A massive dose

This period of convalescence has been marked by a massive dose of Trollope, taken mainly in Kindle form, but some print and some pictures.

Started off by finishing off 'Framley Parsonage', using the nice Oxford Classic edition purchased (second hand) last time around, purchased just after I had dumped my Trollopery in favour of Kindle, on the grounds that I might be too groggy to take care of a Kindle. Then moving onto the Kindle I did 'Orley Farm', 'The Prime Minister' and the 'Warden'. By the end of which I was having trouble remembering what 'Framley Parsonage' was about and keeping the incidents of one separate from those of another.

Interestingly, while I had remembered a lot of the set pieces from my original readings (some of which would have been maybe 40 years ago when we used Harringey West Library for the purpose), for example the manners of a commercial room in a hotel ('Orley Farm'), most of them had been interfered with in some way or another. Bits had been added or subtracted, or perhaps the whole thing had been transposed to the wrong novel. The general tone was preserved, but sometimes a little shifted.

For light relief we had DVDs of BBC adaptations of 'Barchester Chronicles' and 'The Way We Live Now', both rather good (and good value from Amazon at around £1.50 a viewing hour with no advertisements), although the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman) had been allowed to steal the show in the first. 'The Warden' was a gentler and more thoughtful book than the BBC were suggesting.

Indeed, I was again impressed by the way that Trollope included serious commentary on his life and times in among his tales of the crooked paths of love on the way to (generally) happy endings. Serious commentary dished out with a pleasantly light touch.

So, for example, he allowed that the Church of England did carry plenty of sinecures which were in need of reform, be most of the incumbents ever so decent and worthy. And that while some of those attacking the church on this and other matters might have been thoroughly unpleasant people, they may well have achieved more with a few lurid pamphlets in a few weeks than more genteel methods had achieved in years.

Serious commentary which is largely absent from more recent light fiction. So while Agatha Christie might tell a good yarn, her books contain no commentary. There is little character and virtually no content, beyond a bit of nostalgia from an old lady in the 1960s for the morals and manners of (some rose tinted view) of the 1930s. You have a good feeling after reading a Trollope, which goes beyond providing a bit of relaxation, a sort of waking sleep. You have been made to think, at least a little bit. There is something there worth talking about in the pub.

The only down side was the irritation caused by the formatting of, in particular, 'Orley Farm' being very poor on the Kindle. OK so I was using a free version from Gutenberg and the Kindle is best at continuous text, not liking anything more complicated than paragraph breaks, but it did seem to make a terrible mess of this one. So I am now lashing out on the £1.95 complete works from Amazon and I shall report later on whether the formatting of this particular member of the oeuvre has been sorted out.