– XXIII –

The best advice regarding parties: always make an appearance, or else you risk being talked about.

Snowflake Symmetries, Winters Romantics

Hello Gentle Reader,

Winters arrival harks a paradox of responses, both chilled delight and frost bitten embittered refute. There’s something soothing about snow in that smothering Stockholm fashion. Its ability to conceal, completely whiteout landscapes, reducing them to a sheet of whiteness. Hoarfrost in particular is a beautiful feature of winter. The trees reduced, gnarled and bared, coronated in the delicate etchings of frost and snow, an otherwise crystal crown. Frost of any sort is fickle as it is transient. Though the sun maybe slow to awaken and gradual in its rise during its respite rest, it inevitably pulls itself from the horizon and despite its distance shines, leaving the trees with their threadbare pauper appearance. The emperors’ new clothes are a marvel, though lacking in durability. This year, winter seemed delayed. An early snap of cold and snow, but it gave way to unseasonable warmth. Not that many were complaining. Golfing in November is a rare treat. Still September swirled in temperatures that simmered, while October thankfully evened everything out with bearable temperatures. Yet, November that threshold month of winter and the slatestone month of cemetery greyness, defied precedence and preconceived expectations of what is expected of it, and remained warm even tepid, while the earth took on the visage of early spring: brown and molting. All the while lacking the spirit of life and rejoiceful soulishness of that spritely season. No, in its place remained an otherwise portrait of the landscape rusted into ruin, in every way scorched earth and parched at that. As December descended there was trepidation that the trend would continue. It would have appeared that Christmas would be one of little snow, to an otherwise scant amount, or worst: a bone-dry brown Christmas. Yet, finally snow came; not in the typical hollowing and waling of a blistering snowstorm, but a nightly surprise of sustained and continued shower of snowflakes. During the duration, the portrait of russet and brown desperation, was baptized in an indifferent and silent white. The air plated in a metallic aftertaste. Of course, the science is in too, winter sunsets are superior with their clear air, cold temperatures, and the positioning of the sun. Regardless, the defining feature of winter beyond its lengthened shadows; its otherwise plain austerity; its moonstone skies and mackerel scale clouds; is its snow. The great whiteout terraforming the land, concealing and burying a world and creating and reveling in a new one. In all, an empire of sparkle and silence.

As a child and student in primary school, I (in addition to my classmates) was informed that each snowflake on the ground, in a snowbank, or flittering from the sky was singular and unique, a geometrical marvel of ice crystals which formed in the atmosphere and continued their metamorphosis until they reached their earthly destination. As students and children, each of us accepted this fact in the same fashion as we accepted that the sky was blue, or that the seasons changed. Of course, we subscribed to the belief that an ancient and immortal jolly saint flew around the world once a year in a sleigh driven by flying reindeer, delivering merriment and gifts. Snowflakes being unique and independent in symmetry, shape, and form was not a stretch of belief. If memory serves correctly, the lesson concluded with a carefree exercise of making paper snowflakes which would then be used to decorate the seasons Christmas pageant (or perhaps the classroom—the utilitarian details have since faded). Interestingly enough, this informal lesson of snowflakes never mentioned the snowflake savant, Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley, who pioneered the study of atmospheric ice crystal formation and meteorological photography, specifically that of snowflakes.

Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley does not strike one as the most romantic figure. And as a lifelong bachelor, perhaps he wasn’t. Yet an interesting man with a fascinating curiosity into the transient and brilliant world of snowflakes. Before Bentley many naturalists and mathematicians had observed and written about the geometric complexities and marvels of snowflakes, with some attempting to sketch these otherwise transient crystals. Bentley, however, became the first to photograph and capture their inherent and unadulterated beauty, amassing a collection of 5, 381 photographs showcasing the diversity of snowflake structures. Not one to be sidelined as the artistic type, Bently maintained records and recordings of the conditions and storms which formed the snowflakes, which included the length and duration of the storm, the amount of snowfall, temperature, wind directions, even the conditions of the sky itself including time, the suns positioning, intensity, and brightness. Despite this, Bently had no scientific credentials or contacts and any articles he wrote were denied publication in any scientific or academic journals and his photographs remained a secret treasure. One can only imagine the frustration and alienation Bently was subjected to in his very private pursuit. The neighbours of his farm outside of Jericho, Vermont found him eccentric at best and weird at worst. Knowing people of a certain generation and attitude, his devotion to personal freedom as a bachelor and lack of romance and martial tether would also have caused a few whispers and discussions. Still, Wilson Bently carried on photographing and documenting the conditions of his snowflake study, eventually showing his work to George Perkins, former state entomologist and geologist of Vermont, turned dean of the natural science department of the University of Vermont. Perkins assisted Bentley getting some articles and photographs of the snowflakes published in Appletons' Popular Science Monthly. The Harvard Mineralogical Museum bought 400 of Wilson Bentley’s photographs and commended Bentley’s accompanying metrological observations and recordkeeping. A private obsession gradually became acknowledged as meritable research, and not just frivolity by an eccentric and artistically struck individual. A flurry of interest followed with Bentley publishing more articles, facilitating lectures on the nature of snow crystals, and his photographs were reproduced into prints and analogue lantern slides to be used for teaching purposes. In collaboration with George Perkins, Bentley was the first individual to theorize and argue that each snowflake was geometrically independent and unique, with no two being the exact same. Despite the influx of activity, interest, publication and dissemination of his work, Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley did not achieve financial success and would continue to live and work on the family diary farm with his brother, while maintaining an intense and enduring fascination with the beauty of snowflakes, and other meteorological curiosities and phenomena. Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley died December 23, 1931 due to complications caused by pneumonia. Just before his death, Bentley received a copy of the illustrated monograph of his work specialising in the study and capture of snowflakes called “Snow Crystals,” (1931) which contained 2, 500 of Bentley’s photographs.

