strange and random happenstance

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
Published by: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: September 6th, 2022
Format: Kindle, 348 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

John Donne was born a Catholic at a time when it was very dangerous to be a Catholic. Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne, but Mary's reign left a bitter aftertaste in everyone's mouth, resulting in Catholics being in danger primarily because the crown was living in constant fear of a Catholic conspiracy. This was brought home to Donne, not just by family tales of the death of his great-great-uncle Thomas More, but by constantly being punished for his religion. He was unable to take his degree at Oxford because he was unwilling to take the Oath of Supremacy. But the bitterest pill to swallow was when he and his younger brother returned to London where they were both accepted into the Inns of Court. His brother was caught harboring a Catholic priest, a foolish act, that resulted in him going to Newgate Prison where he died of the plague. Donne abandoned his career and perhaps started to abandon his faith. He left the life he knew at Lincoln's Inn where he was the wit forever writing poetry to amuse his friends and took to the high seas. He became a pirate. Though technically he was a privateer, because that's what you call a pirate in the pay of the crown. He served under both Sir Waler Raleigh and the Earl of Essex, two of Queen Elizabeth's favorites. Though she wasn't best pleased about what happened at Cadiz. When Donne returned to London he was well placed to start a diplomatic career and twice in his life he'd serve in Parliament, but it was his work for Sir Thomas Egerton that would change his life. Egerton was the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and while living at York House Donne would be present for many an historical occasion, including the house arrest of the Earl of Essex. But it was also where he met his wife, Anne. They corresponded and then wed in secret. When it was discovered Donne was arrested and his career was destroyed. Once his father-in-law accepted that the were legally married they were still shunned by society and took up residence with one of Anne's cousins, who was an inveterate gambler. Many, many children followed. Many, many children died. The Queen died, James I ascended the throne. The king though didn't wish Donne's return to court, he wished him to take holy orders. An order that would prove historic and lucrative. Donne was a born preacher as well as a poet. He died during the reign of Charles I, beloved by the public, he would be remembered, forever.

There's a theatricality about Elizabethan England. One could say it's because of Shakespeare, but that would be presumptive and looking back on that time with our modern lens. But it can't be denied that everyone was performative and strived to be larger than life, which is why I am fascinated with the era. Just look to the events surrounding the Earl of Essex which are presented in this book. The Earl of Essex was the stepson of the Queen's supposed "one true love" Robert Dudley, who became her favorite over his stepfather and repaid the Queen by being a petulant shit and staging an insurrection resulting in him being executed for treason, which is something I fully support. The execution, not the treason. This is the world to which John Donne aspired to be a part of. And he was. He served under the Earl of Essex and later was in the household that was responsible for keeping the Earl under house arrest. It's actually quite astonishing that someone remembered for his poetry was a seminal figure of his day. Of course, there are poets that through their lives have became cultural icons, just look to Byron and Shelley. Sure Shelley ran off with his bride, but did it land him in prison? Well, it might have had he come back to England and not died. Were any of them pirates? Or priests? Did a single one of them annoy a king so much that their life might have been in the balance? And that is just a small fraction of Donne's life. It is mind-blowing just how often this man reinvented himself. His life, completely omitting his output as a writer, is worthy of a lavish period drama. Obviously a miniseries which each episode capturing a different side of him. Add in that he is one of the most famous poets ever, in fact Jane Austen's favorite, and his life is kind of inconceivable. And I do know what that word means. As one of my friends pointed out, he's kind of the Lando Calrissian of his day and I can not find fault with this argument. Especially once he brings in the capes. But what makes this book on Donne truly memorable is Katherine Rundell's own wit. She has a snarky way of writing and doesn't hesitate to call Donne out on his bullshit. She makes you feel the astonishment that all this happened in the span of one man's lifetime. A lifetime that didn't even last sixty years. Though what makes her an epic writer is leaving his most famous quote until the very end. You've read about Donne, you know he's famous, but did you know he's "no man is an island" famous?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Byron, Catholic, Earl of Essex, For the Love of Book Clubs, Jane Austen, John Donne, Katherine Rundell, Lando Calrissian, Pirates, Poet, Priests, Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Shelley, Super-Infinite, Thomas More

