I'd Rather Be The Devil: Skip James and the Blues by Stephen Calt; Agatha Raisin and The Quiche of Death; Death of a Greedy Woman, a Hamish MacBeth mystery by M.C. Beaton; Josephine Tey: a Life by Jennifer Morag Henderson

 I was listening to meditative music as I wrote this review, because it doesn't draw my attention away from the task at hand.

Here is another group of short reviews.  I read or listened to all of them on Hoopla, except the last, so I don't have any photos of the books.  So instead, here is a lovely, yet random  photo of a postcard I sent.  I'd like to paint it in acrylic.

 

Fascinating, if unflattering narrative on the life of Skip James, but also other blues performers of the early part of the century, their comeback in the 60s as white audiences discovered their love for the blues and their impact on the history and culture of American and also global music.

The author met with and befriended Skip James and was intimately involved with the Blues revival of the sixties. He reveals that many of these musicians led extremely rough, even lawless lives. Their relationships with white people throughout the South was far more complex than how it is often portrayed in today's media.

The author also showed how the Blues Revival of the sixties wasn't necessarily profitable for these blues musicians. Many of the managers and record companies took advantage of them, making money for themselves, but not the blues musicians themselves.

I'd Rather be the Devil, not only provides a historical chronology, but delves into the rich, old culture of the South and Southern black people, combining their religious beliefs, intertwined with superstitions that preceded the introduction to Christianity and the hard determined grit the was necessary for survival in those pre-civil rights days.

I have really grown to like Agatha Raisin. She's so human, yet so likable. I have not read these books in order, but this is the first mystery. Agatha Raisin moves from London, her job in advertising, to the Cotswolds for a peaceful life.

It does not turn out as she expects. The people of the village are politely cordial, but nothing else. No one befriends her and soon Agatha is homesick and lonely. She decides to take the bull by the horns and get involved in village society. She begins to attend church, largely because the vicar's wife, Mrs. Bloxby has been the only person to show genuine friendship to her. She then becomes involved in several church functions.

This brings her to the Quiche competition. Agatha can't boil water, so she decides to cheat. She goes out and buys a quiche and presents it to the judges. It doesn't win, but the judge and his wife offer to take it home and finish it off. Agatha, disappointed and depressed, shruggingly lets them.

The next day, the judge is found dead. Poisoned by cowbane that was found in the quiche. Now what is Agatha to do? Admit she cheated, or be suspected of murder?

The mystery is fun, but so are all the characters as Agatha gets to know her neighbors and they get to know her. Many of the characters travel from book to book with Agatha, so they become like old friends to the reader.

 

 

It's funny, but with Beaton's Hamish MacBeth mysteries, one knows who is going to be topped off almost from the get go. It's the most odious, disgusting individual who acts in a way that makes everyone want to kill them.

From this foundation, one then has to get to know all the suspects and find out who ultimately did it and what their reasons were for doing so. As in previous MacBeth mysteries I've read, even though the murder victim may be obvious, the murderer is not, nor are their reasons.

In Death of a Greedy Woman, a group of tourists come up from England to take a holiday at the local hotel. They are not just any group of tourists, but clients of Checkmate, a match up site. An equal number of men and women are going to spend the week together and hopefully pair off.

The monkey wrench is that one of the partners, Peta, of Checkmate is an ogre. Or at least her eating habits are ogre-ish. The other partner, Maria, actually was hoping to pull the gathering off without Peta's knowledge. Peta finds out however, and joins the group at Priscilla Halburton-Smythe's father's hotel and restaurant. The group, which was already disliking each other, find themselve in solidarity in their disgust of Peta.

In addition to the murder we see the ongoing relationship between Hamish MacBeth and Priscilla. There are bumps along the road as they continue to misunderstand each other, but I suppose that is what keeps the reader coming back. Will Hamish and Priscilla ever meet each other half way?

There is very little known about Josephine Tey, but Henderson does a good job gathering what facts are available and intertwining them with an analysis of her work, both as a playwright, historian and mystery writer.

 

Seven Men and the Secret of their Greatness by Eric Metaxas

7 Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness by Eric Metaxas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The only problem I have with this book is that each biography is brief enough to have me looking through Metaxas' bibliography to read more about his subjects.

Not that Metaxas does an incomplete job writing about these great men but because he whets your appetite.

These men are probably not going to be considered the greatest men by many and maybe some of them shouldn't but I appreciated the author's reasons for including them.

While Mr. Metaxas honestly shows the foibles of each man he shows that humans can also be great while making mistakes or wrong or even immoral decisions.

Also, Metaxas is not set out to write a thorough biography of these men but rather focus on why he believes they are great.

The first biography is of George Washington. Metaxas does not spare the young Washington who lied about the massacre of French soldiers at the hands of a couple of Indians during a diplomatic negotiation that was to hopefully stave off war between the British and French.

He also shows his bravery and his abilities as a war strategist.

But he also points out something that seems to be overlooked in every historical account of our first president.

He agreed to become our president but refused to become our King. This was unprecedented in the entire recorded history of mankind. And people did not simply go along with it. There were several leaders who were bent on making George Washington King and he had a battle to fight against them.

Another important feature about Washington has to do with his slaves. Many authors enjoy pointing out the hypocrisy of a man who spent his life fighting for human freedom as described in the Constitution but not many seem inclined to admit or know that Washington freed all of his slaves before he died and left the elderly slaves with pensions.

It's easy to judge slave owners now, but how many today, of any race, in the same position would have done the same thing back then? How many of us are fighting against the slavery that still exists today throughout the African continent and the Middle East?

Wilberforce is of course included since he helped fight against slavery in England and succeeded in having it outlawed in the country seventy years before it was finally outlawed in the U.S.

Bonhoeffer is described as a radical in his own right because he refused to bend his knee to Hitler and the German Reich Church that thought it could syncretize Christianity with fascism.

