Young, scrappy, and hungry

It's that time of week again -- not quite the time when #Hamalong posts are due, but a little afterward.

We're just on part three of the readalong (chapters ten through fourteen) but I may be starting to flag a bit. Only... four hundred pages to go?! Geez. This book is so unnecessarily long it makes me mad sometimes. You need look no further for an example than page 247:

CHERNOW, this is why your book is so long bro pic.twitter.com/qyPQm4x5M8

— Julie (@jfount) January 19, 2016

Sometimes you come across a conflict in your sources, and you have to make a decision: do you think one or another option is more convincing, or do you present both and give them equal weight? But you know what you do first? YOU SHOULD CONSIDER WHETHER ANYONE, ANYONE ON EARTH, CARES OR SHOULD CARE. Honest to goodness, it's a scandal the way publishers cut corners on editing these days.

I've seen other Hamalongers commenting on Chernow's fanboying over Hamilton, and on that note my criticisms from last time stand. The thing I would add to that, which comes to the fore especially in this section as we get lots and lots of constitutional wrangling, is that he has what I would call an American historian's narrow vision. Yeah, that's right! I went there!

So Hamilton apparently gave an insanely long speech at a confidential convention (so it's poorly documented) that is a Big Deal because many people have taken this speech as characteristic of Hamilton's real opinions, and not in a good way. I say "apparently" because Chernow approaches this event as someone who has read and re-read every two-bit Hamilton biography ever attempted: that is, he eagerly jumps into discussing this speech as something that obviously we all know is a big deal. I thought he could have done a better job with setting this up, but ok, whatever.

The thing that got me -- and it's not just Chernow I'm picking on here -- is that apparently Hamilton's suggestion of an "elective monarchy" is some huge unforgivable sin. R U SRS? Constitutional monarchy -- yeah, the hereditary kind -- remains a very respectable liberal goal in Europe for at least another hundred years. I really don't understand why it's so outrageous for Americans to be putting forward ideas that are really not that far off the wall in any context except comparing them to what actually happened and we've decided has worked and therefore, in retrospect, was "right". Or, okay, I can understand why people might feel this way, but I don't understand how people who call themselves historians can write history this way. (I may be a little tired and cranky as I write this. Or a lot tired and cranky.) It's bizarre. Chernow himself writes that "admiration for the British political system was still widespread" right in between calling Hamilton's proposal "atrociously misguided" and a "blunder". The last two judgments appear in the text as Chernow's own.

Anyway, I don't want to just be negative. I was gratified by Chernow's statement that "those who criticize Hamilton for having engaged in a propaganda exercise in The Federalist must reckon with the tremendous continuity that connects the Federalist essays to both his earlier and later writings" (257). This is the kind of judgment that I am happy to accept from him. Maybe it's just the weight of being further along in the book, but this thesis about consistency is convincing and a satisfying way to understand a life. Incidentally, this characterization is part of what makes the musical so great too.

In this section I kept thinking about Hamilton the auto-didact: has there ever been any other time in history when someone could be so well self-taught? I mean, in the 18th century not only were there low barriers to obtaining the latest and greatest in any field at all, but few enough barriers on someone who had actually taught it to himself instead of having a degree to certify it. I suppose part of it was that the system of academic disciplines we take for granted today hadn't formed yet. Men of the Enlightenment weren't studying economics; they were (or thought they were) simply observing trade and drawing conclusions. Anyone who could, could play along. Hamilton had quite worldly reasons for pursuing his advancement this way; he seems like the ideal type of the Enlightenment scholar but maybe with a little more unapologetically practical ambition.

Confession time: here's what I got. I didn't actually make it through Chapter Fourteen yet, which I'm kicking myself over because flipping ahead it looks pretty good. If it is, maybe I'll include it next week. And on that note, adieu until next week!

Your obedient servant

Just now noticing that the N in "Readalong" is retained from the original cover. Nice work.

It's the Hamilton Readalong with Alice! This week we're through chapter nine, and if I'm scandalized by the revelation that Baron von Steuben was a fake baron, I'm also delighted that Peggy Scuyler was way cooler than the musical lets on.

We get a fairly important thesis statement on page 158: "Hamilton's life was to be all of a piece... His views did not change greatly over time so much as expand in richness, depth, and scope." If you feel at all like Chernow is reading opinions or interpretations backward or forward in his subject's life this here would be why. I have to say, I am not used to reading biographies or history books written for the popular press, and I keep stopping to remind myself that this isn't an academic monograph. It still feels strange to have statements like this just thrown in, with all the argument to support it made implicit.

