Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn (a blog post with a twist)

About 15 months ago, I got a gift from a lady at my book group: Ella Minnow Pea (2001) by Mark Dunn. Fast forward a bit, and I finally got around to it, and found it a surprisingly brilliant small book.

I did know Ella Minnow Pea's main, and most original, 'gimmick', if you will - that Mark Dunn gradually lost a, b, c, so on and so forth, throughout his book - and had thought that it was simply a witty structuring and a prolonging of a trick. It had a possibility of growing a touch dull or awkward (thought I) but was still worth trying out.

And, it turns out, my worry was wholly without basis.  Ella Minnow Pea is a fairly brilliant out-working of a good trick - but it is also dark and disturbing, on occasion, and not at all a throwaway, whimsical sort of book. I hadn't thought it would turn out so dark...

Dunn's story all occurs on an island known as Nollop, in honour of Mr. Nollop, famous for composing an important pangram - which you might know (follow this link.)  I don't know if Nollop is fictitious or not - Wiki is willfully ignoring him, if not - but Nollop is akin to a god for folk on his island.  So much so, that Town Councillors await his laws from on high - although Nollop is, sadly, long lost to this mortal world.  His command is, (so Councillors say), shown by Nollop Island's local bust of his body - or, particularly, wording put by a sculptor on it, of Mr. Nollop's pangram.  As parts of its wording fall off, Councillors claim that it is a dictat from Mr. Nollop, that island inhabitants must drop that part of vocabulary - by mouth or by writing.  If inhabitants do not comply: a warning for a first infraction, whipping for an additional slip, and banishing from Nollop for a third.

At first, as 'z' falls from Nollop's famous pangram, nobody thinks much about it.  It will not significantly adjust island inhabitants' communication - for how much do folk say 'z' anyway?

As 'q' follows 'z', and 'j' follows 'q', things start to grow in difficulty - and angst among inhabitants, many of whom unwittingly infract Nollop's laws, with postliminary warning, whipping - or having to sail away from Nollop for good.  Many Nollopians opt to abandon an unhappy island voluntarily...

Fourth to go is 'd', which brings with it appalling frustration.  Ella Minnow Pea all consists of writing from inhabitant to inhabitant, mum to child, aunt to young girl - scrawlings which Councillors scan for contraband words, but nothing apart from that, so this lady's inclusion of painful or incautious topics won't occasion Councillors burning or taking a communication:

My sweet Mittie, it is strange, so terribly strange how taxing it has become for me to speak, to write without these four illegal letters, but especially without the fourth.  I cannot see how, given the loss of one letter more, I will be able to remain among those I love, for surely I will misstep.  So I have chosen to stop talking, to stop writing altogether.

I found it a tiny bit difficult to work out who was who (or whom was whom, mayhap) always, but Ella Minnow Pea is primarily about a girl with that lmnop-sounding alias, maintaining a campaign against Nollop's Councillors - trying (with similarly stubborn island folk) to craft a rival to Nollop's pangram, which will (curiously) abolish Nollop Island's Town Council's dominant control of vocabulary.

It was surprisingly moving, actually. I think Dunn might aim for Ella Minnow Pea to imply an analogy with a Fascist nation, or any sort of dictatorship which bans individual autonomy. It was chilling, as inhabitants of Nollop lost rights, all books in Nollop's library - burnt, straight away, for invariably having 'z' - and, following from that, inhabitants lost all availability for articulation.

As I said at this post's start - Ella Minnow Pea is surprisingly dark - but not gratuitously so at all.

Mark Dunn isn't original in writing a book which avoids using a particular part of A-Z - in fact, a book using this cunning trick is known as a 'lipogram' (Dunn's book is, if you will, lipogrammatic) - but not many authors could discard so many words and still craft a story so brilliant, almost as though this linguistic loss had no ability to limit his writing or imagination.  Only Dunn could craft a book so moving and full of wisdom, with this handicap - thank you so much, Ruth, for giving it to Simon's Book Gift Mountain.

