Book 13 - Peter Tinniswood, Tales From A Long Room

Bill Bryson is an amusing writer who occasionally makes you laugh but I don’t think of him as primarily a humorist. Instead he is someone who can make droll observations. So for this weeks book I turned to someone I consider a great comic stylist, someone who could mix absurdity, exaggeration, puns, particularly on names, with beautiful descriptive phrases. Just as much a stylist as Wodehouse - and you can’t raise the bar much higher than that. Unlike Wodehouse, most of his output was for television or radio; scripts rather than novels but he did write some books. Although they all seem to be out of print at the moment they are quite widely available second hand.

Tales from a Long Room was first published in 1981 and most of the jokes and references are based on the golden eras of pre and post war cricket, mixed with cultural and entertainment figures. I am not sure it matters much if you know who the people were as their names are used as absurdist colour rather than being comments on the real person. The tone can be gauged from the introduction

I was born in winter
I love summer
My friend the Brigadier was born in Arlott St Johns.
He loves fine wine, Vimto, quails in season, barrage balloons, blotting paper, E.W. Swanton and his sister Gloria.
He recounted these tales to me during the course of a long convivial summer spent in his favourite corner of a long room ‘somewhere in England’.

Sometimes though it does help to have, at least, a passing knowledge of the people being referred to:

There is a regrettable tendency these days for what I call ‘public nosey parkering.
Fed by the unceasing efforts of journalists, broadcasters and similar scum, the British public have developed an insatiable appetite for tittle-tattle of the most trivial nature concerning people, who for one reason or another, happen to be in the ‘limelight’
What possible interest can it be to know that E. W. Swanton wears maroon corduroy underpants and has in his study a complete collection of the records of Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas?
Is the world a better place for knowing that despite all the evidence to the contrary Mr Robin Marlar is a thoroughly nice man?
Are we uplifted in soul and spirit by the knowledge, that despite his constant protestations, Mr Ned Sherrin did indeed once play rugby league football for Rochdale Hornets? - the match in which Miss Caryl Brahms was sent for an early bath for butting an opponent.

To anybody who has heard the plummy, pompous tones of E. W. Swanton dispensing his lofty judgement of the days play, the idea of a secret passion for one of the Merseybeat groups is wonderfully nonsensical. As is the thought of the wit, bon viveur, impresario and lover of musicals, Ned Sherrin, playing rugby league. Perhaps as knowledge of these people fades the humour dates. But I hope not. I hope people will still appreciate the glory of prose such as this:

Why on earth did I ever marry her?
Certainly there was a physical attraction. That I cannot deny
I remember to this day the surge of emotion that coursed through my veins when I first caught sight of her.
The rose garden of dear old Castle Arlott slumbering with honey-laden bees.
The summer breeze lisping through the timid tracery of the delicate Frindall tree.
The Benaud bush aflame in scarlet bloom. The phlox Lakerensis flowering hazily, lazily, benignly blue.
And into my sight she glided; a tall, slim, sylph like figure dressed in purest white.
My heart missed a beat.
Sap rose in my loins.
Dear God, she was the spitting image of Herbert Sutcliffe.

Link to Last Book
Humour

Date first published 
1981

P.S.
Apologies for the photo but the cover of my copy has faded somewhat, over time.

Book 12 - Bill Bryson, A Walk In The Woods

The last book was a memoir of personal recovery and how a hike along the Pacific Crest Trail enabled a young girl reconnect with who she had once been and find the strength to grow into who she wanted to become. This book couldn’t be more different in tone and intent, even if it is about a similarly long through-hike of the East Coast equivalent: the Appalachian Trail. Bill Bryson started his adventure from the place Cheryl Strayed wanted to arrive. He was already a successful author, and settled in his life. As far as we know he had no great demons to face down in the wild, no need for a long physical challenge in order to find his centre. One of the walks was a slightly desperate throw of the dice, the other more of a whim, probably with a book in mind. You might not find much personal redemption in Bryson but there is more humour and information about his surroundings.

I honestly do not know what I can write here that will add anything to what is already known about Bill Bryson and his books. He is an institution. An author used a a reference point in the quotes on the cover of other books; someone who defines his own category. He writes about places or things with humour and although he seems to place himself in the centre of the story, deep down it is not really about him. The narrative might be about his actions and reactions but he doesn’t go deep in his own psyche. He is more interested in what he sees (which is as it should be). I find it confusing when he is described as a humorist; yes he can be funny but he also does his research and is informative. It’s a neat trick: as a reader you learn stuff whilst being amused. It’s what keeps you going and what sets him apart. He has great skill in presenting information, which in other hands could be dry, and make it come alive. Take for example this about trees:

For all its mass, a tree is a remarkably delicate thing. All of its internal life exists within three paper thin layers of tissue, the phloem, xylem, and cambium, just beneath the bark, which together form a moist sleeve around the dead heartwood. However tall it grows, a tree is just a few pounds of living cells thinly spread between roots and leaves. These diligent layers of cells perform all the intricate science and engineering needed to keep a tree alive, and the efficiency with which they do this is one of the wonders of life. Without noise or fuss, every tree in the forest lifts massive volumes of water - several hundred gallons in the case of a large tree on a hot day - from its roots to its leaves. Imagine the din and commotion, the clutter of machinery, that would be needed for a fire department to raise a similar volume of water to that of a single tree. And lifting water is just one of the many jobs that phloem, xylem, and cambium perform

I will never look at trees in the same way again.

But Bryson can also be a bit spiky. His contempt for the National Park Service, which maintains the trail, is a recurring theme.

Here in the Smokies, not far from where Katz and I now trod, the Park Service in 1957 decided to ‘reclaim’ Abrams Creek, a tributary of the Little Tennessee River, for rainbow trout. To that end, biologists dumped extravagant quantities of a poison called rotenone into 15 miles of creek. Within hours, tens of thousands of dead fish were floating on the surface like autumn leaves - what a proud moment that must be for a trained naturalist. Among the 31 species of Abrams Creek fish that were wiped out was one called smoky madam, which scientists had never seen before. Thus the Park Service biologists managed the wonderfully unusual accomplishment of discovering and eradicating a new species of fish in the same instant.

The payoff at the end might be wonderfully ironic but it is the “what a proud moment that must be for a trained naturalist” that is really cutting (especially with the substitution of naturalist for biologist).

I came away from this book with an increased appreciation of the skill with which Bryson puts his books together and the craftsmanship of his writing. It makes an interesting comparison with Wild, in the one I was deeply impressed by the story, in the other by the way the story was told.

Date of first publication
1997

Link to last book

This is pretty obvious. The Appalachian Trail is the east coast equivalent of the Pacific Crest Trail so the two books make an interesting comparison, especially as both the walks must have happened at roughly the same time. Although Wild was published only a couple of years ago and A Walk in the Woods dates from 1997, Strayed started her walk in 1995.