A great writer of our times.

The first time I ever heard of Marilynne Robinson was way back, in Nick Hornby's book column of The Believer. He was praising Gilead to the skies. Intrigued, I got it and read it and I've been in love ever since. I now own and have read all Marilynne Robinson's books - and three of them signed copies! I was lucky enough to see her last year in Edinburgh, in a New College lecture, and then again yesterday in Edinburgh, in a packed Assembly Roxy at an out-of-season Edinburgh Book Festival event. There is nothing I can say in praise of her books myself that hasn't been said before. In such cases, the pleasure of reading them oneself cannot be equal to anything anyone might say about them.  

Marilynne Robinson and devoted fan.

Yesterday she was asked many questions, and she answered them all, within the constraints of the one (only!) allocated hour. I understand that we, the reading public, are a bit cannibalistic, and would not spare our favourite writers, who are, after all, human beings and do get tired and cold and hungry (and bored), like everyone else. But I would have liked a bit more time to ask her to elaborate on some of the things she said, particularly about her surprising (but was it?) statement that she rarely rewrites, that everything comes to her pretty much as it ends up in the page, and that she give a lot of thought to things before writing them up. 

The queue for the book signing was very long, and I can't imagine anything more tedious than sitting down and writing your name over and over again in people's copies, in a cold and lofty building made of stone (which increases the cold) in a dreary (dreich is the lovely, perfectly descriptive word) November afternoon in Edinburgh. Ian Webster from Waterstones was kind enough to take this picture on his iphone and even kinder to send it to me. (Thank you, Ian - I consider every penny I've ever spent in Waterstones well-spent after this!)

When I left, she, kind and patient, was still there signing, signing. And the queue was still long. Outside it was misty, and hazy blurs of light were popping up in the falling darkness.  There was that particular feel and smell of Edinburgh in the air, the excitement of the city getting ready for Christmastime; people in and out of the shops holding red-ribboned gift bags (5p each with the new - and correct - regulations); decorations already on some windows. By the time I arrived at Waverley Station to catch the train back home, it was properly dark - just before five in the afternoon. As the train moved westbound, I could discern strings of festive lights in Princes Gardens. All the way to Glasgow Queen Street station, I was reading When I Was a Child I Read Books,  still dazed. 

Back to work today. Tomorrow at 1pm I'm giving an Insight Talk on Enchanted Places at the Hunterian Art Gallery. More info on my official Hunterian project blog historyfictionfantasy.wordpress.com. And that (sort of) concludes my personal appearance obligations for the project. Finally, I'll be able to concentrate on the blog itself, once all that - not unpleasant, but distracting -  stuff is out of the way. 

A night in amber light.

The Hunterian keynote event last week (already!) went very well. This is probably what I've enjoyed most so far in the PhD, apart from the writing, and some of the reading. The Hunterian Art Gallery is a lovely place, steeped in that special, mellow light - at least this is what I see in my mind when I think of it afterwards - which must be emanating from all those paintings, all those pigments. It is a place I like to nip into even for a few minutes ever so often just to catch a soothing glimpse at the dark reds and rich ambers.

But that night. Such a wealth of ideas, variety of projects, fresh ways to look at old objects, art in the making... We are lucky to live in a place and time when so much is offered to keep our minds alert and to please our senses. A living, working museum, an open art gallery are true blessings: may they a thrive, and may they always be accessible and free to the public.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself that night. There's nothing like talking about things you are passionate about to an intelligent and interested audience. But my best part of the night was the last bit, when Brianna sang an aria from Handel's Rinaldo, her full, golden-timbred voice filling the room with ripples of nostalgia and yearning.

Hunterian Keynote event, Wednesday 5 November.

Some impatient souls have started with the fireworks tonight. Over the high-rises across the valley (formed by a line of council houses, with their own humble beauty, behind a row of perennial trees, and an invisible speedway lined by rows of taller, deciduous trees, now waving bare branches in the dark), red and white and yellow sparkles bloom and erupt and perish. It is a lovely sight. It will be grander tomorrow.

© The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014

A busy day tomorrow, culminating in the Hunterian Associate Keynote event. The blog I started for that project, at http://historyfictionfantasy.wordpress.com is what gave me the idea for this one. They share a title, but their purpose is slightly different. In the other blog (the main blog) I mainly discuss the sixteenth century historical epic The Liberation of Jerusalem by Torquato Tasso. I am enjoying that blog, which is not a strictly academic pursuit, although it is related to my PhD research in a rather oblique way. Tasso's epic (in elegant verse, the making of which is an art I really admire and regret not learning when I had the chance) veers into fantasy, but it is a very modern work for its time, and many of its anxieties are still our anxieties today. I won't go on about it, there's the other blog for that. 

