Olive Has Moved!

Hello Devoted Readers!

Its been awhile since you've heard from me. That's because I've been busy dusting, painting, and buying new furniture for my new home! No, I don't mean I've finally bought my beloved cottage by the sea. What I have done is create a fresh virtual home! You can now find me sailing on An Olive Sea (www.anolivesea.com).

All my old posts are archived there, and new ones are already up! I've also integrated my other blog, Olive Writes, onto this site.

Before I take down this blog, would you be so kind as to subscribe to my new site? No spam, I promise! Only good reads, sweet outfits, and cups of tea.

I look forward to giving you the grand tour of my new house! Should we start in the library, or the closet?

Olive

Eat, Drink, Read

Is reading a ritual for you? In other words, is it more than picking up a book and starting to read?

Reading is a ritual and a luxury for me. As such, when I do open a book it is more than plonking myself down in a chair. I need to create the right ambience, the right setting.

I also need a little something to eat and drink. What I'm reading often dictates what I choose to enjoy with it. A mystery usually needs tea (black) and a cookie or a slice of cake. Poetry needs a small glass of sherry, plays a strong coffee.

Some people like to attend wine and food pairings, but I've just had a brilliant business idea: book, food, and drink pairings! While I get starting on my business plan, you tell me what you like to eat and drink while you read.

October Giveaway!

Pinch, punch, first of the month! A happy October to all. This is the true autumn month for me: orange is everywhere, pumpkin sneaks its way into every kind of food, and, best of all, the leaves are ripe for crunching.

I ushered in the season with a new blue duffel coat and some preppy tan loafers (Oops! How did you end up in my shopping cart, silly shoes.) To even out this selfish splurge, I thought I would usher in your October with a very special giveaway!

And what is Olive giving away? Only a lovely copy of her favourite Barbara Pym novel, A Glass of Blessings.

The contest is open worldwide and will run until October 8th. You have a few ways to enter -- just use the form below. May the best reader win!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Friday Forge-on: Wallace Stevens

What the heck is a "Friday Forge-on," you ask? Just a little treat I dreamed up to lead my readers gracefully into the weekend. You can read about it here.

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Without meaning to sound contrary, I don't like being asked what my "favourites" are: colours, movies, flowers, even books. I just can't decide on one!

There is one exception, however: for the past year I've prized one poet about all others. By the title of this post, you've probably guessed that it's Wallace Stevens. I fell into him a year ago, and I'm almost afraid of that day when he loses his position as the poet for me. 

I'll offer more biographic detail of him for you one day, but for now you can savour one of my favourites (and one of Stevens' best known) poems.

The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask.  No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard.
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this?  we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone.  But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea. 

 It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang.  And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker.  Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh!  Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Taken from The Poetry Foundation 

Author Spotlight: Barbara Pym

Let's say it's a drizzly, early fall afternoon in London, 1948. In a flat in Pimlico, a woman sits quietly revising a novel.

We ring the bell and, although uninvited, the kettle is put on, bread and butter are brought out, and we sit down to chat with author Barbara Pym.

Should I stop this little fantasy here? Maybe you haven't heard of Pym? I hadn't until Alexandra McCall Smith (Mr. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) championed her 1952 novel, Excellent Women, in a 2008 article in The Guardian.

What luck I did find her! Pym is an author whose oeuvre I dread finishing, only to know that I will read her again and again.

Great you say. But what what does this Pym write about? First of all, if you're into the school of "write what you know," Pym's your woman. What she knew, broadly, was this: church life, academic life (she read English Literature at St. Hilda's College, Oxford), Italy and the Wrens (she was posted to Naples in 1944), and anthropology (from her work at the International African Institute in London).

From this collection of experiences, Pym sets down a group of characters (the more you read, the more familiar they become) and lets their lives cyclically unwind across the seasons of a year.

