Crushing Corners

If Georgie Best is to (Sir) Bobby Charlton as Flann O'Brien is to Anthony Powell then the universe is maintaining, if only to mock and distend. It is rather late this week and I haven't finished a book. The placidity of last week was an unlikely collision of holiday, somewhat cold weather and a dearth of league matches. I have spun about for 100 pages in Alexander Waugh's family tracings but it is the spectre of Jacques Roubaud which has indicated my present course. No more Oulipo, mind you, not for the moment but rather Roubaud's penchant for the gloomy insularity of British women; I am extending his trope to the Commonwealth, which he was quick to as well. Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire simply works for me.