He is less clear as to why he sees Pope John Paul II is great although I found his brief biography of the man interesting.

Metaxas also includes his hero and mentor Chuck Colson, the man who worked under President Nixon and went to jail only to become a Christian and start a Prison Ministry that is still serving Prisoners and their families.

One of the most inspiring was Eric Liddell. He was the Olympic gold medalist who became famous in the movie Chariots of Fire. Everyone knows his bravery in refusing to run in the Olympics on Sunday, but not many of us know how about his life as a missionary in China, where he died under Japanese occupation in a prison camp. Or that he died because when offered released gave his place to a pregnant woman and chose to remain in the camp in her stead.

But I must say my very favorite Great Man and the most inspiring to me was Jackie Robinson. Not just because he was the first black man to join a professional baseball team but because of all that he endured, how he refused to fight back and how his Christ-like practice of turning the other cheek forced white America to confront the ugliness of racism and be convicted in their hearts.

This is a highly readable book and I recommend it.



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Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchiner

Poor little Hercaloo broke his tail feathers.  We had to go to the vet and have them removed.  It was not a pleasant experience.  They had to pull them out which is like having your hairs plucked out of your head.  Hercaloo did not suffer in silence.  She kept (we think it's a "she" now) up a constant scream that had my ears ringing until we got back home.

I was afraid she wasn't going to forgive me, but she's just as affectionate as ever, even if she does look like she's been run over by a lawn mower.

Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A.E. Hotchner started out as a young journalist who was assigned to interview Ernest Hemingway. He didn't want to do it. He felt he was much too unimportant a person to be bothering the great writer. Flying down to Cuba where Hemingway was currently living he sent him a note explaining his situation and also that he understood that Hemingway probably didn't have time for him.

What he received was a phone call from "Papa" himself inviting him to a restaurant for dinner and drinks. Thus began a fourteen year friendship between the two men, ending only with Heminway's death. It does not include anything that happened before Hotchner knew him and only includes personal transactions between the two authors.

Hotchner quotes a lot of the conversations verbatim. Hemingway apparently did not talk in complete sentences. This may give an authentic feel to the story but it makes for rather stilted reading. I'd rather he had paraphrased.

Having read Carlos Baker's unflattering biography about Hemingway it was interesting to compare the two. Because Baker in his biography calls Hotchner's biography unrealistic and fawning, I was prepared to read a biography that was biased.

Maybe it was, but I felt that Hotchner was fairly honest about Hemingway's foibles, even if he did leave out or soften some facts that would make Hemingway a less sympathetic character. Mostly it is the story about a man the author obviously has great affection and esteem for. For whatever reason, Hemingway, at least from Hotchner's telling, took a liking to him and did not treat him in the shabby way he treated a lot of people.

Even so, I still don't find Hemingway to be all that nice of a person in Hotchner's biography. Most of it is centered around Hemingway telling Hotchner what sound like tall tales, but even if they're not, they are still rather boorish renditions of what a tough guy he was. ("There I was in WWII, beating up the enemy single handedly...")

The story travels along from Cuba to Spain to Africa, back to Cuba and also the U.S. a few times. Each place Hemingway lived was defined by how he conquered powerful animals . In Spain, he is obsessed with the bullfights. Hemingway never was a bullfighter but he became close friends with bullfighters and seemed to live vicariously through them.

In Cuba he fished Marlin from his boat the Pilar. In Idaho he hunted bears and in Africa he hunted all sorts of big animals. I don't understand the psyche that pushed Hemingway to be such an avid big game hunter. He also enjoyed destroying people, although that does not come into this biography. What drove him to do it? Where did this cruel streak come from? Hotchner does not answer these questions. Baker's biography provides more clues.

Hotchner doesn't answer perhaps because he didn't see it. Or maybe hooking on to Hemingway helped promote his own career. Certainly writing a biography about a famous writer you were personal friends with guaranteed getting known.

Throughout the book Hotchner refers to Hemingway as "Papa". I wonder how the moniker started. It comes across as a little contrived and denotes a kindly, gentleness that was not a part of Hemingway's character.

But perhaps he was a "papa" to some people. Hotchner seemed to view him so and so did others. Who Hemingway showed that side to appears random.

The last part of the biography describes Hemingway's mental deterioration. Other biographies describe Hemingway's mental illness, but Hotchner gives a first hand account, allowing for a more accurate diagnosis. This book was published in the sixties so different names were used but I think that "paranoid schizophrenia" is how it would be described today. Hemingway became convinced that the FBI was out to get him, that they had bugged all his phones, and if any friend disagreed they had been "bought" and crossed over to "their side".

Hemingway was admitted into a mental hospital at different times towards the end of his life and according to Hotchner was released against Hemingway's wife and also Hotchner's advice. In the end Hemingway was able to divert everyone long enough to pull the trigger. Hotchner wrote this biography soon after Hemingway's death.

In conclusion, if you are a Hemingway fan, this is a good biography to include in your library. It is written with the warm affection of someone who knew Hemingway personally and carried on a close relationship with him in his old age, when he had once again invented himself, this time as "Papa Hemingway".



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For a video tour of Hemingway's house "Finca La Vigia" in Cuba, click on the link below:
http://www.hemingwaycuba.com/finca-la-vigia.html 

Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough

Above is my breakfast this morning.  In the words of that great philosopher the Cookie Monster:

C is for cookie and that's good enough for me.

Today my writing is accompanied by all three movements of Pour le Piano by Claude Debussy performed by Gina Bachauer.

Years ago, the first time I moved to New Jersey, I was facing some hard financial times so my mother came up to stay with me and watch my toddler son while I worked.  Tuesdays were my day off so my mother, one of the most organized people I know, mapped out all of New York City and each week we would go and explore some part of the city.

