![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reading, thinking about NFE
Jun. 29th, 2015 11:07 amBecause it came up in a conversation, I thought I would read The Ragged-trousered Philanthropist -- and now I'm three chapters in, but I don't think I can keep going. (This is pretty unusual for me - I've read to the end of all sorts of rubbish, let alone to the end of books which are known, and referred to in conversations - books whose titles people know, even if they haven't read the book.)
Well, but....
I had vaguely thought it would be a sort of barefoot philosopher book, with a side-serve of one-man revolution, showing people ways forward to rebuild things nearer to the heart's desire - something with hope in it, but it's not. It's a furiously angry, unremittingly miserable, slice-of-working-class-life book. (and the hero/author-insert's going to die, I can tell -- which isn't a spoiler because in the very first chapter it says "his complexion was ominously clear, and an unnatural colour flushed the thin cheeks" and you don't need to have read many pre-penicillin books to know what that means.) I don't think I can take so much aint-it-awful being ladelled into me without pause for breath.
It's interesting as being slice-of-life, of course, in showing all sorts of incidental details of the life of house-renovators' work-gangs in the early twentieth century - I liked finding them using a pump-action blow-torch to get the old paint off, for example, and the discussion of what's the bare minimum of furniture to have in a lodger's room (bedstand and mattress, cupboard and wash-stand; chest of drawers desirable but not absolutely essential). Dunno. I might struggle on with it.
NFE... once again, I am totally flummoxed by the sign-up form, let alone writing a Dear Writer letter. I haven't signed up yet. I've got till the end of the week, I think. (Encouragement welcome.)
On the more cheerful side, I saw a most beautiful near-conjunction of Venus and Jupiter last Thursday night, with a crescent moon on the other side of the sky. Very lovely in itself, and also great that the sky was clear to see it - of smog, I mean, not of cloud. The sky is definitely clearer here than it was some years back. Surprise - regulation of industrial chimneys has effect! (Yes, I know London discovered this years ago. :) Who's next?)
Well, but....
I had vaguely thought it would be a sort of barefoot philosopher book, with a side-serve of one-man revolution, showing people ways forward to rebuild things nearer to the heart's desire - something with hope in it, but it's not. It's a furiously angry, unremittingly miserable, slice-of-working-class-life book. (and the hero/author-insert's going to die, I can tell -- which isn't a spoiler because in the very first chapter it says "his complexion was ominously clear, and an unnatural colour flushed the thin cheeks" and you don't need to have read many pre-penicillin books to know what that means.) I don't think I can take so much aint-it-awful being ladelled into me without pause for breath.
It's interesting as being slice-of-life, of course, in showing all sorts of incidental details of the life of house-renovators' work-gangs in the early twentieth century - I liked finding them using a pump-action blow-torch to get the old paint off, for example, and the discussion of what's the bare minimum of furniture to have in a lodger's room (bedstand and mattress, cupboard and wash-stand; chest of drawers desirable but not absolutely essential). Dunno. I might struggle on with it.
NFE... once again, I am totally flummoxed by the sign-up form, let alone writing a Dear Writer letter. I haven't signed up yet. I've got till the end of the week, I think. (Encouragement welcome.)
On the more cheerful side, I saw a most beautiful near-conjunction of Venus and Jupiter last Thursday night, with a crescent moon on the other side of the sky. Very lovely in itself, and also great that the sky was clear to see it - of smog, I mean, not of cloud. The sky is definitely clearer here than it was some years back. Surprise - regulation of industrial chimneys has effect! (Yes, I know London discovered this years ago. :) Who's next?)
