Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

A long-time favorite that I wanted to re-read before seeing the film version recently released in somewhat narrow circulation. I'd forgotten quite how dismal the ending is, and afterward found myself too drained to consume narrative in any form for two days.

The movie was well done and enjoyable, incidentally. Emma Thomson as the mother was SCARY. The thing about adapting this particular story - Waugh wrote these characters with highly nuanced motivations, which would have required unusual genius - or a very, very long film - to portray on screen, so there were some plot shortcuts, the upside of which is that I now know exactly how many different sorts of human subtlety can be substituted by a love triangle (eleven, by my count). I also suspect it caught by surprise any number of the audience who had read the book without realizing how much of it was about homosexuality (don't laugh, you know it happens). All said, though, it still gets two thumbs up. And at least half a thumb is all for Patrick Malahide as the elder Mr. Ryder.

Notable quotes:

Charles's Father: I wanted to talk about Etruscan notions of immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for the working-class; so we compromised and talked about you. (p. 25)

Cousin Jasper: Beware of the Anglo-Catholics - they're all sodomites with unpleasant accents. (p. 26)

Father Phipps, on hair cutting: Nuns do it. (p. 37)

...that unmistakable English church-going pace, which eschewed equally both haste and idle sauntering. (p. 59)

Cordelia: Is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good? (p. 92)

Sebastian: It's rather sad to think that whatever happens you and I can never possibly get involved in a war. (p. 101)

Lady Marchmain: Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. ... but I believe that it is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included. (p. 126)

Lady Marchmain: It's very unexpected for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the gospel is simply a catalogue of unexpected things. (p. 127)

...the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. "There's something chemical between them" was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept of determinism in new form. (p. 129)

Charles, on Sebastian: He's ashamed of being unhappy. (p. 136)

Julia, on Sebastian: I'm fond of him too, in a way, I suppose, only I wish he'd behave like anybody else. (p.161)

Charles: D'you know, Bridey, if I ever felt for a moment like becoming a Catholic, I should only have to talk to you for five minutes to be cured. You manage to reduce what seem like quite sensible propositions to stark nonsense. (p. 164)

To be married, soon and splendidly, was the unquestioned aim of all her friends. If she looked further than the wedding, it was to see marriage as the beginning of individual existence; the skirmish where one gained one's spurs, from which one set out on the true quests of life. (p. 181)

Cordelia: She was saintly, but she wasn't a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it's God and hate that. (p. 221)

I regarded men as something less than the buildings they made and inhabited, as mere lodgers and short-term sub-lessees of small importance in the long, fruitful life of their homes.

Anthony: Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you. (p. 273)

Charles: Why is it that love makes me hate the world? (p. 276)

Julia: Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, year out. Waking up with sin, bathing it, dressing it, clipping diamonds to it, feeding it, showing it round, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep at night with a tablet of Dial if it's fretful. (p. 287)

Cara: His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word. (p. 318)

Julia: ...the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's. (p. 340)

Possession - A.S. Byatt

One line review: That must have been a lot of work.

Notable Quotes:

We are a Faustian generation, my dear - we seek to know what we are maybe not designed (if we are designed) to be able to know. (p. 234)

The whole of our scholarship - the whole of our thought - we question everything except the centrality of sexuality - Unfortunately feminism can hardly avoid privileging such matters. Sometimes I wish I had embarked on geology myself. (p. 242)

And then, really, what is this arcane power we have, when we see that everything is human sexuality? It's really powerlessness. ... Everything relates to us and so we're imprisoned in ourselves - we can't see things. (p. 276)

At some point in their history their self-value changed into - what worries you. A horrible over-simplification. It leaves out guilt, for a start. (p. 277)

So the human imagination mixes and adapts its current preoccupations may ingredients into new wholes. (p. 278)

At my life, the way it is - what I really want is to - to have nothing. An empty clean bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked. (p. 290)

More Abiblia

I've been too quiet here. Too quiet for my own satisfaction. I want to be here - but for some reason I'm blank on putting thoughts on paper (er, silicon?).

I'm in the midst of another season of "I just can't finish ANYTHING I start reading." I suspect there's some more broadly-based discontent at work; whatever it is it's agitating.

And what I do finish I'm finding it hard to write about, despite the fact that that’s the entire point of bothering to blog. It depends on what I’m reading. What more is there to say about a classic like Three Men in a Boat (let alone, The Great Gatsby)? Or about a highly regarded and broadly exposed contemporary bestseller like The Time Traveler’s Wife (let alone, Possession)? And it isn’t only a prideful resistance to exposing my own banal reflections to scrutiny that keeps me quiet. It’s also my natural gravitation to the universal, the contextual, the 30,000-foot perspective, rather than the personal, the specific, the immediate. And the place of The Great Gatsby in the universe seems like well-covered ground, even if it were a topic I were better qualified to meaningfully discuss.

Then there are the times when I can't seem to muster the energy to mold my thoughts into cohesive prose - though another reason for being here is to force myself to do exactly that.

Though I know these reservations have merit, they hold me back from doing what I’ve set out to do. Excess noise might be the path to value. I just have to find a more inspiring track to ride for a while. I've got a few ideas.