[COMPLETE] Some Do Not... - dc

[TheBanjo]

It's so much easier to go back in a real book when characters get too many. Sometimes I even keep a list of characters. I find it's much harder with an e-book and I haven't found a good solution for an audio book. :-/

You raise a good point. For this novel, and others in the tetralogy, it may be worthwhile to include a list of principal characters in the summary. I've had a go at this now. May need to amend this list of characters still further as we go (I may have forgotten someone important).

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded section 06: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_06_ford_128kb.mp3 (27:17)

[Sunrise2020]

It's so much easier to go back in a real book when characters get too many. Sometimes I even keep a list of characters. I find it's much harder with an e-book and I haven't found a good solution for an audio book. :-/

You raise a good point. For this novel, and others in the tetralogy, it may be worthwhile to include a list of principal characters in the summary. I've had a go at this now. May need to amend this list of characters still further as we go (I may have forgotten someone important).

That's a good idea!

[Sunrise2020]

I have uploaded section 06: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_06_ford_128kb.mp3 (27:17)

PL of section 6 is fine.

[TheBanjo]

PL of section 6 is fine.

I found the frank viciousness of the gender politics through the golf sequence quite stunning. On women's rights, we still don't seem to have progressed all that far even a century later.
Already there are hints here of an hysterical edge creeping into the novel, I think.

I have uploaded section 07: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_07_ford_128kb.mp3 (34:39).

[Sunrise2020]

Thank you for adding the list of characters! Now I've a reference I can go back to. Can you please add the characters of Section 6 who were reprehensible but should be captured, in case they reappear.
PL of Section 7 is okay. I found the turn-of-events so surprising, I "rewound" to make sure I hadn't misheard. An interesting story....

[TheBanjo]

Thank you for adding the list of characters! Now I've a reference I can go back to. Can you please add the characters of Section 6 who were reprehensible but should be captured, in case they reappear.
PL of Section 7 is okay. I found the turn-of-events so surprising, I "rewound" to make sure I hadn't misheard. An interesting story....

Thanks Susanne.
By those who "should be captured", I assume you're referring to the two suffragettes who have presumably (it's not terribly clear, I think) accosted the government minister (and possibly the politician Sandbach, too) while they are playing golf, rather than the two "city men" who are playing golf a little further ahead on the course, and who appear to have ripped one of the suffragette's clothing off her back in a pretty flagrant sexually-tinged assault. It's the suffragettes, at any rate, who fear capture by the police, though morally it's really the two "city men" who strike us as far more worthy of being locked up. The suffragettes are Valentine Wannop and her friend Gertie Wilson. I've now added a reference to Gertie Wilson to the summary.

I've also added to the summary a note alerting the listener that this novel quite often deploys a device whereby within the same chapter, without warning, we are jumped in time from what is really the 'end' of a scene back to an earlier point in time, but without the benefit of one of those captions you sometimes get in TV shows that says "9 months earlier", or "20 minutes earlier". This can be quite disorienting, at least until the moment when we suddenly grasp what is going on.

The breakfast scene at the Duchemin's is extraordinary. Re-reading this sequence aloud for the recording, I understood so much better many of the sly cues earlier in the scene of what is to come: all the preparations Mrs Duchemin has made to hide her husband behind a wall of silverware and flowers, her precautions re having strong men around, and so on. On my first silent reading I failed to grasp altogether that the scene does a sudden flash backwards in the middle, so that we witness the Rev. Mr. Duchemin's infelicitous Latin outbreak twice, from different points of view. The treatment of Mrs Duchemin's predicament manages to be at once funny and sad, I think - but the treatment of the sudden Mrs Duchemin/Macmaster love match is surely purely comic.

It's certainly a novel with its fair share of "what in the hell is going on here?" moments!

[TheBanjo]

Forgot to mention I uploaded section 08. Writing this from phone late at night and don’t have URL handy, but it’s in MW. Realised today section 08 may contain errors if, as I think I may have done, I read “HM” several times as “Her Majesty’s” rather than as “His Majesty’s” (which would have been appropriate at the time). I can check this myself in a day or so.

[TheBanjo]

Forgot to mention I uploaded section 08. Writing this from phone late at night and don’t have URL handy, but it’s in MW. Realised today section 08 may contain errors if, as I think I may have done, I read “HM” several times as “Her Majesty’s” rather than as “His Majesty’s” (which would have been appropriate at the time). I can check this myself in a day or so.

I have uploaded an edited version of section 08: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_08_ford_128kb.mp3 (20:32).
There is just one passage altered, from 5:49 to 6:04, where I previously anachronously read "H.M." in the source file as "Her Majesty's" rather than "His Majesty's". Hate editing a file by inserting a passage of fresh recording because it's just impossible to match the sound quality, but it had to be done. The newly uploaded file is the same length as the one it replaces.

