Funny Thing About Blogging ...

Collage of Pride & Prejudice Book Covers filched from Scottish Book Trust's website

This blogging malarkey's tricky.  Often I think my timing's off. Take Pride & Prejudice for example, two Hundred Years young yesterday. But I didn't blog yesterday; I did my last minute tax return instead. And so I feel I've mis-timed my celebration of this timeless masterpiece. True, I gave it a mention a couple of weeks ago. But that was too early. And today, too late. But I will mention it anyway.

What is it about a book that ends so unrepentently happily-ever-after that appeals to hardened cynics in the 21st Century? On Channel Four News last night, writer Jenny Colgan was asked if she thought Jane Austen was the prototype 'Chick Lit' author. Jenny, whose books I've never read, but whose covers are all the colour of boiled sweets and cupcake* icing, said that she thought Austen was no purveyor of chick lit. Too intelligent, too arch, too ironic, understated, subtle to be stuck into such an insulting, dismissive category.

(*When did fairy cakes morph into cupcakes? Bring back fairy cakes, I say!)

Yet, she has always had her critics. Mark Twain famously said, Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

And it wasn't only men who criticised her; Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre couldn't see what the fuss was about either:

I had not seen Pride and Prejudice ... and then I got the book. And what did I find? ... a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck.

It's not hard to see why these two writers would dislike Jane Austen; both are striving for very different literary effects. Mark Twain's books have exaggerated, larger than life comic elements. Charlotte Bronte - and her sister Emily, come to that - go for passionate, stormy, troubling relationships that cannot be resolved, if they are resolved at all, without first visiting catastrophe upon their characters.

Jane Austen, on the other hand, deftly exposes the ludicrous social norms and economic realities by which we are all - whether we care to admit it or not - to some extent constrained. Maintaining one's wit and integrity under the weight of society's expectations and harsh judgements emerges from Jane Austen's work as a laudable task for 

life. 

That and getting a single man of large fortune to realise he must be in want of a wife.

Pride & Prejudice gets my vote. I read it when I need to soothe myself through life's rough patches. And I'm not the only one; I have several friends who do the same. But it's not just that it's a 'happy-ever-after'. We know the ending before we start. There is something perfectly formed about its narrative. We're with Lizzie Bennet, cheering her on all the way. And even the supremely annoying characters delight. Or rather, Jane Austen's rendering of them delights us.

I wonder if in another 200 years there will be another hapless blogger with bad timing, just missing the anniversary?  Or by then, will they be able to tunnel back 410 years in time, pick up vibrations of the people who lived then and translate them into a hologram of Jane Austen sitting at the little table in Steventon finishing the first draft of P&P? Or, ten years later in Chawton, writing to her sister Cassandra when it was finally published, will we be able to look over her shoulder as she pens the words:  I want to tell you I have got my own darling child from London. On Wednesday I received one copy ...?

STOP * PRESS * STOP * PRESS

An unapologetic and delighted Hilary Mantel has won the Costa Prize for her novel, Bring up the Bodies, to add to her Booker win in October last year. Click the link to see her on the BBC News accepting the prize for her 'own darling child'. 

Chasing the Merry Dancers

From BBC Radio Orkney's Facebook Page

This is the first for the last few mornings that I haven't woken to a flurry of facebook photos accompanying posts boasting of the AMAZING activity of the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, over Orkney the previous night. It seems they've been viewed in every part of the islands in recent days. Except in the sky above where I'm staying! I'm beginning to feel singled out, the only one around not to have been treated to the spectacular light show. My colleagues come in with dancing green lights in their eyes, laughing at my failure to be blessed like them. "Yes, the whole sky was green," they say, "celestial curtains waving in a heavenly breeze." 

From BBC Radio Orkney's Facebook Page

On Not Being Able to See for Looking

It's beginning to feel like the time I watched for weeks before seeing the kingfisher down at the River Kelvin near where I lived in Glasgow. Everyone I knew had seen it. I went every day to try and catch a glimpse. Once with my daughter I stood on the footbridge gazing at the brown water. A little old woman came past and engaged me in conversation about cormorants and eider ducks, common on the river. While my attention was thus taken up, my daughter said, "A kingfisher just flew by there." The little old woman went merrily on her way. I was convinced she had scales underneath her tweed coat!

Eventually I decided to stop looking. When I walked beside the river, I told myself, I would enjoy whatever I saw. I would feel blessed by the ducks and the cormorants, doubly blessed by the heron. And then one brilliant day in Autumn, with the reflections of the leaves turning the water gold, this 'little bit chipped off in brilliance' shot under the arc of the bridge, 'a flashing kingfisher that flew with soundless beauty'. 

So the Merry Dancers can dance unseen; they can mock me all they like. I will enjoy the stars instead. And the moon. And this morning, the sun rising sweet as an apricot over the Holm of Houton.



Yap & Yarn

Both the Yap & Yarn groups have got off to a clicking clacking start, with everything being cast on from socks to jumpers, cushion covers to arran throws, scarves to woolly hats. My efforts are growing sl-o-o-o-w-ly. Here's the new neck-warmer-in-progress. There are knitters of all levels of ability and those a bit further along help the ones for whom casting on is still a mystery. Karen and Heather kept me straight - or rather, wavy. And lacy. 

Scottish Poetry Library

Lilias Fraser of Scottish Poetry Library kindly sent us some postcards of Tom Leonard's poem In Hospital, which is a tribute to women knitting: 

the future, knitting the future
the present peaceful, quiet

Check out all the wonderful poems on their website. Click the link above to read Tom Leonard's poem in full.


Pride and Prejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the all time favourite books among readers across the world. It is celebrating its bicentenary this year, so expect a flurry of tributes. One of my friends has just reread it for the umpteenth time because of the comfort to be derived from it in times of stress.

The year started with the BBC World Book Club discussing it with an audience from around the world. Click the link to listen again to the discussion. Among those taking part was PD James, whose book, Death Comes to Pemberley is the next title to be tackled by the Lunchtime Reading Group in  Kirkwall Library. Click on the link to the website for details of all the reading groups. 

Pride and Prejudice is on my list of favourite books too. How about you?