Chernow's research is deep but not wide, which frankly I think is the privilege of someone whose job it is to write giant award-winning bestsellers for the popular press. There are a lot of points in this book where I suspect something Chernow flags as unusual is actually rather common. For instance, on page 85, where he describes the newspaper boilerplate of "may hear something to his advantage" as a "cryptic sentence". Even stranger is page 129 where he breathlessly comments that "Hamilton must have been struck by the coincidence that his paternal grandfather, Alexander Hamilton, had also married an Elizabeth who was the daughter of a rich, illustrious man." Or... those are pretty common names? And again, page 170, this confusing little thing where Hamilton writes some essays and then, we are told, must have "lost or misplaced" them based on the fact that when they were published they were described as "lately recovered". Setting aside the fact that I do not understand what we are talking about here or why this is important, is there some reason to think this is a trustworthy publishing history? It's a strange detail.

A more extended example of this is the discussion of dueling on page 117 where it becomes clear that Chernow can't get past the idea that the practice was "anachronistic" and "a barbaric relic of a feudal age". It had been my understanding -- and five minutes of quick searching around has not turned up what I read that I'm thinking of -- that duelling enjoyed a resurgence in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Enlightenment's print culture brought with it a new codification of the procedure. In other words, it might have been "ancient" but it was also trendy. Like mason jars. Is there some reason why Hamilton would have thought of dueling in those negative terms? That to me is the question that really needs answering.

The big place where I find myself wanting more breadth is in Chernow's readings of personal letters. It might just be that I'm more skeptical than he is, but I read things like "Alexander's sincere entreaties that [James Hamilton] come to America" (148) or "in a poetic conceit that he often played with but never acted upon, he toyed with abandoning worldly pursuits to luxuriate in her company" (160), and I think: come on, man, exercise those critical faculties. Now, Chernow's readings deserve respect: reading a person's entire body of writing can give you an intuitive insight into what is unusual in someone's writing. It's probably the only way to be able to reliably draw evidence out of something like the appearance of someone's handwriting (not that I've seen Chernow make those kind of points so far, I don't think). And look -- all of us who have exchanged emails with a crush know the difficulties of interpreting the intentions behind a letter. But, even though it's not my specialty, I feel morally certain there must be a significant literature about 18th/19th century epistolary conventions and the interpretation of "flowery" language. Right? And yet the letters are so often taken at face value -- well, except for John Laurens. Chernow knows how to soft-pedal there.

I'm not "trashing" the book or questioning his conclusions; I'm just trying to identify what he's doing and not doing. Just to issue a disclaimer before you hit the comment box, it is after all almost literally my job to find the edges of what other people have done in order to find where questions can be fruitfully asked; in short, it's my job to criticize. People often approach popular histories in particular with a kind of good/bad attitude: is it good? is it trustworthy? What I'm seeing here is a book which gives us an extremely detailed view of one man's career and writings, but which is pretty thinly connected to anyone else's work on the time period more broadly which might provide us with context to interpret that life. In the bigger conversation, Chernow provides a characterization and a set of conclusions which can be debated using more specialist knowledge; especially since in this case he doesn't seem to have taken much notice of that specialist knowledge at all. That's scholarship: everyone putting their little specializations together.

This book is giving me a great refresher (*cough*) on the history of revolutionary America, which I don't think I've studied since high school. And even then, I sort of skipped that founding fathers bit because my American history class in Virginia glossed over it on the grounds that you'd get it all in your Virginia history and civics class the following year, which in my case was taught by a very young woman constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown. So I am learning a lot here.

And I did draw one heart in the margins in this section: "Hamilton could also be quite waspish about his chosen profession, telling Lafayette that he was busy 'rocking the cradle and studying the art of fleecing my neighbors'" (168). D'awwww.

I don't write like I'm running out of time, unfortunately.

Welcome folks! TO THE HAMILTON READ-A-LONG.

Hosted by Alice, this is where we all permit our love of what must be the most incredible piece of American art of the 21st century so far lead us into reading an absolute doorstopper of a book.

Unfortunately for me, in this first week we've pretty much covered the part of this story I was most curious about. Having special professional interest in the British empire, I was hoping for a juicy exploration of Hamilton's childhood in the Caribbean. Chernow's done good work with not much to go on -- the acknowledgments (at the end, but as every historian knows, worth skimming at the beginning) are an adventure in their own right, with a fleet of research assistants and helpful archivists on the various islands and at Kew (and in Denmark!), and hooray for that. Listening to the musical, I could hear exciting echoes of the live-fast-die-young planter mentality, and I was gratified to find the biography describing this environment as a key influence.

I did frown a bit at: "Appropriately enough, this boy destined to be America's foremost Anglophile entered the world as a British subject, born on a British isle, in the reign of George II" (17). Uh?? Is this not true of all the founding fathers?? I mean, I know the American colonies are Special and Touched by Destiny and all?? Granted that I could have dwelt on this part of Hamilton's life for twice as many pages; but nevertheless I thought the weakest aspect of this part was the lack of consideration given to the question of British Atlantic identity. This is an open question among scholars, as far as I know; that is, the extent to which any given white colonist from Virginia or New York might have regarded a white colonist from Jamaica or Barbados as a foreigner; but while those differences were clearly acknowledged, I would hesitate to assume that they were a big deal to any particular person at the time. It's evident even from these chapters the degree to which people were circulating. I guess I would have liked to see a little more engagement with the issue of imperial identities here although one always hesitates to make such criticisms of EIGHT HUNDRED PAGE BOOKS.


