Southern Bookman

Book discoveries at home during Covid-19

I'll even try to read "Howard's End."

The other day, I glimpsed a paperback of E.M. Foster's novel peeking out from my bedroom bookshelf. The book's been resting there for years unread.

Never mind that Foster's mantra "only connect" looks out-of-place in this era of social distancing. I've read through most of the other books that have been nestling dormant in my home library, so I've come to my end, as well as Howard's.

During the coronavirus pandemic, I've acquired just one new book, Nelson Algren's appreciation of Chicago, "City on the Make." Fearful of catching Covid-19 from some unmasked sneezing bibliophile, I've given up my longtime habit of going to bookstores.

My well-worn Nook e-reader stopped downloading new books and magazines, and I couldn't figure out how to change the software.

Yes, I could buy books online, but I'm boycotting Amazon, now running those absurd TV commercials about what an enlightened company it is. Besides, no recently published books interest me.

Even the libraries have been closed. The Sandy Springs Library that reopened only a couple of months before the pandemic is now doing curbside checkouts of books placed on hold, but the procedure seems as cumbersome as a Hartsfield-Jackson's TSA line.

So, I've been rediscovering books on my bookshelves, many of them I had never read or in which I lasted for only a chapter or two. I've tried to reread books I loved years before, but for some reason, I'm usually unable to return to once beloved narratives. Although I enjoyed Vivian Gornick's recent "Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader," I can't rekindle the literary flame.

Even before the pandemic, my bookstore habit had been reduced to the Peach Shopping Center's Barnes & Noble, the only bookstore left in Buckhead after the collapse of Atlanta's Oxford stores and the Borders chain. Atlanta's few remaining independent bookstores are too far away for frequent visits. Although Buckhead enjoys a profusion of supermarkets and pharmacy chains, it's a book desert.

The old Buckhead Borders, where I covered a book signing of George W. and Laura Bush and whiled away many hours, is now a Container Store. During Borders' expansive years, I also frequented a couple other of its stores. 

Oxford's flagship store in Peachtree Battle Shopping Center was one of my favorite all-time bookstores, along with the also vanished Maple Street Bookstore in New Orleans and Scribner's in New York City. I also searched for books in two other Oxford locations in Buckhead. Alas, the Oxford empire like Borders overextended, and fell when the book bubble burst. The country must have gotten dumber before electing the great unread Orange man.

As with canceled sports, I haven't missed going to the B&N, where I interviewed Rolling Stones pianist and Georgia preservationist Chuck Leavell and glimpsed Elton John flipping through the vinyl records. The Peach B&N had reduced its selection over the years, emphasizing puzzles, games and accessories. It did appear on an upswing before the pandemic arrived, but the nearness of a coughing patron in February sent my paranoia soaring.

I miss perusing literary journals and film and jazz magazines, but I receive several literary magazines and three daily newspapers at my home. I've been surprised to find Harper's and the Atlantic at my local Publix, although the latest Harper's hasn't shown up yet.

Even before the rise of Covid-19, I discovered on my shelves an engaging volume of Alice Adams short stories. Lately, I've enjoyed the late English professor and literary critic Robert Heilman's memoirs about his days at LSU during the Huey Long era and the heyday of the Southern Review under Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks.

I've recently enjoyed pleasant afternoons browsing through Mike Davis's analysis of Los Angeles, "City of Quartz," and a collection of W.H. Auden's forewords and afterwords.

While I haven't yet returned to Auden's poems, I haven't slighted poetry, delving into a collection of Paul Muldoon's collected poems my daughter won as a literary prize at Princeton and favorite poems by Richard Wilbur and others.

In a pinch, Seymour Krim and Dan Wakefield gave good doses of 1950s and 1960s New York nostalgia.

Now, "Howard's End."

 

 

Times Literary Supplement gives authors' summer reading plans

In the June 26 Times Literary Supplement, well-known writers list the books they're reading this summer.

