To super-infinity. And beyond

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell

John Donne lived myriad lives. 

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral – and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of sadness, yet expressed in his verse electric joy and love. 

From a standout scholar, a biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death. In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell embarks on a fleet-footed ‘act of evangelism’, showing us the many sides of Donne’s extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words, and his tempestuous Elizabethan times – unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living.

I’ve long been a fan of Donne, ever since first reading his poetry in Sixth Year English and then more of it along with other metaphysical poets in undergraduate English Lit too. I was only aware of part of his life story and transition from rake to priest as it is traditionally presented. But there is so much more to Donne than this as Rundell shows here in what is an outstanding biography of a genuinely remarkable and complex individual. Not only does she capture the intricacies of Donne’s messy and often difficult life course through assembling source material in new and compelling ways, she represents the turbulent mood of the time and sets the backdrop to his story extremely well.

A couple of extracts gives a flavour of the work and the person:

He accounts for the first recorded use in the Oxford English Dictionary of around 340 words in the English language. Apprehensible, beauteousness, bystander, criminalist, emancipation, enripen, fecundate, horridness, imbrothelled, jig.

340 new words is pretty impressive.

James was in comparison to Elizabeth an addict of the pulpit, and had doubled the number of sermons the monarch heard preached every week. He cajoled the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge – apparently against the latter’s better judgement: he refused at first, perhaps remembering Donne’s Catholic beginnings, or perhaps having read some of the more vivid sex imagery – to award Donne an honorary doctorate of divinity.

An unusual way to secure an Honorary perhaps.

Anyway, it’s an outstanding biography and highly recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

This is Pop

Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker

We all have a random collection of the things that made us – photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions:

Who do you think you are?

Are clothes important?

Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?

From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley’s Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis’s unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he’d rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process – writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.

This is not a life story. It’s a loft story.

It’s as entertaining as you would hope. There’s some rich and really genuine material from Cocker’s and Pulp’s early days and lots of fun anecdotes about all of those items he has accumulated in his loft over time. All of this ephemera somehow comes together to chart a fuller picture of one of the great cultural icons of our day. It’s really good stuff and Cocker’s voice shines through along with his genuine passion for his work.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Very Strong Coffee

Max Havelaar by Multatuli

A brilliantly inventive fiction that is also a work of burning political outrage, Max Havelaar tells the story of a renegade Dutch colonial administrator’s ultimately unavailing struggle to end the exploitation of the Indonesian peasantry. Havelaar’s impassioned exposé is framed by the fatuous reflections of an Amsterdam coffee trader, Drystubble, into whose hands it has fallen. Thus a tale of the jungles and villages of Indonesia is interknit with one of the houses and warehouses of bourgeois Amsterdam where the tidy profits from faraway brutality not only accrue but are counted as a sign of God’s grace. 

Multatuli (meaning “I have suffered greatly”) was the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker, and his novel caused a political storm when it came out in Holland. Max Havelaar, however, is as notable for its art as it is for its politics. Layering not only different stories but different ways of writing–including plays, poems, lists, letters, and a wild accumulation of notes–to furious, hilarious, and disconcerting effect, this masterpiece of Dutch literature confronts the fixities of power with the protean and subversive energy of the imagination.

It’s a terrific book and one I’d been meaning to read for a while, ever since seeing this statue on a visit to Amsterdam:

Before seeing this I had never heard of Multatuli and was intrigued to learn about someone who has been described as the most important Dutch writer of all time.

Anyway, it really is an impressive literary creation, with some genuinely clever innovations but also a powerful and damning critique of colonial exploitation. The exposition of the failings of colonial administration is remarkable and it the descriptions of the oppression of Indonesians by the invaders really are shocking. Highly recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Follow the Money

Spy Hook by Len Deighton

Millions of pounds have gone missing, and the Department have sent agent Bernard Samson to Washington to track them down. But this mission is just the start of something far deeper and darker. It will take him from the English suburbs to Berlin, the South of France to Los Angeles and the heart of a maelstrom. In the first part of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, friends become enemies, pursuer becomes victim and no one – not even Bernard himself – is above suspicion.

An entertaining thriller, one of an extended series involving Bernard Samson, from the pen of Len Deighton. I must admit I’ve always avoided Deighton in the past, imagining him very much to be in the Wilbur Smith category. However, seduced by the Penguin packaging and stylish graphics, thought I would give one a go. Anyway, it was well worth it and pleased I decided to pick up what turned out to be an impressive Cold War spy thriller. Good stuff and looking forward to reading more in the Samson series.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Painter Man

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.

It’s classic Murakami which, in addition to the features described above, includes some very strange otherworldly characters. There are surprising goings on throughout and some rather questionable dialogue involving the teenager Mariye. The book is a long one and doesn’t exactly move at pace although there was always something unusual enough happening to ensure continuing interest. Leaving aside the painter/teen discussions, which were just wrong and inappropriate, it is a pretty good read overall and the descriptions of the paintings are surprisingly convincing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Hiding and Seeking

This is What Happened by Mick Herron

Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice.

Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk.

Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero – if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.

I think I’ve been spoiled by all of Mick Herron’s other books, particularly the Slough House series, so anything slightly below par feels like quite a big disappointment. Anyway, this one is as well written as the others but the premise, though interesting, just doesn’t quite convince. Without giving anything away it does all feel pretty improbable and therefore some major suspension of disbelief is required. But it is still all pretty gripping nevertheless.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Piano Man

Love is Blind by William Boyd

Around the turn of the twentieth century young pianist Brodie Moncur quits Edinburgh’s slate skies for the lights of Paris, his preacher father’s words of denunciation ringing in his ears. There he joins forces with the fiery Irish virtuoso John Kilbarron and together the pair take Europe by storm.

But when he falls for Kilbarron’s lover – the mesmerizing Russian soprano Lika Blum – Brodie quickly realizes that the tide has turned and he must flee across a continent, haunted by his love for Lika, and pursued by the vengeful wrath of his rival.

A great story, if wildly improbable, about a pianist, traipsing round Europe in pursuit of love and then trying to flee the consequences of his actions. There are some great characters in here and it is really entertaining and engaging tale.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.