Azar Nafisi’s book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Posted on July 8, 2022 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Author: Azar Nafisi
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Date: December 30, 2003
ISBN: 978-0812971064

Nafisi’s book is a biographical reflection mostly upon her experiences teaching Western literature (the modern novel) in Tehran, Iran, before, during, and after the 1979 revolution. In addition, several chapters recount the actual events of the revolution happening in and around the University of Tehran, where she was a professor (Ph.D. American literature, University of Oklahoma).

The narrative pattern weaves together insights from the literature she taught in the classroom, with social upheaval happening around the university. We see behind the scenes into individual experiences of Nafisi and her students during those pivotal years of 1979-1981, as the future of Iran was being sorted out. The sorting out process was sometimes violent and bloody in the streets, constantly argued in the universities, and fought for in the halls of power.

Nafisi includes conversations with students comparing meaning in the novels with the meaning of the social changes happening around them. One of the key functions of literature, Nafisi says (and many others have said), is that it helps people put themselves in someone else’s shoes. This was a big issue among the many competing groups vying for influence when the revolution was in progress, and no one yet knew what the future government would look like. Much of the book explores these competing meanings and influences.

Some of the novels that feature in Nafisi’s life and in the book include Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, James’ Daisy Miller, Washington Square, and the Ambassadors, Nabokov’s Lolita, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, among others.

There is an interesting episode where the classroom is converted to a courtroom, and Great Gatsby is put on a mock-trial for its moral integrity. Students are assigned to roles such as judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, and all participated in the questioning. No verdict was reached, but the exercise provoked a lot of thought and debate. Nafisi considered it a success, despite the lack of a verdict.

Nafisi was dismissed from the University of Tehran in 1981, but years later was invited to teach at Allameh Tabataba’I University. In one poignant moment, a former student re-appears seven years later, and rejoins Nafisi’s literature class in the new setting. Nafisi learns that the last time she saw some of her students, was the day many of them were put in jail for several years, and learned that one had been executed. Ultimately, Nafisi was expelled from Allameh Tabataba’I University as well. Actually she resigned, but her resignation was denied, but then she was expelled. The end result was that she left the school.

The 1980s feature her professorial life, her relationships with students and friends, but the backdrop of this decade was the steady bombardment from missile strikes as the Iran-Iraq war dragged on for many years.

Nafisi began to feel irrelevant as her expertise were devalued, her services as a professor no longer wanted. She wrote to an American friend, being irrelevant is like visiting your old house, wandering into your old family room, where your book-filled bookcases have been replaced with a brand new television set. You are no longer relevant to this house. You’ve become a ghost roaming between the walls, floors, through the doors, but you are not seen and not part of it anymore (169). The feeling is common among older people; however, Nafisi was not very old at the time, and the haunting realization takes on special poignancy in these circumstances. The mood is perfectly captured in the quotation from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the “Burnt Norton” chapter (227–228).

By the 1990s, Nafisi hosted weekly discussions on modern American novels in her home. It included some of her former students, which temporarily filled a void. Ultimately, Nafisi left Iran in 1997. Some of her old friends and students stayed in Iran, others relocated to the US, Canada, England, and Europe. Some pursued their own PhDs, some became teachers and professors.

Looking back on the story, I see a life constantly interrupted, derailed, damaged; but with a drive to find meaning and empathy through the best literature. That is the thread that holds together from her youthful college experience, through Iran’s Islamic Revolution, through the Iran-Iraq war, through many academic, social, and governmental relocations, dislocations, and difficulties. It’s the story of how any life can be more meaningful when reading and learning are at the center and drive the mind onward.

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Hal Shows’ Essay Collection The Bandshell Project

Posted on May 28, 2022 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: The Bandshell Project
Author: Hal Steven Shows
Publisher: Black Bay Books
Date: June 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1514264546

Collections of essays are among my favorite kinds of books. Hal Shows’ The Bandshell Project is a great example. The essays span from about 1979 to 2015 (year of publication). Shows is primarily known as a poet (and a musician), but now he has extended his reach to that of a first-rate essayist.

I would describe myself as a lukewarm fan of poetry. When I am curious about a poet, I look for prose—fiction or nonfiction—that they have published in addition to their poetry. Some of my favorite books are Ezra Pound’s Selected Prose, T. S. Eliot’s Selected Essays (although I thoroughly enjoyed his poem the Four Quartets), Edgar Allen Poe stories, Wordsworth’s Preface, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, etc. Hence, my particular interest in The Bandshell Project—essays written by a poet.

I was struck by many associations while reading this book. What first hit me, was that I thought I could’ve been reading Truman Capote. The first few pages, especially 3 & 4, felt like Capote’s travel piece on New Orleans, the style and texture and imagery all reinforced this impression. Capote’s travel collection comprises some of my favorite writing, so this was a very positive reaction. The ultra-careful æsthetic crafting of words and sentences yields a delightful artistic effect that I look for—and very much appreciate when I find it. I found it in this book by Hal Shows.

Some essays are specific to the geographical area, such as highlighting artistic talent in the Tallahassee, Florida area where Shows lives. Having lived in Tallahassee in a previous life, long ago, I enjoyed the references to musician Del Suggs and poet P. V. LeForge. (Hey, there’s another poet who I have investigated via his prose. I read and reviewed LeForge’s short-story collection The Principles of Interchange.) I also noticed in the copyright page that some material previously appeared in the International Quarterly magazine. That’s another memory from a past life—I was the senior editor for the International Quarterly magazine in the mid-1990s.

Hal Shows’ “Magic” essay (31) explored characteristics of the long poem, and the poet as “mage.” It reminded me of the book Time of the Magicians, although that book was about philosophers. But it rang true—Shows’ essay blurs the line between poet and philosopher, expanding the epistemology of the reader. The poem must achieve what epistemologists seek to achieve—to learn something more about our relation to the world. The drama of a long poem requires an “enveloping context” and an “identifiable world against which particulars can mean.” I like this, again, because of an association. It reminds me of Henry James’ dictum, before writing a single word of a new novel, to have thoroughly worked out the world (sort of a figurative “tableau vivant”) in which the novel will happen.

Staying on the theme of long-ago authors: The essay Hawthorne for Gamers (51) provides a good example for literature instructors who are looking for new ways to present old novelists. Shows tells a good story in this piece as well. I don’t know anything about gaming, but it sounded like it had some good ideas.

I enjoyed further delving into the philosophy of poetry in the Short Notes, Long Poems essay (85). Discussed are what makes structure, and why to not analyze/objectify individual poems. The experience of the poem is the poem, is the structure, is the meaning. There is nothing more to analyze. I like the distinction of the “phenomenal reality of the poem” (91) versus the notion that poems do not have an ontological status. I could insert another association here—Abstract Objects, Ideal Forms, and Works of Art: an Epistemic and Æsthetic Analysis—for more on the epistemological status versus ontological status versus metaphysical status of a work of art.

This theme is further worked out in a later essay in the book, “Objectivity and Others: Notes on the Epistemological Function of Poetry” (107). The first page cites Dylan Thomas. Hey again! Another poet who I primarily know and like because of the poet’s prose writings such as Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog and Under Milk Wood. Hal Shows takes issue with T. S. Eliot’s “objective correlative.” When I studied poetry under poet Ron Bayes, he advocated an inverted “subjective correlative,” which might be more or less what Shows is getting at here as well (but I wouldn’t swear to it).

I liked Shows’ way of putting the chief task of the artist: to “embody in his work the delicate, intuitive knowledge of the underlying unity and integrity of experience in the world.” I believe this is another way of saying to “expand the epistemology of the reader” quoted from the earlier essay. To learn more about the underlying unity and integrity of experience in the world, in my view, is also the chief task of the novelist, the scientist, and the philosopher.

