That pill Florence

It's high time for a Dickens-related entry. I have taken my blog name from one of his characters after all, as well as my blog picture. Maybe I should feel a bit guilty about the latter part, as although I support Georgiana wholeheartedly, I cannot say the same for Florence Dombey. The reason I pinched a picture of her is that I imagine she and Georgiana look quite alike - the same dark, timid, corkscrew-haired, slightly droopy look. There are other similarities as well: they are both shy girls, dominated by a pompous father, who have a great deal of growing-up to do. However, there are differences as well, and in my opinion they are not in Florence's favour.

Dickens's heroines are often a lot more appealing than their reputation as tiresome goody-goodys suggest. Esther Summerson's insecurity, due to a loveless childhood, explains why she is so jubilantly grateful for every kind word and deed, and she is no ninny: her summing-up of characters like Skimpole and Mr Turveydrop can be quite caustic. Amy Dorrit may take her self-sacrifice on behalf of her father too far (giving up her lunch for him! No wonder her height gets stunted), but her love for Mr Clennam, hopeless as it seems for the most part of the book, is both warm and touching. Little Nell is hardly my favourite character in "The Old Curiosity Shop" - I think she only barely makes it to the top ten, after Kit's pony - but she is surprisingly plucky, and no, you do not feel any desire at to laugh when she cops it. Please read the book before you feel tempted to quote Wilde's quip. Hopeless Dora Spenlow knows she's hopeless, which is rather poignant, and Agnes Wickfield, though suffering from an excess of good judgement, does have strength of character. Remember, she tries more than once to correct David's slushy "good angel" picture of her, with indifferent success. Generally, Dickens's heroines have a great deal more spine than they are given credit for, which is needed as they more or less have to drag the hapless heroes to the altar. Dickens often spins out his plots for a few additional chapters by making the heroes convince themselves in some tortous way that they are unworthy of the heroine's affection and cannot possibly propose to her. What's a poor girl to do, except confess her love and risk the rejection her swain shies away from?

Having said all that, there are Dickens heroines who really are as wet as they seem, and Florence Dombey in "Dombey and Son" is one of them. She is usually criticised for not standing up to her father. What surprised me, on the other hand, is that she doesn't stand up for her father. She is supposed to be the perfect devoted daugther, yet everything she does - or does not do - only brings the already sorely tried Mr Dombey more grief, that is, until their final reconciliation, after which she can finally become his Amy Dorrit. That she should cling first to her mother, then to her little brother, in such a desperate way is not difficult to understand, although I understood Mr Dombey's feeling of being shut out, especially in the case of little Paul. The siblings hardly seem to spare him a thought when they are together. What is harder to grasp from the devoted daughter perspective is why Florence leeches on to Edith Granger, née Skewton, later mrs Dombey - or vile Edith, as I call her. Not once during the deeply unhappy marriage between Dombey and vile Edith does Florence try to use her influence with her stepmother to bring about a reconciliation. Instead, she makes things worse by indirectly accusing her father of sending Walter Gay to his death (as she thinks) and confessing, wobbly-lipped, that she is "not a favourite child". She does more to blacken her father in vile Edith's eyes than Carker. I'm sure this is not deliberate, but one could be forgiven for thinking that Florence in a passive-aggressive way makes sure that her dad will not get the love he needs from anyone else, as he does not want any love from her. After all, she is happy enough to take her stepmother to task once Mr Dombey has finally capitulated in her arms.

I think a way of understanding Florence is to remember how young she is - she is practically a child and shows no signs of wanting to enter the adult world. That would also explain her strong reaction when meeting James Carker: she "recoil[s] as if she had been stung". Now, Carker is Dickens's sexiest villain. To some, that might not be saying a lot - no more than if you commended a frog for being the sexiest in the swamp. But coming from me, this is high praise indeed. I will cut my gushing short this time: suffice to say that he is both incredibly brainy and handsome. But he is also, undoubtedly, a representative of the adult world, and his insinuating ways would probably seem disquieting to a girl who does not want to grow up.

Nevertheless, Florence will never be a favourite heroine of mine. In one of the Jeeves and Wooster novels, a character congratulates himself for having escaped an engagement to "that pill Florence" (not Miss Dombey, naturally). I'm afraid it is as "that pill Florence" that I will always regard Florence Dombey.

