... are clearly not peculiar to the U.S., as this post at Petrona demonstrates: Feminism at work and in the newspapers.
Maxine Clarke is on a roll this morning (it's morning here anyway). Check out:
Randomness as book plot
One-book authors
Fraud in science (Judson's book actually has much to recommend it. The chapters on Cyril Burt and Freud seemed to me especially worthwhile. I agree with Maxine that preventing fraud is well-nigh impossible. Moreover, trying to would probably itself cause problems.)
Thank you for the kind words, Frank --- I do appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteYou have been posting some fascinating links and comments recently too, but then Books, Inq. is always like that.
I agree with you Melville about "To Kill a Mockingbird". I haven't read any of the others you mention. What about "Gone with the Wind"?
I am not sure if "Wuthering Heights" counts -- so far as I recall it was Emily Bronte's only novel, but I imagine, being a Bronte sister, she wrote a lot of other things. If it is her only novel, I wish she had written more.
I'm probably the only American who sees no romance whatsoever in the Civil War. The image that encapsulates it for me is of the cartload of limbs Whitman mentions in one of his prose pieces from the war. Bear in mind that one of Whitman's tasks as a nurse was to hold the young soldiers down as they had those limbs amputated.
ReplyDeleteI was 13 when I read Gone with the Wind. I read it becuase I was reading a series of books called "The Chalet School", and in one of them, a girl got expelled for reading it, and the author approved!!! So naturally I had to read the book. I quite liked it, and at least it had the good effect of making me realise "The Chalet School" had its ideas out of kilter.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't hold any particular torch for GWTW -- I just know it as a very famous "one book author" book.
I agree with you both about the lack of romance of the civil war (or any war). I really enjoyed that very sad book "Cold Mountain" (the book by Charles Fraser; the movie was OK but I think did romanticise and simplify it too much, eg the relationship between the two main characters, which barely existed in the book). I particularly liked the detailed appreciation of nature by Iman on his long journey home.
That book definitely did not romanticise the conflict.
Bull's Eye, Melville! Andersonville is without doubt the best Civil War novel and just a good all-round novel, period. Kantor deserves to be remembered better than he has been. The Voice of Bugle Ann ain't bad, either.
ReplyDeleteok, i have put andersonville in mt amazon basket (one-handed typing)
ReplyDelete