A new thread. The content of which will be lists and links, rather than anything more sustantive.

The thing is, I need somewhere to store interesting stories I come across. At the moment, items sit in my diary in a big wobbly heap. Or they get spread across several folders on my computer, immune to all searches. So... Why not add another burden to the shoulders of the hard-working Velvet Cushion? (Hmmm... Do cushions even have shoulders?)

Some of these stories date back a bit. Going forward, I'll try to be more rigorous about logging material as it comes up.

Yeah, I try a lot of things like that...



Anyway...

1.
A review (November 2023) of The Secret Life of John Le Carre, Adam Sisman's supplement to his earlier biography, which Le Carre had to a large extent censored.

Echoes of how Le Carre (aka David Cornwell) felt at what he regarded as an unwarranted intrusion into his private life can be detected in A Legacy of Spies, when Guillam articulates what he is experiencing: "Humiliation, certainly. Frustration, bewilderment, no question. Outrage at having my past dug up and thrown in my face. Guilt, shame, apprehension, any amount. And all directed in a single blast of pain and incomprehension."

*_*_*

2.
An interview (Autumn 1992) with Natalia Ginzburg (who wrote Family Lexicon).

She was a fan of Ernest Hemingway (who "had a great impact... on modern Italian writing... [but] was a prickly character") and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She also has a brilliant description of the work of translation: It's "a job of ants and horses". Meaning: You need the exactitude and industriousness of an ant and the strength of a horse.

*_*_*

3.
Poems by Behcet Necatigil (1916-79).

One of the last things we did in Istanbul this year was take the boat from Besiktas to Emirgan. Close to the ferry terminal is Barbaros Square, about which Turkish poet (and teacher and translator) Necatigil wrote a mournful little piece about the "girl with the aging mother". The centre of the square is "the park of the poor", and the poet thinks the girl is a little embarrassed by her mother's modest clothing. The woman, "exhausted", sinks down on the ground. The girl stands, people-watching, and listening to the "loudest songs" on the record-players. "The young are in need of fun..." Also worth reading is this one: To Die in Books...


Besiktas ferry terminal

*_*_*

4.
The lowdown on absinthe (March 2024)...

Err, why...? Well, in This Must Be the Place, Parisian bartender James Charters explained that Pernod was the drink of choice for new arrivals from England or America (and most tended to monumentally underestimate its potency). He goes on to tell us, however, that Pernod was one of the many trade names denoting a synthetic substitute for absinthe after the real thing was banned in many countries across Europe in the early years of the 20th century. There's a lot more on this substitution here, but the crucial thing about drinks like Pastis and Pernod is that they lack wormwood, aka artemisia absinthium. This was the component suspected of causing "absinthism", a syndrome that included nasties such as depression, hallucinations, and convulsions.


How to prepare the drink known as the "green fairy", or the "green devil"


An early advertisement for absinthe. I would SO not be drinking with that guy...

*_*_*

5.
A montage of film clips from Iran (May 2024), directed by Maryam Tafakory.

A propos of my little Iran season, and tomorrow's presidential election, this is a fascinating little complilation of movie scenes from 1990 to 2018, which demonstrate how Iranian film-makers work round the various restrictions in force in their country. So male and female characters cannot touch? Cue the BAG, which takes on a symbolic life of its own...


Tehran, 2000. It's all under the surface...

*_*_*

6. Byron! Greece went out of its way to mark the bicentenary of a poet who is there seen primarily as "a democrat... [and] a man of unimpeachable ideals" (April 2024).

This guy is irrepressible... He kept popping up in our most recent east European odyssey, and of course he haunted our first trip to Greece and the covid-imposed shadow journey the following year, part of which involved reading Imposture by Benjamin Markovits.


The changing of the guard outside the Greek parliament, June 2019



*_*_*

So... Will there be another Book Notes? Or will it go the way of Links I like, which didn't last beyond three instalments? Or sputter out like Language log and Pictures from everywhere, because language-learning and film-viewing just don't seem to be happening much at the moment? Time will tell...