Proto, Lantana, Arcana, Mobius, Velasco, Uchida

New books, and some art and music

A few weeks ago, I mentioned Proto, a new book by Laura Spinney which tells the history of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the common ancestor of half the languages spoken in the world today.

Now my review has appeared in the Guardian.

Spinney draws on a wealth of recent evidence to tell this story, combining linguistics, archaeology and genetic research to trace the movement of people and their language. Making these links is not straightforward. PIE was not written down; it has been reconstructed by comparing the languages that evolved from it. The word for daughter, for example, is very similar in English, Sanskrit, Greek, Armenian and Lithuanian (daughter, dúhitr, thugátēr, dustr, duktė). This has all been used to deduce the PIE word *dhugh₂ter. (The h₂ might have sounded like the French guttural r. The asterisk denotes that the word is reconstructed.)

There are between 1,000 and 2,000 PIE words, and Spinney’s book is at its most interesting when dealing with them. The word *h₂ster has become “star”. *kerd is the root of “cardio” and “heart”. The phrase *kerd dheh meant “to put your heart”, which became śraddhā in Sanskrit (believe) and crēdo in Latin; *ghostis is “guest-friendship”, a mutual obligation of guest and host. As humans travelled and traded, *ghostis was probably the concept that gave them safe passage. It echoes another word *ghes, “to eat”. Safe passage meant good eating.

How we know this, though, is a little uncertain. *ghostis is the reconstructed root of words in Gothic (gasts), Old English (giest), and Latin (hospes, hostis). (That Old English word giest, meaning “an accidental guest, a chance comer”, is the root of our modern “guest”.) From these known words, linguists deduce the original in Proto-Indo-European. But deductions are not certainties. Whether *ghes really is echoed in *ghostis is debated. And this process is far from complete. Even though PIE is the most studied of all proto languages, there is not yet a reconstructed word for metal, despite those Black Sea coppersmiths.

There is plenty more at the link.

Lantana, or, the indissoluble exhalation

When the Mexican poet bruno darío died aged twenty-nine, he left behind this trilogy of poems, which is newly Englished by Kit Schulter, a one-time friend of the poet. The action of the trilogy is simple enough: a young man loves an older woman who hosts a party and kills herself. The final part, raze, is spoken by her corpse. The “indissoluble exhalation” is the unsilencable voice of poetry. The expression of all of this is much less straightforward. I swung between loving the poem and experiencing deep confusion. Here are two parts which I thought were full of splendid things. I would like to have more time to devote to re-reading this book.

Major Arcana

Tarot, comic books, the decline of the humanities, super-hoer franchises, cultural decline, gender identity politics, and the cultural clashes of the two American coasts are all part of this novel, which was first serialised on Substack, but Major Arcana is not trying to take sides in existing debates. The novel does, of course, have a perspective, but Pistelli is not trying to participate in the culture wars: he wants you to think about them differently. (He has also said the “ontological androgyny of the artist is the novel’s theme, not transgender identity.”) Pistelli has described Major Arcana as “a monument to the vanishing present”. You may be put off by the presence of Tarot, and the novel’s implied magical qualities: don’t be. Much of the best modern fiction is written in a speculative-realisim mode and is all the better for it.

What struck me most about Major Arcana is that Pistelli knows how to write about modern culture. This is not a twentieth century novel trying to make itself relevant in a world it is not merely uncomfortable in but cannot comprehend (all those novels that are stuck a pre-Y2K aesthetic), but instead reads like a novel written now. Unlike all those discourse novels that fail to write about the internet because they merely ventriloquise it in a snarky, narrow-minded manner, Major Arcana successfully writes about an internet culture, which has to be fluid between the on- and off-line. I strongly recommend you read Pistelli’s Preface, an accomplished work of criticism (alas not printed in my review copy), in which he writes:

On the other hand, the way to write about the internet is to write about it, not to mimic its form with strange gimmicks. A novel is a novel, not a browser or an app. Anything uttered in a fictional video can be rendered as dialogue; any fictional picture uploaded to a social platform can be described as imagery. No need for tricks.

He also describes the realist novel as a reverie, not a documentation.

I understand the realist novel to be a reverie over the present and the recent past rather than a journalistic or academic documentation of them, on the premise that reveries, too, are part of history, maybe even the best part.

Many readers surely will struggle to see beyond the conditions of the culture war as they read Major Arcana, which Pistelli professes is neither an essentialist novel nor one approved by sensitivity readers, but many more will be pleased to read a book that is dictated by ideas and imagination, rather than one which is determined by the discourse. Major Arcana is the opposite of a discourse novel, but it remains accomplished and compelling; it does not hide in the old world, nor does it conform to the new one.

If none of this has persuaded you, let me appeal to you on the level of plot, action, intrigue, and prose. Pistelli sometime frequents the narrative with commentary of different aesthetic modes—the comic book mode and the Henry James mode for example—, but he also writes a page-turner. Kingsley Amis once joked (though I’m sure he meant it) that he never wanted to read another novel that didn’t begin with the words “A shot rang out.” Reading modern literary fiction, one sometimes knows how he feels. Here is the opening line of Major Arcana:

He pulled the revolver from his army jacket.

