Lovely Morning

Weather is really great, I awoke at 7.00 despite a late night last night, with the SoA meeting/dinner, and did a lot of washing up.  Now I feel I ought to be allowed to sit down and write a bit.

Last night was great fun - 11 of us, and a really enjoyable evening.  It is nice to be at table with people who can mention Proust without other people rolling their eyes... it is a great combination of people, with lots of overlapping interests and references and experiences.  The thing about mentioning Proust locally is that it is beyond the pale around here - I know from my experience with the book group, and even with the 100-best group that we've formed, that mentioning Ulysses causes - not exasperation exactly, but a definite sense that to claim one loves it is to provoke disbelief, and underlying suspicion that one is being intellectually dishonest or pretentious.  Even M said "Well - I've never seen you reading it."  Well, mush, I've read it three times and when JH and I used to have evenings together we'd discuss it endlessly and read bits of it to each other.... true I haven't read it since I married M - but there are a lot of things I haven't done since then. 

I have been reading a lot recently, and although it has been good to re-connect with a lot of mid-range fiction and fun stuff, the books that have really made an impression on me have been, surprise, surprise! the "classics" - the Harold Bloom Western Cannon books, such as Kim - because they provoke you to read more around the subject, and provoke thought.  Wolf Hall was another such book, since it provoked me to read Cavendish's Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey.  I heard Martin Sheen on Desert Island Discs yesterday saying that reading The Brothers Karamazov had changed his life and made him return to Catholicism.  I really enjoyed it - but for some reason I never finished it... something radical must have happened (maybe I got married).  So I will finish the fun detective novel The Bank of the Black Sheep - author's name unremembered, and crack on with Karamazov - or the second vol. of Proust, which begins with The Guermantes Way.  Someone was saying last night (E I think) that the new translation of Proust is not as good as the Scott Moncrieff because whereas Swann's Way is a perfect translation of Du Cote du chez Swann - since it has a double meaning that describes the book's contents the new translation was something clunkier like The Path past Swann's   but I suppose people love to do new translations, and people love to read and compare them, and there is always a feeling that "we must have a NEW translation" because stuffy old Scott Moncrieff or Constance Garnett just won't do anymore.   But no one in France is saying "we must re-write Flaubert - his style is so old-fashioned, it just won't do anymore" or perhaps they too are being affected by dumbing down.   Not that I'm saying new translations are dumbing down, but the sense that we need them is a bit.  And of course some traditional translations are a bit wonky...

I guess the nice thing is being in a room with people who have similar cultural references and aren't afraid to use them.  It's not that local chums aren't bright and interesting, but I suppose because we are all involved with local stuff, we all tend to talk about that, and the wider world doesn't get a look in - also because I tend to see them at things like private views and public meetings, rather than having proper relationships with them, it's an odd set up.  I'm sure they'd come to my funeral, but they never invite us round for supper...But of course I do have actual friends here now, I mean people I have one-to-one relationships with like A, and er... Sam of course, and L and are getting on well, and D, who curiously has linked up with TM - our new potential client...

Today's plan is to go and get a cat from Cats in Crisis.  That's such a great name for a charity - I wonder if there is an equivalent called Giraffes in Jeopardy?  Dogs in Danger, Tortoises in Trouble... According to KE you can practically order your cat, they have so many there.   I want a ginger/tabby neutered Tom with strong mousing qualities...