Review

A Day on the Green, with Diana Krall (et al)

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Leonard Cohen, 2009

My man, 2009

Last night was my second “A Day on the Green” concert held at the beautiful Centennial Vineyards in Bowral. The first was January 2009 when I attended the stupendous – there’s no other word for it – Leonard Cohen concert. That really was a concert to end all concerts.

Last night’s concert though was no slouch. The performers, all female jazz and blues singers, were, in order:

Katie Noonan, 2010, at Centennial Vineyards

Katie Noonan, at A Day on the Green, 2010

All performers entertained us beautifully – but each in her own special style. Katie Noonan (with her Captains!) got us off to a good start with some engaging home-grown music. They performed for just half an hour but included music from their recent album. There is something nice about being entertained by your own, by someone who speaks the same cultural language.

From Mr Gums’ point of view, Melody Gardot’s set, also only around half an hour, was the most musically interesting of the night. She is a singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, and was probably the most intense – and in many ways the most sophisticated – of the performers. For those who don’t know her story, she came to her music career through music therapy following a near fatal accident in 2003. (It is because of the accident – not some sort of diva-affectation – that she wears the dark glasses you see in the image below.) I found her fascinating.

Melody Gardot, 2010

Next up was Madeleine Peyroux. She too is a singer-songwriter and guitarist, and presented both original music and uniquely interpreted covers. She was the character of the night, and used her Chaplinesque bowler hat to good effect as she transitioned between pieces. If Gardot was the nightclub sophisticate, Peyroux was more relaxed and casual, but no less professional. She apologised for not having many happy songs, but who could complain when you were treated to such music as her beautifully controlled soulful rendition of Cohen’s “Dance me to the end of song”. She performed for about 45 mins – and I liked her.

Madeleine Peyroux, 2010

...and then came Madeleine (in 2010)

Diana Krall is a pianist and singer-songwriter – and interpreter of song. Before I went to the concert I read a few online “reviews” of earlier performances in this series, and there were some complaints: her voice wasn’t up to it (I believe she had a cold earlier in the series), and “we didn’t come to hear solos by her supporting musicians”. Did they not understand the world of live jazz concerts and the role therein of solo instrumental improvisations? The improvisations in the gorgeous and extended “Dancing cheek to cheek” mystified me at times – but I’ll only learn by listening, won’t I? Krall entertained us for around 75 mins, including a couple of encores, and maintained a relaxed rapport with the audience, managing to include a couple of rain-themed songs in her set!  Her singing is soft and throaty, and I particularly loved her interpretation of Dylan’s “Simple twist of fate”.

Diana Krall, 2010

Getting dark and pushing the camera to its limits, but here she is ... Diana Krall

It was a long night – we arrived around 2.30pm, the concert started at 3.30pm and ended around 8.30pm. That’s  a long time to be sitting on your behind on picnic chairs, particularly when doing the poncho dance (on-off-on-off) during the intermittent but fortunately not heavy rain. It didn’t spoil our enjoyment of the music though – nor of the gorgeous setting.

Gums, at Centennial Vineyards, 2010

The gums overhead swayed to the music

Note on the photographs: There was a stage, and we could see the musicians, but the screen did provide better photo opportunities, and hence my shots here are of the performers as we saw them on the screen.

POSTSCRIPT: For a review by a music reviewer/blogger, read Chris Boyd’s here.

Post-impressionism redux

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Musee d'Orsay

Main hall, Musee d’Orsay (Courtesy: Benh, via Wikipedia, under CC-BY-2.5)

It was almost 30 years ago to the day that I attended my first exhibition of post-impressionist art. That was in London: it was Post-Impressionism at the Royal Academy of Arts, 1979-80, and we went on March 9, 1980, the last day of my first European trip. Last night, March 4, 2010, we went to the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. It is an exhibition of post-impressionist art sourced solely from the wonderful Musée d’Orsay. The Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, by contrast, contained paintings sourced from collections besides their own.

Now, being a librarian-archivist, bibliophile and all-round hoarder, I still have my catalogue from the 1980 exhibition, and so I did a little comparison. I loved that first exhibition – partly because the post-impressionist era is a favourite of mine – but when I compare the offerings from the two exhibitions, well, there’s a big difference. The Musée d’Orsay’s collection is outstanding and to see such paintings as Van Gogh’s “Starry night” and “Bedroom at Arles”, and Monet’s “Waterlily pond, green harmony” in my home town on the other side of the world is something to be treasured.

