The Knox Brothers, Penelope Fitzgerald (365 Books, Day 209)

Via Nineweaving.

This is Penelope Fitzgerald's loving and hilarious biography of her father and uncles: Edmund (Evoe) Knox, longtime editor of Punch magazine; Dillwyn Knox, classical scholar, famously of Bletchley Park during the era of the breaking of Enigma; Ronald Knox, mystery writer, Catholic priest, and translator of the entire Bible all by himself; and Wilfred Knox, best described as a uniquely Anglican sort of ascetic. The eldest and longest-lived, Edmund, was born in 1881 and died in 1971. The book goes into some light family history before the 1880s and is then comprehensive through the middle 1950s, when the younger three died.

And by comprehensive I mean comprehensive. The Knox brothers, by virtue of genius, wide-ranging interests, and quantities of luck, knew just about everyone famous in their generations and were also familiar with large swathes of the not-so-famous. This book serves very well as a history of its times, though it is perhaps best at the period just before World War I, a time it looks at with relief, interest, fury and regret-- the 'All That' Robert Graves was saying goodbye to.

But the reason to read this is its tender portrait of four very different, very opinionated, very brilliant men. Also, it is consistently hysterically funny, in that way that only happens when things are drawn directly from life. The young Edmund Knox, for instance, on first getting a house of his own, piled all his receipts and tailor's bills into two hatboxes on the floor of the closet. When he had to write a business letter, he would overturn the hatboxes, and then begin 'Dear Sir, on consulting my files...'

Or there is the inimitable diary entry their stepmother, a scholar of Greek, made and was never after let to live down: "Finished the Antigone. Married Bip."

( Or this excerpt, which is longer, but worth it. )

I am not going to try to attempt to excerpt the description of Wilfred at Christmas, except to say that I laughed until I hurt myself, and no favorite uncle ever had a better epitaph. There is also an utterly priceless description of Lytton Strachey, at Cambridge, falling into and out of love with Dillwyn in the space of about twenty minutes. (Dillwyn, though the book does not go into it, was seeing someone at that point-- Maynard Keynes.)

And yet it's a book that does handle the dark as well as the light, the losses and disappointments and the terrible rift that formed between Ronald and the rest of his family when he became a Roman Catholic. Wilfred was an Anglo-Catholic: it is not, remotely, the same thing. And their father was an Anglican bishop. And Dillwyn was an atheist. Unlike many families in such circumstances, they continued to speak, continued to see each other, continued to love; but they inflicted deep wounds. This is part of what makes this such a good history, the details of these doctrinal conflicts that mattered so terribly much, and which now I only know because I read a lot about this time period. Fitzgerald makes you care about them here.

I have left out so much that is good about this, from Ronald's scheme for writing bestselling mystery novels to support himself while Chaplain at Oxford (it worked) to Dillwyn's plans for writing poetry according to a schema based on cryptography (the poems, surprising everyone, aren't half bad). This is a lush book, an embarrassment of riches, the kind of thing I am always hoping to run into among the histories of various people's favorite Victorian and Edwardian relatives. This is a treasure.

The Knox Brothers, Penelope Fitzgerald (365 Books, Day 209)

Via nineweaving.

This is Penelope Fitzgerald's loving and hilarious biography of her father and uncles: Edmund (Evoe) Knox, longtime editor of Punch magazine; Dillwyn Knox, classical scholar, famously of Bletchley Park during the era of the breaking of Enigma; Ronald Knox, mystery writer, Catholic priest, and translator of the entire Bible all by himself; and Wilfred Knox, best described as a uniquely Anglican sort of ascetic. The eldest and longest-lived, Edmund, was born in 1881 and died in 1971. The book goes into some light family history before the 1880s and is then comprehensive through the middle 1950s, when the younger three died.

And by comprehensive I mean comprehensive. The Knox brothers, by virtue of genius, wide-ranging interests, and quantities of luck, knew just about everyone famous in their generations and were also familiar with large swathes of the not-so-famous. This book serves very well as a history of its times, though it is perhaps best at the period just before World War I, a time it looks at with relief, interest, fury and regret-- the 'All That' Robert Graves was saying goodbye to.