And now, that twist - did you spot that this blog post - I think! - was built (apart from citations and quoting 'Ella Minnow Pea' in full), without using any 'e's at all...?  Not with Dunn's brilliant cunning at doing so, although I must admit that it was oddly tiring!

Congratulations, if you did spot that!

Return of Winnie-the-Pooh

When it was announced that there would be an authorised sequel to Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, I was rather sceptical.  It seemed doomed to failure from the outset, and previous attempts to cash in on Milne's talent (notably the horrendous Disney adaptation, and resultant filling of the world with the hideous illustrations that were mangled into being) weren't encouraging.  But I read the first story online and was pretty impressed; Verity gave me a copy of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (thanks Verity!), and... 15 months later, quick as a snap, I read it.

I don't know why it took me so long, other than because it almost always takes me an age to read the books on my shelves, however much I've been looking forward to them.  But it seemed the perfect choice for my sickbed last week, undemanding and jolly, and so I took it down.

My thoughts could be summed up by saying: "It's pretty much as good as it could be."  We all knew it would never be as good as the original - how could it be? - but it could have been a lot, lot worse.

The right people wrote and illustrated it, for a start.  David Benedictus, the writer, had already dramatised the Winnie-the-Pooh books for the radio, and Mark Burgess (stepping into E.H. Shepard's shoes as illustrator) was the colourist for Shepard's illustrations in When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six.  These are clearly men who have a great awareness of, and fondness for, the genius of Milne and Shepard.  Whatever results they come up with, they have written and illustrated with respect and caution.  Not for them, the slap-dash "Wouldn't it be funny if Rabbit looked like he was off his head on drugs, and Eeyore were an alcoholic?" stylings of Disney.

The stories in the book take place during one of Christopher Robin's school holidays.  I'll write a little bit about the ending of The House at Pooh Corner in another post, soon, but it's clear that Christopher Robin hasn't forgotten his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.  He's changed a bit, but he's still delighted to see them - and they organise (or should that be organdise?) a speshul welcum home party for him, complete with speshul invitations.  Roo has his eye on a green jelly, and is trying to convince everyone else that the red and yellow ones look better.  Kanga successfully diverts Owl's story about Uncle Robert.  Pooh gets drowsy and dreams about honey.  "Jollifications and hey-diddle-diddle," comments Eeyore, and who are we to disagree with him?  Of course, Christopher Robin eventually turns up, and all is well.  It is a gentle, auspicious start to the collection.

Things continue pretty well.  As we go through the book, the events are chosen well.  Owl wants to write a book.  They start a school - Eeyore is headmaster.  Cricket is played.  Rabbit tries to take a Census...

"I thought I was a sensible animal," Rabbit said, shuddering. 

"Of course you are," said Pooh, "everybody knows that." 

"And it was such a sensible idea, the Census." 

"It's almost the same word," agreed Pooh.

It's all very much in keeping with the gang's original adventures, which is great.  Benedictus does, though, add another character.  A drought dries up the river, and there emerges (possibly indignant from years of having pooh-sticks dropped on her head), Lottie the Otter.  She wears pearls, says 'darling', and has gumption.  She certainly isn't a replication of any other characters - it's impressive the Benedictus has found a gap in the seemingly-comprehensive gallery of personality types invented by Milne - but, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lottie never quite works as a character.  Benedictus cannot rely on the charm that Milne has already built up in Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore et al - and there is a lot of looking-over-the-shoulder at events and expressions from previous books, which is better than if they'd been ignored altogether.

And there lies the problem, the inevitable problem, with Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.  The charm is missing.  Or, rather, it is less.  The same goes for Mark Burgess's illustrations - the spark of genius which characterised both Milne's writing and Shepard's drawing is absent from their imitators.  That indescribable something which brought Shepard's illustrations so charmingly alive, and gave Milne's prose a subtle undertone of wry wit and affectionate knowingness - it has not been bestowed upon Burgess and Benedictus, at least not in these guises.

