Poquette's Glorious Adventure II

Zion National Park, Utah

Welcome to part two of my continuing glorious adventure — albeit those restricted to the armchair! — inspired by Richard Halliburton's Glorious Adventure, read in 2014.

The photo above is another of my iconic places, which I visited first as a child and more recently about five years ago.

Current Reading



Literary Theory and Criticism by Patricia Waugh (2006) 618 pages
Symposium of Plato







Ratings. The reality is I rate books mostly on the basis of how well I like them. My evaluations are entirely subjective. And I like books that are not only well written but that have something to say that speaks to me:

★★★★★ A+   — Sent me over the moon!
★★★★½ A   — I really, really liked the book!
★★★★ A–   — Kept my interest, well-done but didn't quite reach the A level.
★★★½ B+   — Mixed feelings; good book but is uneven or contains serious flaws IMHO
★★★ B   — Not memorable.
★★ C   — Why did I read this?
★ F   — Why the heck did I read this????

2015 Books Read
January
Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido (2013), 100 pages, Read 1/3/2015 ★★ (Review)
The Floating Book by Michelle Lovric (2003), 490 pp., 1/9 ★★★½ (Review)
Bound to Please by Michael Dirda (2005), 525 pages, 1/30 ★★★★½

February
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1353), 1072 pp., 2/14 ★★★★½ (Review)
Ecclesiastes, 14 pp., 2/16 ★★★★½
Gorgias by Plato (5th C. BC), 206 pp., 2/23 ★★★★½
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi, (2004), 240 pp., 2/26 ★★★★ (Review)

March
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal (1839), 502 pp., 3/1 ★★★★
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (2008), 256 pp., 3/5 ★★★★ (Review)
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (1992), 868 pp., 3/17 ★★★½ (Review)
Heresy: A Thriller by S.J. Parris (2010, 450 pp., 3/26 ★★★★ (Review)
A Loeb Classical Library Reader (2006), 234 pp., 3/30
The Flanders Road by Claude Simon (1960), 193 pp., 3/31 (Review)
Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson (1966), 256 pp., 3/31 ★★★★ (Review)

April
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964) 211 pp., 4/3 ★★★★★ (Review)
Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser (1997) 240 pp., 4/7 ★★★★★ (Review)
Mission to Paris by Alan Furst (2012) 255 pp., 4/22 ★★★★½ (Review)
The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman (1988) 240 pp., 4/23
The Chapel of Eternal Love by Stephen Murray (2013), 180 pp., 4/25 (Review)
Sandman: The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman (2010) 144 pp., 4/25 (Review)

May
Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City by June Osborne (2003) 208 pp., 5/1 ★★★★★ (Review)

July
Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 by Julia Cartwright (2008) 420 pp., 7/13 ★★★★★ (Review)
The Garden of Allah by Robert S. Hichens (1904) 492 pp., 7/21 ★★★★ (Review)
The Gnostic Scroll by Patricia Owens (2005) 240 pp., 7/24 ★★★★ (Review)

August
The Gnostic Notebook: Volume One by Timothy James Lambert (2015) 76 pp.
Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout (1934) 304 pp., 8/13 ★★★★½
The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner (1945) 300 pp., 8/14 ★★★★
The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser (2007) 237 pp., 8/18 ★★★★½ (Review)
The Renaissance: A Short History by Paul Johnson (2000) 196 pp., 8/24 ★★★★½ (Review)
Yesterday's Bestsellers: A Journey Through Literary History by Brian M. Stableford (2008) 164 pp., 8/28 ★★★½ (Review)

September
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester (1949) 310 pp., 9/5 ★★★★½
Graphic Astrology by Ellen McCaffery (1952) 300 pp., 9/6 ★★★★ (Review)
The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout (1935) 320 pp., 9/9 ★★★★
The Case of the Sulky Girl by Erle Stanley Gardner (1933) 235 pp., 9/10 ★★★★
The Castle of Perseverance ed. by David N. Klausner (2010, 1440) 150 pp., 9/13 ★★★★½
The Castle of Perseverance: A Modernization by Alexandra F. Johnston (1999, 1440) 127 pp., 9/13 ★★★★½ (Review)
Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester (1952) 306 pp., 9/19 ★★★★ (Review)
Tarot and other meditation decks : history, theory, aesthetics, typology by Emily E. Auger (2004) 214 pp., 9/19 ★★★★
Hornblower and the Hotspur by C.S. Forester (1962) 394 pp., 9/23 ★★★★
Two Renaissance Book Hunters by Phyllis Gordan (1974) 393 pp., 9/26 ★★★★ (Review)
Jacopo Sansovino by Deborah Howard (1975) 194 pp., 9/28 ★★★★½ (Review)
Hornblower During the Crisis by C.S. Forester (1967) 176 pp., 9/29 ★★★★

Heresy: A Thriller by S.J. Parris (2010) 450 pages, Kindle

Of all the historical figures one might pick to be the protagonist in a medieval thriller, Giordano Bruno is not the name that would have first come to mind. However, since his life on the run from the Catholic Inquisition was something of a thrill a minute, perhaps he is not so unlikely after all.

S.J. Parris's Heresy opens with Bruno at age 28, having to escape from his Domenican monastery in Naples or face the Inquisition. His crime: reading forbidden books. Some seven years later, he turns up in London, having most recently been in residence at the court of Henri III of France as tutor and philosophe du jour. As an excommunicated monk, he is enlisted on behalf of Queen Elizabeth to serve as a de facto spy to help ferret out suspected papists, many of whom are believed to be a threat to the life and realm of the Queen. The papal bull Regnans in Excelsis ("reigning on high") of Pius V declared Elizabeth to be a heretic and released all her subjects from any allegiance to her and excommunicated any that obeyed her orders. It further encouraged overthrow of Elizabeth. Thus, the lingering presence of Catholicism in England was seen and treated as a real threat.

Bruno goes to Oxford in the company of poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney for the purpose of engaging in a disputation with one of the college rectors, but while a guest at the college, a brutal murder takes place, to be followed by two more, which have anti-Catholic implications. Bruno is one of the first to arrive at the scene of the crime, and he is recruited on the quiet to help find out who the killer is. Many intrigues follow and suspicion is cast far and wide. When the guilty party is finally unmasked, it is unexpected and yet certain clues were there all the time.

As a bit of well written escapist reading with a historical setting that provides a personal view of the ongoing religious unrest during the reign of Elizabeth I, Heresy is not bad although I would not call it a page turner until the last quarter of the book. Parris has written three more Bruno thrillers, so if this one intrigues, there is more available to whet the appetite.

>1 Poquette: That is unbelievably gorgeous!

>3 Poquette: Heresy sounds like fun.

>4 avidmom: Glad you like the picture! Zion is less dramatic than Bryce or Grand Canyon, but it has an unsung grandeur that really stays with you.

Heresy was interesting, but I was really hoping for the reading equivalent of a junk food binge. It fell a bit short.

Today I went to the 2nd Annual Local Author Showcase at one of the Henderson libraries, which featured 36 local authors, each of whom had books available for sale and were happy to converse with any and all. I actually came away with a couple of books having been charmed by the authors and their work. I will try to fit these into my current reading program and will write reviews.

First of all, I was amazed at all these local writers, only one of whom I had heard of — she happens to be my oldest friend here in the Las Vegas area. I am looking forward to reading her book, which I have been hearing about for the past few years as she has worked on it. It is called Whisper in the Blood, by S.H. Montgomery and is, I believe, a family saga set in Chicago.

The other book I acquired is a collection of short stories called Chapel of Eternal Love: Wedding Stories from Las Vegas by Stephen Murray. This is not a typical subject for me, but I am interested in books about Las Vegas, so my acquisition is not completely off the wall. The author is a charming Englishman by way of South Africa who has taken the phenomenon of local wedding chapels and written stories about some of the interesting types who turn up in Las Vegas to get married. If you have not been to Las Vegas, you may not know that this is the wedding capital of the world. I did not know this, but Stephen says there are over 300 weddings per day at one or another of those little wedding chapels along the Strip — or near it — where people apparently flock to tie the knot. I hope this turns out to be as interesting as it sounds.

The event featured some speakers in the afternoon, but it was so crowded and I didn't get there early enough for a seat, so I had to pass, but next year I will try to plan better. Anyway, it was fun, and I ran into another old friend who has moved away but happened to be in town visiting. And while I was there, I looked up a word in the OED. More about that later . . .

Blade Runner

Last evening I tried to watch Blade Runner on HBO On Demand, and after the first 45 minutes or so HBO was suddenly not functioning, at least on my cable system. Not sure what the problem was, but it may have been for the better after all. I did not have the patience to wait for a fix, so I decided to try again another day.

I confess to being quite disoriented during the 45 minutes, even though I had been forewarned that the movie was quite unlike the book. For whatever reason, I somehow didn't realize it would be a completely different animal. The world envisioned in the movie was quite different from what I had pictured through reading the book, and only a few of the characters in the book also appeared in the movie, and even their realization was quite altered.

This morning I decided to try again, from the beginning, and with a determination to forget about the book and concentrate on the movie as a separate and distinct creation. Seeing the beginning again was actually helpful because I picked up details I had missed the first time through.

This movie had everything going for it on paper: direction by Ridley Scott, music by Vangelis, excellent star material in Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young and even Joanna Cassidy. Despite this, and taken as a whole, the movie is not one that really spoke to me. I am not fond of the bleak world view of the dystopian imagination. It just doesn't work for me psychologically. There was no indication in the film of any particular reason for the distance view of futuristic architecture and transportation modes, including flying cars, but contrasted with grungy surroundings at the close-up level. There was no sign of anything like a clean room for the bits of science that were going on — development of eyes for the Replicants — the movie's term for androids — that looked to be taking place in garage-like surroundings.

I stumbled upon a Blade Runner Wiki while looking for a definition of the term "blade runner" which one can only guess at from the context of the movie. But I wanted to know basically if this was a term in general use that I had just missed in my forays into science fiction. Anyway, Blade Runner fans may enjoy the Wiki which can be found here. I can see from having viewed parts of the movie twice, that it benefits from repeat viewings because it may be more textured than meets the eye the first time around.

On balance, I am glad I finally saw the movie, but Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was more satisfying. For one thing, there is a sense of humor that underlies the book, not to mention evidence of actual human emotion. The movie is entirely devoid of humor, and there is inconsistency of emotional expression on the part of both humans and Replicants. I can't say it is a bad movie, but it unfortunately didn't light my fire.

>7 Poquette: I did not care for the movie when I saw it - but compared to the film versions of some other favorite books, it is not that bad actually (mainly because it is different) :)

A Loeb Classical Library Reader (2006), 234 pages

The point of the Loeb Classical Library, a series of almost 500 books published by Harvard University Press, is to provide ancient Greek and Roman texts in their respective original Greek or Latin with English translation on the facing page. These are, of course, very useful to students or anyone interested in exploring materials found in the Loeb Classical Library. The present volume consists of excerpts from 33 of the most famous ancient authors and works.

Here we have an introductory sampler of what the editors call "lapidary nuggets . . . including poetry, dialogue, philosophical writing, history, descriptive reporting, satire and fiction — giving a glimpse at the wide range of arts and sciences, styles and convictions" of sixteen Greek and seventeen Roman writers in five or six pages each.

Most of these are very interesting for what they reveal about the ancient life and mind, and also for the brief exposure they provide to various pieces of literature, which are more interesting than their variously musty reputations may have led us to believe.

As I typically do, I made brief notes as I read hoping to capture the essence of each item. The Greek texts are first:

HOMER, Odyssey 9.307-414
The first selection is from the Odyssey of Homer, and it is one of the most blood-thirsty passages from this otherwise rather tame epic wherein Odysseus describes how he blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus in order to escape from his cave. First he plies the Cyclops with wine until he falls into a drunken stupor:

Then it was I who thrust the stake under the deep ashes until it should grow hot, and heartened all my comrades with cheering words, so that no man might falter from fear. But when presently that stake of olivewood was about to catch fire, green though it was, and began to glow terribly, then it was I who brought it near from the fire, and my comrades stood round me and a god breathed into us great courage. They took the stake of olivewood, sharp at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I, throwing my weight upon it from above, whirled it round, as a man bores a ship's timber with a drill, while those below keep it spinning with the strap, which they lay hold of by either end, and the drill runs unceasingly. Even so we took the fiery-pointed stake and whirled it around in his eye, and the blood flowed round it, all hot as it was. His eyelids above and below and his brows were all singed by the flame from the burning eyeball, and its roots crackled in the fire.

And it goes on. I had forgotten how graphic this episode was because I more recently read the Iliad where carnage and brutality dominate the entire work. Still, you have to love the wonderful way Homer tells a story.

EURIPIDES, Medea 764-865
Having received asylum in Athens, Medea plots revenge against unfaithful Jason. She is determined to kill her children while the Chorus begs her not to.

I recently read a different account of Jason and Medea in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women.

HERODOTUS, Persian Wars 1.1-4
The opening passages of The Histories, which I recently read in the excellent Landmark edition, wherein the initial difficulties between Greeks and Persians — involving the theft of women in all cases and culminating in the Trojan War — are laid out as a preface to what will come.

THUCYDIDES, History of the Peloponnesian War 6.19.2-24.4
The general Nicias argues against attempting to invade Sicily, but the Athenians seem even more determined to do it. The protracted war in Sicily was the beginning of the end of Athens.

ARISTOPHANES, Lysistrata 90-154
Lysistrata tries to convince Athenian women to deny their husbands sex until the war with Sparta is over.

This translation is X-rated! Calling a spade a spade.

XENOPHON, Anabasis 3.1.2-10
Xenophon tells how he was persuaded under false pretenses — despite consulting with Socrates — to accompany the Greeks on their expedition against Cyrus (the Younger).

Xenophon's style is much different from that of Herodotus. Interesting . . .

PLATO, Phaedo 3-5
On the day of his execution Socrates ironically speaks of the pleasure incurred by having his fetters removed. He is questioned about the poetry he wrote while in confinement, and he explains he composed it because of a recurring dream.

The Phaedo was the first dialogue I ever read when I was a teenager. I have a soft spot in my heart for Plato as a result.

ARISTOTLE, Poetics 4
Origins and early development of dramatic poetry and the relative merits of various meters.

CALLIMACHUS, Hymns 6.24-117
A hymn to Demeter in which a sacrilege is punished.

JOSEPHUS, Jewish War 7.280-303
Fascinating description of Masada and the construction of Herod's fortress palace on the heights thereof.

PLUTARCH, Brutus 4-6
Caesar was apparently a mentor to Brutus who, according to Plutarch, may have been his own son. This gives new meaning to the words, "Et tu, Brute!"

LUCIAN, Dialogues of the Gods 2
A brief conversation between Pan and Hermes in which Pan reminds Hermes of the unique manner in which he fathered Pan and in which Hermes asks that Pan not call him daddy when anyone can hear.

PAUSANIAS, Description of Greece 5.6.7-8, 5.7.6-10
A woman disguises herself as the gymnastic trainer she is, and when her son is victorious at the Olympic games, exposes her womanhood. She should have been punished, for women's attendance at the games was prohibited, but they made an exception in this case.

This is the last of the Greek texts. The following are from the Roman/Latin period:

TERENCE, The Brothers 26-77
Micio is lenient with his nephew/adopted son Aeschines, much to the disapproval of his disciplinarian natural father.

CICERO, On Duties 3.5
Cicero uses "Nature's laws" to argue for duty to one's neighbor.

CAESAR, Gallic War 4.17-19
Caesar describes how he constructed the first ever bridge over the Rhine.

LUCRETIUS, On the Nature of Things 2.1-61
A brief poetic passage illustrating the Epicurean ideal: peace of mind.

VIRGIL, Aeneid 2.1-56
Aeneas' account to Dido of how Troy fell before the great horse, a treacherous gift of the Greeks.

HORACE, Odes 1.18, 1.37
Two odes, one on the blessings and dangers of wine, the other celebrating the defeat at Actium and subsequent suicide of Cleopatra.

LIVY, History of Rome 1.9
In early Rome, being dangerously short of women and meeting with rejection on all sides to marry with other realms, the Romans staged games in honor of Neptune and invited outsiders to attend, among them the Sabines. The games were a pretext for abducting the Sabine women and forcing them into marriage with Roman men.

PROPERTIUS, Elegies 1.1, 1.4
Two mildly tongue-in-cheek poems about the problems of love.

OVID, Heroines 7.3-44
The Heroines or Heroides is a collection of imaginary letters by aggrieved women from Greek and Roman mythology which were drawn upon by Chaucer in his Legend of Good Women. The excerpt here is from a letter by Dido to Aeneas.

MANILIUS, Astronomica 2.136-202
A fascinating description of how the ancients saw the constellations of the zodiac in relation to each other as they passed across the sky from one season to the next.

SENECA, Octavia 593-645
Octavia is a play long thought to be by Seneca but its attribution is now unknown. Octavia was the first wife of Nero, who had murdered his mother Agrippina. This excerpt is a speech of the ghost of Agrippina, who has returned from Tartarus and rails against her son's crimes.

PLINY, Natural History 35.36.79-87
Apelles, considered the finest painter of antiquity, was called upon by Alexander to paint his favorite mistress in the nude. When he learned the artist had fallen in love with her, Alexander gave her to Apelles.

PETRONIUS, Satyricon 31-33
An account of unusual occurrences at a dinner party — probably one of the book's tamer incidents!

PLINY THE YOUNGER, Letters 6.16.4-20
A gripping account of how his uncle, Pliny the Elder, when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, sailed down the Bay of Naples in a large war ship in hopes of rescuing his friends and others, but he lingered too long and succumbed to fumes from the volcano.

JUVENAL, Satires 3.268-322
Horrifying yet humorous tale of the potential dangers, whether from falling roof tiles or being mugged, of being out at night in ancient Rome.

APULEIUS, Metamorphoses 3.21, 3.24-26
After watching Pamphile turn herself into an owl by rubbing a certain ointment all over her body, Lucius surreptitiously tries to do the same but got the wrong ointment and instead turns himself into an ass!

JEROME, Letters 43
A letter extolling the simple country life.

>8 AnnieMod: Sorry, I seem to have cross-posted with you, Annie. I fully agree about Blade Runner. It probably is not a bad movie, it just isn't a type that I am crazy about.

>10 Poquette:
Why sorry? :) It happens when you work on long post to have someone sneak in and say something.

>9 Poquette: I have that one at home and still hope to actually learn enough Latin to be able to read the Latin part. Seems less and less likely but who knows. :) Nice summaries - makes me wonder if I should just read it (the English pages anyway) and then return to it again if/when I have some grasp of another language...

>11 AnnieMod: That's what I ended up doing. I am trying to review my high school Latin and decided to read the English to help decide which text I might like to actually tackle. I have both The Aeneid and Caesar's Gallic War complete, and will probably fool around with both. I also have a volume of Boethius in the Loeb edition, and access to the Bible on line, so there is no shortage of source material. Not to mention The Latin Library and its subsidiary web sites.

>9 Poquette: hmmm. Never thought of reading something like this before. Maybe...

