Finished City of Thieves today. Over the last few days I thought that the extreme implausibility of the climactic scenes detracted from the overall book, but then I considered that maybe the character of the book is in the same tradition as the implausible romances of Scott or Cooper or the tales of the medieval knights, with the bonus that the narrative is more modern and interesting than these other books. All the same, the last third of it was a drop off from the earlier parts, which I was impressed by, and I am pretty good at resisting writers, especially when I have been told in advance how smart they are. It is one of the hard and last tests of literature, for a writer to carry a book all the way through and bring it to a satisfying, conclusive end, but of course if you want to be great you must be able to do it.
I don't know if this is considered a trend yet, or if it was considered a trend but has already come and gone, or if people like Woody Allen and Mel Brooks and Philip Roth are already long considered to have broached the subject, but this story seems to share with the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglorious Basterds which also came out a few years ago (and which I haven't seen) the character of having Jewish characters in World War II stories possessed of agency to combat successfully and heroically against Nazis. I think I have read of other books and stories that have taken this tack as well. It is being largely driven by people, mainly, as far as I can tell, men, from my generation, who were born 20-30 years after the war ended and grew up during a period when sober dramatizations of the Holocaust were a central component of and influence on the culture, popular and otherwise. The, to this point, mild reaction against this represented by the stories referred to here, makes a certain amount of sense when one considers it, but I do not think most observers would have predicted it in the 1970s or 80s. Nonetheless, even though it occurred in a modern age of hyper-documentation and historiography and voice recordings and film footage--I just saw a clip of some of the footage from Buchenwald the other day, mounds of corpses being bulldozed into pits and so on--in modern American life anyway it seems inevitable as time goes on and the world in which these atrocities took place and the commentaries and interpretations that were made of them grows every day less immediate, less remembered, less real by the living, that people will not regard or relate to it in the same way either.
Update 10/21/2021: I had not at the time I wrote this post read any Scott, and I was basing my opinion of him on what I took to be the common contemporary judgment. I underestimated him, he is a great novelist and should still be held in the high regard he was formerly.
I did like the Benioff book (City of Thieves) at the time, I thought it was skillfully written, though I haven't thought about it very much in the years since. I don't know that my commentary in the second paragraph has either aged terribly or proved especially prescient or insightful, but I don't think there is nothing to it. This trend seems to have faded, at least among reasonably serious or intellectual artists, though I do not pay as much attention to current trends as I used to.
I didn't like this one quite as much as the Sherwood play, though it held my interest. It is hurt by a couple of weak scenes which will make even a person like me who has a higher tolerance for both archaic attitudes and schmaltz than they ought to cringe. One features a black character who meets Lincoln and unfortunately talks in an Uncle Remus dialect. I suspect that this sort of thing is going to turn up more frequently in the forgotten books on this old list than one would desire to have to cope with. I noted a similar deficiency many years ago when I read Booth Tarkington, an otherwise more than able novelist who is little honored today. And Drinkwater, who was an Englishman, was in theory I suppose trying to celebrate the end of slavery and introduce a human voice into that commemoration; but imagining black characters who possessed any of the admired qualities of the prevailing civilization of the time in any kind of high degree seems to have been beyond the capability of nearly everyone. The other poor scene involved the generals Grant and Meade talking about what a great man and leader Lincoln was on the occasion of imminent end of the war, which was excruciatingly corny; as I alluded to earlier, I don't cringe that easily (at corniness). Otherwise, the play was tolerable as literature of its period, and I enjoyed reading it. It is obvious that my long history of studying, thinking about and playing games with this list, combined with all the confusion and disappointment that has accompanied most of my attempts to do anything requiring the exertion of my mental faculties in the years since this list first attracted me, has made me more excited to finally read some of these books than I had realized, and than they probably intrinsically merit. The next two titles up, Absalom, Absalom and Adam Bede, I have read before for my other list. They are certainly worth reading again, and I am hell-bent to do so. That said however, I cannot neglect this edition's
Bourgeois Surrender Challenge 1. City of Thieves--David Benioff....................4.56
2. The Accidental City--Lawrence N Powell...4.52
3. Fahrenheit 451--Ray Bradbury...................4.17
4. The Handmaid's Tale--Margaret Atwood....4.12
5. Total Recall--Piers Anthony.........................3.50
6. Four titles from this challenge remained unrated: American Eloquence: Studies in American Political History, by Dunston & Woodburn; Julia Ward Howe, by Richards & Elliott; Sword & Pen: Ventures & Adventures, by Willard Glazier; and The Mediterranean,by T.G. Bonney, et al.