One Tuesday it was the Roosevelt house.  Not only was it a fascinating tour but the information provided about our 26th President provoked an interest in that has lasted me the rest of my life.  I have read Roosevelt's own writings and have a couple of other biographies lined up after this one.




Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you're looking for a book describing Teddy Roosevelt's time in office this is not it. Lion in the White House by Aida Donald or Roosevelt's own autobiography would be where to start.

McCullough brings us to the brink of Roosevelt's political career and aside from a small afterward informing us of how all the Roosevelt children turned out, there he ends.

The book is still rich with information. Starting with Theodore Roosevelt, Sr, we get a solid and colorful background in which Teddy Jr grew up, as well as what sort of child he was which gives us insight into the sort of man he developed into.

Theodore Sr. was an intensely honorable and devout man. A strong Christian and the adoring and adored father of his children. A good third of the book narrates the close relationship Theodore Sr. had with all of his children.

He married a Southern woman, Mittie, the decade prior to the Civil War. Mittie was the quintessential Southern woman. Gorgeous, charming, flirtatious but completely in control of her destiny. Theodore must have fallen hard, even besotted. Their letters are filled with ardor on his part and teasing banter on hers.

They married and she, her sister, and her mother moved up to New York to live in the Roosevelt mansion. This must have been hard in many ways for the Southern ladies, New York being a drastically different culture than their dear Georgia. But it was also a blessing because a few years later, when the War broke out, they did not suffer the fate of the rest of their family and friends. Their home and all they knew was destroyed. Mittie's mother prayed she'd rather die than see the fall of Richmond. Her prayer was answered and she did die a year after the war started.

What Mittie's feelings were on the matter, we don't know because it seems to have been the culture at the time that one's feelings were not for exhibition. We see this later in her son, Teddy Jr, after the death of his first wife. He simply never speaks of her, not even mentioning her in his autobiography, yet from the records we know he loved her extremely.

The Roosevelts' lives would probably be deemed distasteful to modern sensibilities. They were unapologetically rich and lived a lavish lifestyle. Ironically, not because many people don't live that way now, in fact with our modern conveniences, the average person lives a more comfortable life than the richest person in the 19th century, but today it's gauche to be in favor of wealth, even if we enjoy it.

Teddy Roosevelt was sickly and an asthmatic. The Roosevelts traveled all over the world, taking an entire year to visit everything from Europe to India. This influenced Teddy in many ways and years later, as a grown man, he sought to replicate those experiences by returning to India and also living out west as a rancher.

Before that we read about his experiences at Harvard, and the impression he made on his fellow students. He was deemed a strange, awkward character with a high pitched voice, but he soon commanded their respect and he never lacked in confidence. Growing up in the Roosevelt household no doubt instilled a strong sense of self-worth.

One thing I must confess that I found disturbing was the utter delight in killing animals. Teddy describes with relish all the huge and powerful animals he hunted and conquered. I know there was a time when that was fashionable but I personally abhor killing for sport.

We also get to know Teddy's siblings. Corinne, the youngest, smart, devoted sister and the only one to live long enough to see another Roosevelt in office.

Elliot, the father of Eleanor Roosevelt, a tragic figure whose uncontrolled drinking put him into an early grave.

And the one Teddy was closest to, Bamie. Bamie had different physical handicaps, one being a curved spine. Her father treated her with the utmost care, usually carrying her everywhere and making sure she was deprived of nothing. Theirs was a special, close relationship.

And despite her physical challenges she turned out to be the most brilliant of them all, advising Teddy on everything from personal relationships to political directions. And I was glad to see that she did finally marry and marry happily, especially since everyone at the time had consigned her to "Old Maid" status. I would very much like to find a biography of this fascinating woman.

In conclusion,

If anything struck me the most it was the strong commitment and tender devotion Theodore Sr had towards his family.

The next thing would be the political shenanigans of the late 19th century and how Theodore Sr. did his utmost to eradicate the political corruption in New York and how this mantle was taken on by his son after the father's untimely and unexpected death while he was still a young man.

The courage both Theodores had in striving to remove the entrenched corruption and cronyism in the political arena of their time, how they fought against the majority of politicians, powerful crime bosses and indifference by the middle and upper classes toward the plight of the exploited lower classes is reminiscent of William Wilberforce's fight against slavery.

 I found this book to be an inspiring account of one of my favorite presidents.



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The Bewitched Parsonage: The Story of the Brontes by William Stanley Braithwaite

The Bewitched Parsonage The Story Of The Brontes by William Stanle Braithwaite

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is so far the best, most interesting biography I have read. It's the first I read of the Bronte sisters and I do not know if it is the most reliable, but it is highly readable and informative.

Mr Braithwaite wrote this biography in the 1950s. I think perhaps that is one reason why I trust his biography. Unlike Elisabeth Gaskell who was a personal friend of Charlotte Bronte and possibly biased or protective of her reputation, and also unlike today's University Professors of Literature who insist on interpreting all woman's literature through contemporary social constructs (woman oppressed, victimized, miserable etc.) Braithwaite writes about his subjects with a cool eye and even-hand.

His biography starts with the Bronte's Great- grandfather, then Patrick Bronte, the father of the Bronte sisters, who was born and raised in Ireland.

Apparently, the great-grandfather came home one day with a swarthy orphan, whom he named Welsh because of his dark skin. When Welsh came of age, he inherited the property of his adopted father. It was understood that when Hugh, Patrick's father, came of age, he would receive his fair share.

This did not happen. Welsh took everything and outcast Hugh who then lived in poverty all his life as well as his wife and ten children. This was the world Patrick was born into. Coming from a family of wealth but being condemned to live as peasants.

This did not deter Patrick who went to school, became highly literate in classical literature and, with the help of a couple of Ministers, went to University and became a clergyman himself.

He moved to the Moors of England and married an English woman, Mary Branwell. It was a marriage beneath her, as they viewed things in those days, but her family agreed and she was devoted to her husband.