However, the The Musée d’Orsay exhibition is not only great because of these top masterpieces; it is full of treasures, big and small. Some of the small treasures that caught my attention included works by Maurice Denis. Now, I checked him out, too, in the two catalogues and found an interesting example of art on the move. In the 1980 exhibition was Denis’ lovely, colourful “Sunlight on the Terrace” (1890). The catalogue, as catalogues do, said it was “Lent by a private collector, St Germain-en-Laye”. Clearly that collector did not hang on to this gorgeous piece (and wouldn’t it be interesting to know the story behind that) because here it now is in the Musée d’Orsay’s collection.  This current exhibition catalogue says it was “purchased, 1986”. I liked this little work, as well as a few others by Denis.

As, I think, most of us like to do when we go to an art exhibition, I looked for a work or two that particularly appealed to me. Of course, it’s hard to go past the “biggies” like the Van Goghs, Cezannes, Monets, and the like. We’d seen some before, but they were then, and will remain always, stupendous. However, the fun is finding new artists or new works to take your fancy. For me, this time, these new works included a couple by Denis. They also included an artist I don’t recollect having heard of before, Théo van Rysselberghe. He worked quite a bit, though not solely, in the pointilist style, and two of his works are in the exhibition. The one that particularly appealed to me was “The man at the tiller” (1892). While the waves seemed a little clumsy to me, I was drawn to its simple but dramatic composition. I also like its allusion to Hokusai’s famous “The great wave of Kanagawa” (1829-1832) – and I like it because I am fascinated by pointilist painting.

The exhibition – of 112 works by 35 artists – is beautifully curated. The works, which cover the significant styles and schools – including Pointilism, Neo-impressionism, Synthetism, Symbolism, the Pont-Aven School, and the Nabis – that loosely comprise the Post-Impressionists, are spread thematically across 6 rooms. This arrangement works well to demonstrate development within these styles as well as between them – and it resulted in several artists appearing in different rooms as they developed their style over the period. And, the lighting is magnificent. “Starry night”, for one, simply shimmers. It’s no wonder that the Gallery reached its target of 250,000 visits 6 weeks before closing. This is a blockbuster to end all blockbusters.

(Note: I have not included images of any of the artworks here due to copyright complications. While the works themselves are generally out of copyright there are arguments that images of these works are not. I am not willing to take on the “big boys” on this matter as the Wikimedia Foundation did last year. And anyhow, they are mostly easy to find with a quick Google search, if you are interested)

Jack London, War

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What do I know about Jack London? Not much really, except that he wrote adventure stories like Call of the wild and White fang, and, intriguingly, a study of London slums, People of the abyss. So, when this week’s Library of America story was “War” (1911) by Jack London, I decided to read it. You can read it too, here.

“War” is an adventure story, of sorts. It is also, obviously, a war story. The plot is a simple one: a young man of 24 or so is out on a scouting mission:

…his task was to find what he feared to find. He must go on, and on, until somewhere, some time, he encountered another man, or other men, from the other side, scouting, as he was scouting, to make a report, of having come in touch.

I like the way London universalises his story by using no names. There are only two characters that count: “the young man with the quick black eyes”, our protagonist, and “the man with the ginger beard” , whom he meets along the way. It’s a short, short story and is told in two parts. In the first we are introduced to the young man and learn that

He was no coward, but his courage was only that of the average civilised man, and he was looking to live, not die.

In this part he comes across “the man with the ginger beard”. In part two, still on his scouting mission, he comes across what appears to be “a deserted farmhouse” where, after being tempted (not biblically, but the allusion is biblical nonetheless) by apples, he has his second encounter with “the man with the ginger beard”. I am being purposefully vague here as I do not want to give away what is a quick and worthwhile read.

The story is sparely told. The language is simple and evocative, with minimal use of adjectives, giving a sense of a world pared to the elementals:

It was high noon of a breathless day of heat.

and

Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by his own loneliness.

and

Another day, hot and breathless.

and

Again outside, he led the horse around the barn and invaded [my emphasis] the orchard.

This is a story about the irony and inhumanity of war. It is not a new story really but, due primarily to the tight way in which London engages our imagination and builds to the climax, it is shocking nonetheless. Clearly there’s more to Jack London than I thought!

