Ice, The Novel In Verse And Mr Madoff

[poliphilo]

I didn't sleep well the night before last- blame it on the curry- and as a result I spent yesterday feeling like I was iced up on the inside- like I had freon being pumped around my bones. Last night I went to bed early and slept very well and today the ice is on the outside only.

Ailz had a podiatry appointment this morning. For the first time in several days I didn't have to de-ice the car before we took off. I took my book with me to read in the waiting room. My current book is (or was- I've finished it now) Anne Carson's Autobigraphy of Red- a novel in verse. I like Anne Carson a lot- to the extent that I bought the book with my own money-- but I'm not sure this really works. A novel is one thing and verse is something else. There are lots of great lines, but the chapters don't function as poems because they also have to be chapters in a novel. Besides, the story isn't terribly interesting. The novel as a form is discursive and realistic- baggy- like one of those stretchy suitcases- whereas poetry is to the point and realism isn't any of its business. The great thing in the Autobiography of Red is the set of translations from Stesichoros- whose fragmentary epic The Geryoneis provides Carson with some sort of jumping off point.

Has there ever been a novel in verse that really worked? Elizabeth Browning's Aurora Leigh comes to mind, but I haven't read it. Have any of you?  Her husband's Ring and the Book is sort of like a novel- a big, bad, bold, experimental novel- and I have read some of it- and some of it is brilliant- but taken as a whole it's fatiguing. You keep thinking, why, apart from habit, didn't he write this in prose? 

After the podiatry we went and put some petrol in the car. We're paying 86.9 a litre . Ailz was listening to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2. He was talking about this latest fraudster- Mr Bernard Madoff. "Merdle," said Ailz when I rejoined her after paying in the shop. "Respected, owned his own golf course- and you had to have an introduction before he'd do you the favour of taking your money." Only difference is Merdle cut his throat in a bath house (one of Dickens' greatest couple of chapters) whereas Mr Madoff is- last time I checked- still with us. According to an article I was reading in the Times, people like Madoff only prey on the intelligent. I don't know how that works, but apparently you have to be intelligent to understand how  this sort of pyramid scheme is supposed to pay. Intelligent and greedy. Don't forget the greedy. If you're not greedy no-one is ever going to fool you nohow.

Comments

re Madoff

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Like they say - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

There's no free money in this world (unless you inherit it) and no free lunch. But there's a mug born every minute.

Re: re Madoff

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yet all these supposedly smart people fall for it- generation after generation. Sometimes I think the human race is incorrigibly stupid.

Novels in verse

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (taster here), and by the end of it, felt I had read a novel. It was a long time ago, but I don't remember that sense of fatigue - which I do get if I try to read, say, Don Juan.

Andy Croft's The Ghost Writer is shorter - maybe a novella in verse, rather than a novel - but fun (and the verse form is much of how that works). The Guardian said nice things about it.

Re: Novels in verse

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Another contender might be Nabokov's Pale Fire- which takes the form of a longish poem and the much longer commentary upon it.

I had a go at Don Juan last year. It wearied me. I found it very laboured.

The Seth seems quite readable- but it's verse rather than poetry- and I really can't see the point.

The Croft looks like fun.

[algabal.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Owen Meredith's novel-in-verse Lucile one of the most popular books of its time? I know there's a project out there with the goal of tracking the hundreds of different editions.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're probably right.

But is it any good? Would anyone still want to read it for pleasure and/or instruction?