>12 Poquette:: I'm very impressed with your commitment! I forget most of my school Latin, and fear it would be a major task to crank up my brain to learn it again. But never say never - I'm going to add this series to my wish list in case one day.... I remember studying The Aeneid and Cicero, but the others are new to me.

>9 Poquette: I like the idea of letters written by abandoned classical heroines. I just downloaded Heroides, and also Metamorphoses, which I have read at least in part but as usual have forgotten all about. Maybe I should look for some Aristophane too.

>9 Poquette: Suzanne, you always draw me back to wanting to read more ancient Greek and Roman writings. This sounds like an interesting collection.

>9 Poquette: I actually own that book (I picked it up one time when I was in the fabulous Harvard Coop bookstore in Cambridge); thanks for that detailed overview, because I don't think I"m going to get to it anytime soon.

>13 dchaikin: I cannot for the life of me remember when or where I acquired the Loeb Reader! But its chief fascination for me is the arrangement of Latin text facing the English translation. But the exposure to all these ancient works, however slight, has been very interesting indeed. But it's not surprising that there are only 140 copies owned by LT members! So you're not alone.

>14 AlisonY: My commitment, such as it is, is very sporadic at this point. It's sort of like playing chess: I love the idea of playing chess — or reading Latin! — as much as the actuality of doing it!

>15 FlorenceArt: Ovid's Metamorphoses is on my list to reread this year. Before reading Chaucer's Legend of Good Women last year, I had not given the Heroides any thought at all, but it is now definitely on my list of books to acquire and read.

>16 Linda92007: I only wish I hadn't waited till so late in life to read the ancient Greeks. Better late than never, I guess.

>17 rebeccanyc: I started the book in November and have been reading it in short spurts. It's one of those books that easily fills in brief snatches of time — like those endless TV commercial breaks!

Catching up. I might give heresy a try.

>19 baswood: Heresy seems kind of low-brow for you, Barry. But if you're just looking for some period entertainment, it may work.

The Flanders Road by Claude Simon (1960), 193 pages

A movement arose among French writers in the 1950s and early 1960s that has come to be known as the nouveau roman (new novel). The nouveau roman style was not uniform except in the underlying intent to move its focus away from conventional aspects of the novel such as plot, character, action, narrative and ideas. Some novels from this era have become cult classics of sorts, but most people can happily pass them by.

The Flanders Road, true to form, has dispensed with plot, narrative and action. It concerns itself with an incident that took place in 1940 in northeastern France where the French cavalry — mounted on horseback, you understand — were tasked with stopping a division of German tanks! The weather was foul and the scene was of utter carnage. During a lull in the action and quite unexpectedly, a French officer is killed by a sniper, and this becomes the central event of this novel which, through a stream-of-consciousness reportage, is rehearsed again and again in the context of other memories and associations that come to mind.

The book is not easy to stay with because it goes absolutely nowhere, and the long unpunctuated sentences that run endlessly together have a disorienting effect. Which is probably what the author intended, because the reader comes away with powerful visual impressions, if nothing else.

I read this book mostly out of curiosity and didn't really expect to like it, so I was not disappointed. But all is not lost: there is nothing like going to a primary source to understand something about a defunct literary movement. Now I know.

A bold try and yes, now you know. So great lesson. And actually it sounds like it was a bit rewarding. Not that I'm about to go pick up my first nouveau roman.

Yes, Dan, it was a bit rewarding in some ways, but I can only recommend it as a curiosity piece.

>21 Poquette: I'm beginning to think that we have absolutely opposed tastes, so I will probably like La route des Flandres :-)

In fact I'm pretty sure I will. My own reading of L'acacia is progressing very slowly, one chapter every two or three weeks. The structure of the book makes that easy. I agree that the style is disorienting, I would even say dizzying, in an almost physical sense, which is why I can't read the whole book at once.

I only read one other book by Claude Simon, and the interesting things is that this episode with the sniper features in both books as well as the one you wrote. I understand it's autobiographical.

>21 Poquette: Thanks for reading that one so the rest of us don't have to! (Not that I'd ever heard of it, of course.)

>24 FlorenceArt: I refuse to give up. Surely there is something out there we both will like!

The Flanders Road was slow-going probably for the same reasons you mention. Dizzying is the word!

>25 rebeccanyc: Always happy to be of service! ;-)

Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson (1930) 256 pages

I got off to a very rocky start with this book — beginning with the first sentence!

"An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful."

Skipping over "in ordinary speech" for the moment, I was not aware that ambiguity was "as a rule witty or deceitful." This sentence sent me to two different dictionaries and ultimately — when I was at the library the other day anyway — to the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. None of these sources contradicted my presumed definition of "ambiguous" or "ambiguity," but interestingly and as an aside, the OED actually quotes this very sentence in its section of historical usage. For the sake of brevity, let me quote the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:

ambiguous: having more than one meaning; open to different interpretations.

Nowhere in any of my sources — the third being Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2008) — were the words "witty" or "deceitful" to be found.

While Empson's presumably working definition invokes "ordinary speech," his book deals almost exclusively with an analysis of poetry — hardly anybody's concept of ordinary speech. But let us forget about this unfortunate phraseology because it merely detracts from what turns out to be a very useful and important book.

Empson has conceived of seven main types of literary ambiguity along with innumerable subtypes and variations, all of which he illustrates with detailed exegesis of poems, especially from Shakespeare, John Donne and John Dryden. Some of Empson's types are easier to absorb than others, but his explanation of individual poems are highly enlightening and worth the investment of time to understand and overlook his sometimes obscure language.

For example, the first type is so complicated that a complete definition is difficult to sum up and state succinctly, but a single line from Shakespeare will serve to illustrate the idea that "a word or a grammatical structure is effective in several ways at once":

      Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang
                              —Sonnet LXXII

. . . because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved in knots and so forth, because they used to be surrounded by a sheltering building crystallized out of the likeness of a forest, and colored with stained glass and painting like flowers and leaves, because they are now abandoned by all but the gray walls colored like the skies of winter . . . all combine to give the line its beauty, and there is a sort of ambiguity in not knowing which of them to hold most clearly in mind. Clearly this is involved in all such richness and heightening of effect, and the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.

How powerful is that?

Here is another example, the third type of ambiguity, in which two ideas "can be given in one word simultaneously":

                                  Delilah,
      That specious monster, my accomplished snare.
                        —Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 230

The operative word here is specious, which in its original definition meant "beautiful," and only later acquired the meaning of "having deceptive attraction or allure." If you know both meanings, you feel the hidden power of "That specious monster."

Empson refers to these words with double meanings as puns, and technically perhaps they are. Shakespeare's poetry — both sonnets and plays — is full of them, as Empson demonstrates again and again. He directly says that most of the ambiguities he has considered seem beautiful to him — again, not our customary notion of a pun.

The many ambiguities seen in poem after poem make us conscious of the tensions raised by the contradictions if we can see them. The more prominent the contradiction, the greater the tension.

Some critics have argued that Empson's ambiguities are not that at all but merely demonstrate the many creative uses of language in poetry. I see in his analysis something akin to hermeneutics, which originated among Biblical scholars in identifying different levels of interpretation and later made more generally familiar in literary criticism by Norbert Fry. However, one wishes to look at it, Empson's analysis opens us up to a deep understanding of the complexity of poetry.

Here are the books that caught my attention from your threads here in Club Read during the month of March:

March Wish List

Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida edited by Robert Chandler (***rebeccanyc)
The Gaugin Connection, etc., by Estelle Ryan (***pmarshall — first in a series about art fraud — light reading fare)
Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang (***wandering_star — intriguing science fiction stories)
Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance by Gordon Braden (***baswood)
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine (***amysisson — YA novel based on fairytale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses")
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (***AnnieMod and ***valkyrdeath recommended this as a good place to begin with Pratchett)
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett (***valkyrdeath also recommended this)
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson (***AnnieMod — speculative fiction set in the near future)
The Chymical Wedding by Lindsay Clarke (***reva8 — see review)
The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann (***linda92007 — sounds like a fun light read)
Get in Trouble by Kelly Link (***AnnieMod — a collection of imaginative SF novellas)
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (***AnnieMod — read this first)
Outline by Rachel Cusk (***RidgewayGirl — a novel that feels like a writing exercise)
Pushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov (***rebeccanyc — well-written satire of Soviet life)

Interesting reading this month. You liked Heresy much more than I did -- it seemed really forced to me.

Enjoyed your review of Seven types of Ambiguity, which does seem to be worth reading.

>29 janeajones: For some reason, I didn't notice that. Having read Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition last year, my focus was on other things.

>30 baswood: I thought of you while reading Empson. His prose takes some getting used to, but there are some pearls to be found.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964), 211 pages

I loved this book!

This is a memoir of Hemingway's early years in Paris of the 1920s. In many ways it seems like a collection of short stories. Each chapter has the unity and feel of an intimate first person narrative, yet in this case the characters and events are real. Even though it was published posthumously, Hemingway had edited and reedited the chapters so that they were fairly well finished and almost suitable for publication.

Between his encounters with Gertrude Stein, Silvia Beach, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others, we get a feel for his life as a writer, where he worked and why, his discipline, the way he honed his style. Sometimes he wrote in cafés, especially in winter where it was warm, but otherwise he rented a room at the top of a cheap hotel where he could work undisturbed. Hemingway admits that he had a short temper as a young man, and it angered him when someone came into "his" café where he had staked out his writing territory and insisted on prattling on and on when it was clear he was working and wanted the interloper to clear off.

He first met Gertrude Stein while strolling in the Luxembourg Gardens. They became friendly and she let him know she was at home every day after five in winter. She was a great talker and had many prejudices about other writers, depending on whether they spoke favorably about her work or not. Hemingway credits her with coining the term "lost generation."

The first time he went to Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach's bookshop — which also had a large lending library, Hemingway had no money with him, and she very kindly registered him, sent him away with an armload of books and trusted him to pay the rental fee later. This was before he had written anything but the journalistic pieces for foreign newspapers that paid his bills, so he was like any stranger coming in off the street.

Ezra Pound was a saint in Hemingway's eyes. He was ". . . the man I liked and trusted the most as a critic then, the man who believed in the mot juste — the one and only correct word to use — the man who had taught me to distrust adjectives . . ."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is the subject of the longest piece in the book, was one of Hemingway's closest friends, although I cannot think why based on Hemingway's own characterization. Fitzgerald actually made him quite angry the time they went down to Lyon by train to pick up Scott's car, which had been left there because of bad weather on account of its not having a top. Things got off to a rocky start when Fitzgerald missed the train. A flurry of wires back and forth got them together in Lyon where Fitzgerald immediately showed his hypochondria, going straight to bed and demanding that Hemingway go out and get him a thermometer — never mind that the pharmacy was closed. He insisted he was dying of pneumonia even though his forehead was cool to the touch and he showed no signs of distress other than having had too much to drink.

So Ezra Pound was a saint, but Wyndham Lewis had the appearance of the devil. Ford Madox Ford behaved like a stuffed shirt (my words) and Ernest Walsh, a poet, was a bit of a con man, promising a thousand-dollar literary award to both Pound and Hemingway, and possibly also to James Joyce. Hemingway doesn't say whether anyone ever got the money!

Hemingway prematurely gave up his journalistic income to devote full time to writing, and this meant that he and his wife Hadley went through some lean and hungry times. They both loved the horse races, and in those days a lot of doping was going on, and the savvy horse player could do well. Hemingway eventually gave up the gambling for several reasons, but the most important was that it ate into his writing time too much.

On one occasion Hemingway had been staying and working down in Lausanne where Hadley was to join him later for a holiday. As a surprise, she had packed up all his yet to be published manuscripts so he could work on them. Her bag was stolen at the Gare de Lyon. When Hemingway later realized that "typescripts and carbons" were in that suitcase, the loss was devastating. It took him a while before he could pick up a pen to write again.

Hemingway's "stories" about his life in and sometimes out of Paris in the early twenties are just wonderful. He puts the reader right there in the milieu of the Left Bank. If one knows Paris at all and is interested in the time of the lost generation, A Moveable Feast should be a very satisfying read.

I don't think I'll be reading Seven Types of Ambiguity, but I liked reading your review of it.

A Moveable Feast sounds like a lot of fun and a must-read for anyone interested in the period.

"Shakespeare and Company" came up quite a bit in the book Hedy's Folly. George Antheil and his wife lived there for a while. I am not a Hemingway fan, but this one sounds really good and not depressing at all!! That is quite the trick, making me interested in picking up a Hemingway again.

I also am thinking I would like to watch the movie "Midnight in Paris". My son watched it in school and liked it. :)

Excellent review of A moveable Feast. Hemingway is much maligned as a writer of literature, but I enjoy his novels. I have A moveable Feast on my bookshelves, but have never read it so I think I will get to it soon.

Shakespeare and Company book store is still there in Paris. I drop in whenever I am lucky enough to get to Paris.

>32 Poquette:: A Moveable Feast sounds really interesting. Added to the wish list...

I think I read A Moveable Feast when I was in high school (the last time I read anything by Hemingway), but that was SO long ago . . . Enjoyed reading about it now.

Enjoyed reading your review of A Moveable Feast -- I read it back in the 1970s and your description brought it all back.

>33 DieFledermaus: When I acquired Seven Types of Ambiguity I did not realize it would be so focused on poetry and might have given it a pass. Definitely not for everyone, but I did enjoy some of the insights into Shakespeare.

>34 avidmom: Funny you should mention Midnight in Paris. It has become one of my favorite movies. Not to be missed! I am thinking of buying the DVD even though I have already watched it several times. I am almost certain the screenwriters — Woody Allen? — must have read A Moveable Feast!

>35 baswood: I like Hemingway's writing, even though there was one book I didn't like at all. Can't remember now which one.

I too visited Shakespeare and Company when I stayed in Paris. It was fun to see it and to experience the whole Left Bank locale, which is where I was staying.

>36 AlisonY: Hope you'll enjoy it when you get to it.

>37 rebeccanyc: In some ways I am glad I did not read A Moveable Feast when I was younger. It really helps to have a grounding in the time and place and the whole 1920s thing to really enjoy the descriptions of people and locales.

>38 janeajones: Thanks Jane! I hope I didn't tell too much!

>27 Poquette: - I liked your review, I started to read Empson at Christmas. His starting point is interesting, I didn't look it up but I had a similar reaction. And I agree about his prose style, I was reading and rereading sentences and in the end decided to just read on and let it take me wherever, which is something I associate sometimes with hermeneutics (and poetry), just need to let it do that. And as you say, having read him on Shakespeare, enjoy the ride. But haven't had time to let myself float with it like that, I have 6 1/2 types to go.

>32 Poquette: I love that Hemingway - a conversation with a friend led me to buy a copy (no I see now I didn't buy it just previewed on amazon) as I'd read it from the library and I was surprised to find the copy I looked at was a new edition that seemed to have a load of chapters not in the one I read before as i remember it - so I am looking forward to that, though I then read that others did not rate this edition as much, I think, maybe that's what put me off.

>40 tonikat: Hi Tony! I am glad you have Empson and that you see what I mean about his style. I had to do the same as you, just float with it. In effect I ended up reading it twice. The first time through I was just hitting the high points trying to ferret out some meaning that I could hold onto. Occasionally I would hit something that really resonated. Then I jumped to the end to see his summary. Then I went back and started all over and it started to fall into place. I have marked a lot of passages for future reference. I learned a lot about certain techniques that create evocative images. So it was very useful both from the standpoint of reading poetry and from a writer's standpoint as well — and the interpretation of Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton and such.

I saw those negative reviews of A Moveable Feast, and I think the problem is that you really need to be familiar with the writers, the whole lost generation thing and with Paris itself, and what it's like just sitting in a café, watching the scene, writing in your journal, reading a book, eavesdropping, etc. If you have strolled through the Luxembourg gardens, and know what it's like just wandering around the Left Bank, up the Boulevard San Michel and along the Blvd. St. Germaine, along the quays, etc., the book is very evocative. If you don't know something about the writers, the place, etc., I can see how it would fall flat.

Great review of A Moveable Feast, Suzanne. I haven't read Hemingway in many, many years and feel like I should revisit him.

.42 Thanks, Linda. This one is a winner.

>27 Poquette: Just catching up on your thread. Your review of Seven Types of Ambiguity is fantastic. Like you, I ended up reading it twice (his prose really is difficult, isn't it?), although I was reading it primarily for his writing on Donne. Really enjoyed your review of A Moveable Feast too.

I'm happy to read your comments on Seven Types of Ambiguity, which I have in my shelves. I can't imagine that I'll read it with as much attention as you did (maybe now I don't have to), but at some point I will skim it.

>44 reva8: and >45 Nickelini: Yes, you have to go into training for Empson! The book is probably most useful as a reference, but there is no index so you would have to familiarize yourself with it first. So I agree that you probably don't have to read the whole thing unless you want to.

Catching up. Very inter about Seven Types of Ambiguity, great review and very strange first sentence.

Fascinated by your review of A Moveable Feast. I mean i've read other reviews before and been captured by them before, but still you got me fascinated all over again.

>47 dchaikin: Sorry for the tardy response, Dan. I think you would enjoy A Moveable Feast.

Been out of town for a week and now it's catch-up time. I am so far behind. Going away is so disruptive!

Finished a great book just before I left, with no time to review, so that's first on the agenda. The book is Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser, a Pulitzer Prize winner (1997 for Martin Dressler). Somehow that one slipped by under my radar, and I would still be in the dark were it not for Michael Dirda's review in Bound to Please. Something about his comments struck a chord and I immediately acquired Little Kingdoms for my Kindle. It consists of three longish stories that fit nicely into my "quirky dreamy novellas" category in every possible way. What a wonderful book, about which more to come. One of the stories caused me to have a genuine epiphany about endings, which is going to send me straight back to Bruno Schulz about whose story endings I complained bitterly. At the time I knew I was missing something, and it bothered me that I could be so obtuse. I think I understand why now, and I am prepared to reassess.

Have any of you read any Millhauser? One of his stories was apparently the basis for The Illusionist, the 2006 movie starring Edward Norton and Jennifer Biel about a 19th century magician — one of my favorite movies.

In reading over the above comments I just realized that I have been going around saying that fantasy is not one of my favorite genres. But that is not quite true. There is fantasy and then there is fantasy — which is to say that the term is so broad as to be almost meaningless. There seem to be certain types that grab me by the throat, and others that I don't relate to at all. Must give this more thought and see if I can identify what the distinguishing characteristics are.

Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser (1993), 240 pages, Kindle edition

Once in a while one runs across an author whose work is so satisfying that it screams "More, more, more!" Not to mention "Bravo!" Steven Millhauser is such a writer for me. Somehow his name did not register when he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for Martin Dressler: The Tale of An American Dreamer. His older collection of three novellas entitled Little Kingdoms (1993) fits right into the dreamy world invoked by the subtitle of his prizewinning novel.

Millhauser's work has been compared to both Poe and Borges, but I also see a touch of Italo Calvino and Bruno Schulz in the way he takes the reader through the looking glass and into magical worlds that seem almost real until you realize you are inside a dream or a fairy tale — the kind you don't want to end.

