It seems fishy making imprints of keys in bars of soap; I don’t like the way that lexicographer is thinking but I digress. I surveyed the range of imprints on my shelves and it provides enough ammo for an extended series of blogs that nobody would read unless they’d run out of sleeping pills. I wanted to check if the worthy Everyman’s Library had anything worth reading until they re-published PG Wodehouse. I remember the Everyman editions being well-bound but not costive (do I mean costly?) and with rather small print. It started in 1905 and in the 1930s benefitted from Eric Ravilious’s design work. They were good quality, cheap hardbacks, possible because their authors were out of copyright. Other imprints have caught on to this admirable wheeze.
In the few months I lived in Singapore in 1989 the paternalistic government made some new laws. Chewing gum and long hair had already been banned but dogs in blocks of flats, peeing in lifts and driving to Malaysia with a tank of petrol more than half full were all banned. (Fuel in Malaysia was cheaper.) Something else that was censured was piling on too much food at the ubiquitous hotel buffets. It would be a fixed price “meal deal” and greedy, price-conscious Singaporeans wanted full value. I hope I’m not being immodest but I seldom help myself to more than I want to eat. However, I do buy more books than I can possibly read.
Inspired by Richard Bassett’s Last Days in Old Europe, musing on The Radetzky March, a masterpiece by Joseph Roth, and thinking of Trieste I bought The Transylvanian Trilogy (Everyman’s Library). How did I come across this not very well known oeuvre? I read this in The Spectator.
“Ocean’s Eleven: best heist flick, whip-smart dialogue, perfect casting (George Clooney). The Magnificent Seven: the Western to end all. Some Like It Hot: Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon. What more could life hold? Where Eagles Dare: second world war, remote Alpine resort, ski lift dramas, funny Nazis, Clint Eastwood, Richard Burton. Oh joy.”
That’s Susan Hill. She must have wiped her nib and realised she had delved into the lowest of the lowbrow and compensated by recommending The TT by Miklós Bánffy. Is it pretentious crap? Maybe, but Charles (peerage pending) Moore, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Jan Morris are all pretty keen.
“As good as any fiction I have ever read … like Anna Karenina and War and Peace rolled into one. Love, sex, town, country, money power, beauty, and the pathos of a society which cannot prevent its own destruction – all are here.” (Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph)
“Bánffy is a born story-teller. There are plots, intrigues, a murder, political imbroglios and passionate love-affairs.” (Patrick Leigh Fermor)
“Pleasure on a different scale and kind. It is a sort of Galsworthian panorama of life in the dying years of the Habsburg empire – perfect late night reading for nostalgic romantics like me.” ( Jan Morris in The Observer)
Thank you again for the daily posts, they are such a joy to read, away from the madness of things. I was introduced to Banffy and his Transylvanian trilogy about six years ago and was transfixed by them. A world I did know a bit about but to see it romantically and at such length through Banffy’s eyes was wonderful.
They must be pretty unusual in one respect – that the author himself, as himself, appears in volume 3. That is quite unnerving. I can’t imagine Trollope getting off a train at Barchester and going to see Mrs Proudie!
Regards
I look forward to reading what you make of the Banffy trilogy. One intriguing element of the narrative is the way that, despite being a patriotic Hungarian, Banffy does not flinch from describing how foolishly his countrymen often behaved to Romanians under their power. He was a great writer and statesman. Only after about fifteen years living in Budapest did I notice a plaque just around the corner from us that commemorated the fact that Banffy had lived in a building there for many years. After that I felt that we had definitely chosen the right neighbourhood.
Christopher, you must read Mr Banffy, I would guess that it’s right up your strasse if you are a nostalgic romantic, like Jan Morris and me. Going into a church on a walk through Rumania I saw Charles Moore sitting at the back with a book on his lap. Perhaps it was the third vol of Banffy, which does gets a bit complicated. I didn’t bother him.
“As I was walking ‘cross the green, a little book it chanced I seen. Carlyle’s essay on Burns was the edition, I left it lying in the same position.”
I resorted to Google to find out who wrote your obscure quotation – an anonymous American, it seems. In my search I found this anagram.
“Lying in the field o’ grass,
With El’, a bonny college lass;
A wee hit-tome by chance I seen;
‘Kama Sutra’ was the edition:
I tried all ninety-nine positions.“
It only works as an anagram of:
“While I was laying on the green,
A little book it chanced I seen;
‘Carlyle’s Essay On Burns’, was named the edition:
I left it laying in the same position.“
There was a book called “Verse & Worse” knocking around at home in the 60’s, and I think I read it there. Carlyle is grim reading for me, he can make a dramatic scene during the French Revolution almost unreadably boring, so that’s why I remembered it, having left Charles Moore in the same position.