Patrick was stern, unemotional and Spartan. The house they lived in was dark, cold and damp and probably contributed to the demise of his wife after eight years of marriage and also to all of six of his children, except his son who drank himself to oblivion. He survived them all.

After his wife's death, Patrick locked himself up in his library and left his children to raise themselves. This they did as well as they could and, since their father forbade them to associate with the village children, they kept each other company and created their own worlds in writing.

Although they were kept from the world, they were acutely aware of it. Their parents had given them a rich heritage of stories from their family histories and also from their father's extensive library of books, of which they were given free use.

They also learned of the local village lore and gossip through a woman who came to take care of them after the their mother's death. This woman was the basis for Nellie in Wuthering Heights and also housekeepers in some of the other novels.

They eventually were sent away to a school that was to become the model for the school of abuse and neglect Jane Eyre was sent to as a girl. As teenagers they went to work as governesses for rich families, an occupation they all deplored. However, it gave them experience that expressed itself in their books.

A well-to-do Aunt sponsored Emily and Charlotte to study in Brussels for a time. What happened there is sketchy and somewhat controversial. Elisabeth Gaskell refused to make any mention of it in her biography but apparently Charlotte fell in love with the Professor presiding over the school.

How far this went, whether there was an actual affair, a mere dalliance on the professor's part or simply a product of Charlotte Bronte's imagination, is anyone's guess. What cannot be denied are the letters that she sent M. Constantin Heger. M. Heger threw the letters away, but his wife retrieved them and kept them, later giving them to the Bronte museum. Six of these letters survive and are included in Braithwait's biography. In my old fashioned opinion, they are not the sort of letters one should write to a married man.

No, they weren't hot and sweaty, filled with passion, but definitely they were the words of someone who missed a person of interest very much. The letters are filled with complaints that her letters were not being responded to.

It wasn't as though Charlotte did not receive marriage proposals. She received a number, but from nobody she felt she could love. I wonder if her longing for a man out of reach was an unconscious desire to keep love firmly rooted in a powerful imagination that no real person could live up to.

Charlotte Bronte's novels, Shirley and Villette were inspired from her time in Brussels and by her mysterious relationship with Professor Heger.

And speaking of mysterious...

Emily stayed briefly in Brussels but quickly returned. Her life was for the Moors. She wrote mountains of poetry that expound on her soul united with the desolate landscape she grew up with. Emily is a kind of cross between Emily Dickenson and Thoreau. She was rarely seen, although she had detailed knowledge of everyone in the village and she was a mystic. Her poetry is the type George Herbert wrote, except her god is nature.

Very little is known about her. Charlotte destroyed most of her sister's work so what might have been known is gone forever.

All three sisters were otherworldly. It has been speculated that they suffered from Autism, Asbergers, or had Radical Attachment Disorder due to being orphaned by their mother and neglected by their father.

Anne wrote the Tenant of Wildfell Hall and it is considered to be the most revolutionary in its treatment of woman who defies conventions and stands against the confinement imposed by society conventions by creating a heroine who leaves a drunken, abusive husband.

The man could very well have been patterned after the Bronte's brother, Branwell. I would also say that John Reed, the spoiled, dissipated cousin of Jane Eyre is a good likeness as well.

Branwell caused the sisters a lot of heartache and they spent what little money they had trying to erase his debts. But Branwell went to his grave a never-do-well. He spent his short life drinking and it finally ended his life.

After giving historical information of the Bronte's lives, Braithwait describes the writing, giving each book a chapter for analysis, not his but the contemporaries of the Brontes. It is remarkable and also humorous to read some of the reviews. Because the sisters wrote under male pseudonyms, some reviewers remarked on how accurately men were able to describe life as a governess or inside a school room. They were also excoriated for writing about women in unbecoming terms. Very shocking at the time. He also describes how they eventually got their books published.

They wrote under male pseudonyms and would have been content to leave it at that except for a rumor that their publisher was going to sell the rights to an American company without their permission.

Anne and Charlotte traveled to London by themselves, Emily of course refused to go, and confronted their publisher. The publisher had no idea who these two small women, hardly bigger than children were or what they wanted. It took a while for Charlotte to convince him that they were, in fact, Acton and Currer Bell, the writers of Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey. We can imagine his shock.

Someone who was not shocked was their father. He did not have an inkling that his daughters were published authors and it took them a while to convince him. One would have thought he might have left his library after that but apparently not.

Another valuable contribution the book provides is showing the inspiration for many of the characters. I've already spoken of a couple. Rochester and Heathcliff seemed to have stemmed from the same inspiration, which was a stern, very masculine teacher at the school they attended.

But Heathcliff also has family history. Remember Welsh in Ireland? Emily was familiar with this story as it had been told countless times.

Charlotte believed that her sisters' untimely demise was due to the deplorable living conditions at the school there. Both Anne and Emily were dead of tuberculosis by their thirty-first birthdays. Unfortunately, Charlotte did not long outlive them. TB claimed her life at thirty-seven. But not before she married and, according to Braithwait, there is every indication it was a happy marriage, although her husband was not seen as her intellectual equal. He was, however, extremely devoted to Charlotte.

As she was dying, she opened her eyes to see him on his knees, fervently praying over her. Her final words:

"Am I dying? But we have been so happy."

One final irony: During their lifetimes, the Brontes were poor and not considered of the class that could be recognized by the gentry (although Charlotte became good friends with contemporary writers after she became known, such as Thackeray and Gaskell). How satisfying it would be to know that your works are now bulwarks of British literature.



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The Bronte sisters.  Painted by their brother Branwell.  Originally he included himself, but later painted himself out of the picture.

Just chillin' with my peeps.

