A Common Reader . . .

Review: Making an Elephant - Graham Swift

Making an Elephant is one of those books which I thoroughly enjoyed from the moment it arrived through the post - a nicely designed and substantial book with plenty of interesting content (including quite a few well-chosen photographs).  And from a favourite author, providing considerable insight into the writer's life, with illustrations and stories aplenty. 

Swift writes on a vast range of topic, and rarely fails to please.  I first came to his work through Waterland, one of those books which managed to draw me into a wholly believable yet utterly strange landscape (in this case The Fens) which I had never encountered before.  Since then I lingered in the Fens while on a business trip to King's Lynn, a journey which I found myself interpreting through my memories of Waterland. 

Then Last Orders came along and quite rightly won the Booker Prize (and was later filmed so effectively with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and others).  Since then I've read most of Swift's books and enjoyed them all so it was difficult to resist this varied collection of pieces from such a wide range of sources. 

In Making An Elephant, we find episodes from Swift's life, illustrated by short articles, portraits of other writers, interviews, poems and essays.   It is an ideal book to dip into, but I found myself reading the whole thing over a couple of days, conscious that it is also a book I will enjoy having on my shelves to refer to when thinking about the writing process or just wanting to recall some of the evocative scenes described in it. 

Review: Field Work - Ronald Blythe

It is when reading books like Field Work that you find yourself giving thanks for the large number of independent publishers such as Black Dog Books (and booksellers who stock such titles such as my local Much Ado Books of Alfriston. 

I usually enjoy books of essays and this collection from Ronald Blythe was a treat for me.  Quite apart from the content (which is excellent) the presentation is of very high quality with a fine painting by John Nash on the cover and a collection of Nash's black and white illustrations scattered about the book itself.  I am someone who usually likes the latest technology, but a book like this only makes me shudder at the thought of devices like the new Sony Reader which was launched this week.  I would not want to lose the sheer tactile pleasure of having this volume in my hands.

The topic of most of these essays could be described as "literary rural England", and anyone who enjoys reading about literary connections will be in their element here. 

As a keen walker myself, I enjoyed reading the essay, John Clare and Footpath Walking.  Blythe provides many quotations from John Clare about walking but also sets them in the context of the rural life in the 17th century when a walk in the countryside was by no means a solitary affair.  Blythe writes that he recently went for a six mile walk and never met a single person - an experience I can relate to from a recent walk across the South Downs on a Monday morning.  In Clare's day however, "there was always somebody up a tree, or under a bush, or just riffling about with a scythe, or hiding away with a sweetheart or a book, or usually just routinely travelling to the workplace".  Blythe calls Clare, "the genius of the footpath" and it was fascinating to read of the routes he followed, either idly wandering about, or systematically aiming for a destination. 

Review: At Large and Small - Anne Fadiman

I first came across Anne Fadiman some years ago via her book of reflections on reading, “Ex Libris”. I enjoyed that little book more than its size would suggest, and when I read a review of At Large and Small I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. I found that it contains a collection of essays on a wide range of subjects, from the ice-cream to butterfly collecting, from the esssays of Charles Lamb to the dominance of correspondence by email. This is definitely a book for someone who like reading intelligent musings on a miscellany of topics, and although the essays are essentially light and amusing, most readers will learn something interesting along the way.

As I read it, I began to wonder how this differed from a newspaper column, or even an Internet blog. After all, there are countless coloumnists who write reflectively in the Sunday supplements or the weekly magazines, and even more bloggers who put their thoughts down almost daily on anything that comes across their path. In the end, I felt that Anne Fadiman’s essays are perhaps written over a longer period and took longer in the gestation, giving them a depth and consistency across the topics which other media writers may not achieve.