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| A salon-ish bunch of chairs? Well, we were probably looking at the view, but notice the books piled at the side. |
Where I Was
We are fortunate enough to own a primitive cabin in Northern Ontario. When we bought the land it was at the edge of Killarney Provincial Park; now it's completely surrounded by the park. You have to paddle in to get to it, and our only neighbours on the lake are two primitive backwoods campsites that folks canoe in to.
People have cottages, cabins, or camps in Ontario. It's a cottage if you're actually close to Toronto. If you're north of the French River (as we are) it's known as a camp, so that's what we are.
A full view of our splendiferous residence:
The sort of thing we see in the neighbourhood:
Fleet week at the cabin:
Bookish
The camp is way off-grid. There's no cell phone coverage, and the power is supplied by those solar panels hanging off the front. All of which makes it a good place for uninterrupted reading and while we were up there last week, I did read a few books:
Rebecca Makkai/I Have Some Questions For You
Her most recent novel; it came out earlier this year. I have to say I wanted to like this better than I did. It's OK. A prep-school murder mystery, which sounded appealing. Makkai is connected to the Chicago area, important for me, though this story has been transferred to New Hampshire. I thought it skilled enough, but it felt programmatic. She wants to say something about the rush to judgment, Twitter mobs and the facile propensity to convict Black men, but then our protagonist does rush to judgment, and her judgment, about her former music teacher, is a little wrong, but is basically reaffirmed as correct. Hmmph.
James Huneker/Unicorns
Huneker was an American newspaper critic--mainly classical music and literature for the Philadelphia and New York papers--who died in 1922. I've read a bunch of his books and am maybe a bit obsessed. This one is from 1916, and is the last collection of essays that came out during his life. He reviews A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when it comes out. (That young James Joyce is a promising author--Dubliners was brilliant--and we expect great things of him in the future. Or so says Mr. Huneker.) Like any collection of incidental writings, it's uneven; there were several fine things, though: a couple of essays on J.-K. Huysmans; Huneker's first trip to Paris, where he went to study piano at the Conservatoire, and may have seen Franz Liszt; a trip up in an airplane.
Anita Brookner/Hotel du Lac
Won the Booker for 1984 and is pretty great. But you probably already knew that.
Gasp!!! I love that primitive cabin SO MUCH!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat does it look like on the inside????
LOL-ing at Fleet Week at the Cabin
James Huneker/Unicorns sounds TOTALLY like my cup of tea!
Anita Brookner/Hotel du Lac - No, I did NOT know it won the Booker for 1984 and that it's pretty great. I will look it up on GR.
I was just looking up all the film festivals here in L.A. because, now that I'm back in town 7 years later, I want to start attending festivals again. My favorite one, AFI, was 100% free when I left, but now it's $15 PER FILM unless you buy a pass. What about for TIFF?
I'll have to put a picture of the inside one of these days. It's pretty spare!
DeleteTIFF films aren't cheap either. There are packages for us, too, but the basic ticket price is $26 Canadian this year, which adds up!
What a great little cabin! I love that you have to canoe to get there...it sounds like a perfect escape. :D
ReplyDeleteIt's a little crazy!...but we do love getting up there.
DeleteI love your book list! I wonder if that critic was alone in recognizing James Joyce, or if that was the general analysis. (I could look this up but I don’t feel like it).
ReplyDeletebest, mae at maefood.blogspot.com
I don't know either about Huneker and James Joyce! It is weird to see what people think at the time about the things we think are great literature now. I wonder what the reviewers said about David Copperfield or Great Expectations back then.
DeleteDoes Thamyris include Hopkins - one of the unexpected twenties poets? Why read this, rather than other books on the period - or even Trevelyan's own poems?
ReplyDeleteHe does discuss Hopkins and doesn't like him, and I think does Hopkins an injustice. But his argument is that Hopkins distorts language more than he should, so it's not crazy. .
DeleteHe's got two lines of attack--subject matter for poetry, and the use of meter. In an era when poetry is pretty much confessional, he argues for a broader range of subjects--well, he translated Lucretius, so he was on home ground there.
In meter he's still relatively formalist, though he likes plain language, and thinks the move from accentual-syllabic to accentual is a good move. (Not his terminology.) The 'modern' poets he talks about are Arnold, Browning, Swinburne, Hopkins, Bridges, so already a bit out of date actually by the early 20s. I found this part interesting.
I was poking around at Gutenberg & saw this. Not really sure why I decided to download it any more, though I had heard of Trevelyan, and the classical-alluding title, I'm sure, appealed to me. I'm now curious to read some of Trevelyan's own poetry, but the only other thing Gutenberg has is his translation of Lucretius, so it may take some hunting.
Your camp looks like an ideal haven!
ReplyDeleteWishing you a wonderful reading week
What a lovely spot and it sounds so calming and nourishing. We learned "camp" here too. Do you really think the different nomenclature hinges on French River? Heheh Ha to Fleet Week. And I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the festival. So many of their offerings are sad, but always worthwhile narratives too.
ReplyDeleteThe guy who built the cabin said that the French River was the dividing line, and he was a real Canadian man of the North type, so I've always believed him... ;-)
DeleteSaw the second movie tonight. A couple more to go. So far, so good!
The scenery looks great - good place for reading. Hotel du Lac was my first Brookner novel, but not my last.
ReplyDeleteIt was my first Brookner as well, but won't be my last.
DeleteI would love to stay at that primitive cabin. Where we are staying in Italy now is the complete opposite---beautiful art and furniture everywhere---I'm afraid to walk.
ReplyDeleteYour stack of books is lovely and diverse. I've decided to skip I Have Some Questions For You, I think.
No, there isn't anything quite like that in Italy, but then Italy has it's own charms... ;-)
DeleteI'm looking forward to stacks of pictures when you're back.
Something moves in my soul, seeing those pictures. I'm from up there, a bit to the east, Temiskaming district, New Liskeard. My father died a year ago in August, the family house for fifty years is gone with everything in it. I could never bear to see my hometown again, but my soul longs for the land. I may go as far north again as North Bay.
ReplyDeleteI knew you were from up there. To the east, but even further north. Espanola is the closest town for us. The land is desolate, spectacular, beautiful. Should you be in town some summer & willing to paddle or row in...
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