Mr Golighty's Holiday

On Paul Trathen's recommendation I have just read Mr Golightly's Holiday by Salley Vickers. In this novel Vickers manages to write convincingly about goodness and happy endings; a very difficult feat to achieve.

Discussion of the comic and tragic is at the heart of the issues explored within the novel with the comic - understood as "a particular slant of vision, one which sees the potential, deep in the core of human affairs, for misfortune's alternative" - predominating. This perspective, which Vickers owes to Northtrop Frye, has synergies with JRR Tolkien's writings on 'eucatastrophes' which characterise fairy tales, myths and the true myth of the Incarnation. Also, in that Vickers believes that the adoption of a comic view of life may in fact encourage the possibility of misfortune's alternative, her ideas resonate with those of Nicholas Mosley when he writes about "a way of thinking which will take account of both the hope and hopelessness, responsibility and helplessness, the good not in spite of but together with the evil” and argues that by speaking, writing and living in this style seeming opposites might be held from a higher point of view and “errors accepted as the purveyors of learning rather than traps.”

Mr Golighty's Holiday was conceived through the device of humanising God (a device that also features in Mr Weston's Good Wine by TF Powys) and culminates in a replaying of Christ's passion (a device also found in Nikos Kazantzakis' Christ Recrucified). Throughout the story is sustained by means of a divine dialogue; a theological theme on which I plan to be blogging in 2008. In this novel the template for this dialogue is the book of Job which Vickers admires because "with all the potential there for a tragedy, by virtue of his unyielding spirit Job refuses to allow his life to become one." In the light of my own recent bereavement, this reflection and this novel speak powerfully.

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Lou Reed & Victoria Williams - Tarbelly & Featherfoot.

Folk Art & Fairy Tales

Folk Art and Fairy Tales, currently at the mac in Birmingham, is an exhibition that delights, thrills and charms. As I viewed it, I constantly heard people saying, " I like ..., I like ..."

The exhibition brings together ten leading artist-makers from Wales and other parts of the UK, connected by their excellence, creativity and their fascination with narrative and literature, folk art, legends and fairy stories. Their works range from the witty and humorous through to those that explore the darker, more mysterious side of myth and fairy tales.

The exhibition presents the disarming creatures of Lucy Casson and Julie Arkell, Samantha Bryan’s exercising fairies, Cathy Miles’ witty wirework birds and quirky sculptures by Jayne Lennard. Carys Anne Hughes’ textiles look at the uneasy side of nursery rhymes while Jennifer Collier’s shoes and dresses weave stories and fruit into their fabric. These show alongside Su Blackwell’s exquisite book-sculptures and installation, Rachael Howard’s wonderful fabric hangings and a major new ceramics series by Lowri Davies. Fresh, fun and full of joie de vivre, this exhibition brightens the winter days.

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The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!