An Island Tale

I seem to have spent ages re-reading Joseph Conrad's Victory: An Island Tale in preparation for another study guide. It's one of his longer novels, and the experience was punctuated by hot sunshine and (brief) periods of swimming. The story has all the usual complexities of Conrad's fragmented time schemes and oblique manner of narration - but the story itself is a tense thriller. The Swedish recluse Axel Heyst rescues a beautiful young woman and takes her to a remote island. He's pursued by two criminals: one wants his money, and the other wants the girl. There's a gripping showdown when he faces them (unarmed) and all hell is let loose.

Vuelta 2012

The twentieth and decisive stage of the Vuelta today. All the main contenders on another cripplingly hard day performed (reasonably) as expected. Maybe Rodriguez and Valverde should have attacked earlier - but who can blame anyone on those gradients at the finish. But Contador finished well adrift. Enough to stay in pole position for the overall win, but where was the superhuman elan he produced two stages ago? I remain conviced that his erratic performance reflects the selective use of chemical assistance. Time will tell.

English Language Quizzes

Do you know where the apostrophe should go in "My greengrocers oranges"? We've started a new series of self-assessment quizzes, so that you can test your knowledge of English language basics. There's one on Apostrophes, one on Spelling, and another on the correct use of Capital letters. More to come later

The answer to the question, by the way, is "My greengrocer's oranges".

Vuelta a Espana 2012

I'm very suspicious of Alberto Contador. For the last two weeks of the Vuelta he has been struggling to keep pace with the other leaders of the race. Then all of a sudden, today he takes off from out of nowhere and puts enormous amounts of time between himself and his nearest rivals. This is classic doping behaviour. It might take a year or two to become proven, but since he's only just emerging from a previous ban for doping, my money is on a longer term revelation.

Vuelta a Espana

Chris Froome and the Sky team released a brilliant performance on stage six of the Vuelta yesterday. It was like the Tour de France all over again. Sergio Henao, Rigoberto Urán, and Froome set a blistering pace up the final climb, and even though Joaquim Rodriguez beat Froome in the sprint, they burnt off Valverde and Contador in a way that suggested they are capable of dominating this race.

Edith Wharton - stories

My summer reading week(s) recently included two stunning texts by Edith Wharton. She's best known for her novels The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, but she was also a prolific writer of short stories. The first is a murder mystery which is loosely based on the notorious 1892 Lizzie Borden case. Confession explores a puzzling set of circumstances seen through the eyes of a decent but slightly naive narrator who meets a beautiful but enigmatic woman in a Swiss hotel and pursues her to Italy. The other tale, Roman Fever, is her best known and most frequently anthologised. It's a witty and subtle study in manners as two middle-aged American women sit overlooking Rome after lunch, reminiscing about their younger days. One of the ladies comes in for a beautifully delivered shock.

Joseph Conrad - early novels

My summer reading has included the first two novels written by Joseph Conrad - Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands which I had not tackled before. They mark an interesting break with the gung-ho imperialism of works such as King Solomon's Mines and the start of a modern consciousness that took a more sceptical view on the activities of European nations in the far east. They also show the early signs of Conrad's famous literary modernism - long complex sentences, non-linear narrative, shifting point of view, dramatic suspensions and an all-pervasive sense of grim irony. The two books are populated by a number of the same characters, and it doesn't really matter in which order you read them. They're not in the same league as his greatest works such as Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, and The Secret Agent, but they are well worth reading.

The Assange Escape Solution

Put him in a diplomatic car (which is immune from seizure) - drive to the docks - take car on board - sail to Ecuador - Simples!

Muse to a generation

For many years I have read biographies of artists and critical analyses of early twentieth century culture in which one name has cropped up again and again - Alma Mahler, or to give her full due, Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel. She had a fling with Gustav Klimt, and was the inspiration behind many of her lover Oskar Kokoshka's best paintings. She married composer Gustav Mahler, then architect Walter Gropius (who founded the Bauhaus) and latterly the writer Franz Werfel. You might not be surprised to hear that she managed fit quite a number of other men in as well - so to speak. She composed songs, neglected her children, drank a bottle of Benedictine a day, and thought Hitler was a superman. All these colourful details, and a lot more, come from Susan Keegan's splendid biography, The Bride of the Wind, with which I have just managed to catch up.

Tour de France 2012

In the last week of the tour, Bradley Wiggins has distinguished himself as an outstanding sportman, and stamped his authority on the race. Partly with the assistance of the expensive and powerfully gifted Sky team - but mainly through moments of real personal class. First the reconciliatory gesture to Nibali after their epic battle up the slopes of La Toussuire. Then his willingness to act as lead-out for his team-mate Edvald Boasson Hagen at Cap d'Agde. And yesterday his sporting close down of the chase, allowing Cadel Evans time to rejoin the peleton after puncturing. He didn't need to do any of these things, but he did them whilst wearing the yellow jersey. And my surmise is that respect for him will have spread throughout the race as a whole.

Elias Canetti's Memoirs

They've been in print for some time now, but I've only just got around to reading the three volumes of Elias Canetti's memoirs. He's an amazing writer who published a modernist European masterpiece when he was only twenty-six (Auto-da-Fé) and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. He was also personally acquainted with just about every major German writer of the first half of the twentieth century - Berthold Brecht, Robert Musil, Hermann Broch, Karl Kraus - to name just a few. He even managed to get a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Vienna before he decided to be a writer. Oh - and he had an affair with Gustav Mahler's daughter.