Socrates by Paul Johnson

Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul  Johnson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A concise overview of Socrates based on what little information we have. While Johnson may employ some guesswork as to what part of Plato's Republic is Socrates or Plato coloring Socrates with his own ideals, he is no more guilty than most historians on this point.

I notice that some reviewers have been harsh almost to the point of vitriol on Johnson "infusing his Christian ideals" on poor Socrates. Every single historian has a slant or bias and to think otherwise is naive. It's the reader's responsibility to read with discernment as well as many other sources.

While this book is not the most in depth or exhaustive biography, Johnson does have a good suggested reading list that points the reader to good sources.

This book serves as a good introduction to the philosopher's life.

I have read several of Johnson's biographies and I find them to be short, highly readable, and always respectful of his subject, which is not always true with other biographers.  His research is meticulous and his conclusions well-supported.

I had always had a hard time separating Plato and Socrates and now I know why.  Plato recorded much of what we know about Socrates in his Dialogues.  Johnson insists that at the beginning Plato faithfully records Socrates words and ideals but later starts to record them through the lens of his personal biases.  Johnson delineates the two for us but also tells the reader that ultimately they have to decide for himself which is pure Socrates and which is a hybrid of Plato and Socrates.


Based on what little we know because Socrates wrote nothing down, Socrates grew up neither poor nor rich. He  fought in the Peloponnisian War.  He never sought riches and apparently refused to receive wages for his teaching, unlike other contemporary philosophers who profited well by becoming household teachers or teachers for hire.  

He had a wife and children, but it is not explained how he took care of them since he never worked but taught for free.

His philosophy was founded on the belief that morals are absolute and he is primarily known for his teaching on ethics.  His method of teaching was to deconstruct everything his pupils said. He taught them through debate.

He met every statement with a "Why do you think that?" "How can you substantiate your position?" and often gave the opposing view in order to cause the other person to come up with counterarguments.

Socrates believed in absolute good and consequently did not believe in the Greek gods because they were obviously not good, but rather tyrannical, childish, selfish and capricious.  This did not make him popular with many Greek citizens.

But he did believe in the supernatural and even a "God" although perhaps not aware of or acknowledging the God of the Bible.This book gave me a better appreciation of St. Paul's experience when he tried to engage the Athenians in discussing the "Unknown God". It also increases my understanding when in Acts 17:16-21:


 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷ So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.  And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?  For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.”  Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. (ESV)

A famous situation is when an Oracle declares there is none wiser than Socrates.  Socrates protests, claiming to know nothing but upon discovering that most people think they know a lot he concludes that he is the wisest because, unlike others, he is aware of how little he knows. 

In fact a Socrates paradox is "I know that I know nothing."

He was an ardent Athenian and refused to live anywhere else, even when he was condemned to die by suicide.  He refused to escape even though he apparently could.  The reason for his trial and death was because of political infighting and Socrates' criticism of what he considered Athenians' immoral practice of city politics. 

Now I have Plato's Dialogues on my list and I hope to read them soon. 

I also have a biography of Darwin by Johnson that should prove interesting.






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Henry James on Italy; Odyssey by Homer; Images and Imagination by C.S. Lewis; Political Woman: The Big Little LIfe of Jeane Kirkpatrick by Peter Collier

  I wrote this post before I left for Paris on December 10th.


I'm listening to my favorite Christmas Carols on Spotify. Feel free to listen to your favorite while reading today's post.

In two days I'll be in Paris.  Four books are piled one on top of the other on my table and I am going to write a brief paragraph on each so I can start the year with a clean slate, so to speak.



Henry James on Italy




















I love James' writing, however, his need to describe every nook and cranny of Italy can only be inspired by the fact that photography was not accessible to everyone and most people had not seen what he was describing.  Hence his attention to minutia.

He does a thorough and adequate job painting the scenery with his words and he includes more than a few jibes at John Ruskin at no extra charge.  Apparently, Ruskin also wrote of Italy and in a manner James did not approve.

What makes the book worth the money (and by that I mean the two dollars I paid for it at an Independent Book Store) are the prints of oil paintings of different scenes throughout the "Lo Stivale". (That's Italian for "the boot", a nickname because Italy is shaped like, well, you know.)


Images and Imagination by C.S. Lewis

This is a compilation by Walter Hooper of C.S. Lewis' essays and lectures on different authors and genres of literature.  The chapters I enjoyed the most were on subjects I had previously read about or authors whom I had read.

Therefore, his articles on the different Inklings such as Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and, of course J.R.R. Tolkien were interesting to read.  I also enjoyed his analysis of Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey.  I had not read his translation but because I had just read the Odyssey, I could appreciate his comments.

My favorite was his analysis and critique of Malory's translation of the Arthurian legends.  He brings other experts in and either agrees or disagrees with their opinions and explains his point of view in a way I could understand and enjoy. 

This was not true of many of the essays because I was either unfamiliar with the writer or the work.  

 In one of his essays Lewis points out is that he thinks his was the age of the biography rather than literature which I found funny since I have been reading a lot of biographies lately.

Odyssey by Homer, translated by Samuel Butler

And speaking of the Odyssey, I found I enjoyed the story much better than the Iliad.  The Iliad was much too stagnate.  It went nowhere but stayed at the battle field with lots of poetic speeches by warriors, gods and goddesses about what sort of revenge they were going to take on each other and even more poetic descriptions of battle scenes.  I understand that I am exposing my own limitations and taste in literature and not in any way making an intelligent judgement on a timeless work.

The Odyssey, on the other hand, went places.  Odysseus just had a time and a half trying to get home.  And of course the whole sale audacity of the young men back home just eating up all of Odysseus' larder and trying to pressure his wife into marrying one of them for the purpose of taking over Odysseus' possessions primes the reader for the final showdown where our hero slaughters them all and not too soon either.