Sawako Ariyoshi, The doctor’s wife

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The doctor’s wife is the third Ariyoshi novel that I’ve read. The other two – The River Ki and The twilight years – I read well over a decade ago. According to Wikipedia The doctor’s wife is considered her best novel. All, though, are fascinating reads providing an insight into a culture which is so different from my own but in which, at the same time, people experience similar desires, pressures and emotions.

The twilight years is set in 1970s Japan and beautifully captures the cultural changes that were occurring around the time as Japan was (and still probably is) moving from  feudal/traditional parent child relationships to our more modern independent ways, with women caught in the middle. The River Ki chronicles three generations of women from the late 19th to mid 20th century, exploring changing attitudes and expectations of women. You are probably getting a picture here and you’d be right: Ariyoshi’s overriding theme concerns the role of women in Japanese society, both historically and in modern times. (Ariyoshi died in 1984.)

Hanaoka Seishu

Hanaoka Seishu (Public domain, via Wikipedia)

The doctor’s wife is an historical novel, spanning 70 years from around 1760 to 1830 and based on the life of famous Japanese doctor Hanaoka Seishu. A quick plot summary. The doctor’s wife is Kae, a young woman from a wealthy family, who is lured to become Seishu’s bride by his ambitious mother Otsugi, herself a woman married from a wealthy into a poorer family. The novel then chronicles Kae’s life in this extended family household as Seishu develops his medical skill and training until, near the end, he performs the world’s first surgery under anaesthetic (1804, breast cancer)*. While Seishu’s development as a doctor frames the novel, the real plot concerns the relationship between Kae and Otsugi.

The novel is told in third person, mostly the more objective omniscient voice, but occasionally we feel we are specifically in the heads of Kae or Otsugi. According to my edition’s introduction, Ariyoshi had access to Seishu’s personal records, diaries and books. However, being a man of his time and a doctor focused on his research, he did not, I assume, document much of his family life. The story, then, of the women is largely fictional. Mostly through dialogue, with description as needed, Ariyoshi describes how the loving supportive role Otsugi initially presented towards her daughter-in-law changes when her son (who had been married to Kae in absentia some three years before) returns home from his medical studies in Kyoto. Overnight, the relationship, to Kae’s shock and distress, changes into a competitive one – a competition that has serious consequences as they vie to be guinea pigs for his experiments in anaesthesia. Both women are presented as flawed, but as it is Kae who opens the novel and is the more powerless, it is with her that we are most keen to identify and empathise.

Why has Ariyoshi chosen to tell this story of conflict and competition within an historically based story of a great man? Does the historical “truth” add credibility to her exploration of familial power discrepancies? I’m not sure it’s necessary, but perhaps it helps … It is a very human tale – the grand gestures made by the women to support his research are small in the scheme of things though the impact on them, particularly on Kae, is immense. Ariyoshi realistically explores the nuances of their relationship through the normal day-to-day patterns of life (weaving, cooking, house management, childbirth) suggesting that this sort of conflict doesn’t have to be but that it often (traditionally, even) is. In fact, we readers are lulled into seeing it as the norm – the lot of women – until we are shocked out of that frame of mind near the end by Seishu’s unmarried sister who says (in broken speech because she is ill):

I think this sort of tension among females . . . is . . . to the advantage . . . of . . . every male.

She continues to explain her particular perspective on women’s secondary lot, and pronounces that:

as long as there are men and women side by side on this earth, I wouldn’t want to be reborn a woman into such a world.

Clearly, given the story Ariyoshi has told, she rather agrees  – or, at least, agrees for such societies as she depicts here in which women’s lot is not only an inferior one but which work to discourage them from cooperating and supporting each other. The novel may be set in Japan, but the fundamental truths, unfortunately, are not so confined.

What I have described here is the main story, but there’s more here that can be discussed, including the development (or history) of medicine in the east and west, the experimentation on animals and humans, and Japanese social life and customs in the Tokugawa period.

It’s a short but engrossing read. It falters a little I think right at the end when the historical facts are presented so prosaically that they threaten to overwhelm its novelistic achievements, but the last line fuses the two so beautifully that you forgive this.  The doctor’s wife is a fascinating and keenly observed novel that deserves to be read.

*Ironically, in 1811, novelist Fanny Burney underwent a horrific mastectomy without anaesthesia because it was unknown in the west!