The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: February 16th, 2012
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

There's only so many times you can throw yourself at someone's feet till you start to fall for the owner of said feet. Augustus has been throwing himself at the feet of the Pink Carnation for over a year now. Working with her as an undercover agent in Paris and using his horrible poetry to foil the French has made him invaluable to the British Government for over a decade now, but really, he only wants to be invaluable to one person; Jane, the Pink Carnation. Despite his flowery poetry that goes beyond the ridiculous, his sentiments of love are becoming more and more real. Jane though does not share these sentiments. She would gladly throw a distraction in his path for the good of Britain, and if said distraction happens to result in true love, well, so be it. Emma Delagardie is an American living in Paris. She spent most of her life in France, going to school with Napoleon's stepdaughter, then eloping with a man whom she didn't quite get, becoming the scandal of society, resulting in her parents cutting off the fifteen year old. Widowed young, she flung herself back into life, even making a few mistakes along the way. One in the attractive yet despicable form of Georges Marston. Yet her new favorite pastime is heckling Augustus. She is ever by the side of Jane and Augustus is ever by Jane's feet... he makes a very logical target. Jane thinks though that perhaps Emma's taunting is a deflection of her true feelings for Augustus. Emma does talk about his tight breeches a lot. Throwing the two of them together to write a masque for Napoleon's house party seems the perfect way to see if these two crazy kids might not find a way to work things out and hopefully foil whatever that wacky emperor is doing next... Because declaring himself emperor seems a pretty big step onto the crazy train for Napoleon. One that Emma can not reconcile with the world she knew.

Augustus is perhaps the most beloved character we have been waiting to get his happily ever after. That is after Turnip. I'm sorry Augustus lovers, but Turnip will always be my man. On the plus side, Turnip got his happily ever after so now it's time to spread the love. Ever since this absurd poet flung himself at the feet of the Pink Carnation speculation has been running wild as to whether this would be the man to win the heart of the elusive spy. As is the case in fiction as reality, the course of love never runs smooth. While busy admiring "The Princess of the Pulchritudinous Toes", the Princess's short little American companion heckling him has never left a good impression. She's American, for a start. A little too gaudy, a little too sultry, and a little too much "the Grand Inquisitor for Poetical Excellence, Greater Paris Branch." Emma Delagardie is the perfect foil for Augustus. Until this book I have always pictured Augustus as one of those over the top, Byronic poets, like Shelley, Byron and Coleridge, but as depicted in Blackadder III, laying about prostate in Mrs. Miggins' Coffee Shop half dead of consumption, but with a very puffy shirt on. Never discount the puffy shirt! AKA, a stereotypical poet ensemble, which for Augustus is the perfect disguise. Lauren does a wonderful job though of showing what playing this stereotype for so long might do to one's mind. Like all deep undercover agents, sometimes it can be too much, and sometimes you just can't get away from the bad rhymes, even in your head. I felt an empathy towards Augustus and his muddled mind. Are his feelings for Jane even real, or has the job just fully taken over control of his senses? He is far more tragic and dark than one might expect... A true romantic poet, not just some parody, with the bubbly Emma as the perfect counterpoint. She too has inside turmoil, but there's an exuberance about her that is undeniable. I can never get enough of this series. More!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: An American in Paris, Augustus Whittlesby, Blackadder, Emma Delagardie, Emperor, Jane Wooliston, Lauren Willig, Napoleon, Poet, Poetry, Regency Romp, The Garden Intrigue, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Possession by A.S. Byatt
Published by: Vintage
Publication Date: 1990
Format: Paperback, 555 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Roland Michell is an academic with very limited options. He's toiling away researching the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash while living off his girlfriend, who he doesn't much care for, in a cat pee soaked apartment, when everything changes. Roland finds an unknown letter that Ash wrote to a female that might just be Roland's lucky break. He traces the correspondence to a Christabel LaMotte, who was an almost unknown female poet at the same time as Ash, and who is the darling of feminist academia. Roland approaches the preeminent scholar on LaMotte, Maud Bailey, directly, circumventing his own department in some odd impulse to keep his discovery to himself. What the two of them find is rather interesting and will change the presumed histories of the two poets drastically. Everyone has always assumed that Ash was happily married, though sadly childless, and that LaMotte was a lesbian living with the painter Blanche Glover. But their letters to each other prove that this is anything but the case. Slowly unravelling the past while trying to keep the present at bay, Roland and Maud are gripped by a fever to find the truth of what really happened to two people over a hundred years ago.

