Notebook

The other night I went to hear Simon Callow give a talk at the wonderful London Library. When asked by a member of the audience what his favourite book of all time was he replied that he would have to choose Dickens' The Pickwick Papers for its quality of beneficence -- a quality he said, rightly, was thin on the ground these days. He reminded me of the closing paragraph of the book, an exemplar of what he means:

“And there in the midst of all this, stood Mr. Pickwick. Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness, of which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light; we, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at our imaginary companions, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them.”

Three cheers for Mr. Pickwick and his friends. That's us, too.

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Eunoia is the shortest word in the English language that uses every vowel. Eunoia is a book by the shockingly clever Christian Bök. It's published by those equally clever people at Canongate.

Whenever Helen enters Hell’s deepest recesses, she sees
Hell’s meekest dwellers. She meets the repenters, never
redeemed. She greets her decedent elders. The elder
seers, when greeted, tell her: ‘repent, repent – never let
the tempters here tempteth thee’ – then these helpless
wretches tell her three spells best kept secret, lest the
tempted empress reverse these hexes, then set free demented
spectres, held here, bespelled. The three spells,
when reversed, sever these hexed fetters; hence, the
berserk efreets, when freed, screech ‘hell’s bells’, then
flee these endless deserts, where the embers swelter.

Hear Christian Bök read from Eunoia on YouTube --

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