so long, see you tomorrow

if there's one thing that gets me thru the ironing prior to returning to work it's having a listen to radio 4's a good read. sometimes it can be just too easy to take a septic turn towards radio 4, especially if you have to listen to a lot of it, but there are other times, times maybe when going back to work feels likes smacking myself in the face with a door again and again and again, when the sound of predominantly white middle class people jabbering on about books seems to hit the reset button just right.

today t was busying herself with some business type stuff, i was ironing, the fire was on and the neighbours cat had just departed after his afternoon visit/sleep. i had been amusing myself to arlene philips and harriet gilbert's response to jocelyn lee esien's choice of prisoner to the streets by robyn travis. kind of like your sparky granny or that aunt/neighbour of a certain age who drags you out to stuff when you're really too young to understand it but who becomes a model of a certain type of behaviour as you get older. something like that...

anyway that all goes on and the next thing harriet gilbert lays down her choice, william maxwell's so long, see you tomorrow which she's never read!!! while i've kind of got used to being in a club of one on the maxwell fandom thing (i know only one other person who's read him and she got him off my shelves) some where in my head i'd taken it as a given that the likes of gilbert would've read this.

sadly no. now, harriet, read all the rest, even the chateau. you won't be disappointed.

i've been thinking about maxwell recently, esp after treating to to a meandering monologue comparing him to richard yates whom i'm more or less at the end stage of reading everything. maybe it was disturbing the peace that did it or maybe it was blake bailey's wonderfully detailed biography but i found myself pining for the more lyrical qualities of maxwell. as i've said before i like this approach go getting all the books, the letters and the biographies and ploughing thru them. it's an effort, exercises the head no end, but totally worth it.

maxwell tho, should be more read. for certain.

as for yates, a good read did the easter parade away back in 2004 and, sadly, it's not on iplayer. in which case somebody choose disturbing the peace and get people having a look at that...