The main emotion I have, when closing the very enjoyable but ultimately, of course, inferior tales of the Hundred Acre Wood?  To re-read the originals, naturally.  What fun!

A Spy in the Bookshop

I've been a bit worried about what will happen when I get to my first Reading Presently book which I haven't hugely liked.  And the time has come.  Since it was given by a very dear friend (my ex-colleague Lucy) I don't want to seem unappreciative - but I also, of course, don't want to lie.  So I'm just going to give my honest review, with the caveat that I'm VERY grateful to Luce for giving it to me (and another addendum, that I've just read a really fun, great book which Lucy also gave me.)

As it happens, I didn't especially dislike A Spy in the Bookshop (letters between Heywood Hill and John Saumarez Smith 1966-74), it just disappointed me a bit.  JSS (as I shall know him for the rest of this review) had previously edited the letters of Heywood Hill and Nancy Mitford, which I very much enjoyed - and was actually the first thing I read in the Mitford canon.  Obviously buoyed by success, JSS decided to publish his own correspondence with Heywood Hill...

Hill had just retired from the bookshop at 10, Curzon Street, and running the shop was a man with the extraordinary name Handasyde Buchanan (known as 'Handy').  His wife Mollie worked there too, as well as assistant Liz.  The letters JSS sends to Hill are, basically, 165 pages of them bitching about the Buchanans.  Forgive the terminology, but nothing else will quite fit.

You know when you're on a bus, or in a shop, and overhear angry conversation between two people about an absent third - and you think "I bet it's six of one and half a dozen of the other"?  Yes?  That is to say, the absent third person would probably have equally as compelling a case against the gossiping couple present?  That's the feeling that I got from A Spy in the Bookshop (2006).  JSS writes off a letter saying "THIS is something awful Handy did today"; Hill replies "Gosh, that's awful"; JSS writes "You think THAT'S awful?  What about THIS!"

I don't blame JSS for writing these letters.  I imagine it was rather cathartic - and sometimes, as with the following example, rather amusing:

Instead, he took the chance when Mollie was away, "to smarten me up": a process that I need hardly describe, consisting as it always does of a catalogue of his own virtues.

but it does rather pall.  Which makes it particularly galling when JSS does edit out excerpts which seem rather more interesting.  This editorial comment made me gnash my teeth, and pencil two exclamation marks in the margin:

[Some details followed about Rome and some of the people, including Muriel Spark, whom I'd met through my ex-uncle Ronald Bottrall.]

Oh, John!  Tell us about that, please!

There is enough about the everyday running of a bookshop to keep me reading, and anybody who can slip in anecdotes about Nancy Mitford is onto a winning thing with me, but I would have loved more.  Heywood Hill could also be witty when he wanted to be:

P.S. One of those real hopeless customer questions from a neighbour here.  A book about a man in California who kept wolves as Alsatians.  She had it in paperback but lost it, she found it such a help with her jackal.

But here again, I'm afraid I have a problem with their outlook.  I hate the idea of books being worth a lot of money if they're first editions, and all that talk of 'unclipped', 'neat copy' etc.  The idea of books as collectible objects based on their appearance or scarcity rather sickens me, as an avid reader.  And commercial value, naturally for booksellers, is paramount in their mind.

Heywood Hill has proven to be a worthy correspondent, in the letters with Nancy Mitford, and I did get the sense that he was lowering himself rather for JSS's petty missives.  I don't doubt a genuine affection between them, but I do believe that Hill wasn't bringing out his best letters for JSS.