The three novellas in this book are about as different from each other as one could imagine, and each appeals, perhaps, to a different part of the imagination. The first story is a straightforward narrative in which one thing happens after another, leading to a climax; the second story is based on a fairy tale but with a unique metafictional vision, and the third purports to be a catalog of pictures at an exhibition but is in the end much more dramatic. Every reader will come away with his or her own favorite, but the stories are all amazing in their own way.

"The Little Kingdoms of J. Franklin Payne" — This story seems to have the broadest appeal judging from the reviews, but in terms of voice and tone it is the most prosaic. A Midwestern newspaper cartoonist gets a job at a New York newspaper. His cartoons have always been quite fanciful, and often involve a child at night in a toy shop where inanimate objects start to take on a life of their own. It is in New York were he begins doing animations of his fanciful ideas in his spare time. The more fanciful and bizarre his movie cartoons become, the more his own fanciful world departs from reality, and he gradually has trouble distinguishing between the two. The story ending is ambiguous in the most satisfying way.

"The Princess, the Dwarf and the Dungeon" — This is a brilliant, brilliant story. Maybe the story to end all stories. At once a fairy tale and a commentary on fairy tales, it addresses the elusiveness of truth behind a story, the complexity of different versions, and the rise and fall of different versions in public taste. The tone, attention to detail and unusual format all are reflections of an unusual mind. Millhauser caused this reader to see just how unimportant, in certain instances, endings really may be. It is the "storyness" of the story that grabs us. Millhauser does not allow one to read this story passively, merely absorbing the atmosphere, the thrill of adventure, the unfolding action, etc. He keeps the wheels turning, and it is the metafiction that makes this happen. Fairy tales are a lot like mystery stories, except that you want and are expecting a certain kind of ending. Millhauser shatters the need for a specific ending. He cleverly builds to a kind of climax just before he closes, and you realize that it was the story that was important and all the possibilities he cunningly planted in your head, just as he cunningly manipulated the thoughts of his characters. He talks the reader into an entirely new and unanticipated expectation. This is a work of true genius.

"Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810-1846)" — No exhibition catalog ever read like this one! Here Millhauser has found a way to tell the story of four lives through what purport to be descriptions of 26 paintings, which have titles like "Galatea," "Clair de Lune," "Nachtstück," "The House of Usher," "Totentanz," filled with cultural references and nineteenth century Romantic musical and literary allusions. Some of the descriptions remind one vaguely of actual paintings, the unreal style of which must have been something like Van Gogh meets Turner with an overlay of Rothko. The dramatic lives of the four protagonists remind one of the excesses of Romanticism. Instead of an illustrated story, the pictures are the story in which, after reading all the captions, one has absorbed the intertwined biographies of four people. This is a very sophisticated approach to storytelling, entertaining in its own unique way.

Taken altogether, this was one of the most delightful and satisfying reads I have had in many years. I look forward to reading more of Steven Millhauser. Highly recommended!

Excellent review of Little Kingdoms a book I had not heard about until I read your review

Ditto

I was wondering where you'd gone to! Little Kingdoms sounds great.

Hi, Suzanne, I don't mean to roll back your thread but I just read your review of War in heaven and want to ask--have you seen the Father Brown movie with Alec Guinness? The archdeacon in the book is very reminiscent of Chesterton's character, what with his jolly serenity, a gift for mischief, humbleness and unflappability in the face of evil.

Joan Greenwood of the velvet voice is in the movie too (as she was in Kind hearts and coronets.)

Thanks Barry and Rebecca!

>54 FlorenceArt: I hope you would enjoy Little Kingdoms.

>55 LolaWalser: Sorry, I have not seen the Father Brown movie with Alec Guinness. But I did sort of have Kind Hearts and Coronets in mind when reading and reviewing War in Heaven. Have you read it?

>56 Poquette: Dare I hope...?

>56 Poquette:

Yes, I read it recently. Oh, if you haven't seen Father Brown (I think that's the title, or maybe Father Brown, detective) you'll be in for a treat! It features a stolen chalice too--but no evil more supernatural than Flambeau (here mutated into an aristocratic thief rather than a sinister lowlife).

Great review of Little Kingdoms, Suzanne. I've added it to my wish list.

>51 Poquette: >59 kidzdoc: Ditto!

Little Kingdoms sounds fantastic! Adding to the list. I'd heard of Millhauser before, but mainly in a "weird author who had one mainstream hit but continues to do weird, less-popular stuff".

>51 Poquette: Great review of Millhauser: I hadn't heard of him before, either.

>57 FlorenceArt: LOL! There may be a chance . . . ;-)

>58 LolaWalser: I'll keep a lookout for Guinness's Father Brown.

>59 kidzdoc: and >60 h-mb: Thanks so much!

>61 DieFledermaus: "Weird" may be a good description, but in a very literary way. I think Millhauser has a PhD, or at least was working on one in his youth.

>62 reva8: Thanks, Reva! Millhauser is probably not to everyone's taste, but I am very glad to know about him now. Better late than never!

Well, I made it to April 20 without completely falling off the wagon! The book addiction wagon, that is. Yesterday I felt the need of some immediate entertainment and of course visiting Barnes & Noble came to mind. I rarely go in there these days because I almost never find what I am looking for, and besides, I am trying to stick with my program of reading only books that are already in my possession. It's true that I have taken two tiny spills, but they were Kindle editions, and since I cannot actually see them they don't really count! Yesterday's foray into B&N was a major accident, however, as I came away with four books.

Valkyrdeath's recent comments about Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Dream Hunters caught my attention for some reason. Well, maybe it was because it had "dream" in the title, and when doing my year-end summaries I noticed there were five books I had read in 2014 with "dream" in the title. Then there is my "quirky dreamy novellas" category that I keep adding to. Gaiman has been on my watch list for some time, and I made a mental note to check this one out. Big mistake. Valkyrdeath did say it would help to be familiar with the Sandman series to fully appreciate The Dream Hunters, so to make a long story less long, I came away with volume one, Preludes & Nocturnes as well. I am afraid these are going to cause a detour in my reading plans! Hey, it could have been worse! I might have come away with all ten volumes!

While I was at it, I remembered Cyrel's (torontoc's) recent review of the latest Alan Furst pre-WWII spy novel. I adore espionage and don't remember ever hearing of Alan Furst. I decided to check him out as well. I would have purchased his first novel if it had been there, but since it wasn't, I spied Mission to Paris and snapped it up. This will fit nicely into my reading plans and it promises to be a very good read.

Wandering down the Science Fiction aisle I happened to spy Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312. Now, Robinson wrote my all-time favorite book Red Mars — not to mention Green Mars and Blue Mars — and I could not resist. I probably won't read it this year, although you never know.

This, for me, is what falling off the wagon looks like. The other books I am currently reading will just have to wait.

>64 Poquette: I've heard so many good things about the Mars trilogy and for some reason still haven't got round to them. It's a real gap in my sci-fi reading. I think I'm going to need to remedy that soon.

>65 valkyrdeath: A bit of a warning about the Mars Trilogy, it is a bit dated now. As a piece of speculative fiction written in 1993 that takes place beginning in 2026, some things posited have already either come to pass or are still way in the future. If you can put yourself back in 1993 before smart phones and the Mars landers, for example, you'll enjoy the wonder of it all much more.

Suzanne -- I think you're attracted to Magical Realism rather than fantasy ( which can be very slick and glib). Little Kingdoms sounds wonderful -- must hunt it down.

>66 Poquette: I don't think that would be a problem for me. I read a lot of classic era science fiction so I'm used to looking past that sort of thing. If there's anything that's different to how things turned out, I generally just view it as a sort of alternate world and can still enjoy the story just the same. I do wonder why SF authors so often feel the need to put a year on things though, when a lot of them could avoid dating as quickly simply by not putting such a near future date on them. There's plenty of stories that don't include dates and I never find myself feeling the story is spoiled by not having it tied to a specific period.

>51 Poquette: not all book bullets are equal. Some are bigger than others. Great encouraging review, to read Millhauser.

Catching up on threads. I loved your comments on A Moveable Feast, which if I had to pick just one favorite book, this would be it.

>67 janeajones: Maybe that's it, Jane. What Magical Realism does for the imagination is quite exciting.

>68 valkyrdeath: In the case of Red Mars, it is considered hard SF and even speculative SF, and the science is based on the realm of unrealized possibilities rather than far-out extreme impossibilities. Given the state of affairs when it was written, colonization of Mars by 2026 was something that could have been realized in many people's imagination. The Internet, which was in its infancy, plays an important role, as does nanotechnology, also in its infancy. At the time, it was an enthralling read. I identified completely with the colonists and felt almost as though I had been to Mars when it was finished. It is had to know how one will see it 20-plus years on, and I do hope you will enjoy it.

>69 dchaikin: Thanks much, Dan!

>70 RidgewayGirl: So happy to know you enjoyed A Moveable Feast as much as I did! And that you enjoyed my review. Thanks!

>64 Poquette: - I think a lot of people are trying to read books they already own, but it's so difficult when you read about all the exciting books that other people are reading that you don't own! I really enjoyed Gaiman's Sandman series - his novels are good and a lot of fun also, but I think the Sandman books are my favorite of his stuff.

>72 DieFledermaus: It finally got to me! There seem to be a lot of books this month that people are reading which I want to run right out and buy. And just now I seem to be hungry for pure entertainment. A lot of what I read is more than entertaining, but it is also challenging. There seem to be no quick reads, so I succumbed to a craving for fun. I have started Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes — had to read the first section twice because I am not used to reading such minimalist stuff — and have almost finished Alan Furst's espionage thriller Mission to Paris, which is also terrific. Glad to hear your endorsement of Gaiman. I have been curious about him for years but just never got around to him. This is about to change.

Mission to Paris by Alan Furst (2012), 255 pages

As an off-and-on fan of spy novels and movies, I am both chagrined and pleased to have learned about Alan Furst a few days ago. Mission to Paris is not his latest novel, but I was attracted by the title and its reference to Paris.

The novel takes place in 1938 and 1939, when pre-World War II tension was at its peak. Hollywood movie star Fredric Stahl — through a series of intra-studio machinations involving trading the services of one star for another — ends up being assigned to do a movie in Paris for the European market. Fredric is an émigré to the United States from Vienna and, because he does not have the protection U.S. citizenship would have afforded him, he is targeted by the Nazi propaganda machine to entice him into contributing to pro-Nazi cultural causes. Fredric resists, and the Nazis do not take no for an answer, so a game of cat and mouse ensues as he finds himself more and more threatened by the course of events.

In addition to the intrigue that carries the story along, one receives several subtle lessons in WWII history that one is unlikely to have read about in the history books. Mission to Paris brought to the forefront the vulnerability in those years of émigrés to France from lands under Nazi influence or control. In the immediate lead-up to the war, Nazi agents operating in France sub rosa treated the émigrés almost as escaped criminals, and many of them, having no papers, were living in a constant state of fear of deportation or worse. The film Casablanca touches on this to some extent, but Furst manages to demonstrate how subtly the Nazis operated in this sphere even before the war had begun.

The Nazis were also behind a so-called peace movement that fostered improved relations between France and Germany but really had as its motive to bring France under German hegemony without the necessity of an invasion. They had recruited émigré aristocrats and businessmen to their cause, trying to take advantage of the level of fear of a war with Germany that gripped all of Europe at the time.

Mission to Paris weaves these issues into the action so you come away feeling doubly compensated for time invested in the book. Not only is it the fast-paced action that carries the reader along, but the book delivers an interesting historical perspective as well, and you come away with a better understanding of what it felt like to be in Paris at that crucial period.

Alan Furst's writing is unexpectedly graceful and even lyrical at times. Here is how the novel opens:

In Paris, the evenings of September are sometimes warm, excessively gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistibly seductive. The autumn of the year 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafés, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affaires, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war — that too had its moment.

I find it hard to resist such evocative writing and will definitely look forward to reading more of Furst's books in the near future.

>74 Poquette: I've been enjoying books like this over the past few months, where the fiction draws you into becoming really interested in a lesser known aspect of a major war or historical event. Thanks for the review, Suzanne - on the wish list.

I thought Mission to Paris was one of Furst's least successful books. You're in for a treat.

>75 AlisonY: Hope you enjoy it as much as I did, Alison.

>76 RidgewayGirl: Hmmm, interesting. Now I am really curious!

The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes (vol. 1) by Neil Gaiman (1988) 240 pages

Graphic novels are a new thing for me, unless you count Audrey Niffeneger's The Night Bookmobile, which I don't, really, because it was rather too short to be counted as a book. Anyway, I suspect that I could have done much worse than to pick Neil Gaiman's work as a starting point.

I have been trying to categorize this in my own mind, and I would call it a mythological fantasy, on the dark side. While there is much to admire about it — the many layers of literary reference, the awesome artwork — I cannot say it really grabbed me, largely because the world it represents is completely amoral. And I mean this in the ethical sense. I did not find an ethical base to it. Perhaps I need to read it again, and perhaps I will.

The kind of dystopian world represented here seems to feed a taste for "anything goes as long as I get what I want." Perhaps I am showing my age here, but I find this too bleak and unappealing. Also, I am not a fan of the dystopian point of view in general. This hovers too close to that world view for comfort. How can one survive in a world where a friendly taxi driver is blown away just because?

One wants to really like Morpheus, the King of Dreams. The character is very well drawn and fleshed out. He might be described as the ultimate anti-hero, and he speaks in a tone that approaches the poetic. Having been captured and imprisoned for many decades by a thoroughly despicable magus and his equally unattractive son, once unleashed he goes on a quest for the tools that were stolen from him, which represent his strength. And this quest is at the crux of the story line.

I was particularly taken with the quality of the artwork in this volume. It is, according to the Afterword by Gaiman, fully recolored. This Vertigo edition is published on heavy glossy paper, something I had not expected in what started out as a series of comic books. The stories are very imaginatively illustrated. As I said in an earlier post, this kind of minimalist writing demands one's full attention to the detail of the drawings, and every word counts. I can see why people read them over and over again, because there are many subtleties that one can miss on first reading. I found that out because I had to read the first story twice to fully get the hang of the presentation and what was going on. I particularly admire the painting/collages on each story title page. Even though they are very modern, making full use of photography and overlays and various other tricks of the trade, they follow the old presentation techniques of medieval manuscripts with the imaginatively "illuminated" borders, etc.

I may eventually get around to reading the next nine volumes. The reason I picked this up to read in the first place was that I was attracted to a review of The Sandman: The Dream Makers, which was published in 2009, long after the original ten-volume series, and was advised that it might help to have some acquaintance with the series in order to fully appreciate the newer book. After I read The Dream Makers, I'll see if I want to delve further into this. There is much to like about what I have seen thus far, and yet the fundamentals right off the bat are a tad disappointing. However, I am very glad to have had an introduction to The Sandman series.

Just catching up. Enjoyed your review on Little Kingdoms, particularly in relation to how you reassessed your view of Bruno Schulz's endings.

Enjoyed your review of Mission to Paris. Another book that I think I would enjoy. I think Neil Gaiman will remain a blindspot for me.

>79 zenomax: It seems to be a kind of kismet that caused me to read Little Kingdoms, and I am very glad for the insights it provided.

>80 baswood: Thanks Barry. I think you would enjoy Mission to Paris. There is also a map of the city, which I forgot to mention in my review.

The Chapel of Eternal Love: Wedding Stories from Las Vegas by Stephen Murray (2013), 180 pages

According to the Las Vegas Advisor, more than 400 weddings take place every day at one of the sixty or so dedicated wedding chapels that are found in and around Las Vegas, about half of which are independently operated and half are located at the major hotels. Wedding chapels have been part of the scene in Las Vegas since its earliest days as a destination, and the large number of marriages that take place identify Vegas as not only a gambling Mecca but also as a major locale for weddings.

The Chapel of Eternal Love won't be found in any guidebooks as it is a fictional place where author Stephen Murray has created a day in the life of a Las Vegas wedding chapel. He shares stories of the whole variety of couples that ironically are apt to gravitate to what is almost universally known as "Sin City" to tie the knot. Some of the stories will make you smile, some will cause the vision to fog momentarily, but all reflect on the common instincts that cause people to want to be married. These are simple stories, mostly about simple folk, and they provide a quite different view of what goes on in Las Vegas.

This is not my usual reading fare, but I happened to meet the author at a recent gathering of local authors sponsored by a neighborhood library and was intrigued enough to buy and read his book.

A Japanese Ukiyo-e Woodblock Print

Sandman: The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell (2009), 144 pages

What a difference a couple of decades make. The grunge and hellish vision of Preludes & Nocturnes (1988) has been replaced with the beauty and wonder of The Dream Hunters (2009), which is set in the "the floating world" of Japanese ukiyo-e. The reader is immersed in a world of fable and — of course — dreams.

The visual setting of The Dream Hunters is nothing short of amazing. That a 21st century cartoonist could mimic the style and spirit of ukiyo-e and sustain it consistently throughout this graphic novel seems to this observer a feat of real artistry. All kudos go to P. Craig Russell, whose conceptions and execution are stunning. "The floating world" and dreams seem made for each other.

Ukiyo-e is the general term used to describe a school of Japanese woodblock printmaking that flourished during the Edo period, encompassing roughly the 17th through the 19th centuries. In English "ukiyo-e" has been translated as "pictures of the floating world." The range of subject matter runs from nature and travel scenes to beautiful women and erotica, and much more. Literally thousands of these woodblock prints have survived and they provide a unique world view, itself somewhat cartoonlike.

The fable providing the text for The Dream Hunters is one that Neil Gaiman invented, and it begins with a wager between a badger and a fox who covet the remote temple abode of a simple monk and devise tricks to get him out so that the one of them who wins the wager can inhabit it himself. Fortunately, the monk is cleverer than these two tricksters, but others come along to disturb his serenity and, unfortunately, the dreamy environment of mere covetousness descends into an ultimate quest for revenge, which seemed to be the motivating force that also drove Preludes & Nocturnes.

Oops! Maybe The Dream Hunters is not so different after all!

Whether one likes the story or not, The Dream Hunters is definitely worth a look for Craig Russell's artistic vision alone. If one is familiar with ukiyo-e, one sees many subtleties in his work that capture the spirit of "the floating world." He obviously knows this world extremely well, and the pessimism underlying Gaiman's world view is almost overcome by the artist's vision.

>83 Poquette: Interesting review. I wasn't even aware of the existence of this version! Was this done as a comic or was the story still in prose but with new illustrations?

The Sandman series does vary in tone from volume to volume, sometimes involving different historical periods and sometimes the stories barely involve Morpheus at all. Things progress quite a bit from Preludes and Nocturnes. I'm sure you'd find something to enjoy if you do choose to continue.

>84 valkyrdeath: This version of The Dream Hunters is published by Vertigo and is in the same format and on the same glossy paper as the ten-volume Sandman series. It is a full-blown graphic novel, i.e., in comic book format, just like the originals. If you haven't seen it, you should have a look. I found my copy at a Barnes & Noble store, where they had all the Vertigo editions of the Sandman series.

