https://www.amazon.com/Song-Explanation-Bixby-Diaries-2020-2021/dp/B0FGV9H3BD?ref_=ast_author_dp
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Thursday, May 2, 2024
I kid you not
Find it at Amazon, $14.99. I went back and picked the best essays, and I weeded out a lot of complaints about politics and politicians.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Once again ...
... I haven't actually stopped reading. Eight weeks of learning how to live a new life, mid-divorce, have rather interfered with my time and attention span.
But I still have my Kindle. I am immersed in a nineteenth-century biography of Marie Antoinette by Charles Duke Yonge, having already read Madame Campan's Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. Why is it that the queen seems to be the very epicenter of the French Revolutionary whirlwind? Perhaps because I read books about her. If I condescended to read books about Danton, perhaps he would seem the very epicenter of the French revolutionary whirlwind.
And was she an "ordinary woman," as Stefan Zweig called her, totally unable to cope with the disasters at the end of her life? (Could anyone?) Or was she quite astute, only tragically thrust onto a ridiculous stage by an accident of birth, and then surrounded, seemingly mid-performance, by a gang of thugs and fools who very much and very simply wanted to kill her? In 1787 she wrote of changes in French politics to her friend, the Duchesse de Polignac, vacationing in England:
To me this does not sound like the helpless, befeathered, sleepy-eyed flibbertigibbet of the Vigee-Lebrun portraits, nor does it fit in with the sort of popular half-knowledge which understands Marie Antoinette as somehow really ancillary to the whole exciting business, but anyway deserving of her fate because she was rich, or idle, or ignorant, or titled, or a woman. Then again, it's possible that the people around her at the time knew perfectly well she was not a helpless flibbertigibbet, but rather an anti-revolutionary conspirator looking for help from her foreign and imperial relations, and lying about it, up to the very end. This was treason, though to her, queen and daughter of an empress, it was clear she had every right to bring her riotous and misguided people back to "calmness." "What is going on in France," she wrote, "would be an example too dangerous to other countries, if it were left unpunished."
And here we are, two days after Bastille Day. Still apparently unpunished. But I must go on reading.
But I still have my Kindle. I am immersed in a nineteenth-century biography of Marie Antoinette by Charles Duke Yonge, having already read Madame Campan's Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. Why is it that the queen seems to be the very epicenter of the French Revolutionary whirlwind? Perhaps because I read books about her. If I condescended to read books about Danton, perhaps he would seem the very epicenter of the French revolutionary whirlwind.
And was she an "ordinary woman," as Stefan Zweig called her, totally unable to cope with the disasters at the end of her life? (Could anyone?) Or was she quite astute, only tragically thrust onto a ridiculous stage by an accident of birth, and then surrounded, seemingly mid-performance, by a gang of thugs and fools who very much and very simply wanted to kill her? In 1787 she wrote of changes in French politics to her friend, the Duchesse de Polignac, vacationing in England:
The words 'opposition' and 'motions' are established here as in the English Parliament, with this difference, that in London, when people go into opposition, they begin by denuding themselves of the favors of the king; instead of which, here numbers oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of masters, and still keep all he has given them. It may be a clever way of managing, but it is not so gentleman-like. The time of illusion is past, and we are tasting cruel experience. We are paying dearly to-day for our zeal for and enthusiasm for the American war ....
To me this does not sound like the helpless, befeathered, sleepy-eyed flibbertigibbet of the Vigee-Lebrun portraits, nor does it fit in with the sort of popular half-knowledge which understands Marie Antoinette as somehow really ancillary to the whole exciting business, but anyway deserving of her fate because she was rich, or idle, or ignorant, or titled, or a woman. Then again, it's possible that the people around her at the time knew perfectly well she was not a helpless flibbertigibbet, but rather an anti-revolutionary conspirator looking for help from her foreign and imperial relations, and lying about it, up to the very end. This was treason, though to her, queen and daughter of an empress, it was clear she had every right to bring her riotous and misguided people back to "calmness." "What is going on in France," she wrote, "would be an example too dangerous to other countries, if it were left unpunished."
And here we are, two days after Bastille Day. Still apparently unpunished. But I must go on reading.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Dinner at Antoine's by Frances Parkinson Keyes
Oh, dear. I thought the novel was going to be about the famed New Orleans restaurant, or about food in some way. Not so. If you want to find out who murdered the invalid Odile St.-Amant -- was it her estranged husband, Léonce? her sister, Caresse, who is also carrying on with him? -- I'm sorry but you will have to read further than I did. Frances Parkinson Keyes has an atrocious ear for dialogue, despite her prose being good. So atrocious is it that I had to put the thing aside in disgust. And yes, I did struggle manfully past the first chapter, where I had to read things like this (it's Orson Foxworth speaking):
And it goes on and on. The worst is when the characters are made to think to themselves, in italics. Parkinson Keyes was very prolific in a time when (and readers of Vellum will recognize a theme) the American publishing industry simply seems to have put out better books than it does now -- so I can only hope that Dinner at Antoine's was an anomaly among her works. If I discover that Blue Camellia or Station Wagon in Spain were any better, I will try to report so as soon as possible.
