Reading Journal: Wednesday 2nd September 2009

Unfortunately, due to an unexpectedly busy afternoon, I’ve not got through as much of the prescribed reading as I wanted to get through today. I did manage however, for the second day in a row, to read through a Lorrie Moore and William Trevor short, keeping me well on top of my Trevor vs. Moore Reading Challenge.

The Moore short I read (from The Collected Stories. Faber) was The Juniper Tree which is all about a close friend dying from a brain tumour, and the narrator’s immediate reaction to the death. At least that’s what I think this story was about because in all honesty I had a really difficult job connecting with it. I’m sure it’s just me but so far I’m just not locking on to Moore at all. Hopefully, as I read more of her work this will change. [Rating - 2.5/5]

The Trevor story on the other hand (which is from The Collected Stories. Penguin) was an absolute delight to read. The General’s Day is, as its name would suggest, all about the day in the life of a General; a retired General, called Suffolk. He’s regimented, a bit lonely, a bit of a dither, but absolutely no fool (well not much anyway ). The story follows him one Saturday as he sets off from his humble home in the country with the intention of walking to the village to seek out a lady friend. He arrives and circumstances unfold but I’d be spoiling the story if I told you any more than that. So I’ll just say that The General’s Day is humorous, endearing and utterly charming, and absolutely in the same league as the stories of Chekhov and Maupassant. In fact Trevor’s scene description is so reminiscent of Maupassant it’s uncanny. Would Penguin mind if I reprinted a short extract to demonstrate? I’m sure they wouldn’t. First the rating – full marks 5/5, and now that sublime extract:

The brown cafe. called ‘The Cuppa’, was, as General Suffolk and Mrs Hinch had anticipated, bustling with mid-morning traffic. Old men and their wives sat listening to the talk about them, exchanging by the way a hard comment on their fellows. Middle-aged women, outsize in linen dresses, were huddled three or four to a table, their great legs battling for room in inadequate space, their feet hot and unhappy in unwise shoes. Mothers passed unsuitable edibles towards the searching mouths of their young. Men with girls sipped at the pale creamy coffee, thinking only of the girls. Crumbs were everywhere; and the babel buzzed like a clockwork wind.

Now tell me that that isn’t as good (or even, better) than Maupassant’s description of the peasant descent on the Goderville market from his famous tale, The Piece of String:

Along all the roads around Goderville the peasants and their wives were coming toward the burgh because it was market day. The men were proceeding with slow steps, the whole body bent forward at each movement of their long twisted legs; deformed by their hard work, by the weight on the plow which, at the same time, raised the left shoulder and swerved the figure, by the reaping of the wheat which made the knees spread to make a firm “purchase,” by all the slow and painful labors of the country. Their blouses, blue, “stiff-starched,” shining as if varnished, ornamented with a little design in white at the neck and wrists, puffed about their bony bodies, seemed like balloons ready to carry them off. From each of them two feet protruded.

‘Reading Journal’ provides an unedited, on-the-fly record of the bookish highlights in Rob’s reading day.