Wednesday
Three New Books
I used the past week to catch up on some magazine reading. The November 11th issue of The Economist had a great assortment of book reviews. Van Gogh: The Life; Vanished Kingdoms; Blue Nights.
The gist of the Van Gogh book: The guy was really an ass. "Van Gogh's lust for conflict was strongest of all. . . . The book describes a lonely, bad- tempered alcoholic, a syphilitic who liked to bite the hands that fed him." But that wasn't what I found most interesting. I found it most interesting that the massive book (953 pages) saved space by removing all the footnotes (consisting of 5,000 pages) and instead putting them at the book's website. I really appreciate that kind of innovation. My hat's off to Random House.
Vanished Kingdoms is not quite as exciting, but the subject matter interests me more: Forgotten kingdoms of Europe. The book ranges wide: "The variety is striking: the Byzantine empire lasted more than 1,000 years; the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine barely 24 hours. Some, like Aragon or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, grew into empires. Others (Eire and Estonia) started life by breaking away from someone else's empire. . . . Few will know of the Visigoths' kingdom of Tolosa, centred approximately on modern Toulouse, or an ancient British domain in what is now modern Scotland, so completely forgotten that even locals have never heard of it."
The last book, Blue Nights, is the least intriguing, but I've long had a soft spot for Joan Didion. She's not my favorite essayist, by any means (such devotion belongs to Joseph Epstein), but her prose entices and stories entrance (her essay about the perennial California fires mesmerized me). She has now written her memoirs, which revolve around the death of her husband of forty years and her adopted daughter. It's sad stuff, but her art apparently shines through:
Her recollections meander and loop back, interrupted only by distressing questions that no one is left to answer (“Did I get this all wrong?”). Often these questions consider the choices she made as a mother (“Was I always the problem?”) and her own increasing frailty (“What if I can never again locate the words that work?”). With “Blue Nights”, named for the intense and portentous beauty of the dying light on a summer day, Ms Didion has translated the sad hum of her thoughts into a profound meditation on mortality. The result aches with a wisdom that feels dreadfully earned.