It's a fun enough collection, and the bookshop setting certainly helps, but it does scream afterthought, once the Nancy Mitford letters were successful.  Without either correspondent having her talent for letter-writing, and with such a repetitive, almost bitter, note sounding throughout, A Spy in the Bookshop is only fairly enjoyable - and there are certainly better places to look for this sort of collection.  But, once again, thank you to Lucy for being sweet enough to give me a copy!

Talking of Grief

I hope I don't sound odd when I say that I am rather fascinated by the idea of grief.  Not in a sadistic way, of course, but simply because it is a fundamental aspect of human life which I have yet to experience.  Recently I have read two very different non-fiction books on the topic, and it seemed to make sense (briefly) to consider them together - Calvin Trillin's About Alice (2006) and C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed (1961).  Both are by husbands who are coming to terms with the premature loss of their wife to cancer, but from that point, they are incredibly different.

As the title suggests, Trillin's book is about Alice, his wife.  It is essentially a memoir of their marriage, concentrating on those qualities he most loved in Alice - and how bravely and determinedly she was when she first had cancer, which went into remission, and then returned.  What made About Alice moving to me was, actually, the fact that I didn't warm to Alice at all.  The characteristics Trillin adored - such as bluntness,  or a willingness to use her beauty to avoid speeding tickets - weren't ones which I admire, which made Trillin's portrait all the stronger and affecting.  Reminiscences - in fact or fiction - which detail how uniformly perfect the deceased was, and how terribly they are mourned by everyone, never quite ring true.  We all know that our very favourite people are not everyone's favourite people, and a personal grief is much more powerful for being personal.

I'm struggling to know what to write about About Alice.  It's a beautiful portrait of a relationship, as well as a woman.  It is not really a book about grief - that isn't the sort of book Trillin chose to write.   I found it moving, but as the reflection of a life that has sadly ended, rather than reflections upon Trillin's own ongoing life.

Lewis's A Grief Observed is the flip-side of the coin.  There is little about Joy's character and life, because Lewis's focus is the process(es) of grief - particularly, grief as a Christian.  A Grief Observed isn't a work of theology, though, because that would suggest settled conclusions, with arguments and illustrations to support and work towards them.  Lewis writes that sort of book very well (c.f. Mere Christianity), but in A Grief Observed he is openly flailing.  It really is the documentation of an ongoing process.  Lewis hasn't edited the book to make it feel consistent or conclusive - indeed, he often backtracks or offers alternative interpretations of what he has already written.

I wrote that last night.  It was a yell rather than a thought.  Let me try it over again.

Somehow, Lewis manages to write down the varying states of his mind and spirit without sounding self-absorbed or introspective.  Grief genuinely seems to confound and puzzle him, as he tries to ascertain how he really feels, and how he will manage the future.  Part of this is concerned with his faith, and re-assessing his understanding of God.  In soaps or light fiction, grief would have ended his faith - Lewis's relationship with God was too strong and real for that, but the pain of losing his wife does make him reconsider God's character, and how he has previously misunderstood it.  Again, Lewis doesn't have any predetermined conclusions here, and he doesn't really come to any by the end of the book, but he is remarkably eloquent about his journey here.  (Sorry, I meant to avoid the word 'journey', but... well, it felt like one.)

A Grief Observed is starkly, vividly, astonishingly honest.   It is also eloquent and thoughtful, without losing spontaneity or genuine emotion.  Through the nature of Lewis's approach, it is of wider applicability that Trillin's book.  Although nobody else will have the exact experience Lewis did, plenty of people will probably agree with the general points he discovers along the way.

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow.  Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.  It needs not a map but a history, and if I don't stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there's no reason why I should ever stop.  There is something new to be chronicled every day.  Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

I read A Grief Observed with the interest of the outsider, keen to understand a facet of emotion I cannot grasp.  One day, presumably, I will need to turn to it as a fellow-griever.  I found Lewis's book so powerful and wise even without having experienced grief - and now, thankfully, I will know exactly where to turn when I first experience it.  And I imagine it will feel like a completely different book then.