the deified dollhouse

and beans for scale

Last week I interviewed Jen Calleja for her new book Fair: The Life-Art of Translation which I would recommend not just for translators but anyone working in a creative field as it explores the joys but also the reality( especially financial) of freelance and creative work. The next day I went to see Tom Holland speak on his new translation of The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius and the difference between his and Robert Graves’ translation. The event was in a Georgian Church of Scotland church( uncomfortable pews naturally) and there was a man who brought a pug in a baby carrier which is just what I wanted aesthetically from Edinburgh classicists! There were men of all ages there- the book world needs to do more events and books on the Romans. Holland mentioned a ( missing) essay by Suetonius on Roman toys which I googled and silly google AI told me he never wrote it and of course I wasn’t going to help it by correcting it. I am annoyed at the whole of humanity the essay isn’t preserved. My new thing since then is to use wikipedia as a homepage, which at least I believe is still mostly written by humans. Anyway I want to read I, Claudius by Robert Graves now.

I spend my evenings now watching Lovejoy I am completely addicted and luckily there are many seasons and I bought a set of the novels it is based off too . I want to live in Suffolk in the 90s and go to pubs which serve trout and sherry. There is a sweet scene in one where Lovejoy gets his daughter to explain who Suetonius is to him.

I can’t stop laughing at this scene too. she will be reading at the next soho reading series for sure.

I read the shory story “The Nose” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa this week, about a Buddhist priest self-conscious so about his nose he spends his time combing “the Buddhist scriptures and other classic texts, searching for a character with a nose like his own in the hope that it would provide him some measure of comfort”

One of his disciples discovers a way to give him a strange nose job, involving boiling his nose and squeezing the fat out which goes into great graphic detail.

This week I also really enjoyed this old dessert island disc with the illustrator Jan Pieńkowski. The Kipling poem he mentioned is here

The Edinburgh International Book Festival Program is out. I am chairing Nicola Barker and Nell Zink on a panel and also M. John Harrison. The event i’ve booked to go see is Frances Wilson and Francesca Wade on Muriel Spark and Gertrude Stein. The Marina Warner ones look great too. If you are under 30 there is a good ticket discount so do take advantage of that and also for the unemployed/income support at five pounds.

I have a new article in The Stinging Fly on writing and money. The fridge in the illustration is not my fridge as I would never have an american fridge magnet of any sort so here is a picture of my fridge magnets. American wise I have in the flat:

a copy of Moby dick

some Shirley Jackson novels and essays

some old New Yorkers from my neighbour.

a billie holiday biography

The complete stories of Flannery O’Connor. some Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell ( a bio of him too and his letters) , a James Baldwin, some Sylvia Plath. That’s about all you need really before you succumb to the american hegemony . T.S Eliot is throughly British in my mind, as is Russell Hoban.

I finally found a dollhouse on gumtree, it fulfills all my fantasies of a twee suburban or village British house. I already fixed a window on it so feeling quite DIY and am going to install electricity. I want the interior to look like somewhere Lytton Strachey would like to live. It also sort of resembles one of the cute cottages Lovejoy lives in. Where does one buy tiny antiques?

Browsing ebay i found this very pleasing image: