Reviews and News:
A charred book containing the Acts of the Apostles has been sitting, unopened, in the Morgan Library archives since 1962. It may now be read for the first time since it was burned.
Also: One-inch text fragments found in a canon from the wreckage of Queen Anne’s Revenge reveal what Blackbeard’s fellow pirates—and maybe even Blackbeard himself—liked to read.
Changing gears somewhat: When I was a 21-year-old traveling through Europe with three Canadians, I experienced my second proudest moment as a young driver: I parallel parked our rental car in a tight spot in Munich in one swooping motion. This after one of my friends had given up in frustration after several failed attempts. It’s unseemly, I know, to remember (and share!) such a trivial victory, but they are the ones that stick with us most, I guess. All that to say, I can see the attraction of competing in the National Valet Olympics, which includes a precision parking competition that I probably couldn’t finish much less win: “Valets must sprint to a car—in this case, a black Toyota Camry—leap inside, and roar out of the parking spot. There is no speed limit. Athletes then weave through 10 orange cones, park the car, put it in reverse, and do the whole thing all over again, backwards.”
Over at Comment, Marilyn McEntyre writes in praise of forbearance: “I don’t much like the people I ‘put up’ with, though, I piously tell myself, I’d like to like them. When I’m in the company of people whose views strike me as narrow, obnoxious, ill-informed, or dangerous, I struggle to hang onto some notion of neighbourly love that can quell my impatience and hasty judgments. Aware of how often I face that struggle, and how commonly political and social antagonisms divide churches full of people more or less like me—people with general goodwill and an assortment of strong opinions—I found James Calvin Davis’s reflections on forbearance deeply refreshing. They offer exactly the reminders we need of what life in beloved community requires.”
I’ve mentioned this before, so forgive me for mentioning it again: This year is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. Publishers are capitalizing on the moment by bringing out modern annotated editions of the novel. Joseph Bottum reviews three: “What emerges from all these books is a curious sense that Frankenstein is more a reflection of the reader than a portrait of an early 19th-century medical dabbler and his creation. Each new era overwrites the text with the interests and worries of the age, like scrawls in the condensed steam on a bathroom mirror. And soon enough they fade away, leaving the story clear for interpretations addressed to the interests and concerns of subsequent eras of readers. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein may not be the most interpreted English text. Hamlet surely has it beat. But Frankenstein may be the most overinterpreted.”
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century aside, French economists are staunchly free market. Guy Sorman reviews the latest book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Jean Tirole: “Though the book covers a broad range of economic topics, one overarching credo undergirds each argument: Tirole—founder of the renowned Toulouse School of Economics—insists that one cannot be a true economist while opposing the free market.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art changes its admissions policy: “For the first time in decades, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current ‘suggested’ admission price of $25 will become mandatory for visitors who do not live in New York State.”
Adam Rubenstein talks with novelist Hillel Halkin: “What is a snoop? In a review of one of his books, the Israeli writer, translator, and critic Hillel Halkin was called ‘one of the great snoops of the age.’ In English, the word carries a negative connotation: A snoop is one who sticks his nose in others’ affairs, who pries. In Hebrew, the noun can be rendered as balash, a word that suggests a gumshoe, a detective. That somewhat more dignified Hebrew concept applies to Halkin. He has the snoop’s attitude and gimlet eye, a critic sizing up everything and everyone before him, including his readers.”
Essay of the Day:
Ulysses S. Grant didn’t want to write a memoir of his life (and the Civil War), so why did he? Meredith Hindley explains in Humanities:
“In late 1884, after delivering an evening lecture at Chickering Hall, Samuel Clemens ventured out into the soggy New York City night. November had brought with it both cold and rain, leaving only a few brave souls on the dark streets.
“Clemens had appeared as his alter ego, Mark Twain, the mustached writer and raconteur, who could enrapture a crowd as easily as a reader. The 48-year-old former newspaperman had become a household name with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), and Life on the Mississippi (1883). His new novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, would debut in England and Canada in three weeks, and in the United States in February. Living off book royalties made for precarious finances, which is why Clemens worked the lecture circuit and dabbled in business.
“As he walked home, two men emerged from a building ahead of him, continuing their conversation on the sidewalk. The cloudy night and weak glow of the gaslights made it difficult to figure out their identities, but Clemens could hear what they were saying.
“‘Do you know General Grant has actually determined to write his Memoirs and publish them? He said so, to-day, in so many words,’ said one.
“‘That was all I heard,’ wrote Clemens in his autobiography, ‘and I thought it great good luck that I was permitted to overhear them.’”
Photo: World’s largest picture frame
Poem: Clive James, “Season to Season”
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