Sp Coll Hunterian Cd.2.1., Special Collections, 

University of Glasgow Library.

For the noo (as they say here in Glasgow), my anxieties are of a different and rather technical sort: an adapter to connect my laptop to the projector, which was supposed to be here today, hasn't arrived on the post yet, the PowerPoint presentation changes  every time I look at it, there's an uncertainty re: cameras and videos and their allocation ... In short, I have a feeling that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Not discounting the nagging feeling there's still something else I should have done, something terribly important and crucial, only I can't remember... 

At any rate, by that time tomorrow it will be all over, and I can go back to relishing Tasso's haunting verses (at one point he describes death as 'the stern gaze, the iron sleep') on my own, and doing my blog in my own good time without the pressure of direct public engagement. Amen to that. 

Autumnal windows, old and new.

Now that the clocks have gone back one hour and the sun sets before five o'clock, I love to get up early, earlier than daylight, and watch the light come in and then the slow or swift fall of leaves and the change of colours around me. This is the view from the window of the old office (right), and the new (below), where I moved last week. For my wish was granted at last, when I had lost all hope it would ever be. 

I often re-read Persuasion at this time of year, and I particularly love the following passage, in which Anne Elliott is walking in the country with her annoying sister and some friends, her former fiancé, Captain Wentworth, among them: 

The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory. (...) [A]fter another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the ploughs at work, and the fresh made path spoke the farmer counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill, which parted Uppercross and Winthorp and soon commanded a full view of the latter, at the foot of the hill on the other side.

It is typical of Jane Austen to say the most important thing as an aside. She never means to preach, and this is one of the reasons why she is such a convincing writer, besides being such a constant pleasure to read. 

'Meaning to have spring again' should be my new motto. 

Yesterday, we went on another tour on the sightseeing bus (possibly our tenth or more since we moved to Glasgow; I've lost count). It was an undecided day, between rain and shine. Perhaps this is why there is something water-colourish in this picture of Glasgow University above one of the bridges over the river Kelvin, just before the stop for the Kelvingrove museum. I have no idea where the cream frame came from. I'm still learning how to use the ipad, and sometimes it seems to have a will of its own. I don't mind. The glass between the image and the lens seems to have changed the light, ehnhanced it somehow, touched up the colours, given the clouds an extra swirl. 

Looking at a picture I took and seeing in it something I did not mean to put there is always a pleasant surprise. Much like writing a piece and forgetting about it and then reading it again after a while, and thinking: "Who wrote this? Did I write this?" It's a kind of happiness, that. 

Theory is Spot On!

One of the things I find less fascinating about my PhD research is the absolute necessity of reading theory. When all I want is to sit down and engage with imaginary people in more or less imaginary settings, the rigorous application that theory demands from me seems more like a chore than a pleasure. One gets used to it, of course. And the next step is to realise that theory is important, not only for its academic uses, but for its relevance to reality, to real life. 
Here is an example. Walter Benjamin wrote this in One-Way Street (See One-Way Street and Other Writings, tr. by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. London & New York: Verso, 2006 [1979], p. 56) in the 1920s:

Even the title is portentous.

"Poverty disgraces no man." Well and good. But they disgrace the poor man. They do it, and then console him with this little adage. It is one of those that may once have held good but have long since degenerated. ... When there was work that fed a man, there was also poverty that did not disgrace him, if it arose from deformity or other misfortune. But this deprivation into which million are born and hundred of thousands are dragged by impoverishment, does indeed disgrace. Filth and misery grow up around them like walls, the work of invisible hands. And just as a man can endure much in isolation, but feels justifiable shame when his wife sees him bear it or suffers it herself, so he may tolerate much as long as he is alone, and everything as long as he conceals it. But no one may ever make peace with poverty when it falls like a gigantic shadow upon his countrymen and his house. Then he must be alert to every humiliation done to him and so discipline himself that his suffering becomes no longer the downhill road to grief, but the rising path of revolt. But of this there is no hope so long as each blackest, most terrible stroke of fate, daily and even hourly discussed by the press, set forth in all its illusory causes and effects, helps no one uncover the dark powers that hold his life in thrall."