The story and studious personal obsession of Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley is one of winter poetry. By being a metrological pioneer in not only studying snowflakes, but capturing photographic evidence of their singular symmetries and preserving their otherwise transient existence. Bentley’s own writings on snowflakes moved between empirical observation and rationale, to ethos with equal delight. Having described ice crystals as “ice flowers,” and snowflakes as “tiny miracles of beauty,” Bentley also wrote:

            “Was ever life history written in more dainty or fairy-like hieroglyphics,”

“The snow crystals . . . come to us not only reveal the wondrous beauty of the minute in Nature, but to teach us that all earthly beauty is transient and must soon fade away. But though the beauty of the snow is evanescent, like the beauties of the autumn, as of the evening sky, it fades but to come again.”

Beyond the capture and study of ice crystals, Wilson Bentley also was the first American to record raindrop sizes, and is often described as one of the first cloud physicists. All of which was accomplished from a small dairy farm just outside of Jericho, Vermont.

The state of Vermont brings to mind the imaginings of an unspoiled New England Eden, the one mythologized and so endeared by the eternal and quintessential American Poet Laureate, Robert Frost, who through colloquial and plain language pondered existential questions of the individual lost and adrift within an indifferent universe to both the hardships and joys of mortal existence. One of Frost’s most famous poems: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” is a complex poem depicting a lonely traveler during a winter evening at the threshold of some private woods, which lead to allusions of the peace of death and perhaps the temptation of suicide, as the speaker contemplates the soft and inviting darkening woods in a snowy evening; but pushes on as there are obligations and commitments to hold. As Robert Frost put it best: “the best way out is always through.” Of course, Robert Frost is only one of the many poets and writers who have found sanctuary within the charismatic landscape of Vermont. The Soviet dissident and gulag monk Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived in exile in the tiny village of Cavendish, before returning to a post-Soviet Russia in 1994. Vermont also held an endearing place for the late October Poet, Louise Glück, whose famous poetry collection: “The Wild Iris,” celebrates the garden of Vermont life, its rustic charms and remoteness, while capturing the diversity of character and personality of its flora. While Plainfield, Vermont proved to be the inspiration for the collection “A Village Life,” even though the setting has shifted from the rustic North Eastern New England landscape to one of brilliant sun and Mediterranean seas and mountains, but the human folly, regret, and condition is empathetically the same. 

While the snow has arrived and finds itself endangered by rising temperatures, losing its virgin whiteness, its youthful cloud-land downy substance to melt and refreeze in crusted peaks of dirty meringue, I find myself thinking of Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley and his enduring appreciation for snowflakes. His love of the winter season. Though Canada enjoys to calling itself a northern nation, it has done nothing too little to develop its northern territories or protect and safeguard artic sovereignty. Canadian’s love of winter is thin to the point of borderline bitter; where the Nordic nations have an appreciation and love of winter, embracing its challenges and revelry, where in spite of its darkness they light up even further. Bentley’s studies of snowflakes and photographs have injected a sense of life back into the season, especially since the snow was overdue in its arrival, and now finds itself existentially threatened. Despite winter being a harsh season with its bitter cold and darkened skies, it is not without beauty or wonder as Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley proved with his photographs and his poetic waxing and waning lectures regard the beauty of snow, encompassing both the symmetries of snowflakes and the romantics for a season often denied such pleasures.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The Booker Prize Winner 2023

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
This years Booker Prize winner is Paul Lynch with his novel “The Prophet Song,” which imagines Ireland falling to a state of authoritarianism, echoing a general malaise and concern of today, where both sides of the political spectrum are flirting dangerously with authoritarian methods. The left veering continuously to inflationary economic policies and enacting stagnate morally smug policies of positive prejudice and discrimination in order to ban and censor materials that otherwise contravene these policies of sugared righteousness, all of which is hate under the guise of tolerance; meanwhile the right has been spurred into a state of disenfranchised soullessness, now radicalised and reactionary with an appetite of scorched earth policies. The entre not only lost, but a mythical state. Paul Lynch’s imagined dystopia teeters precariously on the notion of prescience, as the recent string of riots and protests in Ireland regarding immigration and other ‘progressive,’ or ‘woke,’ causes which have become divisive issues.
 
