Counting Princes
It’s been another of those quiet days when I look up to find the day has almost gone and I don’t have a lot to show for it. The morning was spent listening to, and putting together 1970 music posts about, obscure records. That was fun. I’m a little surprised I’ve managed to keep that project going this long: in the early days of lockdown my enthusiasm wained somewhat. The good records were always a pleasure, but my tolerance for listening to and writing about dross fell away.
Back on October 2nd, I wrote:
For a large part of the day I sat out front in the sun reading M John Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, released earlier in the year and waiting on my tbr shelf. As might be expected, it’s slightly offkilter, disturbing and compelling. It is also another that tempts me to chop my fingers of and do something else. (Alternately, this, and Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi are a challenge to do better, a standard to which to aspire.)
For one reason or another, it has taken me longer to finish it than anticipated, but I did finish it this afternoon. My views on it shifted somewhat the further I got into it. It has been very well reviewed in literary places, and was this week announced as a nominee for the Goldsmiths Prize. I found myself instinctively pushing back against authorial manipulation, the narrative voice that insists that I will be unsettled whether I like it or not. As I said a couple of days ago, I looked at the book and looked at the reviews, and thought: is it just me? It’s good, all of his books and stories are, but I was neither under- nor over- whelmed; merely whelmed.
A fox jumped out of a bush beside me and ran away as I was out for a walk tonight. I’m not sure which of us was the more startled.
***
Music: something bracing to finish the evening. Dick Gaughan’s celebrated version of Brian McNeill’s No Gods and Precious Few Heroes
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