I noted that a recording of my appeared in a Vita Poetica podcast, my poem, I Pray to You, Saint Peter, Whom No One Loves is also in the autumn 2022 edition, if you’re more of a reader.
In Which I Appear Very Briefly On A Podcast
Which is to say, here.
In The Fog
This short novel was a fun, if predictable read. A group of men in an exclusive club, improbably named The Grills, eating, drinking, and reading newspapers. Three men have connected stories around the murder of a returning aristocrat and a disreputable, larcenous Russian princess.
But any careful reader will quickly see the game: the storytellers are trying to delay a charismatic member of Parliament from going to the House of Commons and delivering a forceful speech in support of a naval bill. The MP is a fan of mysteries and they hope, like Scheherazade, to delay him by dragging out the mystery (when one man finishes, the next announces, a ah! I have more information to illuminate this mystery).
They succeed in delaying him and announce that they have saved the Empire from wasteful spending, only for the MP to say, wait, I gave my speech this morning and the bill passed – I was just going to have dinner with a friend.
The Return Of Fu-Manchu
The racism is so bad, yet the story moves so effortlessly, actively, and thrillingly. Sufficiently exciting that, while you can hardly escape the racism (though it seems laughably transparent; however, as a white man, it is, perhaps, too easy for me to laugh, since I am not the target), you mostly overlook the question of why, if this the genius agent provocateur and herald of a new, global Chinese empire, Fu-Manchu, is so very dangerous, the bold, the brave, the fearless agent of empire (the good kind), Nayland Smith, keeps relying on the narrator, Dr. Petrie (an old college chum, if I remember from the first book)? Surely there is some proto-James Bond type he could rely on?
It’s really a series of short adventures, with Smith and Petrie (don’t say ‘dish!’) constantly running into people with knowledge of stuff happening in China (including a clergyman who was corresponding with someone whose name escapes, but which was remarkably close to Sun-Yat-Sen; I’m not sure if that was deliberate or if the redoubtable author was simply throwing together three letter sounds that combined to sound vaguely like some kind of transliteration from the Chinese). At least the hero and narrator falls in love with someone vaguely Eastern, but more of an orientalist, harem-fantasy than a real person and, despite being from exotic lands, apparently, surprising fair (read: white).
Why do I read books like this? I don’t know, except that I have a great love for these early twentieth century adventures that read so briskly and engagingly. I also feel guilt, though not enough, it seems, at things like the strange race of dog men that are somehow ‘Semitic’ (really, Mr. Sax Rohmer?).
‘Ars Poetica’ By Horace
I read this twice, which was a good thing, because the first time, I just had no time for it. Fan of his poetry, by his Ars Poetica or Art of Poetry simply didn’t speak to me.
Even on second reading, this is not going to be my go to resource, but I liked it much better. Mostly, I enjoyed his wit, which is the best part of his poetry. But it’s no Poetics (the Aristotle one; which I also read recently and am kind of over it; yes, he is arguably the greatest thinker who ever lived, but I am just not seeing anything more for me when I re-read The Poetics).
But, I appreciate his modulated advice to write what you emotionally know, to not let correctness lead your to smooth all the roughness which gives a poem emotional power, and also be sure that you know your audience when you read aloud.
Ion
Nope, not talking about particles or science, but about the minor dialogue by Plato, wherein Socrates interrogates a rhapsode name Ion on his vocation.
Generally, a rhapsode was someone who memorized an epic poem or myth and was an expert on reciting it. Ion specialized in Homer. He says that he also comments on it, but that doesn’t quite track, not in the least because Socrates’ questioning more or less positions as a sort of idiot savant who is able to recite Homer’s epic poems so well because, in the moment, he is divinely inspired. Socrates shows this by arguing that you could only speak well on, to use one Socrates’ example, horsemanship if you were also an expert horseman. He then, rather meanly, shows up Ion as a bit of dolt, which leads Socrates to conclude that Ion is divinely inspired and, by implication, all such performers who reach the highest levels of their profession.
Baptism Of Fire
I am done with these Witcher novels. I’m enjoying the Netflix series. I tried playing the video game, but just wasn’t up for learning anything new on that front.
I will simply repeat what I’ve said before: the titular Witcher, aka, Gerald of Rivia, is much better as the star of short stories than as the protagonist of a novel.
The Vietri Project
What a terrible disappointment. Gabriele, an interesting, traumatized young woman with dual U.S-Italian citizenship who works at a bookshop in Berkeley, California becomes powerfully intrigued by a customer named Giordano Vietri. Vietri orders from his apartment in Rome huge numbers of books on academic and mystical topics. Eventually, our protagonist feels compelled to track him down, leaving her boyfriend and aimless life in California to go to her mother’s homeland. She reconnects with family while she attempts to track down the mysterious Vietri.
He had been captured by the British in World War II, he had been the neighbor of a painter who was also a journalist and anti-fascist activist. What was he searching for in these books? Who was he?
We never know, because she decides it is less important than… I don’t know. I don’t feel I got a better answer than “I met a nice guy who is better and more mature than the young men I have been casually hooking up with.” I don’t really care who she sleeps with, though her attitude towards sex seems portrayed as being an expression of maternal trauma (her mother was schizophrenic).
I do care that this story is much less interesting than the tease of the mysterious Giordano Vietri, who is dropped as if the author got bored of writing the book looked for an excuse to end it.
The Time Of Contempt
The second novel of the Witcher series, it’s better than Blood of Elves, but not as good as Last Wish nor Sword of Destiny, which were a short story collections. If you’re watching the series, the second season diverges strongly from the books (the first season pulled heavily from the short stories), though viewers of both will pick up on something that was mentioned at the end of the second season and is clearly foreshadowed in the book (though I might not have guessed had I not seen the series).
One interesting thing is that the titular Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, is made smaller. He is badly injured by the end and is also portrayed as being relatively small compared to the power wielded by wizards (including his sometimes lover, Yennefer).
‘The Cartographers’ By Peng Shepherd
Ever since I read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, I have been looking for it in other conspiratorial novels about learning and books. The closes I have come is Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, which I still recommend and now want to read again (which would be, probably, the fourth of fifth time).
The Cartographers doesn’t really come close, but it’s still pretty good. The villain’s motivation never really seems that evil (or, if it is, then the protagonists couldn’t have known about the really evil part, which is an underdeveloped criticism of a certain breed of technofetishism/technoutopianism) and their identity is rather crudely telegraphed about one hundred pages out.
But, listen, it’s still good. Not being as good as Eco or as good as one of my favorite novels published in the last twenty years can’t be the criteria here. I enjoyed and I’m glad I read it. I learned something about map making and the premise, which is held secret for long enough in the book that I don’t want to give it away here, is pretty clear. The primary protagonist is a pleasantly flawed, obsessive, and intelligent woman, even if the rest of the cast can feel a little thin.
the coffee philosopher 