Passacaglia and Fugue

Book Review: All Souls, by Javier Marías
I can't remember whether this book was recommended to me by R, or whether I just saw it on a pile. The premise described in the blurb on the back cover, of an affair between a visiting lecturer and another academic, probably wouldn't have particularly caught my eye. The citation from the Times Literary Supplement as "a dazzling example of the Oxford novel" might have drawn more attention - for what, exactly, is the Oxford novel?

In any case, the blurb somewhat mis-sells this book for me. Whilst the illicit relationship is the thread that weaves the story together, it's rather more an interesting collection of Oxford tropes: the caricature of a High Table dinner and the games academics play with each other, the spies, the secondhand booksellers, the beggars (I recall finding these quite intimidating on arriving in Oxford, and at some point, their number dwindled overnight, possibly some ruthless update to the law or policy in the early 1990s). I have mixed feelings about the gay character: on the one hand, it's important to document the dark early years of HIV/AIDS, but on the other, there feels some ubiquity in the writing, as if every gay man of the time had the disease (in this respect it reminds me of The Flanders Panel), and it hardly provides a cheery role model. Whilst this is definitely an Oxford novel, I'm none the wiser about the definitive article - Gaudy Night, Brideshead Revisited or Inspector Morse could all be candidates as well.

Yesterday we went to Harcourt Arboretum. Of course, everything nowadays must be booked in advance, and we'd put this off for a week or two due to weather, but the forecast was reasonable so we decided to take our chance.

It's many years since our last visit and I can't say I remember much, so I don't know how much it has changed. Not a great deal, I imagine. There is a lot of open space for an arboretum; presumably the Harcourts only wanted a limited area devoted to trees.

Palmer's Leys Meadows

Having got some decent exercise by wandering the perimeter of the meadow, we eventually found our way to the acer glade, one of the main attractions for this season. One or two trees had already gone over; some were still quite green, whilst others were in transition.

Traffic-light acer

One thing I do remember from the previous visit is the prevalence of peacocks. "The peacocks are not owned by the Arboretum. They are wild animals and may be unpredictable. Please do not feed the peacocks", warned the leaflet. Those we saw were presumably relative youngsters, as they seemed to have some downy feathers still, and they were no especially co-operative for photography. The litter of Oxford Sandy and Black pigs were a bit more open to these opportunities, I suspect having learned that the humans often approach with food.

Oxford Sandy and Black pigs

Though there were some cloudy spells, it remained dry and was often quite bright. With indoor attractions not a viable option for the foreseeable future, there's limited scope to get out and about. Covid cases remain relatively low here, but have doubled in the past week, and quadrupled from a couple of weeks ago, an all-too familiar pattern.

Harcourt Autumn Leaves

Book Review: Holt College - An Oxford Novel, by Brian Martin
This was a random selection in the work book sale. I didn't really know what to expect; I struggled to downplay the idea that this must be satirical, like Porterhouse Blue. I was also curious how Oxford would be portrayed, and whether there would be a steep learning curve for the outsider.

The story is told by Johhny James, a "young" economics fellow at Holt College. (I put young in quotes because he is one of the more junior fellows, not a Junior Research Fellow, which is something else). The college Principal is acting in an increasingly autocratic manner, as a CEO rather than a Chairman, and this has aggrieved some of the fellowship, James among them. This has become a more serious issue as some appointments and expenses are called into question. In parallel with the college politics, James also begins a relationship with Estelle Treisman, another of the other fellows. The story chronicles an increasingly bitter battle within the college governing body, and has some twists.

The literary geography of Oxford has always been negotiable; in this case, a mixture of real and fictional colleges are named; the location of Holt oddly corresponds best to Queen's, which is not one of the colleges mentioned (and notably, until recently, did not admit students to study English, which was Martin's own subject). The downfall of a Principal is reminiscent of the resignation of Sir Stephen Tumim across the road at SEH; though on that occasion apparently he and the college Bursar were in conflict, which is not the case in this novel. (Again, oddly, characters in the novel fret over the attention of Private Eye, which did have a long-running spat with that bursar in the 1990s). Ultimately I suspect anyone with any knowledge of Oxford machinations can recall college politics whose fragments can, to a greater or lesser extent, be projected or imagined onto this novel. It's a work of fiction.

Although it's relatively contemporary - the Principal's expenses are cast in the light of the MPs' expenses scandal of 2009 - I find the use of devices such as photocopiers and telephones curiously anachronistic, even for an Oxford college. The plot does seem at times exaggerated, though that probably is a fair reflection of the self-importance of the characters concerned. There are plenty of Oxford tropes - wine snobbery, outdoor concerts, gross moral turpitude, college grandees and fundraising. It's not Colin Dexter: despite the high tension, there is no murder. It fits well into the category of what Graham Greene would describe as "an entertainment".