The TLS feature, matching a holiday reading survey, gives a voyeuristic thrill. The cheerful comments of authors like Hilary Mantel, Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Enright make them seem just like us.

A common motif is that because of the coronavirus, authors will be doing their summer reading at home this year rather than at exotic beaches or idyllic country retreats. Another theme is reading children's books to sons and daughters unable to go to school.

While the authors do seem like regular folks, they don't go in for the light reading associated with the lazy, sun-dazzled season. Oates, for example, is embarking upon Dostoevsky after finishing "War and Peace" and other Tolstoy tomes.

With the coronavirus out of control, Trump's daily outrages, and racial turmoil, the old idea of pleasurable summer reading looks superfluous. Yet, I more and more seek to escape the news, especially the gloom bearers of MSNBC. I agree with them of course, but the strident Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow get my a-fib a-fibbing.

Spurred by the ambitious reading of the TLS authors, I might try again to finish "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." But Gibbon would seem too much like cable news.

 

Rick Atkinson's "The British Are Coming" tells vivid story of American Revolution's start

Right after the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, the revolution's death appeared imminent.

After taking control of Boston, the American army headed to a series of defeats, most ignominiously the loss of New York City because of the blundering of George Washington and his compatriots.

The British crossed the Hudson and chased the battered, poorly equipped Yankees through New Jersey to Trenton, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the American capital. The British paused for the holidays, confident that the Americans were already whipped, and just needed finishing off.

Rick Atkinson in the richly detailed "The British Are Coming: The War For America, Washington to Princeton, 1775-1777," tells the story of the beginning of the revolution, and how Washington came back from disaster to save the American cause in the winter of 1776.

The first of a projected three-volume history of the American Revolution, Atkinson takes an in-depth look at the causes of the colonies' revolt, and the American army's initial triumphs, causing the British to abandon Boston.

Early battles Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill come alive, as do subsequent clashes. Atkinson also gives an epic rendering of the American invasion of Canada, which turned disastrous after initial success, and victories in the Carolinas.

Washington's tribulations and triumphs are the heart of the book. In a complex portrait, Washington is shown emerging from the fire of the military defeats in New York to take charge as a daring, charismatic military leader, one of history's greatest generals.

As winter fell in 1776, Britain's overconfident Hessian troops encamped in Trenton, just across the Delaware from where Washington's desperate, depleted forces shivered in Philadelphia.

Beset by disease, desertions, and deteriorating supplies, the American troops feared an imminent British assault. Instead, on Christmas Day 1776, Washington audaciously decided on a surprise attack against the complacent Hessian troops in Trenton.

Despite setbacks crossing the ice-strewn river, Washington's attack succeeded. A subsequent battle in Trenton, and another surprise attack at the British stronghold in Princeton, turned the tide of the revolution. Thanks to Washington's daring, the colonies believed they could beat the haughty British empire.

The most venerated Founding Father, Washington along with contemporaries like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is receiving condemnation because he owned slaves.

Although Washington requested in his will that his slaves be freed, his widow, Martha Washington, resisted doing do. And, during his life, he sought to return to bondage a slave who had gained freedom because of the British. Overall, he was a steadfast supporter of slavery.

In Atkinson's narrative, the British exhibit the most enlightened views on slavery, while the American colonists vociferously support owning other humans.

Out of all of the British and American personalities that Atkinson vividly portrays, Washington stands out, a fascinating mixed portrait of cruelty and magnanimity, brilliance and obtuseness, finesse and arrogance.

His personality displayed the contradictions of the American character. In the end, he exemplified the best of us.

American Voices: An Independence Day Reader

Here are a few readings from American writers that intrigued me in an Internet search.

I saw this photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" at the Walt Whitman exhibit at New York City's Grolier Club. The photo expresses the American ideal of self-education, of citizens' freedom to explore ideas.

Happy Fourth of July.

To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth

By Phillis Wheatley

Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies

She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:
Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd,
Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd;
Thus from the splendors of the morning light
The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.
No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?
Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,
And thee we ask thy favours to renew,
Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before,
To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.
May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give
To all thy works, and thou for ever live
Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,
But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,
May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain,
And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.

