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Integrity Bank Becomes 10th US Failure This Year (Update2)
Bloomberg - By Alison Vekshin and Ari Levy Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Integrity Bank of Alpharetta, Georgia, was closed by US regulators today, the 10th bank to collapse this year amid a surge in soured real-estate loans stemming from the worst housing slump since the ...
Cricket gaining ground in Italy Leagues start up as workers from subcontinent bring cricket to football nation
Inexperienced 'hockey mom' ignites race for White House
John McCain showed his maverick side by choosing little-known Sarah Palin, 44, to be his running-mate
lagniappe
Pretty
by Stevie Smith;
introduced by Mick Imlah
Famous for four words – "Not Waving but Drowning" – the Londoner Stevie Smith (1902–71) is otherwise a difficult poet to classify. Her milieu is somewhere between the comic, the twee and the neurotic: her chief virtues are her oddnesss, and the discipline with which that oddness is sustained through single poems. "Pretty", for instance – published in the TLS in 1959 – seems at first an obsessive, atmospheric reprise of the theme of Nature "red in tooth and claw", until the closing stanzas, which reveal a human raptor and an unsuspected impulse behind the poem.
Pretty
Why is the word pretty so underrated?
In November the leaf is pretty when it falls
The stream grows deep in the woods after rain
And in the pretty pool the pike stalks.
He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too,
The prey escapes with an underwater flash
But not for long, the great fish has him now
The pike is a fish who always has his prey,
And this is pretty. The water rat is pretty
His paws are not webbed, he cannot shut his nostrils
As the otter can and the beaver, he is torn between
The land and water. Not ‘torn’, he does not mind.
The owl hunts in the evening and it is pretty
The lake water below him rustles with ice
There is frost coming from the ground, in the air mist
All this is pretty, it could not be prettier.
Yes, it could always be prettier, the eye abashes,
It is becoming an eye that cannot see enough,
Out of the wood the eye climbs. This is prettier
A field in the evening, tilting up.
The field tilts to the sky. Though it is late
The sky is lighter than the hill field
All this looks easy but really it is extraordinary
Well, it is extraordinary to be so pretty,
And it is careless, and that is always pretty
This field, this owl, this pike, this pool are careless
As Nature is always careless and indifferent
Who sees, who steps means nothing, and this is pretty.
So a person can come along like a thief – pretty! –
Stealing a look, pinching the sound and feel,
Lick the icicle broken from the bank
And still say nothing at all, only cry pretty.
Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you’ll be able
Very soon not even to cry pretty
And so be delivered entirely from humanity,
This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty.
STEVIE SMITH (1959)
addenda #1
Erica Wagner on BookSleuth, a wesbite that helps readers track down forgotten favourites
There are few greater pleasures than the rediscovery of a book that you think you have lost. By which I don't mean that copy of Great Expectations you were certain was on the bedside table and now has mysteriously vanished: no, I mean a book you know you read, know you loved, and knew at the time that everything about it - title, author, tiniest detail, grandest theme - would stay with you for ever and ever and ever. But ... wait. Suddenly all you can remember is one telling detail, and the rest has flown the coop. There's that scene with the fork, the radio and the bolt of lightning, but nothing else. There's a tall woman with bright red hair and a limp, but farther than that you can't get. It's maddening. What on earth is a reader to do?
Turn to BookSleuth , that's what. Last week, readers may recall, author Alan Garner revealed he had, for years, suffered from just such a loss. He could recall a boy able to magically descend through the staircase in a pillar box to a garden where a girl could be found; he could recall “a wise but erratic old gentleman”. He had been through decades of anguish, he told us, as a result of his inability to recollect anything more.