One point of characterization I struggled with a bit was Chernow's description of Hamilton as fearing anarchy; "he would always be an uneasy and reluctant revolutionary," says Chernow (46). Indeed, "Hamilton would have preferred a stately revolution, enacted decorously in courtrooms and parliamentary chambers by gifted orators in powdered wigs" (65). Really? This sat a little awkwardly with the all-out, slash-and-burn rhetoric for me. This guy did not seem worried about disturbing the peace, and he certainly jumps into the war with gusto. However, I was struck by the account Hamilton wrote of the attack on Rivington's print shop for the St Croix newspaper, particularly this: that the mob "put an entire stop to his business, and reduced him at upwards of 50 years of age to the sad necessity of starting the world again" (qtd 69). Chernow describes this as "horror at such mob disorder" and that it is, but I might put a little finer point on it and say that this was a man intimately familiar with how precarious life could be, and what it meant to lose your livelihood. When you're swept up with anger, it's easy to cheer when someone who "deserves it" loses their job or has their business shut down. I wonder if Hamilton was the person who couldn't help but be aware of the long-term suffering that would follow. Would he have preferred a talking revolution? I find that hard to believe, but it seems like an entirely likely outcome of his background in the West Indies that he would be preternaturally conscious of what could be lost, and the need to preserve one's income (or the nation's income). Most people in the 18th century lived fairly precarious lives -- thus the importance of observing conventions and maintaining social networks -- but the West Indies always had a reputation for being particularly brutal for life's losers. Gentlemen with large estates could trust that land would always have value, and rest on a hazy confidence in their own self-sufficiency. Anyone from the West Indies would know that utter ruin and destitution was a real thing and it could happen to you.

So that's the first hundred pages down, and mainly what I've learned is that the musical is delightfully true to Chernow's research. So 700 more pages OR just listen to the musical another fifty times.

...

Oh fine, I'll keep reading.

A good old-fashioned murderbook

I have to admit that when I hear the word "academic" used with a negative connotation, it makes me feel a little downhearted. I get that not everyone enjoys school things, but I have always enjoyed school things and even when a subject seems narrow or uninteresting to me, I enjoy enough niche things to appreciate other people's interest. And then all my close college friends went to grad school (I think 50% of the people at my 21st birthday have now finished their PhDs), and my own department is so friendly that I've had remarkably little exposure to conniving, petty, self-important types. Plus, a lot of grad students develop awesome hobbies and side projects in grad school (not me, I'm lame). When I think "academics" I think adorably nerdy people who are about as intimidating as a muppet.

And when I think "academic books" my heart warms, because what is better than an academic book? Academic books have a clearly defined focus, they delve deeply into their subjects, and they provide you with all the information you need to judge them -- or if they don't, then there's your assessment right there. But I appreciate that for plenty of people none of this is true, and alas, "academic", which is a rather accurate descriptor for me, is not a positive for the general public.

All of this is a long lead-in to an excellent book that strikes a happy medium between academic and general interest. The University of Chicago Press has clearly pulled out the stops to make Blood Runs Green: The Murder that Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago accessible for the general book-reading public. It's very reasonably priced, for one thing, and has a catchy title. It has maps, illustrations, a cast of characters, and a glossary. There are no superscript footnotes, and the technical parts of the introduction (historiography, methodology) have been pulled out and placed in a separate section at the end. It starts with an attention-grabbing introduction and carries on from there. Very easy to read. At the same time, it's well researched and all those important citations are there as endnotes, formatted in a gratifyingly efficient way for those of us who like that kind of thing. Seriously, I hate endnotes but these are very easy to use.

The book itself, as the subtitle suggests, tells the story of a sensational murder that took place in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. It's very much a narratively-driven book: it introduces the players, describes the victim's disappearance, the discovery of the body, investigation, and trial, before concluding with some considerations about the legacy and impact of the case. Now, murders are fairly interesting in themselves, but this was a case of a member of a secret Irish republican society being bumped off by his rivals within the group, so the story encompasses terrorism and financial misdeeds as well as nationalism and racism. Oh! And also the interplay of the press and the justice system. There's a lot here, is what I'm saying, but it's all straightforward and readable. If you like historical murder things -- and I know you do -- you'll like this.

(PS. I am delighted to find I already have a tag for "murder".)

