Evening Entertainment.

I’m at a bit of a loose end through the dark evening hours now that I have no new DVDs and have finished Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. Out of a mild sense of desperation I located an old school prize that I still have entitled Classic Choice. It’s an anthology of six short stories by classic writers, and one fortuitous upshot is that I’m using as a bookmark the original slip of paper which says: 

 Form 4A 1^st

Jeffrey Beazley

Reading that note every time I open the book reminds that I once mattered, in a manner of speaking, and that’s encouraging. And so far I’ve discovered – through subsequent research – that I have much in common with Anton Chekhov, that he had the same birthday as my mother, and that he died at the same age as my grandfather and of the same disease. I’ve also discovered that Thomas Hardy’s prose style is nothing like as thick as I used to think it was, which suggests that my literary appreciation is rather more advanced than it was when I won the race to be top of Form 4A. I’m now into Theodor Storm’s novella, Immensee, and becoming a little irritated with the translator.

And when I’ve had enough of classic writers, I move over and read my own novella, The Gift Horse, which I wrote shortly before I moved to this house fourteen years ago. I’m finding it surprisingly enjoyable, and even the prose style is generally pleasing me. I was expecting it to be rougher that far back. And of course, I’m falling in love with Natalie and her little red Citroen all over again. I’ve decided that if Dan Brown can create a woman of considerable charm and substance in Sophie Neveu, I can match him with my Natalie.

 

(Natalie is half Irish, incidentally. She has dark hair and blue eyes. At one point, when the protagonist (me) is prevaricating, her eyes 'burned with that brand of Celtic fire peculiar to the women of Ireland.' Given that Dan's Sophie is repeatedly said to have 'burgundy hair which framed the warmth of her face,' I make no apology.)