Book Notes: "Backcloth" by Dirk Bogarde

Backcloth by Dirk Bogarde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I first 'discovered' Dirk Bogarde after reading Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and then watching the movie starring Bogarde as Gustave Aschenbach. The movie was rather true to the book and Bogarde's performance perfectly captured my mind's eye view of the story. An unusual but pleasing experience. So recently, when I 'discovered' a copy of Backcloth, I was impressed that Bogarde, after turning down Hollywood roles and refusing a 'marriage of convenience' to make American viewers happy, became a best-selling author. And no wonder. Backcloth is an autobiography, but it reads like A Year in Provence (Bogarde lived there, too). There are other volumes of his story and I cannot wait to 'discover' these, too. But after reading the story of his life from birth up until his honorary doctorate from St Andrews and the death of his life-long 'partner', Forwood, I can only imagine what else he must have done to fill more books on his life. Bogarde had a real talent for story-telling, and there is little self-aggrandisement, yet much reflection that makes one sad, yet nostalgic and happy at the same time. In essence, Bogarde captures the Portuguese feeling which escapes English translation - saudade. After feeling that I was running out of classics that were my 'cup of tea', 'discovering' Bogarde gives me hope that my reading journey still has a very long way to go.



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Book Notes: "An Orderley Man" by Dirk Bogarde

An Orderly Man by Dirk Bogarde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the third of Bogarde's autobiographical works. I am reading these in random order as I stumble upon each book in second-hand book stores. Yet there is a continuity in Bogarde's writing that seems to make it easy to piece together. Each work is a standalone wonder of personal stories that are somehow vividly interesting. I "discovered" Bogarde after reading Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and then watching the movie of the book. I also "discovered" Mahler. After watching the movie, I have become more aware of the name of Dirk Bogarde and this has sent me on a mission to read all of his works (15 I believe). An Orderly Man is of interest because it covers the period of Bogarde's portrayal of Gustave Aschenbach. The work brings to life Visconti and other famous Art House directors and screen writers and presents in sharp relief the life of an English actor of the period working on the Continent versus the excesses of fame and fortune in Hollywood. Bogarde's humility shines through and it is difficult not to admire the "underdog" and his trials and tribulations. Mind you, living in Provence and existing by acting and writing are hardly the banal stuff of most people's lot. Yet the stories are fascinating, Bogarde makes a wonderful success of writing about writing (and acting) and finishing each of his books so far leaves me calmly contented and eager for the next book.



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Book Notes: "Great Meadow" by Dirk Bogarde

Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Another of Bogarde's biographical stories, this one of his childhood in England around the time of Hitler's rise. It reads like a novel, even though one knows it is more-or-less an account of Bogarde's childhood. There is nothing peculiar about the ending, but it left me with a tingling sensation that was hard to shake. Bogarde was writing of his childhood in the early 1930s, but recollecting his childhood some 60 years later. His ability to put his own story into a format that keeps the reader fascinated in the mundane activities of a boy living in the '30s is due in no small part to his excellent prose.



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On the Beach: The most disturbing novel I have ever read

Remnants of Chernobyl [Photo: CC0]

On the Beach by Nevil Shute
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Spoiler Alert: This novel is about how to die. Forget the reviews that wonder how people could conduct themselves so serenely and not go off like crazed rats. If I had the knowledge that I - and everyone else - would be extinct in a matter of weeks, how would I want the end to be?

I finished reading this novel last night with a powerful rush of emotion followed by involuntary tears and a horrible feeling of powerlessness. I tried to shake this off with a start on some absurd Nabokov (Despair) but it didn't work. All night I dreamt about how I would die in this situation.

In the first dream, everyone was scrambling into a cave. I was following a loved one. Deeper and deeper into the earth we burrowed. I wanted to stop and go back but I also wanted to be with the one I love. They went on. The effects of radiation began to tell on me and I wanted to be near my loved one but not in the dark, buried under ground. We died there and I felt so disappointed that I hadn't gone my own way. I awoke in a state, realised it was the novel and a dream.

