Horizon

'Anyone got thoughts on what to make of Mr. Strachey?'

Clever writer and a bit of that extrapolate-your-world-view-from-discovering-you-like-it-up-the-arse type of rebellion.

Apparently, your cat would prefer to read the newspaper.

Is this jeering sarcasm Mr Farouk?

No. Martha has a newspaper reading cat.

On the other hand, your cat prefers reading a newspaper is a good slam and I'm going to have to remember to use it.

I thought it was a crucifying and innerlectooal put down, so complex, so allusive as to leave me whimpering and ignorant. I decided to style it out. Still, one comment coming underneath another does look apropos the above. But yeah, keep on using it, it could be lethal.

Back to Strachey. What little I know about him comes from Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf. There's this following his death...

She was distressed by the loss of an old friend, and Leonard [Woolf], whose friendship went further back, was perhaps even more saddened. They both felt, I think, that the world had lost an artist who had never quite found himself, never quite justified the hopes of his Cambridge contemporaries, never written that "supreme" book of which they had believed him capable.

The idea of a biography of Lytton was discussed and, some time later, his sisters - some of them - suggested that Virginia might write "something." But to give any notion of what Lytton had really been like, it was, everyone agreed, necessary to deal frankly with his sexual adventures. At that time this seemed completely impossible. It was taken for granted that no true life could be written and Virginia did not want to write anything else.

I've never actually read any Lytton Strachey, but Carrington is one of my all-time favourite films of the 1990s, so I really should go to the trouble sometime to pick up Eminent Victorians.

Sorry to be ignert, but woss Carrington?

/M, proud of newspaper-reading cat, who has also learned to take skidding leaps onto my desk from a back table.

Carrington is one of my all-time favourite films of the 1990s

God, really? I thought it an awful yawn.

Carrington?

Film about Strachey's friend the painter Dora Carrington-she was madly in love with him and they lived together but his homosexuality put a lid on their long term happiness sort of thing: she killed herself after his death. Never seen the film though have read the screenplay for somereason ages ago.

Carrington is a deeply affecting film with wonderful performances by Jonathan Pryce as Strachey and Emma Thompson as Carrington. I loved it.

Fair enough. Maybe I just find the Bloomsburys a bit too precious for my tastes.

Ebert liked Carrington, but it's also possible his cat reads newspapers.

God, that is the most amazingly evocative fake euphemism I've ever heard. Nice work, Bobby. I'm going to start using it too.

Wot, you're saying a newspaper-reading cat is a bad thing?

I don't know...am I? Why don't you ask your newspaper reading cat about it?

See? It's brilliant. You have no idea what it means but it sounds ominous.

Martha, I thought the picture of your cat was wonderful. Originally, I merely suggested your cat would rather read the newspaper than the Eminent Victorians. Your cat reads newspapers makes a good slam because it defies interpretation. However, we can all agree that in the real world of pets and reading material, a newspaper reading cat is a good thing. When you run for president you can dump the ownership society for the reading cat society.

So what are ya, some kinda Bulgakov fan?

Really I'm not sure newspaper-reading cats would be a good thing. Do you have the "Get Fuzzy" comic strip out there?

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Thx re: picture. We had fun with it. Actually I think the attraction for the cat was that J had something to eat in his right hand. That or she was interested in the soup on the table. Don't ask me why, but she loves cream of tomato soup.

By the way, The Eminent Victorians is available online.