The Möbius Book

Catherine Lacey’s new book works like a Möbius strip: it tells very similar stories, once as fiction, once as memoir. Each is printed at the opposite end of the book, the text of whichever one you are not reading being “upside down”, so that the book rotates like a Möbius strip, showing the endless loop between fiction and reality. Sometimes the themes and content and quite directly related, but there is a general overlap of themes and modes (note the word purgatory in both sections, for example). Both are about faith, and the loss of faith, and the end of relationships that were domineering or controlling. A relationship is an act of faith—it’s a kind of magic or experiment, isn’t it? asks one of the fictional characters. Whereas the memoir narrator says, you could make the argument that half if not all published writing is a form of crying in public. There are some parallels with Lantana, especially in the fiction section, too.

Both sections are as good as you would expect from Lacey, but I found the memoir the most enthralling. Perhaps this is because I am so partial to life writing. Good memoir requires both honesty and selectivity. Some of the anecdotes are quite striking.

My grandmother, as a girl, had been caught playing with her mother's rouge—I want to be seen, she explained with the pilfered lipstick on her mouth—and as punishment her father took her downtown to the Piggly Wiggly where he worked, lifted her onto the counter, and announced, This is Martha. She wants to be seen. This may have been the last time she ever asked for anyone to look at her.

She and her sister were outfitted identically as children, in dresses handsewn by their mother. In the unpublished memoir I read after she died, my grandmother explains it was her father's idea for his daughters to be dressed the same so that no one would think their parents were "partial" to one over the other.

When I think of Mother's making us two of the same garment, she ends the paragraph, I feel inferior.

When Lacey lost her faith in God as a girl, she began to eat very little. At one point she writes “Sometimes I wonder if the point of all that cold and sombre pain might be revealed to me, that God would appear again and convert those years of hunger and beyond-hunger into wisdom itself.” I shan’t give away anymore of what happens in either story, but as I read this book each morning with my breakfast I found its disturbing clarity about death, violence, faith, family, took me away from my own world for a while.

Velasco exhibition

Despite the dreary post-Covid queuing system at the National Gallery (if you want to experience civilisation without being bothered by petty bureaucrats, take the bus five minutes down the road to the Tate, where you can simply walk in though any door of your choosing), I popped in to see the new José María Velasco exhibition. Everyone is currently mad for the Sienna exhibition, but Velasco is less popular and I got a ticket there and then, no booking required.

To my parochial mind, Velasco seemed like a Constable for Mexico. Velasco’s paintings (there is only one room of them in the exhibition) showed careful attention to detail. His ferns, for example, are quite compelling. He was an early member of a botany society, a new institution at the time. Rising industrialisation is present too, in contrast to traditional life. The monumental history of Mexico, from the eagle and the valley to the spreading city is all juxtaposed in his landscapes.

At the end, I was stunned by his painting of a comet. It seemed like a bold departure late in his career. (He experimented with postcard painting too.) But when I went back round, I saw early signs in the way trains left trails of white steam streaking across his landscapes. Large postcard images of the phenomenal cactus and the comet now sit next to each other on my shelf, one rising the other falling, and I see a much stronger sense of evolution in his work.

This is the first time Velasco’s work has been exhibited in the UK and I was very glad to see it.

Recent concerts

The philistinism of modern audiences is well-known to me (listening to the drinking and snacking in the Old Vic is more akin to being in an airport than a theatre), but I was still rather stunned to hear not once but twice the noise of a can of drink being opened during a recital by Mitsuko Uchida at Festival Hall. However, the recital was quite stunning. I was blessed to see her twice: Mozart, then Schubert. Uchida is perhaps the best living Mozart pianist and the concerto she played was excellent. The second concert included Beethoven: Sonata in E minor, Op.90, Schoenberg: 3 Pieces, Op.11, György Kurtág: Márta ligaturája, and Schubert: Sonata in B flat, D.960. That is the big sonata, one of Schubert’s final compositions. Wow! It was remarkable! Writing about music reminds me of Shaw’s complaint that to be a music critic one must know something whereas anyone can be a theatre critic. All I can tell you is that it Uchida is one of the greats and her Schubert that night really showed it.

I also saw Mao Fujita playing Mozart. Perhaps it is because I do not love piano concerto 25 that this did not affect me very much, but I do not yet understand why Fujita is garnering so much attention. Paavo Järvi conducting the Firebird was outstanding. All music is better live, but Stravinsky really makes you feel like the whole concert hall will come apart. Surrounded by people who got their phones out, make a ceaseless amount of noise coughing, opening sweets, rummaging in their blasted bags, I regretted the prohibition on movement. Stravinsky makes me want to dance.

After attending so many nights of theatre performances that weren’t worth the candle, I was pleased to hear so much excellent music recently. Uchida is well-known for her poise, and I especially liked it when she walked to the front of the stage and held up a finger at the audience member who insisted on keeping their phone out. She also turned round and clasped her hand to her chest when, during a brief pause, people were coughing like it was a sanatorium. She won admiring laughter and applause both times.