Shows’ excellent review of P. V. LeForge’s book of poetry (183) felt like the perfect book review (and here I am reviewing that review). After reading it, I felt like I knew LeForge. Actually, I had met LeForge many times, when he owned the Paperback Rack bookstore, and around the Florida State University milieu. But I didn’t actually know him. Getting back to Hal Shows—my favorite quote in this essay is “I suspect that a lot of memorable and cherished English verse was composed in the mind … during a long walk in the weather” (185). I think of great walkers of London such as Charles Lamb (also an essayist) and Charles Dickens; also a book I enjoyed, Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City. Their walks may have led to other non-verse compositions, but same idea. My own ideas come when I am doing something active, walking, exercising, vacuuming the carpet, etc. And so, “Again and again, these poems by P. V. LeForge connect physical activity to the crystallization of our thought” (185).

In the D. H. Lawrence essay, “For Lawrence, the moral function of the work of art lay not in any didactic advocacy of a given morality, but … to deliver us beyond ‘moral schemes of any sort” (197). But rather, literature is to give us “new understandings of ourselves in relation to our world” (197). How Henry James would agree! James, himself a fantastic essayist, wrote an essay “Art of Fiction” in response to a didactic essay written by Walter Besant who asserted that art must always convey a moral message and reinforce the moral structure of the day. In essence, Besant wanted artists to “rearrange” the facts of the story to fit the dictums of morality, instead of what would actually happen in the world. James, being a purist in the value of “truth in art,” wrote his response in the “Art of Fiction”: He says, “In proportion as in what [art] offers us we see life without rearrangement do we feel that we are touching the truth; in proportion as we see it with rearrangement do we feel that we are being put off with a convention” (405). Emotion evoked from sympathy with a human character, one that corresponds to real-world experience, to “truth in detail” (“Art of Fiction” 399), is central to James’ own view of character development. [“The Art of Fiction”. The Portable Henry James. Ed. Morton Dauwen Zabel. New York: Penguin Books, 1981: 387-414.]

Finally, I must pay special homage to Hal Shows’ essay on poet Van K. Brock’s book, Hard Essential Landscape. It is a very informative piece that should be read before reading Brock’s book. It helps with both insights and organization of the book. Brock is a poet whose poetry I actually liked, a lot. I didn’t need to look for his prose to learn more about Brock. In fact, I should mention, I knew Van Brock well at one time. Rather than go into that here, I’ll link out to a brief bit about “My Friendship with Van Brock.”).

There’s a lot more to tell about Hal Shows’ Bandshell Project, but I have already exceeded my normal character limits (somewhat kidding). There are many provocative and enjoyable references to familiar names and works throughout the book. I enjoyed references to F. O. Matthiessen, for example, who was perhaps the foremost Henry James scholar in his time (before Leon Edel came along).

Hal Shows’ Bandshell Project should be circulated among all lovers of literature and epistemology. It’s a must for those who especially enjoy essays, like me. So do go out and buy this book (that is, go out to amazon.com and buy it). I highly recommend it.

—Robert Rose-Coutré, author of Screenformation.

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Summary of the 2021 Biography of Philip Roth

Posted on March 11, 2022 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Philip Roth: The Biography
Author: Blake Bailey
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st Edition (Hardcover)
Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0393240726

This biography of Philip Roth (19-March-1933 – 22-May-2018) presents a mix of Roth’s personal and literary life—with a more emphasis on the personal. In fact, my main criticism of the book is that it spends too much time belaboring the minute details of Roth’s personal-life miseries and disasters. The prolonged jeremiads and relentless physical and emotional sufferings become painfully tedious too often. Cutting some of that out, the book might’ve been trimmed to about 600 pages, instead of the lengthy 807 pages (not counting notes, appendix, etc.). On the other hand, that might not give the full picture of Roth’s life.

Roth enjoyed a stable, secure, and relatively happy childhood in Newark, New Jersey (Weequahic neighborhood), with family summers at the Jersey shore. He had a healthy academic life, earning a B.A. magna cum laude in English (elected to Phi Beta Kappa) at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, and, with a scholarship, earned an M.A. in English literature at the University of Chicago. But in adulthood, the happiness mostly ended.

Roth made poor choices in both of his marriages (self admission), and lived much of his life in miserable relationships. But not all: part of his life, mercifully, was blessed with some very happy non-marital relationships. The author spends a lot of time detailing arguments and other conversations, many verbatim (based on various journals and interviews), and many, in my opinion, not worth recording.

Roth loved the bustling city life in his New York City apartment, although to ensure quiet when he wanted it, he bought up the apartments all around him, beside, above, and below (p. 704). He also liked the less hectic life in his Connecticut getaway, where he hosted social gatherings from his extensive list of friends. The social gatherings at these and other locations are also described in some detail, which, in this case, really added color to the book. The attendees constitute a Who’s Who of literary lights and other celebrities of the time.

Roth’s early and primary literary influences were Henry James, William Faulkner, Gustav Flaubert, Sherwood Anderson, and Joseph Conrad. Later he revered novelists Saul Bellow and John Updike more than any others. Roth also greatly respected, and was friends with, William Styron. The author offers some interesting tidbits such as, according to Styron, Roth is partly the model for the character Nathan Landau in Styron’s bestseller, Sophie’s Choice (p. 186), which was published in 1979.

The author does a good job reporting on the period during which Roth rose from obscurity to fame. Roth’s first really successful writing was the short story “The Conversion of the Jews” (written in 1958, published in the Paris Review in 1959). Roth’s second successful piece of writing was his novella Goodbye, Columbus (1959), which suddenly catapulted him to literary renown. The novella won the National Book Award—Roth was the youngest author ever to win that award. Saul Bellow declared Roth a virtuoso at age 26 (p. 171).

Roth experienced repeated acclaim with his steady outflow of successful novels and other writings, finally numbering thirty-one books during his lifetime. The author emphasizes Roth’s monk-like daily writing discipline, which sharpened his expertise as well as enabled his prolific output. Roth’s final novel, Nemesis (2010), was lauded as a masterpiece and “a triumphant return to high form” (p. 748). Roth was 77 years old.

The author highlights this striking accomplishment—Roth is unique in that he wrote so many books universally acclaimed as masterpieces, and unique in that two of his greatest novels were 50 years apart: Goodbye, Columbus and Nemesis. No other novelist comes close to this accomplishment, consistency, and longevity.

As for the twenty-nine books in-between, posterity has dubbed most of them major or minor masterpieces, with few exceptions. The author shows us Roth’s varying attitudes towards the critical responses. He tried not to read them, but often couldn’t resist and gave in. Other times he was quick to find the first review being published. A common theme in all the reviews throughout his lifetime was that the reviewers completely failed to understand the book, whether the review was good or bad.

Roth accumulated a lion’s share of literary awards as well. American Pastoral, for example, won the Pulitzer prize in 1998. Other books garnered the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Roth was often a repeat-winner—many books won the same awards over time, and there was a real diversity of awards. The Human Stain, for example, won the United Kingdom’s WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year, as well as two awards from France: the Prix Médicis Étranger, and the Commander of the Legion of Honor; in 2011, the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement (approx. $80,000); and in 2012, the Prince of Asturias Award for literature and the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. He won the Gold Medal In Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001.

Many major universities bestowed honorary doctorates upon Roth, including Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Columbia, and Rutgers, among others. Many of Roth’s novels became Hollywood movies. The author notes that Roth viewed the movie version of Goodbye, Columbus as the best movie ever made of his books (p. 783).