Summer reading

I recently finished my latest Ambitious Book Project - Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on The Shore" - and now there will not be any more ABPs for some time to come. Not that I didn't enjoy the book. It had a lot going for it. There were several engaging characters, such as Nakata, the sweet old man who can talk to cats, Hoshino, the down-to-earth lorry driver who helps him, and Oshima, the friendly librarian who seems to have a bit of a crush on the troubled hero. It also has passages of understated humour where the characters accept surrealist situations as given. "I wouldn't want Mickey Mouse to be my pimp", Hoshino says at one point, in a context where this comment makes perfect sense. A lot of the philosophical musings are way too deep for me, and the hero "Kafka" Tamura is rather too serious for my taste, but it is a quietly gripping book with occasional references to Western culture which make one feel at home (though I may never view Johnnie Walker or Colonel Sanders in quite the same way again).

So why no more ABPs for a while? Because it is summer, and my vacation. Each year, I get irritated by the recommendations for summer reading in the newspapers' culture/review sections. Critics and authors invariably come up with the most intellectually demanding or downright tedious stuff they can find and feel no shame in foisting their unhelpful recommendations on readers who just want a good read for the beach.

Lets get this straight once and for all. When you sit in the sun with an overheated brain, your concentration is not likely not be on top form. What you long for is an easy read, a page-turner preferably, or something funny in the Wodehouse vein. This is not the time to get to grips with modernist poetry, or with Proust (yes, believe it or not, two Swedish critics recommended him: one the whole "In Search Of Lost Time", one only what I have been given to understand is the most boring volume in it).

Here are my recommendations for the beach/hammock/anywhere comfortable in the sun or out of it:

Just about anything by Agatha Christie: Although she's a best-seller, Christie is very much underrated as an author. I have reread many Christie novels more than once, even though I knew perfectly well who the murderer was. The first time you read a Christie, you want to know who did it. The second time you want to pick up all the clues you missed. The third, fourth time etc. you just enjoy the succint prose and the human drama. You may not always agree with Christie's psychological statements - she is a bit too cynical for me at times - but the characters are no stereotypes either. A problem with Christie is that she doesn't film very well, which makes people who have only seen a creaky adaptation believe she is boring, which she definitely is not. (There are other dangers with adaptations: the latest miss Marple films are reasonably pacy, but approximately every second mystery has nothing whatsoever to do with the book it is supposedly based on. "The Secret of Chimneys", for instance, was pure invention from start to finish, including the identity of the murderer.) If you truly have little time for whodunnits, try her adventure yarns like "The Secret Adversary", "Destination Unknown", "They Came To Baghdad", "The Man In The Brown Suit" and "Why Didn't They As Evans?". Avoid her very last books where her prose starts to wander a bit and get repetitive and you'll be fine.

The Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse: Yes, the Blandings novels are good too, but I prefer the Jeeves/Wooster novels because of Bertie Wooster's endearing narrative (and because efficient secretaries aren't pillorised). Invest in an omnibus, but alternate with a crime story or two so you don't get overfed on Wodehouse. What ho!

And if you have to read something ambitious: a really good 19th-century yarn: I once read "Crime And Punishment" in the sun and enjoyed it immensely. Fun cop. Colourful characters. Villains a-plenty and high drama. Or just settle for one of Dickens's best, like "Great Expectations" or "David Copperfield".

Ah, well back to my Georgette Heyer: another good holiday read, though her heroes are supremely irritating. I would like to shove their quizzing-glasses and snuff-boxes down their conceited throats. If I come across a novel where the hero does not get on my nerves, I will recommend it unreservedly.

Avoiding effort

There is a lovely German word called "urlaubsreif". It means "ripe for vacation", and that is exactly what I am. I'm one week from my blissfully long Swedish vacation, and I feel like one of those policemen in detective stories who are a few days from retirement, but still have to take on a final big and nasty murder investigation. Business has been slack for a while, but now, typically, the wheels have started spinning again. I catch myself humming "At the End of The Day" from Les Mis. At least it's not "Look Down", or the entirely un-Les Mis-related "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", so there's still some way to go before I start smashing the office furniture.

It's not just work, either. Everything feels exhausting, even TV. Should I blame the World Cup, which has got me used to watching TV without having to follow any plot whatsoever? Or the summer weather? Or is it just sheer laziness? Anyway, I can't even be bothered to watch a recorded "Tudors" episode, let alone Gaskell's "North and South" (or John Jakes's "North and South" for that matter - too long!).

