Humpback whale & gentle thunder
The boy’s newest enthusiasm is for Santana’s Greatest Hits (1974). Yesterday, when “Jingo” came on, he thrashed merrily and then crawled in circles.
This music is pretty unlike the “nature” sounds that I play to encourage him to sleep.
January’s novel by C.P. Snow is The Affair – the third Strangers and Brothers book situated in Cambridge. It comes after The Light and the Dark and The Masters. The Masters is more celebrated, but I think The Affair is the book that propels the series, or certain parts of it, into greatness.
In this novel, the dons again compete for small prizes. They also fight over whether to rectify or perpetuate a rather bizarre injustice having to do with academic fraud. (Their conflicts develop along the social fault lines of postwar Britain.)
A few of the earlier books’ protagonists are replaced in this novel by younger, more impolitic men.
As for the returning characters, several have done remarkable about-faces. Some have blossomed or found belated success. Others have shriveled. A few have even turned their backs on college life.
All are tempted to attend to the case before them with less than perfect scrupulousness.
My favorite character is M.H.L. Gay, a very old scholar of Icelandic literature. He is astute but also hugely, hilariously egotistical. Snow isn’t often funny; indeed, given his purpose of telling his narrator’s life story, his plodding style has some advantages. In his portrayal of Gay, though, he shows that he can amuse when he wishes to.
The novel is very suspenseful. By proceeding one inch at a time, Snow makes exquisite drama out of an affair that, in the grand scheme of things, is of little consequence.
This music is pretty unlike the “nature” sounds that I play to encourage him to sleep.
January’s novel by C.P. Snow is The Affair – the third Strangers and Brothers book situated in Cambridge. It comes after The Light and the Dark and The Masters. The Masters is more celebrated, but I think The Affair is the book that propels the series, or certain parts of it, into greatness.
In this novel, the dons again compete for small prizes. They also fight over whether to rectify or perpetuate a rather bizarre injustice having to do with academic fraud. (Their conflicts develop along the social fault lines of postwar Britain.)
A few of the earlier books’ protagonists are replaced in this novel by younger, more impolitic men.
As for the returning characters, several have done remarkable about-faces. Some have blossomed or found belated success. Others have shriveled. A few have even turned their backs on college life.
All are tempted to attend to the case before them with less than perfect scrupulousness.
My favorite character is M.H.L. Gay, a very old scholar of Icelandic literature. He is astute but also hugely, hilariously egotistical. Snow isn’t often funny; indeed, given his purpose of telling his narrator’s life story, his plodding style has some advantages. In his portrayal of Gay, though, he shows that he can amuse when he wishes to.
The novel is very suspenseful. By proceeding one inch at a time, Snow makes exquisite drama out of an affair that, in the grand scheme of things, is of little consequence.