Second Monday book group selection. I didn’t care for it particularly—pedestrian writing, tired WWII setting, ill-fitting parts, female protagonist who’s entirely wrapped up in the men around her—but others very much did.
Things I looked up: bartender “sets the shaker out for those who want to salt their drinks to melt the foam” (adding salt increases the head on a flat beer, according to what I’m seeing, but there are lots of other interesting reasons for this old tradition); the Ladies of Llangollen (although again, the context seems slightly off, describing them as having popularized hiking, when they just liked walking near their home); the expressions, as quoted in the book, “nargois” and “uckavie,” which are both kinda wrong; raddle, sheep paint to see which ewes have been bred, from the same root (red ochre/rouge) as “raddled.”
The most interesting theme of the book to me is connection to place and thoughts about nationalism, and now I see that almost all the quotes I pulled relate to it. A Welsh word, cynefin, comes up again and again. It’s defined as “the flock’s sense of place, of territory,” but it turns out it’s also now a framework for decision making, covering five “domains” of problems (disorder, obvious, complicated, complex and chaotic)—I’m interested in following that up. First, short quote: “she sees his nationalism for what it is, selfishness, and more than that, a kind of licensed misanthropy.”
It comes to her now that cynefin is the essential nationalism, not her father’s windy brand, but this secret bond between mothers and daughters, described by a word the English have no equivalent for.
And suddenly it felt not only possible but right to not be German or British, to escape all those debts and duties, the shackles of nationalism. That’s what he had glimpsed at the pub, what had sent him into that fit of laughter [he thought he was being treated rudely because he was Jewish, but it was because the Welsh bartender read him as English]. The Jews, he knew, had no homeland, yearned for one, and yet as much as he understood it to be a source of their victimization, it seemed at once such pure freedom to be without a country.
And one more quote I found interesting, but which to me also reveals a trace of sexism or gender essentialism that bothered me throughout:
Their dishonor, men’s dishonor, can always be redeemed, defeat followed by victory, capture by escape, escape by capture. Up hill and down dale. But women are dishonored once and for all. Their only hope is to hide it. To keep it to themselves.
No longer about the book but about my process: this post took about an hour to write, about 3/4 the pleasurable research and transcription and 1/4 the more laborious and active ordering and writing context. The quotes give me the most benefit as the primary reader of my own blog, but the shaping of the post (even though I don’t do it as thoroughly as I could, partially because it’s not really for an audience) is better for me as a writer. I’m dwelling on this because I have such a huge backlog and I’m trying to figure out if catching up is a realistic goal. I think I’ll focus on doing this month’s books quasi real-time first…