Odysseus has many adventures, mostly at the expense of his crew, none of which survive.  Life was cheap back then and the gods were not people...er...spirits...er... beings...um...gods you could turn to.  They were capricious and destroyed men at their whim.  There was no reason, either.  I cannot do justice in this brief review to describe all my thoughts on the subject of Greek Gods.  I would love to know their history and origins, not to mention the psychology behind such inventions.

I wonder if the reason I read through the Odyssey more easily than the Iliad was that the translator, Samuel Butler, chose to put it in prose rather than poem form.  My Iliad, translated by Andrew Lang was written as a poem, which the epics were.


And finally....

Political Woman:  The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick

I am really not going to be able to do justice to this book and it is worth much more than the brief paragraph I am going to give it.  But briefly...

Jeane Kirkpatrick was a political scientist and diplomat.  Starting as a Democrat, she converted to Republicanism as the Democratic party moved farther and farther left.  In a time when women played no significant role in politics, she was appointed by Ronald Reagan to be the American U.N. Ambassador.  She also served as his political advisor.

The best part of this book is the insight it provides as to how our political parties, especially the Democratic party evolved from being a party concerned about American citizens as individuals and protecting their rights insofar as their rights were limited to opportunities in employment and education, to propagating ideology at the expense of the individual.  

She tried to understand the intellectual "perversion" of utopianism.  In her words utopianism was:

"theories ungrounded in experience (that can therefore) never be tested."

This led to what she called "rationalism" whose politica effect was:

"the determined effort to understand and shape people and societies on the basis of inadequate, oversimplified theories of human behavior...(which) encourages utopianism..Both are concerned more with the abstract than the concrete, with the possible than the probable.  Both are less concerned with people as they are than as they might be..."

Kirkpatrick moved to the Republican party after Carter made it clear to her and other moderate Democrats that they were not going to take the "kick me" sign off of America's back for the rest of the world.  Or change their or Europe's or the Middle East's anti-Israel stance.

Carter succeeded in costing America so much respect globally that he practically ensured Reagan's election.  Parallels between that election and our current one are hard to ignore. 

When Kirkpatrick later became U.N. Ambassador under Reagan she tore the "kick me" sign off America's back.  She personally contacted countries that were denouncing the U.S. during U.N. meetings and asking if they were still interested in receiving U.S. aid.

I may add that reading the nasty and even sophomoric tirades that certain third world countries gave at the U.N., not the least of which by the likes of Idi Amin, Fidel Castro and other tyrants one sees the flaws in an organization that gives equal floor to countries that point fingers at the U.S. (to standing ovations!) while their own houses are filthy.

Which leads me to one of the next books I plan on reading:  The Tyranny of Guilt by Pascal Bruckner.

Bruckner is a French philosopher and his book  argues that it is time for the West to stop self-flagellating.  But more about that in the future.

I have not done justice to any of these books but at least I got them off my chest and back on the bookshelves.

In the mean time, have a joyful, blessed season of Peace and God bless you!

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers; A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway; Ernest Hemingway by Carlos Baker: A Life Story and TinTin Au Congo by Herge

Antonin Dvorak's Czech Suite is playing and I must once again breeze through four books in order to shelve the pile of books that is becoming higher on my dining room table.  Hopefully this does not diminish any analysis I am able to give, but I do find that I do better when I try to be succinct when writing book reviews so as not to blather.

My parents had come to visit me and I read this book to my mother, who has mostly peripheral vision due to Macular Degeneration (we read a lot of books together).  We started the book here in Texas and finished it in Florida where I drove my parents back to their home.  I tell you this to say that as much as I enjoyed reading, the enjoyment was doubled because I was experiencing the story with my mother.  It was a real pleasure to read a chapter then discuss it with someone who had as many strong opinions as I had.

Without appearing too gushing, I do not believe I can exaggerate how much I love Dorothy Sayers.  I didn't always feel this way.  The first book I read, "Whose Body" didn't impress me at all. I felt Lord Wimsey was rather callous in his glee at discovering a dead body in the bath and Oh boy! another murder to solve.  How considerate of the murdered man.

Sayers is a complicated person and I have a couple of biographies of her waiting for me and I will be very interested to get more information on what I so far am finding to be a fascinating individual.  

What little I know of her already leads me to believe that "Gaudy Night" has some autobiographical overtones in it. 

We have a woman in her thirties, Harriet Vane, who has come to an occasion at her Alma Mater, Oxford.  The occasion is called a "Gaudy", which according to the Web, is a college feast that also serves as a reunion for past students.

Harriet does not want to go for a number of reasons.  She lived with a man without marrying him, which in those days was condemned as much it is approved today (unless you're a homosexual, then a marriage license is necessary, judging from recent lawsuits. Sorry, moving right along...). 

To make matters worse, her lover got murdered and she was the primary suspect until Sir Peter Wimsey saved the day.  Wimsey, a social butterfly, finally alights and falls in love with Harriet, but she is unable to trust anyone.  This theme is thread throughout the book and thus the book serves as both a mystery and also possible romance, neither of which is resolved until the end.

So Harriet returns to Oxford for the Gaudy.  Now, without giving anything away, this story is not so much about a murder as it is about people and human relationships.

The first chapter sets the stage and we meet Harriet's previous friends and colleagues.  We then meet the faculty and later the students.

Each chapter is a careful study in the characters, flaws and foibles, personality traits of the different people populating Oxford:  Faculty, students, and hired help.  These chapters were sufficient in themselves to make a very interesting story without any adventure at all.

The story does not follow a usual formula.  At first it seems someone is playing amateurish pranks.  Ugly drawings with obscene subject matter, dresses and gowns stolen to be turned up later in effigies of a hanging.  But the pranks become increasingly sinister and attack all sorts of people from the professors to the students.

The Head of the Women's college does not want publicity, so she asks Harriet to stay at the school as if she were doing research but in reality to catch the culprit.

