Backdated books review: LOTR, Rattigan, Economics, Owen Jones, Rilke, and other such ramblings

August 2012

I've been rather lazy with this page. When I realised I couldn't set it up to do individual posts - as on the main page - I went off the idea a little. However, I have been re-inspired to write something at least up about what I've been reading. 

My main project for this summer was to read the Lord of the Rings. The sheer scale of Tolkien's world, with its millions of avid readers, its fanfiction, films and appendices, really intimidated me - I was convinced it would be a whole-summer reading marathon, trekking through interminable passages listing the genealogy of elves. For those interested, there are interminable passages listing the genealogy of elves (and humans, dwarves, the Numenorians etc), but the story itself isn't overwhelmingly difficult. I can understand that some people might not get into it, but I was gripped. For days I raced through the familiar journey, watching Frodo and Sam struggle across Ithilien and revelling in the sheer beauty of the story. It has a wonderful epic quality, a richness of language, which is unsurpassable. I read all the appendices and spent days discussing the lineage of the dwarves with my Dad, who is a long-time Tolkien lover, and fully intended to go and read all the additional books, but then I got distracted reading other things, so I am yet to discover the history of the Second Age  of Middle Earth and that sort of thing. Perhaps its better this way. When you read the Lord of the Rings, you realise you're just skimming the surface of Tolkien's life work, the culminating event in the glorious history of Middle Earth. It's only fair that it should take a lifetime to read it, and savour the pleasure. 

Since then I've read a variety of new things and old. I finally read a Terence Rattigan play, The Deep Blue Sea, which I'm still thinking about, and I'm reading 50 Economic Ideas You Really Need to Know, one economic idea at a time. The idea is to try and make myself sound more intelligent when I'm arguing with politics students. So far, I'm eight ideas in, and I can refer to things like the 'invisible hand of supply and demand' with alacrity. The '50 ideas' series are the most fantastic books for sounding smart at short notice. I read '50 Literature Ideas You Really Need To Know' just before my A-Level exam, and I think it helped. Maybe. I'm slightly terrified that when I start university next month everyone I meet will genuinely understand these things, so I'm trying to polish my few nuggets of knowledge in the brief time left before I start packing... I've also been re-reading Sherlock Holmes for relaxation, because like most literaturish students I'm in love with him. 

Strangely for me, I haven't yet finished my holiday reading books. It's a tradition in my household that we each buy a novel or two for holiday reading, and this year I asked for Owen Jones 'Chavs: The Demonization of the working classes' (non-fiction), Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, and The Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, also by Rilke. I'll start with the book of letters. Written to aspiring poet Franz Kappus in the early half of this century, this selection of ten letters from Rilke to Kappus is inspiring, uplifting, encouraging, and life affirming. I felt, as I'm sure most readers do, that Rilke was talking directly to me. For a manual on how to write, on God and on life, they are essential reading, and I can this book becoming part of my 'Desert Island Discs' kit - the book, after Shakespeare and the Bible, that I'd want beside me when I feel lonely or lost. 
This brings me on to the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. I haven't finished the Sonnets yet, so I can't really comment on them. I don't feel qualified to comment on anything Rilke created, so all I can say is this: read them. Read them slowly. Read them on buses, and then listen to the conversation the people behind you are having about them, having seen you reading them. (You have to turn the pages every now and then so they don't realise you're eavesdropping.) If you can, read a bilingual translation so you can appreciate the rhythms and rhyme scheme which are totally destroyed in translation. Go away and learn German then read them properly.* Love them. Do not worry too much about understanding them. 

I bought the wrong translation of the Elegies and I am contemplating going and buying another translation because I think the phrasing is slightly better. This is how obsessive and lit-geeky I feel about them. (If you're interested: I have the Stephen Mitchell translation, which is good, but I'd prefer the Martyn Crucefix translation. So. Sad.) 

I haven't finished Owen Jones Chavs yet. It merits slow reading. Discussing attitudes to the working class in Britain, it is a truly challenging book, taking on many common misconceptions, from social to statistical. It suggests links between cause and effect, prejudice and reason, and argues strongly for the case that that social ills are a symptom of, rather than the cause, of Cameron's 'Broken Britain'. As you might have guessed, it's an angry left-wing work, with plenty of reasoned criticism of the Conservative governments of the last few decades, especially Margaret Thatchers' government. Jones also levies a fair amount of criticism of the labour party under Tony Blair, and is careful to present a reasoned and valid case for all his arguments. It is the sort of book that could be questioned, but it's a useful springboard for a groundwork of understanding the problem of class in Britain today. I feel it could do with - or at least, I'd appreciate - some more political theory to support the statements it draws from case studies and statistics, but the point is that the book is popular politics, designed to be accessible to everyone, so the absence of theory is justified in its premise. A highly qualified political commentator, Jones presumably has argued through the more academic side of his arguments and is confident that he could, and I think often has, support them when required to. It is, in any case, a useful and informative book, and the authority of Jones' arguments has for me been confirmed by the instances where he speculates about the future and his speculations have been confirmed by events since the book was published around two years ago. He's another person I'd love to meet, as our views seem very similar. The only other thing I'd nitpick about the book is the poor organisation of his arguments. It's a little hypocritical of me to complain, given the rambling nature of most of my blog posts, but I feel the book could have done with a plan setting out a miniature argument and conclusion for each chapter and then sticking rigidly to it, like an academic essay. Perhaps the book was planned like this, but if so, it's been hidden cleverly so as to create a general impression with each chapter rather than a logical, joined-up-the-dots argument. If there's one thing Critical Thinking AS Level did for, it was to make me pedantic about being able to trace argument structures, and it's often quite hard to follow the thread in Chavs. 
Nevertheless, it's definitely worth reading. It might not leave be more informed, or better at social arguments, but it will leave me with a genuine desire to challenge class perceptions and my own inherent prejudices. I have to read it in small chunks because it makes me want to hit people who vote Conservative,** but underwritten in the text is a genuine desire to make the lives of others better, and educate the uneducated - the degree-holding classes...

Soonish I will (hopefully) have a reading list for University, so that'll probably take up most of my time. I'm going to have to learn to think again! :D 

Until then, I have two main things on the go. I'm going to read Julius Caesar, because I saw the RSC production on TV and really liked it, and I'm going to read Les Miserables. Today, on the 7th or 8th book of the first principle book of the story, one of the main characters was finally introduced...more on that when I get there.

Until then, keep reading :D I always like book suggestions so please send me some!
J.R. 


*This one is still a work in progress. 
**Which isn't nice. Please don't stop reading if you vote Conservative. I love you really.