Book Notes 30/11/06

Living Words, The Last Creatures and Hardy: the not so Obscure reviewed by Edward O'Hare. Living Words

Reading poetry can be one of life's most sensational pleasures or one of its cruellest miseries. How many people have turned away from poetry for life after going through the agony of having to learn it by heart at school? Most people's introduction to poetry is disatrous because an entire other world of significance crucial to the appreciation of a poem is ignored in the classroom. We can only come closer to the meaning of poetry by reading and listening to it.

Academic Josephine Hart has fought against the traditional way poetry is taught in British schools. Her latest brainchild is Catching Life by the Throat, a book of essays accompanied by a CD of readings. And what a cast Hart has assembled. Juliet Stevenson reads Emily Dickinson, Ralph Fiennes reads WH Auden and Roger Moore lends his suave tones to Rudyard Kipling. Edward Fox, Helen McCrory and Ian McDiarmid take on TS Eliot while Harriet Walter reads Sylvia Plath. WB Yeats is read by Sinead Cusack and the malcontent himself, Bob Geldof. The most interesting match of all has to be Philip Larkin and Harold Pinter. If you have ever felt the desire to return to poetry, this is your chance.

The Last Creatures

As the year's end draws ever closer, Book Notes has been reflecting on one great Irish writer whose wisdom and guidance we will sadly be without in the years ahead. The death of John McGahern was the greatest loss to international literature in 2006. His patience, reason and compassion were precious in a world that has become defined by its lack of these qualities. It says much of McGahern that the vital spark of his creativity has only burned brighter in the memory of his many admirers in the months since his passing.  

Book Notes is also glad that we have a more specific reason to celebrate John McGahern's talent. Creatures of the Earth: The Collected Stories was the project McGahern was working on even as he entered the last months of his life and has recently been published by Faber and Faber. In between writing cultural milestones such as Amongst Women and The Dark, he penned some magnificent short stories examining family relationships, the shift from rural to urban life and the experience of emigration. Collections of these appeared sporadically throughout his career. Creatures of the Earth is McGahern's own choice of his stories. Even now his work continues.

Hardy: the not so Obscure

Book Notes has been wondering why the work of some writers becomes an obsession. For the distinguished author Claire Tomlain, the novels and poems of Thomas Hardy possessed such an overwhelming power that they compelled her to write about the life of the Dorset-born giant. Ten years later, Tomlain's book, Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, has been hailed as not only a biographical masterclass but also an invaluable work for anyone wishing to understand how a male writer gave fiction some of its most famous heroines like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd's Bathsheba Everdene.

Hardy was the son of a moderately wealthy builder. Ignoring his fearsome mother's demands that he remain unexceptional, he took his fate into his own hands and abandoned his family home for London. There, after years of strain, poverty and anonimity, he became a sucessful novelist whose work removed the barriers that had long kept the working classes from creating art. Unfortunately, Hardy's triumph was to become a tragedy. Haunted by the terrible memory of his impoverished former self, Hardy channelled all his energy into his writing while his marriage to Florence Dugdale, a schoolteacher 40 years his junior, became frigid. It seems even the greatest of writers are not safe from obsession.