An interesting challenge, with surprise at the Atwood and the Bradbury scoring so low. As in all endeavors that choose to rely on mass approval, this game has its perils. I have read Handmaid's Tale and I admit, it did not do much for me (I did like Lady Oracle, for what it's worth). I've never read Fahrenheit 451 and I was kind of hoping it would win, since it is both short and such an iconic book of postwar America, the literature of which time period I frequently like. City of Thieves is a modern book (2008) by a modern author about which, and whom, I knew nothing. My local library had a copy and it is fairly short (258 pages) so I decided to accept the challenge. In fact, I am already up to page 165 in it. I have endured some mild...chastisement?--I am not sure what exactly to call it, the suggestion is that I am hidebound and overly and perhaps even mindlessly attached to the classics--about my easy dismissal of most modern books, and it is true I don't generally like them. While they are the works of my rivals and would be peers who have succeeded so brilliantly in navigating the intellectual waters of our times, such as they are, whereas I have failed more utterly than once would have seemed possible, I am still confident that most of them are not very good. I have to say, though, that this City of Thieves does seem to me to be very good, and its author is certainly capable enough--contrary to much apparent contemporary belief, a lack of capability is not one of the primary problems afflicting the book world. Although it is a modern book it is set during the siege of Leningrad in 1942, so it has an old and, given the conditions which were in operation at that time, decidedly elemental atmosphere. It does not redefine the possibilities of the novel or exhilarate in and make sense of the most vital trends and movements of our own time. Nonetheless it is smoothly written and especially shows an advanced degree of skill for the telling description or metaphor. I have no idea what a real survivor of that time would make of it--it does have something of the American 'endurance of the human spirit' quality about it that Europeans, especially those in the countries hardest it by the 20th centuries' wars, seem to have moved beyond believing in--but it does a better job at describing the fatigue and hunger, if not the terror, that were endemic in that period than other things I have read. For example, there is a bit where a thoroughly exhausted and starving character is trudging through the snow at night in -20 degree or so cold, with the German army all around the area, and how the only way he is able to cope with this is by making it as far a certain tree that his eye has alighted upon, and then when he reaches this to pick out another one, and so on. I believe I gained a couple of pounds at the beginning of the book because the descriptions of the hunger effected me enough to make me crave food more than I do ordinarily.
I was curious enough to look up some of the big professional reviews of the book. I am almost sorry that I did, as the instinct of most reviewers seems to be to spend as much time working through their issues with the idea of David Benioff the person as to think about the book. There is a lot to chew on there. He is apparently monstrously handsome. His father was the head of Goldman Sachs. He is married to a Ivy-League educated movie actress. He has a highly successful career writing for television and movies--book fiction seems, at least in terms of income, to be kind of a sidelight. Then there is the obvious talent, whatever one thinks of how it is being deployed, for fluid and satisfying plotting and prosifying across genres. As far as I can tell it is not like this guy sells massive numbers of books or generate an inordinate amount of love from the literary community, passionate young intellectuals, and so on, but he makes enough, and is known and connected enough in a lot of desirable circles, to make a lot of people look at themselves in the mirror and wonder where it all went wrong for them.
The edition of Abraham Lincoln I ordered was from the old Riverside Literature Series (1927, in this instance), which is a set of (from what I have seen) scrawny little books with pale blue covers, the series seal imprinted on the front and the book's number on the back (268 for A.L.). The skinny spines are ugly and spare, the title only appearing in boring block capital letters When I was in high school I had copies of Hamlet and Macbeth from this series, but I have long lost those, and this is the first book from the series I have had since then. The series was evidently intended to be used in schools; the texts are accompanied by many pages of notes, study questions, & suggestions for essays and classroom dramatizations. There were fifteen general questions taken from 'College Entrance Board Examinations'. A sample:
"Choose one character from each of five novels or plays and show briefly in each case how this character changes for the better or for the worse because of one or more of the following reasons: a. The influence of another character. b. Circumstances over which the character has no control. c. The character's own strength or weakness."
Another suggested 'topic for investigation' was "Calhoun's Doctrines of Nullification and Secession."
I am aiming to be more positive and likable. I don't know if it is possible to achieve this if one has to make a conscious effort to aim for it, but I think it is worth trying.