Sawako Ariyoshi
The doctor’s wife
(trans. by Wakako Hironaka and Ann Silla Kostant)
Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966 (orig ed), 1978 (trans)
174pp.
ISBN: 0870114654

Kevin Barry, Fjord of Killary

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Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Society, London

A propos of nothing really, except it's Irish and makes me laugh ruefully like Barry's story

I hadn’t heard of Kevin Barry when his short story published in The New Yorker this month, “Fjord of Killary“, was brought to my attention. Kevin Barry is an Irish writer, born in Limerick in 1969, and this makes him 40 (or 41 this year). The first person narrator of the story is the same age, which rather suggests an autobiographical element, but … that’s for Barry to say! On turning 40, he (the narrator that is, a poet and a self-confessed “hopeless romantic”) did the sea-change thing, that is, he bought a pub on the west coast of Ireland and left his city life behind:

I had made – despite it all – a mild success of myself in life. But on turning forty, the previous year, I had sensed exhaustion rising up in me, like rot. Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hang-over. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you. I found that to be alone with the work all day was increasingly difficult. And the city had become a jag on my nerves – there was too much young flesh around.

This is, it turns out, a mid-life crisis story. It takes place one night, in his pub. There is a storm raging outside and the waters from the fjord threatened to flood the pub … as indeed they do to the point that our narrator, with his customers and staff, retreat to the upper floor. Despite the reference to the cannibalistic black-backed gull eating its mate, this is not a gothic tale (of “the night was dark and stormy” ilk), or one of those tragic Irish sea stories. Rather it is a somewhat comic, somewhat satirical tale, about a publican whose sea-change doesn’t quite seem to be working.

The satire is conveyed in language which is both mock-heroic and melodramatic: the skies are “disgracefully gray “, the locals are prone to “magnificent mood swings”, and the downpour is “hysterical”. Our narrator self-deprecatingly equates himself with the many poets who have tried to escape to the countryside, the, as he describes it, “hypochondriacal epiphany-seeker”. He even manages a sly dig at the English occupation – yet another disaster the pub has had to withstand! There is straight-tending-to-the-absurd humour too. If you have ever spent a few hours in an Irish pub on a rainy, rainy day, as Mr Gums and I did in Avoca three decades ago (can it really be so?), Barry’s description of the drinkers and their ability to keep talking regardless of what’s going on around them or who is listening will ring true! As our narrator says of his customers:

They were all nut jobs. This is what it comes down to. This is the thing you learn about habitual country drinkers. They suffer all manner of delusions, paranoia and warped fantasies…

And he doesn’t? The joke in many ways is on him, because while these people are getting on with their odd, messy, unique lives, he is floundering.

This is a wonderfully Irish story in its wry and sly but also rather absurd take on life.  As for the ending? Well, I won’t give that away, except to say that, with my little blue pen, I wrote against the last line, “Love it!”. Read it here, and see what you think.

Sarah Waters, The little stranger

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The little stranger, by Sarah Waters

The little stranger (Book cover courtesy: Virago Press)

I’m not quite sure I know where to start with this one –  the ghost story that isn’t. Or is it? The little stranger is my second Sarah Waters’ novel. I found The night watch riveting, and I did see and enjoy (but not read) her very Dickensian Fingersmith.

Like The night watch, The little stranger was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize. It’s an easy read, and rather a page-turner, but by the end I have to say that I felt a little unsure about what I’d read. In one of those interesting bits of reading synchronicity, I recently read Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s last stand. It is very different to this one, and is set a few decades later, but they both deal with the loss of “old families” and the breaking up of their estates. Waters, though, is the far superior writer.

So, what is the plot of The little stranger? Its first person narrator, Dr Faraday, was born to the working class but, through family sacrifice, has pulled himself up into the professional middle class. After a brief flashback to a childhood memory of Hundreds Hall, where his mother had worked as a housemaid, he proceeds to chronicle the relationship he develops with the Hall’s family when he is in his late 30s and practising in the nearby town as a GP. The family comprises the mother, Mrs Ayres, and her adult children, Caroline and Roderick. The book is set soon after World War 2, and the story he tells occurs over the period of about a year, but is told from the vantage point of some three years later.

Waters is best in her vivid description of the house, its inhabitants and its increasing dilapidation. I’m tempted to read the house as a metaphor for the society it represents – for the days of elegance and upstairs-downstairs that are now on the way out.  And, extending this idea, “the little stranger” (or “dark germ”) that seems hell-bent on bringing about the house’s destruction could then be seen as a metaphor for the rapid modernisation that was occurring in post-war England and that was pushing the old families to the brink of economic and, thereby, social ruin. After all, servant Mrs Bazeley reassures the young servant girl Betty that “it” is not interested in them.

