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.