A Perfect Sunday

Overcast weather is perfect weather for a Sunday.

I  read profusely. I read to gain better understanding of  thoughts in general  and the very nature of our being or the very being of  our nature.

I read about the trajectory of  life, the state of  our being and hope to expand my mind. I read to write better sentences. Mostly I read for pleasure. I read more than one book at a time and try to be an omnivorous reader.

Words persuade, dissuade, describe and transcend all that define us, our beliefs, our insecurities, our hypocrisies, our truths and the ordinary events that shape our lives. 

It was one of those Sundays when the weather was perfect for reading outdoor. Even if it is  overcast weather, I am too wary of pigmentation to sit in the sun. Sunbathing is a thing of the past since I discovered how pigmentations have found their way to my skin.

Our dog does not  enjoy solitude and I have found a happy compromise. 

After some rain storms, the dog wanted the sun as much as I did. She left me alone when I read under the porch. She just wanted me to be in the vicinity, how adorable. I told  her , “ Maybe you can read in your next life.”  She seemed  to understand  and  lied there next to me, looking contented. She did her downward facing dog stretch like what she does all the time. She is natural at it, it is her pose after all.

When our  dog moved away from my feet, I knew  the sun had  reappeared.

We want the breeze and the sun. We want to have it all.

In the early evening, our dog hopped onto the wooden table where my book was placed, it was as if she wanted to see what book I was reading. After dinner , I took her  for an evening walk. She behaved so it was good. I never know how to train a dog.

I was reading The Noise of Time  written by  Julian Barnes . The story is based on the life of Dimitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, a Russian composer and how the tumultuous evolution of Soviet Union has affected him in his music compositions. The novel begins with the composer on the landing of his apartment block in the middle of the night waiting by the lift thinking that he would be arrested and persecuted as his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk click has met with Stalin's disapproval and public denunciation. The year was 1936.

The life of Shostakovich is full of ironies and contradictions.
In The Noise of Time, 

' One of the few places where optimism and pessimism could happily coexist -- indeed , where the presence of both is necessary for survival -- was family life. So, for instance, he loved Nita (optimism) , but did not know if he was a good husband (pessimism). He was an anxious man, and aware that anxiety makes people  egotistical and bad company. Nita would go off to work; but the moment she arrived at her Institute, he would telephone to ask when she was coming home. He could see that this was annoying: but his anxiety would just get the better of him.

   He loved the children ( optimism ) , but was not sure if he was a good father (pessimism). Sometimes he felt his love for his children was abnormal. even morbid. Well, life is not a walk across a field, as the saying goes.'

 Julian Barnes guides us through Shostakovich's career and meditates on the meaning of art and its place in a society that commands reeducation for artists.

' Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake. But which people, and who defines them? He always thought of his own art as anti-aristocratic. Did he write, as his detractors maintained, for a bourgeois cosmopolitan elite? No. Did he write, as his detractors wanted him to, for the Donbass miner weary form his shift and in need of a soothing pick-me-up? No. He wrote music for everyone and no one. He wrote music for those who best appreciated the music he wrote, regardless of social origin. He wrote music for the ears that could hear. And he knew, therefore, that all true definitions of art are circular, and all untrue definitions of art ascribe to it a specific function.'

The following passage strikes a chord with me.

' In an ideal world, a young man should not be an ironical person. At that age, irony prevents growth, stunts the imagination. It is best to start life in a cheerful and open state of mind, believing in others, being optimistic, being frank with everyone about everything. And then, as one comes to understand things and people better, to develop a sense of irony. The natural progression of human life is from optimism to pessimism, and a sense of irony helps temper pessimism, helps produce balance, harmony.

          But this was not an ideal world, and so irony grew in sudden and strange ways. Overnight, like a mushroom; disastrously, like a cancer.'

The question thus is: Could irony protect Shostakovich's music? All his life, he had avoided joining the party but in 1960, when Shostakovich no longer feared for his life, he was required to join the Communist Party to endorse the new direction taken by his country and he had to accept the chairmanship of the Russian Federation Union of Composers.

' So irony becomes a defence of the self and the soul ; it lets you breather on a day-to -day basis. You write in a letter that someone is a 'marvellous person' and the recipient knows to conclude the opposite. 

The composer  had lived long enough to be dismayed by himself.

'And how would he now appear to his younger self, standing by the roadside as a haunted face in an official car swept past? Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised.'

' He attended Party meetings as instructed. He let his mind wander during the endless speeches, merely applauding whenever others applauded. On one occasion, a friend asked why he had clapped a speech in the course of which Khrennikov had violently criticised him. The friend thought he was being ironic or, possibly, self-abusing. But the truth was , he hadn't been listening.'

All  his life, the composer had relied on irony.
' So irony becomes a defence of the self and the soul ; it lets you breather on a day-to -day basis. You write in a letter that someone is a 'marvellous person' and the recipient knows to conclude the opposite. 

' If you turned your back on irony, it curdled into sarcasm. And what good was it then?Sarcasm was irony which has lost its soul. 

The Noise of Time  is descriptive about how the composer had to submit to Power and lived through the complexities of life under tyranny. Despite repressive regimes and official intimidation, Shostakovich managed to compose music and produce great symphonies against the noise of time. If you ask to whom does music belong to, not being able to answer is the correct answer as Julian Barnes writes, ' Because music, in the end, belonged to music. That was all you could say, or wish for.'

Julian Barnes is absolutely prolific and his prose thought-provoking. He is a brilliant writer.

On Reading

Why read? The answer is simple.

