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Fri May 23rd, 2014
 | 10:28 pm - The weekend at last
1. Lovely day, feeling much cooler than the purported temperature. Jacket weather, and in the morning's raw cloud, jacket and fleecy weather. Culminated in an evening of golden western sun and glowing purply clouds like those of the autumn preview, that brief cold spell in early Augusts in the early 70s. After July's heat and mug, five or six days of highs near 15 and lows near 6: not the way autumn actually looked when it came but a sort of ur-version or Platonic form. Remember the roar of the furnace turning on in the bowels of the house, and the cocoon of warm dry air blowing from the (really very odd) heating outlets we had at home.
Also the neighbourhood is presently awash in lilac scent because lilacs burgeon on every lilac bush-- except, of course, mine. Am of two minds here: lilacs are a lovely sensual experience, but the scent of fruit tree blossoms is much more restrained and therefore elegant. Also they're much briefer and therefore never go rotten rank the way lilacs and orange blossoms do.
2. Learned a new word today: epigone - an inferior imitator of some distinguished writer or artist of musician. This in a discussion of Tolkien. OTOH I only recently discovered that Tolkien has two syllables, not three. I cannot say how much this crushes me. Tol-keen? Really??
3. I should be liking The Eyre Affair better than I do. It has all sorts of pleasant Library overtones, and I'm by nature fond of punning names. But I can't follow the action if I stop reading for a bit, and I can't remember who everyone is. First novel-itis, perhaps?
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I dunno, something about the eyre affair irritated me so much when I was reading it that I didn't finish. Can't recall what exactly, but I think it had something to do with bad logic. I seem to recall a number of people bouncing off it for this reason or that. Its logic doesn't bear inspection: this is very much one of those (for lack of another term) 'English fantastic' books-- like the start of Harry Potter or most of Roald Dahl. You must accept the unlikely conceits as part of the universe. But then they has to be internally consistent, and they often aren't.
Also I'm not sure if Fforde is in this tradition or another one, exemplified by Kingsley Amis' satire: which from here is summed as 'monstrous people doing monstrous things on a small social scale.' I believe both traditions are seen as light-hearted romps, while foreigners shudder at the hideousness of the world-view. Requires several Pratchetts to take the taste from one's mouth. |
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