Fantastic beasts

Here is an interesting note about the Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko. It says that her themes and artistic style, as well as her country’s circumstances, were similar to those of Pablo Picasso. (Picasso, it turns out, admired Prymachenko.)

Not an outlandish connection; but right now, I’m primed to associate Prymachenko’s art with Blake’s paintings of fantastic beasts.

(As I’ve mentioned here and here, the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk has explicitly connected her own work with Blake’s.)

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An update on our infestation:

Jasper has caught and killed three mud-room mice.

Ziva also has been hunting. She caught a mud-room mouse and brought it into the house. It ran away before she got around to killing it, though.

Since then, we haven’t seen any trace of that mouse. It probably didn’t survive long.

Karin found the hole in the mud-room through which the mice have been entering from the yard. We’ll put copper wool over the hole. That should keep them out.

Drive your plow, pt. 2

Now that I’ve finished reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, I can identify other Books as its Aunts and Uncles:

• J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (in Elizabeth Costello)
• Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale

Reviewers point out that Drive Your Plow is like a Novel by Agatha Christie. Well, it lacks the most important Characteristic of those Novels, which is Self-Effacing Narrative Voice.

Voicewise, Drive Your Plow is much more like the two aforementioned Works (which, though not Arrogantly narrated, are not Self-Effacing).

But yes, Drive Your Plow is a Whodunnit.

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There is one Christie Novel that may be ancestral to Drive Your Plow, and that is the great Endless Night. Its Title, also, is from Blake:

Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.

(These Lines, from “Auguries of Innocence,” are mentioned in Drive Your Plow.)

Drive Your Plow is a Good Read, but I’ve seen a lot of it before, in other Books.

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead

Scant rain has fallen the last two weeks. Large sections of the lawn have become tawny.

My neighbors water their grass. I am averse to doing this, as it encourages grass to grow, which makes for more frequent mowing.

Yesterday, I sheared the back lawn down to its nubs.

The lawn already was rather short. On this occasion, such a small length was cut off the top, I didn’t have to rake any of it into piles.

This is exactly the situation I aspire to, as far as the lawn is concerned.

Tonight there is rain and thunder. I am out on the back porch with Samuel, Jasper, and Ziva. Ziva, especially, is fond of the porch. When I go back inside the house, I have to lure her with treats.

The book I am reading – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – is by Olga Tokarczuk, of Poland, a recent Nobel Prize winner.

In this book, villagers keep popping off, slasher-movie style. The narrator, a semiretired schoolteacher and estate caretaker, suspects that the perpetrators are Animals (she capitalizes a good many common nouns, to charming effect). In particular, she suspects the Deer, who are often poached. She alleges that their motive for committing these Murders is Revenge. (I am reminded of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, The Happening.)

The narrator has hobbies. She translates the poetry of William Blake. She is a firm believer in Astrology. She writes letters to the Police, explaining to them who has been committing the Murders.

She is eccentric but quite self-aware, and her narration is matter-of-fact. This makes the book very funny.

Also, the book is short. And yet I’ve been reading it since before the libraries closed for the pandemic. I’m forcing myself to finish it by Friday, which is the final due date after several renewals.

I find myself wondering how the narrator would judge me. I’d like to come out well, by her lights. She’s quite a humane person. I eat meat, which perhaps she’d not condemn absolutely (it’s the Order of this poorly designed Universe that some Creatures must survive by eating Others).

The narrator also despises Lawn Mowing.