Most people who know me now are shocked to discover that I wasn't always a reader. I didn't read much, I didn't like school and was a bad student, and I mainly watched movies. Somewhere along the way that completely reversed itself. This has had the effect that I always feel like I'm playing catchup. I'm always trying to read what others consider "standard" or "classic" books. In fact I only heard about A.S. Byatt because of the movie version of Possession. While I have said before that I have this inbuilt need to read the book before seeing the movie, in the early days of my discovering authors, a movie adaptation would help to introduce me to authors I might never have found on my own. Hence me and Possession. I too have the copy with The Beguiling of Merlin by Burne-Jones on the cover but with that lovely "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture" sticker firmly planted above Merlin's head.

I had no expectations going into this book the first time, but I was sorely disappointed. I've never been the biggest fan of poetry, and that is a bit of an issue when reading a book about poets. To paraphrase Possessions own words, poetry is a love of words where prose is a love of story, of narration. I have always loved stories, if the words are well chosen, then it adds something more, but I do not rhapsodize or wax nostalgic over the rhythm and flow of words. The epic poems of Ash and LaMotte were just sections to be read hastily for clues before the plot resumed. All this and more meant I just didn't connect and was left dissatisfied. I remember finishing the book on a warm Sunday in May and feeling this need to do something to alleviate this want in me. I met my friend Sara and we went to a movie, but all the while I was thinking about how Possession had let me down. I had that itch under my skin when you've spent so much time on something and it just doesn't work out in the end. It's a dissatisfaction on such a huge scale that it's almost like having a panic attack. Later that summer after seeing the disastrous movie adaptation with my most hated of actors, Aaron Eckhart, I knew the book could have been far worse, in the way that I knew I would come back one day to this book and try to find the connection that I had felt wanting the first time.

Possession the second time around was a far better read. I understood more what Byatt was trying to do and more of her literary allusions weren't over my head. But more importantly, I feel like I now possess the language to say why it was the book left me cold in the first place. I can now identify and name that itch under my skin and relieve it through critique. Possession starts with a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's preface to his book The House of Seven Gables asking for clemency for his book's adherence to the standards and tropes of the Romance genre. He begs the reader to allow latitude in his predictability and lack of realism. By using this quote Byatt is also asking us to forgive her using the same tropes of the Romance genre, with a capital "R". There are two problems inherent in this "confession". Firstly, as an artist I was taught that you never make excuses or apologize for your work. As far as the viewer, or reader in Byatt's case, is concerned, this is the best freakin' thing that has ever been done and you need to sell it as such. If you start out with an apology you are basically telling someone that there is a flaw in the work and it is human nature to search out that flaw.

This is a flawed book, it is by no means perfect. The predictability of the story with the absurd ending that you could see a mile off was my second and ultimately main problem with Possession. Going back to the Hawthorne quote I wonder if Byatt chose this quote not to give a historic literary connection between her and Hawthorne, but to apologize for her work, by writing the quote Hawthorne himself has thankfully already apologized for the abysmal The House of Seven Gables. As I've said before, no excuses, no apology, even if you really need to make one, giving one makes you look weak. You can't justify your work being subpar by saying it's the genre that made me do it. Was it the genre that made the book have unlikable passionless characters whose connection and attraction is initially based on the mind but devolves into a physical passion that still has this weird cold and unfeeling vibe? No, that was you who did that. That was your writing, not the genre. As for the rapidity of time making things obsolete... well, that's no one's fault. This book feels dated, more so then when I read it twelve years ago, and it's not just the lack of computers and the prevalence of copy machines, but the very change in the nature and meaning of language. Glory Holes have a far far different universal connotation now... I'm hoping Byatt was aware of this then lesser used definition when she was writing the book in the eighties...