Harriet is not a detective only a detective story writer.  So she now has the double task of solving a growing threat at Oxford while trying to meet a deadline.  We get to hear Harriet struggle through the challenges of making a mystery story both logical and believable.  Not an easy task.

Harriet wishes Peter were available to help her but he has gone abroad so she is stuck with using her powers of deduction, usually reserved for writing a mystery novel.

I won't reveal the rest of the story but know that it is a lot of fun to read with all the ingredients that make a story so enjoyable:  mystery, suspense, character development and, of course, romance.  The book is longer than a lot of mystery novels and by the time you get to the home stretch you are chomping at the bit to discover who the guilty party is.

Again, without revealing anything I will also say that I found the motives to be an interesting example of hating and seeking revenge for crimes that have not been inflicted on the perpetrator, but rather for crimes that the guilty party cannot own up to and have projected on to everyone else.

"A Moveable Feast is a memoir that Hemingway wrote towards the end of his life about the beginning of his life.  Or at least the beginning of his writing career in Paris.  Some of the chapters are sweet, tender memories of his time with Hadley, his first wife.  One gets the impression that at the end of the day he concludes that his problems started with the abandonment of the woman whom he seems to have regarded as his first and true love.

Other chapters are not so tender.  He does not have fond memories of anyone else.  Gertrude Stein comes across as an arrogant, writer "wanna be" and he includes some highly unflattering episodes of her, one of which is rather disturbing and he could have left it out and the reader would have been none the worse.

He also writes of other people he once knew in Paris in unflattering terms at the least and brazen skewerings at the worst.  One wonders if he was trying to avenge himself on everyone who ever slighted or wronged him.

A couple of chapters are devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I do not know how reliable Hemingway's version of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda are.  He must have hated Zelda because she comes across as a Troll Queen bent on destroying her husband out of jealousy for his writing.  Maybe this is true, maybe Hemingway hated her as he seemed to hate a lot of women.  Perhaps she reminded him of his mother?  Fitzgerald himself comes across as a helpless infant lost in the clutches of drink.

Interestingly Hemingway presents himself as a the norm by which to measure others.  Methinks he was not being entirely honest.  Other sources indicate he wasn't quite so innocent.  Which brings us to the next book:

This book, at 672 pages, is quite a marathon to finish but it thoroughly writes each detail of Hemingway's life with an objectivity that is neither flattering nor smearing.  I have another biography to read but based on this one I conclude that Hemingway was an extremely strange individual who was either playing a role all his life or was a brute.

According to Baker, Hemingway hated just about everybody.  The more established writers liked him and helped him, the more he held them in contempt.  Not everyone.  He loved James Joyce and Ezra Pound, but he roasted Sherwood Anderson, in a parody and did pretty much the same to Ford Madox Ford in his memoir.  T.S. Eliot comes across badly even though he supported his work.

Then there were the victims who had done nothing to him except befriend him.  This was most evident in his first successful novel, "The Sun Also Rises."  OK.  He hung around an immoral bunch of people, but who appointed him as judge over them and how was he any better?  I know, I know,  he includes himself as an impotent jerk but Baker describes an unfathomable glee Hemingway took in exposing this "badly behaving" group (I take this from a recent biography titled, "Everyone Behaves Badly").

And he was always challenging men to boxing duels.  If they didn't like what he said or wrote about them they could duke it out with him in the ring.  I mean, really, Ernest?  Are you a man or a thirteen year old boy in a state of arrested development?

Then there was his appalling selfishness toward women.  He was married to Hadley, but that didn't stop another woman, Pauline from moving in and taking over, even though Ernest and Hadley had a young son at the time.

When I say moved in I mean both figuratively and literally.  Pauline moved into their house, then followed them across Europe and to America.

How does that work?  You see a married man with a small child and think, "I want to marry him and I'm going to get what I want."  That kind of mentality is inexplicable to me.  At least it kept me from feeling sorry for Pauline when it happened to her years later, although I thought it was too bad for her two boys.  I guess what's best for children isn't taken into consideration.  All three boys paid a price, judging from their own sad lives.

Another disturbing trait of Hemingway's character, is his lust for killing animals or watching them die.  He loved it. He really, really loved it.  He couldn't enough of the bull fight and describes with glee, the slow, tortuous death of the bull as well as gored horses and even injured fighters.  He writes with the same enthusiasm of his own hunting expeditions in Africa.  It's not enough to say he killed a beast.  He has to describe their roaring and bleeding.

He also enjoyed bear hunting and baiting them with the carcasses of horses that he rode and didn't like.

Are you disgusted yet?  

Yet I've read most of the man's novels and all of this short stories.  I like the precise weight with which he measures his words.  The sentences don't plod but the step with aim and determination.  Some of his stories are quite wonderful, others are repulsive.  

One feature of Hemingway's stories were his travels.  He lived in Paris, Spain, Austria, Italy, Africa, Cuba, the Florida Keys and the America mid and northwest that his stories hold a lot of colorful variety and cultural diversity because of their national backdrops.  That is one of my favorite attributes of his work.

After reading his biography I wonder if I would have been better off simply reading Hemingway rather than reading about Hemingway.  I definitely need to read other sources before I form firm conclusions about this complicated man.

And finally,

I read this book primarily to practice French and I like TinTin. However, I must say that this book is a rather appalling reminder of just how racist people were towards Africans not one hundred years ago. And also the callous cruelty to animals that apparently are not so unique to Hemingway's stories as I thought.

The story is not without its fun and adventure and I think it was useful to read it in order to remember history so as not to be doomed to repeat it.

I still love TinTin and I must remember that Herge was a product of his time period. He would probably not write such a story today.

Many Masks: A Biography of Frank Lloyd Wright by Brendan Gill

In a previous post I reviewed a book that focused on a particular time and circumstance in Frank Lloyd Wright's life.  Death in a Prairie House by William R. Drennan gave the reader a fairly thorough account of the events in Wright's life leading up to the grisly murder of Wright's mistress and others in his original Taliesin home.  