To support this way of looking at the novel, here is Dr Faraday early-ish in the novel:

But Hundreds Hall had been made and maintained, I thought, by the very people they were laughing at now. After two hundred years, those people had begun to withdraw their labour, their belief in the house; and the house was collapsing, like a pyramid of cards. Meanwhile, here the family sat, still playing gaily at gentry life, with chipped stucco on their walls, and their Turkish carpets worn to the weave…

And here is Dr Seeley (to whom he later goes for advice):

The Ayreses’ problem … is that they can’t or won’t adapt … Class-wise they’ve had their chips. Nerve-wise, perhaps they’ve run their course.

Quotes like these support a social change interpretation. And yet, perhaps it is more psychological? Dr Seeley suggests that part of one’s psychology, one’s dream-self , can break loose and become some sort of “psychic force”:

The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let’s call it a – a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop – to grow … What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps a Caliban, a Mr Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy, and malice and frustration…

Somewhat supporting this interpretation is Caroline’s report of her mother as saying:

the house knows all our weaknesses, and is testing them one by one.

And so what do you think? Psychological/psychic or social? Or perhaps bit of both? That is, the arrogant upper class family out of touch and unable to adapt (social) releasing all its weaknesses (psychic). I’m not sure that Waters makes the case clearly enough – partly I think due to the ambiguity posed by the narrator.

Her characterisation is in fact coherent and convincing, except for the narrator. How are we to read him? Is he genuine – does he really care for the family? Does he genuinely care for the house and its history? Or, is he a social climber who wants his way into the house any way he can. I must say I couldn’t fully work him out. Is he reliable? The tone is quite reminiscent of that in Ishiguro’s wonderful Remains of the day. Like Ishiguro’s butler, Dr Faraday tells the story from some time after the events, and he peppers his account with such words as “recall”, “I think I noticed”, “must have”, words that suggest that all may not be as he sees it. And in some ways it isn’t, but there is no intriguing twist, neither is there a traditional resolution. As I read I wondered whether he was stringing me along, whether he was the cause of the malevolence. He did after all chip away a decorative acorn from the house on his youthful visit:

I was  like a man, I suppose, wanting a lock of hair from the head of a girl he had suddenly and blindingly become enamoured of.

If he was the malevolence, there is no evidence to suggest it is anything other than unconscious. And further, if he was, it certainly makes the whole class divide story more complex – and, more interesting.

Regardless, though, of how the end comes about, of “who” (one? many? none?) is responsible, it is pretty clear that the winners – if there can be such things in the messy game of life – are the old underclass. Hundreds was, in Dr Seeley’s view, “defeated by history, destroyed by its own failure to keep pace with a rapidly changing world”. It is not surprising, I suppose, that by the end the narrator is both “baffled and longing”.  Social change never has been easy!

Sarah Waters
The little stranger
London: Virago, 2009
450pp.
ISBN: 9781844086023

Jorge Amado, Gabriela, clove and cinnamon

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Jorge Amado

Jorge Amado, 1985 (Courtesy: Xan Carballa, via flickr, using CC-BY-NC-2.0)

How could you resist reading a book with a title like this? I don’t manage to read all the books scheduled for the various bookgroups I belong to, but when this one came up I decided it was a must – because it was by a non-Anglo writer and one I hadn’t read before, and because of its gorgeously evocative title. I wasn’t disappointed. This is fun and rather easy to read, but that doesn’t mean it’s simple.

Jorge Amado is a Brazilian writer, and Gabriela, clove and cinnamon (1958) is set in Ilhéus, a coastal city where he spent his childhood. The novel takes place in 1925 – during a time of great social change:

New streets had been opened, automobiles brought in, mansions built, roads constructed, newspapers published, clubs organised – Ilhéus was transformed. But the ways men think and feel evolve more slowly. Thus it has always been in every society. (p. 2)

The basic plot concerns Nacib (the Arab) and his love for Gabriela (the simple, but sensuous, mulatto girl he hires as his cook). But the book’s subject matter is far wider, dealing with politics and society at a time when “old ways” were being challenged by “new ways”. The “old ways” are typified by macho violence, by the notion, really, that “might is right”. Violence is used by the old leaders (mostly the “colonels”) to attain and maintain political power – and to maintain possession of women. It was accepted practice, for example, for a man to kill an adulterous wife and her lover. In fact, the novel starts with such a murder and then a little later we hear of another man being reviled for not doing so, even though his way of handling it had a delicious come-uppance about it. Ilhéus is, we are told, changing but not yet civilised; it still clings to its old and violent customs; it is

so feudal still despite its much publicised and undeniable progress.