I've finally decided to start reading (or in many instances, re-reading) through the books on this ancient list. It is obvious as I get older that the spirit that came up with this list was more attuned with what is likely to bring me a few moments' of pleasant reprieve every day than what I will be able to find in the present times. This will be exceptionally slow going reading, for I will be continuing to read my main list that I have been working on since 1994 and have not attained the halfway point of yet. This Illustrated Encyclopedia list is something I will probably read 10-15 pages of a night before I go to bed, to put myself in a tranquil mood, regardless of the darkness of the story, because I associate it with a time in my life when I was optimistic.
I have always been perplexed about what order to read these books in, but I have finally decided that it is all right to just read them alphabetically, as they are listed, which is the easiest way to approach it. Also most of the really important books I have read once either for my primary reading list or at school. I do plan to read them again as they come up, and look forward in most instances for the excuse to do so, but if I should die before I get back to War and Peace I do have the consolation that I have read it twice already.
The first two selections on the list are short 20th century plays about Abraham Lincoln, which is good for jumping in and feeling one can make some headway through the list right away.
Abe Lincoln in Illinois is the perfect introduction to the worldview embodied in this list, at least for me. It is entertaining and well-written, it is simple and clear, it is optimistic--about America, about democracy, about human freedom, about the potential of the common person to live as a decent and contributing citizen. This optimism is probably rooted in symbols and ideals of men--of Lincoln mainly--rather than actual men, or even actual Lincoln, but it seems genuine to me, in the sense of being motivated by goodwill rather than being platitudes disguising baser instincts. Sherwood appears to have been something of an east coast Brahmin, New York money and connections, all the best schools, Harvard, etc, and he is under no delusions about there being a real hierarchy among men with regard to character, moral sense, mind, power of action and so on, and that the ability of these superior men to rise to their proper station is the most important task that a society faces in organizing itself. It is also suggested, of course, that the United States has known some fortune in this regard.
Sherwood wrote some notes that were appended to the end of the play in which he explained his sources for certain incidents and reasons for taking liberties in some of them or wholly inventing others. He wrote with high praise of Sandburg's once-celebrated biography, though only The Prairie Years (the first volume) had been published at that point. It was noted the The War Years was currently in preparation. I would guess Sherwood was looking forward to it:
"The Prairie Years is an incomparable portrait of Lincoln and of the young, boisterous America in which he grew up."
In another place he refers to a quote about Lincoln about his having a kind of poetry in his nature, and stating that this was why Sandburg was the perfect biographer.
To give a taste of Sherwood's judgement where personal Greatness was not attained, however, I will quote his summation of the life and character of Lincoln's poor surviving son, Robert, who, to be honest, sounds like he could have been a lot worse. People nowadays would be in awe of his resume:
"Robert justified his name (after his maternal grandfather), by following in the dainty footsteps of the Todds rather than the huge ones of the Lincolns. He was educated at Exeter and Harvard, served as Secretary of War under President Garfield, as Minister to London under President Harrison, became a successful corporation lawyer and president of the Pullman Company--in which capacity his hostility to the interests of labor indicated that he had not paid strict attention to the opinions of his father. He spent the last fifteen years of his life in retirement at his New Hampshire home (sic--I believe Sherwood must be referring here to Hildene, which is actually in Manchester, Vermont, and remains open to the public to this day), playing golf and saying "No" to all who begged him for access to the private papers which had come to him with his father's meager estate. Indeed, he decided to burn these papers and was restrained from doing so only by the timely intervention of Nicholas Murray Butler, who persuaded him at least to place them under seal in the Library of Congress. Robert Lincoln left orders that they shall not be opened until 1976, when a new series of biographies and plays about Abraham Lincoln may be written."
I don't remember reading about anything spectacular being revealed about Lincoln in the 1976 unsealing of these papers. I suppose I ought to look it up.