" ...my dear, the fascinating creature clinging to my arm is Amelie Lalande, the envy of all lesser charmers. I see that Odile's already made up for my negligence by introducing herself, and perhaps she's told you which is really her sister and which is really her husband. Yes? Well, I thought so. The Viking-looking chap on the other side of Caresse is Russ Aldridge -- Russell Wainwright Aldridge, Ph.D. -- a fast man with a hieroglyph, a drink, a samba, and a back-to-back pair of Jacks, in the order named! And finally, Dr. Perrault, who painted tonsils for Odile and Caresse when they were only knee-high to a puddle duck. But they don't hold that against him and you needn't either .... Have you had a drink yet? As you see, some of our guests got desperate because we were so late and very wisely started in on Sazeracs."
And it goes on and on. The worst is when the characters are made to think to themselves, in italics. Parkinson Keyes was very prolific in a time when (and readers of Vellum will recognize a theme) the American publishing industry simply seems to have put out better books than it does now -- so I can only hope that Dinner at Antoine's was an anomaly among her works. If I discover that Blue Camellia or Station Wagon in Spain were any better, I will try to report so as soon as possible.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Godfrey of Bouillon, Defender of the Holy Sepulchre by Tom Tozer
This was a new experience. I turned on my Kindle -- bless its heart -- and searched the keyword Godfrey, because I had just encountered a lengthy and rather turbid poem of G.K. Chesterton's which sang, in part,
I am familiar with the once legitimately-published but now out-of-copyright books hosted at Project Gutenberg, but this was the first time I had bought anything sight unseen from Kindle, only. Was it a reprint of something just as old, or might it be a recent bestseller in a genre that I was ignorant of?
Neither. The book is a self-published short novel, put out by a vanity press or POD (publish on demand) company -- in this case, PublishAmerica, whose reputation in the bookselling industry seems to be even worse than that of most such places. Red flag to prospective authors: PublishAmerica does not accept returns, from bookstores, of its unsold product. Why does this matter? Because Legitimate Press A would do so. Legitimate Press A invests time and money in a writer because it judges the writer's content is marketable; if it turns out that new author Miss Smith's book doesn't sell, Legitimate Press A does not stick its bookstore clients with stacks of it, but takes the rotten apple back like a good merchant, writes off the loss, and perhaps doesn't deal with Miss Smith again.
Not so PublishAmerica, which has given us Godfrey of Bouillon exactly as Mr. Tom Tozer gave it to them. Godfrey inspires this interest in the workings of the publishing world because the novel itself inspires almost none. Now, to be fair, I read it, I finished it. The prose is acceptable, some passages even rather nice. But as you skim along, without benefit of any information about the book at all, no dust jacket blurbs, no logrolling, no "advance praise," the realization slowly grows that this is an amateur.
The book is very short, for one thing, probably not more than 120 pages in a print version, if that. Short books can be good, and long novels can be bad, but any professional -- no matter how many rejection slips he has gathered -- knows that to be taken seriously he must make his manuscript, for better or worse, a certain length. As to the content, there are people and there are events in the story, but the events roll by as they were culled from popular histories of the Crusades, and the people are little more than names which the writer has learned from the same. There is the battle of Ascalon, there are Godfrey, Eustace, and Ida. No character develops in any way nor has any vital relationship with any other. If this manuscript had remotely got past the first desk in the slush pile at a New York publishing house, any editor (likely a woman) would have immediately insisted at the least on many more women, and much more romance. Our author, bless him, is a man who likes the Crusades, not all that folderol. There are also some outright mistakes. Surely no character in 1096 is going to say " 'The Pope can no more turn bread into the body of God than he can turn a frog into a potato.' " And no, it's not the disrespect shown the Pope that is anachronistic here.