The chair of this year’s judges, Esi Edugyan, made a point of clarification regarding Paul Lynch’s win, highlighting that the decision was not unanimous, and that the judges deliberated, debated and voted over six hours on Saturday to come to the comprise and conclusion of Paul Lynch being the winner. Despite the context of the book being politically charged and capturing what could otherwise be considered political concerns of the age, the novel Edugyan clarifies is for its timeless and masterful work of fiction. All of this being said, however, “The Prophet Song,” is the second politically concerned novel to receive the Booker Prize in a row, after last years “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida,” by Shehan Karunatilaka. Does this mean the Booker Prize is heading towards establishing political allegiances or promoting social or ideological concerns? Not necessarily. The lists are carved out by the discussions and reading tastes and concerns of the panel for the year, based off of the books nominated.
 
Congratulations are in order for Paul Lynch for this years Booker Prize win.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary 

– XXII –

One of the worst feelings in the world is to never have applied one’s education or their talents, but instead to watch them be squandered and in turn dissipate.

Dame A.S. Byatt Dies Aged 87

Hello Gentle Reader,

Dame A.S. Byatt was one of the most exceptional and extraordinary English language writers of the second half of the 20^th century. Few writers were capable of writing with such intellectual authority, while underpinning it with such pleasures of the craft. Few writers discuss writing in the same vein as Byatt, who never described writing as a chore or laborious process. Instead, Byatt, rejoiced and celebrated writing as an activity of the utmost enjoyment. Despite being a English writer, Dame A.S. Byatt maintained a continental and European approach and influence to her work, whereby she explored the interplay between reality, myth/folktale/fairy tale, the active of creativity, history, literature, and interior lives, as intricate facets of an individuals consciousness and life. Dame Byatt’s work flitted between the cerebral and intellectually intangible, to the cemented and palpable. One of A.S. Byatt’s most astonishing achievements, however, is her mastery of narrative. One can talk of A.S. Byatt’s academic aptitudes and digressions, until they are blue in the face, but without her generous ability to actually have a defined narrative, her novels would be dry doorstops, full of brilliant knowledge and thorough research, but deprived of any literary enjoyment or flare. Throughout her literary career, A.S. Byatt never remained completely committed or surefooted in the realistic. Byatt flittered and digressed into the realms of myth and fairytales, exploring the fantastic and whimsical with a serious air. This is clearly seen in her short story collection “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” and the titular novella. Readers expecting lighthearted fantastic tropes will be disappointed, as the novella is a complex display of intertextuality, showcasing Byatt as being a writer whose pastiche and appropriation of fantastical elements could be erudite and challenging, with references to folktales as well as Chaucer and Shakespeare. Other short story collections such as “Angels & Insects,” continued to showcase and display Byatt’s diverse curiosities which included the natural and biological science of geology, entomology, and zoology. Her monumental “Fredrica Quartet,” (“The Virgin in the Garden,” “Still Life,” “Babel Tower,” and “A Whistling Woman,”) traced the social and imaginative life of English society during the 1950’s and 1960’s through the lens of a fiery woman, the titular Fredrica. Not one to be bogged down with histography, mapping out and referencing key points, Byatt created an elaborately textured quartet full of symbols and digressions, as Fredrica navigates the frustrating realties of wanting an aesthetic and imaginative life, but is riddled with the immediate concerns of daily life. A.S. Byatt’s most famous novel is of course the Booker Prize winning: “Possession: A Romance,” which is a typical Byattian novel of ideas. Parading itself as a literary detective novel, “Possession,” is a pastiche of a variety of literary styles (diary entries, letters, and poetry, the Victorian style) and recounts two academics in modern day Britian investigating the previously unknown romance between two fictional Victorian poets. “Possession,” is a maximalist metafictional histography novel, which not only won the Booker Prize but was a bestseller. “Possession,” remains A.S. Byatt’s most popular and well-known novel, her masterpiece as it were. Few novels that followed quite held up to the sheer imagination, research, and invention of “Possession,” though Byatt’s last great historical novel “The Children’s Book,” was a purely marvelous novel and shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize. “The Children’s Book,” was a celebration of the golden age of children’s literature, and was a marvelous swansong of a novel, whereby Byatt could reconcile both palpable historical and realistic concerns with the aesthetically interesting and imaginatively wonderous. “The Children’s Book,” was indeed weighty and full of lush exuberant prose. A.S. Byatt wrote in “The Children’s Book,” regarding one of the central figures, Olive Wellwood: “The real world sprouted stories wherever she looked at it.” So too did A.S. Byatt, who found stories in every life and every event. Byatt was an intellectual writer, an author of ideas, and while this may have once been a point of contention at one point, a besmirched snide insult, A.S. Byatt was able to dust off the lofty arrogance of such notions, and showcased that intellectual curiosity and erudite understanding could be not only approachable and engaging but enjoyable.   

A.S. Byatt died at home surrounded by her loved ones. She was 87 years old and leaves behind a solid and powerful body of work. A truly fantastical postmodern set of novels and short stories, but also critical studies and analysis, essays of thought and contemplation.