Thomas Paine, from "The American Crisis," 1776

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. "

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

By Frederick Douglass

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Abraham Lincoln, From the Second Inaugural Address

”With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

I Hear America Singing
By Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Let America Be America Again
By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Chattanooga
By Ishmael Reed

1

Some say that Chattanooga is the
Old name for Lookout Mountain
To others it is an uncouth name
Used only by the uncivilized
Our a-historical period sees it
As merely a town in Tennessee
To old timers of the Volunteer State
Chattanooga is “The Pittsburgh of
The South”
According to the Cherokee
Chattanooga is a rock that
Comes to a point

They’re all right
Chattanooga is something you
Can have anyway you want it
The summit of what you are
I’ve paid my fare on that
Mountain Incline #2, Chattanooga
I want my ride up
I want Chattanooga

2

Like Nickajack a plucky Blood
I’ve escaped my battle near
Clover Bottom, braved the
Jolly Roger raising pirates
Had my near miss at Moccasin Bend
To reach your summit so
Give into me Chattanooga
I’ve dodged the Grey Confederate sharpshooters
Escaped my brother’s tomahawks with only
Some minor burns
Traversed a Chickamauga of my own
Making, so
You belong to me Chattanooga

3

I take your East Ninth Street to my
Heart, pay court on your Market
Street of rubboard players and organ
Grinders of Haitian colors rioting
And old Zip Coon Dancers
I want to hear Bessie Smith belt out
I’m wild about that thing in
Your Ivory Theatre
Chattanooga
Coca-Cola’s homebase
City on my mind

4

My 6th grade teacher asked me to
Name the highest mountain in the world
I didn’t even hesitate, “Lookout Mountain”
I shouted. They laughed
Eastern nitpickers, putting on the
Ritz laughed at my Chattanooga ways
Which means you’re always up to it

To get to Chattanooga you must
Have your Tennessee
“She has as many lives as a
cat. As to killing her, even
the floods have failed
you may knock the breath out of
her that’s all. She will re-
fill her lungs and draw
a longer breath than ever”
From a Knoxville editorial—
1870s

5

Chattanooga is a woman to me too
I want to run my hands through her
Hair of New Jersey tea and redroot
Aint no harm in that
Be caressed and showered in
Her Ruby Falls
That’s only natural
Heal myself in her
Minnehaha Springs
58 degrees F. all year
Around. Climb all over her
Ridges and hills
I wear a sign on my chest
“Chattanooga or bust”

6

“HOLD CHATTANOOGA AT ALL HAZARDS”—Grant to Thomas

When I tasted your big juicy
Black berries ignoring the rattle-
Snakes they said came to Cameron
Hill after the rain, I knew I
Had to have you Chattanooga
When I swam in Lincoln Park
Listening to Fats Domino sing
I found my thrill on Blueberry
Hill on the loudspeaker
I knew you were mine Chattanooga
Chattanooga whose Howard Negro
School taught my mother Latin
Tennyson and Dunbar
Whose Miller Bros. Department
Store cheated my Uncle out of
What was coming to him
A pension, he only had 6
Months to go
Chattanoooooooooooooooooga
Chattanoooooooooooooooooga
“WE WILL HOLD THIS TOWN TILL WE STARVE”-Thomas to Grant

7

To get to Chattanooga you must
Go through your Tennessee
I’ve taken all the scotsboros
One state can dish out
Made Dr. Shockley’s “Monkey Trials”
The laughing stock of the Nation
Capt. Marvel Dr. Sylvanias shazam
Scientists running from light-
ning, so
Open your borders. Tennessee
Hide your TVA
DeSota determined, this
Serpent handler is coming
Through

Are you ready Lookout Mountain?