My subconscious wasn't satisfied, so back into the dream state I go and the dream runs again. And again. And again. Finally, I wake and realise that life is not so serious. Dying well is more important than running on the rollercoaster of others' ideas. Trust the process. And off into the deepest sleep I go.

No art has ever affected me so. Arriving at this novel and discovering such powerful emotions was a fortunate accident of circumstance. Dilectio Libertas et Doctrina. Love, Freedom, and Learning. Such a powerful way to live.

My choice of books is often a result of random events that open an entirely new world of thought. On a recent road trip, my girlfriend selected the podcast The Cold War Vault, and we listened to the episodes about the Net Evaluation Subcommittee and how it painted an increasingly gloomy picture of the United States' ability to win a nuclear war in the late 1950s.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was President at the time, and Nevil Shute's novel was published in 1957, followed by the 1959 film starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson, and Fred Astaire. The novel and the film painted a bleak picture that almost materialised during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. By then, Robert McNamara's strategy of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD) was gearing up, and the Net Evaluation Subcommittee had made itself obsolete. 

In 1983, Carl Sagan's warnings of a nuclear winter following even a limited nuclear war would ramp up the scientific debate about the end of the world. But Nevil Shute, a Brit-turned-Aussie (and author of A Town Like Alice and Beyond the Black Stump), had set it out already in On the Beach.

I had no idea about Nevil Shute. The connection to Australia came out in the Cold War Vault podcast, which referred to the film and "Anthony Perkins' non-existent Australian accent". I was intrigued and the next thing I notice, the book is staring at me in Elizabeth's Bookshop in Newtown.

These random connections in my various readings are wonderful. Even while writing this up, I looked for a link to Nabokov's Despair and discovered that it, too, had been made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde. Much like Shute, I knew nothing of Bogarde until I read Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and watched the 1971 film. I've since read several of Bogarde's autobiographical stories, opening up another world of French gardens and country living.

Back to On the Beach. Unlike the horror of dying from radiation exposure as thousands of people did after the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Shute tells of the various approaches to death taken by the characters left in Melbourne as nuclear fallout following the short World War III in the northern hemisphere slowly engulfs the rest of the planet.

The hopelessness of it all is symbolised by a trip in a nuclear submarine to test an optimistic theory that radiation levels are decreasing closer to the north pole and to investigate the origin of random morse code transmissions from near Seattle. Yeoman Swain escapes the submarine off the coast of his hometown and is later seen in his boat with an outboard motor fishing. He refuses to die in a strange land in a few weeks' time, preferring to die in a few days at home. It's the individual choices that make this story so vividly disturbing.

One character decides to remain faithful to his dead wife (unlike Gregory Peck in the movie version!). Another buys a Ferrari race car and pushes himself to the limit in scenes where several drivers die brutally in an ad hoc Australian Grand Prix. He takes his prescribed suicide tablets (provided free by the local pharmacy) while sitting, victoriously, in his well-preserved car.

A couple and their daughter decide to just get it over with. A farmer worries about his cattle and makes sure they have enough feed. The naval officer goes down with his ship outside of territorial waters, and Ava Gardner's character gets sloshed and takes her suicide pills just as Gregory Peck's character (she doesn't shag him in the novel) sails off into the sunset and before diarrhea strikes her again. She's on the beach. Hence the name.

This novel demonstrates how stupid it all is - going through the motions because we don't know how to live, let alone die. I am still disturbed when I think about the novel, but differently than in my first nightmare last night.

Much like my literary idol Professor Harold Bloom said, as we age we read against the clock. But we might also prepare to die well. That starts now. And that, I believe, is what Nevil Shute was trying to say.

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On Love: Turgenev Style

The statue of Mumu in front of her eponymous café in St. Petersburg. Photo by Grant Schutz [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia.

First Love and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is something about Turgenev's work that distinguishes him from other famous Russian authors such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. His tone is masculine yet romantic in a forlorn way - maybe he had his unrequited love, married opera singer Pauline Viardot, in mind. It seems to convey a darker, Russian version of saudade. 