I probably will eventually follow through with the Sandman series, but probably not this year. There are many things to like, and as you said in your review, many layers which reveal themselves upon repeat reading. Thanks for bringing all this to my attention! ;-)

I know nothing about the Sandman series, but I love ukiyo-e art and the whole Edo and Meiji period. I may have to check this one out.

>86 janeajones: If you can take a look at it physically in a bookstore, Jane, that's what I'd recommend.

Landscape Painted with Tea by Milorad Pavic (1990) 339 pages

This is the first time I have abandoned a book since 1961 when I gave up on Finnegan's Wake. It is too clever by half for me. In my quest for the perfect quirky dreamy novel, this one exceeds even my patience.

It is ironic. I bought this book because I was taken in by the title and the cover. Has the lesson been learned? Let us hope.

Don't judge a book by its cover! Alone. It needs to have additional known redeeming qualities.

This is so sad. I have been hauling this book around since 1990 when it was shiny and new. It should have been read (and abandoned) long ago, and now I have given up at page 18. Not a happy day. Alas.

A moment of silence, please.

It is a gorgeous cover with an enticing title -- too bad about the contents.

Have you read Olga Tokarczuk? I loved her House of Day, House of Night and Primeval and Other Times -- definitely dreamy and quirky. I wish Antonia White would translate her other books.

>88 Poquette: Argh! Well, that's just annoying.

But it's good to be able to abandon a book you don't like!

>89 janeajones: Have not heard of Olga Tokarczuk. Will check her out.

>90 Nickelini: Annoying is the word. But it is kind of funny.

>91 rebeccanyc: This has been a weird year for reading. There has been a higher percentage of books I didn't like than I've ever seen. Was bound to happen.

>74 Poquette: - Mission to Paris sounds interesting - my BIL is into spy movies and books also. In the past, I got him some nonfiction books, but might have to check Furst out.

>78 Poquette:, 83 - I enjoyed the first Sandman novel and wanted to read more, but I don't think it is the best in the series, although I think I liked the quest/revenge plot more than you did. (It was a bit weird with the whole "DC characters making appearances" - I'd seen the horrible Keanu Reeves Constantine movie so that was what I was thinking of when he showed up.) The dysfunctional family aspect is one of my favorite parts, but that doesn't show up too much in the first volume. I also was impressed with his worldbuilding, but that was also something that was developed over the whole series. Agree with you about the illustrations, and it's nice to see the different styles that are in the later books. I haven't read the Dream Hunters yet (and I think there's another one that was written after the conclusion of the main series).

>88 Poquette: - Ooof..sorry to hear about the Pavic. But better not to waste time on anything that's really not working - so many good books out there!

>93 DieFledermaus: Furst's books are quick reads and I really like the historical context. For several years beginning in 1999 I read everything I could get my hands on concerning WWII. So it's nice to feel I have actually learned something from a mere novel!

Re Sandman, I will eventually read more, but my curiosity has been satisfied for the time being. I am locked into my category challenge, and I need to follow through with planned reading for the next few months. It's funny how easy it is to deviate from a path that seemed so broad at the beginning.

But better not to waste time on anything that's really not working - so many good books out there!

That is so true, which makes it easy to move on. It only bothers me that nobody seems to have seen the humor in my post! A moment of silence??? Please!

May 1st and how time flies! I seem to be way behind in my reading. Too many books that require a lot of processing. Even the fiction, with one or two exceptions, is not the type to zip through.

Here are the books that have caught my eye during the month of April here in Club Read. Some of them sounded so good I went out and got them immediately!

April Wish List

Minotaur by Benjamin Tammuz (***Polaris — characterized as "World Noir," originally published in Hebrew. See review)

Midnight in Europe by Alan Furst (***torontoc — his stories all take place in and around Europe before and during the Second World War — sounds interesting. NOTE: on basis of torontoc's review, purchased and read another Alan Furst, Mission to Paris.)

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris (***rebeccanyc — memoirs(?) of a New Yorker copy editor — sounds delightful)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories by F.Scott Fitzgerald (***AlisonY — see her review, stories sound very good)

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (***AlisonY — "stunning imagery of the Swiss lakes . . ." — set at Lake Geneva — winner of the Booker Prize)

Sandman: The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman (***Valkyrdeath — part of a series, should be familiar before reading this. NOTE: Already read and reviewed!)

Trafalgar by Angelica Gorodischer (***Eliz_M — sounds like a collection of stories that would appeal to my QDN fancy. NOTE: Already purchased!)

Stoner by John Edward Williams (***RidgewayGirl — a low-key novel that packs a punch)

Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City by June Osborne (2003), 208 pages

Urbino, remotely located east of the Apennines in an area called the Marches, is my favorite city that I have never visited, and its first Duke, Federico da Montefeltro, is my favorite Renaissance man. When I was traveling in Italy many years ago I don't believe I even knew about Urbino. If I were to return to Italy today, it is the first place I would visit.

Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City is a coffee table book filled with wonderful color photographs. But it is also a scholarly text by an art historian who once served as assistant to Ernst Gombrich and who at the time of publication lectured at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The whole panorama of Urbino and its storied past is laid out here both literally and figuratively.

The history of the city goes back to Roman times, but it came into its own in the late Middle Ages under the counts of Montefeltro, reaching its pinnacle as the quintessential Renaissance city under Duke Federico (1422-1482). Federico was the illegitimate son of Guidantonio Montefeltro, who died in 1443 and was succeeded at first by his son and heir Oddantonio. The Montefeltros had a reputation of being enlightened despots who ruled well, imposed a low and just tax regime and were beloved by a loyal populus. Oddantonio immediately doubled the tax burden and antagonized the citizenry to the point that he was brutally assassinated the following year.

Meanwhile, Federico had been nurturing his reputation as a skilled condottiere — essentially a mercenary general — and upon his half-brother's death, went to claim his position as Count of Urbino. Before the people would allow him to enter the city, they demanded that he sign a list of concessions that would restore the tax rates and generally good government of his father and grandfather. Upon his agreement, he was welcomed into the city where the wealth he had earned and continued to earn as a warrior for hire allowed him to keep the taxes low and "to create a city in the form of a palace." In his day, according to Castiglione, he was "the light of Italy." When asked what was the most important attribute of a leader, Federico replied, "Essere umano," which can be translated "to be human," "to be humane, or "to be a humanist." Federico was all three.


Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro (Piero della Francesca)

The Montefeltros were well connected all over Italy, but especially with the Gonzagas of Mantua, the Sforzas of Milan and the King of Naples. Honors that were bestowed upon Federico included the Order of the Ermine (i.e., knighthood) by Ferrante I of Aragon, the Order of the Garter by Edward IV of England and he was made Duke of Urbino by Pope Sixtus IV. He was married to Battista Sforza, daughter of a lesser light among the Sforzas. Their only Son Guidobaldo married Elisabetta Gonzaga and it was during their regime that the Urbino court reached the peak of its ascendency, as memorialized in Baldassare Castiglione's renowned The Book of the Courtier.


The Walled City of Urbino

Urbino was a fortress in itself, so it did not need a castle. Federico was thus at liberty to create a palace to express his magnificence. The Ducal Palace is at once imposing in its size and yet a model of restraint in its interior proportions and livability. Sir Kenneth Clark famously said in Civilization, "It is the only palace in the world I can go round without feeling oppressed and exhausted." From the interior courtyard with its Latin frieze inscription and delicately carved Corinthian columns to its angel fireplace and secret garden, not to mention the famed Studiolo and the Salle della Veglie where the discussions reported in The Book of the Courtier took place, it is indeed a palace that dreams are made of.


The Ducal Palace

The twin towers which frame a delicate loggia are the palace's most striking exterior feature. A passage which can be discerned from the row of windows in a low wall to the left of the towers connects the Duke's apartments with those of the Duchess. It is behind the middle of the three loggias that the Studiolo is located.


The Studiolo

The Studiolo is famous as the finest and most complete example of an early Renaissance private study, and for the trompe l'oeil intarsia lining the lower walls and the paintings of historical figures revered by Federico, which included Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Cicero, Boethius, and a number of Church fathers.


Example of Intarsia (wood inlay)

Federico's son Guidobaldo had never been physically strong, and he died at age twenty-six after a lingering and debilitating illness. He and Elisabetta were childless, and they had adopted his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere as his heir. Pope Julius II was a della Rovere, and this connection seemed to stabilize Urbino, which had undergone serious challenges and even caused Guido and Elisabetta to be exiled for a time until they could secure the city. It was the visit in 1507 of Pope Julius II, many of whose entourage consisting of scholars, writers, artists and musicians stayed in Urbino after the pope's departure, that set in motion the writing of The Book of the Courtier, and it was upon their discussions that the book was based.


The Salle della Veglie where The Book of the Courtier took place

Castiglione himself embodied all the attributes of an ideal courtier, an ideal Renaissance man. He was a soldier, writer, poet, book collector, Greek, Latin and Italian scholar, art collector, and later an ambassador (from Mantua to Rome) and a papal nuncio to Spain where he died.

After the della Roveres were succeeded by the Medici, the cultural importance of Urbino declined. It is depressing to read of this decline. The Ducal Palace was virtually sacked by the Medici and all its treasures that could be moved were scattered far and wide. The city languished and fell into decay, but in 1700 a pope who had been born in Urbino undertook a restoration of the cathedral and Ducal Palace.


Ducal Palace Courtyard

One smaller palace that had belonged to Federico and was sold into private hands bore a lovely frieze inscription in Latin in its courtyard which was reminiscent of that in the Ducal Palace. The sentiment it bears must be applied to Urbino itself:

"Let this house remain until the ant drinks the ocean and the slow tortoise walks round the world."

I give this book five stars both for presentation and content. It is an outstanding read, and I spent way too much time pouring over the pictures!

Fabulous review. If I ever get to Italy, Urbino is now at the the top of my list!

>96 Poquette: I have to look up Urbino. I am supposed to be deciding where to go this summer, and I was thinking of Italy... This city seems fascinating.

>96 Poquette: loved your review of Urbino. Brings me back to very happy memories of a 2 week road trip through Italy before my kids were born.

Love the review AND the pictures.

>96 Poquette: That's a lovely set of pictures, and notes, on Urbino.

>96 Poquette: that was fun. I had never heard of all the stories around this city.

>97 janeajones: and >98 FlorenceArt: I do hope Urbino has not become a tourist mecca and that one can step back in time and appreciate it for what it once was.

>99 AlisonY:, >100 rebeccanyc: and >101 reva8: Thanks! It brings back memories of northern Italy especially for me as well. I have visited a couple of walled cities in England, most notably York, but would love to have stood on the ramparts of Urbino.

>102 dchaikin: I only scratched the surface and left out some important stuff. But glad you enjoyed what was there!

I give this book five stars both for presentation and content.

Same for the review! Very much enjoyed the pictures.

Suzanne, lovely review of Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City.

I would imagine that it's not a tourist Mecca being a little way off the tourist routes. I have not been, but I would be interested to make the journey some day. It seems the perfect place for lovers of the Renaissance.

>104 DieFledermaus: and >105 baswood: A belated thanks, DF and Barry!

* * * * *

I have been out of town for a while. My mother is very frail and needs someone with her, so I have been elected to stay with her indefinitely. Needless to say, everything is very unsettling right now and not much reading has been going on. But I hope to start catching up here when I can snatch a few moments. I came on line just now and my sister called and her car won't start, so I have to log off. But in the immortal words of someone or other . . . I'll be baaaack!

Stay cool Suzanne. We will all be here.

Ah Suzanne -- real life does beckon. I wish you all the best with your mother.

What Barry and Jane said.

Good to see you back, albeit briefly. Hope you manage to get back into a bit of reading soon.

Take care of yourself, along with your mother! And we'll be here when you get back.

All the best for you and your mother (and sister). I'm sure your mother is very happy you are with her.

Sorry to hear about the unsettled situation - best wishes to you and your family!

Yes take care of yourself and best wishes to you and yours at this time.

Wish you well S.

>106 Poquette: I am sorry to hear that your mother is doing poorly. I hope everything settles down soon and that you are able to find time/energy to read.

Thank you everyone for your kind concern. I am sorry to report that my mother, who was 94 years old, passed away yesterday morning quietly in her sleep. I was sitting with her at the time. There is much to do here in the aftermath — funeral, closing her house — so not sure when I'll be back home, but I hope it will be sooner than later. Looking forward to getting back into the swim here on LT. I have not forgotten you all. As Jane said above, real life does interpose itself now and then, and there is nothing one can do but go with the flow.

>117 Poquette: I'm sorry to hear about your mother, Suzanne. Being with her at the time must have been a comfort. Take time to reflect and take comfort from your memories.

My condolences,Suzanne. Also sorry for the loss of your mother. But to have lived for 94 years is a rather amazing feat. I am sure it was it was important to both of you that you were there with her. My thoughts are with you.

>117 Poquette: I am sorry for your loss. Take care of yourself.

I'm so sorry to hear about your mother. Please remember to take care of yourself.

Very sorry to hear your news, Suzanne. We are all thinking of you.

I am sorry about your mother too. Thinking of you.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother, Suzanne.

Sorry about your mother. Hang in there Suzanne.

My condolences, Suzanne. Stay well.

Condolences Suzanne, hope to see you back here when you feel the time is right.

What they all said. Hope to see you back soon.

I'm also sorry to hear this Suzanne, take care of yourself, please accept my condolences.

So sorry to hear your sad news Suzanne. Thinking of you.

Very sorry to hear the news about your mother. Condolences to your whole family. I agree with everyone above - take care of yourself and we'll be here when you come back.

Thanks to all of you for your kindness. My mother lived a full life almost to the end, and a surprising number of friends and relatives turned up to celebrate her life. The funeral was memorable and she will not be soon forgotten. At 94, she was ready to go and while getting used to her absence will not be easy, knowing how well loved she was is quite gratifying.

I am back at home now and hope to get back into some kind of routine very shortly.

Now that I have lost the better part of a month in which I have not read a word, it is unlikely I'll be able to meet my now rather ambitious reading goals for this year. Oh well. I shall do my best to catch up.

Just to bring myself and you all up to date, I was deep into Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan by Julia Cartwright and had just started Literary Theory and Criticism by Patricia Waugh. I need to do a bit of review to remember where I was. Plato's Symposium is still on my current roster but I have not started it yet. And, of course, I need to begin catching up with all your threads here in Club Read. That's next . . .

The May wish list barely got started when I dashed off. Just for the record, here it is:

May Wish List

Tomorrow in the Battle Think of Me by Javier Marias (***DieFledermaus — interesting style, long sentences)

Voyage along the Horizon by Javier Marias (***Rebeccanyc — this Marias sounds even more interesting)

It sounds like the funeral was a really nice memorial to your mother.

I hope you're able to get any support that you need at home.

That's an impressive list of books - will be looking forward to reviews of those or others that you decide to read.

Good to see you back, Suzanne. Take care of yourself.

Thanks DF and Alison! All is well.

Still suffering a bit of reading paralysis. But making it up by watching more movies since my last post than I usually see in a year! And am surprised I could actually find something on cable that was worth watching. Some are better than others, of course, but there was only one I bailed out on. That was The Game (1997) with Michael Douglas. It was too contrived for my taste. My bargain subscription to HBO is paying off:

— The Other Woman (2014) with Cameron Diaz — mildly entertaining comedy
— Before Sunset (2004) with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke — way too talky but I was somehow mesmerized by these two.
— In & Out (1997) with Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck — I never saw this comedy about a gay teacher coming out at his wedding. It was cute if somewhat dated. I have always liked Kevin Kline. This was not his best role although it was not his fault!
— About Time (2013) with unknown male lead and Rachel McAdams (Midnight in Paris) and Bill Nighy in supporting role — this was the best of the bunch, a romantic comedy with time travel. Wouldn't mind seeing this again.

Other cable offerings:
— Les Miserables (1998) with Liam Neeson — very good!
— Sixteen Candles (1984) with Molly Ringwald — sometimes kids' movies are the most entertaining. I never saw this in all these years and it was cute if a bit overdone.
— Usual Suspects (1995) with Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, etc. I think I saw this or at least parts of it before, but enjoyed watching it unfold to a surprise ending.
— 8MM (1999 with Nicholas Cage — this was about tracking down the victim of a snuff film, rather on the dark side, a lot of violence of course, but I was doing Sudoku while it was on and only heard most of the gruesome bits.
— The Monuments Men (2014) with George Clooney, Matt Damon, Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), etc. — quite good account of the group of men assigned to tracking down all the art works stolen by the Nazis during WWII.

Doesn't look like there is much in the way of movies on the tube today. Maybe this is the day I will actually do some reading!

Appreciate your list of flicks and reviews. Sounds like you've stumbled across some good ones. I've seen a few of these, "In & Out" (which I thought was funny eve if it wasn't the best movie), bits and pieces of the Liam Neeson (I love Liam Neeson!) version of "Les Mis" and I own the movie "Sixteen Candles".... I'll have to give "Monuments Men" a try.

You have my sympathies.

In case you're still looking for movies to watch, this link may help:
http://www.openculture.com/freemoviesonline

I've got this list bookmarked but haven't watched any of them yet:
http://www.openculture.com/2010/07/tarkovksy.html

>136 Poquette: I have a soft spot in my heart for Sixteen Candles, which I saw on TV too.

Here we are at June 25, a week has gone by, and I am happy to say I have gotten back into the book I was reading about Beatrice d'Este. Problem is I had to go back and start over again, and I am not sorry, as it turns out. This book was written in 1899, by a woman — an English art critic and historian of the Italian Renaissance. She wrote several books about women in high places who were overshadowed by the more visible exploits of their famous husbands.

As might be anticipated, this book is more about Beatrice's milieu, beginning in Ferrara as daughter of Duke Ercole d'Este and sister of the more famous Isabella d'Este (who married the Marquis of Mantua), continuing in Naples where she spent eight of her first ten years in the household of her grandfather, Ferrante of Aragon, king of Naples, and culminating in her life at the court of Milan as the wife of Lodovico Sforza, "Il Moro," Duke of Milan, patron of the arts in general and of Leonardo da Vinci in particular.

Beatrice was married at age 16 and was dead five years later in process of delivering what would have been her third child!

Obviously, it is a bit of a stretch to spend more than 400 pages on the life of someone who had barely come of age when her brief life was snuffed out. But surprisingly, despite what seem to be more than subtle attempts to elevate Duchess Beatrice to something she clearly was not, this is an exceptionally interesting book which is really more about Lodovico, her husband, and the world of northern Italy — the culture, court intrigues and warfare among the city states of Italy.

Anyway, the book is over-long, overwrought, and while it attempts to be chronological in its treatment of events, it assumes the reader knows more about the family trees of the Italian aristocracy than I do. To make sense of it all, I have had to construct my own said family trees to keep everybody straight. Some people seemed to have an endless number of children both legitimate and otherwise, all of whom were married off as well as possible so that the blood relationships among the important families of Italy were as complex and interesting as those of, say, the British royal family in the 19th and 20th centuries.