"The Tudors" has itself to blame, in part. It's getting increasingly obvious that nothing in Henry's later life really matches the Boleyn story as far as juicy drama is concerned. Well, except perhaps the disastrous marriage to Catherine Howard, and that's ages away. Meanwhile, you're left to ponder such things as: does this series have a pro-Catholic bias? Consider the evidence. The characters are described roughly in the following manner:

Catherine of Aragon Loving, loyal, popular, suffering with dignity: all in all a pearl among women.

Anne Boleyn Slut. Didn't sleep with her brother, but that's really all that can be said for her.

Cardinal Wolsey Corrupt. Should not have tried to box through that divorce. But as he's played by Sam Neill, the audience sides with him anyway.

The sainted More (That's how we "Daughter of Time" readers think of him, in an ironic, non-complimentary way) Honest and upright. The king's one true friend who could not bring himself to compromise his religious beliefs. Aaah, you break my heart.

Thomas Cromwell Ruthless persecutor of innocent li'l old monks. Takes bribes too.

Bishop Cranmer A coward. Yes, that's the-hand-that-recanted-first-in-the-fire-Cranmer. Nowhere to be seen in series 3, by the way: a bit odd, surely?

Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk A tormented soul - he didn't want to kill all those women and children, honest. He only did it because mean old Cromwell and the king made him. This is the same character who behaved like a proper swine in series one, bedding Buckingham's daughter out of spite etc.

Mary Tudor Put-upon, innocent young girl, quite pretty, friendly with Elizabeth in spite of everything. Honestly, the series seems to ask, after all she's gone through, who can blame her for finally setting fire to a Protestant or two?

Jane Seymour Unfailingly sweet. OK, she married a man who had his previous wife put to death to make himself available. So what?

Robert Aske Noble, touching, unwilling to fight, entirely justified.

Cromwell's chum with the patch over one eye Well, the patch says it all really. Sleeps around. Threatens to smash lady Mary's skull in.

At this point I might hear some complaints along the lines of: "Oh, come on, you've already blogged about The Tudors. Couldn't you try something a little more intellectually challenging? An essay on Florence Dombey whose picture you've filched? Even more Ancient Rome?" Sorry, no. Can't be bothered.

Not so astounding, Holmes.

Yes, I'm afraid it really is that bad. I'm talking about the recently released film called "Sherlock Holmes". I have to put it that way rather than "the latest Sherlock Holmes film", because the film has nothing whatsoever to do with the famous detective.

I don't see myself as a purist when Holmes is concerned. I have seen, read and enjoyed all kinds of sequels, spoofs and "forgotten cases" featuring Holmes. And to be honest, much as I admire the detective's razor-sharp mind, he can be irritating at times. Both Watson and Lestrade have my sympathy for putting up with his arrogance. What's more, in this case, my expectations regarding the film's faithfulness to the original stories, or even to the spirit of the original stories, weren't high. There had been much talk about Holmes suddenly becoming a first-class pugilist and action hero. Well, well, I thought indulgently, Holmes is actually rather good at defending himself in the original stories. Anyway, even if Holmes is not very recognisable, a crime story in nineteenth-century England can never be an entire waste of time, can it?

This time, it is. It's like those trendy cynical films called things like "True Romance" who aren't romantic at all. The protagonist of "Sherlock Holmes", played by the otherwise charming Robert Downey Jr. who is nevertheless pretty insufferable here, is a disorganised, absent-minded, childish slob, who tries to sabotage his friend's engagement out of pique. Now, does that sound like Sherlock to you?

Which leads me to Watson, played somewhat surprisingly by a trim, handsome Jude Law. Personally, I don't think Conan Doyle ever intended Holmes and his loyal sidekick to be more than just good mates. But if the film had hinted at something more and depicted the two friends as an affectionate but bickering old couple I might have lived with it. The thing about Holmes is that he's asexual, so inventing female love interests for him - which has been done often enough - is just as wrong-headed as romanticising his relationship with Watson. Here, though, the two behave not like an old married couple but like a token gay couple in a rom-com. A squabble about a waistcoat is a case in point ("I thought we agreed it was too small for you"). That is just plain wrong - whatever they are, Holmes and Watson aren't honeymooners. By the way, there is a female love interest for Holmes, so it is perfectly possible to take or leave any homosexual subtext. She is Irene Adler, or she is called that, but like "Sherlock" she bears no noticeable resemblance to the character invented by Conan Doyle. This Irene is a femme fatale and gangster moll between whom and Holmes there is zero chemistry (at least that part is strictly true - Holmes only ever revered her for her mind). The only thing faintly Doyle-ian in the whole film was Eddie Marsan (a.k.a.Pancks to those of us who have seen the superb TV adaptation of "Little Dorrit") as Lestrade.