The author brings out Roth’s disillusionment with the steady deterioration of the reading public over the decades, as television made people read less and less. The general population’s march towards illiteracy had an impact on his readership. He noted that, among writers, he and Updike were “the last pre-television generation” (p. 334). As television implacably dumbed down the populous, there followed “the inevitable decline of ‘people who read serious books seriously and consistently’” … “Someday soon, said Roth, reading novels would be as ‘cultic’ an activity as reading ‘Latin poetry.’” (p. 751).

I definitely recommend the book. Despite the book’s flaws, Philip Roth is an important literary figure and this book gives us greater understanding of his work. I recommend the book for anyone interested in literature, writers in general, or anyone interested in twentieth-century history.

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Review of Wolfram Eilenberger’s Time of the Magicians

Posted on December 11, 2021 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy
By: Wolfram Eilenberger
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date: August 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0525559689

Eilenberger tells four stories in tandem that cover roughly the years 1918 to 1929, culminating at a philosophical conference in Davos, Switzerland. The four main characters are Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassier, and Walter Benjamin. Cassier and Heidegger spoke at the Davos conference, which occurs near the end of the book.

The book provides an enjoyable mix of history, biography, philosophy, and novel—four genres that I enjoy individually. So reading a book with all four genres in one made my day—especially one so well written.

The novelistic quality emerges from Eilenberger as a compelling storyteller with a crystal clear style. The story focuses on the most productive periods in the subjects’ lives, when their brilliance shined brightest and their best work was done. This is particularly true for Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Cassier was a little older and farther along in his career. Walter Benjamin doesn’t seem to have done much work at any time, but this is when he generated ideas for which he would later become known. Benjamin’s life as told in the book reads more like soap opera.

The time-travel experience of the book was exciting to me because of my interest in history. I can read “dry” history books all day—reading history with such dynamic characters about whom I already knew a lot—so vividly brought to life—in a period I think is fascinating—thoroughly affirmed my initial impression when I saw the book at a bookstore: I needed to buy it immediately.

Eilenberger delves into some detail of the major works of the four subjects, especially Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosphicus and Heidegger’s Being and Time.

The author does a great job teasing out the loci of certain philosophical disagreements, such as between Heidegger and Cassier: Cassier’s epistemological neo-Kantian approach to meaning versus Heidegger’s ontological approach, which he viewed as “Kantian” but not “neo-Kantian.” Read the book for more details!

Also between Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle—the disconnect was palpable between the Vienna Circle’s scientific-empirical approach to analyze meaning via philosophy of language (Viz. Schlick: “The meaning of an assertion lies in the method of its verification” [275]), versus Wittgenstein who writes “…if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all” (41), or, ideas such as, the logical form that allows a proposition to represent reality cannot be expressed in language (171). Yet, Wittgenstein was excruciatingly scientific in his study and exposition of philosophical ideas. Wittgenstein drove his Vienna sparring partners batty with his unconventional yet analytically incisive theses. They remained friends but went their separate ways philosophically, and geographically (Wittgenstein ending up at Cambridge).

Why am I so enamored with this book? Because I knew the cast of characters so well. In both undergraduate and graduate studies, I was immersed in Wittgenstein studies under one of the premier authorities on Wittgenstein (Professor Jaakko Hintikka), and I studied Heidegger under an actual colleague of Heidegger’s at Freiburg (Professor William Werkmeister).

Aside: I was in a grad student’s colloquium once, when Dr. Werkmeister contradicted a statement made by the grad student. The student said something like, “I think the evidence in the… “. But Dr. Werkmeister interrupted, “You see the last time I discussed this question with Martin (aka Martin Heidegger!), he said that he meant ….” And so ended the debate. The grad student embarrassed himself but also learned something while experiencing an authentic moment of his own fact of Dasein.

I also studied Cassier, primarily from the angle of the philosophy of mythology. I also studied many of the minor characters in this book: Karl Jaspers, Rudolph Bultmann, Bertrand Russel, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Gottlob Frege, Maynard Keynes, Frank Ramsey, Rudolph Carnap, Moritz Schlick, and several others in the storyline. So naturally I was excited to see so many familiar names show up in this book. The main gap in my previous knowledge of these figures was Walter Benjamin. His flâneuresque character and desultory intellectual efforts made him more of a distraction and less interesting than the others. In fact the inclusion of Benjamin in the book seemed a bit incongruous.

That incongruity aside, the book is a treasure and a treat for any serious lover of books. It offers delights for just about any taste, and for aficionados of any genre. The philosophical discussions are well developed, and true to the characters. But they are not weighty or dry by any means. Readers will appreciate the author’s clarity and discretion—he gives us just enough to understand what’s happening, and avoids going down any rabbit holes.

Thank you Wolfram Eilenberger for this exceptional reading experience.

Related Book Reviews:

Hintikkas’ Investigation of Wittgenstein

Kant and Critique: New Essays in Honor of W.H. Werkmeister

Georg Henrik von Wright on Wittgenstein

Plato’s Phaedo and Its Theory of Forms: Conversations and Language Games

My philosophy book:

Abstract Objects, Ideal Forms, and Works of Art: An Epistemic and Aesthetic Analysis

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David Lowenthal’s book
The Past is a Foreign Country

Posted on September 30, 2021 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: The Past is a Foreign Country
Author: David Lowenthal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 1985, 1988
ISBN: 978-0521294805

Lowenthal launches an in-depth investigation into our relation to the past in this book. He discusses many angles and methods of perceiving, characterizing, and experiencing our past. He compares memory-past versus ancestral oral history versus formal documented past versus imagined past. Lowenthal highlights the many ways that we shape the past to fit our present—intentionally, subconsciously, and unintentionally, including when we are convinced we are being purely objective and truthful. Indeed, those who are the most convinced of their objectivity, are the ones with the most bias.

We alter the past every time we think about it. Our world view and our values significantly color how we see the past, the past of other cultures as well as our own, from ten years ago to 10,000 years ago. Conversely, the manifold influences from the multi-form past continuously transmogrify our present. We better understand our relationship with history as we understand this endlessly evolving lifecycle of past-colors-present-colors-past-colors-present-colors-past.

That we “see the past through our present-day lens” is a cliché, but also a fact. In this book Lowenthal shows us what that really means and how it works, with myriad examples.

The book shows us how we reject the past, shun obsolescent influences we deem out of touch, condemn world views that differ from today’s. We reject outmoded value systems, social systems, former popular attitudes with which we no longer identify. The book also shows us how we embrace the past, preserve old architecture, cherish old books and their old ideas, admire things “old-school,” view the past as full of wisdom, mix the bad in with the good into a romanticized nostalgia, fund historical preservation of all kinds, save old art from disintegration because losing them would be a horrific injury to culture. We go through each day shunning and embracing ideas and actions dating from ancient history through yesterday.

What we shun and what we embrace shapes part of who we are. Who we are, in turn, shapes our version of the “reality” we call “history,” or “our past,” or “the good old days,” or “those stodgy old days,” and a plethora of other judgment-laden labels. We create the past in our image, so that the aspects of it that align with our world view are elevated, and the aspects that do not align with our world view are deprecated. Through all this, we very often believe we can see the past as it really was.

Lowenthal makes the interesting point that the more radical the rejection of the past, the greater the dependence on the past. In that instance, the past serves as a counter example against which we hold ourselves in shining relief, as superior to the dusky has-been times. Conversely, it is often those who embrace the past the most who thoroughly wreck it. One example is in the restoration of buildings so that they seem hoary and stalwart, but in fact bear no resemblance to what the building once was. We often change old things to be “better-old-looking” based on our present day aesthetic preferences for what is aged. We do something similar in our Creative Anachronism events such as Renaissance Fairs where we make the old days all jolly and festive, or in our authentic historic villages such as Williamsburg, Virginia. Lowenthal does not pass judgment though, in fact, quite the opposite. He embraces any and all ways of “remembering” or valuing the past. Keeping it alive in some aspect is better than forgetting. It also seems to be a healthy practice for everyone involved. Imitation is the greatest flattery, and often the imitation is much nicer than the original.