Rest in Peace A.S. Byatt.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary 

Small Things Like These

Hello Gentle Reader,                                   

When a writer is described as having a ‘economic style,’ or employing an ‘economy of words,’ to their work, it always rings with an unintended insult. The term economic is draped in dry connotations of accountancy, with all the recording of debits and credits. A subject completely deprived of a sense of excitement, glamour, or sparkle, resting instead on the well-worn tried and true grounds of dependability and practicalities. While when a writer’s work is described as ‘minimalist,’ it carries similar connotations, leading prospective readers to summarize or assume the work is simple, or without flare or linguistic brilliance, and more reminiscent of a bleached bone, structurally sound and certainly the necessary scaffolding for biological existence, but completely lacking in essence of life. The notion of literary addition by subtraction, has always felt like an overused concept. Hemmingway reductionisms looms and lurks within a variety of literary contexts, with the continued less is more style being considered the benchmark for greatness. While Hemmingway had his merits, blending the journalistic language of reportage with its natural ease and clarity of vision with the artifice of the literary, its continued proliferation and imitation of form and style as the yardstick for greatness, has become cliché, overwrought and overdone, to the point its cheapened and discounted. In a manner similar to anything mass produced and imitated, its charm and quality depreciates before being refined into a manufactured manicured commodity. Poets—and more frequently, short story writers—are often referred to as maestros of the economic literary format, where subtraction is the format and default state of the short story. Despite existing in an otherwise terse and acerbic form, the short story is not a format resting on the butcher’s block waiting to be trimmed, severed, and cut back. The short story is not a voracious vulture’s soliloquy. The short story is a form for mastery. It’s not the tadpole of prose; the juvenile scribblers workbook; or the apprenticeship of the writer. The short story is a form requiring the technical expertise of a clockmaker, in order to understand the intricacies and details to propel the narrative forward; while incorporating a jeweler’s eye for finish and presentation. 

Claire Keegan is a virtuoso of short stories technical brilliance. Keegan knows when to utilize a draughtman’s touch, etching out a hardedge line bold and defined, and then moving to a faint shading, ghostly impressions fading into insinuation. The craftsman brilliance is beautiful, and while the language maintains precision to the point of being lean, it is by no means the product of a misers’ penny-pinching economic principles. Keegan knows when to define and when to insinuate; how a striking image is enough to set the scene without being burdened by details; while being a writer of immense empathetic capacity, fleshing out characters with human contrariness. Still, as a writer, Claire Keegan understands the mechanical operations of narrative and form. Reading Keegan provides textbook examples of foreshadowing and expertise in tension. Perhaps this is due to Keegan’s own role as a teacher, where she deconstructs a short story or sentence allowing her students to pull back the curtains revealing all the gears and pullies at work maintaining the narrative. Though Claire Keegan is considered a contemporary master of the Irish Short Story tradition, with her reputation established with two brutal short story collections “Antarctica,” and “Walk the Blue Fields,” both were applauded for being harsh and honest tour de forces; Keegan has proven that her narratives are not limited by form, but are enriched by them. In a similar manner to a pond, Keegan’s narratives surface area is intimate in scope, but expands when reflecting the sky and concealing deepening depths below. The generosity and moral vision of the sky and the lurking mundane darkness, are two oppositional forces of Keegan’s debut novel “Small Things Like These,” where Bill Furlong a coal merchant both embraces and confronts these oppositional realities within his small Irish village, New Ross.

“Small Things Like These,” is set in 1985, and despite being set almost forty years ago, there is a sensation and feeling that New Ross has yet to enter the modern world. An atmosphere of raw hardship and pitiless poverty not only shrouds the village, but is a bleak defining feature. While time is stagnant, whereby one would easily hear with regular assurance that the villagers adhere to ‘the ol’ ways,’ or ‘live a traditional life,’ this otherwise conservative attitude have frozen New Ross into a time capsule. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant, a profession brining to mind otherwise Dickensian and Victorian sentiments. Though Furlong’s business is diversified beyond coal (though it’s the bread and butter of winter) and includes turf, anthracite, slack and logs; in addition to briquettes, kindling and bottled gas. The novel opens with a beautiful expedited time lapse describing the golden October trees lost along with the hour of a return to standard time, and further stripped bare by the unrelenting northern November winds. Despite owning and running his own business, Bill Furlong’s life is far from easy, and as winter settles over New Ross, what can be described as the busy season sets in. Everyday residents place orders for fuel, and Furlong provides the product. Of course, the product must be weighted, packaged, accounted for, invoiced, and then delivered. Despite having a natural talent and good head for business, Furlong is a man not deprived of a rich interior world or bouts of genuine generosity, having been the recipient of such sincere kindness, which inevitably afforded him further opportunities. This does not mean Bill Furlong’s life was not without challenges. The bastard son of an unwed mother, both mother and child were spared the full retribution of their situation in part thanks to a wealthy Protestant widow (Mrs. Wilson), who kept Furlong’s mother as a domestic servant, and provided a warm and welcoming home for both. The absent father remains a shadowing mark on Furlong’s character, as recounted when visiting the registry office to obtain his birth certificate the space for father was filled in with: “unknown,” which the clerk handed over to Furlong with a knowing smug smirk. As a child Furlong remembers the unknown and absent father makes him a target, as in the incident when the other boys at his school covered the back of his coat in spit. Still, childhood inevitably ended, and Furlong married the practical and stoically sensible Eileen and fathered five daughters. In essence becoming a respectable man of the community, and is treated as such. His customers are loyal, and Furlong in turn tries to support and forgive where he can; as Eileen acknowledges, it is Bill’s business and tireless work ethic which has allotted them the breathing room to avoid living on credit and dodging financial ruin and the creditors squeeze. Their financial independence secures their modest luxuries and life.