Much has been made of Pym's focus on the everything, the small detail (it's hard to find her named without coming across Jane Austen at the same time). This is true. The minutia of life is gently and methodically enacted in her works but, despite the cups of tea and cake, the clergymen, and the -- dare I say it -- feminine details, Pym is not saccharine. She offers dry humor and a touch of modern existentialism, but always with a deft hand. There is never too much of anything in Pym's world. Moderation rules. I think this is what is attractive to me, at least, in her work. Just as she lays her plots against the natural balance of the year's unfolding, her characters' navigate a post-WWII world that, through glimpses, we can see is precarious, but which we also discover was liveable and well-lived.

For more Barbara Pym:

The Barbara Pym Society (must of the above biographic details are taken from their excellent site).
Alexander McCall Smith's article

And finally, two of my favourites:

Mystery Monday: The Haunted Bookshop

     THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED by the ghosts
     Of all great literature, in hosts;

     We sell no fakes or trashes.
     Lovers of books are welcome here,
     No clerks will babble in your ear,

     Please smoke--but don't drop ashes!
                             ----
     Browse as long as you like.
     Prices of all books plainly marked.
     If you want to ask questions, you'll find the proprietor
           where the tobacco smoke is thickest.
     We pay cash for books.
     We have what you want, though you may not know you want it.

          Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.

     Let us prescribe for you.

     By R. & H. MIFFLIN,
                                     Proprs.


(From The Haunted Bookshop) 

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox, which maybe explains why I've started to "draw in," if only mentally. I love a bit of cozy: warm fires, woven blankets, and books. Books that ooze indoor comforts and give me a little excuse to put the kettle on just a few more times a day.

One of the best for doing this is my old friend The Haunted Bookshop. Written in 1919 (handy because the book is now in the public domain) by Christopher Morley, it features a suspenseful little mystery that's really just a vehicle to let our hero, bookstore owner Roger Mifflin, extol the power and wonder of books. There are plenty of warm fires to be had in this Brooklyn shop, and Mr. Mifflin would be happy for you to join him in front of one. I come every year and he's always happy to see me.

Review: Catch-22

I find it difficult to review a book that, in the period since its 1961 publication, has become a modern classic. Whatever I want to say comes out like an essay and, hallelujah, having graduated in May, I'm on a break from those.

Thus (oh no: essay speak) I'm going to offer not another critical analysis of this worthy piece of writing, but my emotional, almost immediate impression of it.

But first, what is Joseph Heller's most famous work about?

That is not so easy a question as a basic synopsis would suggest. Heller uses a very particular non-chronological narration to his plot: nothing is in order, events overlap, jumping backwards and forewords through time and place, and merge in the most outlandish ways. (Do you remember the fictional "War Room" in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove? I somehow picture Heller needing a massive screen like that on which to project his convoluted, yet masterfully controlled plot.)

Let's say this:
Time: World War II
Place: The island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean
Characters: U.S. Air Force personnel
Main Character: loosely, Captain John Yossarian (the novel circles around a number of other characters).
General theme: How do the Air Force men fulfill their increasing number of missions while attempting to retain their sanity?

I should also say that it is a satire. And, yes, it's going to remind you of M*A*S*H. You will laugh, probably heartily.

You will do far more than that, however: Catch-22 is a visceral ride (I am going to use flight analogies here, be warned). By the end -- which took me three months to reach -- you will be hung out, wrenched dry, and probably heaving (from laughter and nausea). I was bored -- the generals and colonels made me want to run in circles and chase my own tail -- and awed. I was haunted, not just after the fact, but during the reading: what happened to Snowden and Yossarian, after all? And the ending. I was prepared for a tremendous decline, a last falling drop. But Heller has a kind of last burst to propel us out with. Why not end with frenetic elation and possibility? Catch-22 has something of the retro-fantastic about it. You can't believe it, but you're not reading a fantasy either. That's one of it's powers, of course -- Heller's hurtling insistence that you must believe.

One last note: What of the phrase "catch-22?" Heller did invent it, although his original choice was "catch-18." Read the novel to create for yourself a full-bodied definition.