One example Lowenthal mentions is that the changes to the Bloomsbury district of London were so comprehensive, that it bore no resemblance to the old neighborhood. But soon, no one remembered the old look. After a few years, tourists flocked to the district and experienced awe at the quaint charm of the authentic historic quarter. Is this a problem? Lowenthal cites many historians, architects, and others, on both sides. Some think it is a horrible outcome. Others think it’s the best possible outcome. Lowenthal, ever the voice of reason, asks Why judge? Everyone experiences the past in their own way. Everyone molds the past to fit their own way. Everyone values something different about history and memory and the æsthetics of antiquity.

Copyists paint copies of famous old paintings. In some cases, the 1800s copy of a 1600s painting is as valuable as the 1600s original. Some imitation Tudor homes are far more authentic in appearance than actual old Tudor homes still standing. The original Tudor buildings are in such a ruin that the original inhabitants would not recognize it—but they would recognize, and prefer, the new “imitation.”

Some argue there is an attrition of meaning, as we favor imitations, reenactments, anachronisms, copies. Some also fault museums. Taking precious old objects out of their original setting, putting them into a sterile new building, wipes away any vestige of authenticity of context or meaning. They argue that painstaking care should be applied to keep old things in their original state. Any exploration of the past should aim towards maximum verisimilitude in every way. But all these competing approaches to experiencing the past need not be mutually exclusive. One can appreciate in multiple ways. And in fact, most people do just that. They appreciate museums, old original settings still in situ and intact, original art, copies of art, ruins, restorations, imitations, unchanged remote villages, and Ye Olde Festivals.

Most everyone likes the past in some way or another. This is evident in how most everyone cringes at dystopian nightmares where the past is destroyed, all records erased, all works deleted or falsified, such as in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. We want to know that the past is there, that it is at least partially within reach, and that someone is keeping records.

As we grow older, much of our “memory-past” also becomes “history-past.” Now the senses—smells, sounds, sights—bring a flood of memories. Now the history-past becomes highly subjective as it mingles with our memory-past’s inner life and nostalgia. Then we ourselves become a piece of the past. When younger people see older people, they often merge older people in with older homes, older cars, long-past wars, out-of-touch ideas, forgotten presidents, and outdated fashions—or conversely—with wise old owls, tough old birds, rough old-school characters, windows into ancient lore. We “people the past” with our older people. Here again, we remold the past to fit our fancy.

One troubling trend that Lowenthal points out: While there is huge increase in anachronistic festivals, reenactments, creation and traffic in museums, historical novels and movies—there is also a steep decline in history majors in college. People increasingly want to have fun with the past, but decreasingly want to put in the effort to really understand it. Fortunately, we have Lowenthal and the like, giving us a deep dive into the very concept of history and a very rewarding 400+ pages of historical insights.

Conclusion
Given that, theoretically, there must be a perfectly true and accurate past that exists back there in time—it is most certainly the most remote, obscure, unintelligible, irrecoverable, foreign-est of all foreign countries imaginable. We can pretend, but we cannot and will never speak its language, feel its feelings, think its thoughts. At the same time, we are inextricably integrated into the past. Our every word, every feeling, and every thought emanates from the past. Yet, we cannot know it.

If this sounds like a sad ending, that’s my fault. The book is very uplifting and the multi-form ways of learning, experiencing, and appreciating the past are fully fleshed out in Lowenthal’s analysis. Anyone with the faintest feeling for our shared timeline will love this book. It was a very rewarding experience.

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The Past is a Foreign Country

Stendhal’s The Life of Henry Brulard

Posted on June 13, 2021 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: The Life of Henry Brulard
Author: Stendhal (Henri Beyle), Trans. from the French by Catherine Alison Phillips
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Date: February 20, 1925 (written 1835)
ASIN : B000MMIJYK (ASIN for a more recent available edition)

Stendhal is a great writer so you cannot go wrong buying this book. Most readers are familiar with his two great and classic novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. The present book, The Life of Henry Brulard, is much less known . He lived an eventful life so there’s a lot of material to make a compelling story. The book was written in 1835 when Stendhal was 52 years old (bn. 1783). Most of the book dwells on the author’s life as a child and young adult.

The main counterpoint of Stendhal’s childhood is his antipathy for his father versus his reverence for his grandfather. Satellite characters more or less align with one or the other, as “evil” or “good” forces in his life. Stendhal lived a suffocating life, prevented from knowing or playing with other boys, kept from exposure to the outside world, which he hated and struggle against constantly. The grandfather is his only real companion for many years, the only one with whom he can share ideas and agree.

Stendhal’s life shifts from the worst depression to the liveliest happiness when the liberty of which he had dreamed, came true at the Central school at age 11. Stendhal studied drawing and music extensively, along with Latin and others.

At age 17 he became a lieutenant of the 6th Dragoons. We see Stendhal transition into manhood at a young age, considering his sheltered youth. He engages in battles across Europe, which we see through his eyes, which see absurdity in everything.

Ultimately Milan became Stendhal’s favorite place to live, where he spent most of his time from 1800 to 1821. We learn this in the last few pages, and the story ends. The book is written in 1835, and he lives to 1842, but the book does not cover those later years.

Stendhal did not complete this book, and it was never published in his lifetime. It must be read in light of the fact that it is an unfinished draft of randomly recorded memories. In this light, it is an interesting study into Stendhal’s retrospection and the psychology of memory. He often comments on the tricks the mind plays on memory, and alternative ways of interpreting his childhood experiences.

The book is a must for anyone interested in Stendhal, or who enjoyed his novels. I also recommend it for anyone interested in history in general.

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Simon Winchester’s new book Land

Posted on May 1, 2021 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Land
Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper
Date: January 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0062938336

Simon Winchester’s new book Land is aptly titled because it is so general in its study of land. The story moves from measuring the size of the earth, to mapping the earth, to differing concepts of land among diverse peoples, to some very odd border situations, to the creation of new land in the Netherlands, to the loss of land due to climate change, to the shifting legal status of land in many countries, to “Wilding” efforts, to who owns the most land today, among many other subthemes. Winchester explores shifting laws and attitudes about land in all corners of the globe, mediæval to contemporary.

The book achieves coherence by looking the many historical, social, and political developments via the lens of how it affects land or how land influenced those developments. It is a land-centric view of cultures past and present.

Measuring the planet is one of Winchester’s first topics. Friedrich Wilhelm Georg von Struve spent forty years measuring the size of the earth. He was fortunate when Tsar Nicholas I came to power, who was an engineer by trade before ascending to the throne. Nicholas believed in the project and provided Struve with unlimited financing to obtain the best equipment in the world, and the staff he needed to assist as he traveled across, and measured, the earth. Struve’s measurements proved very accurate—40,008,696 meters compared with NASA’s measurement of 40,007, 017 meters using satellites.

Another aspect of land is borders. The oldest extant official border in the world Andorra’s. A Minnesota border around Angle Inlet (population 123) is an odd border. Access requires driving into Canada, then circling back to re-enter the US from above and enter Angle Inlet. Winchester offers several odd border situations.

The Netherlands gets the prize for most land added by humans to the planet (1.2 million acres). Look up the Zuider Zee works, brainchild of engineer Cornelis Lely, to see how one of the official Wonders of the World provided a major expansion to the nation’s landmass. On the opposite side, the book discusses land being gradually lost due to a rising sea level, with several examples.