Except for the reference to 'man' as the default position of the human race and woman ('his wife') as its complement - which is not unexpected in a text written almost ninety years ago - this text could have been written just a few days ago. 
It evokes the atmosphere of bleak disappointment that fell like a heavy blanket over Scotland the day after slightly more than half of the voters gave in to fear and said No. 
It describes the BBC's ('the press') nasty role in obscuring the truth and in propagating illusions that help to hold our lives in thrall to a corrupt system. 
It points out the only way out of this: 'not the downhill road to grief, but the rising path of revolt.' 
This path of revolt doesn't need to be, and won't be, violent, but informed, broad-minded, and determined: things, on the whole, much more scary to 'the dark powers' than violence, which 'they' know and condone and nurture, as the events at George Square showed very clearly only a few hours after their 'victory.'  
Benjamin's warning about the catalytic role of the media is especially pertinent; that is where the difference must be made, for real change. Well, it seems that things might be going towards that direction.

Hope or Fear?

Bus-stop on Byres Road yesterday. 

Only one day to go and the people of Scotland will decide on one of this most important of all political issues: self-determination. This referendum is not at all about ethnic identity. If it was, I wouldn't have a say in it, not being a Scot by birth. Actually, the fact that only residents are allowed to vote, regardless of their ethnic origin, while Scots who do not live here are not has caused much opprobrium, mostly to anti-independence supporters, who will accuse the pro-Indy side as 'nats' in the same breath, and never see the irony!
There is nothing nationalistic about independence: it is about self- determination, de-centering, moving away from an anachronistic, unfair political system, away from a  Union which still nurses illusions of imperial grandeur and indulges in bouts of war-mongering, towards a fairer, more egalitarian, nuclear-free society.

Bairns, Not Bombs. Independence will mean a
nuclear-free Scotland. 

 I can see why people would vote No: long habit (300 years is a not a negligible time), emotional attachment, and fear of the unknown - fear that has systematically been played upon, exploited and cultivated by the establishment en masse: UK government, media, banks, big business, even celebrities fell over themselves to convince 'the Scots' (I'd give anything to dive into their heads and see the mental image they had of 'the Scots') that they love them and please, please don't go. On the other hand, diametrically opposite this over-sentimentalised, almost saccharine attitude, the leader of the No campaign looks and sounds like the accounts manager of Grunnings [1], banging on non-stop about money, pensions and currency, and looking disgusted and sarcastic when hope, imagination, or radical ideas about self-government are brought into the discussion.
At the PostGraduate induction party today at uni, in which I was one of the hosts, the buzz was certainly pro-independence. There is no choice for me, really, but I understand that for some people it is a very hard one, and I respect that. 
But 97% of the eligible population has registered to vote. Regardless of the result, Scotland will never be the same again: people take this thing seriously, and rightly so. Even if they decide to say No to Independence - saying yes to fear and being bullied at the hands of a ruthless establishment at the same time - things will never be the same again. Within the next few years - and particularly if there is a Conservative / UKIP government in the next elections, which seems highly likely - this discussion will be revived. And there will be a resounding Yes then. But I'll be voting Yes this time round too. 


[1] Grunnings: fictional company selling drills in which Harry Potter's awful Uncle Vernon is director. I still can't understand how J.K. Rowling found it in her heart to side with those people. But I suppose they are her friends now. Oh well. Sigh. 

Reading List

Perfect pairs (but Kindle not in the picture).

Currently reading:

• Blood of the Martyrs, by Naomi Mitchison.
• The Merchants of Nations, by Alexandros Papadiamantis (on Kindle).
• Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962-1204: Cultural and Political Relations, by Krijne N. Ciggaar.
• The First Crusade: A New History, by Thomas Asbridge.
• The Alexiad, by Anna Komnene (Comnena).
• Walter Scott's Journal.
• Infancy and History: On the Destruction of Experience, by Giorgio Agamben.
• One-Way Street and Other Writings, by Walter Benjamin.

There's a perfect symmetry in this list, I notice: four pairs of books, one of historical novels, one of historical research, one of memoirs (though The Alexiad could fit the previous category as well, it is a memoir too, IMO), and one of theory. One of them is left in my locker in the PG common study space; one is on Kindle (the Greek book, strangely enough). Only three out of the eight are library loans.

So much for statistics. I am enjoying them all, if one might be bold enough to use the word 'enjoy' for the venerable works of Agamben and Benjamin. They are all related to my research (no guilty stuff this week), one way or another. Perhaps the novels are the least directly relevant ones, but it must be remembered that the finished project will be a novel, too. You learn the craft from other novelists, not from theory, and not only on your own efforst. 