While men hold the power, the novel is structured around women. There are four chapters, each commencing with a poem about a woman:

  • The languor of Ofenísia (who would rather die a virgin if she can’t have the Emperor)
  • The loneliness of Gloria (the mistress of a wealthy man, who has everything but what she wants)
  • The secret of Malvina (the young student who will not be controlled by a man)
  • The moonlight of Gabriela (the free spirit who should not be changed)

The first, Ofenísia, does not really appear as an active character in the book (though we are told that her “importance must not be judged by the brevity of her appearance”). The other three though manage to achieve what they want…and in doing so they epitomise the conflict between the “old ways” and the “new”, between maintaining the “status quo” (with its attendant double standard) and accepting change.

The book is peopled with a wonderful array of characters. I found it hard at the start to keep track of all the characters – particularly the many Colonels – but eventually I did, and realised that they fall into two main camps: those tied to the “old ways” and those supporting change. Colonel Ramiro Bastos is the leader of the former, and new arrival Mundinho Falcâo is a proponent of new ways of doing things, such as through negotiation. This conflict is represented literally and symbolically by the sandbar. It prevents the town being used as a port for the new cacao industry and Falcâo promises to dredge it. The scene is set for a big showdown as the various citizens of the town align themselves with one side or another, but the resolution is not as simple and dramatic as we expect. And this is partly what makes this a novel well worth reading. Change is presented as generally good, but it is not “simply” or even always so. Amado conveys this subtly. The characters are complex and through their very realistic interactions and sometimes contradictory behaviours we see that old versus new is not a simple dichotomy. Gabriela, for example, cannot be changed to fit Nacib’s image of a wealthy man’s wife: she is a free spirit who doesn’t quite represent the old or the new. She just is. And symbolically, the sandbar will not stay dredged and will need regular clearing. It is not a simple answer to continued progress for Ilhéus. Nonethess, by the end, some level of civilisation is achieved. At the trial of the husband who’d murdered his adulterous wife and her lover at the beginning of the book, the lawyer Dr Ezequiel Prado is reported as saying:

Ilhéus was no longer a land of bandits, a paradise of assassins; his theme was civilization and progress.

It is interesting to think that this book was published around the same time as Patrick White’s Tree of man (1955) and Voss (1957). Amado and White are both described as modernists, but how different they are. White is psychologically intense, while Amado here is full of humour, colour and movement, reflecting the messiness of society. Modernism, though, is a forgiving church as Lisa (ANZLitLovers) shows in her post on the subject.

There is so much to write about this book. Its humour and satire, the complex characterisation, the clever way the double murder introduced at the beginning is woven as a motif through the book, and the breadth of its subject-matter are just a few of the the topics that could be explored in depth.

I’ll leave those for others though and come back to a favourite aspect for me which is its thorough analysis of the way the desire for progress clashes with the status quo. I’ll end with statements made by two of the town’s old guard. First, the Colonel who sees that change is coming:

That’s right Colonel. Everything you’ve said is right as far as it goes. But it’s right by the conditions and needs of an earlier time. We spend our lives working hard, and we don’t realise that time is going by and that things are changing…

Then, the Colonel who doesn’t see it:

What does Ilhéus want beyond what we’re giving it? What more is there to do? To tell the truth I don’t see these new needs.

It was ever thus eh?

Jorge Amado
Gabriela, clove and cinnamon
(trans. by James L. Taylor and William L. Grossman)
New York: Vintage International, 1958 (1992)
426pp.
ISBN: 9780307276650

Musica Viva, the Internet and Borodin

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Tonight was the opening of our Musica Viva 2010 International Concert Season. The performers were the Borodin Quartet, and they performed two quartets by Shostakovich and one by their namesake, Borodin. I’m not going to review this concert in detail because, as I’ve said before, I have no musical training and so can’t comment in any detail on the structure of the music or the technical skill of the musicians. There are things though that I can talk about.