How I get myself into these complex books is truly amazing! I sort of knew what I was getting into with Herodotus and Thucydides, but I was completely blindsided by this one. I thought it would be one of those typical "ladies" books of the late 19th century that would give me some insights into court life in Renaissance Italy and that I could breeze right through. The insights are certainly there, but this is no breeze.

This has not been a review, more of a rant. ha ha! There's a lot of good stuff here for those of us who are fascinated by the Renaissance, but be prepared to take copious notes if you expect to get anything more than the superficial out of it. I'll have more to say when I actually finish.

I was thinking this book from 1965 was over-long and overwrought (and yet I was enjoying it just the same). You're back in 1899, which can be so much more of that. The book sounds terrific. Happy to see you reading away again.

>142 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan!

* * * * *

I am again deep into Beatrice d'Este. The book is tremendously interesting although the going is slow. Once again, I am forced to take notes just to keep everything and everybody straight. I suppose I could skip the notetaking and just get on with it, but how much would I really get out of it? Since the Renaissance is one of my great interests, I think it is worth the extra time and effort. Hopefully it will pay off. But here it is the end of June, and I don't have a single book to show for the month! Ugh! So much for planning ahead. I do hope I can catch up. I had such high hopes for my reading challenge. It may not be too late. We'll have to see how it goes.

I admire your dedication Suzanne. I get very frustrated when I read historical books - I keep coming across lots of amazing facts that I so badly want to remember, but my memory seems totally perforated when it comes to holding that kind of information.

What Alison said. And also, I'm a big believer in reading whatever strikes your fancy at the time and not sticking to a "plan" or "challenge." Life is too short, and there are too many books, and what's a book for if not to enjoy?

I'm currently making about 17 pages on hour through Blood Meridian, which is actually a fast paced book. It's just I can't seem to let a McCarthy-esque obscure word go by without looking it up. I think maybe I can understand a bit where you're coming from. Enjoy and read slow.

>144 AlisonY: The effort is paying off because I am reaching a point now where I don't have to go back and review who the various actors are.

>145 rebeccanyc: Well, you are preaching to the choir about planned reading. It is only because I got carried away with the idea of the category challenge that I did any planning to begin with. And it turns out I bit off too much. I cannot keep up with two active groups, so I have pretty much abandoned the other one. And I won't be making this mistake again!

>146 dchaikin: I know what you mean about looking up words. But that is how one builds vocabulary, so I wouldn't knock it. And I am actually enjoying this slow read. It is tying so much together from other reading, as well as introducing me to some very interesting players in Renaissance history.

To give you a bit of the flavor of what is going on here, Beatrice d'Este was married to Lodovico Sforza, "Il Moro," a younger son of Francesco Sforza, who had married into the Visconti family, the historical dukes of Milan. By virtue of the Visconti male line dying out for all practical purposes, Francesco Sforza became the de facto Duke of Milan. When he died in 1466 his oldest son Galeazzo took over, but he was assassinated, leaving a ten-year-old son Giangaleazzo. After some family disputing, Lodovico, who had been made Duke of Bari by King Ferrante of Naples, was appointed regent on behalf of Giangaleazzo.

Giangaleazzo eventually married Isabella of Aragon, who was Ferrante's granddaughter. Beatrice was also a granddaughter of Ferrante but from different parents. Thus, relations between the King of Naples and the Sforzas appeared to be well cemented. However, by the 1490s, this happy state of affairs began to fall apart.

Giangaleazzo, the titular Duke of Milan, was "sunk in idle debauchery" and was universally recognized as unfit to rule, and he had no interest in doing so. But his wife Isabella was not happy about this and wrote a famous letter to her father Alfonso Duke of Calabria (son and heir of Ferrante). This letter created the desired effect, and Lodovico, not unaware of the dangers, engineered a new 25-year treaty between himself, the pope and the Doge of Venice (Milan's historical enemy). Ferrara (Beatrice's home town) and Mantua (her sister's home town by way of marriage) also joined the new league.

Meanwhile, Lodovico sent an ambassador to Germany with two proposals to Maximilian who was on the verge of becoming Holy Roman Emperor: to offer the hand of Bianca Maria Sforza (the Duke of Milan's sister) with the enormous dowry of 400,000 ducats (about $60 million today); and to ask Maximilian for a renewal of the investiture of Milan, formerly granted to the Visconti dukes, but never obtained by the three princes of the house of Sforza. "As, on the extinction of the Visconti race, the fief ought to have returned to the empire, it was in the emperor's power to bestow the duchy upon Lodovico, whose title would thus be rendered perfectly legal." This would render Giangaleazzo the usurper!

Maximilian, dazzled by the size of the dowry in view of the empire's depleted coffers, agreed to Lodovico's proposal and promised to grant him the investiture of the duchy of Milan as soon as he succeeded his father Frederick III (who was still alive but in failing health). He received 300,000 ducats as dowry, but the remaining 100,000 were unreported and withheld secretly until the investiture actually took place.

So what, you may well ask?

Now that I am fully immersed in the goings on of the Sforza clan and its many relatives and friends throughout Italy, as well as the many intrigues that were hatched and even seemed necessary in order to preserve one's place, I think this story gives a fascinating glimpse of the lengths the Italian city states had to go to to preserve the peace. There was always someone who wanted to invade and take advantage of some perceived right. The King of France Charles VIII will eventually invade Italy and cause all kinds of havoc and will be responsible for the ultimate downfall of Lodovico, who was second only to Lorenzo di Medici as a patron of learning and the arts. This is still to come in the book, but it has been broadly hinted at, and it's almost like reading a novel — I cannot wait to see what's going to happen next!

Reading this I never thought to ask "so what?"

I tripped over Beatrice d'Este a few times in university and always found that whole family and their world interesting. I'm particularly intrigued by Cecilia Gallerani, aka The Lady with an Ermine. One day I'd like to write a novel about her and that world.

Have you read The Tigress of Forli?

It's wonderful how immersed you''re getting in Renaissance Italy and the Sforzas.

>149 dchaikin: I know, you would never do that!

>150 Nickelini: And well you might be intrigued by Cecilia Gallerani! She could be the subject of an entire series! You probably know this, Joyce, but others may be interested to learn that she was Lodovico's mistress and she still had rooms in the Castello after he married Beatrice! When Beatrice found out a few months into the marriage, she threw a fit and demanded that Lodovico choose between them. Cecilia delivered a son in May after Lodovico and Beatrice had wed in January of 1491, and Lodovico ultimately saw to it that Cecilia was married to one of his courtiers. She was renowned for her beauty and learning and continued to entertain in the highest circles. Such was life in the Renaissance. The Lady with an Ermine is one of Leonardo da Vinci's loveliest paintings, IMHO. He lived in Milan under Lodovico's patronage for sixteen years.

>151 baswood: I have not read The Tigress of Forli, Barry, but I just read your review, and it would appear she was Florence's answer to Cecilia Gallerani, but with a few differences. I don't think the description "monster" would apply. However, I am adding the book to my wish list.

>152 rebeccanyc: Up to now, I have neglected the Sforzas. My readings in the Renaissance have centered more on Florence and environs, but yet not Florence per se, but the art and literature that bloomed at the time. You are reminding me, Rebecca, that my whole "pagan influences" craze that began around the time I joined LT has brought me time and again into the Renaissance where it seems to have gotten stuck. Eventually, I'll move on, but there is so much of interest here.

ETA — I just looked up Caterina Sforza, The Tigress of Forli, and see that she was an illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Lodovico's father.

Fascinating discussion here.

>150 Nickelini: please do write that book, Joyce! I'd love to read it!

Enjoying the discussion here.

>154 janeajones: and >155 japaul22: Seconding Jennifer's motion, and glad you are both enjoying this topic. As you know, I tend to get lost in the weeds and sometimes wonder if it amounts to too much information. But I always hope that if it fascinates me, it will grab others as well.

>153 Poquette: The Lady with an Ermine is one of Leonardo da Vinci's loveliest paintings, IMHO

In my opinion too! It's my #1 favourite of everything he did.

>155 japaul22: please do write that book, Joyce! I'd love to read it!

Okay, but I'm deeply into a completely different world right now. One day . . .

Some interesting and drama-filled reading, it sounds like! Glad to hear you're back into your book. I have The Tigress of Forli on the library list also, but I think the Beatrice d'Este book would be too much for me. Good to have your comments though.

>158 DieFledermaus: Interesting and drama-filled to be sure. And Beatrice d'Este seems to be too much for me as well!

Don't ask me why — I don't have a good answer, or even a bad one — but I am fascinated by all the people who were the movers and shakers during the Renaissance. Everyone from the condottieri to the dukes and minor princes of the many Italian states, to even the popes and kings and emperors who all had designs on each other and claims and counterclaims to make one dizzy trying to keep them all straight. Not to mention the wives, mothers, daughters, sons, illegitimate and otherwise. All the marriages were arranged for political and/or economic aggrandizement, and many seemed like good ideas at the time, but the unintended consequences of some unions created some of those claims and counterclaims, such as Louis Duke of Orleans' claim on Milan as a result of his Visconti grandmother's legacy to him, a claim which dogged Lodovico from before the first French invasion in 1494 and which led to his ultimate death in a French prison.

It is a sad thing to report that Beatrice d'Este died suddenly after giving birth to a stillborn son in January of 1497. She was only twenty-one, having been married at age 16 and having already provided Lodovico with two living sons, both of whom grew up to serve successively as dukes of Milan. It is an odd thing that the few years during her marriage to Lodovico were a brief time during which the stars shone brightly over Milan. Italy had survived the first French invasion, but in 1497, the year of Beatrice's death, events began to take a turn for the worse.

The Marquis of Mantua (Beatrice's sister Isabella d'Este's husband), who was at the time captain-general of the armies of Venice, apparently harbored French sympathies. The Venetians got wind of this and in April 1497 summarily dismissed him from his command. He claimed that his disgrace was due to Galeazzo di Sanseverino's jealousy and Lodovico's intrigues. The Sanseverinos (sons of Roberto Sanseverino), famous condottieri, were cousins of the Sforzas, and "Messer Galeazzo" was one of Lodovico's most loyal courtiers and a great jouster at tournaments to boot. Interestingly, Messer Galeazzo first gained fame in defending Caterina Sforza, the infamous Madonna of Forli.

In September 1497 a tournament was held at Brescia in honor of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, which island by this time was under the control of Venice, where the Marquis of Mantua and Messer Galeazzo were both present. Galeazzo's brother "Fracassa" was also present with his wife, Margherita Pia (sister of Emilia da Carpi aka Emilia da Montefeltro, wife of Federico's illegitimate son Antonio da Montefeltro (a noted condottiere and lieutenant of Federico) and a great friend of Isabella d'Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga, wife of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro Duke of Urbino, Federico's son and heir), "in a chariot driven by twelve fine horses."

"But the hero of the day was Messer Galeazzo, who appeared suddenly at the head of forty horsemen, all in deep mourning, with hair dyed black and black and gold armor and a herald bearing a black pennon with gold griffins." This sounds like a Hollywood movie, but it is the description of a real tournament.

If you are still reading this and wish I had left out half of these names, I sympathize. But this is why it is taking me forever to read this book, which is ostensibly a biography of Beatrice d'Este, but in fact it is a biography of the age. Unlike the usual history book, each of these characters come to life here. The dukes and princes and condottieri are the creators and actors in the events that drive history, but in the meantime they are also husbands and lovers and fathers. Real human beings, in other words. Julia Cartwright makes ample use of primary sources — letters by and between and among these interesting people, whose personalities shine here.

The above-mentioned tournament did nothing to repair relations among the former allies — Venice, Milan and Mantua. And Francesco Marquis of Mantua did not stop intriguing with both France and Florence. These activities were reported to Lodovico, who wrote of his displeasure to Isabella, "complaining bitterly of her husband's ingratitude." Poor Isabella, finding herself in the middle of this, tried to effect a reconciliation.

Meanwhile Charles VIII suddenly died, amidst his plans to reinvade Italy, and he was succeeded by the hated Duke of Orleans, who became King Louis XII. Here's one of those interesting factoids that drives one crazy: Apparently the courier who brought the news of Charles VIII's death "from Amboise to Florence rode the whole way in seven days and had killed no less than thirteen horses!"

Now things really started to unwind for Lodovico, because in trying to cement relations with Florence, he managed to offend the Venetians who, in revenge, secretly began to negotiate with the new King Louis. A reluctant reconciliation was engineered by Isabella between her husband and Lodovico, who appointed the marquis to head armies in defense against future French invasion.

I could go on and on . . .

Beatrice is now dead but there are still sixty pages to go to finish out the life of Lodovico.

Don't ask me why — I don't have a good answer, or even a bad one — but I am fascinated by all the people who were the movers and shakers during the Renaissance.

I don't think it's an odd thing to be interested in at all. Think of all the people who are fascinated by the Tudors -- it's sort of like that. Except your area of interest involves more money, more power, more art . . . .

Suzanne, condolences on your mother. To live to 94, and live so fully till so near the end and be celebrated -- that is remarkable.

I’ve just caught up with your whole thread and especially enjoyed your reviews of Seven Types of Ambiguity (which I likely will not read) and Little Kingdoms (which I might). And >96 Poquette: I returned from Rome the day you posted this and the vacation feeling has unaccountably stayed with me even to now, good timing to read about Urbino and your posts on Beatrice d'Este.

>82 Poquette: So The Chapel of Eternal Love is fiction? About 10 years ago, a friend travelled to her nephew’s wedding in Las Vegas and gave me the link to watch it streamed online from one of the hotel wedding chapels. I logged on early to test the link and then, for a few days, ended up watching a bunch of random weddings there. The couples and their families varied but I remember them being universally nervous.

>161 Nickelini: Of course, you are right. And in my recitations I have neglected to mention the many artists and poets who thrived at the court of Milan, most of whom are probably little known today except by specialists. Leonardo was the star attraction, and he completed The Last Supper just before the French conquest and Lodovico's hasty and ill-fated departure.

>162 detailmuse: Thanks! She was indeed remarkable.

>163 detailmuse: I was quite surprised by Little Kingdoms, which turned out to be a collection of what might qualify as quirky dreamy novellas! I am looking forward to more of Steven Millhauser.

Yes, The Chapel of Eternal Love is fiction. One of the weirder books I have read. I don't think the writer did a lot of research, but it was almost a must read since I keep running into him here and there!

>160 Poquette: admittedly I got a little lost on paragraph four with the tournament. Enjoyed your commentary. What a crazy complicated world.

>165 dchaikin: Sorry about that! I was trying to cram too much information in. Chalk it up to enthusiasm!

* * * * *

I am happy to say I have finally finished the book. At first I thought I wouldn't do a review because I have already said too much about it, but I noticed that there are no other reviews, so I really want to get the word out. Thus, the review follows . . .

Beatrice d'Este, 1475-1497: A Study of the Renaissance by Julia Cartwright (1899) 420 pages, Kindle edition

Beatrice d'Este, younger daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, became de facto Duchess of Milan at the age of sixteen, bore two sons before she turned twenty and the following year, only hours after delivering a stillborn son, she died. What could possibly fill four hundred pages concerning such a short life? The truth is there is not much known about her except for the treasure trove of letters that were safely hidden away in various archives, that were written by her and to her and by a large number of other individuals with whom she lived and those family members and friends with whom she and others in her household corresponded. While this book purports to be a biography of Beatrice, it is in reality a biography of a bright few years when Fortune blessed the duchy of Milan.

Julia Cartwright's approach to this brief life was masterful. She used not only the letters, but the diaries of contemporaries and the memoirs of prominent diplomats and courtiers who were on intimate terms with Beatrice, her husband Lodovico Sforza and their extended family members. The story progresses chronologically, as it should, and fleshes out the events of the age and the people who participated in them. Cartwright gives us a feel for the childlike enthusiasm of Beatrice on the one hand, and her amazing level of education and maturity on the other. She was the daughter of a Duke, the granddaughter of the King of Naples, she married a Duke, and in her brief life she was on intimate terms with everyone who passed through the court of Milan, from popes and kings, to artists like Leonardo da Vinci — who was employed by Lodovico for sixteen years and completed The Last Supper the year after Beatrice's death — to poets like Ariosto and condottieri like Galeazzo di Sanseverino who embodied the very essence of chivalry both on the tournament ground and in the battlefield — and at court.

This book would have been nothing without the presence of Lodovico Sforza, one of the great men of the age. He has a tarnished reputation if one reads some accounts of his years as regent on behalf of a young Duke of Milan and then as Duke himself. However, through this more personal inquiry, Cartwright acknowledges the darker picture which may have been created by his political enemies, but at the same time she reveals a great lover and patron of the arts and higher learning, a devoutly religious man, an active correspondent with many friends and family members, and a loving husband and father. We also gain some insight into his motivations at times when momentous decisions were made. We get an inside look at court life and a feel for some of the prominent characters of the age: kings and cardinals, poets and painters, and courtesans and courtiers, the very "mirror of chivalry."

In short, a fan of the Renaissance will discover much of interest in this book. I did not expect to find such a rich treasure trove of information and insights and stories of the people who come to life in this treatment of the period. Highly recommended!

Very nice review.

Lovely review after such wonderfully detailed commentary.

In short, a fan of the Renaissance will discover much of interest in this book That describes me and so I will look out for this book.

>168 dchaikin: and >169 janeajones: Thanks so much!

>170 baswood: It could be right up your street!

The Garden of Allah by Robert S. Hichens (1904) 490 pages, Kindle edition

A one-word description of this book might be "overwrought." On the one hand, it is the romance to end all romances, but on the other hand, it is also a story of religious ecstasy in the context of Catholic faith. At some point, the romantic and religious rapture seem to merge, and in the end one is destroyed by the other. The reader is carried away by all this euphoria through an environment of living, breathing and loving the northern Sahara desert, descriptions of which are almost as infinite as the Sahara itself.

It is small wonder that The Garden of Allah was used by Hollywood not once, but three times as the basis for a desert romance, the most recent in 1936 starring Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, with Basil Rathbone thrown in for good measure. The movie pales by comparison to the book. It doesn't begin to convey the intensity of emotion found on the printed page. And it turns the plot upside down and in so doing loses significant elements of drama that lead to an actual climax in the book that is entirely missing in the film.

To be sure The Garden of Allah is a product of its time. According to Yesterday's Bestsellers: A Journey through Literary History by Brian Stableford (1998), it is very much in the vein of Marie Corelli's fiction which was very popular at the turn of the last century. She too managed to turn romantic love into a religious experience when elements of the occult and religious fervor were almost commonplace in some types of fiction.

The central figure of the novel — as opposed to the movie — is a thirtyish aristocratic Englishwoman, aptly named Domini, whose life has been quite sheltered in spite of her age and wealth. She embarks on a voyage of self-discovery which takes her to the Algerian desert. On her way to Beni-Mara, an oasis where the railroad line ends and the northern edge of the desert begins, she encounters a boorish man named Boris who seems to lack the most basic manners. They end up at the same hotel and every time they meet in passing, he repeatedly manifests such rudeness that she comes to believe his is a destructive personality.