And yet. There is a curious freshness to the book. I believe it must come from the author's love of the subject and from his creation of a work of art outside the sacred precincts of that New York publishing world, where talent does batter down the doors sometimes, but where a great many submission guidelines also read like instructions for candidates in the Mandarin examinations of imperial China. ("Excellence is really our only criterion. That said, however -- race, class, and gender, etc. -- if you must trumpet your religion, do it with grace and style -- racist or bigoted characters must be seen to be defeated -- children must solve a unisex problem not involving war, death, or illness," etc.) Those guidelines produce books as stale as can be, books which read like examination papers more than stories. Only last night, I tried another sample on Kindle of a new, correctly published and accredited biography of the saints Brigid (early medieval Ireland) and Genevieve (early medieval Paris). Who knew that the people of that far away time would have spent so much time thinking, in the most painfully fusty academic terms, about gender and sacral spaces? Needless to say, I didn't buy that one. By contrast, Godfrey's freshness in the end even has a medieval feel to it. Mr. Tozer seems to have captured something of what we imagine to be the eleventh century's flaming, personal Christian passion, as well as something of a medieval chroniclers' bland, sometimes maddeningly distant and unreflective voice ("what I have told you is truly what I have seen and heard, and I have no more to add to it").
So. Here is an example, for history's sake, of what does not batter down the doors, what does not escape the slush pile, what does not pass the imperial Mandarin examinations. We'll let Mr. Tozer end with this: does this deserve never to have seen the light of day? Ida speaks.
... the voice that shook our palaces -- four hundred years ago:The Kindle store promptly found, and offered me the chance to buy, a title called Godfrey of Bouillon, Defender of the Holy Sepulcher, for $2.99. Published in 2005. Well, why not?
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!"
I am familiar with the once legitimately-published but now out-of-copyright books hosted at Project Gutenberg, but this was the first time I had bought anything sight unseen from Kindle, only. Was it a reprint of something just as old, or might it be a recent bestseller in a genre that I was ignorant of?
Neither. The book is a self-published short novel, put out by a vanity press or POD (publish on demand) company -- in this case, PublishAmerica, whose reputation in the bookselling industry seems to be even worse than that of most such places. Red flag to prospective authors: PublishAmerica does not accept returns, from bookstores, of its unsold product. Why does this matter? Because Legitimate Press A would do so. Legitimate Press A invests time and money in a writer because it judges the writer's content is marketable; if it turns out that new author Miss Smith's book doesn't sell, Legitimate Press A does not stick its bookstore clients with stacks of it, but takes the rotten apple back like a good merchant, writes off the loss, and perhaps doesn't deal with Miss Smith again.
Not so PublishAmerica, which has given us Godfrey of Bouillon exactly as Mr. Tom Tozer gave it to them. Godfrey inspires this interest in the workings of the publishing world because the novel itself inspires almost none. Now, to be fair, I read it, I finished it. The prose is acceptable, some passages even rather nice. But as you skim along, without benefit of any information about the book at all, no dust jacket blurbs, no logrolling, no "advance praise," the realization slowly grows that this is an amateur.
The book is very short, for one thing, probably not more than 120 pages in a print version, if that. Short books can be good, and long novels can be bad, but any professional -- no matter how many rejection slips he has gathered -- knows that to be taken seriously he must make his manuscript, for better or worse, a certain length. As to the content, there are people and there are events in the story, but the events roll by as they were culled from popular histories of the Crusades, and the people are little more than names which the writer has learned from the same. There is the battle of Ascalon, there are Godfrey, Eustace, and Ida. No character develops in any way nor has any vital relationship with any other. If this manuscript had remotely got past the first desk in the slush pile at a New York publishing house, any editor (likely a woman) would have immediately insisted at the least on many more women, and much more romance. Our author, bless him, is a man who likes the Crusades, not all that folderol. There are also some outright mistakes. Surely no character in 1096 is going to say " 'The Pope can no more turn bread into the body of God than he can turn a frog into a potato.' " And no, it's not the disrespect shown the Pope that is anachronistic here.
And yet. There is a curious freshness to the book. I believe it must come from the author's love of the subject and from his creation of a work of art outside the sacred precincts of that New York publishing world, where talent does batter down the doors sometimes, but where a great many submission guidelines also read like instructions for candidates in the Mandarin examinations of imperial China. ("Excellence is really our only criterion. That said, however -- race, class, and gender, etc. -- if you must trumpet your religion, do it with grace and style -- racist or bigoted characters must be seen to be defeated -- children must solve a unisex problem not involving war, death, or illness," etc.) Those guidelines produce books as stale as can be, books which read like examination papers more than stories. Only last night, I tried another sample on Kindle of a new, correctly published and accredited biography of the saints Brigid (early medieval Ireland) and Genevieve (early medieval Paris). Who knew that the people of that far away time would have spent so much time thinking, in the most painfully fusty academic terms, about gender and sacral spaces? Needless to say, I didn't buy that one. By contrast, Godfrey's freshness in the end even has a medieval feel to it. Mr. Tozer seems to have captured something of what we imagine to be the eleventh century's flaming, personal Christian passion, as well as something of a medieval chroniclers' bland, sometimes maddeningly distant and unreflective voice ("what I have told you is truly what I have seen and heard, and I have no more to add to it").
