Regarding Harry

Without intending to, I've found myself rereading the Harry Potter books - knee deep in the goblet of fire before I know what I'm about. This time around, I admit the justice of many of the criticisms. The prose is poor - plain and clunky, a simple stitching together of worn-out phrases and predictable structures. While the subject is magic, there is a distinct lack of magic in the atmosphere of the books. There is no beauty, nothing lyrical, and, strangely, no sense of wonder to be found anywhere. Beautiful or wondrous things are described baldly or hyperbolically, leaving little room for mystery. And in the latter books, murky adolescence robs them of much of their childish charm.

However, the spell these books cast is undeniable. Though short on wonder, they have comedy, invention, and affection in abundance, and each book contains at least one pearl of wisdom or moral courage that lifts the books from entertainment to something more. Rowling has a fine comic sense, and is adept at creating humourous situations and even one-liners without much effort. She is also a skilled sketcher of characters. Harry himself can be a bit transparent, but Ron and Hermione are both vividly imagined and highly likeable, to say nothing of Arthur Weasley, Remus Lupin, Uncle Vernon, Neville Longbottom and a host of others. Perhaps the greatest strength of the books is the meticulous and successful plotting, within each book and across the seven, and this is aided by Rowling's intuitive use of symbols and emblems that have deep roots in the western imagination. Her cauldron cleverly mixes the staples of swords, dragons, castles, and serpents with coinages like quidditch, horcruxes, howlers, and pensieves. Most of all, she has pitted good and evil against each other and made unambiguous moral gestures in the books that make them deeply satisfying, despite their lack of poetry.  

Books I wish I'd read in 2010

As the end of the year draws nigh, it's time for one of those wrap-up end-of-year best-of posts, but you might have noticed that I haven't really read any books that came out this year (as far as I can remember) so I'm ill-qualified to comment on what was best or worst in the offerings of the past twelve months. Instead, here's what I thought about reading, talked about as though I'd read, picked up idly in bookshops, read good reviews of, or otherwise toyed with:

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
Censoring an Iranian Love Story, by Shahriar Mandanipour
All the Devils are Here: the hidden history of the financial crisis, by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world, by Francis Wheen
At Home, by Bill Bryson
A Tiny Bit Marvellous, by Dawn French

Any other suggestions?

Post script

As an afterthought to the last post, I think of the comment made by Sophia Croft, wife of Admiral Croft and sister of Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, that wives of sailors should be treated like rational creatures instead of fine ladies: “We none of us expect to be in smooth waters all our days.” She and the Admiral enjoy one of Austen's happiest marriages, probably because of this courage toward the weather of life.

And here's another description of the felicity of the Crofts' marriage, observed and admired by Anne Elliot:

They brought with them their country habit of being almost always together. He was ordered to walk to keep off the gout, and Mrs Croft seemed to go shares with him in everything, and to walk for her life to do him good. Anne saw them wherever she went. Lady Russell took her out in her carriage almost every morning, and she never failed to think of them, and never failed to see them. Knowing their feelings as she did, it was a most attractive picture of happiness to her. She always watched them as long as she could, delighted to fancy she understood what they might be talking of, as they walked along in happy independence, or equally delighted to see the Admiral's hearty shake of the hand when he encountered an old friend, and observe their eagerness of conversation when occasionally forming into a little knot of the navy, Mrs Croft looking as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her.

Made in Heaven

We are wed and honeymooned, and life continues on. When I reflect on our wedding day it's with mingled emotions. The things I prayed hardest for in the weeks preceding were good health and fine weather. Neither of these prayers were answered. In spite of ill health and foul weather, we managed to plight our troth (troths?) in some joy, but I have a lingering grizzle, not unlike my lingering cough, and the lingering drizzle outside, about my unanswered prayers.

It's quite unreasonable, I know. Especially when I think about the texts we chose and the words Alistair spoke over us. Our reading was Deuteronomy 11:8 - 21, and Al talked about the land we were entering as a land of hills and valleys, joy and sorrow. Joy follows sorrow, he said, as birth follows death, and spring follows winter. We promised to love each other in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want. Why shouldn't this unfaltering love in a faulty world begin on our wedding day? Why should I expect an eerie brightness to fall on that day when every day thereafter would be a pied beauty, a dappled thing?

I'm also coming slowly to see the truth of the poem we chose: Robert Frost's “The Master Speed.” 

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still -
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Life is only life. A wedding day is not a special day. It is only the first day. The first of many travels, through hills and valleys, through winters and springs, together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Of silence and slow time

As my nuptials are fast approaching, I was looking for an epithalamium for today, but most of them are too long to publish here, and lots of them seem to focus on the bride and the bridal chamber in a way that brings a blush to the bridal cheek. So instead, I chose Keats’ “bride of quietness” and the festal scene depicted on the Grecian Urn. If you want to read the whole thing it's here, but I felt the first two stanzas would do nicely.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,  
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape      
Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? 
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?    
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?   

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,  
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: 
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave         
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;  
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!