But the reason to read this is its tender portrait of four very different, very opinionated, very brilliant men. Also, it is consistently hysterically funny, in that way that only happens when things are drawn directly from life. The young Edmund Knox, for instance, on first getting a house of his own, piled all his receipts and tailor's bills into two hatboxes on the floor of the closet. When he had to write a business letter, he would overturn the hatboxes, and then begin 'Dear Sir, on consulting my files...'

Or there is the inimitable diary entry their stepmother, a scholar of Greek, made and was never after let to live down: "Finished the Antigone. Married Bip."

( Or this excerpt, which is longer, but worth it. )

I am not going to try to attempt to excerpt the description of Wilfred at Christmas, except to say that I laughed until I hurt myself, and no favorite uncle ever had a better epitaph. There is also an utterly priceless description of Lytton Strachey, at Cambridge, falling into and out of love with Dillwyn in the space of about twenty minutes. (Dillwyn, though the book does not go into it, was seeing someone at that point-- Maynard Keynes.)

And yet it's a book that does handle the dark as well as the light, the losses and disappointments and the terrible rift that formed between Ronald and the rest of his family when he became a Roman Catholic. Wilfred was an Anglo-Catholic: it is not, remotely, the same thing. And their father was an Anglican bishop. And Dillwyn was an atheist. Unlike many families in such circumstances, they continued to speak, continued to see each other, continued to love; but they inflicted deep wounds. This is part of what makes this such a good history, the details of these doctrinal conflicts that mattered so terribly much, and which now I only know because I read a lot about this time period. Fitzgerald makes you care about them here.

I have left out so much that is good about this, from Ronald's scheme for writing bestselling mystery novels to support himself while Chaplain at Oxford (it worked) to Dillwyn's plans for writing poetry according to a schema based on cryptography (the poems, surprising everyone, aren't half bad). This is a lush book, an embarrassment of riches, the kind of thing I am always hoping to run into among the histories of various people's favorite Victorian and Edwardian relatives. This is a treasure.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.

the way upward and the way downward are the same

I have spent most of the last day crying over Diana Wynne Jones.

The thing is, she saved my life. I was a neglected and abused child, and her books told me not only that it could be all right, that I could be all right, but that it could be funny. I learned irony, humor, and resilience from her, as well as how never to be surprised by a plot; I also learned that you may not be who you think you are, but it's still fine.

About a year ago I had the opportunity to write and tell her that she had saved my life. She was at that point already too ill to write back, but the friend who gave me her address told me she got the letter, that it meant a lot to her. I am so glad she knew, that I had the chance to tell her that I loved her, that her books parented me more than my parents did. So very much of who I am today I owe to her-- a huge amount of my sense of humor, a huge amount of my pragmatic streak, and every damn thing I know about plotting. Books can raise a kid, you know. They really can.

I have been trying to think what I can say or do in memoriam, in tribute. The best thing I can think of is that in 2007 I started to write an essay to explain the end of Fire and Hemlock, because a lot of people find it confusing; the essay was meant to have two parts, and I never managed to write the second.

Here is the first. You should of course read it first. I haven't edited it at all except to add some instances of the blockquote tag, which I didn't know at the time and which should make it easier to read. The essay of Jones' referred to is "The Heroic Ideal-- A Personal Odyssey", from The Lion and the Unicorn (1989).

( And here, now, now-here, is the second part; do I need to mention that there are giant in-depth spoilers throughout? )

the way upward and the way downward are the same

I have spent most of the last day crying over Diana Wynne Jones.

The thing is, she saved my life. I was a neglected and abused child, and her books told me not only that it could be all right, that I could be all right, but that it could be funny. I learned irony, humor, and resilience from her, as well as how never to be surprised by a plot; I also learned that you may not be who you think you are, but it's still fine.