A shadow exists on the outskirts of New Ross, the Good Shepherds Convent looms in the distance, being both a dominating reminder of the church in the everyday life of the residents of New Ross, and sovereign independent institution of the community, providing an education for the resident’s girls and daughters, while also operating a laundry, which everyone sends there linens up to, as it comes back as if new. Despite the good in its name, and its presentation of being a pinnacle member of the community, the convent was also notorious with nefarious whispers discussed regarding the laundry business and the wayward girls it supposedly saved and employed. When Bill Furlong is to make a delivery to the convent, he is reminded of an earlier incident, when the heavenly principled institution found itself slightly exposed. In an inner garden and orchard, Bill Furlong is confronted by one of the charges of the convent, a poor desperate waif who begs him to help her escape, if only so she could kill herself, fling herself into the River Barrow and be done with the whole ordeal. In a manner fitting any man of good grace, Bill is unobliging of the request, but shares his concerns and even offers to help mediate a resolve for the young woman, who crumples at the sight and sound of a nun. It is then and there that Bill Furlong takes stock of the caricature of Eden. Though the convent strikes a powerful and romantic image, being compared at one point to the likes of a Christmas card, it lacks the sentiment of goodwill and peace on earth. Broken glass coronates the tops of walls, and Furlong grows increasingly suspicious of the locks in all their formats barring entrance and departure from the grounds. When this event is brought up to Eileen, she responds with the darkening (though understandable) caution and stiffening resolve:

            “If you want to get on with life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.”

Bill inevitably disagrees (and for good reason) defending the kindness and resolve of the late Mrs. Wilson, who not only spared his life, but also his mother’s from indentured incarceration; while their lives were not easy or carefree, it was more agreeable then the alternative glimpsed in the convent. This early introduction into the convents harsh realities sets the stage for another climatic confrontation with the convents open secret, and the nuns, whose supposed Christian good nature and impeccable and unimpeachable moral resolutions, are not only brought into question but are found to be bankrupt. The otherwise hallow halls hollowed out, deprived of good will and charity and replaced with cruelty on an industrial scale.

“Small Things Like These,” is Claire Keegan’s debut novel, though it does not read like a debut. Its solid and sturdy, full of succinct and crystalline language. Keegans understanding of the technicalities and mechanical operations of narrative and literary form are on full display in this beautiful novel. Despite being only just over a hundred pages long, “Small Things Like These,” cannot be described as airy or insubstantial. It’s a novel of careful shading and insinuation, but also natural, fixating on tense moments and provide the necessary details to set the scene and the table. The novel has a rotten dark underbelly to it, and the lack of modern sensibilities and permeated the novel like a frost, curating the atmosphere of austerity and life as a test of endurance and penance; but it is full of enriching warm scenes, such as when the Furlong family makes a Christmas cake. As for Bill Furlong, he is agreeable and good company. A man not privy to the stoic marrow and resolve of the Irish, but who offers generosity without any ulterior motives. Who kindles hope (however small and feathered it may be), and perhaps slips into sentimentality and yearning when it comes to his family. The fact that Bill Furlong was the main character and the driving force of the novel not only propelled the novel to a sense of measured optimism, but ensured it was not drowning in the tar of a dour vicious narrative hellbent on not only autopsying the infamous Magdalene Laundries of Ireland, but making it a blatant hit job. Keegan expertly dissects the church’s unchecked power, but does not let the examination pull away from the human elements of the narrative. Instead, Claire Keegan is more subtle, sketching imagery and scenes to provide the context to the narrative with great success. “Small Things Like These,” is an absolute gem of a novel, and perhaps can be read within an hour or two, but I enjoyed savouring it over the course of three evenings.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

– XXI –

Sensitivity is the new form of censorship. It is the newest notion in attempt to rid the world of offense. Yet such practitioners of sensitivity editing, reading, and viewing find offense wherever they look. They do the world a disservice. The world is not ideal. It is a mixed bag of stimuli; none of which is exclusively interested in regards to one's tolerance or sense of sensitivity. Children and people need to have frank and open discussions regarding intolerance, not censor material in which they are never exposed to it. The human condition is a varied spectrum of experiences. Not all of which are positive or kind. Exposure, discussions, and understanding them are intricate parts when experiencing them and encountering them, but also in confronting them and processing them.

Ananda Devi Wins the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Hello Gentle Reader,

The Neustadt International Prize for Literature for 2024 has been awarded to the Mauritian Ananda Devi. Previous winner of the biennial award include:

Francis Ponge (1974)
Czesław Miłosz (1978)
Octavio Paz (1982)
Tomas Transmtromer (1990)
Kamau Brathwaite (1994)
Assia Djebar (1996)
Mia Couto (2014)
Dubravka Ugrešić (2016)
Ismail Kadare (2020)
Boubacar Boris Diop (2022)

Often referred to as the ‘American Nobel,’ the biennial award has a reputation for recognizing and awarding great writers from across the globe who write in a diverse language. Winners of the award include giants of international reputation (as listed above), while nominees include other contemporary classic writers as: Doris Lessing, Wole Soyinka, Mavis Gallant, Carlos Fuentes, Can Xue, and Nirmal Verma. The Neustadt International Prize for Literature shares a similar literary perspective with the Nobel Prize in Literature, an eye for global recognition and appreciation of literary merit, though some may point out that the Neustadt applies a more global perspective with greater accuracy.