But for everything that this book does wrong, it does get things right. I love the Victorian time period, and in specific I love seances. I like both the idea that they could possibly be real, but also the intricacies of chicanery that the false mediums created in order to fool their marks. I even went to a photography exhibition years ago at the MET that was supposed proof from the time of the veracity of spirits... let's put it this way, they had the original Cottingley Fairies, so, that's the level of truth in these photographs. But what interested me in Possession was that it was posited that these seances are in some way a replacement for storytelling. The beginning of the beloved television show The Storyteller was right in that "people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, [and] foretold the future with stories." Stories were a faith. Mythology and folktales are part of us. But in Victorian England, so much advancement in such a little time was stripping away the foundations of faith. Such searching and questioning changed the world. People needed a new way to search for the meaning of life, and for some that came in the form of seances. They needed to know that life had meaning and they were searching for it beyond the vale. Ash and LaMotte are both curious and questioning individuals, it makes sense that they, as artists, would not only embrace the old ways but also the new. These two ways, through language and planchette, unite the very human needs across the generations to quench the thirst for knowledge, a thirst that is then taken up in the "present" by Roland and Maud and unifies the book not only in it's own narratives but to our own lives.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A. S. Byatt, Apology, Christabel LaMotte, Merlin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poet, Possession, Pre-Raphaelite, Randolph Henry Ash, Seances, Spiritualism, Sweet Reads, The House of Seven Gables, Victorian

Possession by A.S. Byatt
Published by: Vintage
Publication Date: 1990
Format: Paperback, 555 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

"What can you say about Possession? It was a phenomenon when I was in my teens. The lush prose, the poetry, the meticulously detailed academic mystery as two scholars dig down into the past of two—previously unconnected—Victorian poets. All I can say is, don’t watch the movie. Read the book.

I didn’t consciously think of Possession when I started writing That Summer, but it was there with me anyway, there in the unpicking of a historical mystery and there in the cultural context. Possession is about poetry and That Summer about paintings, but when one is talking about the Preraphaelites, it’s very hard to extricate the one from the other: Dante Gabriel Rossetti nearly dropped his art to become a poet, while his sister Christina’s poetry is, for me, the epitome of that cultural moment.

The cover of my old copy of Possession boasts a painting by Burne-Jones, The Beguiling of Merlin. I suggested to my publisher that we name my book The Beguiling of Imogen, but they were not amused.

It does kind of have a ring to it, though, doesn’t it?" - Lauren Willig

Roland Michell is an academic with very limited options. He's toiling away researching the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash while living off his girlfriend, who he doesn't much care for, in a cat pee soaked apartment, when everything changes. Roland finds an unknown letter that Ash wrote to a female that might just be Roland's lucky break. He traces the correspondence to a Christabel LaMotte, who was an almost unknown female poet at the same time as Ash, and who is the darling of feminist academia. Roland approaches the preeminent scholar on LaMotte, Maud Bailey, directly, circumventing his own department in some odd impulse to keep his discovery to himself. What the two of them find is rather interesting and will change the presumed histories of the two poets drastically. Everyone has always assumed that Ash was happily married, though sadly childless, and that LaMotte was a lesbian living with the painter Blanche Glover. But their letters to each other prove that this is anything but the case. Slowly unravelling the past while trying to keep the present at bay, Roland and Maud are gripped by a fever to find the truth of what really happened to two people over a hundred years ago.

Most people who know me now are shocked to discover that I wasn't always a reader. I didn't read much, I didn't like school and was a bad student, and I mainly watched movies. Somewhere along the way that completely reversed itself. This has had the effect that I always feel like I'm playing catchup. I'm always trying to read what others consider "standard" or "classic" books. In fact I only heard about A.S. Byatt because of the movie version of Possession. While I have said before that I have this inbuilt need to read the book before seeing the movie, in the early days of my discovering authors, a movie adaptation would help to introduce me to authors I might never have found on my own. Hence me and Possession. I too have the copy with The Beguiling of Merlin by Burne-Jones on the cover but with that lovely "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture" sticker firmly planted above Merlin's head.