Winchester explores land being essentially taken from people in Scotland due to legal changes such as “enclosures” and “clearances,” at the same time when huge amounts of land were being given away to anyone who would work it in the western US. Many of those losing land in Scotland came to the US to seize the opportunity.

The book briefly looks at the largest landowners in the world, and how they use the vast resource. The book illustrates the contrasting property laws among different nations, and how many are experimenting with returning land to nature, in a wide variety of different ways.

The book discusses many other land-related fascinating facts and phenomena—too many to summarize in this review. I wholeheartedly recommend Winchester’s Land story to anyone interested in any aspect of history, as land plays a rôle in so much of it.

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Anhinga Press Poetry Anthology North of Wakulla

Posted on April 4, 2021 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: North of Wakulla: An Anhinga Anthology
Editors: Donna Decker and Mary Jane Ryals
Publisher: Anhinga Press
Date: September 1, 1989
ISBN: 978-0938078302

The poetry anthology North of Wakulla fulfills and rewards the reader with its outstanding assemblage of unique voices and compelling stories. The high-quality expression is consistent throughout the collection, which is an accomplishment in itself given more than 100 writers included. There are approximately 130 poems and every one motivates the reader onto the next. For this, we have to give credit to the editors of the volume, Donna Decker and May Jane Ryals (both also have poems in the anthology). Their intelligent organization lends both logical and artistic coherence to the flow, which helps readers like me who like to read many per sitting.

It’s beyond our scope to highlight all 130 poems, but I’ll talk briefly about a small subset of my favorites, with extra comments about some of the poets.

Geoffrey Brock’s “Villanelle for a Suicide” confronts a self-inflicted sorting out of confusions. The act peels away illusions, and leaves behind a slow dissolution of memory. The feeling of the moment is sparse, stark, and powerful. The reader senses that a thin psychological thread holds the mind and heart together on the edge of clarity and hope. Personal Note: I worked with Geoffrey Brock for a short time at Van Brock’s International Quarterly magazine headquarters (his apartment), in 1994–1995. Geoffrey is a gifted poet, translator, and overall thinker. You will not find a better artist or conversationalist.

Hal Shows’ poem “Visiting Rights” is very brief, and very moving. It reminded me of Dylan Thomas’ villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Shows’ verse is not a villanelle, but the impression of the two poems was very similar on a deeper level than mere form. Read it two or three times—it does not feel repetitive, it pulls you in deeper every time. (See my review of Hal Shows’ essay collection, The Bandshell Project.)

Bruce Boehrer’s “Sestina for Tea” seems like it should be a happy occasion in a cottage amid the snowy hills in June. But the scene degenerates, there is a malignancy somewhere in the atmosphere. The fireplace is heartless, the tap water brown, even the cottage is soggy. But then the cold landscape acquires a warm white heart, and the kettle is a blessing. Finally, all is a fading memory of distant hills, a strange fire, and a cottage no longer for rent. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster, but it sings like a musical ballad of heartwarming light mixed with heartless forgotten memories. Personal Note: Bruce Boehrer was my graduate Renaissance literature professor. He is a very entertaining teacher as well as poet.

Steve Huss’ “The Blue Shoe” begins with reminiscence of driving a white chevy, with faded radio dial, amid the hum of the highway and the smell of orange groves. The carefree spell is broken by the revelation of injury and bruising of the battered wife in the car. The abrupt twist is like falling off a cliff. This kind of mood switch is not easy to pull off, but Huss handles it very well in this poem. Personal note: I served with Steve Huss on the Anhinga Press board, the press that published this anthology. (See more about our board activities below in my “Personal Notes about My Friendship with Van Brock.”)

Nick Bozanic’s “After the Journey” is filled with haunting and vivid imagery with concrete, touchable, verbal illustrations. Bozanic’s full images remind me of Dickens in the pleasing use of language to conger lifelike experience for the reader. The experience is real. Bozanic also surprises with interesting twists—very nicely done. As a sidenote, Bozanic won the 1989 Anhinga prize for poetry, with his poetry collection Long Drive Home. I was on the Anhinga board during its selection and publication, and I was very proud to be a part of this great poet’s publication.

Harry Morris’ “To a Suicide I knew but Slightly” rings with cheer, in an eerie way. The bouncing lyrical style, the spritely rhyming, starkly contrasts with the sad and desperate content. The form jarringly antagonizes the content. It is not surprising that Morris would know poetry. He was the Shakespeare scholar and professor at Florida State University (I studied Shakespeare under Professor Morris). You can read my book review of Dr. Morris’ landmark study, Last Things in Shakespeare.

Julie Weiler’s “Pieces Missing” pulls the reader into an everyday scene, sitting at a table, made suddenly immediate by the sister’s death. The pieces of a photo, and especially the missing pieces, collapse into the heart of emptiness. But there is a redeeming memory of “hands clasped tightly together.” The poem starts with a hard, commonplace environment, then changes into a hollow sadness tempered by a delicate hope. It is a great piece of writing. Personal note: I served with Julie Weiler on the Anhinga Press board, the press that published this anthology. (See more about our board activities below in my “Personal Notes about My Friendship with Van Brock.”)

Another outstanding talent featured in this anthology is Jerome Stern. His poem in the book, “Appeal,” propels the reader through a frenetic appeal for help, for funding, for rescue. Government agents steal equipment, hamsters keep the turntable spinning. The broken down studio atmosphere feels like many old shoestring-budget broadcasting enterprises. Stern seems to have personal experience with them. In the early 1990s, Stern was known for his NPR radio spot in which he read his cultural essays. Stern led the creative writing program at Florida State University until his death in 1996. He was the only professor I knew who rode a bicycle to work every day. It had a basket on the handlebars which typically contained a few books. Stern was also the author of one of the best books on writing, Making Shapely Fiction.

David Kirby’s “Madame Zebouni and Mr. White” tells the funny tale of the poet’s undergraduate schoolboy crush on his French teacher. He is just getting closer to her, when she tells him of her father who throws her suitors out of third-story windows. He then sinks into an infinitely deferred capture of the right word, le mot juste, struggling among the monks translating classics, lost in the old wing of romance languages and vulgar tongues. There is a wistful sadness beneath the funny surface. The fun of the piece should not hide the carefulness of the poet in constructing this verse so perfectly (echoes of Mr. White). Personal note: Professor David Kirby was on my thesis committee. Great guy too.

P. V. LeForge cannot stop himself, he always has to tell a story. Whether a novel, a short story, or a poem, you may expect to be taken on a thought-provoking trip. You will experience oddities, joys, frustrations, and sadness. In every event, you will find truth and meaning. LeForge’s poem “White” in this anthology is no exception. In this case we find ourselves burning up and freezing to death, while searching for survival clues, both spiritual and physical. Each line carries the reader forward, much like a compelling plotline, but with the poetic care and rigor for each word. LeForge also wrote a great short story collection called the Principle of Interchange, which I also reviewed here. As a side note, Mr. LeForge owned and operated the locally famous Paperback Rack bookstore in Tallahassee (no longer in operation). I didn’t exactly known him, except well enough to chat about the books I was buying in his shop, and to greet when passing on the FSU campus or around town.

Van K. Brock’s poem “Novas” radiates the bright colors of miraculous flowers, interrupted by fire ants and homicide, which guide the traveler among the stars to find direction and meaning. Typical of Van Brock’s poetry, each stanza packs a punch on its own, with strong anchored expression—while also serving as the perfect segue to the next stanza. This is a talent few poets possess, but which Brock possesses to perfection. (See more about Van Brock below in my “Personal Notes about My Friendship with Van Brock.”)