Hemingway said that for him, writing fiction was like boxing with Turgenev, Maupassant, and Stendhal. There are certainly some similarities in Hemingway's work.

I am just getting in to War and Peace and I would compare Tolstoy to Virginia Woolf. That's how different the two famous Russian authors convey their stories. Both great authors, but very different in style.

I enjoyed Turgenev's Sketches from a Hunter's Album (A Sportsman's Sketches), but I only knew of this book because Hemingway mentioned it in one of his non-fiction collections I have read.

First Love and other stories is very different from either Sketches or Fathers and Sons. I have  not read Torrents of Spring yet. (Hemingway's first novella had the same name.)  I discovered this book because either Harold Bloom or Italo Calvino (I cannot remember which one) said that 'King Lear of the Steppes' was one of the greatest short stories (or is it long-form?) of all time.

Each of the stories are brilliant. Each has a sense of gloom about them. Not in the annoying way, but in that untranslatable saudade way. Not gloom, but so close to life. Something akin to that feeling that you have when you remember a past hurt.

You wouldn't go back to it - indeed, you had forgotten all about it until one day it just appears in front of you while you are watering the garden or doing the laundry. But there it is, and you feel sad for a moment, and then laugh, and then move on. 

But you remember the hurt, it just doesn't hurt so much anymore. (Unless of course you are on a complete downer, so don't do that.)

There is something about Turgenev that makes his long-form hard to read. I didn't find this with Fathers and Sons so much, but I found the same thing with Sketches. When I reflect on the stories, every one of them was enjoyable, but all of them require a bit of effort.

I don't know how to explain that effort, but I had the same experience with Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. When I look at the book now, it is tiny, but it took a while to get through, even though I thought it was brilliant and I have since watched the movie starring Dirk Bogarde a few times. This then sent me off to read Bogarde's work (which I find easy and enjoyable to read).

Turgenev requires effort. In the way that going for a run requires effort. Once you have the miles in your legs, it is splendid. If you haven't run for years, it is almost impossible. I find that Turgenev requires a clear head and a commitment to read, but it is worth every effort.

Just don't turn to Turgenev when you are looking for a light read. It's a bit like going for a sprint when you haven't run for years. Same difference.

Lenny: Mahler, Pedagogy, Leonard Bernstein, and My Cat

Leonard Bernstein rehearsing with Benny Goodman, 1940s. [Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia]

Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein by Jonathan Cott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A brief look at Jonathan Cott's profile at Rolling Stone magazine reveals a long list of interviews (including dinners) with some of the greats of music, literature, and film, including Bob Dylan, Susan Sontag, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Henry Miller, Richard Gere, and Francis Ford Coppola. I found this book, which was originally meant to be an article for Rolling Stone, refreshing. During the course of some twelve hours, Jonathan Cott interviews the conductor and composer most famous for West Side Story, but is not allowed to ask questions such as "What is your favourite book/composer/music (etc)?" The interview was conducted in 1989, and within a year, Bernstein, a heavy drinker and smoker, was dead. There are some great reviews that cover the basics of the work, including Amanda Mark's review in the New York Journal of Books. I agree with Mark's criticism of the interviewer injecting a little too much of himself into the interview, but it is clear that "Lenny" was taken with him. Suzy Klein's interview in the New Republic captures more of Lenny's sassiness.

But for me, two things stand out most. First, Leonard Bernstein was a great conductor. And not just because others say so, but now I am armed with more knowledge of his work as a conductor, I have been able to compare the works conudcted by Bernstein with that of others. For example, I have taken a keen interest in Mahler. This interest stems from a number of coinciding interests. I first "discovered" Mahler after reading Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. This led me to watching the movie starring Dirk Bogarde, where Mahler's music forms a major part of the soundtrack. (This led me to discover the literary work of Dirk Bogarde.) Around the same time, I was fortunate enough to attend the inaugural performance of John Adam's Saxophone Concerto at the Sydney Opera House, where John Adams conducted the work. Despite a non-existent microphone, Adams held the audience captive as he spoke to the audience about Mahler (among other things). I have never heeard such silence from such a large crowd. John Adams is easily my most favourite composer (of any genre), but there is clearly a connection here with Mahler. So I was surprised to learn that Bernstein fits into the theme of things I enjoy, and I have been comparing recordings of Mahler's work conducted by Lenny with other conductors. There are clearly interesting differences that I would otherwise have missed.

Second, I had no idea that Bernstein had a clear pedagogy. He is credited with teaching a new generation about classical music with the 1950s television series Omnibus. Suffice it to say that Bernstein had a way to lift the lid on education, to inspire, entertain, and really teach. I like West Side Story, but I was never really enamoured with it, as many others seem to be. But reading this book has given me a glimpse of the great man. Finally, and despite my initial reservations about the interviewer, I have a new appreciation for Jonathan Cott's work, and will investigate some of his other published works. I am not sure how I stumbled upon this book, but I have a suspicion it was from Maria Popova's wonderful blog, Brain Pickings, which is easily one of my favourite blogs. And by way of an aside, we named our cats Karl and Lenny (of The Simpsons fame), but interchangeably refer to them as Karl Marx and Lenny Lenin. But now I can only think of my cheeky cat as Lenny Bernstein. And, based on Cott's interview, reincarnation was not something that Lenny took lightly.

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A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude

A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude by Frank Frankfort Moore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My favourite quote (p. 81), paraphrasing Genesis 2:8, and also used in Sid Meier's Civilization V for the Hanging Gardens wonder:

I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God, it would be in a garden at the cool of the day," said Mrs Friswell, gently.

I admit that I discovered this book because of the quote in Civilization V. It felt like I was reading one of Dirk Bogarde's novels, where numerous characters appear at his house, providing amusement, and often derision, by the author who attacks all and sundry in the first person narrative of a segment of his life. Moore's work is a must for all who are considering designing and creating a garden. Set against the background of the Great War (although this setting is only revealed by its publication date and the conclusion), Moore covers a good deal of literary, architectural, historical, theatrical, and cultural ground, and there is a rich tapestry of people, places, events, books, plays and so on to mine for more interesting discoveries. This particular book was printed from a scanned copy of the text only and does not include the original photographs, which can be found online at archive.org. It would appear that the garden actually existed, as described. This is a remarkable book and it is one of my favourites. Why such literary gems slip from our collective memory is a wonder, and it is nothing less than wonderful to rediscover these buried in the crevices of history.

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How I Journal Now...

 

My current journalling regimen incorporates two key approaches from Ryan Holiday and Benjamin Franklin [Photo by Dr Michael de Percy].

After much reflection, a little therapy, and much deliberation, I have arrived at a new journalling regimen that has given new life to my daily reflective habit. I document my current journalling process below.

It is almost three years ago since I blogged here about my daily journalling regimen. At the time, I had been journalling on a daily basis for over a year, and, despite some major life interruptions, I continue to journal on a daily basis. 

My daily habit has not always been efficacious; not because of my journalling, but because my process became stagnant and the challenges I faced had changed over time.

Originally, I took the opportunity to journal using Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic as a prompt but also to develop a routine that reinforced Stoic logic, in particular Epictetus's Enchiridion, which can be summed up in the first three sentences of his work:

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

Like the ritualised practices found in organised religions, journalling is a constant reminder to defer to the source: my sense of reason, and, in particular, to continually assess what is in my control and what is not. There is power in the daily reminder which I find similar to the concept of daily (or regular) prayer or meditation found in Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. 

Interestingly, my reading of many theologically inspired works confirms the ubiquity of Stoic philosophy's basic premises in many major religions and ancient philosophies.

My previous process began with free writing, followed by reflection on the daily meditations in The Daily Stoic, The Daily Stoic Journal, and the three-monthly program in Benjamin Franklin's Virtues Journal. I also added the morning and evening reflections from James Allen's As A Man Thinketh. 

(These days I generally journal only once per day whereas from the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2019 I journalled each morning and each evening.)

For the final parts of my journalling I referred to various texts and reflected on a number of short passages of these texts on a daily basis. These included (among other works) La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, the Qur'an, the Tanakh, the Holy Bible (yet again!), Patience and Gratitude: An abridged translation of ʿUddat as-Sabirin wa dhakhirat ash-shakirin, and the Shiva Sutras, and soon I will finish the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Slowly digesting classic texts this way is useful as it allows time for each morsel to make its mark, rather than racing through a book and forgetting soon after.

Ryan Holiday advocates reading slowly. And the point is that we should give ourselves time to do things for ourselves. Emerson¹ said it best:

Eminently thoughtful men, from the time of Pythagoras down, have insisted on an hour of solitude every day, to meet their own mind and learn what oracle it has to impart.

While the paragraph by paragraph approach to reading worked over the last few years, I have started to lose interest in my old journalling process. Brett McKay from the Art of Manliness wrote about how he lost the journalling habit over time once his life settled down. I suspect this is part of what is happening for me, too.

But there is still this other part of me that needs to journal so that my monkey mind gets out of my way. Tim Ferriss says it best:

I’m just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day.

This is key for me and if my journalling process requires too much effort I tend to only get to it piecemeal during the day rather than using it for its monkey-caging benefits.

I also found that my recent experience with EMDR was great but "checking-in" with my different "parts" and getting them to communicate (rather than running off when my adult self is on autopilot) stopped happening when I wasn't regularly checking in with the therapist.

EMDR, parts therapy, and internal family systems are really interesting and it is best to work with qualified practitioners. But for my personal record, and drawing on Rolf Potts' travel journal philosophy of my journal being for me, "an author and audience of one", here is my own "parts map" from September last year:

Dr Michael de Percy, personal "parts map" developed during EMDR therapy

Once I would have been afraid of exposing my vulnerability, but fuck it, I am over 50 now and I will do whatever I want with my own stuff, just as I did recently. And if Alain de Botton advocates psychotherapy, then who the hell is anyone else to judge?

Now to my most recent process. Once a day, I do the following:

1. Daily Stoic reflections. I wanted to make sure I reinforced the logic of Stoic philosophy as the first thing, so I have moved the Daily Stoic and the Daily Stoic Journal as a combined first item. I have hand-written the questions from the Daily Stoic Journal into the pages of my copy of the Daily Stoic.
2. Benjamin Franklin's Virtues Journal reflections.
3. Reflections on a "Quote of the Day" (that I like or I look to one of my Cabinet of Invisible Counsellors).²
4. Check-in with my "parts" (or what I am grateful for if I have nothing to discuss). 
5. Free writing to clear my monkey mind. This can be long or short depending on how I am feeling. Speaking of which, Mark Manson provides some helpful questions in this regard: What the hell am I doing? What the hell am I feeling? What the hell are my blind spots?

So that is my latest attempt to reignite my journalling. It is still a big part of my day but it allows me to spend less time thinking and more time doing. It reminds me of part of a Hemingway story that Fitzgerald told him to leave out because it was too clever:

Benny is an awfully smart boxer. All the time he’s boxing, he’s thinking. All the time he was thinking, I was hitting him.

 I hope this article is useful for anyone keeping a Stoic journal.

Notes

1. Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Conrad, Charles; Books, Best Success. We Are the Builders of Our Fortunes: Success through Self-Reliance (p. 58). www.SuccessBooks.net. Kindle Edition.

2. I am still developing my "cabinet" but here is my go-to list for now:

• Work practices: Cal Newport
• Literature: Harold Bloom
• Political Science: Charles E. Merriam
• Teaching: Ryan Holiday
• Scholarly Tradition: John Wanna
• Virtues: Benjamin Franklin
• Individuality: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Existence: Albert Camus
• Blogging: Walter Benjamin
• Motivation: Kyle Eschenroeder
• Music: John Adams
• Writing: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald
• House and Garden: Dirk Bogarde
• Travel: Rolf Potts