I had no expectations going into this book the first time, but I was sorely disappointed. I've never been the biggest fan of poetry, and that is a bit of an issue when reading a book about poets. To paraphrase Possessions own words, poetry is a love of words where prose is a love of story, of narration. I have always loved stories, if the words are well chosen, then it adds something more, but I do not rhapsodize or wax nostalgic over the rhythm and flow of words. The epic poems of Ash and LaMotte where just sections to be read hastily for clues before the plot resumed. All this and more meant I just didn't connect and was left dissatisfied. I remember finishing the book on a warm Sunday in May and feeling this need to do something to alleviate this want in me. I met my friend Sara and we went to a movie, but all the while I was thinking about how Possession had let me down. I had that itch under my skin when you've spent so much time on something and it just doesn't work out in the end. It's a dissatisfaction on such a huge scale that it's almost like having a panic attack. Later that summer after seeing the disastrous movie adaptation with my most hated of actors, Aaron Eckhart, I knew the book could have been far worse, in the way that I knew I would come back one day to this book and try to find the connection that I had felt wanting the first time.

Possession the second time around was a far better read. I understood more what Byatt was trying to do and more of her literary allusions weren't over my head. But more importantly, I feel like I now possess the language to say why it was the book left me cold in the first place. I can now identify and name that itch under my skin and relieve it through critique. Possession starts with a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's preface to his book The House of Seven Gables asking for clemency for his book's adherence to the standards and tropes of the Romance genre. He begs the reader to allow latitude in his predictability and lack of realism. By using this quote Byatt is also asking us to forgive her using the same tropes of the Romance genre, with a capital "R". There are two problems inherent in this "confession". Firstly, as an artist I was taught that you never make excuses or apologize for your work. As far as the viewer, or reader in Byatt's case, is concerned, this is the best freakin' thing that has ever been done and you need to sell it as such. If you start out with an apology you are basically telling someone that there is a flaw in the work and it is human nature to search out that flaw.

This is a flawed book, it is by no means perfect. The predictability of the story with the absurd ending that you could see a mile off was my second and main problem with Possession. Going back to the Hawthorne quote I wonder if Byatt chose this quote not to give a historic literary connection between her and Hawthorne, but to apologize for her work, by writing the quote Hawthorne himself has thankfully already apologized for the abysmal The House of Seven Gables. As I've said before, no excuses, no apology, even if you really need to make one, giving one makes you look weak. You can't justify your work being subpar by saying it's the genre that made me do it. Was it the genre that made the book have unlikable passionless characters was connection and attraction is initially based on the mind but devolves into a physical passion that still has this weird cold and unfeeling vibe? No, that was you who did that. That was your writing, not the genre. As for the rapidity of time making things obsolete... well, that's no one's fault. This book feels dated, more so then when I read it twelve years ago, and it's not just the lack of computers and the prevalence of copy machines, but the very change in the nature and meaning of language. Glory Holes have a far far different universal connotation now... I'm hoping Byatt was aware of this then lesser used definition when she was writing the book in the eighties...

But for everything that this book does wrong, it does get things right. I love the Victorian time period, and in specific I love seances. I like both the idea that they could possibly be real, but also the intricacies of chicanery that the false mediums created in order to fool their marks. I even went to a photography exhibition years ago at the MET that was supposed proof from the time of the veracity of spirits... let's but it this way, they had the original Cottingley Fairies, so, that's the level of truth in these photographs. But what interested me in Possession was that it was posited that these seances are in some way a replacement for storytelling. The beginning of the beloved television show The Storyteller was right in that "people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, [and] foretold the future with stories." Stories were a faith. Mythology and folktales are part of us. But in Victorian England, so much advancement in such a little time was stripping away the foundations of faith. Such searching and questioning changed the world. People needed a new way to search for the meaning of life, and for some that came in the form of seances. They needed to know that life had meaning and they were searching for it beyond the vale. Ash and LaMotte are both curious and questioning individuals, it makes sense that they, as artists, would not only embrace the old ways but also the new. These two ways, through language and planchette, unite the very human needs across the generations to quench the thirst for knowledge, a thirst that is then taken up in the "present" by Roland and Maud and unifies the book not only in it's own narratives but to our own lives.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A. S. Byatt, Apology, Christabel LaMotte, Lauren Willig, Merlin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poet, Possession, Pre-Raphaelite, Randolph Henry Ash, Seances, Spiritualism, That Summer, The House of Seven Gables, Victorian