Ananda Devi is considered one of the most important French language writers working today, specially from abroad. Devi’s bibliography includes novels, poetry, short story, and essays, though only a fraction has been translated into English so far. The novel “Eve out of Her Ruins,” is given significant praise and is noted as the best introductory point for Devi’s work. The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is the first big name international award that Ananda Devi has won, which may mean an increase interest in her work and further translations, but this is also a significant moment in Devi’s career, where international acclaim is now being bestowed upon her, though Ananda Devi has long been revered in French reading circles.

Congratulations to Annada Devi, The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is certainly a confirmation that your work is renowned for its penetrating poetic insight, unflinching social criticism and overview, and an expert surveyor of the uniquely female perspective of the human condition.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

Louise Glück Dies Aged 80

Hello Gentle Reader,

Louise Glück was one of the most singular and original poets of contemporary English language poetry, a poet whose work was unified and complete, revolting against the notion of miscellany or collected scraps. Each of Louise Glück’s poetry had a sense of concrete or togetherness about them, a sense of unity not just in form, but in narrative, preoccupation, crafting beautiful poetry collections of marvelous sequences. Louise Glück was an unapologetic lyrical poet, one who swore no allegiance to any school, movement, or theory. Glück’s poetry strived for continued absolute clarity, one which severed and trimmed sentimentality and kitsch modes of expressions of disingenuity. This clarity was also regarded for its austerity. Pristine and picked clean, but unmistakably examined and exactingly staged and displayed. Louise Glück was a poet whose work examined, dissected, cut open and burrowed into otherwise eternal preoccupations of the human condition but also of personal matters, such as trauma and intimate relationships either with parents and siblings, or the dissolution of a marriage. These otherwise personal narratives had critics referring to Louise Glück as a confessional poet, but they couldn’t have been more wrong in their categorization. Glück’s poetry lacks the emotive frills, the titillating exhibitionist strip tease and final self-immolating cleanse. Louise Glück was far more chameleonic even impersonable, employing and embodying myths and botanical perspectives to refract and reflet on the topics in which Glück mulled over; but what was always enduring was the unmistakable poetic voice, both personal in its intensity, but crystallinity disseminated without ceremony. A poem often referenced by critics as having the distinct Glück touch is “All Hallows,” with the placid imagery of an otherwise rural landscape in autumn. Glück describes the arrival of dusk with the image of darkening hills and oxen asleep; the fields are picked clean either by harvest or pestilence; while a toothed moon rises. The poems jagged, sharpened edges, poke and prick throughout the poem, but soothes in the end, when a woman extends a hand of golden seeds as offering, calling out into the darkened evening for the soul. The distinct mournful voice, the jagged and serrated imagery, are all hallmarks of Louise Glück’s poetry, but take note of the season, and how landscape and nature are prevalent through the poem. “The Wild Iris,” is regarded as one of Louise Glück’s masterpieces of poetry, a poetic cycle that ruminates on the existential dramas of human nature and life through three very distinct voices, the God, the gardener, and the flowers of the garden, each one adding their voice to the chorus. The poem “Snowdrops,” is featured on the Nobel Prize website, but displays Glück’s unique poetic voice embodied by a fictional character, whereby the titular snowdrops remark with anxious surprise that they revived and return as winter recedes. Louise Glück is truly the October Poet, while looking outside as the day is bathed in grey light, the sky swaddled in impenetrable grey and white clouds, but the trees remain alight and aflame with a brilliance of autumnal colours of yellow and orange, while roads and lawns are carpeted in brown leaves, and some trees eager or windswept, have all but shed their leaves for the season. October is a month of ripeness and lengthened shadows, but also the last swansong before winters arrival, when the world comes alight once more, in a moment of renewed ripened life.

Sadly, Louise Glück died today (October 13 2023) at the age of 80. She was a remarkable poet, whose adherence to personal lyrical form ensured she had a rich and rewarding career, having won both the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the National Book Award, and was the United States Poet Laureate, in 2020 Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Beyond poetry, Louise Glück was an accomplished professor and lecturer or poetry.

Rest in Peace, Louise Glück.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