I'm pleased to say he is anguished no more. One of our readers put a query in on his behalf on the aforementioned Booksleuth, a feature you'll find if you head to abebooks.com, one of the good websites for sourcing out-of-print books. There you'll find souls who ask such things as: “I'm looking for the name of a humorous fictional book about a college professor that winds up with his own personal cannon, one that fires oil cans filled with concrete. Any help would be appreciated.” There's a woman who recalls a book in which a girl marries an Alaskan ship captain; someone wants to find a ghost story about a house that can't be slept in. Have a browse - perhaps you can help. Alan Garner got his answer because a kind soul wondered whether it wasn't Marion St John Webb's “Mr Papingay” books he was after . . . yes, came the delighted answer - exactly those. “My yearning for a pillar box and a girl and an old gentleman is resolved and a 64-year itch has gone,” Garner says. “Now I may rest. Thank you!”
Happy endings are rare enough in life, I find - even rarer than they are in novels. It's immensely satisfying when one gets a glimpse that, as the stories sometimes tell us, they might just be possible
addenda #2 <== not a bad list
Exclusive: Philip Pullman's essential reading list
40 favourite books selected for the Waterstone's Writer's Table
COMPLETE POEMS
by Elizabeth Bishop
How simple some great poetry can seem - as x` as water, and as necessary. Bishop is incomparable: “Awful, but cheerful,” she said.
THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
by Robert Burton
A vast rickety structure of learning, wit, sense, nonsense, bizarre anecdotes, kindness, and wisdom. A humane guide and antidote to this terrible affliction.
A PERFECT SPY
by John le Carré
A perfect blend of form, subject, sensibility and moral power. Le Carré's best book, and one of the finest English novels of the 20th century.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE
by Wilkie Collins
For sheer plotting genius, Collins had no rival. If you've never read this, I can promise you one of the most gripping stories of all time.
Related Links
KOLYMSKY HEIGHTS
by Lionel Davidson
The best thriller I've ever read, and I've read plenty. A solidly researched and bone-chilling adventure in a savage setting, with a superb hero.
THE ANCESTOR'S TALE
by Richard Dawkins
Dawkins at his very best: a beautiful clarity of exposition, and an unslaked sense of wonder at the grandeur, richness and complexity of nature.
THE COMPLETE BRIGADIER GERARD STORIES
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes, but Brigadier Gerard is a marvellous creation - proud, valiant and absurd.
THE LETTERS OF VINCENT VAN GOGH
On the evidence of these honest, revealing and very moving letters, the greatest painter was a great writer as well; and his brother was a saint.
ART AND ILLUSION
by E.H. Gombrich
This is all about the mysterious business of looking and seeing, and E.H. Gombrich looked deeper and saw more than almost any other writer on art.
THE COMPLETE FAIRY TALES
by the Brothers Grimm
The fountain, the origin. Read one of these stories every day and your narrative taste will be purified, strengthened and refreshed.
THE CASTAFIORE EMERALD
by Hergé
Hergé was the best at everything: plots, draughtsmanship, jokes, characterisation, timing - he could do the lot, and this is his best book.
THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER
by James Hogg
A brilliant, chilling and subtle account of religious derangement. Every self-righteous fundamentalist ought to read this, but of course they won't.
COUNT MAGNUS AND OTHER GHOST STORIES
by M.R. James
I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm frightened of them. They don't come any scarier than in these superb examples of the classic English ghost story.
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
by William James
The most interesting thing about religion: not whether it's true, but what it feels like, explored by a psychologist of great intelligence and sympathy.
FINN FAMILY MOOMINTROLL
by Tove Jansson
The delight of the Moomin world always trembles on the brink of melancholy; its subtle and fascinating atmosphere is a triumph of the storyteller's art.
KIM
by Rudyard Kipling
A story about a boy in India, who ... But no summary can do this marvellous, rich and unforgettable novel anything like justice.
THE MARQUISE OF O
by Heinrich Von Kleist
A very strange writer: intense almost to the point of madness, but what a penetrating mind, and what sharpness and clarity of vision.
A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS
by David Lindsay
As literature, this is tosh. Nevertheless, it's a work of epic moral grandeur, and one of the very few fantasies to do something truly original and important with the genre.