“Give all of my Generals what he’s
drinking,” Lincoln said, when the
Potomac crowd called Grant a lush

8

I’m going to strut all over your
Point like Old Sam Grant did
My belly full of good Tennessee
Whiskey, puffing on
A.05 cigar
The campaign for Chattanooga
Behind me
Breathing a spell
Ponying up for
Appomattox!

America

By Paul Simon

“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate here in my bag”
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies
And walked off to look for America
“Kathy,” I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
“Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitch-hike from Saginaw
I’ve come to look for America”
Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, “Be careful, his bow tie is really a camera”
“Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat”
“We smoked the last one an hour ago”
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, thought I knew she was sleeping.
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why”
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

Elegy for the Native Guards
By Natasha Trethewey

Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . .
—Allen Tate

We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead
trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare—
all the way to Ship Island. What we see
first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee—
half reminder of the men who served there—
a weathered monument to some of the dead.

Inside we follow the ranger, hurried
though we are to get to the beach. He tells
of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split
in half when Hurricane Camille hit,
shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells
souvenirs, tokens of history long buried.

The Daughters of the Confederacy
has placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance—
each Confederate soldier’s name raised hard
in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards—
2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.
What is monument to their legacy?

All the grave markers, all the crude headstones—
water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones,
and we listen for what the waves intone.
Only the fort remains, near forty feet high,
round, unfinished, half open to the sky,
the elements—wind, rain—God’s deliberate eye.

Flannery O'Connor's racism doesn't detract from her artistry

Flannery O'Connor was among the long list of venerated authors who expressed racist views.

While her racist slurs and opposition to black civil rights have long been documented, author Paul Elie in a June 22 New Yorker article accuses O'Connor's followers of seeking to evade her racism.

O'Connor's adherents have denied Elie's claims. Amy Alznauer, in a better argued article published by The Bitter Southerner,  says that O'Connor's racism has long drawn fire from critical commentators.

Elie, who included O'Connor in his survey of Catholic writers "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," asserts that O'Connor's supporters try to justify her views with the dubious argument that she was a product of her times. But he overstates her native Georgia's racial progress in the last years of her life, when the state's opposition to segregation hardened.

Elie's article coincides with the publication of Angela Alaimo O'Donnell's "Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor." Alznauer expresses outrage at Elie's cursory dismissal of O'Donnell's work.

Black authors like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison have condemned O'Connor's racism while admiring her fiction, Alznauer says.

As Elie points out, O'Connor like C.S. Lewis is one of those writers passionately followed because of her religious outlook. O'Connor's letters and essays with their spiritual reflections are as celebrated by many readers as her short stories and novels.

O'Connor's exalted position as a literary saint demands a reckoning with her racism, Elie says. He contrasts O'Connor with poet Philip Larkin, also exposed for casual racism.

"Unlike, say, the struggle over Philip Larkin, whose coarse, chauvinistic letters are at odds with his lapidary poetry, it’s not about protecting the work from the author; it’s about protecting an author who is now as beloved as her stories," Elie says.

An artist like O'Connor needs no such protection, no matter how condemnable her views.

 

 

 

John Keats lovers mark bicentenary of book in which great odes appeared

John Keats began coughing up blood in February 1820, five months before the publication of the last book of poems that appeared in his lifetime.

This week marks the 200th anniversary of that collection, "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems," now recognized as one of the greatest books of poetry.

The young poet's previous book, "Endymion," a romantic epic, had been mercilessly ripped by critics.

But Fleet Street publishers Taylor and Hessey agreed to publish Keats' new collection, which received better reviews. Despite the warmer welcome, the book quickly disappeared from public attention.

Mortally ill with tuberculosis and despondent over his doomed love for Fanny Brawne and what he perceived as his failed poetry career, Keats sailed to Italy in September 1820 with his friend Joseph Severn, hoping to regain his health in Rome.

But the disease worsened, and he died in February 1821 in a small apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps. His friend Severn, who had nursed him until the end, drew his deathbed portrait.

Nearly forgotten at the time of his death, Keats received posthumous recognition as one of the Romantic era's major poets. "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems" contained his most celebrated work, the six great odes he wrote in a bust of genius beginning in the spring of 1819.

