LETTER FROM LONDON JULY 2017

A Family Affair: Reading v's Listening: In The Aftermath of Grenfell

1.

Orwell once famously compared this country to a family with all the wrong members in charge. Putting to one side one’s feelings about the accuracy of the analogy it seems a particularly bitter comparison now. For if we stay with the analogy we are a family at war with itself. The corrupt uncles and dodgy aunts have conspired to gamble away the family’s future. Making promises they knew they couldn’t keep and promising lottery sized bonanza’s they persuaded a small majority of the family to invest in a pyramid scheme called Brexit. As the promises begin to turn sour and the bank statements start to arrive there is a growing sense that the family has been betrayed and the dodgy uncles mumble barely comprehensible excuses.

All the while an ageing hippy, a great uncle whom everyone had forgotten about, has suddenly become a star for the younger family members, making wild promises of his own and encouraging the idealistic teenagers to revolt.

Like all analogies this one breaks down in several ways, still, it has the virtue of simplicity and the innate tragi-comedy that is family. Comedy so often essential to leaven the heavy dough of reality.

 So often I have witnessed countries commit acts of great stupidity but thought my own immune from such populist madness. I was wrong. I now live in the belly of a country committing suicide.  It is not a pleasant experience.

2.

I have just finished reading, and listening to, Djuna Barnes, ‘Nightwood;’ What an extraordinary novel it is, prose so stunning and rich it defeats a single reading. Nightwood famously has an introduction by TS Eliot. I have not read it. I hate introductions, even by the great and good, especially those which give away significant aspects of the plot. Few things can be as galling as reading in a forward or book review something along the lines of… ‘why the central character murders his wife in the second chapter remains a mystery until we are introduced to Fielding, her cousin… etc, etc.’

There was a time when, as a sort of principle, I would only ever read one book at a time. With Kindle, Audible and the wonderful www.abebooks.co.uk those days are long gone. These days I tend to be reading at least four books at a time. Contrary to my previous, strongly held, principle this does not dilute the power of any one book. However, I have learned that certain books lend themselves to a certain time. History is daytime reading, novels for the evening or early hours, philosophy is best consumed at night. Thus, waking in the early hours, I have been recently listening to Schopenhauer on Audible. For a philosopher, he writes with a clarity that is a joy.  However, having confessed to listening to it on Audible this raises the question does it count, as reading that is?

Well, certainly it’s not the same, lacking the intimacy and insularity of the reading experience, the closed and self-contained world of the reader, author and printed page. However, what listening loses in terms of intimacy it gains in theatricality and defining characters much more solidly as organic creatures living outside of oneself in the universe of living souls. This is especially true of masters of the art such as Neville Jason reading Proust, Jack Klaff’s rendering of the Alexandria Quartet or the brilliant character interpretation of Gemma Dawson reading Nightwood.

With respect to ideas, these too can be shaped differently by the spoken word, changes in emphasis and nuance can result in a very different understanding of ideas, the cadences and inflexions of the human voice adding different dimensions to the written word.

Whether reading or listening different flavours come into play both can be enriching and provide depth of experience. Yes, they are different mediums and listening, or indeed listening and reading at the same time, is not the same as reading, and perhaps the intimacy of reading alone has the edge. Still, as both add significant pleasure to any life, does it matter?

3.

July trundles slowly towards August and my days have begun to take on a languorous Chekhovian quality, with Miles Davies playing the soundtrack. It old be pleasant but for an all pervading anxiety,  a cocktail of the dismal political situation and the heavy presence of Grenfell and the emotional fall out from that terrible disaster.  Posters, worn and rain stained still pinned to trees and notice-boards, plaintive enquiries for children, the elderly, sometimes whole families missing in the aftermath of the fire. This area will regain its self-confidence,  but it will never be the same again.

AT July 2017.