I finished a very modest five books this month, three by women/PoC (again = women), four for my “Dorothy Richardson and environs” theme; one German, and none in Portuguese (I’m doing some listening instead).
- Country People — Ruth Suckow
- Professor Unrat — Heinrich Mann
- Journey to Paradise — Dorothy M. Richardson
- Pointed Roofs — Dorothy M. Richardson
- Departure(s) — Julian Barnes
Starting with the inevitable, Pointed Roofs is not typical Pilgrimage — it’s a much easier read than most volumes, and along with Oberland is the non-England chapter — but it’s a very fine book, and contains the passage that made me fall in love with DR:
Someone was saying “Hi!” a gurgling muffled shout, a long way off.
She opened her eyes. It was bright morning. She saw the twist of Harriett’s body lying across the edge of the bed. With a gasp she flung herself over her own side. Harry, old Harry, jolly old Harry had remembered the Grand Ceremonial. In a moment her own head hung, her long hair flinging back on to the floor, her eyes gazing across under the bed at the reversed snub of Harriett’s face. It was flushed in the midst of the wiry hair which stuck out all round it but did not reach the floor. “Hi!” they gurgled solemnly, “Hi…. Hi!” shaking their heads from side to side. Then their four frilled hands came down and they flumped out of the high bed.
In one of her later letters to her younger sister, written when she was 72, DR remembers the original of this episode.
The 40-year-old DR has some fun with the perspective of 17-year-old Miriam:
how square and stout she looked and old, careworn, like a woman of forty.
I read some new to me Richardson too: Journey to Paradise is a miscellaneous collection of stories and sketches, some clearly adjuncts to Pilgrimage itself. One for the completists, I have to say.
Country People is by Ruth Suckow, a friend and correspondent of Richardson. It reminded me of Elizabeth Strout, or Garrison Keillor — rather matter of fact depiction of, well, country people. Once I’d got used to the gentleness of the pace it was interesting enough, but not enough to send me running for more Suckow.
Heinrich Mann is another contemporary who Richardson read and liked, so I chose Professor Unrat. This was great fun, well-narrated as an audiobook, with a central character seeming to deserve an interesting mix of pity, contempt, and admiration.
Pausing here to mention some DR-adjacent books which I haven’t managed to finish: Hugh Walpole is a great discovery, and I’ll finish The Silver Thorn next month; I haven’t got far at all with May Sinclair (Mary Olivier), Romer WIlson (Martin Schüler), or John Cowper Powys (Wolf Solent), though I do like what I’ve read of the latter two.
Departure(s) was not in the plan, but I saw that the audiobook was coming out, and grabbed. It’s classic late Barnes: combining memoir, essay, and fiction on, as he pre-emptively mentions, some of his favourite tropes. Barnes’ own narration makes it all the more powerful, fitting perfectly a book being narrated by … author Julian Barnes. A perfect ending rounds off his last words.
Next month, inspired by Julian, my topic is favourite authors: JB, DR, Anne Weber, Joachim Meyerhoff … the list is growing.