While the title poems "Lamia and Isabella" are not considered among his best poems now, "The Eve of St. Agnes" is one of his masterpieces. The collection also includes the ambitious, unfinished epic "Hyperion."

But the appearance of "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn" and three other magnificent odes makes the book a hallmark of Romanticism.

Keats' gravestone in Rome's Protestant Cemetery contains the inscription, "here lies one who's name is writ in water," as he requested. Those words bring a deep sadness to those who love his work 200 years later.

 

 

 

 

John Bolton's stinkbomb explodes

John Bolton's "The Room Where It Happened" has landed.

It seemed pointless to read reviews by Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times and Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. Revelations in the book about Donald Trump's corruption, mental instability and cozying up to dictators had already appeared in The Times and WSJ's news columns. Why waste any time reading the book?

Despite Trump's lawsuit against release of his former national security adviser's White House expose, the WSJ published an excerpt in its Saturday Review section. Although the WSJ's editorial page frequently defends Trump, albeit turning against him more and more recently, Rupert Murdoch's newspaper disclosed some of Bolton's most damaging accusations about Trump's dealings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Trump responded to the book's arrival with his usual fulminations, claiming that Bolton is one more enemy who should be thrown into Trump's fantasy jail.

Slate's Fred Kaplan said that Bolton's own foolhardy views disclosed in the book are as disturbing as the Trump vignettes. Bolton shows himself as more extreme than Trump on Iran and North Korea, Kaplan said.

Kaplan cites a passage from the book that pictures Trump  as having the attention span of a 2-year-old. Trump's unable to focus on one subject, continually veering off to pursue bizarre associations in his mind.

Kaplan's piece made me wonder if Lin-Manuel Miranda can take action against Bolton for appropriating the"room where it happens" lyric from Miranda's smash musical "Hamilton."

It sounds like Bolton's memoir should have been called "the room where it didn't happen."

 

 

New York Times' A.O. Scott blends film, book criticism

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on Wednesday explained his recent move to literary criticism.

In an "Inside the Times" essay, Scott points out that he was a book critic before his hiring as the Times' movie reviewer. His series for the Sunday Book Review on forgotten American writers returns him to literary criticism.

Scott in the article supports the universality of cultural criticism over specialization. He quotes the late Los Angles Times food critic Jonathan Gold, who started out as a music critic. "Criticism is criticism," Gold said, as cited by Scott.  "An aria is like a well-cooked potato."

Following Gold, Scott claims that "any product of human creativity, however humble or highfalutin', exists to be appreciated, interpreted and judged. Whenever we take the time to listen, taste, watch or read, criticism is what comes naturally."

Cultural purists would argue that distinctions are vital, that a Beethoven symphony differs from a gourmet meal. Those traditional elitist views have been challenged by the rise of film and other popular arts. That a jazz composition by Duke Ellington displays artistic refinement comparable with a Mozart concerto is no longer disputed.

In supporting the primacy of criticism, Scott makes an appealing call for an aesthetic approach to life. Following Robert M. Pirsig's philosophy of quality in "The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," I've sought to bring such an appreciation to daily life. An Arby's can satisfy while a fine restaurant falls short. Yet, sometimes a potato is just a potato.

Scott began his series, which will appear in the Sunday Book Review, with an appreciation of the Western writer Wallace Stegner. While I found Scott's defense of Stegner's work unconvincing, I will look forward to his subsequent installments.

As Scott points out in his Inside the Times article, books and film are perceived differently yet share affinities. His broader focus is a gift to Times readers.

 

 

 

Remembering Stephen Crane

I've rediscovered Stephen Crane, one of my favorite authors during my college days.

Like Keats, Crane died young of tuberculosis. Crane, the author of the best-seller "The Red Badge of Courage," was 28. 

Crane was a product of the rough-and-tumble New York newspaper and magazine world of the 1890s. "The Red Badge of Courage," lauded for its realistic depiction of combat although Crane had never gone to war, didn't make him financially secure.