Inexplicably — and I mean it: it is never explained, at all — Domini and Boris get married against the better judgment of the local priest, a friendly Italian count who has seen Boris in action and, of course, a native sand diviner who has foretold Domini's future with forbidding overtones. Directly after the wedding, the two lovebirds embark on a voyage into the desert, complete with sandstorm, camel caravan, Arab retainers, boundless dunes and mirages. This desert honeymoon symbolizes the self-discovery that continues for both Domini and Boris and becomes a rite of passage that takes an unforeseen turn and results in an ending that could not have been predicted early on. Domini sets out in search of freedom and truth, and as the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that Boris's own search for freedom is blocked by a lack of truth.

Modern readers don't seem to care for the seemingly unending descriptions — in this case of love, religion, the desert — but I cannot help admiring Hichens' ability to use style, syntax and sentence structure to convey the buildup to a climax — most notably the passages describing their love on the wedding night. Remember, this is 1904, and the word "sex" appears nowhere in the 490 pages of this book. At the outset, I appreciated especially the picture of the desert community of Beni-Mara (based on the oasis town of Biskra in Algeria), the native denizens, and the beauty of the desert itself and its surrounding mountains. But as the novel wore on, even I began to tire of what began to seem like a repetitious overexposure of the protagonists, their love and their religion, but the desert never completely lost its magic.

Hi, Suzanne! Great review of The Garden Of Allah. A lot of the fiction from that era could be described as "overwrought"---it was the style of the time (as Grampa Simpson would say), and I find that men were often more guilty of emotional overwriting than women. I've gotten used to it now but it can be hard to swallow if you haven't been exposed to that kind of thing.

>172 Poquette: That is a great review! (I hadn't heard of the book or film). I do think you're right in saying that "Modern readers don't seem to care for the seemingly unending descriptions.."

Wow! I never heard of the book or the film either.

>172 Poquette: I enjoyed reading your review but don't feel drawn to read the book itself. On the other hand, I am intrigued by Yesterday's Bestsellers but it seems to be a rather obscure book and I can't find any information on it. How did you find it?

>172 Poquette:

You just made it more likely I'll open that book rather than ditching it unread (but I shall probably ditch it in any case), having recently suffered through Daughters of Babylon, a collaborative work of Hichens and Wilson Barrett. (I skimmed, but even so it's one of the few completely awful books I can recall reading. And no, it is NOT, alas, so bad as to be good, or interesting, or perversely amusing--it is bad AND boring.)

After this debacle, and especially as I have seen the movie (only because I like all three principals, otherwise I have no kind words for it), I was going to steer clear of the book, but now you made me curious again.

The thing is, Hichens had struck me as an interesting writer--his horror story How love came to Professor Guildea is one of the best I've read, and his wicked send-up of Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, The green carnation, while mean-spirited and far less witty than any single crumb of Wilde's, nevertheless makes for a fascinating document of the times and the attitude taken to Wilde by his enemies. Hichens, by the way, was himself gay, so perhaps there's additional interest in contemplating how a deeply closeted man might react to another practically flaunting his orientation in public, to what must have seemed for a long time was acclaim.

>173 lyzard: Hi Liz! Haven't seen you in a while. Funny thing, I have a sort of love/hate relationship with description. I can find it both mesmerizing and annoying at the same time! The Garden of Allah is a perfect example.

>174 reva8: Thanks, Reva! Yes, unending descriptions are definitely out of fashion.

>175 rebeccanyc: Hi Rebecca! I can't guess whether you would like either the film or the book. Since you are deep into 19th century fiction, however, you might actually like this one.

I watched the movie on YouTube. It is mercifully short. However, if you think there is a possibility you might read the book, I suggest reading it first because the movie is one big spoiler alert.

The Garden of Allah on YouTube

>176 FlorenceArt: My guess is you would hate The Garden of Allah. Yesterday's Bestsellers, on the other hand, is quite interesting, although somewhat academic. I found it when I was searching on Google for some contemporary reviews of the Hichens book. Here is a link to a preview, but you can download the entire text via Google Play for $7.20.

Yesterday's Bestsellers preview

>177 LolaWalser: Hi Lola! I have not read any of Hichens other books, and as you can surmise from my review, I have mixed feelings about this one. I cannot dismiss it out of hand because despite its flaws and the fact that it is derivative, there is more to it than just a bit of fluff. And as I said, I really enjoyed Hichens evocation of the time and place. And you have raised an interesting question: Is The Garden of Allah so bad it's good? May be.

As to the movie, the book is light years better if you can manage to slog through. I am not recommending it, mind you, but the first part until the abrupt announcement of the marriage gives enough flavor. I think that books like The Garden of Allah, which are so much a reflection of the time in which they are written, should be read — if at all — with this always in mind.

"How Love Came to Professor Guildea" is so different in style it is hard to believe it is by the same writer! Hichens was more facile with style than I would have imagined. I couldn't find the text on line but there is an old radio broadcast of the story at YouTube which was not bad:

old radio broadcast of "How Love Came to Professor Guildea".

The actual story begins about three minutes into the broadcast, so be patient, if you care to listen.

As to Hichens' gayness, I didn't know that he was while I was reading the book, but it had crossed my mind that he might be. Interesting . . .

>178 Poquette:

Thanks for the link. My, listening to horror is rather different from reading... they do all the voices and sound effects! Sorry to hear it's not available online (weird, I'd think copyright was long expired), but in case you come across this book, it's included in Alberto Manguel's first volume of fantastic literature, Black water: The Book of Fantastic literature.

>178 Poquette:

No, I've been a bit slack about thread visiting recently; trying to do some catch-ups, though! :)

Interesting comments on Robert Hichens. I had forgotten that he wrote How Love Came To Professor Guildea.

Speaking of "Yesterday's Bestsellers", I have a mini-project going at the moment wherein each month I'm reading the #1 book on the Bookman's / Publishers Weekly best-seller lists from 1895 onwards---currently up to 1901. I do this book by book rather than looking ahead so I don't know for sure, but it sounds like there might be some Hichens in my near future.

(And now you understand why I can speak so authoritatively about how "emotionally overwrought" turn-of-the-20th-century literature was!)

>178 Poquette: You're right that I'm deep into 19th century fiction, but I have so many books I know I want to read that I think I can safely skip this one and just enjoy your review.

The Gnostic Scroll by Patricia Owens (2005) 240 pages, Kindle edition

The Gnostic Scroll is a bit of fluff very much in the school of The Da Vinci Code. The suspenseful plot is rather intricate and involves a search for a lost gospel similar to those found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The search begins at an obscure college in North Carolina and takes the protagonist on a wild goose chase to Paris and the south of France. The requisite number of dead bodies and abductions keep the pages turning, and while this is escape fiction to be sure, there is enough historical lore to make it interesting.

The book appears to be part of the current self-publishing phenomenon — better than some I have read — and available inexpensively for download. Light weight but enjoyable nonetheless.

A bit late, but I was very entertained by your review of The Garden of Allah. It's always interesting to see what some of the forgotten bestsellers of yesterday are like. I've been tempted to read some Marie Corelli, just because The Sorrows of Satan sounds like it should be a fun read.

Hope things are going well.

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout (1934) 304 pages
The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner (1945) 300 pages

Just making a record of having read these two books. I was suddenly in a reading slump and just wanted to indulge in a bit of escapism. These two classics filled the bill nicely. Rex Stout is an old favorite of mine. I could read about Nero Wolfe again and again. His is a delicious world to become immersed in.

As big a Perry Mason fan as I am — I keep watching the old black-and-white reruns — I had never actually read any of Erle Stanley Gardner's books. That omission has now been corrected, and I plan to read more in the future. Gardner's writing compares well with Stout's, which I think is pretty good for this genre. My favorite historically has been John D. Macdonald, but the world of Nero Wolfe never loses its appeal.

* * * * *

This year is stacking up to be unpredictable at best. Still hoping to get back into the swim here in Club Read, which life keeps interfering with. But I am hopeful . . .

>183 DieFledermaus: I just reread my review of The Garden of Allah. I had to laugh . . .  

The Barnum Museum: Stories by Steven Millhauser (1990) 237 pages, Kindle edition

The stories of Steven Millhauser all have about them a suggestion of the supernatural. Or perhaps it would be better to call it magic realism. Whatever the appropriate descriptor, they are all fantastic in one or another sense of fantasy. Some of them are fantastically good as well.

I think Millhauser would qualify for distinction as a writer's writer because many of his stories operate on more than one level — one often being a running commentary on the creative process itself. This is one of the aspects of his work that appeals to me most: He causes one to think about his methods as a storyteller — not unusual, I suppose, in the realms of metafiction.

All ten of the stories in this collection are both interesting and enjoyable — admittedly, some more enjoyable than others. Here is a brief rundown:

"The Game of Clue" — A family game of Clue proceeds, intertwined with imaginary byplay of the game's characters, which suggests more than it reveals.

"Behind the Blue Curtain" — A boy is allowed to go to the Saturday matinee alone for the first time. Afterwards, curiosity takes him behind the stage curtain where his imagination carries him inside a bigger-than-life world.

"The Barnum Museum" — A "realm of enchantments," a world apart from the world, "constructed so as to help us lose our way." In the 19th century Barnum museums actually existed in Bridgeport, Connecticut and New York City. The Bridgeport museum burned down at some point, and this story attempts to recreate — dare I say embellish? — the sense of its wonder: "In the gift shops of the Barnum Museum we may buy old sepia postcards of mermaids and sea dragons, little flip-books that show flying carpets rising into the air, peep-show pens with miniature colored scenes from the halls of the Barnum Museum, mysterious rubber balls from Arabia that bounce once and remain suspended in the air, jars of dark blue liquid from which you can blow bubbles shaped like tigers, elephants, lions, polar bears, and giraffes, Chinese kaleidoscopes showing ceaselessly changing forms of dragons, enchanting pleniscopes and phantatropes, boxes of animate paint for drawing pictures that move" — etc., etc.

"The Sepia Postcard" — An impressionist story — again, suggestive more than revealing or conclusive: A man trying to get away from it all checks into a seaside inn, but the weather! — it won't stop raining, and he leaves abruptly. All this interweaved with impressions of a scene in a sepia postcard, which seems to depict more every time the man looks at it.

"The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad" — The narrative alternates among three different points of view: (1) Sinbad reminisces, unable to recall the order in which his adventures occur; (2) a historical narrative: "The first European translation . . ." etc.; and (3) a first-person account by Sinbad. Readers who have actually read The Arabian Nights will be able to say whether this is a new adventure or a pastiche of references to past voyages.

"Klassic Komix #1" — Unless one knows the opening line of T.S. Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" — "Let us go then, you and I" — one will be of the mistaken belief that this is merely a panel-by-panel prose retelling of a rather surreal comic book. In fact, it recasts the images and impressions from Eliot's poem as a comic book. The genius of the poem — and this story — is that almost every reading conjures slightly different interpretations.

"Rain" — A violent rain storm in which everything goes wrong for a man caught out wearing a new pair of shoes.

"Alice, Falling" — Once again, Millhauser takes as his point of departure a familiar text which he reimagines — in this case, the opening chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He embellishes Alice's fall through the rabbit hole while commenting upon it at the same time.

"The Invention of Robert Herendeen" — "I decided to invent a human being by means of the full and rigorous application of my powers of imagination. Instead of resorting to words, which merely obscured and distorted the crystalline clarity of my inner vision, I would employ the stuff of imagination itself. That is to say, I would mentally mold a being whose existence would be sustained by the detail and energy of my relentless dreaming. My ambition was to create not an actual human being or a mere work of art but rather a being who existed in a realm parallel to the other two—a third realm, obedient to the laws of physical bodies but utterly discarnate." The story then goes on to explore the limitations of creating an imaginary friend.

"Eisenheim the Illusionist" — Acknowledged as the source of the 2006 movie The Illusionist starring Edward Norton, this story in truth only provides the film's bare outlines, but it is a quintessential Millhauser fantasy about a 19th century magician and illusionist who is famous for materializing and dematerializing phantom spirits and then as his last act performs the ultimate dematerialization.

While reading these stories, more than once it crossed my mind that in some respects they qualify as a type of prose poetry in the sense that they sometimes suggest more than they actually describe. Millhauser's word pictures seem to amplify in the mind and cause one to see more than is actually there. This, to me, is writing that not only conveys stories and impressions, but it stimulates the imagination as well.

If you like this kind of thing and you haven't yet tried Millhauser, this would be a good place to begin.

The Renaissance: A Short History by Paul Johnson (2000) 196 pages

Brief surveys such as this are sometimes more difficult to absorb than their longer counterparts simply because the facts and information are so highly concentrated. Since countless artists are at the very heart of any discussion of the Italian Renaissance, the problem is even more acute because the book suffers by lack of illustrations. But we cannot have it both ways. Or can we? Thanks to the ready availability of internet resources, we can provide our own visual aids, and I highly recommend that one take the time to do so, as this book is very much worth reading. It brings the story of three hundred years of history together and gives the reader a sense of how it all ties together. The book consists of six chapters that survey a particular aspect of the history of the period.

Chapter 1 — The Historical and Economic Background
A quick overview which shows patterns of history where ebbs and flows evidence periodic "renaissances" throughout human history. Technology improvements during the Middle Ages led to unprecedented wealth and the growth of "intermediate technology" culminating in the first "pan-European industry": i.e., the printing of books. Dissemination of knowledge and economic progress led to the Renaissance. Interestingly, printing was born in Germany — not Italy — although it thrived and exploded in Italy, largely because of the more attractive and readable printing types developed there: Roman and Italic. The German so-called "black letter" was not accepted outside of Germany. Printing was invented in the years 1446-50, the Gutenberg Bible — the first printed book — began printing in 1450 and was completed in 1455 in Germany. By 1500, even though there were printing presses in sixty German towns, the locus had moved to Italy. Venice alone had 150 printing presses!

Chapter 2 — The Renaissance in Literature and Scholarship
"The Renaissance was the work of individuals, and in a sense it was about individualism." The individual in literature — as opposed to the merely archetypal category — began with Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio and culminated in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The humanist bent of Renaissance literature inevitably led to conflict with the Church. Despite the almost total subsuming of Aristotelian philosophy by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, or perhaps because of it, the critical scholarship of Lorenzo Valla not only exposed the fraud of the Donation of Constantine, but began to undermine inconsistencies in Church doctrine. The resulting conflict between the Church and humanism set up a cultural war — according to Johnson, the first in European history: "Medieval certitude — or credulity, depending on one's viewpoint — was now faced with Renaissance scrutiny or skepticism." Key Renaissance writers are highlighted and fleshed out in this chapter.

Chapter 3 — The Anatomy of Renaissance Sculpture
"The Renaissance was concerned with the presentation of human reality" in all its endeavors, but especially in literature and the arts. Sculpture was the most vivid expression of three dimensionality. Johnson concentrates on Donatello — whose "workshop was one of the great creative furnaces of the Renaissance" and who "in some ways was the central figure of the Renaissance" — and Michelangelo, whose output was not limited to sculpture as "he was more interested in the human form as such than in any particular way or medium in which to represent it." His "heroic figure of David, designed to stand in the open and overawe the Florentines," added to his legend: "patrons and public alike confuse the giganticism of the work with the man who made it." Johnson also gives more than a nod to the particular contributions of Verrocchio and Benvenuto Cellini whose autobiography was written while serving a four-year prison sentence under house arrest.

Chapter 4 — The Buildings of the Renaissance
This chapter gives a brief but tantalizing introduction to Renaissance style, its architects and their contributions: Brunelleschi, the dome of Florence cathedral; Leon Battista Alberti for the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence and the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini; Michelozzo di Bartolommeo, personal architect to Cosimo de Medici; Donato Bramante of Urbino for his contributions to St. Peter's; Bernini; Michelangelo; and in Venice, which came belatedly to the renaissance, Jacopo Sansovino for the Libreria Marciana and his redesign of Piazza San Marco; and Palladio, Venice's greatest architect and the only Renaissance architect to give his name to a style that has endured. He was also the last of the true Renaissance architects.

Chapter 5 — The Apostolic Successions of Renaissance Painting
This is the longest chapter in the book, and if it weren't for the blessings of the Internet, it might be rather dry reading. But perhaps that goes for the rest of the book as well. Johnson surveys almost three hundred years of Renaissance painting, beginning with Cimabue, Giotto and Masaccio, the so-called apostolic succession of Florentine artists after whom no such definite progression was possible to identify simply because of the seeming explosion onto the scene of so many individual artists. Johnson has interesting comments about the important works of too many artists to name here. Looking up each painting slows down the reading, but adds immeasurably to one's absorption of what is presented. Johnson makes salient points about the works mentioned and places the artists in context with their contemporaries and patrons.

Chapter 6 — The Spread and Decline of the Renaissance
What we today, many hundreds of years later, call "Gothic" and "Renaissance" had no such names in those times. They were viewed as normality which, as we know, progresses almost without notice from day to day. This nameless phenomenon we call the Renaissance, however, had distinct characteristics and a distinctly new perspective: "the rejection of medieval art as false; the need to examine the work of antiquity both in practice, by studying its survivals, and in theory, by reading the texts; the concentration on the human form and its exact representation by scientific study; and the mastering of perspective." While Renaissance ideas spread quickly to northern Europe thanks to the printing press, artistic manifestations were slow to catch on and did not really take hold north of Italy until after the High Renaissance ended with the deaths of Michelangelo and Titian in the 1560s and 1570s. For northern artists visiting Italy — most notably Albrecht Dürer — the experience "was an artistic revelation, what we would call a cultural shock." The dissemination of Renaissance ideas and arts was inadvertently aided by military incursions into Italy beginning in 1494 by Charles VIII of France: "From the perspective of history, we can now see that the Florentine Renaissance came to a climax in the quarter century before the French invasion, when it truly was a city made for artists." The center of artistic activity then shifted to Rome under a series of munificent popes, especially Julius II and his Medici successor Leo X. This was the great Roman age of Raphael and Michelangelo. But in 1527, the devastating sack of Rome by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's armies ended the High Renaissance there. After the sack of Rome, artistic leadership in Italy moved to Venice, where it abided for half a century, after which the locus shifted north to the rest of Europe. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to a new age in the history of Europe.

In this short survey of the Renaissance we can see as if through a telescope how much the Italian Renaissance has contributed to our cultural heritage. Despite its lack of visual aids, this is a very useful book in summarizing and clarifying the important aspects of the period.

>184 Poquette: Oh, I used to love Nero Wolfe, but I haven't read any since at least the 80s. Maybe I should go back . ..

And I appreciated your more "serious" reviews too. Enjoyed reading about Milhauser and the Renaissance.

Somehow I seem to have missed you since June 25, close to when I went away and I am not fully caught up yet. I enjoyed your discussions of Beatrice and was going to suggest The Tigress of Forli too, but read down further to see bas did in a much more timely manner.

"How Love Came to Professor Guildea" is an amazing story. As Lola says, it is in the classic Black Water. If I remember correctly, it is the first story and really sets the tone for the collection of fantastic (in the genre sense) stories.

So, at least two books here to add to the never ending list.

Now that I am caught up, I can keep up better.