Brendan Gill's biography fills in the facts before, during and beyond this event, allowing us to get a fuller portrait of the man considered the greatest American Architect of the twentieth century.  Gill knew Wright personally and conducted a number of personal interviews with him as well as with his wife and children.  He also had access to many of Wright's letters, which he quotes at length.

Wright's relationship with his domineering mother, narcisstic personality and philosophy of elephants and ants (the elephants may do as they like, including stomping on the ants; guess which animal Wright considered himself) have largely been explored in Death in a Prairie House and is not glossed over in Gill's book, but Gill wisely understands that these topics are charted territory so he comes from a different angle.

Many Masks takes the reader through the main building projects of Lloyd, his relationship with his clients and the final result of his schemes.

I call them schemes because Wright projects seemed to follow a  pattern, whether he was building a hotel in Tokyo, a Prairie House for a wealthy family, a church, or a business building.

Initially, the client would have a vision for his business building (or house, or church or synagogue) and decide who they would like to design and build it.  Sometimes someone would recommend Wright, sometimes the client would ask him and more than a few times, Wright suggested himself.

The client's reaction would tend towards awe and disbelief.  The great Frank Lloyd Wright would deign to  undertake his (sometimes her) project?  Why yes.  I, the great Frank Lloyd Wright, would be inclined to acquiesce to your request.  

The reality was Wright needed the money because he could never hold on to it.  He fully believed in his right to an outrageously extravagant lifestyle, regardless of his financial situation.  He was forever in debt, huge debt, and so yes, he most certainly was inclined to acquiesce to any wealthy person's request.

But acquiesce is a really a farcical word to use here, because apart from taking the contract, Wright acquiesced to nothing else.  Every project Wright took he viewed possessively and proceeded to incorporate his own vision at the client's expense.

One such project was Unity Temple in Chicago.  The Congregation wanted a religious ediface focused on the worship of God.  Wright made a temple to Man worshipping Nature.  To the dismay of  the members of Unity Temple, his intention was unmistakable.

The most famous example of this would Fallingwater, a residence built by Wright for the Kaufmann family.  The family owned property in western Pennsylvania in a mountainous area near a waterfall.  The family envisioned a home where they could enjoy the rural environment, including a spectacular view of the waterfall.

What they got was a house right on top of the waterfall.  Wright, in his ingenuity, put the house in the one place where no one could see the falling water.

But they could hear it.  I have not visited the place, but I've read that it is rather loud inside of the residence due to the roaring waters rushing underneath.

This, however, was not Wright's concern.  His intention was to create something so stupendous that people would remark of it for years.  He succeeded.  All of Wright's creations were about announcing his genius to the world.  Gill called this one of Wright's many masks.

Con man was another mask.  Wright could reel them in and then hook them, leaving the poor battered client practically bankrupt.  This is how he did it:

 Invariably Wright would estimate a modest figure for the building and equally invariably the project would cost much more. It's would be hard to exaggerate how much Wright underestimated the cost.  An original cost projection that would be, say ten thousand dollars, would end up running into hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.

You'd think his reputation would precede him, but Wright had a wonderful mask to wear, that of snake charmer.  His clients were so over awed by his genius and then charmed by his affability and eloquence, especially in his letters, that he got away with it every time.

The tug of rope contests between Wright and his clients, while of the same cloth, each have their own individual color and are fun to read about.  

A good example of this is the history behind the Guggenheim Museum.  Solomon R. Guggenheim, who commissioned the project wanted a place to house his collection of modern art.

The museum is cylindrical in shape and is wider at the top than the bottom.  There are no stairs inside.  Visitors walk up a slow spiral while observing the art.

On a side note, I attended the Guggenheim with my mother and it was more fun to watch my mother's reactions to all this modern "art" than to look at the art itself. Probably because in order to appreciate it, one had to use a good dose of personal imagination. At least I did.  

My mother was a little more concrete and deemed the whole lot of it a "bunch of pretentious tripe!"  I only wish she hadn't spoken her mind in the museum.  Or so loudly.

But back to Wright.  As per usual, the museum cost far more than the architect's beginning price and was completed some years after Solomon Guggenheim's death.

A final sad fact on his buildings:  the roofs had a propensity to leak.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are often easy to identify.  They are blocky, as though modeled after a child's wooden building blocks, but with poured concreted and lots of overhanging structures jagging out.

This sounds unflattering, but I like his houses. No one has made concrete an aesthetic art form like Wright. They are unique for his concern for the interior was as thorough, and as domineering, as the exterior.

The other aspect of Gill's book are Wright's personal relationships.  After the death of Mamah Cheney, the lover he left his wife for, Wright married Miriam Noel.  Noel was a domineering drug abuser that caused more grief and anxiety than any joy.  After much publicized drama, they divorced and Wright married Olga Hinzenburg.  Hinzenburg was  an equally dominating force in his life and introduced him to mysticism.  This is only hinted at in this book but I believe other books describe this eerier attribute, which also characterized his Taliesin school.

Which leads us to his final mask, that of teacher.  Many students, with plenty of disposable cash, dropped out of other colleges to become a part of Wright's Taliesin fellowship. This was a needful source of income for Wright especially during the Depression. For the right sum of cash, wealthy young people got the privilege to serve Wright as grunt workers doing menial tasks, such as copying out blueprints and buffering irate clients and other dirty work.   How much training they got is debatable.  Not many of them became notable architects.  However, the Taliesin Fellowships still continue today at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

In conclusion, Wright the person was probably not someone I'd want to know, but his architecture is groundbreaking and enduring and, to me, beautiful. I have another biography by Meryle Seacrest in the wings.  It will be interesting to see what she has to say about this brilliant, if astounding man.