So. Here is an example, for history's sake, of what does not batter down the doors, what does not escape the slush pile, what does not pass the imperial Mandarin examinations. We'll let Mr. Tozer end with this: does this deserve never to have seen the light of day? Ida speaks.
"It is all like a vast poem. We know how it begins, and we know how it ends, and we know that all together it is beautiful. But we live in the middle, between the light and the glory. And thus we do not know what lines we write with our own lives every day. But, with God's help, we can write lines with our lives that deserve a place in His song."
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie
Very fun fluff from the mistress of intelligent, if somewhat pedestrian, fluff -- just the thing to devour on a day off, when you have decided to try for the first time that old-fashioned egg-and-mayonnaise treatment supposed to be so good for lustrous hair. This experiment entails a lot of sitting around, with your head swathed in plastic wrap and a towel, so why not read?
It's a tale of a country village murder, just as Agatha Christie invented it. Well done. Certainly we never see the murderer coming. And it's a Miss Marple tale, too, although that delightful lady, frustratingly, does not show up until the story is five-sixths finished. She is much more visible in the short stories that bear her name, rather than in the novels. As for the romance between Jerry and Megan, that is a little stiff. Bravo to Christie for trying to imagine herself into the mind of a man abruptly in love, but her sensibilities just aren't quite in it. Jerry limping on his "sticks" is too elderly and Megan too childlike for them to be convincing as a pair. Effeminate Mr. Pye is far more fun. (He reminds me of Georgie in the Mapp and Lucia novels.) "And then," he gushes the only time we meet him, "the dreadful old woman died, but of course it was far too late then. They just went on living there and talking in hushed voices about what poor Mamma would have wished."
Christie is at her best with old ladies like Mr. Pye or the five elderly spinsters whom he is gossiping about, or indeed with Miss Marple. I've always liked the way she uses sharp-as-a-tack old women to comment upon the twentieth century's mostly direful social changes. Her old ladies always know the routine of a correctly run country house, or what to wear to what occasions, but more importantly they know how to spot an unscrupulous man, or when to sack an unsatisfactory housemaid and never mind compassion for the lower orders, she's a thief who doesn't deserve a good reference which she would then use to prey on her next employer. The old ladies know "wickedness," and that human nature has not changed no matter that we've freed ourselves from corsets, hats, and (we imagine) bigotry and prejudice, not to mention silly old-fashioned inhibitions on our marvelous self-expression. It's all very refreshing. In one of her gentle arguments with her nephew Raymond, who is a very modern and enlightened and compassionate writer, Miss Marple notes what happens when whole generations decide to chuck most of what their ancestors knew about life. "Young people," she sighs, "say things that were never talked about in my day, but their minds are so terribly innocent ...."
It's a tale of a country village murder, just as Agatha Christie invented it. Well done. Certainly we never see the murderer coming. And it's a Miss Marple tale, too, although that delightful lady, frustratingly, does not show up until the story is five-sixths finished. She is much more visible in the short stories that bear her name, rather than in the novels. As for the romance between Jerry and Megan, that is a little stiff. Bravo to Christie for trying to imagine herself into the mind of a man abruptly in love, but her sensibilities just aren't quite in it. Jerry limping on his "sticks" is too elderly and Megan too childlike for them to be convincing as a pair. Effeminate Mr. Pye is far more fun. (He reminds me of Georgie in the Mapp and Lucia novels.) "And then," he gushes the only time we meet him, "the dreadful old woman died, but of course it was far too late then. They just went on living there and talking in hushed voices about what poor Mamma would have wished."
Christie is at her best with old ladies like Mr. Pye or the five elderly spinsters whom he is gossiping about, or indeed with Miss Marple. I've always liked the way she uses sharp-as-a-tack old women to comment upon the twentieth century's mostly direful social changes. Her old ladies always know the routine of a correctly run country house, or what to wear to what occasions, but more importantly they know how to spot an unscrupulous man, or when to sack an unsatisfactory housemaid and never mind compassion for the lower orders, she's a thief who doesn't deserve a good reference which she would then use to prey on her next employer. The old ladies know "wickedness," and that human nature has not changed no matter that we've freed ourselves from corsets, hats, and (we imagine) bigotry and prejudice, not to mention silly old-fashioned inhibitions on our marvelous self-expression. It's all very refreshing. In one of her gentle arguments with her nephew Raymond, who is a very modern and enlightened and compassionate writer, Miss Marple notes what happens when whole generations decide to chuck most of what their ancestors knew about life. "Young people," she sighs, "say things that were never talked about in my day, but their minds are so terribly innocent ...."
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