Naoi Mitchison's political engagement is powerful and very relevant nowadays (she wrote this novel in the thirties, but there is much in common with that era now, unfortunately), and I am interested in lives of slaves and of saints, which are part of my own novel as well. Papadiamantis' book is a re-read: it was a favourite historical romance of my childhood, but I am curious to see what I'll make of it now. So far I'm finding it fascinating: set in the thirteenth century Aegean island of Naxos and Venice, it is teeming with pirates, abductions, betrayals, quests, wicked and angelic characters, and medieval politics. As I read, I am half-forming a project in my mind of translating this novel into English. But this is one of the dangers of research: fascinating projects pop up from every new book, article, or paper one reads, enticing one away from the work at hand (as Benjamin would say). But there is only so much time, and the PhD must remain firmly on top as the (only?) priority, research-wise. Easier said than done. 

A Desk of One's Own, Bedroom Tax, and Lotteries

I'm not going to write about those precious things threatened by a possible Yes in the Scottish Referendum in two week's time, such as the Bedroom Tax, the National Lottery, and even private possessions (according to some terrified No supporters). I'm going to write about working space. 
Working space (i.e. a desk of one's own) is very important when you're doing a PhD, but setting one up is not as straightforward as it sounds. In theory, all PhD students are offered office space at the commencement of their studies. In practice - alas! - an office of one's own is a dream equivalent to winning the lottery. You actually have to win the lottery to get one. This is not a manner of speaking: it is the literal truth. After the academic year has started and office space has been allocated to those lucky ones whose scholarship terms particularly state they are entitled to office space (not all scholarships offer this - unfortunately mine doesn't), there is a waiting list for the rest, the order determined by lottery draws. Office space is allocated as it becomes available. Less than half of interested PhDs received one last year, and it is predicted that even fewer will receive one this year. The lottery list is only valid for the academic term, which means that you might have been one place away from getting a desk last year, but this year it's back to square one. No waiting lists. For some reason waiting lists are not on. I suppose it's considered as ludicrous, as, say, having waiting lists in the National Lottery: "Hey, I've been playing for fifty years, isn't it time I won something?" When the one and only criterion is luck, waiting lists just don't make sense.

The Itinerant Scholar, alias Academic Bag-lady,
opens shop every morning, carries it all back home
every night (no more book space in the locker).

Let so much be said for office space at uni, as Anna Comnena would say. But oh, for a room of one's own at home! One corner in the bedroom it is for me. I'm going slightly deaf from having the ipod permanently stuck into my ears, and pre-classical music doesn't do much to block the regular household noises anyway (I should be listening to Wagner perhaps, but then I'd go deaf much more quickly). If we had a spare room at home to turn into a study, we'd have to pay bedroom tax for it. Many would think that it's rich of the poor to want luxuries such as workspace for intellectual pursuits. The poor have no business being intellectuals, is what they think. 

 I'm not complaining, mind: I made certain choices in my life, which I don't regret for a minute, and which led to a - shall we say - definitely not opulent lifestyle. I'm happy with that. I don't ask for the taxpayer to fund my intellectual habit, either. (I do question - no, I directly refute and reject - the fairness of the Bedroom Tax, though). It would just be nice to have more support for intellectual pursuits where intellectual pursuits are institutionally nurtured. There surely must be a better way to do this than a lottery!  

 I inquired and was informed that the College of Art's decision had the support of student representatives. Fair enough, and this is what democracy is all about: representatives speak for those whom they represent. The good thing is that within such a system, as long as you speak to your representatives, and your representatives speak for you, you can change things that seemed a good idea at the time but don't really work after all. (Something for voters to think about for Sept. 18)

In the meantime, it' is a Corner of One's Own for me in the Postgraduate Study space for the CoA. I'm getting fond of it. Lovely soothing blue on the wall, and it's really quiet, so pre-classical music is fine even at a low volume. 

Book in the Post

A book I ordered on the post arrived today.  Here it is:                               

What the pictures can't convey is the musty smell of the old book (which I  bought for less than three pounds, most of it for p/p) and my joy in actually holding it in my hands. You see, this book was described as "inaccessible" in another academic book. That one, on foreign visitors in Constantinople between the tenth and thirteenth century, became available to me through an interlibrary loan. I got access to both books within three or four days after requesting them, and without having to travel far and wide in order to get  them (well, I had to go to the University Library for the ILL[1] one, but that's not far. At any rate you are supposed to see the inside of a library while you're doing a PhD, even nowadays).   
There really is no "inaccessible" today, is there? 

[1] ILL: InterLibrary Loan. A wonderful thing, for which universities pay quite a bit of money, sparing you the trouble (and expense) of going on a quest to find a book necessary to your research yourself. But it seems there are people who order books and then don't bother to go pick them up. Recently the university has decided to impose a penalty - a fiver - in such cases.