KEV67

No Arnold Bennett fans? I think these days he is most famous for being forgotten. In his day he was massive. Successful in Britain and America. He was successful as a journalist. He wrote potboilers and serious literary classics. He wrote successful plays that were staged in the West End. I wonder how much his reputation suffered from Virginia Woolf's criticism.

Went to my 4th Baptist church. I have a sense what they are like now. Not much ornamentation, no stain glass windows, statues, etc. No incense. Bands play modern instruments instead of an organ. The hymns are singable, but a bit primary school. There was a hymn this morning that seemed to go on about 15 minutes. Modernity extends to the sermon. They often use a projector to display the hymns or other information on the wall. The pastor used power point to present his sermon. He seemed genuine enough. There was a strangely odd bit when four members of the prayer group were invited out. Anyone in the congregation who felt they needed a bit more help were invited out to be touched by one of the prayer group. There are more children at these services, but about half way through they are taken away to their classes. Returned to St Mary's Castle Street in the evening. Apart from the vicar there were six present. I suspect the woman who hands out the prayer books is the vicar's wide. One is the organist. Another woman was seated in the bit up the front, and I think she might have been mic'ed up, because she was the only one who seemed to know how to sing the hymns. The sermon was about how God was for the living, not the dead. There was a bit of Sadducee bashing, but not the Pharisees this time. Instead the Scribes got it in the neck, although I am not sure the Pharisees and the Scribes are not the same people.

One more day of Victober (after today) but it was a success as far as I was concerned. I was not too bothered about In a Glass Darkly, but the good sections of The Way of All Flesh were good. What I liked the best were the recitations and animations of Victorian poetry on YouTube.

I finished The Way of all Flesh. I did not like Edward Pontifex, who was the hero in the book by the end of the book. He became insufferably self-regarding.

Another reading by the Wandering Paddy, whoever he is. The Wind that Shakes the Barley, written by Robert Dwyer Joyce, 1836-83. I think it's about Irish Nationalism.

I have watched and listened to numerous reading of Invictus by W.E. Henley. I have not liked most of them, but this one is alright. Read by The Wandering Paddy AKA Jamie. He is a pretty good reader.

The only real crime books I have read are In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and Homicide by David Simon. I would not say either was suspenseful, although they are great books, particularly Homicide. I found The Talented Mr Ripley very suspenseful. You get a strange feeling reading that book.

I have nearly got to the end of The Way of All Flesh. The first section is about the protagonist's grandfather and father, both of them stern hypocrites. Then it is about the protagonist's upbringing to be a clergyman and how that all goes wrong. That was the best bit of the book. Now things are all coming good, but only because he was left a lot of money. It has a strange writing style. It is narrated by the protagonist's Godfather, but he knows everything that goes through everyone's minds. There is less dialogue than normal. It is mostly he did this, he thought that. The book is based on the author's experiences, so I will be interested to read the introduction. There was a section that reminded me of George Gissing's early adulthood. Gissing was late Victorian author of miserabilist social novels.

When I started reading Harry Potter, it reminded me of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. There is The Hobbit, which is a children's book set in a fantasy world. It has wizards, dragons, trolls, goblins and little people in it.

I think I started reading it at school, but I found it weird and strange, so I took it back to the library. I think I was a bit young for it. That was the story about everything having a true name? Ursula Le Guin is a bit weird and strange. I read Left Hand of Darkness, which is not a children's book. It was political and philosophical. It was written in the late 60s but stands up well in these times.

I was wondering which other Victorian poets I had heard of. I had heard of The Browning Version. It was a film. Browning referred to Robert Browning, and the Browning Version was a translation from Greek or Latin of some play the boy in the film either wanted to learn or did not want to learn. Ah, ok, what's his best known poem. Turns out it is The Book and the Ring, only it is 21000 lines long, and is divided into twelve books. I had never heard of it before. I am not going to post a YouTube reenactment of that.

I have not read The Old Curiosity Shop. I take it that it's sad.

You could try Watership Down by Richard Adams. I read it many times as a boy. It is about a band of rabbits that leave their warren to find a new home. You could try I Claudius by Robert Graves. It is a supposed to be a memoir by the Roman Emperor Claudius. Maybe something by Raymond Chandler, e.g. The Lady in the Lake. All his books are quite similar. They are about a tough American private detective in 1930s Los Angeles. The plots often involve a beautiful, scheming woman and some big, tough gangsters.

A section from The Seafarer: þæt ic gehyrde butan hlimman sæ, iscalde wæg. Hwilum ylfete song dyde ic me to gomene, ganetes hleoþor ad huilpan sweg fore hleahtor wera, mæw singende fore medo drince. Stormas þær stanclifu beotan, þær him stearn oncwæð isigfeþera; ful oft þæt earn bigeal urigfeþra. Nænig hleomæga feasceaftig ferð frefran meahte. There I heard nothing but the sea resounding, the ice cold wave. At times the song of the swan I made my joy, the gannet's cry and the curlew's melody for the laughter of men, the gull singing rather than the drinking of mead. Storms beat stone cliffs there, where the tern replied icy-feathered; very often the eagle called back dewy-feathered. No protecting kinsmen could comfort the desolate spirit.

