Where bad punctuation & sound joinery combine to give you the real feel of the country life.
I found a 1950 Penguin edition of Charles Williams’ Many Dimensions for 30p in a Rottingdean charity shop, & read it here–
“SMILE” YOU ARE IN BALLARDIAN SPACE
how fitting that on the day I discover this blog, you should have posted about Rottingdean – my home for thirty years and a hub of anomie, anomaly and anonymity. I know which charity shop you mean, of course – there’s only one on the whole High Street, and it is in a building that used to be the independent local bookshop a quarter-century ago.
I would be terribly surprised to hear that would be your first readng of Many Dimensions. I have tried to get to the end of it myself quite a few times but it always seems to post *me* to some strange infolded place that I can’t navigate out of, and I get stuck in a sort of overprinted origami cul-de-sac. It feels just too clipped and elliptical to me, and although I like the idea of the book, as well as the idea of Williams and his life, the overriding impression is Trevor Howard doing Aleister Crowley. What did you make of it?
Hi Mortmere. I quite like that shabby bit by the sea, with the surf shop & the pub. I always manage to write something in a place like that–failed, vestigial, trying to be something it can’t be. (Describes most UK seasides I guess.)
Hi Mike M. I know what you mean, although I think of it more as JB Priestley trying to do Borges. It’s weird to keep reading a book at intervals across your life–especially a book you read so much when you were young. What seemed simple then seems puzzling now, what seemed puzzling then seems simple now. This time round I rather loathed the way the author short-changes Chloe, offering her spiritual duty because her yearnings are “too great” to be assuaged by love, sex & life. Cheap rhetorical trick. But I still enjoy all the mad metaphysical stuff & the villain’s dawning panic as his situation pulls his worldview apart. Williams was so good at that; I can’t help feeling that Lewis stole Tumulty & Palliser for The Hideous Strength.
“I always manage to write something in a place like that–failed, vestigial, trying to be something it can’t be. (Describes most UK seasides I guess.)”
Too right! I’ve lived in Hastings for many years now and while the constant (and largely applauded regeneration drive) would initially appear to deprive all the old haunts of that sense of place – both actual and projected – characterized by you above, this sense of deprivation is only a surface. Beneath all that, these charming places will always always carry their own defeats with them; re-emerging in a liminal way, swelling up beneath the surface of the new college buildings or shopping centre to emerge stronger than ever.
Hi Mike,
Hope you had a good time in West Sussex… have some musical suggestions for you: Castanets – narcotic, haunted, a bit menacing Americana (www.myspace.com/castanets) and Fever Ray (who I played to C last week, I think she liked them), Swedish childish, complex, electronic (http://feverray.com/)
Hope to see you sometime Caro xx
Ah, down in my neck of the woods, then. A little further along the A259, the Saltdean Lido is another place that strikes me as distinctly Ballardian – especially out of season when the pool’s drained.
Hi Caro. We did have a good time, thanks. Lots of walking & I even managed to run a couple of miles on the downs. Thanks for those recommendations too–I know C was quite taken by Fever Ray.