Reviews and News:
In search of a sacred combe: “In the first volume of his sprawling and unreliable memoir, the prolific French writer and shoe fetishist Restif de la Bretonne described finding a hidden valley, or ‘bonne vaux’, that cast a spell of wonder over his childhood. Two centuries later, English novelist John Fowles took up the idea, which he, a Devonian, called the sacred combe, in his revealing, complex but not entirely successful novel Daniel Martin.”
It’s Abraham Lincoln’s birthday today. Mark it by reading Allen C. Guelzo’s account of Lincoln’s statesmanship: “Keeping the rule of law unimpaired is the great achievement of democratic statesmanship. But it is rarely simple, and crises like war abound with temptations for both the state and the society to wave it aside.”
Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitude at 50: “The desert around Joshua Tree is fashionable now, and you always see Abbey’s half-century-old book on vacation-cabin bookshelves and in desert park gift shops. It is one of those books that can catch a reader on any page, with a rant against industrial tourism or a supernaturally tinged tale of wandering a canyon alone or a humorous remembrance of some misadventure.”
How the horse shaped Western civilization.
Is science making the world better or killing it? Joseph Bottum takes up the question in a review of Charles C. Mann’s The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World.
The Washington Post launches new bestsellers list.
Theory of Everything composer Jóhann Jóhannsson has died. He was 48. Joe Muggs remembers his work.
In The New Statesman, Amelia Tait writes about how J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books shaped a generation of liberals…who have now turned against her. Cue the sad violin: “‘I strongly dislike her,’ Alice (who does not wish to disclose her surname) says. ‘I just think she wrote many beautiful things in Harry Potter, but she doesn’t live up to them in real life.’”
Essay of the Day:
In The Review of English Studies, Daniel Starza Smith, Matthew Payne, and Melanie Marshall write about a recently discovered copy of John Donne’s obscure satirical book list and why it matters:
“In autumn 2016, while working through a tin trunk of unsorted manuscript fragments, Matthew Payne, Keeper of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey, came upon a previously unknown scribal copy of a satirical library catalogue by John Donne. The work is known to Donne scholars by its Latin title, Catalogus Librorum aulicorum incomparabilium et non vendibilium (‘Catalogue of incomparable courtly books, not for sale’), or more commonly by its title in English, The Courtier’s Library. Donne himself refers to it in a prose letter as his Catalogus librorum satyricus, and it is hereafter called Catalogus. The catalogue ostensibly lists a series of book-titles that an ambitious courtier can introduce into conversation to seem more learned than he really is. For reasons explained below, we think the original work was probably completed by Donne some time between late summer 1603 and late autumn 1604. The manuscript witness at Westminster Abbey dates to the early seventeenth century, and thus pre-dates the first printing of the work in 1650. Both textual collation and bibliographical evidence suggest that this discovery constitutes the earliest known surviving copy of the Catalogus. Donne’s satirical catalogue remains one of his most critically neglected works, so the new manuscript prompts a reconsideration of several hitherto unanswered or partially answered questions.”
Photo: Starlings
Poem: J. D. Smith, “Behind the Epic”
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