The first thing is the Internet. Like many of us, I like to keep an eye on how organisations and businesses use the Internet to enhance their services. A few years ago Musica Viva started making their concert programs available online before the concert. Not only did this mean you didn’t have to pay for a printed program at the venue but you could read up on the pieces beforehand. In addition to this aid to audience education, they have, for some years, offered free pre-concert talks. We never managed to get to those which is a shame as I’m sure they would have further enhanced our appreciation of the concerts but, well, you just can’t fit in everything. This year, though, they have replaced this with a new feature: online concert talks – which they say they will make available around 2 weeks before the concert. You can check out the talks offered for tonight’s Borodin concert here. What a great way to use the Internet to help audience members get the most out of the concerts. As the athletes at the Winter Olympics say, I’m stoked!

The next thing is a little more esoteric. I may not be trained in music, but I am a trained librarian/archivist. I was therefore rather chuffed to read that Borodin, an industrial chemist as well as composer, invented “a chemical compound – a special type of gelatine coating – that enabled him to preserve his [hand-written] musical work for posterity” (from the concert program). How great is that?

Cello

Cello (Courtesy: Clker, by OCAL)

And now for the concert. Three pieces were played:

  • Dmitri Shostakovich String Quartet no. 4 in D major, op. 83 (1949)
  • Dmitri Shostakovich String Quartet no. 13 in B flat minor, op. 138 (1960-70)
  • Alexander Borodin String Quartet no. 2 in D major (1881)

It was a lovely concert. The two Shostakovich pieces were a little more demanding for those in the audience who like something more traditional, but I thought both were beautiful. The end of his 4th quartet, with a slowly sustained fading line from the cello supported by light (not bright) pizzicato from the other instruments, was played sensitively and left us with a wistful melancholy. According to the program, Shostakovich said that music should always have “two layers” and that Jewish folk music with its ability to “be happy while it is tragic” is close to his vision of music. Both these quartets reflected, I think, this goal though in the mostly sombre 13th it was much harder to find! My concert neighbour (not Mr Gums, but on my other side) and I agreed that this was not music to listen to at home on the radio or a CD, but to hear live, in the concert hall.

The Borodin is a different kettle of fish – romantic, with all the richness and lyricism you associate with that period. The third movement, the Notturno (or Nocturne), is famous. I recognised it immediately but if you had asked me before the concert who wrote it I would have “guessed” Beethoven. Well, it is Romantic! But, hearing it tonight, I realised that it does sound a little more “modern” than Beethoven, and that’s about as technical as I’ll get!

All in all, a lovely concert – interesting music well played – to start this year’s season. Next up The Harp Consort. You never know, I may be inspired to tell you about that one too.

Richard Allen and Kimbal Baker, Australia’s remarkable trees

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It’s odd, don’t you think, that a poem by Thomas Hardy is used to introduce a book titled Australia’s remarkable trees? The poem, “Throwing a tree”, starts with a line that leaves you in no doubt as to the poet’s sympathies:

The two executioners stalk along over the knolls

… and concludes with the poignant, nay tragic:

And two hundred years’ steady growth has been ended in less than two hours.

Relevant? Yes. But there are Australian poems that would have done the job, such as, for example, David Campbell’s “The last red gum”, which concludes:

So we stand, me and my brothers, just the bones of ancient trees
that have lined the riverbank since time began.
In a bare and barren landscape, fed by the red dust on the breeze,
We’ve been ravaged by the careless hand of man.

I’m being churlish though I know, as this is a gorgeous book. The best way to describe it, I think, is as the tree equivalent of a dictionary of biography: it documents 50 trees from all over Australia, through photographs (Baker) and text (Allen). The trees are categorised under six chapters:

  • Magnificent natives
  • Old curiosities
  • Foreign invaders
  • Historic trees
  • Private trees
  • Local giants

Not surprisingly, gum trees (22 of them) feature heavily in the book, with four of these being the River Red Gum . In his text – a page or two for each tree – Allen provides some background to the tree (the specific tree photographed, its species, and its location). Just enough information to whet the appetite. Take, for example, the Himalayan Cedar (Cedrus deodar) at Government House in Canberra.

Himalayan Cedar (Deodar cedrus)

Himalayan Cedar (left), Government House, Canberra. (If I’d known I was going to write about it I would have featured it more!)