The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge
Because there is a danger of my never reading anything published after 1960 again other than the occasional topical book that happens to pique my interest I have devised a Challenge in which using keywords culled from the archaic reading I come up with a list of books from internet searches and score them based on their Amazon ratings (This is exactly what Jonathan Franzen--whose assumption as the person in charge of contemporary literature is the sort of thing that is driving people like me into the arms of the past--does not want us to do, but as I am using this system--really a game--to generate at most 15% of my actual reading, and which I will tweak over time if it fails to produce the desired results, I think it is not going to be do damaging).Here are the results for Abe Lincoln in Illinois:
1. Wagner As I Knew Him--Ferdinand Praeger..................................................5.00
2. Team of Rivals--Doris Kearns Goodwin.........................................................4.71
3.Sailing Alone Around the Room--Billy Collins.................................................4.51
4. Children's Stories in American Literature 1660-1860--Henrietta C Wright...4.40
5. Abraham Lincoln & Coles County, Illinois--Charles H Coleman...................4.00 The Good Doctors--John Dittmer...................................................................4.00
7. The Wrongs of Women: or, Maria--Mary Wollstonecraft...............................3.83
8. Areopagitica--John Milton..............................................................................3.73
9. The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln--Wayne Whipple................................3.50
10. The Rip Torn Handbook--Emily Smith..................................Received no reviews
The Wagner book vote is based on just one review, but based on the current rules of the Challenge it is our winner (and didn't I dodge that Doris Kearns Goodwin bullet?). Do I accept the Challenge? I would if the book were easily and cheaply obtained. However there is not a single library in the state of New Hampshire that owns the book, and the cheapest paper copy available online is $9, which in this instance is too much. So I will pass on this Challenge and move on to the 2nd book in the Encyclopedia series, John Drinkwater's play of Abraham Lincoln.
This process turned up three Challengers that were musical recordings.Their tallies:
1. Rodrigo Costa Felix--Fados de Amor..........................................................5.00
Dick Diver--New Start Again.....................................................................5.00 3. Peter, Paul & Mary--Songs of Consciousness & Concern........................4.72
I haven't had time to explore these possibilities, though again both winners achieved their perfect scores on the strength of a single review.
Fannie Hurst (1889-1968) Back Street (1930) Born: Hamilton, Ohio. Buried: New Mount Sinai Cemetery & Mausoleum, Affton, Missouri. College: Washington (Missouri)
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) Balder Dead (1855) Born: Laleham, Surrey, England. Buried: All Saints' Churchyard, Laleham, Surrey, England. College: Balliol (Oxford)
William Morris (1834-1896) Born: Fire Station, opposite site of Elm House, Walthamstow, London, England. Buried: St George's Churchyard, Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England. William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, London, England. Kelmscott Manor, Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England. Red House, Red House Lane, Bexleyheath, London, England. Kelmscott House (William Morris Society), 26 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, London, England. College: Exeter (Oxford)
Felix Salten (1869-1945) Bambi (1929) Born: Budapest, Hungary. Buried: Israelitischen Friedhof, Zurich, Switzerland.
Walt Disney (1901-1966) Born: 2156 Tripp Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Buried: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, Los Angeles, California. Walt Disney Family Museum, 104 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California. Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Disneyland, 1313 South Disneyland Drive, Anaheim, Orange, California.
Par Lagerkvist (1891-1974) Barabbas (1950) Born: Vaxjo, Sweden. Buried: Lidingo Kyrkogard, Lidingo, Sweden. College: Uppsala
Barabbas: Jerusalem, Israel. Creation Museum, 2800 Bullittsburg Church Road, Petersburg, Kentucky. Painting, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York.
Jesus Christ (6 B.C.-27) Born: Bethlehem, Israel. Tombsite: Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Jerusalem, Israel. Baptism Site, Al-Maghtas, Jordan.
Pontius Pilate. Born: Bisenti, Abruzzo, Italy (tradition). Grave (tradition): Plan de l'Aiguille, Vienne, Rhone-Alpes, France. Pilate Stone, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel. Scala Santa, Chapel of San Lorenzo, Rome, Italy (the steps Jesus climbed to meet Pilate).
Alan Blair. Translator. I can find no biographical information.
Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) The Barber of Seville (1775) Born: Rue Saint-Denis, 1ere, Paris, France. Buried: Pere Lachaise Cemetery, 20eme, Paris, France. Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais, 12 Rue Vieille du Temple, 4eme, Paris, France. Seville, Andalusia, Spain.
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) Born: 34 Via Rossini, Pesaro, Marches, Italy. Buried: Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, Italy. Original Tomb (now empty), Pere Lachaise Cemetery, 20eme, Paris, France. College: Conservatorio di Bologna.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1839), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1852-3), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861) Born: Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum, 1 Mile End Terrace, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England*****(6-30?-99)***** Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, England*****(9-7-96)***** Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, Holborn, London, England*****(6-24-99)***** Dickens World The Grand Tour, Leviathan Way, Chatham Maritime, Kent, England.
