Good reading

I've had a very good run of reading recently--as sometimes happens--seeming to have a magic touch both with library books and items trawled from second hand shops. I've just finished (if you can be said to finish such a work) The White Goddess, Robert Graves's original, lengthy, passionate and sometimes just downright barmy musings on the origins and interconnections of myth and poetry. It's difficult to come up with a pithy summary of such a large book, so maybe I won't try. I can see why professional Celtic scholars dismissed it, and why lots of new age type people would hug it to their bosoms. Let's just say it's worth reading, if only for the richness of anecdote and the Byzantine footnotes (the belief that barnacle geese grew from barnacles is a nice example).

All this and John Updike too. I have been put off for a long time, but final read Seek My Face recently. A fantastic bit of writing, and all the more interesting for being about post-war American painters (albeit slightly in disguise). The Zack character really being Jackson Pollock gives rise to the lovely line: "When did Zack start dripping?".