The publication of North of Wakulla was celebrated with a gathering of many of the poets in the anthology, others involved in the making of the book, and those otherwise affiliated with the Anhinga Press. I attended the Launch Party, which was held at the Chez Pierre restaurant in Tallahassee, Florida, in the early fall of 1989 (if I remember right). It was a lot of fun, and a rare treat to mingle among so many interesting people and so much talent in one place.

Personal Notes about My Friendship with Van K. Brock

The dedication of the anthology reads:
“To Van Brock, who lives poetry and has made it come alive in Tallahassee.”

A review of this anthology would not be complete without a tribute to Poet and Professor Van K. Brock. Indeed, half the poets in the anthology would not have grown as much or as well without Van’s guidance and inspiration.

For those who are not aware, Van Brock was an internationally acclaimed poet, active from 1970 through the 2010s. He was the founder and president of the Anhinga Press, which sponsored and spearheaded the publication of this anthology. It is yet another way that Van Brock brought meaning to the lives of so many people. The anthology remains a tribute to his talent and dedication, especially helping other poets develop and mature.

In early 1989, Van Brock invited me to join the Anhinga Press board. I served on it 1989–1990 with Van, Julie Weiler, and Steve Huss (all three of them have poems in this anthology). I have wonderful memories meeting weekly with Van, Julie, and Steve for Anhinga business. There was no office. Van, Julie, Steve, and I met weekly at Anthony’s Restaurant (corner of Thomasville Rd. and E. Bradford Rd. in Tallahassee, Florida). We talked poetry, discussed poetry-contest applicants (and winners), promotional activities, financial business (Steve’s specialty), as well as general discussions of literature, philosophy, and gastronomical topics.

Van Brock and I had another phase of literary activity later, 1994–1995, working together almost daily at his apartment on the International Quarterly literary magazine (especially Voices Across Continents and Fifty Years of Fallout). Van’s apartment was the magazine’s office. It was usually filled with people (editors, proofreaders, layout specialists, etc.). The apartment had a great balcony, where during the days, Van, the other editors, and I selected manuscripts, edited, and talked about philosophy and poetry. We would work all day, and then sometimes after everyone else had left, Van would pour a glass of vodka for himself and me, and we’d keep working a couple more hours. He let me browse through his books, and one evening gave me a copy of Henry James’ Italian Hours, knowing I was an avid reader of James.

Van moved west, ending up in Arkansas; I moved to Pennsylvania. We stayed in touch through the late 1990s and 2000s, at first by email, then later by Facebook. But it was those days in the 1980s and 1990s that Van and I really hung out and shared a lot of life and work. Van passed away March 1, 2017 (Oct 31, 1932—Mar. 1, 2017). He was a great poet and a great man. I am just another person whose life was brightened by him.

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Harry Morris’ Landmark Study—Last Things in Shakespeare

Posted on February 17, 2021 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Last Things in Shakespeare
Author: Harry Morris
Publisher: Florida State University Press
Date: January 1, 1985
ISBN: 978-0813007946

The book is an eschatological analysis of several Shakespeare plays:
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Henry Plays (Henry IV #1, Henry IV #2, Henry V)
As You Like It

The first four plays listed constitute a hypothetical tetralogy with a shared theme of damnation versus redemption, and how they figure in the behavior and fate of the leading characters. For example, how do Hamlet and Othello, deemed to be in a state of grace at the outset, turn out by the end of the plays. Same question for King Lear and Macbeth, who are deemed to be in a fallen state at the outset of their respective plays. What decisions are key to their destinies. Morris goes to great lengths establishing the likely answers to these questions. He supports his conclusions with an impressive body of references.

Morris argues that Shakespeare was fluent in Spiritual Encyclopædiæ cataloguing the realms of the afterlife and the fates that await humanity. Shakespeare’s plays are laced with memento-mori, for example, the popular “Dance of Death.” The Mediæval iconography and tropes of “last things” was still in wide circulation in the sixteenth century and Shakespeare would’ve been intimately familiar with such traditions and the works that came out of those origins.

Another theme throughout the plays, Morris points out, is the topsy-turvy state of everything and everyone under the influence of demons and when evil usurps good. The wrong person is wearing the crown, reality seems upside down, life is a mixed-up mess. These perverse states of affairs ensue from leading characters making tragic choices to align with the demons instead of angels, for example.

Dante’s Inferno plays into Shakespeare’s descriptions of the fate of souls. Dante aligns degrees of evil with levels of Hell. These levels of punishment match up with the extent of depravity of the sins of those souls navigating the regions of the eternal Inferno. Shakespeare using Dantean descriptions of evildoers like Macbeth, shows Macbeth’s worst depravities that correspond to the most horrible punishments in the Inferno.

The final play in the collection, As You Like It, features the paradoxical themes of Et in Arcadia Ego and Memento-Mori. The former highlights timeless pastoral paradise, the latter inevitable deterioration, death, and decay. In the bucolic paradise, there is a conspicuous skull in a meadow. Carefree youths are reminded of their timeline towards that skull. It is a symbol of the universality of the ravages of time. Appropriately, As You Like It features the famous “Seven Ages of Man” speech.

Harry Morris’ scholarship is extensive and persuasive. His arguments are insightful and very enlightening. In addition to being deeply researched, the book is brilliant and beautifully written. The author is truly an artistic writer as well as a deep analytical thinker. I thoroughly enjoyed reading every line on every page. Anyone who appreciates crystal-clear thinking and æsthetic writing will enjoy the book. Anyone who appreciates Mediæval and Renaissance traditions, will especially love the book. It is obviously a must-read for any Shakespeare fan or scholar. Whether or not any of the above apply, I still recommend the book to any discerning reader.

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Thomas E. Ricks’ new book First Principles

Posted on January 18, 2021 by rose-coutre

Thomas E. Ricks’ new book First Principles

Book Review
Title: First Principles
Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date: November 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0062997456

Ricks’ First Principles gives us insight into the literary and philosophical factors that influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States. These influences formed the personal values of the individuals who signed the Declaration of Independence and who contributed to the US Constitution.

The book is relatively short and easy to read. That, combined with the fair amount of research behind it, makes it a good refresher course in how the US was formed. Published just a couple of months ago, it is an up-to-date perspective drawing relevant comparisons and contemporary points of view. The author shows some bias in his personal likes and dislikes of certain Founders, and he weaves in some Trump parallels, which reads like an odd cameo appearance of a current personality in an eighteenth-century story. Maybe better to stick to the characters of the period (there’s no shortage of characters back then).

Sometimes the author’s comparisons of issues of today are useful; for example, many today view the two-party system as corrupt and detrimental to democratic process. Others view the two-party system as balanced, providing an ever-present give-and-take as checks and balances. The same tension existed in the 1790s.

Equality wasn’t exactly as we think of it today. The most glaring example of course is the institution of slavery, built into the early nation as a terrible compromise to get the southern states to join into one nation. Many founders viewed the slavery compromise as a curse that would doom the nation. They predicted that such a “deal with the devil” would destroy the nation in the near future. Interestingly, plenty of leaders in the period viewed slavery as the evil that we think of today. Condemning slavery is not a case of projecting today’s morals and world view onto a past culture. Many people (though not enough) had the decency and conscience to condemn it back then as well.

Early American norms also included a definite ranking system. Liability and injury, for example, depended partly on rank. Libel or injury to a high-ranked individual carried harsher punishment than the same injury to a person of lower rank.