The novella gives an impressionistic account of a young soldier's experience of battle. Isolated from his unit, the soldier wanders through a hellish landscape in which natural beauty contrasts with the horror of death. The never named battle has similarities to Chancellorsville.

In the last chapter of his well-traveled career,  Crane was a correspondent covering the Spanish-American War, writing an account of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Crane had first met Roosevelt, then New York City's police commissioner, when testifying in favor of a woman accused of prostitution.

Constantly writing for money, Crane during his life made reporting trips to the untamed western United States, Mexico and Greece, where he covered the Greco-Turkish War. Beginning with "Maggie, A Girl of the Streets," he kept writing fiction such as "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" and "The Blue Hotel" along with "The Red Badge of Courage."  He also wrote poetry.

Outside of "The Red Badge of Courage," his most famous and accomplished work is the non-fiction "The Open Boat," based on his surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida.

In 1896, Crane was en route from Jacksonville to Cuba on the SS Commodore when the ship sunk after striking a sandbar. Crane and three others were adrift in a boat for 36 hours before deciding to swim for land in turbulent waves. Battling the surf, Crane and two others made it to Daytona Beach, the other man drowning.

"The Open Boat" is a masterpiece of realistic writing, marked by the depiction of humans struggling against an uncaring nature.

Before Hemingway, Crane was the model of the dashing, adventurous American writer and war correspondent. "The Red Badge of Courage" and "The Open Boat" have never been matched.

 

Of Bob Dylan, Emily Dickenson and William Faulkner

Here are some nuggets from my weekend reading:

"Murder Most Foul": After reading Bob Dylan's interview with Douglas Brinkley in the Sunday New York Times, I finally listened to "Murder Most Foul." Dylan's 16-minute documentary song about the John F. Kennedy assassination is surprisingly the Nobel Prize winner's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard chart. I would have bet "Like a Rolling Stone" had reached the top spot.

Like an ominous Gregorian chant, Dylan murmurs the lyrics against a repeated musical phrase. He recycles the familiar conspiracy themes of the assassination, and with contrived rhymes cites a number of cultural figures connected with it. The result is a collage of cliches with few moments of liftoff.

Emily Dickenson, transsexual: Thumbing through my tattered anthology of American literature from college days, I wandered through the large selection of Emily Dickenson's poetry.

I was surprised to discover that in several poems, Dickenson said "when I was a boy," referring to her childhood. Intrigued, I found a critical essay that said that Dickenson made the cross-gender reference when discussing the scientific education she had received, more like a boy's than a girl's.

William Faulkner's "The Evening Sun": In William Faulkner's short story published in the same anthology, the doomed Quentin Compson narrates a event from his childhood. In the story, Quentin, his sister, Caddy, and brother, Jason, witness their parents' interactions with a family maid named Nancy. The Compsons' black servant, Dilsey, also appears.

Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury" reveals the Compsons' adult fates. One chapter is narrated by Dilsey, who upholds traditional values.

In the story, the Nancy. fears being killed by her common-law husband, Jesus, because he believes she's pregnant with the child of a white man.

The young Compsons barely understand the adult actions. Illustrating the closeness of whites and blacks in the segregated South, Nancy lives close by, and even stays in the children's room for a night.

The children's father, Jason, discounts Nancy's fears. In the last scene, Nancy brings the children to her primitive house, hoping that their presence prevents Jesus from murdering her. The story ends with the father coming to take the children home, leaving Nancy alone. The implication is that she will be killed.

Faulkner critics point out that Quentin is about 24 when he narrates the story, although in "The Sound of the Fury" he commits suicide at age 19 while a student at Harvard. The children's relationships foreshadow their tragic adult personalities.

Maligned because of her race, the character Nancy blends stereotypical elements and surprising individuality. While undoubtedly offensive to black readers, the story gives a complex view of black-white relationships in the Jim Crow era, rising above crude racism.