Salivation is not a bodily function one normally uses to describe the act of entering a bookstore, but today I was one of Pavlov’s dogs, you know the one named Druzhokskya who loved great literature, (okay, so Druzhok, ‘little friend’ was really one of his dogs but this would be the name I would choose if I were one). I didn’t mean for this to happen, even though it was lunchtime, but when I saw the sparkling purple and gold laced cover of A.S. Byatt’s new novel sitting in the display case, I had a moment akin to what I imagine diamond lovers have when feasting their eyes upon the Hope Diamond for the first time.
I own four (now five!) of Byatt’s books, each of which I cherish and if we had a decent library in D.C. for checking books out, I know there is no way I would want to part with any of them. "Possession" is probably her most famous book, and it is a wonderful read and was my introduction to Byatt through my great teacher, now friend, Mrs. Kernutt. But what Dame Kernutt did not tell me was how amazing the breadth and depth of Byatt’s other books, short stories and essays are—she let me find them on my own. My favorite thus far is “A Biographer’s Tale” a wonderfully told story of…well everything. I’d like to know what Byatt doesn’t know about, but the book stretches lands, genres, time periods and involves science, history, mystery and it’s all mixed up, as always with passion.
If I were asked the question of what living person, out of anyone, I would love to spend a day with, Byatt would be in my top 5. She knows a lot about so many things and they all happen to be things I am fascinated by—biology, genealogy, words, history, politics, colonialism, the naming of places, plants, animals, and both physical and fantastical travel. But what I didn’t know until hearing her on a BBC radio interview was how feisty she is, and now I love her even more. Dame A(ntonia) S(usan) Byatt is now 73 years young and is the only woman to have won the Booker prize twice. A Brit born and raised, although she did study in the U.S. for some of her multiple graduate degrees, she has spent her life teaching and writing in the U.K. I found out from the interview that the new book is on the shortlist to win this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and if she wins, this would not make her the first woman to win three, but the ONLY writer to win thrice.
Needless to say, I bought the book today, all 600+ pages of it (it weighs nearly two pounds) and when the interviewer asked her about what she thought of her fellow contemporaries in fiction, such as J.K. Rowling, she hesitated only a half second before saying something to the effect of…well, I think she’s a great writer of children’s books and it’s great for kids to read. Indeed. You see, Byatt’s books are for big kids, true adults who think it’s cool to tote around a binder of excellent literature rather than trying to recapture some kind of strange youth or read about adolescents zooming around on broomsticks. Byatt transports, don’t get me wrong, but it’s to a world where people have grown up, they know about things and sometimes it gets steamy. Just because the title of her novel happens to be “The Children’s Book,” I doubt most 10 year olds would get through the first chapter.
Long live Dame Byatt and I can’t wait to be midway through another one of her books and get that feeling that washes over you when you know the faster the read the less time you’ll get to spend with the characters and you wish it will never end. If you’ve ever read a Byatt book, you know that she also writes poetry, or her characters do, that is. Today’s poem is not taken from one of her books, instead it stands alone and was published in the New Yorker earlier this year. I happen to adore it. Actually, it’s more than that, it’s feckin’ brilliant. After reading this, I picture myself in the scene of Field of Dreams where a giggly James Earl Jones walks into the corn into the unknown. I'll follow Byatt into any of her trenches, anytime.
Trench Names
by A.S. Byatt
Published April 6, 2009
The column, like a snake, winds through the fields,
Scoring the grass with wheels, with heavy wheels
And hooves, and boots. The grass smiles in the sun,
Quite helpless. Orchard and copse are Paradise
Where flowers and fruits grow leisurely, and birds
Rise in the blue, and sing, and sink again
And rest. The woods are ancient. They have names—
Thiepval, deep vale, La Boisselle, Aubépines,
Named long ago by dead men. And their sons
Know trees and creatures, earth and sky, the same.
We gouge out tunnels in the sleeping fields.
We turn the clay and slice the turf, and make
A scheme of cross-roads, orderly and mad,
Under and through, like moles, like monstrous worms.
Dig out our dens, like cicatrices scored
Into the face of earth. And we give names
To our vast network in the roots, imposed,
Imperious, desperate to hide, to hurt.
The sunken roads were numbered at the start.
A chequer board. But men are poets, and names
Are Adam’s heritage, and English men
Imposed a ghostly English map on French
Crushed ruined harvests and polluted streams.
So here run Piccadilly, Regent Street,
Oxford Street, Bond Street, Tothill Fields, Tower Bridge,
And Kentish places, Dover, Tunbridge Wells,
Entering wider hauntings, resonant,
The Boggart Hole, Bleak House, Deep Doom and Gloom.
Remembering boyhood, soldier poets recall
The desperate deeds of Lost Boys, Peter Pan,
Hook Copse, and Wendy Cottage. Horrors lurk
In Jekyll Copse and Hyde Copse. Nonsense smiles
As shells and flares disorder tidy lines
In Walrus, Gimble, Mimsy, Borogrove—
Which lead to Dum and Dee and to that Wood
Where fury lurked, and blackness, and that Crow.
There’s Dead Man’s Dump, Bone Trench and Carrion Trench,
Cemetery Alley, Skull Farm, Suicide Road,
Abuse Trench and Abyss Trench, Cesspool, Sticky Trench,
Slither Trench, Slimy Trench, Slum Trench, Bloody Farm.
Worm Trench, Louse Post, Bug Alley, Old Boot Street.
Gas Alley, Gangrene Alley, Gory Trench.
Dreary, Dredge, Dregs, Drench, Drizzle, Drivel, Bog.
Some frame the names of runs for frames of mind.
Tremble Copse, Wrath Copse, Anxious Crossroads, Howl,
Doleful and Crazy Trenches, Folly Lane,
Ominous Alley, Worry Trench, Mad Point,
Lunatic Sap, and then Unbearable
Trench, next to Fun Trench, Worry Trench, Hope Trench,
And Happy Alley.
How they swarm, the rats.
Fat beasts and frisking, yellow teeth and tails
Twitching and slippery. Here they are at home
As gaunt and haunted men are not. For rats
Grow plump in ratholes and are not afraid,
Resourceful little beggars, said Tom Thinn,
The day they ate his dinner, as he died.
Their names are legion. Rathole, Rat Farm, Rat Pit,
Rat Post, Fat Rat, Rats’ Alley, Dead Rats’ Drain,
Rat Heap, Flat Rat, the Better ’Ole, King Rat.
They will outlast us. This is their domain.
And when I die, my spirit will pass by
Through Sulphur Avenue and Devil’s Wood
To Jacob’s Ladder along Pilgrim’s Way
To Eden Trench, through Orchard, through the gate
To Nameless Trench and Nameless Wood, and rest.
2 comments:
Byatt is quite wonderful, just as you say. Her sister, Margaret Drabble, is also an excellent writer, but doesn't dazzle the same way that Byatt does. Twenty-five years ago, Drabble was by far the better known, but has since been eclipsed by Byatt. I read most of Drabble's early fiction but haven't read much of her later work. She has a new book out as well, Patterns in the Carpet, a history of jigsaw puzzles. Sounds intriguing to me.
The two sisters reportedly do not get along.
Yes, I have never heard Byatt speak of her sister but have heard that too, which is quite unfornute. Patterns sounds interesting, I'll check it out!
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