All the Lovers in the Night

Hello Gentle Reader,

The decline of social capital and meaningful relationships has risen steadily. Prior to the pandemic, former United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described loneliness as an emerging epidemic; in 2018 the United Kingdom appointed a minster for loneliness in order to report, manage, and reduce loneliness within the United Kingdom. With the onslaught of the pandemic in 2020 into 2021/22, loneliness was referred to as the shadow pandemic. While individuals participated or complied with mandates or restrictions and other public health orders such as social distancing and self-isolation. Restaurants, bars, theatres, and cinemas closed. Other retail stores either shuttered their doors or remained open in reduced capacities. People stayed home (where they could) and to use the resilient cry to arms, hunkered down. All the while, loneliness spread. Images, footage, stories, and news of the elderly locked up and isolated in their care homes looking out windows, completely severed from their social networks, supports, and safety nets. Further reviews, audits, reports, and inquiries have been damning. Canada, for example, paraded itself as a stellar success when it came to its response the pandemic, but reports have also damned the nation and its provinces for its complete failure and abuse of seniors and elderly who were confined to long term care facilities. The response to their needs was not only inadequate but fragrantly negligent, resulting in numerous deaths and causalities. The physical and health related effects of loneliness continue to be studied, with researchers warning that the effects of loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being a chronic alcoholic, and exceeds the health complications related to obesity. Human beings are hard wired biologically to cultivate and participate in intimate activities. The requirement for meaningful social connections is inherently human, but the notion of loneliness has evolved alongside human society, philosophy, political and economic systems, and social structures. For example, one might imagine archaic feudal rural societies as being plagued with loneliness; but this has not been historically proven. To partially quote Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of people," and certainly during these otherwise feudal dark ages of back braking labour, mundane oppression, and deliberate inequalities, the church became in essence the epicenter of the social life, a place in which to gather and amongst a group take in the word of the lord. Faith in the divine—this otherwise invisible hand—proved to be the tonic and comfort to what would otherwise be described as lonely souls, because despite their physical isolation or remoteness, the notion of God was an ever unseen but constant companion with faith being the tether to this understanding of divine company. Society in turn continued to evolve, and as medicine, science, and new philosophies that rallied against absolute monarchies and the church's complete subjection and monopoly of the world, the individual has been repositioned as the most important being, not the collective that absorbs the individual. Loneliness was no longer solely attributed to trees, roadways, and clouds, people too began to become acquainted with the notion of loneliness. Modernity brought freedom, fueled further by Darwinian applications in socioeconomic principles, and existentialist philosophies have sought to provide the basis for the individual to live their lives emancipated from the church. Yet, loneliness persists with a pestilence proclivity for permeance.

Loneliness has become a somewhat ironic byproduct of global interconnectivity, consumerism, and technological dependence. Ideas, narratives, stories, experiences can be shared across the world. People are connecting and re-connecting with people online. But the harsh glare of a computer screen or a phone screen, does little to pacify or replace the need for meaningful social connections. Everywhere, however, people are transfixed by their phones. Bombarded with images of their friends or relatives or co-workers or some celebrity on some great adventure, while their commuting to their job or standing in a fluorescent lit hellscape making themselves a coffee in the breakroom. Doomscrolling is another term that has come to the forefront, whereby people consume as if on loop nothing but depressing, negative, disheartening news. Continually, research shows that there is a lack of meaningful relationships and partnerships forming amongst individuals, and technology is neither replacement or alternative. The celebrated rat race of the postwar boom years in the 1950's has expedited and cultivated conditions where the modern individual is doomed to be atomized and isolated. People's calendars are full of activities and events, but the continue 'go, go, go,' narrative only masks the condition, providing the superficial understanding that they have meaningful interactions, with one participant of a study recounting their early investments and relishing in the on-the-go culture from morning into the night, filling their days with activities from school to extracurricular sports to then volunteering, only to slowly become increasingly exhausted. Then they realized they had no real support or meaningful social connections. Their phone and contact list were full of polite acquaintances but no enduring friendship. In turn solitude, alienation, loneliness have perhaps become more prevalent literary themes over the past decades, as it becomes an increasingly permanent fixture of the human condition. Collectivist cultures such as Japan before did not report many cases of loneliness, but the rise of globalization and consumerism has inevitably worn away the collectivist cushioning from alienation and loneliness. Shut-ins or what are known as: hikikomori, are becoming a prevalent demographic in Japanese society, where individuals do not leave their homes or have any meaningful real world social connections. Furthermore, Japan's population is declining, with a number of single person households on the rise, and almost half of the population has reported to feeling occasional loneliness on a daily basis. It’s a concerning social trend, and should not be confused with the wistful solitary characters of Murakami Haruki as they despondently stroll through their neighborhoods and tripping into a surreal dreamscape. It’s a palpable and realistic concern deprived of flights of fantasy. It was due to Murakami's praise of Kawakami Mieko that I initially was hesitant of reading her. Recently, however, her work has been translated and published with frequent ease into English language, showcasing to an extent a significant departure from the previously dominant surreal and magical realist narratives produced by Murakami. Similar to Ono Masatsugu, Kawakami Mieko is a writer concerned with more immediate social and realistic concerns, though she is less literary than Ono.

