Quantification

If this is what it boils down to,
the residue of hopes no longer
triumphant over expectation
how might one measure that?
Does one weigh it in a balance
between all that seemed unlikely
and every thought that never flew
or pour it out into the glass to say
half full, or maybe not; half empty?
We dare not say or have no view
for knowing this, that fools rush
in where angels fear to tread,
the more or less we think we know
such thoughts hang by bare thread.
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Now Voyager?

Barely floating, like an ancient, leaky boat
from some lost age, with creaking joints
placed under too much constant pressure
but resistant yet; still together - just -
beneath the cracked and flaking skin,
once bright, once clear but fading now;
half-submerged in water on which once
it sat upright and maybe even perky,
defiant in those former days, those days
of bygone glory when (once upon a time)
no farthest shore seemed yet too distant,
no feint horizon failed to stir the impulse
to head out, to set out on a journey
over seas with neither map nor compass.
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How good is writing like this?

	Painter or Illustrator: Lynch, James Henry (d. 1868)    (Work signed) Writer: Abot, Eugene Michel Joseph (1836-1894) This leaflet is part of a series: Balzac, Pere Goriot, Sc life by., Calmann-Levy, Quantin, 1885 (Cash / No 0 / 10) Dating:  1885 Source text: Balzac, Le Pere Goriot (1834)

Painter or Illustrator:
Lynch, James Henry (d. 1868)    (Work signed)

Writer: Abot, Eugene Michel Joseph (1836-1894)

This leaflet is part of a series:
Balzac, Pere Goriot, Sc life by., Calmann-Levy, Quantin, 1885
(Cash / No 0 / 10)

Dating:  1885

Source text:
Balzac, Le Pere Goriot (1834)

M. Poiret was a sort of automaton. He might be seen any day sailing like a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des Plantes, on his head a shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow ivory handle in the tips of his thin fingers; the outspread skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed to conceal his meagre figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken limbs; the thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken man; there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about a throat like a turkey gobbler's; altogether, his appearance set people wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the audacious race of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien. What devouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed outrageous as a caricature? What had he been? Well, perhaps he had been part of the machinery of justice, a clerk in the office to which the executioner sends in his accounts,—so much for providing black veils for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for the knife. Or he might have been a receiver at the door of a public slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of nuisances. Indeed, the man appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our great social mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their Bertrands do not even know by sight; a pivot in the obscure machinery that disposes of misery and things unclean; one of those men, in short, at sight of whom we are prompted to remark that, "After all, we cannot do without them."

From Farther Goriot by Honore de Balzac
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Reading for dummies (like me)

I am procrastinating; avoiding the work that I really ought to do.  I can't be bothered because (five weeks into my new job) I'd sooner leave it than get stuck in.  I have formed an escape committee with Mrs Spiers.

Anyway, I took to thinking about how ill-read I feel.  I'm not illiterate.  I know that much.  But I was struck, not so very long ago, with how few books I had read from The Guardian list of the top 100 books of all time.  (It turns out, apparently, that the list was merely re-printed by The Guardian, from the original constructed by The Norwegian Book Clubs, of all the improbable points of origin one might think of.)  Over 50 of the texts can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg, here.

Last year, again while procrastinating, I was likewise struck by how few novels on a list compiled by Time Magazine I had read.  It was described as the ALL-TIME list of the world's best 100 novels.  To be deemed eligible for consideration a novel had to have been written between Time's first publication in 1923 and 2010.

I combined the two lists, which contain 187 texts.  There are 9 texts on both lists.  I've read 32 of the texts (including 4 of the 9).  That's a paltry 17 per cent.  Time to get reading.

I've started with Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac, written in 1835.  In the first chapter I came upon the term "car of Juggernaut".  That struck me as a modern term for an early 19th Century author, which shows you how much I know.  Jagganatha, the Hindu deity translated as Lord of the World, is worshiped in temples that date from as far back as the 12th Century (in Puri, Orissa; North East India).  The picture is one of the Madrass car of Jagganatha.

Harriet Jacobs

I finished reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl today.  It's a remarkable text; an almost unbelievable tale (although its truth shines through ... and for any deniers or sceptics out there .... has been independently verified).  The full text can be read here.  How could we do these things to one another?

What a woman.  How much we owe her.

From the Harriet Jacobs web site:

"I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations." 

After nearly seven years hiding in a tiny garret above her grandmother’s home, Harriet Ann Jacobs took a step other slaves dared to dream in 1842; she secretly boarded a boat in Edenton, N.C., bound for Philadelphia, New York and, eventually, freedom. The young slave woman’s flight, and the events leading up to it, are documented in heart-wrenching detail in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, self-published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent.

A significant personal history by an African American woman, Harriet Jacobs’ story is as remarkable as the writer who tells it. During a time when it was unusual for slaves to read and write, self-publishing a first-hand account of slavery’s atrocities was extraordinary. That it was written by a woman, unprecedented.

From the Harriet Jacobs Wikipedia site:

Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813 - March 7, 1897) was an American writer, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs' single work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym "Linda Brent", was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the sexual harassment and abuse they endured.
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Scrambled on Enmore Road

My breakfast at Scrambled, Enmore Road.  Spike made the better choice ... something Mexican ... but I seem to have deleted it from my phone.  The food was so-so; nothing to get excited about but decent enough to convince you that you'd eaten a hearty breakfast ... even at one o'clock or thereabouts.  We'd had a busy morning.

The cafe is worth visiting.  Friendly folk, mixed clientele, plenty to watch go bye on Enmore Road.  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the smokers on the pavement tables just beyond the open shop-front.  If it's true that barely 17 per cent of adults smoke, I begin to think we've reached the point where smoking should not be permitted wherever food is served.  That's a Jack sentence, which one tries to avoid as much as possible.  Here's a simpler version: smoking ought not to be permissible wherever food is served.  Full stop.
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2,164 words later ...

... my essay is finished, after a 12 hour stint. Here's my penultimate paragraph:

Stam states that Genette’s architextuality, “has to do with an artist's willingness or reluctance to characterize a text generically in its title.” Based (as the credits state) on Orlean’s book, the title of Adaptation sets out its different terrain. It is not the film of the book that character Kaufman insists he must write. It is a knowing parody of self-conscious works of art organised in paradoxical and transtextual dialogue with itself, other works and readers.

Did I really say that? I'm happy enough with the essay. We'll see how I do later.
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