The biggest problem with the film, I believe, is that if you are going to invent freely on the basis of a legendary figure like Sherlock Holmes, you still need to have some references to the original before you take off in flights of fancy. I suspect this is why the "realistic" film about King Arthur with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley was not a hit, and why I would be surprised if the new "Robin Hood" film with Russell Crowe should turn out to be a box-office phenomenon. (Though I may be doing these films an injustice: the "this is the true, unvarnished story" spin they both used has put me off actually seeing them.) King Arthur needs his Round Table, Robin Hood needs his merry men and an archery competition or two, Sherlock Holmes needs his pipe, his violin (not just to pluck at) and his tidy, logical mind. Otherwise, why bother to tell a story supposedly about them at all? Do a film about a Briton fighting in the Roman army, or a rugged non-merry freedom-fighter, or an unshaved nineteenth-century detective who can kick ass, and call them something else.

Brutus says he was ambitious...

After having finished the high-prestige Swedish crime story - which proved not to be so very gloomy after all and included a touching description of male friendship - I'm back in ancient Rome. Harris's second novel "Lustrum" is even more highly acclaimed than the first one, but I must confess that in my view, it could have done with a bit more "the politicians at home" scenes. What I liked in "Imperium", apart from the West-Wing-in-togas-feel, was the intimate portait of some of the Famous Romans. The lumbering Pompey enthusing "didn't I tell you he was clever?" when Cicero came up with one of his brilliant ideas or the tough old bird Crassus genially pinching Tiro's cheek (Tiro is Cicero's secretary/slave and the books' narrator): these kind of scenes added a personal note to all the political schemes. They are still around in "Lustrum", but not as much as I would have liked. We never do get any real take on what Catilina was like as a person. I have gathered this much, though: if any Roman resembled the kind of villain I easily fall for, it was Caesar, not Catilina. Caesar is the sly one.

This idea gets some getting used to. Only now do I realise how favourable the portrait of Caesar in my old "Asterix" comics really was. Yes, he was an enemy of the intrepid Gauls and was time and again defeated by Asterix and his gang, but he had dignity and honour all the same. "Asterix" comics shouldn't really be allowed to influence one's judgement regarding a historical personage - they are, after all, cheerfully unhistorical, and only the Latin quotations have any basis in fact. But once you have seen the Asterix version of Caesar slumped in his chair, as baffled as the reader by a lecture on economics, and finally giving the one-word comment "Eh?", it's hard to imagine him as an unscrupulous wheeler-dealer with little regard for anything except his political ambition.

As I remember it, Shakespeare didn't help either. Granted, it's a long while since I saw the play (or read the Illustrated Classic - a very good cheat's guide to the Western Canon). But I chiefly recall three things about Shakespeare's Caesar: 1) He loved Brutus like a son (big mistake) 2) he preferred fat people to men with a "lean and hungry look" who thought too much 3) he couldn't swim as well as Cassius. Honestly, who would have thought he was a lean-and-hungry-looker himself?

It is possible, of course, that Harris is exaggerating Caesar's dastardliness a bit just to make a point. He is on Cicero's side after all. All the same, I do trust him more than I trust the "Asterix" comics when it comes to historical accuracy.

Now, time for a summary of the Swedish crown princess Victoria's wedding festivities on TV, and then a football match with the Ivory Coast, trained by our "Svennis". I told you I'm very Swedish in some ways.

I may not know much about football...

It was fun while it lasted, being a critical consumer. For weeks I have proudly used Chrome instead of Internet Explorer, praised its swiftness, and felt very grand for making the effort of testing another browser instead of passively trudging on with IE, just because it's Microsoft and what I'm used to. But now, after having wasted an hour of my life looking for a print preview function, I give up. If you want to do anything remotely fancy in Chrome (and surely print preview isn't that fancy?), you have to rely on a "Gallery" of additional functions programmed not by Google itself but by happy amateurs around the world. I'm sure it's very kind of them to share their add-ons with us, but sadly there's no guarantee (as, after trying to install two of them, I've now found out) that they actually work. So, back to lumbering old IE. At least it's got all the functions you need, as well as a great many you don't need. "Don't be evil" is all very well as a company motto, but "Be professional" would be even better.

