Hello!
I hope you’re all well, and looking forward to Halloween, whatever you’re doing. I do love this time of year but I am anxious about how warm it is, because the planet is dying.
What I’ve been reading and what I think about it
Anyway! I have finished Bleak House, you’ll be pleased to know (I certainly am). I actually forgot about loads of stuff happening, like what happens to Lady Dedlock and George and how it basically becomes a detective novel after around the 600 page mark. I remembered it being sad, but I found it sad for different reasons on this read; George’s story was particularly affecting, as was where he ends up and why (I’m trying not to reveal any spoilers, even if it is like 170 years old). I also found it fascinating on a technical level, because it is truly insane how Dickens manages to connect almost every single character into a big web of people who are all impacted by one chancery suit. It’s just a great book really, even if it is incredibly long.
This week I also read Derek Jarman’s Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping, which he wrote in 1971 and is now being published for the first time by Prototype’s imprint House Sparrow Press (thank you for the advanced copy!!). This couldn’t really be any different to Bleak House, which is probably a good thing as I could easily have fallen into a slump after spending so much time on one text.
The story itself is only about 50 pages with a lot of supplementary material such as an introduction by Phil Hoare, a QR code to a recording of Jarman reading the story out loud, photos of his writing and a couple of afterwords. Just like Jarman’s own varied career, which is ultimately defined by his filmmaking, this is more of a multimedia project than a book.
Billboard is a reflection on America and Hollywood, with a blind protagonist called King being led by his assistant John through ‘Billboard Land’, an abstract landscape where they come across prophets, poets, billboards and people declaring that ‘tomorrow has been cancelled’. I think if you’re not already a fan of Jarman this might get a bit lost, but it is a really interesting postmodern text that sets out a lot of stuff he would later commit to other forms like film, journal writings, gardening, and so on.
After starting Billboard, I scoped out the films of his I hadn’t seen yet, and settled on Sebastiane, about the martyrdom of St. Sebastian in the 4th century. It is in Latin and is largely set in a landscape not dissimilar to the one that I had imagined the King walking through with John -- dusty, arid, unpeopled for miles. A really beautiful film.
Books on my radar
I know I keep saying that I’m in the mood for stuff with a dragon, but i am, I just need the time to read something with them in!! I ordered Rosemary Sutcliff’s King Arthur Stories this week after Rosalie mentioned it on Twitter and I thought it sounded perfect for what I need rn.