Sorry, wir haben uns verfahren (2012)

     Stephan Orth & Antje Blinda Sorry, wir haben uns verfahren (2012) A collection of anecdotes about the German Federal Railway. The events range from the silly through the bizarre to the scary. One example will suffice: An elderly lady boarded the train. The conductor and fellow passengers helped her to find her seat and stow her baggage. Then she needed a place to hang her coat, and spied a lovely bright red knob. Perfect! She hung her coat on it, and promptly stopped the train. The bright red knob was the emergence brake.
     Each anecdote is signed, so presumably the events actually happened, even the ones that sound like urban legends. The title alludes to a commuter train that stopped several miles up a branch line. The train had been diverted from its planned track, and the engineer had no idea where they were. So he announced, Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have lost our way. Amusing enough. My cousin, a ferroequinologist like me,  received two of these from his family and decide the share the surplus. I’m glad he did, the book entertained me for a two or three hours. **½

Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001)

     Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001) Jon gave me this book for Christmas, and I’m glad he did. Sacks tells us of his childhood and adolescence, when he was consumed by a rage for chemistry, in part stimulated by his uncles. Uncle Abe ran a factory that made light bulbs with tungsten filaments, hence the title. But the real focus is Sacks’ fascination with the elements, and his discovery of their properties. He read voraciously about the history of chemistry and chemists. He set up a lab in which he did experiments duplicating (as far as he could afford it) the discoveries of his heroes. That he didn’t destroy himself and the house was I think as much a matter of luck as of caution. Nowadays, such a course of study would not be possible, even in a well-equipped high school lab. Liability insurance has imposed safety regimes that make independent lab work by high school students almost impossible.
     Sacks, as in all the his books, comes across as a charming man with a lively curiosity, intellectual rigour, and the kind of imagination that can see the patterns that matter. This impression is strengthened by his TV interviews, which have the quality of conversations that we have the privilege of overhearing. Sacks spent some time at a horrible boarding school when he (along with thousands of other children) was evacuated from London during WW2. Reading was an escape; science, especially chemistry, promised stability and security. His large family gave him a diverse society, that loved him and his brothers unconditionally. These combined to heal the wounds inflicted by a sadistic headmaster (who, on the little evidence provided by Sacks, was a monster with demons of his own).
     I enjoyed this book enormously. The writing is graceful, intimate, intelligent, witty, wry, and above all vulnerable. One gets the impression that this is the authentic Oliver Sacks, a man one feels privileged to know in person. ****
     Update 26 March, 2013: My son Jon died on 19 March. He was 48 years old, but to me he was still the boy with whom I had conversations on our walk to school, about history and anything else that caught his interest.  I don't know how much of what I think I know of history I learned from him, but by now it's most of it. His choice of books for gifts was always thoughtful; he had little money to spend, and must have searched yard sales and library books ales all year long. He liked yard sales, actually, he was a great searcher-out of treasures that others didn't value. I shall miss him. Grief seizes me without warning. Obituary via etouch.ca or legacy.com.

Pride and Prejudice (book review)

     Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (a school edition published 1958) I like this book very much, and reread it after having seen parts of yet another TV version. This time round I noticed that Lydia’s elopement and seduction by Wickham was a far more serious thing than I had thought. We tend to impose our own values on the past, and have difficulty understanding the depth of feeling surrounding what we no longer see as serious moral lapses. No doubt the past would have the same difficulties with our moral judgments.
     I had also forgotten how much Elizabeth censured herself for her prejudices, and how much his pride had mortified Darcy. It seems to me that in praising Austen for her social comedy critics have often failed to notice how close she comes to tragedy. I suppose that is because marrying and being married seem to be mere domestic concerns, and so a romance of courtship and marriage could not express suitably tragic themes.
     But for most people, marriage is the most important decision in their lives. Our easy divorce doesn’t change this; in fact, it underlines it, for divorce is an admission that one has made a serious mistake. Besides, many of the great and powerful have been destroyed by their unfortunate choices in marriage. And Austria’s history suggests that marriage has more to do with politics than many other, apparently more important, concerns.
     So Austen, although she confined herself to a small canvas, nevertheless treats large themes. Her satire on romantic love doesn’t hide her conviction that marriage is the primary source of both happiness and misery. A good marriage is good not only for the partners but also for their children, and their community; a bad marriage can have devastating effects on everyone, not only the children. The Bennetts did not have the best of marriages, but Mr Bennett’s retreat from his paternal responsibilities magnified the bad effects of his wife’s foolishness. Money is not necessary to a good marriage, but careful stewardship of one’s wealth is. While Austen is fully alive to the benefits of a good income, she also knows that a large income can tempt to extravagance.
     One could continue drawing morals of this kind from the book, but I don’t want to emulate Mary. I enjoyed my brief stay with the Bennetts and their friends, and will likely read this book again. **** (2002)

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)

     P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954) Bertie Wooster and Aunt Dahlia get into the usual mix of pickles, some home-made by themselves, some constructed by others. Jeeves once again provides advice and action, and all ends happily. As usual, Bertie gets mixed up with a female who wants to marry him, there is the threat of physical retaliation from the spurned lover, love at first sight, missing necklaces, dark secrets, and so on. Wodehouse’s style as always amuses: he is the master of the twisted cliche and the apt (if often unattributed) quotation. Wonderful stuff. I see by the notes in the book that I bought it in 1979. Left it on the shelf for future pleasure, which it provided. ***

My Uncle Oswald (1979)

     Roald Dahl My Uncle Oswald (1979) I started this book some years ago, and found it again recently while trying to reduce the pile of books in the case by the bed. I won’t finish it. It’s silly and “clever” in the worst sense, like most of Dahl’s work. The plot of the novel is that Uncle Oswald discovers an aphrodisiac, and decides to use it for a spot of blackmail in order to get very, very rich. I think Dahl fancies himself as a writer in the Saki tradition, but he lacks the underlying moral sense of Saki, so that what should be black satire is merely nasty farce. Witty in places, and avoids the grosser kind of pornographic writing – which may not be a virtue. *

A Book of Courtly Cats (1986)

A Gentleman A Book of Courtly Cats (1986) Excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays and poems paired with portraits of cats in the style of Elizabethan miniatures. Not a book so much as an extended greeting card. I think Mum gave this to Marie. It’s a charming object. I recognised most of the quotations; the one I liked best is:
       If I could write the beauty of your eyes
      And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
      The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;
      Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’
      So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,
      Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue.
     And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage
     And stretched metre of an antique song.
However, I don’t know which sonnet it’s from, so I shall have to read them all over again. Unrated (not a book). But lovely to look at and read. (2002)

Country Vet (1972)

     Denis Farrier Country Vet (1972) The blurb claims this books is in the Herriot vein, but I wouldn’t know. Its publication date suggests an attempt to cash in on vet-lit. Amusing enough, but very light reading. A few rants about the realities of animal life and death are worth keeping in mind when confronted by animal-rights activists, a stupidly sentimental lot without any real knowledge of animals. Farrier relates a few tales about his youth, his student days, his life as an assistant, and his life as an independent practitioner. Sentimental he isn’t, but he is annoyed, to put it mildly, by the mindless shooting of birds. *1/2 (2002)