Lord George Gordon (1751-1793) Born: Upper Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, London, England. Buried: St James Chapel Piccadilly (destroyed), public garden, Hampstead Road, Euston (?), London, England. Wedgewood Cameo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945) Barren Ground (1926) Born: Richmond, Virginia. Buried: Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia.
Percival Christopher Wren (1875-1941) Beau Geste (1924) Born: Deptford, South London, England. Buried: Holy Trinity Churchyard, Amberley, Gloucestershire, England. College: St Catherine's (Oxford)
Ronald Colman (1891-1958) Born: Richmond, Surrey, England. Buried: Santa Barbara Cemetery, Santa Barbara, California. Niles Essenay Silent Film Museum http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/index.htm, 37417 Niles Boulevard, Niles (Fremont), Alameda, California.
George Farquhar (1677-1707) The Beaux' Stratagem (1707) Born: Shipquay Street, Derry, Northern Ireland. Buried: St Martin's-in-the-Field Churchyard, Strand, London, England. College: Trinity (Dublin).
Gerhardt Hauptmann (1862-1946) Before Dawn (1889), The Weavers (1892), The Beaver Coat (1893) Born: Szczawno-Zdroj, Poland. Buried: Near church, Hiddensee, Mecklenberg-Vorpommem, Germany. College: Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Gerhardt Hauptmann Museum, Gerhardt-Hauptmann Strasse 1, Erkner, Brandenburg, Germany. Museum Agnetendorf (Gerhardt Hauptmann House, Jelenia Gora-Jagniatkov, Poland. Carl und Gerhardt Hauptmann House, 11 Listopada Street #23, Szklarska Poreba, Poland. Gerhart Hauptmann House, Hiddensee, Mecklenberg-Vorpommem, Germany.
Ludwig Lewisohn (1882-1955) Born: Berlin, Germany. Buried: Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts. College: College of Charleston.
John Gay (1685-1732) The Beggar's Opera (1728) Born: 35 High Street (plaque on Joy St side), Barnstaple, Devonshire, England. Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, England.
Kurt Weill (1900-1950) Born: Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Buried: Mount Repose Cemetery, Haverstraw, Rockland, New York. College: Berlin University of the Arts. Kurt Weill Zentrum, Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
John Hersey (1914-1993) A Bell For Adano (1944) Born: Tianjin, China. Buried: Martha's Vineyard, Dukes, Massachusetts. College: Yale. Bell Tower, Licata, Sicily, Italy.
Lew Wallace (1827-1905) Ben Hur (1880) Born: Brookville, Indiana. Buried: Oak Hill Cemetery, Crawfordsville, Indiana. General Lew Wallace Study and Museum (www.ben-hur.com/), 200 Wallace Avenue, Crawfordsville, Indiana. Circus Maximus, Rome, Italy.
Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) The Betrothed (1827) Born: Via Visconti di Modrone 16, Milan, Lombardy, Italy. Buried: Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Lombardy, Italy. Casa del Manzoni (http://www.casadelmanzoni.mi.it/) Via Morone 1, Milan, Lombardy, Italy.
A.B. Guthrie, Jr. (1901-1991) The Big Sky (1947) Born: Bedford, Indiana. Buried: Mt Lebanon Cemetery, Glendale, Queens, New York. College: Harvard.
Aristophanes (448-385 B.C.) Lysistrata (411 B.C.), The Frogs (405 B.C.), The Birds (Date unknown?) Born/Buried: Athens, Attica, Greece.
Anna Sewell (1820-1878) Black Beauty (1877) Born: 26 Whitehorse Plain, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. Buried: Quaker Burial Ground, Lamas, Norfolk, England.
Anna Sewell's birthplace was a museum for many decades, but is now a tea room. This appears to have happened some time within the past six years.
Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) Black Oxen (1923) Born: Rincon Hill, San Francisco, California (plaque north Lafayette Park, at Octavia & Washington). Buried: Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, San Mateo, California.
Robert Browning (1812-1889) A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843) Born: Southhampton Street, Camberwell, England *****(6-28?-01)***** Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, England. College: University College (London). Armstrong Browning Library (http://www.browninglibrary.org/), 710 Speight Avenue, Waco, Texas.
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) The Blue Bird (1907) Born: Ghent, Belgium. Buried: Stele of platform near Palais Maeterlinck, 8 Boulevard Maurice Maeterlinck, Nice, Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur, France. College: U. of Ghent.
Far from sated with sites commemorating literary greatness, we went the very next day down to Amherst to invade the sanctuary of Emily Dickinson, whose birthplace and lifelong home is now a museum.