I read  because I like to read. In the same vein, I write because I like to write.

I even read between my laptop and book before me interchangeably. During the day, I write intermittently and  most days I write daily.

In his book On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft , Stephen King writes, 

'So we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.'

I am a compulsive reader as reading helps me to think and write. I resonate with what Stephen King has written in his memoir,

‘I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books – of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favourite, the john. You can even read while you’re driving, thanks to the audiobook revolution.’

Every day I feel torn between books I love to read and cases and texts I need to read for work. I am aware that reading during meals may cause indigestion and as a rule since I frown on multitasking, I should focus on eating while eating but for me reading is the exception.  I go everywhere with a good novel to keep me company. When I lunch alone, I always have a book with me. When I am not sure if  I will enjoy a particular book, I will bring with me another book that  I know will be good.   

 In his memoir, Stephen King wrote, “ The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.”

This week I had been going to bed past midnight as I engaged myself in reading the fiction I’ll see you in Paris written by Michelle Gable.

It is a story about a young woman in search of the missing pieces in her life. She wants to know who her dad is. Her mother is an accomplished lawyer and a protective single parent who only wants to shield her only daughter from the harsh fact of who her dad was and what happened to him.

Despite her mother’s discouragement, Annie, aged twenty-two, is engaged to Eric, a Marine just before he gets shipped off to the Middle East. When Annie’s  mother, Laurel  Haley and her take a trip to Banbury, she stumbles upon a biography of the eccentric Duchess of Marlborough who had lived in Banbury. When they arrive in Banbury, Laurel has some business to take care of, leaving Annie to her own device. When Annie and the book catch the attention of Gus, an older gentleman who frequents the pub that Annie happens to visit, Gus shares with her stories about the elusive duchess and  she becomes increasingly intrigued with the story of the mysterious duchess and in the end, she uncovers the missing pieces in her own life.

I’ll See You in Paris click is a fiction based on real life of Gladys Spencer –Churchill, the Duchess of Marborough who lived until ripe old age of 97 years old. Quite a complicated setting. The author has created a romantic story between two people by blending historical facts to the setting.The novel is a page turner and an enjoyable read. 

Le week-end

On Sunday afternoon, I made a quiche for dinner, three quarter of it with salmon and mushrooms and the remaining quarter with  left over bacon bits from previous night dinner. It took me more than two hours to make it from scratch. We were going to bring the quiche to my in-laws. Our dog ran out and it was drizzling. I asked my family to go ahead and I would stay home. Someone had to be home to let the dog back in. I  prefer to be home on Sunday evenings when I can read whatever I am reading and  brace myself for a new work week ahead. 

I was looking forward to reading another satire written by Hanif Kureishi as I had thoroughly enjoyed reading The Buddha of Suburbia click.  During the weekend, when I read The Last Word by the same author, I could not help thinking if I should have spent my weekend reading another fiction. While I appreciate the author's wit and  the theme of the novel, I am just not fond of the characters in the novel and by the end of the story, I still could not warm up to any of the characters. 

The first paragraph of the novel definitely had my attention.

'Harry Johnson gazed out of the window of the train at the English countryside and thought that not a moment passed when someone wasn’t telling a story. And, if his luck held for the rest of the day, Harry was about to be employed to tell the story of the man he was going to visit. Indeed, he had been chosen to tell the whole story of this important man, this significant artist. How, he wondered, with a shudder, did you begin to do that? Where would you start, and how would the story, which was still being lived, end? More importantly, was he, Harry, capable of such a task?'

In The Last Word, Harry Johnson, a young writer, is commissioned to write a biography of Mamoon Azam, an eminent cricket-loving, Indian-born British novelist, a cranky writer, now living in the Somerset countryside and married to a glamorous Italian. Mamoon’s book sales have dried up and his new wife has expensive tastes. Much comedy and drama ensue as Mamoon himself is mining a different vein of truth while Harry’s publisher seeks a biography that is explosive.  As Harry relentlessly pursues with his enquiry about the materials he has obtained, Mamoon tells Harry,

            " Harry, you know more about my many selves than I do. You're in the remembering business while I'm in the forgetting game, and forgetting is the loveliest of the psychic luxuries, a warm scented bath for the soul. I follow Chuang Tzu click, the patron saint of dementia, who advised, "Sit down and forget." 

In his attempts to get Mamoon to verify some things told by Marion, Mamoon's mistress, Harry has angered him by upsetting his second wife, Liana. Mamoon and Harry have this verbal exchange:

‘“ Marion –I mean Liana –said you’re the sort to want to appear on television! You’re trying to make a career out of me, young man!”

“We’re strapped together, sir. We sink or swim as one beast.”

“Yours is a work of envy, and you are a third-rate semi-failure of a parasite who has got by on meretricious charm and fading looks. DId you ever read a biographer who could write as well as his subject?”

As if this wasn’t enough, Mamoon grabbed Harry by the lapels and tried to throw him against the car.

“ You’re fired, Harry. You’re never going to finish this work of tittle-tattle and when I come in from work tomorrow lunchtime I want to know this ridiculous misadventure is over! We’ve got another writer lined up to take over. He wears a tie!”

I read that The Last Word could be a roman-à-clef as the relationship between Mamoon and Harry seems to closely mirror that between V S Naipaul and Patrick French who wrote a biography of the Nobel laureate, The World Is What It is. The novel provides some insight about artists, writers and literary people while they are fictionalized. The conversations between Mamoon and Harry are combative, which one of them will have the last word?