THE MAGIC PUDDING
by Norman Lindsay
The best thing yet to come out of Australia, and that includes Shane Warne. If anyone can read this without laughing, heaven help them.
LAVENDER'S BLUE
edited by Kathleen Lines
Every household needs a collection of nursery rhymes, which are the foundation of every kind of success with language. This has always been my favourite.
VENICE FOR PLEASURE
by J.G. Links
Whether in prospect or in retrospect, or there in one's hands in the city itself, the most informative and engaging guide to the past and present of Venice.
THE CALL OF CTHULHU
by H.P. Lovecraft
Preposterous, overblown, absurd in every way - yet with an originality that looks more powerful and convincing each time I dip into it.
BUDDENBROOKS
by Thomas Mann
How could a 25-year-old know so much, and write so perceptively? The first of Mann's great novels, and still astonishing today.
THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
by Robert Musil
The greatest condition-of-Europe novel, but much more than a profound diagnosis - it's enormously funny, apart from anything else. I never tire of it.
THE BEST OF MYLES
by Flann O'Brien
The best collection of the funniest newspaper columns ever written. It's as simple as that. After this, read his The Third Policeman.
THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS
by Elaine Pagels
We live in Gnostic times. This is a clear account of the strange and intoxicating religion that nearly supplanted orthodox Christianity in its earliest years.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND
by Roger Penrose
This is an age of great writing about science, and here is some of the finest. Penrose's knowledge is awe-inspiring in its reach and completeness.
THE BOOK OF DISQUIET
by Fernando Pessoa
The very book to read when you wake at 3am and can't get back to sleep - mysteries, misgivings, fears and dreams and wonderment. Like nothing else.
WOLF SOLENT
by John Cowper Powys
Powys evoked the English landscape with an almost sexual intensity. Hardy comes to mind, but a Hardy drunk and feverish with mystical exuberance.
EXERCISES IN STYLE
by Raymond Queneau
A pointless anecdote told in 99 different ways, or a work of genius in a brilliant translation by Barbara Wright. In fact it's both. Endlessly fascinating and very funny.
WE DIDN'T MEAN TO GO TO SEA
by Arthur Ransome
Ransome never strayed beyond the realistic, but what an exciting story this is: danger, courage, skilful seamanship, and a real respect for his young protagonists.
DUINO ELEGIES
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The deepest mysteries of existence embodied in the most delicate and precise images. For me, the greatest poetry of the 20th century.
SELECTED WRITINGS
by John Ruskin
The best way to read this great and life-enhancing writer is in short and well-chosen excerpts. Earnest, unfashionable, no doubt; but profoundly wise and truthful.
THE COMPLETE MAUS
by Art Spiegelman
The complete answer to all those who still doubt the potential of comics. Spiegelman is a genius, and no other form could have told this story so well.
WALLACE STEVENS (POET TO POET)
edited by John Burnside
Wallace Stevens speaks more interestingly, and more memorably, about the things that matter most to me than any other poet. I can't imagine being without his work.
THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM
by David Thomson
Opinionated, slightly cranky, vastly entertaining, endlessly informative. Of all the reference books I have, this is always the hardest to put down.
COUNTRY OF THE BLIND AND OTHER SELECTED STORIES
by H.G. Wells
In these short stories we can feel a whole genre just beginning to spread its wings, and test its strength, and take to the air.
MOLESWORTH
by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
As any fule kno, this is the best marriage of writer and illustrator since ... well, since William Blake, really. Still funny after 50 years.
SUMMER LIGHTNING
by P.G. Wodehouse
Wodehouse had the extraordinary ability to evoke innocence without being in the least boring, all in a prose style that lightens the spirits like champagne.
THE ART OF MEMORY
by Frances A. Yates
Yates re-imagined the whole intellectual world of the Renaissance, and laid bare the odd and secret beliefs buried in the foundations of the times we still live in today.
© 2008 Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman's Writer's Table will launch in selected Waterstone's stores on Thursday September 4. Find out more at www.waterstones.com/writerstable