This tree was 5 years old, when it arrived in Australia, from Britain, in 1837 and was planted on what was then a sheep station called Yarralumla (now the name of its suburb). It is HUGE and one limb is now supported by a steel cable, but it is still surviving and, Allen says, could live another 100 years. When I did a tour of the garden last year, the gardener told us that they are propagating from it: it is clearly of good stock, and propagating it will ensure that it continues to be part of the Government House landscape when it does finally die.

Snow gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora)

Snow gum on Merritt’s Traverse, Kosciuszko National Park, Thredbo

Among the gums featured is one of my favourites, the Snow Gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora). The one chosen for the book is from the Bogong High Plains in Victoria. It has the tortured, twisted formation typical of those that live in high altitudes. And, like my younger less tortured one here, it also has the gorgeous multicoloured ribbon marking that is characteristic of these trees.

These are just two of the trees presented in this book. There are many more gums (and other natives) and more exotics, there are the giants (such as Western Australia’s Karri) and the strange ones (like the Boab and the Banyan Fig), and of course there is the famous, recently discovered (1994) “living fossil”, Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis).

This book has a lot to offer if you are interested in trees – for themselves, and for how they relate to landscape and our sense of place – and if you believe passionately, as the authors do, that preserving them is key to our future. John Muir would be proud. But again, strangely, the book ends not with an Australian reference but a quote from American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who apparently said “The best friend on Earth of man is the tree”. I think, though, that I will end with something a little more mystical. It’s from “Scribbly Gum”, by Judith Wright:

The gum-tree stands by the spring.
I peeled its splitting bark
and found the written track
of a life I could not read.

Richard Allen and Kimbal Baker
Australia’s remarkable trees
Carlton: The Miegunyah Press, 2009
254pp.
ISBN: 9780522856699

Willa Cather, The sentimentality of William Tavener

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Willa Cather

Willa Cather, 1936 (Photo: Carl Van Vechten; Public domain, via Wikipedia)

Last week’s Library of America story was Willa Cather’s “The sentimentality of William Tavener” (1900). I can’t resist blogging about this one because it’s by the wonderful Willa, to whom I was introduced when I first lived in the US in the early 1980s. I have read only three of her novels (My Antonia, The professor’s house, and Death comes for the archbishop) but loved her from the beginning: for her robust, somewhat terse and yet not unsubtle style, and for writing so evocatively about the nation I was living in and keen to learn about.

The Library of America’s introduction says that this story is one of her earliest pieces and that it “combines recollections from her childhood years in Virginia, where she was born, with the atmosphere of her family’s later home in Nebraska”. It also introduces us, the Library continues, to “the strong-willed pioneers who would be so prevalent in her later, more famous fiction”.

“The sentimentality of William Tavener” might be an early piece but it demonstrates well her ability to tightly evoke character and mood. Its plot is flimsy: it takes place in one evening and concerns Hester Tavener’s plan to get her husband to allow their sons go to the circus. He, it appears, is hard and demanding of the boys; she, their ally in obtaining some of the pleasures of life (“No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly that did Hester with her husband on behalf of her sons”). In less than 6 pages, Cather provides a powerful picture of this couple – of their individual (equally strong in their own ways) personalities and the somewhat distant relationship between them. In the first paragraph is this:

The only reason her husband did not consult her about his business was that she did not wait to be consulted.

And yet, he, the William of the title, is not a pushover – but he does things his way:

Silence, indeed, was William’s gravity and strength.

On the night of the story though, he breaks his silence and the astonishing effect, the ending teases us, is that it just may augur a new balance of power in the family. We see the possibility of this coming as the evening wears on and the barrier between the couple starts to break down through the sharing of memories, but it is heralded by a sudden change in style from concrete, matter-of-fact almost staccato reportage to a descriptive interlude:

The little locust trees that grew by the fence were white with blossoms. Their heavy odor floated in to her on the night wind and recalled a night long ago, when the first whip-poor-Will of the Spring was heard …

There is irony in the title: William is not presented as a sentimental man and yet, we find, a little sentimentality can work wonders.

The story introduces us to the Willa Cather to come – to her direct, matter-of-fact style; to her strong characters who often survive by the force of their own will in a world that is hard (or they perceive as hard); to her exploration of relationships and the challenges of maintaining them (particularly in the long haul); and to her evocative, careful use of landscape and nature. If you enjoy this story, and have not read any other Cather … then do move on to her novels.

POSTSCRIPT: For an excellent analysis of Willa Cather’s writing, see AS Byatt’s article in The Guardian. It takes a writer to know a writer!