adventure story. I like that Pushkin has branched out into publishing books that are less worthy and more fun than their previous fare.
This is the eighth year I've kept track of my reading:
When I was an undergraduate, a first-year I think, there was a Guardian column with the premise that you could only read 3000 books in your lifetime, and I remember complaining about this to someone who couldn't understand why I found it so annoying. Perhaps I need to concentrate on letting that long-lived annoyance go...
Anyway it hasn't been a vintage reading year, but there have been some very good things. Early in the year, I enjoyed Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire, about what the British did in India. He puts cricket, tea, and something else I forget on the plus side, and points out quite how much damage was done by milking the country of its profits to benefit Britain. I'm pretty sure the other positive thing isn't trains -- he points out the cost that India paid to get them, and how they were only built to make the extraction of resources more efficient.
Paul Beattie's Booker winner, The Sellout, is very funny in an angry way. It's about a black man who ends up reimposing segregation in his black neighbourhood. I like books that are angry and funny. I would like to write an angry funny book myself.
Hideously memorable was Emmanuel Carrère's The Adversary. It's a true story about a man who suddenly murdered most of his family, but it reads like a nightmarish thriller. I can't get out of my head the image of a student who one day doesn't bother to get up for an exam, and whose life then gets more and more complicated as he refuses to confront the consequences of his actions.
I remember enjoying Olivia Manning's Levant Trilogy, which I didn't realise was a sequel to her Balkan Trilogy. I also can't remember much about it now, apart from that I enjoyed it... Perhaps that means I am safe to read the Balkan Trilogy at last?
Lucy Hughes-Hallett's Peculiar Ground is an extremely good novel set in two time periods in the same country estate. This is another sort of book I would love to write.
Mohsin Hamid's Exit West has a pleasantly mythic quality about it. The premise is that doors are opening up in cities, doors that lead to some random other place in the world. It follows a young couple whose city descends from normality into civil-war-ridden chaos, and their experiences as refugees.
Marian Keyes' The Break is classic Keyes, to the extent that I read it twice this year. She writes reliably humane and funny chic-lit, unpretentious but well-written and the best the genre has to offer. It's about a woman whose husband suddenly decides he needs a break from their marriage and sets off round the world, and how this affects her and her teenage children. There's a bit where a young woman has to have an abortion which, as this is Ireland and before the 2018 vote, means that she has to travel to England, with all the expense and stress that involves. I do love Marian Keyes.
Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding is brilliant and an excellent revival. It's about the difficult relationship between sisters, one of whom is getting married, to the other's dismay. It's extremely well-written.
Andrew Sean Greer's Less was one of my favourite books of the year. It's about a middle-aged writer who wants to avoid his ex-boyfriend's wedding, so accepts lots of random invitations around the world. It's funny and quietly touching.
Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy was probably my other favourite. It's a memoir by the woman who wrote Rape Joke, and is very funny. It's about when she and her husband had to move in with her crazy parents for a while because of medical bills. Her father is a Catholic priest -- he was ordained and married with children when he converted -- and is very eccentric. Her writing is honest and unobvious -- I particularly appreciate that when people write about religion. As a married man her father is sometimes sent to parishes where the previous priest has abused children, and Lockwood is well aware both of the damages the church can do and of the honest love it can show to a community. Mainly it's just a very funny book though.
Valerie Martin's The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, though not as brilliant as her sinister Property, was very good and not quite what I expected. I think I will seek out other things she's written.
Lydia Millett's Mermaids in Paradise is quite brilliant, perhaps third tying for my favourite. It's about a bright and cynical woman on honeymoon with her lovable jock husband. They discover mermaids in the bay by their resort, and then try to protect them from exploitation. It has an amazing ending.
Jakob Wegelius's The Murderer's Ape will definitely be given to my god-daughter, niece and/or nephew at some point. It's a very readable children's story about Sally Jones, a hard-working and clever gorilla who works as an engineer on a boat. When the captain is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit she travels over the world trying to clear his name. The book is very nicely presented too, with maps and illustrations of the main characters. It's an excellent adventure story. I like that Pushkin has branched out into publishing books that are less worthy and more fun than their previous fare.
This is the eighth year I've kept track of my reading:
- Total number of books read: 211
- Gender of authors of each book: 74 male (roughly 35%), 137 female (roughly 65%)
- Number of non-fiction: 26 (roughly 12%)
- Number of re-reads: 58 (roughly 27%)
- Number read on Kindle: 92 (roughly 44%)
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