Magari

All English speakers of Italian will know how useful the little word magari can be. It expresses regret or longing, irritation or delight, according to tone and context. Whatever it means, it means it more effectively than any single English word. Students who ask for a translation watch me squirm as I come out with a five-, six-, seven-word expression that works just once. They’re generally too polite to say it, but their faces say it for them. How on earth do you manage?

Magari is one of a thousand words that don’t have any simple linguistic equivalent in English. Italian, on the other hand, doesn’t have a host of mundane, earthy terms such as, well, splodge. You can’t skedaddle in Italian or faff around (I don’t think) or squish. The range of Duh is only half-captured by the more historic Boh, immortalised by Moravia. In language, evolutionary niches always get filled but no one would seriously suggest that a giant terrestrial parrot has the elegance of a gazelle. Nor that a gazelle has the wonky charm of the now sadly extinct giant terrestrial parrot.

If you’re amused by this kind of thing, as I am, you’ll probably enjoy, as I would, a book called Toujours Tingo by the splendidly named Adam Jacot de Boinod. For more about the book, see this review. Here’s the first paragraph, to whet your appetite and, possibly, if you’re French, to wet your finger (Yes, I’m thinking chapponage):

Tsonga speakers who have had a fruitless day’s labour know it simply as walkatia. For Anglophones, it is the act of throwing down a tool in disgust. Someone fluent in Bakweri might soothe his walkatia by looking at a womba – the smile of a sleeping child. But all would probably shy at a Frenchman’s offer of a spot of chapponage – the act of sliding a finger into a chicken’s backside to see if it is laying an egg.

For I will consider my cat…. (Tilly)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord’s poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually–Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Christopher Smart

Homoeophobia? Common sense

This shouldn’t need doing again, but just in case you still think homoeopathy might have something in it, read this fine new article by Ben Goldacre from today’s Guardian.

As long as you’re popping a pill that contains no trace of ‘active’ ingredient (or – gulp! – listening to homoeopathic music) to get rid of a head cold, no harm’s done. But when people start suggesting that homoeopathy can cure Aids, like the goon quoted below, it’s time we all reached for whatever in rational discourse might pass for a gun.

Peter Chappell, whose work will feature at a conference organised by the Society of Homeopaths next month, makes dramatic claims about his ability to solve the Aids epidemic using his own homeopathic pills called “PC Aids”, and his specially encoded music. “Right now,” he says, “Aids in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio.”

Radio Gaga?

Oh yes, the forenamed Society has apparently threatened to sue bloggers who are critical of homoeopathic ‘medicines’. Well, homoeopathy sucks.

Watch this space.

Giuseppe Mallia: Arum lilies

Something for the eye. It hangs in our living room, over a roughly-made probably Yugoslavian pale blue cupboard with very grand fluted columns on each side, and is partially concealed by bottles, an unused oil lamp we bought in Thessaloniki and a sculpture given to me on my 50th birthday by Daniela, made from a telephone directory, silver paint, two small cherubs and a piece of crimson cord.

I love it.

Pip-pipped at the post

Publishing news. Picador has decided to scrap the traditional first-hardback-then-paperback process for literary fiction and to bring out almost all its novels in paperback editions from the outset, producing only a limited run of luxury hardbacks for collectors. The first novel to appear in this format will be Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey. You can read more about why this move has been made on the Picador blog.

As a reader, I’m convinced that this decision makes sense. Most of my reading these days is done on trains or planes or buses, or in bed, and hardbacks are simply inconvenient. They won’t slide into pockets or side-by-side in bags, they weigh too much. Some of them don’t even fit comfortably on shelves (at least not on those of the bookcases I’ve had made to hold my extensive collection of paperback novels). Nobody really wants them. Their only advantage is that you can use the jacket flap to mark your place. Even that awful commercial compromise, the ‘special airport edition’, is unwieldy and unlovable.

So why am I slightly anxious about the move? Because my own, my very own Little Monsters will be the last (or last-but-one) novel ever to be published by Picador in the traditional way, first in hardback, and then in paperback. This might make it highly collectable in years to come, regardless of its immense literary merit (although I doubt this), but I’m worried that it might also make it feel a little bit like yesterday’s loaf from the word go. It also means I’ll have to wait months and months for the paperback, which, as Crumey says, is the edition the author’s friends – and everyone else – actually want to buy. Hmm.

There is only one way to make me feel better about this. Scroll up and down the sidebar until you see a little box with the cover of Little Monsters inside it and the magic words Buy from Amazon. Click. You will be rewarded in heaven.