About a year ago I had the opportunity to write and tell her that she had saved my life. She was at that point already too ill to write back, but the friend who gave me her address told me she got the letter, that it meant a lot to her. I am so glad she knew, that I had the chance to tell her that I loved her, that her books parented me more than my parents did. So very much of who I am today I owe to her-- a huge amount of my sense of humor, a huge amount of my pragmatic streak, and every damn thing I know about plotting. Books can raise a kid, you know. They really can.

I have been trying to think what I can say or do in memoriam, in tribute. The best thing I can think of is that in 2007 I started to write an essay to explain the end of Fire and Hemlock, because a lot of people find it confusing; the essay was meant to have two parts, and I never managed to write the second.

Here is the first. You should of course read it first. I haven't edited it at all except to add some instances of the blockquote tag, which I didn't know at the time and which should make it easier to read. The essay of Jones' referred to is "The Heroic Ideal-- A Personal Odyssey", from The Lion and the Unicorn (1989).

( And here, now, now-here, is the second part; do I need to mention that there are giant in-depth spoilers throughout? )

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My, Tove Jansson (365 Books, Day 210)

This is an early Moomin picture book, notable for two reasons: its divergences from the way people are in the novels (the Hemulen loves housecleaning and the Fillyjonk is kind of creepy, which is brainbreaking), and its absolutely amazing use of cutwork and holes in the book.

You don't have to like the Moomins or know who these people are to appreciate the illustrations. The simple story involves Moomintroll looking for Little My, whom everyone believes is lost; he and the Mymble travel through forests, mountains, and caves, and each double-page spread has a different set of cutouts in the paper. All of the cutouts work both with the page after and with the page before. Some of them go down multiple layers.

So you'll get a spread of a dark forest path, in which the spaces between two trees are cutouts that show the next page, which is the meadow just outside the forest-- you can see the space outside the forest through the trees just as you would in real life. And there's a further cutout you can see just a part of, going down a second page, which gives you just one ray of sunshine.

Flip the page, and you get the meadow; the tree cutouts are now looking back into the picture of the dark forest we just left, and the full extent of the sun cutout is revealed, so we can see the whole meadow bathed in sunlight.

Every single illustration in the book is that well planned, or better. The compositions are arranged such that bits of the picture you didn't know were significant pop into relief in the cutout the second you flip the page.

It is such a tour de force that it almost feels petty to mention that the translated text is terribly rhymed and scanned, and also doesn't make very much sense. Honestly, I'd ignore it entirely-- you can follow what plot there is perfectly well from the pictures. And should. This is one of those picture books everyone can examine and be dazzled by.

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My, Tove Jansson (365 Books, Day 210)

This is an early Moomin picture book, notable for two reasons: its divergences from the way people are in the novels (the Hemulen loves housecleaning and the Fillyjonk is kind of creepy, which is brainbreaking), and its absolutely amazing use of cutwork and holes in the book.

You don't have to like the Moomins or know who these people are to appreciate the illustrations. The simple story involves Moomintroll looking for Little My, whom everyone believes is lost; he and the Mymble travel through forests, mountains, and caves, and each double-page spread has a different set of cutouts in the paper. All of the cutouts work both with the page after and with the page before. Some of them go down multiple layers.

So you'll get a spread of a dark forest path, in which the spaces between two trees are cutouts that show the next page, which is the meadow just outside the forest-- you can see the space outside the forest through the trees just as you would in real life. And there's a further cutout you can see just a part of, going down a second page, which gives you just one ray of sunshine.

Flip the page, and you get the meadow; the tree cutouts are now looking back into the picture of the dark forest we just left, and the full extent of the sun cutout is revealed, so we can see the whole meadow bathed in sunlight.

Every single illustration in the book is that well planned, or better. The compositions are arranged such that bits of the picture you didn't know were significant pop into relief in the cutout the second you flip the page.

It is such a tour de force that it almost feels petty to mention that the translated text is terribly rhymed and scanned, and also doesn't make very much sense. Honestly, I'd ignore it entirely-- you can follow what plot there is perfectly well from the pictures. And should. This is one of those picture books everyone can examine and be dazzled by.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.