D'ara mateix, o no m'enganyareu pas pus!

Acabat, ahir, 6-X-2016, de Henry Green, Living (1929).

La vida corrent d'uns obrers a una foneria de Birmingham, centrat sobretot en una diguem-ne família, i especialment en la noia de la casa, amb algunes excursions narratives que toquen la vida — alhora molt diferent (car no pas condicionada per la mancança de diners) i en el fons semblant (car abocada al fracàs i la frustració) — dels propietaris.

Els treballadors a la fàbrica, molt de xarfardeig, sovint maliciós, i no gaire de fer, encara per manca de possibilitats, enganyats dia a dia per un futur que no existeix.

—The works are so depressing, it's all so incompetent. They are all such awful people. [Diu el fill del propietari, ell qui aviat heretarà la factoria.]

—Another thing I can't understand about the lower classes is this business by which they pay 1d per week for all their lives [no pas per cap assegurança de vida o de retir, ans pel funeral!] and get a whopping £60funeral at their end. [Ho fan no pas per confiança en la mort, ans per altruisme; així no carreguen més la família, car després que ells no serveixen, prou s'han de morir, i morts, la família té un sou menys.]

Encara més a preu. Suïcidi. Dos passatges.
Andrew, foreman in iron foundry, many a time worry was too much for him and he'd go off and sit in a corner where none could see him with his hands over his face. Was many would not believe that but with delivery, delivery always being shouted at you, in tricky work like iron founding were foremen took their lives and those that didn't take them had their lives shortened by the worry.
(...)
He had halted close to three great coffin shaped lumps of metal sunk in the ground. He thought Alf Igginbotham would be in one of those three, other two did it before no one could remember. With Alf the management had tried to make the men cast with molten metal Alf had suicided in. (...) There he was in that lump of metal, thirty ton to a penny, but then likely as not he'd risen in dross to top of the metal, and like dross does when you ain't casting, it'd stuck to the sides of the ladle or gone back to the bottom as they poured the metal out. So Alf had got out of it after all, though in different shape to what he'd gone in.

L'acció empesa pel diàleg. Amb el que hom diu, es revela, i pots conèixer'l. Qui no diu, és com si no existia.

—As women who have had nits in their hair over a long period collapse when these are killed, feeling so badly removal of that violent irritation which has become stimulus for them, so when men who have worked these regular hours are now deprived of work, so, often, their lives come to be like puddles on the beach where tide no longer reaches.

Bo. Sap fer que pel seu interès servis l'atenció.

Acabat, abans-d'ahir, 5-X-16, de l'organista qui es feia dir Edmund Crispin, un recull de setze narracions, Beware of the Trains (1953). Trets irònics, amb sovint, com sol a fer l'autor, el culpable el de més autoritat, com ara qui mena l'enquesta.

Els trob els setze admissibles (14 Ves!) , amb només un parell d'allò que en pots dir Bons.

The Drowning of Edgar Foley.
I "Lacrimæ Rerum".

—We were all a bit hysterical in those days, whether we knew it or not, and a man who never laughed was unexpectfully restful. [Veritat perenne.]

—The precarious constricted air you notice in people who are trying to think of two things at once. [I tant.]

—The democracy of death was too large and obvious and absolute a fact to require comment. [I tanmateix què és el gros de la literatura sinó, en el fons, comentar-hi?]

—I wouldn't be knowing if a certain fate's really worse, as they say, than actual death. But if I was a woman, well, sir, I know which I choose. [Un parell d'anys a la presó per comptes de viure amb un maleït qui et destrueix malignament el cos.]

—The phenomenal flux, without the concept of Order, is psychologically intolerable. [La mort qui tot s'ho menja.]

—When you think that there are still a lot of damned vociferous fools who go around saying children oughtn't to be taught about sex. [Hi són, hi són, i encara i encara, funesta taujana diabòlica quisca, i enfilats a llocs de poder.]

—He had none of that appalling narrowness which you normally get in people who are engaged in breeding money from money. [Astoradora estretesa de mires, és a dir, nicis; no t'hi barregis pas.]

—But in 1947 they were old-established residents who'd survived two wars and were well-known and popular in the neighbourhood. [Aquest és el detall: haver sobreviscut.]

—I've known a crime passionnel be committed for possession of a penniless old lady of sixty-eight, and statistics show sex to be the motive for quite half the murders committed in this country. [Pel cap baix, i al món.] —Without any particular aim other than the universal aim of survival. [El mínim, i massa sovint màxim, que et demana el cos.]

—One of those average people whom you never notice, who leave no perceptible hiatus even when they die or disappear. [Prou pot.]

Fet.