jam-roll Julius

Late last night and this morning I read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It’s one of those plays where you are already familiar with a phrase from it every few pages, though I have to admit I assumed ‘It was Greek to me’ was first said by a middle aged person from Wisconsin in the 1980s instead of dear William, and its always jarring to come across lines used in the titles of cheesy novels, but that is what Shakespeare does, remind you that the way we speak, think, joke or create metaphors comes from him, and actively trying to read more Shakespeare these past months, I even feel attuned to when Dickens is being Shakespearean on a line level (‘ To-morrow,’ said the old man. ‘Think of me to-morrow. Say to-morrow’ from Dombey and Son) Half finished, I went to bed my mind filled with stark light pouring into marble buildings, vases, togas, swords, letters, bowls of wine. I am skeptical of historical fiction, the corpse ventriloquism of it, but Julius Caesar changed my mind. I feel like I finally understand Caesar’s assassination on a political and emotional level, and reading more about it after I read the play, late into the night, everything was easier to comprehend. I visualise the 21st/20th/19th/18th /17th/16th/15th/14th centuries down to the dark ages as kind of glowing gems on a string, an unpleasant pinball machine aesthetic to time, but the ancient world is squashed together in an accordion way because that long ago is hard wrap my mind around (esp with Ancient Egypt!) and Shakespeare stretched it out a bit for me. What I love in Shakespeare are not just the famous speeches, metaphors and similes but really simple lines like ‘ Give me thy hand’ and Brutus saying to his tired servant Lucius who has fallen asleep playing music

…Gentle knave, good night:

I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.

If thou dost nod, thou break’st thy instrument;

I’ll take it from thee; and good boy, good night.

Orwellian shower

I was very lucky my landlord fixed my shower less than a day after it broke, but all the switches are now backwards, so ‘economy’ is actually ‘stop’ and ‘hot’ is ‘cold’ so there will be many future conversations where I have to explain this to people.

Wiliam Trevor’s weirdness

I like how on the surface William Trevor seems to write realist stories about middle class protestants in Ireland and England, but reading him is often like slicing into a blancmange that is filled with worms and oysters. Some favourite ones of late are ‘O Fat White Woman’ a deeply damning view of marital harmony told within a sadistic boys school and ‘The Forty-seventh Saturday’ in which a man in his 50s tells lies about his non existent wife to his girlfriend: that his wife is ‘ Bigger than you, Mavie. A big, dark woman’ who ‘likes a jam-roll.’ Mavie makes him vile recipes, like mackerel and custard and he does erotic dances for her.

A ‘Sidestack’

I have started a second substack wholly dedicated to reviewing novels under 150 pages, aka novellas. We live in an era of Costco logic where more is always considered more, and I intend to battle this. So far, I wrote about Brigid Brophy and Natalia Ginzburg and friend Neil Scott has written about Michael Bracewell. Novellas are very chic!!!