[Sunrise2020]

Forgot to mention I uploaded section 08. Writing this from phone late at night and don’t have URL handy, but it’s in MW. Realised today section 08 may contain errors if, as I think I may have done, I read “HM” several times as “Her Majesty’s” rather than as “His Majesty’s” (which would have been appropriate at the time). I can check this myself in a day or so.

I have uploaded an edited version of section 08: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_08_ford_128kb.mp3 (20:32).
There is just one passage altered, from 5:49 to 6:04, where I previously anachronously read "H.M." in the source file as "Her Majesty's" rather than "His Majesty's". Hate editing a file by inserting a passage of fresh recording because it's just impossible to match the sound quality, but it had to be done. The newly uploaded file is the same length as the one it replaces.

Thanks! In the meantime I listened to all the recorded sections again and really enjoyed them. Like reading a book for the second time, one makes new discoveries.

[TheBanjo]

Thanks! In the meantime I listened to all the recorded sections again and really enjoyed them. Like reading a book for the second time, one makes new discoveries.

Methinks you must be a glutton for punishment! That said, I agree heartily that this is a book that rewards re-reading. So much of it makes better sense the second time around. That whole section about "Breakfast Duchemin" is an obvious example.

I have now uploaded section 09: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_09_ford_128kb.mp3 (29:50)

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded section 10: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_10_ford_128kb.mp3 (47:29)

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded section 11: https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/somedonot_11_ford_128kb.mp3 (30:12)

[Sunrise2020]

Sorry it took me a while to get back to you on Section 9. I listened to it a couple of days ago but I needed to check the text which I've now done. Of course, you read it correctly but while listening I tripped over this part:

"I shall have to on Monday, then," Tietjens said. "The point about the feudal system . . ."

Just after lunch—and it was an admirable lunch of the cold lamb, new potatoes and mint-sauce variety, the mint-sauce made with white wine vinegar and as soft as kisses, the claret perfectly drinkable and the port much more than that, Mrs. Wannop having gone back to the late professor's wine merchants—Miss Wannop herself went to answer the telephone. . . .

I kept "rewinding" to see if you had missed something after "the feudal system" because it didn't fit with "Just after lunch". How can one reflect the "..." in the recording to make it easier on the listener?

[TheBanjo]

Sorry it took me a while to get back to you on Section 9. I listened to it a couple of days ago but I needed to check the text which I've now done. Of course, you read it correctly but while listening I tripped over this part:

"I shall have to on Monday, then," Tietjens said. "The point about the feudal system . . ."

Just after lunch—and it was an admirable lunch of the cold lamb, new potatoes and mint-sauce variety, the mint-sauce made with white wine vinegar and as soft as kisses, the claret perfectly drinkable and the port much more than that, Mrs. Wannop having gone back to the late professor's wine merchants—Miss Wannop herself went to answer the telephone. . . .

I kept "rewinding" to see if you had missed something after "the feudal system" because it didn't fit with "Just after lunch". How can one reflect the "..." in the recording to make it easier on the listener?

You're doing a wonderful job! As it happens, I've only in the last couple of days bought a Kindle version of a marvellous edition of this novel (https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770127) which contains a brilliant and very detailed introduction that sheds light on so many of the aspects of this novel which appear "strange" - but which also points out subtle variations between different versions of the text, especially between (a) the original handwritten manuscript (b) the first English edition and (c) the first American edition. And believe it or not, there is a note in this edition about the very point you've put your finger on. In the Caracanet edition (but NOT in the edition I'm reading from) there is not only a ... after 'the feudal system' but there is also a line space to indicate a change of scene. The Caranet editor notes that the line space occurs in the handwritten manuscript, but was omitted from the first English edition (which omission is really what has given rise to this uncomfortable feeling that you have so acutely picked up).

I've now made two changes to the audio file for section 09 around the 8:35 - 8:45 mark.

First, I've shortened the spacing between "I shall have to on Monday, then", Tietjens said and "The point about the feudal system..."

Second, I've lengthened the silence before "Just after lunch".

I hope this may address this particular problem.

At the same time, I'm acutely aware that some of the text with its ... and ... all over the place is quite hard to make sense of, particularly when the listener doesn't have the visual cue of that ... before the eyes. And it's not just the ... The characters really do jump all over the place in their thoughts, suddenly breaking off one line of thought or speech and starting another, and it can be quite hard to tell if one is simply MEANT to be a bit confused by this, or what. All a bit of a challenge for both of us. For all its obliquity, though, this chapter is a really remarkable love scene, I must say, a wonderful example of 'saying without saying'.