Glad to see you back! I wishlisted both The Barnum Museum and The Renaissance: A Short History, although I have read similar books to the latter before, but it's OK since I forget everything as soon as I put the book down.

The Renaissance: A short History looks to be a useful guide, a good introduction perhaps but books like this can also be misleading as they tend to paint everything too black and white. For instance I was thinking about your comments on chapter two where Johnson says there was conflict with the church on the subject of Renaissance literature. Perhaps conflict is too strong a word.

>187 rebeccanyc: I read quite a few of the Nero Wolfe series way back when . . . but I had never read the first one, Fer-de-Lance. But I never remember the endings of mysteries, so I can blithely reread, which I may to do just for the fun of it.

>188 SassyLassy: Not to worry. I have been hit or miss for the last few months and can't seem to get back into my old rhythms. Seems like the hurrier I go the behinder I get!

>189 FlorenceArt: Thanks, Florence! I quite liked Johnson's survey of the Renaissance because he had so many memorable things to say.

>190 baswood: Actually, I wouldn't recommend Johnson's book as an introduction to the Renaissance. Considering all the books I have read in recent years on the subject, I wasn't looking for an introduction to be sure. My reading has not been systematic at all, being all over the place, so I found this to be a very good summary, and I found it especially useful because it pulled all the disparate facts and factoids I have floating around in my head and brought them into perspective. I take your point about the tendency of historical surveys to summarize too much, painting in black and white. If my review conveyed that impression, it is entirely my fault because I was creating a summary of a summary.

Regarding your point about conflict being too strong a word to describe the relationship between Christianity and humanism, Savonarola's book burnings, the Inquisition, and Church efforts to suppress literature it disagreed with seem like conflicts to me. There certainly wasn't much of a conflict in the beginning, but I think you'll agree that over time things changed for the worse.

Perhaps conflict is too strong a word.

I'm puzzling over that one. You must have specific works in mind, Bas. I'm picturing Erasmus trying to mollify Luther's critics before the full outbreak of the Reformation. Tension seems understated.

P - Enjoyed your review of Paul Johnson's book.

>193 Poquette: Thanks, Dan!

Yesterday's Bestsellers, A Journey Through Literary History by Brian M. Stableford (1998) 160 pages, Google Books

There is something about the tone of Brian Stableford's writing that makes one wish to avoid reading almost all the books discussed here. It is odd that these books that were widely read at the time of publication could seem so universally unappealing in retrospect. Collections of book reviews usually present profitable veins for mining to augment one's list of books that must be read. In this case, the books that I have already read or am intimately familiar with have at least not been tarnished too badly by Stableford's critical appraisal.

I stumbled upon this book while in search of a contemporary review of The Garden of Allah by Robert Hichens. This is by no means contemporary, but it does present some interesting background about Hichens and his writing. If I had read this review before reading Hichens' book itself, I might have decided to skip it.

The most familiar books and writers covered here include Robinson Crusoe and its descendants, Alice in Wonderland and its back story, Lost Horizon by James Hilton (which I read many years ago), I, Claudius (which I have not read but did avidly absorb the BBC series), and Raymond Chandler and the American crime novel and its film noir derivatives.

Stableford is British and except for Eugene Sue (French) and Raymond Chandler (American), all the writers discussed were British. Some are almost forgotten today: H. Rider Haggard (She), Marie Corelli (A Romance of Two Worlds), Robert Hichens (The Garden of Allah), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Last Days of Pompeii), Eugene Sue (The Mysteries of Paris, P.C. Wren (Beau Geste), James Hadley Chase (No Orchids for Miss Blandish) and Hank Janson. Stableford does a good job of placing the books in context. He has interesting things to say about the authors and contemporary world events.

A word about this edition. It is available inexpensively through Google Books. I read it on line, which was fine, but unfortunately, there is no facility for highlighting passages. This is almost like torture for a compulsive underliner like me! One can preview the book at Google, if interested.

The criticism altogether was well done, but I kept wondering why the writer didn't select more books that were attractive. Not that he exactly panned Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland, I Claudius, etc., completely, but the overall effect of this book, particularly the last few chapters, left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I didn't come away with the feeling that I needed to rush out and catch up with many of these authors.

>192 dchaikin: I was thinking more on the lines of conflict between humanists and the church. The examples that you and Suzanne have given were conflicts within the church itself, of which there were many and which led to violence. Erasmus is a good example of a humanist thinker who found it easy to stay within the umbrella of the church.

Bas - but at that time everything in was within the church.

>194 Poquette: this sounds like an interesting idea. I would love to read a study of why certain books were best sellers at the times they were. What do the generally crappy quality current best sellers tell about us? And what makes certain books become best sellers? (Oh right, marketing) Not surprised though that a bestseller might be thought less of now.

>194 Poquette: I would say that some of those "best sellers" are classics and are still read today. Alice in Wonderland, anyone?

I read some of them when I was younger, but then they were recommended by my mother (The Last Days of Pompeii, No Orchids for Miss Blandish), maybe they were no longer best sellers at the time. I read others as weird kitsch from the past in the 80's or 90's (Rider Haggard, Eugène Sue).

>196 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan!

Re the "conflict" between the church and humanism, to be sure it did not begin until the Renaissance was well underway and it intensified after the 1490s when criticism of the Church caused it to crack down on individuals whose writings did not adhere to absolute orthodoxy. Some notable humanist targets of the Inquisition were Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno. Later on, many others in the realm of the sciences who were not humanists per se but whose ideas were certainly influenced by humanist thought. Gallileo comes to mind.

>197 rebeccanyc: I think I did single out Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland, Lost Horizon, I, Claudius and books by Raymond Chandler as most familiar, and indeed, they are classics. Most of the rest are fading into oblivion for better or worse.

>198 FlorenceArt: Oddly enough, I had never heard of No Orchids for Miss Blandish. Haggard was still a household name when I was a teenager although I never got around to reading anything by him. And poor Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Last Days of Pompeii) has now become something of a joke with the establishment in 1982 of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest which encourages writers to top the floridity of his "It was a dark and stormy night . . ." first sentence (from his novel Paul Clifford).

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester (1949), 310 pages, Kindle Edition

Something about the film Master and Commander really gets to me. While watching it for the third time in as many weeks, I got to thinking about reading the books, which I have been avoiding for no reason in particular except that once started, a long series of novels somehow becomes psychologically burdensome. But in reading about Patrick O'Brian and his books, I decided I should begin with C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels, which apparently were a big influence on O'Brian, and thus his books may be somewhat derivative — not meant to be snarky, but I think I am going to enjoy Mr. Hornblower.

The first in the series chronologically (although it was sixth of the eleven novels published) is Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It takes us through the years 1793-1797, from Hornblower's first step onto a ship after which, among other things, he survives a duel, is rescued from a sinking ship, is captured by a Spanish flotilla and suffers two years' imprisonment during which he heroically saves Spanish sailors from a dangerous shipwreck, receives his lieutenant's commission in absentia and is finally released from Spanish confinement.

I don't know whether I'll make it through the entire series, but this is a great beginning, and I hope to eventually get to Patrick O'Brian's books.

The Hornblower novels were a huge part of my teenage years. My sister and I read them together, and for months we lived in a fantasy world as British seamen. They have been imitated many times in many genres, but never surpassed. I hope you enjoy the rest of the series.

I really like the Patrick O'Brian books. I started reading them something like 10 years ago and I'm currently reading the 6th one. (I am obviously not the type to read through a series all in a row!) I've considered the Hornblower books, but never picked them up. Have you seen the miniseries (or I guess it was a series of 8 tv movies), with Ioan Gruffudd and Jamie Bamber? Good stuff.

>200 Poquette: I've read all the Hornblower books and am now very slowly making my way through the O'Brian ones, and just based on my own experience, I'd say that's a good way round to do it. If only because the Hornblower books seem a lot easier to follow, even if you know little about sailing ships or nautical terminology, and are thus useful practice. They're both entertaining, though, and different enough that, for me, at least, O'Brian doesn't feel too been-there-done-that after Forester at all.

I've never read any Hornblowers . . .

I've watched most of the Hornblowers mentioned in >202 ursula:. Not read the books, I, too, have a bit of a fear of committing to a long series.

>201 StevenTX: What a wonderful memory, Steve! I can almost put myself back in my own teenage years and thoroughly relate. When I was a young tomboy, I thought I wanted to grow up and go to sea, and the sheer adventure of this first book makes me wish I had read it sooner. On to Lieutenant Hornblower!

>202 ursula: I have not seen the TV movies of Hornblower. There is enough adventure to make movies about, yet I suspect many of those same adventures would be difficult to film. I'll definitely watch for them, and thanks for mentioning them.

>203 bragan: Glad to have my strategy, such as it is, confirmed. So far, Hornblower has proven to be a real page-turner and I am looking forward to going on.

>204 rebeccanyc: Fortunately, it's never too late. I am finding out we have missed something kind of wonderful here.

>205 Helenliz: If the rest of the Hornblower series moves as quickly as the first volume, the commitment won't seem so daunting. These are not deep, brooding novels; rather, they are high adventure for all ages.

Graphic Astrology by Ellen McCaffery (1952) 300 pages

From the sublime to the ridiculous. I almost feel I have to issue a disclaimer for reading this book!

While being only tangentially interested in the subject of astrology, I read this book because I wanted to understand how an astrological chart was constructed and generally how interpretations are made. I don't have the patience or the deep-seated interest to follow through on the very detailed and somewhat complex process of actually doing astrology. As its subtitle suggests, this book provides an excellent foundation course in creating and interpreting charts. Because of the complexity, much study and practice are required to assimilate the entirety of the subject. My initial curiosity has been more than satisfied. Would-be practitioners of the art will not be disappointed. For what it is, I give it a solid 4 stars. Aficionados will probably think it deserves a higher rating.

The 1951 movie version of "Captain Horatio Hornblower" with Gregory Peck is excellent as well.

And does anyone else remember the Democratic political convention when Jimmy Carter was nominated? He made a speech in which he named off popular Democrats from recent years including Hubert Horatio Humphrey (VP under Lyndon Johnson for you youngsters), only he misspoke and said "Hubert Horatio Hornblower." Apparently President Carter was a Hornblower fan too.

Nice story Steven

Ditto what Barry said.

>207 Poquette: so by the end of the book had you altered your views any on the accuracy of astrology? I only believe in it when my horoscope's good...

>211 AlisonY: Well, I'm really a sceptic in this area. Thus, my embarrassment at admitting to having read the book! What prompted me to read up on the subject was that I got quite interested in the Renaissance view of planetary astrology which manifested itself in a kind of archetypal psychology. I was curious to find out if modern astrological charting would a) provide any insights into historical beliefs, and b) to understand how or whether modern practice sees relationships among planetary influences. I feel I was rewarded on both counts, although the subject is way too complex to absorb by merely reading a book. So you see, it was more of an intellectual exercise or chalk it up to research. Take your pick. And my scepticism remains unshaken!

No need for embarrassment. Sounds like rewarding research.

The Castle of Perseverance edited by David N. Klausner (2010, 1440) (127 pages)

The Castle of Perseverance: A Modernization by Alexandra F. Johnston (1999)

I stumbled across this play while looking for something else and got hooked. It is, according to Alexandra Johnston, "the quintessential English morality play containing all the elements of the genre." The original manuscript dates from about 1440 — forty years after the death of Chaucer — making it the earliest full length vernacular play manuscript to come down to us. It is in Middle English, the dialect having been identified as coming from the neighborhood of Norfolk. Having recently done some reading in Middle English, it all seemed quite familiar.

As is apparent from the two titles given above, I found myself reading two texts simultaneously, one in Middle English and the other a modernization, both of which are available on line. Reading on line is not my first choice, but with all the back and forth, it was probably easier to have both texts up on the screen at the same time than shuffling two books.

It was actually Johnston's modernization that I came across initially but soon found the original text as well. While Johnston has done a pretty good job of capturing the versification and tone of the play, I enjoyed reading the original Middle English because there is simply nothing like it. David Klausner's ME edition makes it as easy and painless as possible by providing glosses at the end of each line as well as informative end notes that fill one in on stage directions and Biblical and cultural references. The end notes are interactive and are displayed at the bottom of the screen to facilitate viewing without having to flip back and forth between two screens. I really recommend reading it out loud because so much of the spelling looks odd and confusing, but the minute you hear the sounds of the words it is almost like a revelation. It is a lot of work but well worth it if you are so inclined.

The original manuscript included a staging plan (see above), apparently unique in the surviving evidence of early drama, and Klausner has transcribed the words for ease of reading.

The morality play at its simplest presents the battle for the Soul of Man in which personifications of evil and righteousness are pitted against each other. In this play, these personifications have been expanded to thirty-six players, which include Mankind, the central figure, plus your basic Seven Deadly Sins and a few more; the Seven Virtues; the so-called three enemies of Mankind — the World, Flesh and the Devil; a Good Angel and Bad Angel; God, and perhaps some other minor transitional figures. The staging must have been spectacular, as Medieval/Renaissance productions went. And it is an unusually long play: 3649 lines! Shakespeare's longest play Hamlet has 4042, Macbeth only 2113 and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex has 1684, all by comparison. Thus it may have taken close to four hours to present. This play illuminates how effective dramatization through allegory can be for the presentation of abstract ideas. Much of the flavor of the play is conveyed through the rhyming lines, alliteration and onomatopoeia.

The first third of the play is devoted to the temptation of Mankind by each in turn of the Seven Deadly Sins — Greediness, Lechery, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath and Pride. Their arguments are persuasive and Mankind is lured to the "scaffolds" (i.e., stage platforms) of several of them in turn.

Eventually characters representing Confession and Penance approach Mankind, saying that since Easter is near, he must consider confessing his sins and doing penance. After much persuasion, he begins to relent. Mankind knows he is a sinner but his excuse is that "everybody does it" — for he tells himself:

Sin does Mankind's bliss prevent;
In deadly sin my life is spent —
Mercy, God omnipotent!
In your grace I begin.

He thereupon denounces the Seven Deadly Sins. Having confessed, the character Confession takes him to the Castle of Perseverance where the Seven Virtues reside, all apparently portrayed as women.

The characters representing the various sins eventually make their way to the outskirts of the castle and begin hurling insults at Mankind and the Virtues inside. The byplay here has the potential for much tomfoolery, because the Virtues use roses as weapons in retaliation. Despite the urgings to battle by the Devil, the Castle holds in face of the first major onslaught where Pride, Wrath and Envy are driven off by a shower of roses thrown down on them by Meekness, Patience and Charity. This battle in the play forms a spectacular climax to the fight for Mankind.

Envy complains that

Charity, that tawdry tart,
With fair roses my head did break!

In disgust, the Bad Angel castigates the Devil and his three defeated warriors:

Go hence! You are not worth a turd!
Foul fall on you, all four!

It is now up to Gluttony, Sloth and Lechery to save the day. During a second assault, the outer defenses of the castle are breached, but the Sins are driven back again by the Virtues and their roses. Greed shouts an appeal to Mankind, hidden in the castle. Something in his argument penetrates Mankind's defenses, for he voices his fears of advancing age and eventually succumbs to Greed's wheedling. In a stunning turnabout he cries out: "I forsake the Castle of Perseverance!" To which the Good Angel laments:

Ah, sweet ladies, help! He goeth
Away with Greediness!

All the Virtuous Ladies lament his departure.

When body and soul shall be parted sunder
No worldly wealth shall with thee wend.

The Bad Angel answers with a scornful rant, concluding:

By God thou art no part of mankind
Unless Greediness be in thy mind.

Greed takes Mankind back to his scaffold and the World and the other Sins return to theirs. Greed shows off his store of riches and cajoles Mankind:

I'll show my lore
And thee endow with a full store,
But always, always say, "more and more"
And that shall be thy song.

Mankind carries his chest full of riches back to his bed under the castle where he prepares to bury it. But now a new character appears — Death:

Oh! now the time is nigh
To fill Mankind with Death's dint!
In all his works he serves folly;
Much of his life he has misspent.
* * *
You shall me dread, every one!
When I come, you shall groan.
My name on earth is left alone —
I am called dreary Death!

After a long soliloquy he approaches Mankind and delivers a mortal blow with his lance. Mankind did not see him until the blow had been struck.

Mankind calls to the World on his scaffold for help. But the World, in vengeance against Mankind's outrage — i.e., having lived for a time in the castle and adhered to the Seven Virtues — gives Mankind's worldly wealth to a boy — "I don't know who" — rather than seeking out his kin to benefit by his death. From his bed and with his dying breath Mankind puts himself at God's mercy.

Then his Soul emerges and castigates the sinful body, after which he appeals to the Good Angel for advice. The Good Angel cannot think of a logical reason why Mankind should not be damned, unless Mercy will come to Mankind's rescue. But in the meantime he is on his way to Hell.

Justice wills that thou must wend
Forth away with the fiend.

Soul laments his folly:

Wellaway! I was full mad
That I forsook my Angel good
And with Greediness stood
Till the day that I should die.

The Bad Angel guides him to Hell and even he cannot understand how Mankind could have forsaken the "Good Ladies" and been tempted by Greediness into sin. Then he beats Soul into the ground:

To the Devil's dell
I shall thee bear to Hell!

And to the audience:

I will not dwell
Have good day — I go to Hell!

Whereupon, he carries the Soul to the Devil's scaffold. Finally, the Four Daughters of God enter. Justice and Truth demonstrate conflicting ideals with Peace and Mercy. The colloquy of the Four Daughters ends the play. Truth and Justice think Mankind rightly belongs in Hell. Mercy and Peace argue that God's judgment must be tempered by them, i.e., Peace and Mercy. But they want to take the case before God, sitting in judgment. He listens to their arguments back and forth and decides in favor of Mercy, telling his daughters to fetch Mankind:

Bring him to me
And set him here by my knee,
In heaven to be
In bliss, with joy and glee!

This outcome reflects a common medieval sentiment: "Like a spark of fire in the middle of the sea is all wickedness of man compared to the mercy of God," which is demonstrated in this play by Mankind taking his place at the right side of God.

To be sure, this play is religious first, last and always and must be understood in the context in which is was written. Still, regardless of one's views on the subject, the play is highly entertaining, the language witty and ripe with irreverence, and taken together with the editorial notes provided, gives us a notion of the milieu and mentality of the medieval audience. Highly recommended.

A wonderful find. I enjoyed your summary.

"Go hence! You are not worth a turd!" I'll have to try this line on the next telemarketer who calls while I'm having dinner.

Excellent review. Very much enjoyed your summary and background. But 36 characters and 4 hours! Might be interesting to see it performed.

"Go hence! You are not worth a turd!" is cool indeed. I also liked "I will not dwell / Have good day — I go to Hell!"

>215 StevenTX: and >217 FlorenceArt: If you like that, you'll possibly enjoy as well:

"Al myn enmyté is not worth a fart;
I schyte and schake all in my schete.

There is quite a lot of scatological humor scattered throughout, all nicely alliterated, of course!

>216 DieFledermaus: Indeed, would love to see a performance. The staging area would have to be quite large to accommodate all the platforms even if they are small.