The early days of the republic were fraught with violent disputes about the basic principles of governance. After more than ten years of war to gain independence, internal wars were just heating up. John Adams, for example, wanted an authoritarian central federal government (Federalist), Thomas Jefferson wanted very little power in the federal government. Jefferson knew the Constitution would not be perfect—determining liberty for the people, he wanted to err on the side of too much liberty, rather than too little. Jefferson even favored periodic armed rebellion by the rabble. He thought bloodshed was a healthy way to refresh democracy and prevent the government from gaining authority over the people, instead of people having authority over the government.

Civil discourse did not hide extreme antagonism. The party in power viewed the other party as traitors and seditionists who should be jailed or put to death. This was not a reference to some fly-by-night troublemakers. This was John Adams talking about Thomas Jefferson. Newspaper editors who favored the party currently not in power were routinely kept in prison until the power shifted at the next election. 3rd-President Thomas Jefferson released many journalists from jail who had been imprisoned by 2nd-President John Adams.

After being voted out after one term as president, John Adams refused to attend Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration. Adams thought the American people had become degraded, having lost all virtue and sense (for voting against him). He left the Whitehouse at 4 a.m. the morning of Jefferson’s inauguration to avoid seeing him, or anyone else.

Most people know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. But fewer are aware that a lesser-known founder, James Madison (4th US President), wrote the US Constitution. Madison was a brilliant and prolific writer, having written the famous Federalist Papers. He wrote so much, in one example, he wrote George Washington’s speech to the House of Representatives, he wrote the House’s Response to the speech, and he wrote Washington’s response to the House’s response. Madison’s writings largely constitute the entire history of the early nation.

A fair portion of the book is devoted to George Washington’s evolution as a military strategist—his rôle in the British military, then as the American Commander in Chief during the seven-year American Revolution. He shifted dramatically from sudden-impact engagements to a longer-term strategy of relentless precision harassment and guerilla warfare. Washington’s ability to adapt and optimize his approach fluidly in response to British military behavior, shifted the balance of power to make the revolution successful.

The book includes interesting historical trivia, such as the early years of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other nascent American institutions, and their political alliances. In 1828, Federalist newspaper editor Noah Webster published the first edition of a dictionary he conceived and authored on his own, known as “Webster’s Dictionary,” with Noah Webster’s own 70,000 hand-written entries. Another tidbit—many years after George Washington died, a well-meaning sculptor created a statue of George Washington in a Roman robe. It received its most devastating criticism from Davy Crockett: George Washington in a Roman Gown? “This ain’t right.” It was removed.

One weakness in the book is the overdone connection with Roman and Greek influences. It is true that Roman and Greek history and literature was widely known in those days. But the claim of particular influences upon the Founders might have been either less emphasized, or better documented.

In the final analysis, the book is an entertaining and informative window into the founding era of American political and philosophical history. It highlights some of the most extraordinary events and legendary figures during a fifty-year period before, during, and after the American Revolution. I recommend it to anyone interested in the people who formed the nation.

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Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education

Posted on December 9, 2020 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Sentimental Education
Author: Gustave Flaubert
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date: October 26, 2004
ISBN: 978-0140447972

With our busy schedules a lot of us have to keep an eye out not to miss those fleeting chances to get in some good reading. Fortunately, the holidays bring many of us a respite from our workaday routines. We might even come in from some of the cold nights and curl up in a cozy corner with one of those great books we’ve been meaning to sink our teeth into. But many may have a hard time selecting one to pull off the shelf. Here then is a suggestion.

I cannot help but be reminded of the great French novelist with his birthday just around the corner, December 12. Gustave Flaubert was one of the most colorful characters in literary history. His most difficult battle in life was governing his flamboyant imagination. This he accomplished with enormous discipline which allowed him to refine his art to a degree that is yet unrivaled in French literature. His idealism, tempestuous love affairs, and the Revolution of 1848 gave him the experience that crystalized in perhaps the greatest French novel ever; a historical novel, subtly blending fact and fiction, entitled Sentimental Education.

Sentimental Education is a sort of “intellectual history” showing how Flaubert and his peers, the young academicians of France, proceeded from idealism to realism from the years before the revolution to the years after. All the characters and the action corresponded to the real-life personalities and activities in Flaubert’s milieu. It’s full of great events and delightful conversation against the romantic background of nineteenth-century Paris.

The fine artistic writing style alone makes it exquisite reading. But Sentimental Education is a lively and spontaneous journey that also serves as an excellent window to an intriguing past society. It may lead you to want to read more of Flaubert, or other books about nineteenth-century Paris. In any case you will almost surely have an affinity for Sentimental Education years after you finish it.

Also see: Lottman’s Flaubert: A Biography.

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Lionel Trilling’s Book The Liberal Imagination

Posted on November 27, 2020 by rose-coutre

Lionel Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination comprises fifteen essays that range in time from 1946 to 1948. The book was first published in 1950. The collection provides a potpourri of intellectual refinements on the state of American literature in the late 1940s. He starts with a focus on the relation between literature and society, and how that relationship has changed over time.

As a side note: Trilling wrote these essays just a few years before people started watching TV, when reading habits rapidly declined—so the book provides a time capsule when there was still a dynamic relationship between the novels, poetry, and essays of the day, and society’s values, ideas, and norms. The average person today might be surprised at how influential literature once was to society and prevailing ideologies.

Back to Trilling’s time: Society and literature were inextricably linked in the 1940s and earlier, and this book provides analysis and criticism of that interplay. As examples of this evolution, Trilling references dozens of authors, from Plato to Faulkner, with varied representatives from the many eras in between.

Some authors suffer significantly under Trilling’s scrutiny: Dreiser, Dos Passos, O’Neill, Sherwood Anderson, Thucydides, Kipling, among others, he considers lesser figures. To paraphrase, these authors are viewed as naïve and self-absorbed, with limited intellectual faculties, and less in touch with the complicated subtleties of the social and psychological realities around them. They give us only a meager façade of literary art instead of the real thing.

Conversely, authors faring better include Henry James, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Tacitus, Aristotle, Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Stendhal, Dickens, Flaubert, Balzac, and several others. These authors are viewed as giving us deeper and more powerful insights into the complexities of life, offering more profound and rewarding experiences for the reader. These greater authors also played a more significant rôle in the development of human societies, according to Trilling.

Of course, rattling off names of lesser and greater authors sounds dégagé and presumptuous out of context. I should emphasize that Trilling provides persuasive arguments and à propos examples to support his appraisals. The lesser authors have in common a tendency to over-confident declarations about a contrived self-serving version of reality. They emphasize brute emotional force that indicates a limited range of intellect and experience. Readers are manœuvred to feel good short-term, but there is little long-term learning or reward after the reading. Conversely, the greater authors have in common a more astute analysis of real-life experience that helps us better understand our social and psychological realities. According to Trilling, these preëminent authors reflect wider experience and deeper intellect in their works.

The general public, however, is not so coöperative—popular preferences do not seem to align with Trilling’s appraisals. Trilling points out that his so-called lesser authors are in fact more popular than the greater authors. The apparent difference lies in an affinity for emotional impact (lesser authors), regardless of expositional incoherence; versus a public mistrust of intellectuals (greater authors), regardless of deeper insights and æsthetic quality.

Another tension that Trilling highlights is the historical scholarship of a literary work’s context, versus the New Critics who say that a “work of art” stands alone outside of history. New Critics were Trilling’s coævals in the 1940s, and they dominated literary criticism at the time. New Critics discount any information about the author’s era, culture, social milieu, personality, etc., in their study of a literary work. New Critics treat the work as a bubble-wrapped ænigma isolated from the roots and atmosphere of its creation. Trilling disagrees with this view of a novel, for example, being a self-contained, self-referential æsthetic object. Trilling takes the position that “a literary work is ineluctably a fact of history, and, what is more important, that its historicity is a fact in our æsthetic experience” (184).