Anyway, moving on to the subject of the moment: the Football World Cup.

Wonderful as world and European championships must be for real football fans, they (the fans) do have a lot to put up with as well. It is at times like these when people like me, who don't know the first thing about the game, insist on taking an interest. Instead of regional teams, which don't really capture the imagination of the football illiterate, we have ACTUAL COUNTRIES playing against each other. This is great fun. If our own country doesn't win, we football philistines can always root for other countries we like for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with actual footballing skills. I love French history and English literature and have a Western European bias altogether - with the result that no matter how many times they let me down, I will still have a soft spot for these countries' teams.

I am starting to change my mind about France, though. One thing a football philistine does not forgive easily is if a team plays "boring" football. We want to see the players rush back and forth on the field trying to score goals. We don't care about tactics or saving your strength until it's really needed. This is why I can never warm to the Italian team, even though I like Italy as a country. Once they score, they spend the rest of the time more or less standing in front of their own goal defending their position. It may be tactical brilliance, but it's boring, boring, boring. France suffers from a similar problem: their games have, in later years, become increasingly dull to watch. Now the England team may fail as often as not, but something still makes them watchable. Perhaps it's all those near-misses that keep you on your toes. Pity any sincere football fan, though, who has to watch World Cup games with me and listen to my comments. "If Lampard is such a great shot, why has he never scored a goal while I'm watching?" "Didn't Crouch use to be a red-head? I think red hair goes better to the lanky, lantern-jawed look somehow." Capello, as you see, needn't fear any competition from this quarter.

Lazy Monday afternoon

A bonus day off today because the Swedish National Day (6 June) was on a Sunday. The holiday commemorates the vaguely-more-democratic-than-the-last-one constitution of 1809 which has been ditched many times over since then, so it's hard to get too steamed up and patriotic. Although if I'm not mistaken, Gustav Vasa marched into Stockholm after having defeated the Danes on 6 June as well, which is a bit more like it. All right, Independence Day it ain't, but a holiday is always welcome, whatever the pretext.

The problem is, it's time for me to pick a new Ambitious Book Project, and I'm feeling far too lazy. It should cheer me that the last ABP turned out to be great fun - "Imperium" by Robert Harris, which I counted as ambitious because I haven't read anything by him previously and because the scene is set in ancient Rome rather than in, say, Victorian England. It is also a book about Cicero, which sounded faintly worthy. I remember a picture of Cicero we had in our Latin book in school, painted 1800 years or so after his death, I would say. In it he was attacking Catilina in the Senate. Cicero had a flowing white beard and looked upright and noble. Catilina looked like a bird of prey. You can imagine whom I rooted for.

It turns out, though, that Cicero was a shrewd politican and only vaguely more principled than his contemporaries. Yes, he tries to do the right thing, but only if it does not hinder his political ambitions. It makes it easier to cheer him on than if he had been the incorruptible paragon ready to defend the Republic at all costs I imagined. As for Catilina, he seems a bit too loony and violent to be a villain in my taste, but I'm not quite giving up on him yet - he did look very foxy in that picture. Let's see how he turns out in "Lustrum", book No. two in Harris's Cicero series (it does sound learned, doesn't it?).

After "Imperium", I indulged myself with a frothy Regency Romance by Julia Quinn ("How To Marry A Marquis"). Frothy entertainment is not so easy to write as one may think. I remember being thoroughly bored with one bestselling author's supposedly escapist novel, in spite of a good premise and a glamourous setting, and at another time I was bemused when a romantic bestseller turned out to be written like a children's book. But Quinn knows her stuff. She is not the new Austen, as someone quoted on the cover alleges, but she may well be the new Georgette Heyer, and that is not bad at all. In spite of the title, there is less snobbishness displayed here than normally in the genre. The hero is not a nonesuch of the first stare, fussed about the tying of his cravat, for which one is thankful. I do wish, though, that he had not been an ex-spy. I cannot imagine him, or any other Regency Romance hero, lasting ten minutes pitted against Fouché's finest.

But now I have wallowed in a bodice-ripper, including romantic but blush-inducing sex scenes, I really should read something meaty and mind-expanding. A gloomy crime story written in the Fifties by one of Sweden's leading authors seems the likeliest candidate right now. I just wish I felt more enthusiastic about it.