In spite of the apparent size of the house, the tour only includes four rooms, one of which is not furnished other than with modern chairs. Nonetheless I enjoyed the tour, as the guide speaks for about ten minutes in each of the rooms, and the information is generally interesting. I find as I get older that I like going on guided tours, provided that the guide is at all capable. It is pleasant to walk leisurely through an old building listening to an intelligent person talk, regardless of the comparative importance of the facts being relayed.
The tour did not go into great detail as far as breaking down the actual poetry of Emily Dickinson, the greatness of which I must confess even at my advanced age I have a hard time truly convincing myself. And this is a real failure, because it is something that is so obvious to serious literary scholars that not to grasp it is to relegate oneself eternally to a lower status of literacy than all genuinely educated people. It is not that I do not like the poems of Emily Dickinson, or that I am not happy that they exist. To this point however I am incapable of seeing that they are great in the way that Donne or Sir Philip Sidney or Herrick seems to me to be really great. At this point I have no choice but to keep plugging away. It is too late for me to try to pursue expertise in any other worthwhile area of human endeavor.
I have noted this elsewhere on the internet, but I really enjoyed being in Amherst for the day. College towns are wonderful places, and it will be a sad day if they disappear because everybody is spending the years from 18-24 acquiring job skills on the computer at their parents' house, and not only because I have five children and am desperately counting on some of them leaving the house once in a while before they are thirty-five. The combination of youthful energies, above average intelligence, and free time in which to indulge in the course of an average day is highly attractive, to me anyway.
Because we have little children still, we had to go on alternate tours, mother and children 1 & 3 on one, and myself and child 2 on the other. But I liked this, as it enabled us to wander around town a little, which we probably would have neglected to do otherwise. At one of the parks there were a number of hyper-progressive looking student types about, female mainly, unsmiling towards me, and reading and writing out longhand notes on paper just like the old times, when my two year old daughter decided to skip around the fountain singing "I'm a princess, I'm a princess", much to my horror as you can imagine. She did not pick this up from me, I assure you.
Along the walk to the other house on the property, where Emily Dickinson's brother lived. I would have liked to seen that too, but to see that required going on a combined tour that was an hour and forty minutes long, and seeing as we had to go on two separate tours as it was I thought that would be pushing it.
In front of the other house.
The main entrance, with a full view of the front of the house.
The West Cemetery in Amherst, where Emily Dickinson is buried, is a bit shabby, and is occupied by a number of people of the sort who look like they dropped out of college many years back and now hang around the cemetery all day acting weird.
I don't know why I included three different grave pictures, I guess to give a feel for the setting, which, in contrast to most cemeteries I go to, was not very peaceful. It is small and is bordered by a gas station and the business district of Amherst, and all sorts of people are constantly tramping through, and there are the aforementioned people who are camped out there for no apparent reason and watch you tramping dutifully to Emily Dickinson's grave.
I do not know what the significance of the toy chair is, though I suspect it is something obvious, even juvenile. Nonetheless, it eludes me.
We made a trip out to this very tiny graveyard, which lies within the Green Mountain National Forest in the vicinity of a settlement that I am not sure even qualifies as a town. The cemetery is down a long gravel road, and no other cars or people passed by in the entire 30-45 minutes that we were there.
We took our lunchboxes and had a picnic. The spot is tranquil and beautiful and well-maintained.
Given that Robert Penn Warren as an author is so strongly identified with the South, it was somewhat of a surprise to find his grave in this well-kept but obscure corner of Vermont. Evidently he summered there for many years.
What thoughts did I have at this memorial? Nothing pertinent. I do not know very much about Robert Penn Warren, other than that he had a successful career, and people trusted and respected his talent and knowledge in literary matters, which has always struck me, absurdly really, as the most desirable state to which a person could attain. I thought about the loneliness of the spot, the now complete passing of Warren's literary generation, which retained some prominence and authority even in my youth. I thought about the universal male desire for money, power, and sex, and thought that in his own milieu Warren seemed, compared to me anyway, to have attained a fair portion of the first two of these--I don't know about the sex. So yes, this is what I thought about, in between my major concerns about my children behaving, not climbing on or tipping over gravestones, and so on.
This has a Vermont Life magazine feel to it, don't you think. I must confess, I love that magazine. Though the older numbers from the 60s and 70s are a world of their own that can never be recaptured, I like the newer issues too.
I thought this was an unusually beautiful tree. It reminded me of one that used to be in my grandparents' yard.
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