Trieste And The Meaning Of Nowhere
(Jan Morris): I just love Morris’s
unconventional ‘travel books’ (this one published in 2001); they’re a unique
combination of fascinating facts, history and people but, far more important
for me, also Morris’s meditations, memories and insights about the place… and I
just loved this book. My friend Mike gave it to me to mark our first meeting
earlier this month. I visited the city in the summer of 1968 with my student
friends John and Ron (£15 return coach trip from Dover – or was it Ramsgate? –
to Trieste!)… we camped just up the coast at Muggia and I have vague memories
of catching trains from Trieste to Venice… and to Rijeka (in what was then
Yugoslavia)… and sleeping overnight in Trieste railway station awaiting our
return coach back home! Sadly, we failed to explore the city at all (a big
regret). Clearly, Morris (who first encountered the place during WW2) loves the
city and, especially, what she describes as its European cosmopolitanism
(“multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-faith…”) - rather poignant comments given
our recent abandonment of the EU. The book which, at the time, was supposed to
be her ‘final’ book (thankfully she’s written more since!) is very much a
reflection of her experiences at what she regarded as the ‘end of her life’. I
loved this passage at the end of the book (no apologies for quoting it in
full): “Much of this little book, then, has been self-description. I write of
exiles in Trieste, but I have generally felt myself an exile too. For years I
felt myself an exile from normality, and now I feel myself one of those exiles
from time. The past is a foreign country, but so is old age, and as you enter
it you feel you are treading unknown territory, leaving your own land behind.
You’ve never been here before. The clothes people wear, the idioms they use,
their pronunciation, their assumptions, tastes, humours, loyalties all become
the more alien the older you get. The countryside changes. The policemen are
children. Even hypochondria, the Trieste disease, is not what it was, for that
interesting pain in the ear lobe may not now be imaginary at all, but some
obscure senile reality. This kind of exile can mean a new freedom, too, because
most things don’t matter as they used to. The way I look doesn’t matter. The
opinions I cherish are my business. The books I have written are no more than
smudged graffiti on a wall, and I shall write no more of them. Money? Enough to
live on. Critics? To hell with ‘em. Kindness is what matters, all along, at any
age – kindness, the ruling principle of nowhere!”. Special book. Special
person.
Such Small Hands (Andres Barba): Our bookgroup ALMOST chose this book
as part of its ‘sadness-to-be-leaving-the-EU’ selection acknowledging authors
from across the EU… and, although I’m not usually one for reading scary novels,
I was very brave and chose to buy a copy for myself! It’s no more than a
novella but, somewhat hilariously you may think, I decided NOT to attempt
reading it immediately before bedtime (my nighttimes are disrupted as they are!). Marina, a 7-year-old girl, has been wounded in an
accident that killed her parents; she is taken to live in an orphanage… and she
also takes with her a wide-eyed doll, also called Marina, which is her constant
companion. Both the child and the doll become the focus of the other girls’
attention… part adoring, part cruel… and, soon, uneasy playfulness develops
into a shocking nighttime game. Eeerie, sinister and a bit terrifying (but
impressive).
Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi): This is our bookgroup’s latest book. In the late 1990s, Azar Nafisi (a former professor of literature at
Tehran University) invited a group of seven young women to meet at her
apartment in Tehran every Thursday morning to discuss Western literature. I
found it a pretty remarkable book… and, somehow, reading about her experiences
of detachment and isolation in her Tehran University teaching post (and her
mini-teaching community) formed fascinating, and humbling, contrasts with the
experiences we’re currently encountering through the coronavirus pandemic (and,
somewhat ironically, I finished the book on the day the government announced
its various isolation restrictions). Bizarrely, and hilariously, reading her
description (in the very first chapter, P4) of the two contrasting photographs
of her women’s reading group (one dressed in their black robes and the other in
their ‘normal’ clothing) gave me a mental image of our own bookgroup posing for
two contrasting group photographs – one in normal clothing and the other where
we’re all dressed as ‘book characters’ (oh dearie, dearie me!) - the fact that
I started reading the book a couple of days after ‘World Book Day’ might have
influenced my thought processes at the time!? I also thought it was somewhat
ironic to read of people gathering together in secret at a time when we
ourselves have to remain apart! I found reading about the attitudes to and the
treatment of women (I knew much of it already, but…) in Iranian society was
hugely depressing – and yet I was also profoundly moved and heartened by the
courage and determination of Nafisi and her students. I hadn’t read lots of the
books studied by the group (eg. Lolita, Daisy Miller, A Doll’s House,
Washington Square), but that didn’t matter. I loved how literature, during very
difficult and challenging times, brought the women together and how it provided
surprising insights into their own very different lives. Frequently, Nafiisi’s
words made me feel as if I was reading Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
or ’The Testament’. There was SO much in this book that I loved (eg. ‘The
Magician’ character)… and I was also hugely moved by a number of passages (eg.
student Nassrin’s little parcel containing transcribed words from all of their
classes over the past 3 years; and Manna’s inspiring words at the very end of
the book).
Three Men In A Boat (Jerome K
Jerome): First
published in 1889 (our/Moira’s copy 1969) is the well-known story of three men
(and a dog) on a boat, making the journey from Kingston to Oxford along the
Thames (and back again). This must be at least the third time I’ve read it but,
in these ‘difficult times’, something humorous seemed to be required. I think
it had originally been intended for it to be a travel book, but it seems that
the humorous elements rather ‘took over’. It’s obviously incredibly dated and
‘of its time’, but it really is very funny and beautifully written. All
accounts of their journey invariably get side-tracked by recollections of
other, often completely unrelated, events (a bit like Ronnie Corbett’s old long
drawn-out stories on television?). Some lovely references bemoaning the “pace
of nineteenth century life”… and a rather pertinent comment about “people’s
changing tastes” and things that had become “unfashionable”: “Will it be the
same in the future? Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap
trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be
ranged above the chimney-pieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?...”. A
very enjoyable read.
The Three Dimensions Of Freedom
(Billy Bragg): This
book is something of an extended essay (it’s one of the publisher’s, Faber+Faber,
new series of political pamphlets). Most people know that, as well as being a
revered musician, Bragg has also been a life-long activist (I’ve previously read
a couple of his books). His views are left-wing, but not extreme… and I found
this a fascinating, eloquent assessment-cum-diagnosis of the crisis of
accountability in western democracies. He identifies ‘The Three Dimensions of
Freedom’ as: Liberty, Equality and Accountability… and I found myself
underlining (in pencil!) whole sections, page after page. This provides a flavour:
“At a time when opinion trumps facts and truth is treated as nothing more than
another perspective, free speech has become a battleground. While
authoritarians and algorithms threaten democracy, we argue over who has the
right to speak…”. Lots and lots of food for thought… and I found myself
agreeing with him, time after time.
