Georgina Bedford, Monica Baldwin, William IV, Claude Simon, G.E. Lessing, Kafasani

Since my last post I've read an issue of Eclectic Reading, an issue of Hello Canada, and an issue of The New Scientist.

I've also read two books about the film maker Marcel Carne, both eponymous. I was interested to learn that he had had many troubles in getting films made. I've read a biography of King William IV by Gore Allen that wasn't very good, and a biography of Georgina, Duchess of Bedford called Mistress of the Arts, by Rachel Trethewey, which was not as insightful as I hoped. It was more like a list of where she stayed and who she had over and what her extravagant lifestyle was like. I read a classic of Palestinian literature by Ghassan Kanafani, with an unforgettable short story about powerlessness, called Men in the Sun. It also gave me the opportunity to suspect some plagiarism in the New Yorker review article which led me to read it. I read some Claude Simon, but I don't like the nouveau roman inspired by Ulysses, and I don't think this fashion will last, even if he did get the Nobel Prize. Finally I read I Leap Over the Wall by Monica Baldwin. This is the story of her adapting to the world after being in a contemplative order from 1914 to 1941. It gave me a poor impression of this woman's ability to cope with life at all -- she said she stayed in the convent for 18 years after she knew she was in the wrong place -- and she certainly made some impractical decisions after that. I felt sorry for her. Finally, I read Laocoon by G.E. Lessing, an essay about literature and art.