Warwick Collins: Gents

Cottaging – the use of public lavatories for fugitive sexual encounters – can be thrilling, titillating, dangerous, delusory, exquisite, sordid, debasing, indescribably erotic, and all these things at once. I should know. I spent a brief summer over thirty years ago as an habitué of the cottage on Jesus Green, Cambridge. Indeed, my first published story talks of the experience, and many gay writers have described their own, or others’, sexual encounters in cottages. But it had never occurred to me to consider the subject from the point of view of the people who work in public conveniences, as they used to be called, or restrooms, as Senator Larry Craig would have it. Warwick Collins, in his wonderfully engaging short novel, Gents, gives everyone the chance to see what goes on behind the door marked MANAGER.

Work as a subject is sorely neglected by fiction; few writers, with the notable exception of Magnus Mills who does almost nothing else, draw inspiration from the mundane tasks we perform or have performed for us on a daily basis. Gents, though, describes with lyricism and precision the working lives of the three men running a municipal public lavatory in London. The men, all three originally from Jamaica, have different attitudes to the use of the place by homosexuals – or, as they refer to them, ‘reptiles’. Jason the Rastafarian disapproves, but sees the problem in racial terms. Reptiles, for him, are white men:

“Whitey cold,” Jason said. “Cold inside.” He began to utter the dark poetry in his soul. “Colder than reptile. Don’ have no emotions. Come to de Gents for de sex wid another reptile. Don’ come for the wife, don’ wan family, maybe don’ even want de other man. Come. Afterwards go.”

The supervisor, Reynolds, is less judgemental. His main concern is that the council doesn’t decide to close the place down and put all three of them out of work. As he says: “We don’t keep their conscience, we only keeping order.” Later, he comments: “Reptile not dangerous. Danger come from man who hate reptile.”

The third man, Ez, who provides the novel’s main focus, is initially incredulous that such things happen, then, despite himself, curious and, finally, thoughtful. In one finely-written passage, he is described observing a cubicle in which two men are having sex:

Ez glanced at the cubicle. It seemed, in the fervent silence, that it was vibrating slightly, like a washing machine, as though various pieces of clothing were being thrown against the side. Then the machine seemed to switch itself off, to utter a soft sigh.

Talking to his wife, Martha, – and the relationship between Ez and Martha is one of the subtlest things in the book – he distinguishes between gay behaviour and what the reptiles get up to.

“Maybe these people not gay. Gay men mostly don’t have to come to dis place. Go to other places. Dese men family men, lonely men.”

As the novel develops, the complex, interdependent relationship between the two groups, each, in its way, oppressed and at risk, becomes more evident. When the ecological balance that enables the attendants and the ‘reptiles’ to survive is threatened by bureaucracy in the form of the implacable Mrs Steerhouse, something needs to be done. The solution the three men find – and I won’t reveal it here – is both humane and practical.

This short novel says more about racial tension, the economics of labour and sexual politics than many books ten times its length. It could have been anti-gay but contrives to have a grace and lightness of touch that distinguish it from more widely-known overtly gay-friendly books. As an ex-reptile I wholeheartedly recommend it.

You can buy it here.

Leg

http://www.youtube.com/v/htzuxuAGzsk

At last…

…a charitable way to waste your time, and improve your vocabulary. Click here.

As you can see, the labels below are quite irrelevant and are merely attached to this post to draw in the unwary and allow them to do something useful for a few moments.

Hey! Save money!

I’ve just noticed, from the Amazon box in my side bar that allows you to pre-order LITTLE MONSTERS, that the price has dropped from £14.99 to only £9.89.

I’m not sure how Amazon works, so this may not be a good thing. But it would be a pity to miss the chance to save some money. Unless, of course, you’ve already paid the full whack. In which case your reward will be karmic but not, alas, monetary. Either way, I love you.

Right?

Squabbling over kippers

Finally, a story that combines great literature, down-and-dirty sex with minors, gratuitous violence and, er, cultural heritage issues. The house in London in which Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud loved, wrote and fought over smoked fish has been saved from property developers thanks to the pioneering work of the charity Poets in the City. They plan to turn the house into a rendezvous for the poets’ admirers and creative offspring.

“It is probably going to be more tea and cake than absinthe,” said Graham Henderson chief executive of Poets in the City. “A lot of people have been working hard over a long period of time to get the house saved.

“It is all on the drawing board at the minute, but we envisage a place that is a celebration of Verlaine and Rimbaud, where poets and enthusiasts can meet, do research and hold events.”

The house is in Royal College Street, so if you’re feeling vaguely maudit, you know where to go.

PS. By pure chance I spent two weeks last year in one of the buildings Verlaine lived in during his years in Paris, in rue Nollet, just round the corner from Place du Clichy. I don’t have a photograph to prove this (and I’m sure you believe me in any case). But I do have one I took during my stay which captures something of the rather dark and perverse nature of the two poets’ relationship.

Here it is.