a novel from Francis Spufford

[Mark Kohut]

This performance is far from the first time Smith has trod the boards, but
nearly every character in the novel is performing in some way. Tabitha says
that she detests novels for turning life as she knows it into “smirking
sentiment and unlikelihood,” but she loves the grandeur and the pretenses
of the theatre, and especially Shakespeare, “because he does not tell me
lies about things close to hand.” And, while she and Smith assure each
other that they are not Beatrice and Benedick, there’s plenty of “Much Ado
About Nothing” in these sparring lovers.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/golden-hill-a-crackerjack-novel-of-old-manhattan

On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 3:33 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The brig *Henrietta * having made Sandy Hook a little before the dinner
> hour—and having passed the Narrows about three o’clock—and then crawling to
> and fro, in a series of tacks infinitesimal enough to rival the calculus,
> across the grey sheet of the harbour of New-York—until it seemed to Mr.
> Smith, dancing from foot to foot upon deck, that the small mound of the
> city waiting there would hover ahead in the November gloom in perpetuity,
> never growing closer, to the smirk of Greek Zeno—and the day being advanced
> to dusk by the time *Henrietta* at last lay anchored off Tietjes Slip,
> with the veritable gables of the city’s veritable houses divided from him
> only by one hundred foot of water—and the dusk moreover being as cold and
> damp and dim as November can afford, as if all the world were a quarto of
> grey paper dampened by drizzle until in danger of crumbling imminently to
> pap:—all this being true, the master of the brig pressed upon him the
> virtue of sleeping this one further night aboard, and pursuing his shore
> business in the morning. (He meaning by the offer to signal his esteem,
> having found Mr. Smith a pleasant companion during the slow weeks of the
> crossing.) But Smith would not have it. Smith, bowing and smiling, desired
> nothing but to be rowed to the dock. Smith, indeed, when once he had his
> shoes flat on the cobbles, took off at such speed despite the gambolling of
> his land-legs that he far outpaced the sailor dispatched to carry his
> trunk—and must double back for it, and seizing it hoist it instanter on his
> own shoulder—and gallop on, skidding over fish-guts and turnip leaves and
> cats’ entrails, and the other effluvium of the port—asking for direction
> here, asking again there—so that he appeared most nearly as a type of
> smiling whirlwind when he shouldered open the door—just as it was about to
> be bolted for the evening—of the counting-house of the firm of Lovell &
> Company, on Golden Hill Street, and laid down his burden while the
> prentices were lighting the lamps, and the clock on the wall showed one
> minute to five, and demanded, very civilly, speech that moment with Mr.
> Lovell himself.
>
> 2018-02-11 8:08 GMT+01:00 Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>:
>
>> Has anyone else read this? I just started it yesterday and I haven't made
>> it very far, but so far I really like it. Style evocative of M&D, if
>> somewhat less so. I really, really liked the opening sentence, which is too
>> long for me to quote here.
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 4:43 PM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Us fans of Mason & Dixon might like the new novel from Francis Spufford,
>>> Golden Hill.  New in the US, that is -- I think maybe a UK lister posted a
>>> review a while ago? (I haven't read it yet.) More here:
>>>
>>> http://crookedtimber.org/2017/06/01/golden-hill/
>>>
>>
>>
>
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