July 28, 2010
You've got to court delight
You’ve got to court delight, I think. By which I mean that things don’t just turn up in the post. You’ve got to send small gifts across the country to get a thank-you note in return, and subscribe to literary journals and magazines, and have a friend who lives in Antarctica who sends a postcard from time to time. Or rather, you have to go out of your way to buy a red teapot so that you can be a person who has a red teapot (unless you’re a particular fortunate person for whom red teapots arrive in the post).
Anyway, the point is that I received two letters in the post today upon whose envelopes my name was inscribed by hand. (And it wasn’t even that deceptively handwriting-like font that Bell Canada puts on all their envelopes when they send missives begging for the return of my custom.) Two handwritten envelopes is practically unheard of! I tore them open in a hurry and was not the least bit disappointed by what I found inside.
But let me backtrack. I joined The Barbara Pym Society earlier this year, because it seemed a strange, funny and Pymian thing to do. (I was inspired by this article.) And I also made friends with a brilliant writer/almost birdwatcher, and had her over for tea last week. As a result of these two things, I today received a lovely letter from a fellow Pym Society member who is looking for a Canadian meet-up*, and an absolutely beautiful thank you note from my birder-writer friend (who is truly as master of the form). Both of which made me exquisitely happy.
So you do have to court delight, I think. Though there’s also the point that if you wish to be perpetually delighted, just look for the pleasure of tiny, wonderful things. (Or perhaps I need to get out more…)
*Fascinatingly enough, the Pym Society member had sent me this letter unknowing that we’d corresponded in the past! Three years ago, she published a beautiful essay in The Globe, and sent me a note after I’d mentioned it on my blog. And now we find ourselves two of the very small population of Canadian Barbara Pym Society members! How marvelously tiny the world truly is…
April 20, 2010
My video pitch for Barbara Pym
Jen Knoch’s book club is not only Keepin’ It Real, but they’re Keepin’ Toronto Reading too. I did my part for their effort, making a video pitch for Barbara Pym’s No Fond Return of Love. You can watch the video, and my series of bizarre facial expressions, here.
March 29, 2010
Barbara Pym again
It sounds like I’m being cutesy, but it’s true: something had been a little “off” around here, reading-wise, and it dawned on me that the problem was that I hadn’t read Barbara Pym in ages. So I’ve got on that with Some Tame Gazelle, her first published novel, which she started writing whilst a student at Oxford, proof that she’d been turned onto middle-age spinsters early.
Also, aren’t these Moyer Bell editions quite lovely? The prints call Persephone Books to mind, though of course these aren’t quite as artful, but they’re also ridiculously inexpensive. I love them.
Though I know exactly why I love Barbara Pym, I can think of all kinds of reasons why I might not– she’s never written an opening scene that didn’t involve the vicar or the curate (and I don’t even know what a curate is), not to mention that Jane Austen comparison (because I’m not really so crazy about Jane Austen myself). The last Pym novel I read was Unsuitable Attachment (which was the fourth Pym novel I’d read) and I finally saw the Austen comparison, in that so much of her plots are to do with couplings.
With Pym, however, the couplings are merely an excuse for everything else, rather than ends in themselves. And everything else is usually absurd, funny, understated and surprising. With a great degree of subtlety, she deals with adultery, homosexuality, loneliness, friendship, spirituality, marriage and sexuality, which is a surprising array for a writer who’d been dealing with spinsters since adolescence. I love her narrators, and their English reserve, and the story we glimpse around this. And yes, I love the tea. Always, the tea, and the irresistible bookishness.
Barbara Pym is charming, delightful, splendid, and so smart. Now that I’m reading her again, all is right with the world.
February 26, 2010
In the post and etc.
I just tramped out through the snow to collect today’s brilliant postal haul, which included a writing cheque, my new spaceage autoshare keycard, and a copy of Susan Telfer’s absolutely beautiful collection House Beneath. And really, it tops off the most wonderful morning, which I’ve spent listening to DJ Bookmadam’s playlist, reading An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym and issue 32.3 of Room Magazine. Drinking pear lychee green tea, while Harriet napped for almost two hours (!!). This morning following an evening during which I went out and spent my time in the company of inspiring, amusing women and ate lots of cheese while my husband put the baby to bed without me for the first time ever, and they both did brilliantly. All of which is to say that I am terribly, terribly happy today, and I tell you this not to be smug or rub it in, but because this is one of those good days that I want to collect like a postcard, to pickle away and keep always to remember just how fantastically beautiful the snow-covered world is outside my window right at this moment.
February 2, 2010
Foolscap is awkward to read in bed
“‘Will she expect a comfortable bed?’ Rodney asked. ‘Oughtn’t we to break her into the world gradually?’
‘I don’t see what difference it makes,’ I said.
‘Wilmet, have you thought what books to put by her bed?’ asked Sybil. ‘You must make a careful choice.’
‘I suppose some anthologies of poetry and good novels by female authors,’ I said. ‘Not devotional books, obviously.’
‘We have just completed an interesting report on the Linoleum Industry,’ said Rodney. ‘I could let her have a cyclostyled copy– the pages are bound together.’
‘Foolscap is awkward to read in bed,’ said Sybil. ‘Arnold has just published a paper in one of the archeological journals– that’s a handy size for night reading and there are some excellent drawings of pottery fragments done by an invalid lady who lives in Dawlish.'”– from A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym(!)