Loneliness is not the central theme or figure of Kawamai Mieko's novel "All the Lovers in the Night," though it is an apparent reality and state of being. The novel describes a modern woman Irie Fuyuko adrift, completely directionless and aimless, whereby the world zips along past her. Fuyuko is an individual who has seemingly no qualities, no interests, and no life. She is an individual who has come to the conclusion and acceptance that her life will not be very exciting or interesting. The novel introduces her as a simple neutral and beige character. A working professional woman—a copy editor/proof reader—whose almost machine like in her job, capable of working through manuscripts notating errors. At the office her productivity is appreciated, though this is her sole activity, never participating in water cooler chat, conversations, or other social activities. The other women in the office immediately view Irie Fuyuko with disdain. She becomes the focal point of the office gossip, taunts, and other passive aggressive attacks. Irie Fuyuko's character foil is the unapologetic, brash, social, aggressive extravert man-eater Ishikawa Hijiri, who recognizes Irie Fuyuko's productivity and encourages her to become a freelancer, whereby she could most certainly make more money and work from home. This is the life of Irie Fuyuko, a completely blank slate of an individual. She attended and graduated from an average nondescript high school, she had no preferential university or postsecondary ambitions and attended one merely because it was recommended to her. Upon graduation she accepted the first job that was offered to her and then stayed well into her early thirties. Her trajectory in life is best described as unambitious, unassuming, and uninspired coasting. It’s a life lacking in agency or direction. Irie Fuyuko is an amorphous being and individual completely afloat and lost within the world, directionless and perhaps even clueless. Her parents are never mentioned. Though its assuming they were typical middle-class individuals. There is little joy or excitement in her life. She's never left Japan and has no aspirations for traveling. She doesn't give her appearance much thought or concern either. Curating further information to assume that her clothing is generic and equally unassuming, lacking in character or colour. Her birthday is late December around Christmas, which unsurprisingly she celebrates the event alone, but in a rare moment exercises a sense of independence and takes a walk at night and observes the city in all its lights and comings and goings, but also notes people. How they wait for each other in restaurants or train stops; how they walk together or eat together. On one of her nightly walks, Irie Fuyuko is confronted by her own reflection in the mirror:

“The image of myself that floated to the surface, tinged with blue against a backdrop of the signs, walls, and windows of the nearby buildings, looked absolutely miserable. Not sad, or tired, but the dictionary definition of a miserable person.”

What follows is Irie Fuyuko's slow decent into self-realization and actualization, if on a more destructive basis. In attempt to participate in actual events or activities outside of work, Fuyuko goes to a community centre which offers a variety of different classes from languages, to culinary/cooking/baking, crocheting/knitting, to courses regarding the sciences. What follows suit is an embarrassing and destructive showcase, but also opens the door for hope and redemption, the opportunity for a meaningful social connection with another individual attending the event, a high school science teacher, Mitsutsuka. What follows is a budding relationship between the two. Their meetings awkward and polite revolve around superficial subjects and science, with flashes of odd admissions from Irie Fuyuko, giving her imperceptible character some defining feature. Her joy of lying in bed as a child and pretending to be a lion for example. Of course, Fuyuko's dissatisfaction with her life continues, but cannot be resolved as she has no interest or understanding of how to facilitate improving it. What follows is a slow train wreck, the continued dive into crisis and introspection and misery. Irie Fuyuko's default state of being has always been unrecognized loneliness, suddenly faced with its reality, Fuyuko is lost within its all-consuming depths. The narrative goes the way it's expected to. The novel loses its drive and steam and concludes as natural as it can, with a sense of irresolution, all the while gaining further understanding. At times Kawamai Mieko writes almost glaringly polemic, employing the brash Ishikawa Hijiri to give voice to her opinions and perspectives on societal expectations and constraints, lacking the required subtly to be considered successful to thwart accusations of posturing to the readers.

Along with Ono Masatsugu, Murata Sayaka, Kawamai Mieko is a representative of a new wave of Japanese literature, one which showcases writers who are moving away from the incorporeality and disengaged hermetic narratives, and instead moving towards narratives that are socially aware and concerned; they do not shrink or shy away from specifically Japanese elements or cultural references. Kawamai Mieko is a writer renowned in her native Japan as being unapologetically feminist, and these social lenses and perspectives are often stitched and sewn into her narratives, providing commentary on the societal expectations of women in Japan. In this fashion, one of Kawakami's claims to her success is both interviewing and criticizing Murakami Haruki over his otherwise two-dimensional female characters in his work, who rely on heavily male oriented perspectives and characters to define them.

"All the Lovers in the Night," is a unique social novel, one with explicit detailing care into the nuances and perspectives of a life completely adrift in a state of anemic alienation. Scenes of passive aggressive office politics are genuine and empathetically relatable, while the descent into misery is a slow burn, and unfortunate to read, often leaving readers wondering at which point their own lives have come to the same epiphanic moment where they realize their own life will not be very exciting. Irie Fuyuko's job as a copy editor is not held out of any enjoyment, satisfaction, or interest in reading or editing. The description of how she works through the manuscripts to Mitsutsuka seemed frightening, where she described the activity with machinist enjoyment, not enjoying what was written, but merely pecking through looking for mistakes and then discarding the work and moving onto the next manuscript like an assembly line. The lack of fulfillment shows a character who has no direction, no interest, no understanding of life. The novels slow vivisection of these social realities and emotions is what makes it a worthy read. Personally, I didn't find Kawamai Mieko's language explicitly lyrical or touching. The prose was clean and starched, which is required in order for it to land its punches and have the necessary impact; though as the aforementioned polemic discussions aside, there were times the novels language slipped into the uncharacteristically quotidian and vernacular. Beyond these initial observations, Kawamai Mieko's novel “All the Lovers in the Night,” is a tonic of a social critique regarding the amorphous apathy of modern life and loneliness as constant companion of the modern individual.

 
Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary