Book Lists

On Saturday 20 September 2008, The Telegraph published a list called Villainy - the 50 foulest fiends in literature in the Review section. In at No. 50 was OA Raymond Chandler with Helen Grayle/Velma Valento from Farewell, My lovely. Described as "a blonde (sic) to make a bishop kick a hole on a stained glass window" she leaves a trail of bloody victims in her wake as she tries to hide her past as a flame-haired nightclub singer.

The list, like all lists is very dubious, as Samuel Whiskers from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers by Beatrix Potter comes in at No. 2, behind Satan from Milton's Paradise Lost!

I suspect that the compiler of these lists may have a soft spot for Raymond Chandler as he was listed at No. 4 in The 50 Greatest Crime Writers in April this year, and No. 21 out of 50 Crime Writers to read before you die in February 2008.

Julian Evans champions a little known author

OA (1965-73), Julian EVANS' most recent book Semi invisible man – the life of Norman Lewis has just been published by Jonathan Cape. It is the biography of a writer he feels has been overlooked and is published to coincide with the centenary of his birth. Norman Lewis was the son of a pharmacist from Enfield and was entirely self-taught as a writer. His account of south-east Asia before the Vietnam war, A Dragon Apparent, remains required reading. Voices of the Old Sea, a glimpse of pre-tourist Spain is a classic in the literature of the Mediterranean. His memoir of wartime Naples, Naples `44 is a masterpiece. All are good examples of his revolutionary style and penetration of the glorious and inglorious surfaces of our planet. You can read an obituary of Norman Lewis in The Guardian from 2003.

Julian's previous book Transit of Venus: Travels in the Pacific Secker and Warburg 1992 is an account of a journey to the heart of the US nuclear-missile testing programme.

Julian Evans is the translator of two French Novels and he has written for newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Guardian, Vogue, GQ, Esquire and Harpers & Queen. He writes and broadcasts on literary subjects and lives in Bristol.

Child 44

Child 44 by Old Alleynian Tom Rob Smith is the current book for the Dulwich College Staff Reading Group. There are two copies in the Archives if anyone would like to borrow a copy, rather than buy one. For more information on this book see the previous thread in June 2007.

Edward Alleyn in the FT

Dale Sumner, OA writes from Spain:
An unusual place to find our Founder is in 6 Down in today's FT crossword:
'Edward Alleyn and a tiger run wild'
A: tragedian (is that the usual description?)
Dale Sumner
PS I know it is a bit early in the day for the Xword - I only gave it a glance when looking at the weather forecast in the European edition and he jumped out at me (that sounds like a schoolboy's excuse)

Chandler's Long Embrace

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the woman he loved by Judith Freeman tells the story of Chandler's , marriage to Cissy who was 18 years his senior. Freeman shows how very important Cissy was to Chandler's life and art. In a fine appreciation she plots his life from "an accountant for an oil company into one of the most interesting and original writers America has ever produced."

The book is published by Pantheon and was reviewed by Martin Rubin in The Washington Times on 2 December 2007.

Two new books from OA Poet

Anthony Barnett, OA has just published Listening for Henry Crowder, a monograph on his almost lost music with the poems and music on an accompanying CD. Henry Crowder travelled and worked with Nancy Cunard the daughter of the shipping magnate. This book proves that Henry was his own man and not just an adjunct to Cunard; as such he made a uniquely fascinating contribution to the jazz age.

The Archives have just acquired a copy of this book as well as the earlier Would you tread on a quadruped? (1992), in which Barnett's poems form an animal alphabet of questionable rhymes to accompany charming paintings by Natalie Cohen.

A Fool's Life

Akutagawa Ryunosuke's A Fool's life has been translated from the Japanese by Anthony Barnett, OA and Toraiwa Naoko. Akutagawa's writings include reworkings of motifs and tales of China's and Japan's past, modern fables, essays and a few autobiographical fictions which, like A Fool's Life, follow his intense engagement and difficulty with the world. He ended his brief life the month after completing A Fool's Life.

Anthony Barnett is not the first Old Alleynian to publish translations from Asia, EB Howell (1893-1897), translated Chin Ku Ch'i Kuan The Inconstancy of Madam Chuang and other Stories from the Chinese in the 1920's.

Anthony Barnett will be one of the subjects of an exhibition on Old Alleynian poets in the Wodehouse Library in February 2008.

In Search of the Kamasutra

Old Alleynian travel writer James McConnachie's new book on the history of the Kamasutra has just be published by Atlantic Books. The Book of Love tells the story of the Kamasutra, which was written in Northern India in the third century AD and sought out and translated in the nineteenth century by Victorian scholars including Richard Burton of "Pay, pack and follow" fame. James may be better know for his Rough Guides including The Loire and Conspiracy Theories (with fellow OA, Robin Tudge).

New Ondaatje novel

Old Alleynian, Michael Ondaatje (1954-62), has just published a new novel Divisadero, named for a street in San Francisco where one of the characters, Anna, used to live. The book was reviewed in the New Yorker on 4th June and another review from Time Out New York is available online at http://www.timeout.com/newyork/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TONYWebArticles1/609/books/divisadero.xml

Homage to Raymond Chandler

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by the American author Michael Chabon was reviewed on Saturday Review (Radio 4) by Tom Sutcliffe and guests: Susannah Clapp – theatre critic,
Howard Schuman – screenwriter and Amanda Vickery – historian . The story is written in the style of a noir thriller and is both a whodunit and an exploration of what it means to be in exile, and they felt it was an homage to OA Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It imagines that the new state of Israel collapses and that Alaska is designated as a temporary safe haven for the Jews in 1948.

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon is published by Fourth Estate.

OA translates Harry Potter into Ancient Greek

OA, Andrew Wilson (1950-58), translated Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone into Ancient Greek in 2004. His aim was to assist with JK Rowling' s aim to help children overcome the common dread of studying the two dead languages - where wars in Gaul and Virgil's thoughts on beekeeping can be as exciting as it gets. He has built a brillant website about the work:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/harry_potter.htm