Volume One — The Tongue Set Free

Volume Two — The Torch in My Ear

Volume Three — The Play of the Eyes

Ghost Stories

Henry James is best known as a novelist, but he was also a prolific writer of short stories - or 'tales' as he called them. He wrote over a hundred, and he was particularly fond of ghost stories, which enjoyed something of a vogue at the end of the nineteenth century. His most famous is The Jolly Corner, which is the story of a man who returns to New York after living for thirty years in Europe. He visits his old family home, which he has inherited, and wonders what would have become of him if he had stayed. Wandering round the old house late at night, he gets the feeling that his 'other self' is waiting for hi. Then he finds a room with the door open ... I won't spoil the rest of the story for you.

He could even write ghost stories which are amusing, if not actually funny. In The Third Person two elderly spinsters inherit an old house in Kent. They are so enthusiastic about its antiquity they convince themselves it must be haunted, and start to compete with each other for sightings of the resident ghost. And Sir Edmund Orme even has a benevolent ghost whose purpose is to protect bachelors from being ill-treated by a woman, as he once was. However, he does manage to scare her mother to death.

Avanti Pozzovivo!

My tip to watch out for climber Domenico Pozzovivo last month was justified by his sizzling performance in the eigth statge of the Giro d'Italia this week. And this was a decisive victory on only a second category climb. Wait until he gets into the steep stuff this weekend and the Dolomites a few days later. There's a good chance he'll wipe out the other GC contenders. But I am still keeping my fingers crossed that he's clean. After all, lots of us were fooled by Pantani, Richard Virenque, Bjarne Riis, Floyd Landis, Michael Rasmussen, Alberto Contador et al.

Election Night UK

If you thought that the BBC's presentation of election night results was amateurish and clunky in the past - remember the 'Swingometer' and Peter Snow leaping about like an enthusiastic loon on screen? - then tonight's performance scaraped the barrel of an all time low. Jeremy Vine was reduced to crouching on the floor behind screens that had graphs that were simply not visible because of the background graphics. He was walking over a map on the floor that presented information to viewers that was effectively tilted at a sharp angle to their vision. And whilst trampling over the data he descibed areas of the map as 'black' that were clearly 'green'. None of the information was simple, clear, or visible. It was just a mess on screen. Massive public subsidy. Result = a mess. I can't put a picture up, because the BBC hasn't yet released any stills.

Style Guide for Clarity

If you've ever grappled with the guidance notes for a new TV set or a central heating boiler, you'll know that technical manuals are often rubbish. IKEA flat pack instructions are even worse. So how should clear instructions be written? Microsoft believe that they have clarified their software help pages and established a logical and coherent house style. And they're prepared to share their secrets in the fourth and latest edition of their company guidelines - which we've reviewed here.

Comic Classic

If you've not read it before, George Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody is a hoot that will reveal the source of much modern comedy. City clerk Charles Pooter decides to reveal his life in the form of a published diary, because he thinks people might find it interesting. It turns out to be a catalogue of the most stupefying banmality, with Pooter himself the primary figure of fun. He is terminally naive, beset by slapstick accidents, surrounded by people who take advantage of him, and he turns out to be the man for whom everything goes wrong. You'll recognise elements of everything from Adrian Mole and Dad's Army, to Rising Damp and The Good Life.

A Master of Modernism

Oxford University Press are in the process of publishing new translations of Kafka. We reviewed Metamorphosis and The Castle last year. Now comes The Hunger Artist and Other Stories which combines some of his best-known short stories (Investigations of a Dog, The Great Wall of China, The Burrow, and The Judgement) with some of his quasi-philosophic aphorisms and earliest journalism. It makes a selection ideally suitable for readers who have not tackled this enigmatic  and completely original writer before.
The full review is here.

Pure Climber?

I was very impressed this weekend with the climbing performance of Domenico Pozzovivo in the Giro del Trentino.  I just hope he doesn't turn out to be another Marco Pantani, whose style on the bike was very similar.

BeauBoDor

I'm very glad to report that the excellent visual satirist BeauBoDor has started blogging again. Get your daily fix here.

Woody Allen

I've been catching up on Woody Allen's latest movies recently via iTunes - on the premise that a trip to the cinema was too expensive and time-consuming to be worth the risk. I'm not sure which is worse - Midnight in Paris or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Both are pathetically self-indulgent, full of cliches, and predictably referential to an astonishing degree

Midnight in Paris opens with a series of amazingly unimaginative shots of Paris that come straight from tourist postcards. The conceit of the main character stepping out of one time zone to mix with Hemingway, Scott-Fitzgerald, Picasso, et al in the 1920s is milked ad nauseam and to no real end.

We learn nothing from this magical slippage, and neither does the protagonist as he exits the film with a new conquest and his prospective in-laws left abandoned in another fictional realm

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an old man's wet dream. Having wisely decided not to feature himself as the male lead in his fictions, Allen substitutes Javier Bardem - who just happens to seduce not one American female tourist, but her friend as well. And he happens to be married. But no matter: when the wife turns up she accomodatingly accepts the arrangements, and so he then enjoys a menage a trois. This is sheer authorial wish-fulfilment of the most juvenile kind

It's all a long way from the serious achievements of Interiors, Another Woman, September,  and Crimes and Misdemeanours.