It is definitely difficult. I am currently trying to work through Complete Old English by Mark Atherton. It has an associated web site where you can play the readings. I struggle to remember the grammar. I will have to go over the grammar again. https://library.teachyourself.com/id004325519 I have been quite interested in languages most my adult life, although my ear is not particularly good. I used to study French and German at night school. I got to a reasonable level in French and German. Then I studied Italian, but to a lower level. Then I lost interest a bit. I have worked through cassette courses in a number of languages, including Spanish, Dutch and Serbo-Croat. Those did not stick in my mind much. I worked for a Japanese company and we were encouraged to learn Japanese. I did two courses of evening classes. I have a certificate on my mantlepiece. I can just about read my name. Sometimes I can make out the writing on Japanese restaurants. Recently I have started learning cultural languages. I have been studying Latin for a couple of years. That is very hard, but I am starting to understand it a bit more. I started Anglo Saxon because I am interested in the history, the culture and the religion. There are one or two cool documents I would like to be able to read eventually, including Beowulf and the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. It is interesting how English changed so much.

I am reading a biography of Arnold Bennett by Patrick Donovan. He was huge from about 1900 to 1930, but is now largely forgotten. I have read one of his books, Old Wives' Tales. I thought that was a remarkable book. It was very true to life. It was about two girls who grow up in draper's shop, and then go their different ways in adult life. Only thing is I am not sure how much I actually enjoyed it.

Wycliffe's Baptist church this morning. Baptist churches are quite well attended. Quite multicultural, a mix of ages. There was another band who played modern hymns. It was a bit happy clappy. There was coffee afterwards. At Mary's Church of England (continuing) in the evening. About eight in the congregation. Tending towards elderly. Not at all happy clappy. Edit: did notice that the vicar pronounced 'Ye' as 'yay', but I do not think that is right. 'Y' is not a Y but a Thorn (Ð,þ), which is pronounced 'th'. It seems very strange that a letter that originally looked like þ should over time change to y. Edit: regarding 'Ye'. There was a 'ye' in which 'y' was really a thorn character, in which case 'ye' was really 'the'. However, 'ye' was also an old word for the plural you. In Old English it was written 'ge', but 'g' was often pronounced 'y' in Old English. Orthographically, it is easier to see how a 'g' could become 'y' than a 'þ' could.

Tom O'Bedlam. He has read about 1000 poems on PoetrySpoken, so I am told.

I have given up on In a Glass Darkly. I have taken it to the Oxfam shop. I am still enjoying The Way of all Flesh. It is wickedly sardonic. I have run out of Victorian poets I really want to read. I have gone off Kipling a bit. In part because of the cod Cockney accents and the militarism.

Try I Claudius by Robert Graves.

I was about thirty when the Harry Potter books started coming out, so I thought they were a bit beneath me. But since I have been trying to learn Latin, and there is a Latin translation, Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis, I thought it was a good opportunity to see what the fuss was about. I thought it was pretty good. I would definitely have enjoyed it as a child. I am not sure it would have replaced The Hobbit or Watership Down as my favourite book. I might have enjoyed it more than Famous Five, although I am not sure about that. To begin with, it reminded me rather of Roald Dahl, what with the horrible aunt and uncle and the badly behaved cousin.

I planned to go to Wycliffe's Baptist church this morning, but I did not get up in time. So I went to St Andrew's United Reformed Church instead. I was shown around by a very friendly chap called Bob, an little bit elderly Glaswegian. The congregation was a bit on the elderly side and a bit thin. There was a Kenyan faction. The URC service seemed pretty similar to the Baptist churches. There was a lay preacher. The hymns were bright and cheerful. I remember singing one of them from school. There is little ornamentation at these churches, although Bob did point out the wooden clock and they had some old photographs and books under a display case. I think the pastor was an academic in some science or technology field. He was into science fiction. He said a computer was not like a mind. Look up a topic and you get a lot of information, but not in the form that makes sense. Dunno about that. The reading was about a widow who pestered a judge for justice. The judge was not a good man, but was prepared to give her justice to stop her pestering him. Therefore, how much more a caring God would give justice. That is a reading that has come up somewhere else recently. Afterwards Bob showed me around. The United Reformed Church is an amalgamation of the Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist Church, although Presbyterian churches still exist outside England. He said there are Presbyterian churches in Europe. He said during the war, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina was sheltered at Mortimer, which is a village near by. She used to attend to the this church after ascertaining it was a true Presbyterian church. That was quite interesting because I have a Dutch friend. I asked her about it, but I think Presbyterians must be called something else in the Netherlands. In the evening I went to St Mary's Church of England (Continuing) service. I was a bit surprised they were taking the Eucharist. I thought they never did this in the evening. I took part this time. The hymns were just as difficult to sing. This service is fairly different to the Baptists', the United Reform Church', the mainstream Catholics', and even the Church of England's. The sermon was about waiting and being patient. I wonder how much effort goes into writing a sermon. I often find them unfocussed and difficult to concentrate upon. When I was studying my PhD I was asked to give a lecture on heat transfer to some students. That was a massive subject, thirteen chapters in my book. I spent ages on it, but I still ran out of material before the hour was up.

I Am by John Clare, one of my favourite poems. There are a lot of variations of this poem. I think John Clare must have tweaked it quite a bit and there is no settled version. Most the readings on YouTube are different to the version in my book. I don't suppose that is any bad thing, but it is unusual. Having said that, I do not read much poetry, so maybe it is quite common for poets to tweak their best poems. There are quite a few readings on YouTube. I do not entirely like any of them but this is the one I liked the best so far.

Still trying to study it. It is more like German than English, particularly the grammar. It has three genders and four cases. One thing I have never come across in any other language is the we-two conjugation, which Old English has in addition to the singular and the plural. Another oddity is that some words start 'hw'. For example 'hwæt' means wheat, and 'hwar' means where. I suppose just about every modern English word that starts 'wh' originally started 'hw' in Old English.

I'm glad you liked it. I hated it.