30. William S. Gilbert - 'Angela: An Inverted Love Story' (1890)

'When I first occupied my room, about six years ago, my attention was
directed to the reflection of a little girl of thirteen or so (as nearly
as I could judge), who passed every day on a balcony just above the
upward range of my limited field of view.'

(Victorian Short Stories: Stories of Courtship, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15381)

This one engages me much more than the Trollope, perhaps because it is so of its time in a more radical sense. Gilbert, of course, admits to desire and the whole state of mind that that entails. Vestiges of propriety may be maintained but like in Wilde, there is a sense of conventional assumptions being overturned and confounded. It was published in September 1890 in the Century Magazine, as a new cultural era was taking root.

As with the Trollope, this presents a rather curious picture of 'Victorian Romance' - but this time with the emphasis on love in signs and interpretations of what love is. It takes a while for the 'poor paralysed fellow' who is the main focus and narrator of the story, to be revealed as definitively English - but it certainly makes sense that he is: 'she threw up her hands in a pretty affectation of despair, which I tried to imitate but in an English and unsuccessful fashion.'

There is a rather poetic conceit, suitably visual coming from this man of the theatre (noted for burlesques, melodramas and operas, of course): that the would-be suitor only sees his paramour in reflection in the canal water; a mirror image which one cannot rely on. Gilbert shows that his narrator's interpretation of her basic friendliness as love is down to his loneliness and wishful thinking - it could almost make an early Pulp song, this scenario!

It is all chaste in explicit terms; as this girl becomes mature, possibly sixteen or seventeen he ardour becomes manifest - though one is entirely unsure how she regards him. This brief vignette is so determinedly fixed from one vantage point that it resembles an unlikely precursor to Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), one of the greatest of films. Flowers seem to be a token of love, but are they? 'Tis a rather profound question raised by this story; our narrator interprets them as he will:

'But I soon took heart of grace, for as soon as he was out of sight, the little maid
threw two flowers growing on the same stem--an allegory of which I could make nothing, until it broke upon me that she meant to convey to me that he and she were brother and sister, and that I had no cause to be sad.'

It is rather 1890s in its revealing of the feelings and complexities beyond mere virtue and evil; in its small way, 'Angela: An Inverted Love Story' contributes to the Wilde-Shaw-Pinero destabilising of melodramatic conventions. What makes it all the more interesting is how Gilbert may be adding greater depth to the previous, rather roseate view of romance in some of his Operas (whilst slyly referencing The Gondoliers, which opened at the Savoy in the previous December); he is clearly coming to terms with stories like 'A Sphinx Without a Secret'. As in that story, male desire is satirised and the female character is unknowable, impossible to pin down in the standard ways their narrators demand.

8/10

23. Hector Hugh Munro - 'The Background' (1911)

'She cancelled the sale of the work of art, and a few days later Deplis learned with a sense of consternation that she had presented it to the municipality of Bergamo, which had gratefully accepted it.'

(The Dragon's Head: Classic English Short Stories, Oxford University Press, 1988, p.176)

The second story of week #4 is from the same volume of stories collected in the 1930s. Munro, better known as 'Saki', was Burmese born, but raised and schooled in England - and this is clearly the work of a cosmopolitan Briton, taking up the baton from Wilde and others. There is a dark humour, cruelty and effortless development of a conceit reminiscent of Wilde and possibly looking forward to early Evelyn Waugh.

This is one of the Clovis Chronicles, and yet not about the aforementioned Clovis at all; it is a bizarre tale told to Clovis by a journalist friend - though it all takes off as a result of an offhand, presumably typical expression of Clovis's irritation at a woman's 'art-jargon': 'She's so fond of talking of certain pictures as "growing on one", as though they were a sort of fungus.' (p.175)

Saki's wonderful conceit - of Henri Deplis gaining money and spending it on some 'harmless extravagances', including getting the tattooist Signor Andreas Pincini to cover his back with 'a glowing representation of the Fall of Icarus' - is utilised to the absurdist and satiric hilt. The framing of the story reminds me, in its truncated, deliberate truculence, of the way 'A Sphinx without a Secret' opens - highest praise from me. Deploying the Wildean trope of a human being a work of art, it unfolds with inexorable black humour, without the sense of socialism Wilde imbues in most of his tales, but much glorying and mocking of aestheticism. In some senses, the style might be said to prefigure Kafka or Orton or shame something with G.K. Chesterton. The world-view is notably bleak, back into line with the first few stories assessed as part of ASSAD, and it is unsurprising that this reminds me of Dahl, as I believe that writer used Saki's conceit for an episode of the TV anthology series, Tales of the Unexpected.

Henri Deplis, 'traveller of commerce', is a perpetually unfortunate native of Luxemburg, buffeted around, unable to move freely around regions or nations. Once the 'work' is ruined, he is kicked out of Italy 'as an undesirable alien' and ends the story as an absurd relic in Paris - and I won't quote it anymore to avoid any more spoilers. Read it! Bizarre, amusing stuff; I certainly look forward to more Saki in future.

8/10

Ring in the new...