Culture changes over time, and a literary work is the product of its particular moment in a changing culture. Trilling notes the life-art interplay: culture influences art, and art influences culture, in the ongoing cycle of cause and effect. Trying to extract a work from its culture and time (New Criticism) strips away much of the meaning and significance of a literary work. Trilling argues that scholarship into the period, and into the author, give us a more thorough comprehension of the complex layers of literary art, and a more accurate critical appraisal. For Trilling, the roots and the atmosphere are vital to understanding our art as part of our existence.

The book touches on other topics such as the Romantic poets and epistemology, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the rôle of Little Magazines, a look at Freud’s influence on criticism, and other topics.

As a bonus above and beyond this potpourri of intellectual refinements on the state of American literature, we discover that Trilling himself is a great writer. Academic books like The Liberal Imagination can be intimidating, stereotypically dreaded like reading an encyclopædia. Not so for this book. This book is lively and well written, every page drawing the reader forward. Every essay stimulates interesting thought vis-à-vis life, society, culture, and literature. Trilling’s insights and perspective reward the reader and make the time commitment to read this book very much worthwhile.

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The Battle of Hastings: and Literature Hasn’t Been the Same Since

Posted on October 12, 2020 by rose-coutre

The lifestyle of everyday people didn’t change much in the old days when their government was overthrown. Sometimes, a healthy invasion really enhanced a culture. The conquerors added their art and music and literature to the existing culture and suddenly new forms and styles emerged from the mixture. Remember, this was ages ago when the arts defined national character more than politics. As far as politics went, everyone was under a monarchy anyway. But this article particularly concerns the influence of a conquest over language.

Before the eleventh century, English was a pretty rough tongue. In the realm of literature, about the best it could do was Beowulf. Then came the Norman invasions. The Duke of Normandy stormed England in 1066 in a campaign to be known as the Norman Conquests, culminating at the Battle of Hastings. The finalé of that campaign in Hastings marked the demise of the last Anglo Saxon king, Harold II, and ushered in the reign of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.

William the Conqueror thereby became King William I of England and brought with him the French language. Creating a new Anglo/Norman (English/French) language, William I virtually doubled the English vocabulary. Since 1066, English has evolved as the richest and most diverse language in the world. No other language approximates the vast number and variety of the words that are available to us.

The greatest paintings may be French or Italian and the greatest philosophies may be German, but because of William I, the greatest literature will always be English and American. If you love the language, take your hats off to the former Duke of Normandy and celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings on October 14.

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Kotsilibas-Davis’ Biography of Maurice Barrymore

Posted on October 10, 2020 by rose-coutre

Book Review
Title: Great times, good times: The Odyssey of Maurice Barrymore
Author: James Kotsilibas-Davis
Publisher: Doubleday & Co., Inc.
Date: January 1, 1977
ISBN: 978-0385049535

Author Kotsilibas-Davis is primarily a biographer, but he approaches his writing like a novelist. He thoroughly marshals the facts and doesn’t stray into interpretations and speculations about the subject; however, he develops the plotline like an artist, and writes with crystalline æsthetic clarity. The result is an exceedingly creative work of nonfiction. Every sentence is a linguistic pleasure. The overall organization is masterful. Kotsilibas-Davis writes as well as Dickens or Austen, a statement I don’t take lightly as a lifelong literary aficionado with a Master of Arts in literature. The present biography of Maurice Barrymore is a brilliant work of art, in addition to a being a fascinating window into late-nineteenth-century American society, stage, and even vaudeville.

I particularly appreciated the background, starting with Barrymore’s great-grandfather (the family name was Blythe—Maurice changed his name to Barrymore as a stage name, which became the actual last name of the family). The story begins in the 1780s and ends in the early 1900s. Developing the ancestors’ characters provided helpful insight into the personality of Maurice Barrymore. Barrymore’s rebellious nature and independent spirit was shared by his grandfather. Both of them “left the fold” of hearth and home and struck out on their own, without the blessing of their respective patriarchs.

Through Maurice Barrymore’s social circles, Kotsilibas-Davis provides enjoyable glimpses into the period. We meet Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Henry James, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Ambrose Bierce, the Prince of Wales (who would become Edward VII), Tchaikovsky, President Grover Cleveland, and of course the other great actors of the time, such as Ellen Terry, Lillie Langtry, William Gillette, and then the less famous Joe Rickey who is the creator (or at least inspirer) of the very famous cocktail, the Gin Rickey. Barrymore socialized with all of the above, and they all considered themselves fortunate to socialize with Barrymore.

Aside from those stars flitting in and out of Barrymore’s social sphere, his own family overflowed with bright lights. When he married Georgie Drew, he married into the most famous acting family of the time. His mother-in-law Louisa Lane Drew (Mrs. John Drew) owned and managed Philadelphia’s Arch Street Theater, and was the most renowned actress of her generation in the US. As an interesting aside, in her younger years, Mrs. Drew had acted opposite a promising young actor, John Wilkes Booth, whose career was cut short when he was hanged for the assassination of President Lincoln. It’s just one of many historically fascinating anecdotes in this book.

Mrs. Drew’s daughter Georgie (who married Maurice) became just as renowned as her mother in her own generation. Her brother and cousins were all similarly famous. It was an amazing family of greats who were in the headlines and starring in theaters across America for two generations. As an author, Kotsilibas-Davis uses these compelling personalities and this fascinating time period to full advantage in his storyline. There is never a dull moment in this narrative.

Those who know about “life on the boards” in those days, know that the majority of actors’ lives were spent on trains and sketchy overnight lodgings in towns across America. This biography gives us plenty of insight into that railroad-bound nomadic lifestyle. Maurice was also a playwright, and often penned his plays on trains between towns. He wrote in both English and French when it was to be played in Paris, as Maurice was bilingual. As a result of their traveling lifestyle, families in show business might see each other a few times per year, if they played in shows that happened to be in the same town for a night or two, and then perhaps for a couple of weeks between runs. It was still the days of horse-and-buggies—even at the very end of the book, automobiles were a few years in the future.

As Maurice Barrymore’s health declined and was confined to the Long Island Home at Amityville, the last part of the book focuses on the rising stars of Barrymore’s three children: Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore. Like their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, all three Barrymore children became huge stars on the stage in their own right by their early 20s (around 1903–1904). Film was just a few years in the future—when it came, Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore became three of the biggest film stars in Hollywood. Their careers perfectly straddled the stage and film eras. Unlike many stage stars, the three Barrymore children made the transition seamlessly and successfully. If it involved acting, it was in the Barrymore blood, regardless of medium. Only one film was made that features all three Barrymores working together (Rasputin and the Empress [1932]), but several films star Lionel and John together.

Today in the twenty-first century, the most prominent representative of the family is Drew Blythe Barrymore (first name “Drew” from Maurice’s wife’s family; middle name “Blythe” from Maurice’s actual birth last name; “Barrymore” from Maurice’s adopted last name). She has carried on the Barrymore traditions in many respects.

In the final analysis, the present biography of Maurice Barrymore is a treasure. Rarely have I read a book with such an exciting story about such compelling lives. I felt I had a truly rewarding and rare experience after reading it. This is a testament to Kotsilibas-Davis’s superior writing—a preëminent writer’s treatment of the era’s preëminent actor. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their preferences of genre or period. Witnessing the life of Maurice Barrymore is to witness a parade of wit, brilliance, and creativity, the likes of which we will never see again. But, thanks to author Kotsilibas-Davis, we can always look back and enjoy Maurice Barrymore’s nineteenth-century life on the boards, the trains, and his demimonde of genius.

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