There actually is a video version of Castle of Perseverance available from the University of Toronto. Their Poculi Ludique Society did a full length performance in 1980 and filmed it. There are two versions available. The full length one is 4 hours and 15 minutes. The overview is 50 minutes. I used to show that one in my humanities course. They're really pricey, but you might be able to find one in a library collection.

>219 janeajones: Thanks for that tip, Jane! I knew U of Toronto had produced it but did not know there was a video. will try to find it through the library. Also glad that you know the Castle of Perseverance. I actually thought of you as I was reading. ;-)

You have had a run of interesting and varied books recently, S.

I have a soft spot for maritime novels too. I've read one Hornblower novel, Bird of Dawning, by John Masefield, and also Eric Newby's non fiction The Last Grain Race. Sea lore and naval tradition are fascinating to me.

Which lead me, inevitably, to Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels.

My first reading of one of his novels, which I think was the last but one in the series (they can of course be read as standalone works) was odd, because I kept thinking to myself that there is no obvious plot, no character development in the normal sense. This, it transpires, is a good thing. It allows room for the rhythm of the sea, and the foibles of mankind to arise naturally and in their own time.

The other thing I like about O'Brian is that he gives a unique personality to all living creatures, from a crew member who only ever has one line, or one thought recorded for posterity, through to dogs, sloths and horses.

I find that this greatly enriches his writing and allows one to muse on things greater than the sum of the parts.

Also Aubrey is ESFP/J and Maturin INTJ/P.

Opposites, anima/animus etc. which creates an almost universal or maybe mythical relationship.

>214 Poquette: Excellent review Suzanne. Love those quotes. There is so much vibrancy in words in that style of English.

>222 zenomax: Interesting about the ESFP and INTJ juxtaposition. Did you work out that analysis? Interesting idea to try to apply the theory to literary characters. The Aubrey and Maturin characters in particular have obviously been very well thought out. I look forward to reading that series.

In the meantime, I have just finished my second of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. I suspect the characters are less subtly drawn, but I too am captivated by the seafaring adventures.

>223 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan! Yes, vibrancy is the word. I particularly feel it in the original Middle English. Once you get into the rhythm of it, it's just amazing.

Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester (1952) 306 pages, Kindle edition

In a series of books purportedly about Horatio Hornblower, it is surprising to read one in which Hornblower is not the central character, except in an indirect way. C.S. Forester spins this yarn through the eyes of another lieutenant who serves with him on the same ship but is senior to him according to date of commission. This is a clever approach because it allows the reader to see Hornblower's sometimes enigmatic character through the eyes of a colleague. So instead of an omniscient narrator, we see all the action filtered through the point of view of one who is not the hero of the story. As a consequence, Hornblower's heroism, ingenuity and fast thinking are elevated by witness of this colleague who is obviously less talented yet great-hearted enough to acknowledge and appreciate Hornblower's qualities.

Lieutenant Hornblower is another great sea adventure that takes place mostly underway to the West Indies — Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) in particular, where, under command of an insane captain who suffers a debilitating accident and is thankfully confined to his quarters for the duration leaving the ship in command of the rather dull-witted first lieutenant, they suffer at first a defeat, but swiftly followed by a resounding victory which was thanks almost entirely to Lt. Hornblower. Read the book to see what happens next!

Going back a bit to the Castle of Perseverance, my university library could get a copy, but they'd have to do the more time-intensive loan and it would be a videocassette, which I couldn't even play anymore (although they might want you to watch it there).

Also, I saw this (on the wikipedia page) about the stage directions, which I thought was pretty funny -

"In the center of the drawing is the castle from the play's title. The writing above the castle explicitly says that the audience should not sit in the area. At the base of the castle is a bed on which Mankind rests. The circle around the castle is labeled as a ditch, which the audience should not cross."

I'm imagining audience members running amok.

>226 DieFledermaus: That's a rough translation of the writing on the drawing. This must have been a theater in the round. From what I have read about morality plays and troops and whatnot, it also must have been put on outside. The stage directions also call for "scaffolds" for the various lairs of the Sins. Must have been something to see.

Hope you can find time to watch it!

>225 Poquette: - Looks like fun stuff.

>214 Poquette: I read The Castle of Perseverance in a penguin collection Four Morality Plays and thought I would be the only person on these threads to have read it.

The Penguin version has 3,693 lines in medieval English, but is quite easy to read.
It may have been a spectacular production as there are 36 parts for actors. There has been some conjecture that the ditch, the castle, the scaffolding were all part of the setting for the play, but of course we do not know if it was ever performed in this way.

Glad you enjoyed it and I can recommend Magnyfycence by John Skelton, but that was written a century later.

>228 dchaikin: Indeed, it is fun stuff. I just finished my third in the series, Hornblower and the Hotspur. I am now totally hooked.

>229 baswood: Of all the people here, you are the one I figured might have already discovered The Castle of Perseverance. Delighted to know you in fact have read it. And thanks for the recommendation of Magnyfycence. I'll check it out.

Until yesterday, I have been reading three books, two of which are kind of heavy going: Along with the just finished Hornblower, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis by Phyllis Gordan and Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice by Deborah Howard. The Renaissance seems to have a steady hold on me. And there is more waiting in the wings!

When reading more than one book at a time, I seem to get more read in a day because I stop one book when my mind starts to wander and move on to another. It may be an illusion, but the stimulation from one book feeds into another, and so on. For some reason I keep forgetting how effective this is and end up rediscovering it from time to time.

The books sound terrific. I've done that, switching between books, but it's not often I have enough reading time that I need to.

Being retired, I have nothing but time to read which is both a blessing and a curse. I could read books like Hornblower all day, but the more serious studies I tend to get involved with are hard to stick with for more than an hour or two at a stretch. The learning curve is too intense. So trading back and forth somehow relieves the strain, for want of a better word.

One of the side benefits of the Hornblower books is that my knowledge of the coastal geography of Spain, France and the Channel coast of England has grown exponentially. This is true also of all the nautical expressions that Forester uses so well in describing the motions of a ship of war whether in battle, in weather foul or fair and in shallow waters.

>233 Poquette: "Being retired..."

Everything you said here applies to me as well. I couldn't possibly have read Plato if I hadn't alternated with something like Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. Rider Haggard. Only with me it's more like 30 minutes at a time. And what I know about nautical life all stems from Hornblower. The educational value of good historical fiction is probably underrated.

Even though I read for much shorter stretches of time, I rarely want to read the same book in each session. Even with lighter fare, I guess I feel like I just need some variety so I don't spend the entirety of my reading day in one world.

>231 Poquette: two books that I am anxiously awaiting your reviews.

Retirement is just ...well wonderful, if only I could have done it sooner.

Bas - I'm ready... I'm 42. Ok, the savings accounts don't think I'm ready.

>234 StevenTX: The educational value of good historical fiction is probably underrated.

Too true!

>235 ursula: Variety is good. In fact, it's great!

>236 baswood: Reviews just around the corner.

Youth is wasted on the young . . . alas!

>237 dchaikin: Ok, the savings accounts don't think I'm ready.

Ay, there's the rub!

>234 StevenTX: The educational value of good historical fiction is probably underrated.

Too true. When I think about what I know about historic events, it's the fictional accounts that come to mind over the documentaries I've watched or non-fiction books I've read, and the best non-fiction books are the ones that read a bit like a novel. For my first trip to England where I was going to have a chance to go beyond London, I had zillions of choices, but based my plans around what I'd read about in Sarum, by Edward Rutherford. (Turns out it was a good choice).

Poggio's handwriting



Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, translated with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan (1974, 1991) 393 pages

First of all, I come not to bury Poggio Bracciolini but to praise him, for his letters are charming, witty and reflective of the age in which he flourished. But this book, Two Renaissance Book Hunters, has within its pages a great deal to complain about. Before we get to that, however, let us begin at the beginning on a more positive note.

Interest in Poggio was rekindled a few years ago with publication of Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve which dealt with, among other things, his discovery at the Swiss monastery of St. Gall of Lucretius' great poetic work On the Nature of Things which had been lost for a millennium. But even more important to the Renaissance humanists was the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, a lost book by the father of rhetoric no less, not to mention seven — or was it nine —lost orations of Cicero. Many more ancient texts were discovered by Poggio and his fellow book hunters, most of which have lapsed back into obscurity. But at the time, some people wanted to erect statues to Poggio and especially Bartolomeo Aragazzi, about whom almost nothing is known today (in English anyway) but who participated equally in these discoveries.

Poggio was also famous for having served in the Roman Curia for fifty years as secretary to seven popes. This number was inflated by the fact that three of them were claiming the papal throne at the same time. The resulting Church turmoil culminated in the Council of Constance (1414-1418) which settled the longstanding Western Schism and issued in the long term of Martin V (1417-1431).

But after the abdication of Antipope John XXIII, the papacy was actually vacant for two years, so Poggio and his humanist friends in service to the Curia were at leisure in 1416-1417 to search for books. It was in this period that he traveled the twenty miles from Constance to visit St. Gall in Switzerland, and he later traveled to Baden in Germany. These were the sites of his major finds.

After the election of Martin V, the Church was still fraught with turmoil, and it was some time before Martin felt safe to return to Rome. Poggio received an invitation to work for the Bishop of Winchester, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, so he punted and went to England for five unproductive years (1418-1423). It was during this time that the correspondence with Niccolò de' Niccoli began in earnest.

Either Poggio was a bit of an egoist or he was reluctant to presume a right to publish other people's letters, for he made certain that several hundred of his own were published in his lifetime, but almost none of his correspondents' letters have survived. And more's the pitty. This book suffers by the one-sidedness of the correspondence. Gathered here are 93 letters of Poggio to Niccolò but none in return to give us an equal flavor of his writing. A hazy picture of Niccolò forms through Poggio's reflections and the accompanying notes.

Before this review takes a turn for the worse, a word should be said about the translation. It is excellent. Poggio wrote almost exclusively in Latin, and Ms. Gordan has transmitted his personality almost flawlessly, capturing his wit, his annoyance, his enthusiasm — in short, his charm, which comes through nicely. As a window into the world of fifteenth century Italy, this collection serves very well.

Now, as to the complaints. I was prepared to issue a diatribe against the pedantry and even the organization of this book, but there simply isn't room. Let me try to hit the high spots — or should I say low spots?

First, there is a group of several letters dating from the period around Poggio's discoveries (1416-1418) that are relegated to an appendix. They are either to or from some of Poggio's closest, life-long humanist friends, and they convey the feeling of excitement generated among humanists as a result of those finds that initially brought fame to Poggio and some of these same people. These letters set the table; this is where it all began. They introduce some very important characters who appear again and again in Poggio's letters to Niccolò, and they would have provided a nice introduction to these names, who became quite familiar by the end, if only they had been placed in a prologue at the beginning of the book. I was well into the letters before it dawned on me that the discoveries had been made. I kept waiting to read of something new and exciting, but throughout this correspondence both Poggio and Niccolò were engaged in borrowing and copying manuscripts from far and wide either to share with others or to augment their own libraries. The era of discovery had passed. I think the book suffers by this unfortunate editorial placement. If you decide to read this book, after the introduction, go directly to the appendix.

Second, as stated above, these letters are translated from the Latin originals. But the translator has chosen to retain the Latin form of all proper names, some of which are quite obscure even to Wikipedia. But the Italian forms even sound familiar to a nonscholar such as myself. The unknown Nicolaus de Niccolis becomes the more familiar Niccolò de Niccoli; Leonardus Brunus Aretinus becomes Leonardo Bruni aka Leonardo Aretino; Cosmus de Medicis and Nicolaus de Medicis become Cosimo and Niccolò de' Medici, and the list goes on. The question is raised: If you're going to translate a book presumably for the benefit of the average reader, why not translate the names into the most commonly recognizable forms?

And that brings me to the third complaint: This book has all the trappings of a book for the average educated reader, but this is a disguise. It is really meant for scholars and has been dressed up to look like it would be enjoyable to nonscholars as well. The 1991 reissue is a quality paperback from Columbia University Press. But I didn't have to get too far into the notes to realize that these are way above my pay grade. Some are more useful than others; I won't say they are completely useless. I did manage to ferret out quite a bit of interesting arcana. But the good stuff is buried so deep in the pedantic stuff, that it sometimes takes too much time to get to the kernel of information that you are hoping to find. Sometimes it doesn't materialize. Sometimes you are referred to another source for background, and most of the sources cited are in Latin, Italian, German or, rarely, French. Some are in manuscript form. Who but a scholar has the time or the resources to track down half of what is presented, and once found, the ability to read it? Philologists, content analysts, textual analysts, historiographers, bibliographers, linguists and others soaring in the empyrean heights will find them useful indeed. Would that I had the time, the resources or the knowledge of four languages! Anyway, I am not sure the notes are as helpful as they might have been had they been aimed at an audience that might be able to profit by them. If you want to get a glimpse of what I am talking about, you can preview the Notes at Google Books.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, on balance, despite the complaints, I thoroughly enjoyed these letters and the sense of immersion in the Renaissance they foster. With the caveats issued above, I can recommend them to lovers of Renaissance history and literature. But be forewarned, it is going to be a bumpy ride.

How interesting to get to read letters written by Renaissance scholars in translation. Shame about the presentation of them for the average "interested" reader. Excellent review.

Ditto to what baswood said, and a reminder to self that it's important in some reviews to address the editorial material as well as the primary content.

>241 baswood: and >242 StevenTX: Unfortunately, I was only able to scratch the surface in my review. Also I wanted to leave plenty for readers to discover. I was less interested in discouraging than in preparing readers for some hard work. It was worth the effort in the end.

>240 Poquette: Fascinating. I'm enjoying your Renaissance explorations.

Thanks Rebecca!

Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice by Deborah Howard (1975) 194 pages

Venice is well known for its unusual architecture which reflects not only the "Veneto-Byzantine" flavor dating from the 12th century, and the Venetian Gothic which began to appear in the 15th century, but also the new Classical elements influenced by the rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini in 1414 of De architectura, Vitruvius's four-volume work on architecture dating from the first century. Jacopo Sansovino was only one of several architects in the 1500s to have caught the Vitruvian bug, for he had studied the ruins in Rome which made his absorption of Vitruvian principles that much easier.

Sansovino was born in Florence in 1486 and spent his early career there and in Rome, where he was in close contact with the great artists of the High Renaissance. He knew Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo and many more. He had been trained as a sculptor and had limited architectural experience when, to escape the ravages of the sack of Rome in 1527, he fled to Venice where he was welcomed by Doge Andrea Gritti, an enthusiastic patron of the arts.

His first architectural commission in Venice was to restore the domes on St. Mark's Basilica, which led to his appointment as architect to the Procurators of St. Marks, a quasi-governmental body which had responsibility for management of all the properties surrounding both the Piazza San Marco and the Piazzetta in front of the Doge's Palace.

In 1529 the Peace of Bologna ended Venetian hostilities with the pope and the Holy Roman Empire, beginning a long period of relative peace that lasted throughout the rest of Sansovino's life. In this environment, architectural projects abounded. Sansovino formed lifelong friendships with Doge Gritti who was very interested in civic improvement, and with Titian and Pietro Aretino the poet.

In addition to the Procurators, other patrons of Sansovino included the state itself, the Church, charitable institutions and private citizens. In this book his work is analyzed according to these various categories of patron with a chapter devoted to each.

Sansovino is probably best known for "modernizing" and improving Piazza San Marco and designing the Marciano Library and the Loggetta in front of the campanile. The choice of the west side of the Piazzetta for the library was a long time in coming — in fact, fifty years overdue. The gift of 500 Greek manuscripts by Cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond had languished in an obscure room of the Doge's palace and later in the Basilica itself. Cardinal Pietro Bembo was the newly appointed librarian, and work began in 1527. Palladio called Sansovino's library "the richest and most ornate building since antiquity." The Senate pointed out in a decree of 1515 that the "whole notion of building a splendid public library was a conscious attempt to emulate the ancients." Of his design, Aretino wrote in a letter to Sansovino: "You are the man who knows how to be Vitruvius."

The Logetta, which sits in front of the Campanile, is a unified architectural allegory which, in its sculptural decorations, sets out the virtues of the Venetian government.

The Mint, which shares the far wall of the Library and faces on the lagoon, was designed to replace an older structure. Sansovino received a commission by the Venetian Council of Ten, and the project was underwritten by freeing some of the 25,000 white slaves on the island of Cyprus at 50 ducats per head.

Sansovino's ecclesiastical patrons were of two types: monastic institutions and parish churches. Altogether he built six churches in Venice, all of which replaced earlier structures that had fallen into disrepair, and three of which were later destroyed during the Napoleonic period. "Churches form the nuclei in the cell structure of the city of Venice." This is because in the earliest days (5th – 7th centuries) each of seventy islands in the marshy lagoon became individual parishes with church and campo being built and set apart on the highest ground. The three parish churches had originally been established a thousand years before Sansovino was engaged to rebuild them.

Sansovino's reputation as an ecclesiastical architect does not match those of Palladio and others for a variety of reasons. First, there are no unifying architectural ideas behind his churches: they each reflect individual circumstances to which he adapted his plans. Second, "there is no trace of the sixty plans of temples and churches, apparently intended for publication," that Vasari tells us were left to his son Francisco. Finally, he left no writings, unlike Palladio, to reveal his ideas about religious architecture.

The Church played no significant role in providing medical care or relief to the poor in Venice. Charitable institutions in Venice were of two types: self-governing scuole and state-run hospitals. Sansovino designed one of each.

The palazzi that line the Grand Canal are some of the great attractions of Venice. Sansovino designed two: the Palazzo Dolfin and the Palazzo Corner. In addition he undertook countless restorations and alterations. Before his flight to Venice in 1527 Sansovino had already built a palace in Rome — the Palazzo Gaddi in the Renaissance banking quarter, begun in 1520.

The Venetian economy was founded on trade mostly organized on a family basis, and the palazzo served as headquarters for the business and sometimes four generations of the family. Over the centuries, the style of façades evolved from "Veneto-Byzantine" to gothic to classical.

Palazzo Dolfin was a characteristic merchant's house and reflected classical architectural features, adapted to the needs of the Dolfin family and fully described in the text.

The Corner family was one of the oldest in the Venetian nobility. Zorzi Corner died the year Sansovino arrived in Venice (1527) and his sons inherited his estate. Five years after his death, the legendary Corner Palace — legendary both for its size and beauty — burned to the ground in a spectacular fire. The new palazzo was not completed until long after Sansovino's death, and while the design is impressive, its large scale seems out of proportion to the neighboring palazzi.

In summary, Sansovino's architectural style is impossible to generalize or categorize, although his fondness for classical features is apparent in a variety of settings. His versatility is reflected in the wide variety of patrons and buildings intended for vastly different purposes which he designed over a forty-year period. This generously illustrated book focusing on his architectural achievements in Venice gives a well-drawn behind-the-scenes look at the city from an architectural point of view. Notes can be read or skipped, as the reader desires.

>246 Poquette: Excellent review of Deborah Howard's book.

Thanks Barry!

* * * * *

This thread is way long in the tooth. Moving on to Part III.