“I felt in a way it’s a recompense for the education I was given [...] I went to a state school in Leeds. I went to Oxford on a scholarship. I benefited at every stage from the nanny state, as it is disparagingly called. It would be unimaginable now to be a student and free of money worries. But I was lucky in my time and I’m grateful to be nannied.”


(Alan Bennett, quoted in The Economist, 23/10/2008)

"Will there be honey
In a northerly sea
For a well-behaved enterprise culture?"

(Sudden Sway, ''76 Kids Forever', '76 Kids Forever, 1988)


























'O! Start a revolution, somebody!
not to get the money
but to lose it all for ever.'

(D. H. Lawrence, 'O! Start a Revolution', 1927)

"Quite evidently, the people of this country don't want anything to do with the people up north, or with the communist way of life."

(J. G. Ballard, Theatre of War, 1977, The Complete Short Stories, Vol.II, p.457)

"It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage."

(George Monbiot, addressing Hazel Blears, The Guardian, 10/02/2009)


I hail the crier to this sodden patch of ground, an obscure corner of the www where shingle meets raincoat, to quote the venerable Sudden Sway. To get the full epoch-making significance of this latest venture play The Advisory Circle's 'Fire, Damp and Air' on looped repeat.

The remit is to provoke, converse (occasionally soliloquise) and make links between many areas of culture: literature (short stories, novels, drama, poetry), music (popular and otherwise, the old Abba to Yello and new Camera Obscura to Witty Boy continuum) politics, local history and travelogue. Nothing is separate, cordoned off and irrelevant, to be discussed in solitary confinement. Even Noel (Edmonds)’s HQ, God help us, is worthy of mention, even as an example of what we are up against…

Britain, Europe, North America, the world; nothing is out of bounds; there is the imperative to engage with America once again, now that the disastrous regime has departed and the better side of that country is asserting itself - could one imagine Bush or even Clinton making the speeches Obama is making at the moment regarding the bonuses? The north in general exerts its hold; Canada, Scandinavia, Scotland and the benighted North of blighty seem to form in many ways a possible cultural-political alliance against the simplicities of Palin, the banalities of Cameron and Hollywood sentimentality.

I may even dabble at some original short stories (you are warned to set up an exclusion zone forthwith), psycho-geographical travel writing, there will be a sequel to chart writing such as this: http://tom-may.livejournal.com/2008/03/02/ (am willing to admit I may have got some things badly wrong there, being fallible and no omniscient authority). Left-wing politics, in this time when we are witnessing the collapse of Thatcher-New Labour free-market capitalism, will naturally inform my perspective. The seemingly contradictory poles of Wilde and Bevan will serve as an example of future paths we have [frustratingly] yet to take. I can make no coherent philosophy other than to say that certain principles must stand: ordinary people deserve the very best rather than to be patronised, artists have the right to self-expression free of censorship; public service is an ideal to be defended – the right (or, left) sort of nanny can be beneficial, as Alan Bennett has argued and John Peel or Oliver Postgate demonstrated.

I also hope to include, as this project develops, fictions of my own (set up the exclusion zone, marras), examples of photography and my evolving music, if possible within these confines. I certainly feel that Blogger offers more of these opportunities than Live Journal; for example, it is far easier to upload images: essential for any psycho-geography or chart-writing.

The immediate rubric, designed to ensure that this thing gets up-and-running, is to establish a regular series: for me to read and review a short-story a day. I will draw from my own partial experience and knowledge, in order to assess the literary - a fine way of actually reading and comparing many writers I have shamefully never read before.

I will express gratitude again for the examples set (and occasional encouragement from) of fellow internet writers, who continue to exert influence: Simon Reynolds, Marcello C. & Lena, Robin Carmody, k-punk and Owen Hatherley. Monbiot, Morley, Meades, Kermode and (to a point) Brooker, voices on the fringes of the mainstream media must be commended, in this world of Myersons and stultifying middlebrow - last Friday's tedious Newsnight discussion 'Is Television Dead?' being a prime exhibit with its vested-interest industry insiders and cliche-spouters, sorely lacking in a Tom Paulin figure, an actual critic (now removed from our screens due to, my word, expressing some political views).

Real-world friends and colleagues who remain an inspiration ought to be thanked; they know who they are. I should also give 'shout-outs' to benign institutions that I am certain will prove invaluable in various ways: You Tube, Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, the Star and Shadow Cinema, Sunderland and Newcastle public libraries... This is important; it must be refuted that we are a broken society or all doomed or all such; we have been immersed in one of the more shallow phases of our civilisation, but everything passes, and the opportunity is clearly there to make the change - and, I'm sorry anarchists - public and open-source institutions have a role to play in that.

The old place, Quiet Talks and Summer Walks, will remain, but restricted more purely to spur-of-the-moment reactions and comments, more fragmentary vignettes. The more considered pieces will from now on be on here.

Please comment or ‘follow’ as you will, though I would naturally prefer the term comrade, or friend, to follower. I do not set my word down as sacrosanct but hopefully worthy of kind correction and non-rancorous nattering, over virtual – and none-too-nourishing – pints of Old Peculier or careworn black coffees.

Follow TAC's 'Fire, Damp and Air' with Roy Harper's 'Commune', and let's have some audacity.