Sunday Salon 9 November 2008

A short post - because I am reading (heh). This week Hodmandod Senior realised that we haven't had a holiday for the last couple of years and decided to take the week off. Consequently we have been gadding about in the car and on trains, and one day had to endure an exhibition of Pre-Rapahelite art (Hodmandod Senior loves the stuff). There was one sketch which I liked, but generally I can't see how Pre-Raphaelite art is that much different from other (sentimental) Victorian art, although Hodmandod Senior has tried to explain...

Anyway, food at the art gallery (which shall remain nameless) was very bad: dried up bread rolls, unbearably (and mysteriously) hot spicy soup which made our eyes water and noses run, even drier cakes and it took so long to pay for our tea that by the time we took it to our table it was cold. Null points - as they say in all the best Eurovision Song Contests.

However, I did read a book: FRED AND EDIE by Jill Dawson, which I loved - a mainly epistolary tale about a woman on trial for murdering her husband ... and not because he'd made her go and see questionable artworks in unfavourable conditions. At the end of it I briefly considered whether I preferred this book (which was short-listed for the Orange Prize and the Whitbread (now the Costa)) over another of her great books, WILD BOY, and decided I did not. Although both books are excellent, WILD BOY haunts me still - it is very clever, moving and made me reconsider few things I thought I knew.


Ah well, back to Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: I am, of course, learning a lot. It is the Salavador Dali of science. Nothing is what it seems. Concepts seem to flow and distort like semi-liquid clocks...and I have just read an explanation of why quantum mechanics only applies to the microscopic world, and why a photon can be at two places at once. Marcus Chown made this all seem like prefect sense when I was reading it, but unfortunately, now I try to recall it, it doesn't. It was something to do with a photon having the properties of both a particle and a wave ... and that if you take a single photon, since it is a wave it can have two components, so one component can go through a glass window while the other component is reflected back and so - voilá - two places at once.

Then, again, looking at it from the point of view of Everett's multiple universes, one component is in one universe and another is in another, and when they finish travelling, in order to see them they must come together in a sort of constructive (or destructive) interference ... but these interferences are vulnerable, delicate things - easily degraded by the environment, even the act of looking at them can extinguish them ... which is why, in the macroscopic world, where everything is necessarily observed, the interferences are destroyed, and so nothing, in quantum mechanical terms, can be measured ...argh...back to Marcus, who makes much more sense.

Added later: For another take on 'this sort of thing' see Gordon McCabe's hilarious review of the film 'Quantum of Solace'.

A Little (En)Light(ening) Reading for the Weekend.

A couple of new acquisitions landed somewhat unexpectedly on the Hodmandod doormat this week. How Pathogenic Viruses Work by Lauren Sompayrac and Quantum by Manjit Kumar. I've dipped in and they both look good. In fact I've read Sompayrac before, and know that I really like his style.



But tonight I am going to retire with Marcus Chown's Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, again. I've read the first few chapters (which were excellent) then been diverted, but it is time to indulge myself again now.

Sunday Salon October 19 2008

Hello Sunday Salonists! I've had a productive day so far. I got up early and finished finished AFTER DARK and now just want more, more, more Murakami...


It concerns an enigmatic girl called Mari, and her sleeping sister Eri, and takes place, as the title says, after dark during one particular night. Its setting, then, is the world we seldom see, that place occupied by shift workers and insomniacs. People interact differently in the night. They reveal secrets that they might not reveal during the day and thus become closer; and I think this is the theme and point of the book - how close can we get to each other - and in particular, how close are the sisters Mari and Eri.

Several passages stood out for me.

"Finally, no matter what I say, it doesn't reach her. This layer, like some transparent sponge of a thing, stands between Eri Asai and me, and the words that pass out of my mouth have to pass through it, and when that happens the sponge suck all the nutrients out of them."

"Let me tell you something Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you."

"Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed full of uselss stuff. Meanwhile all the important things we keep on forgetting, one after the other."

"You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are the fuels they use to stay alive."

"Of course Eri was scared to death too, I'm sure, even as scared as I was. She wanted to scream and cry. I mean , she was just a second grader after all. But she stayed clam. She probably decided on the spot she was going to stay strong. She made up her mind that she was going to be the strong big sister for my sake. And the whole time she kept whispering in my ear stuff like "We're going to be okay . There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm here with you..."

Ah, memories and promises, and trying to reach people - every word resonated with me like a poem. The surreal passages merged beautifully with the more realistic ones, and the descriptions of the city were particularly intense and exciting. It was a short book, but it somehow said a lot...and it was all written in the present tense - which I love. Just recently, I have been trying to stop myself write like this because it seemed too much like an addiction. But now I think I might go back to the present. It says what I want to say, and how I want to say it. I feel as though Murakami has given me permission.

And now, after a brief outing to the gym, I am ready to return to another book. Something completely different: QUANTUM THEORY CANNOT HURT YOU by Marcus Chown. It's a provocative title, I think, and makes me want to retort 'Oh yes, it can!' ...especially if you happened to have a certain lecturer with bushy eyebrows in a certain university in the north-east in the late seventies and early eighties. I don't think my brain has been the same since.


I may also dip into another of Tania Hershman's excellent little stories in THE WHITE ROAD.