Haven't we had enough voting this week? -or- Waiting for Goodreads to send my dang sticker

I don't really use Goodreads. I like the scanning of barcodes part (who wouldn't; except probably someone who spends their working days doing that anyway) and I like the idea of having this automagically generated report of what I've read. Furthermore it can be fun and rewarding to enter my page progress. But I don't write reviews, I hate doing stars, I don't really add people as friends, and it's a lot less cool to log in and see what I've abandoned or stalled out on. (Is there a good way to "finish" a book in the sense of quitting it? I haven't played around with it much, but Goodread's interface seems kind of inflexible compared to my usual patterns of reading, which involve a lot of not-reading.)

However, in addition to being a place where people can apparently carry on utterly pointless feuds, Goodreads is a place where you can click on buttons to vote for Book(s) Of The Year. I saw some chatter on Twitter that one book I definitely support had been nominated so I dusted off my log-in and cast my vote. Then I started looking for other books to vote for. When I didn't see any other books I've read as nominees I started thinking up write-in candidates.

And that's more or less when I realized how little I read in the year it's been published. There are a few things, notably Pioneer Girl, that I've read and liked and which qualify. One book, I really wanted to vote for it but the site wouldn't let me. Since I live in a pig sty studio apartment it was sitting in arm's reach, and I checked the publication date: 2014! Or no, wait, 2012; the US hardback came out in 2013 and the paperback in 2014. So fine, you win, Goodreads.

Since academics are slow, and since this is the centenary year, I think The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 still qualifies as a new book, though. It certainly qualifies as a book you should read. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you want one book to read for the centenary, this is it. That's not a very original opinion; this book has gotten a lot of praise. July 1914 is a quicker, pacier read (and has bigger type), and is essentially narrative, whereas Clark goes broader and deeper, exploring various factors and facets of the prewar world in a more explicitly analytical way. If you are really getting serious about the topic (reading two books qualifies), I strongly recommend getting hold of the review essay by John Deak published in the June 2014 Journal of Modern History titled "The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: the Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War." Most academic libraries, I dare say, have some sort of public provision if you want it, and Deak's review of Austrian history and historiography is invaluable.

Anyway, back to the book. The first chapter of The Sleepwalkers is an overview of Serbian politics in the nineteenth century, which is such an amazing, mindblowing, perfect choice I can, indeed, hardly even. Chapter two then deals with Austria-Hungary and its internal politics. Clark sets the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary front and center, takes it seriously, and is never too eager to sweep it aside in favor of great-power conflicts that must obviously be the real truth. One of the simple but excellent insights here is the way Clark chooses to make an analogy between the Serbian nationalists of the 1910s and modern terrorist organizations. That kind of thing can be tenuous, and at any rate it's liable to become dated, but in this case it's convincing and moreover an extremely effective way to quickly get the reader into the scene. The second section, chapters three through six, treats the international political situation not simply as a matter of international relations or the interaction of policy but a messy tangle of individuals often working at cross-purposes. This is a theme that will resonate with the July 1914 book, but Clark goes into much more detail, focusing country by country with subheadings like "Who Governed in St Petersburg?" and "Who Governed in Paris?" This section deals with a lot of different themes and theories that appear in "1914" literature, so you get wonderful little passages like "A Crisis of Masculinity?" (Side note: Christopher Clark must be superhuman, for all that he's able to cover in this book.) Finally, in the third section, we get back to the July crisis proper. This section covers familiar ground but is able to draw on all the consideration of the preceding 360 pages to really supercharge the narrative.

Guys, I'm fawning over this book, which is so uncool and gets one nowhere in one's career, but whatevs. It's amazing the level of research here and even more amazing how effortlessly it's put across. I put this in my suitcase when I went to Rome this summer, even though it takes up a significant amount of space, simply because I couldn't put it down. It's a long book, I know, but if you like reading history I guarantee you will love this, and however far you get into it you will get a lot out of it.

Love and cynicism in a cautiously optimistic place

I have sprinted through two books in the last five days, and it feels good.

The Exiles Return is a book I first became aware of through Persephone but appears to have been published last year by Picador ("appears" = this library copy was published by Picador with a copyright date of 2013) (I am like Sherlock Holmes with the deduction). The Persephone description is really (too?) detailed, but what it shares with the Picador edition is its emphasis on the historical place of the book, the circumstances in which it was written and the historical situation it depicts.

This isn't all that surprising. Exiles is a posthumously published novel about 1950s Vienna, written by a woman with personal and family experience of that city at that time. Early in the book, a character returning to Vienna for the first time after the war arrives by train and is shocked by what he sees:

Formerly, there had been a long and high, cavernous, glazed-in hall into which the trains used to glide; it was old-fashioned, dingy, and yet somehow sumptuously dignified like the well-worn attire of a high-born elderly spinster who has clothed herself once and for all in her best and scorned to change her style. But now there was just -- nothing: an open space where the bombed wreckage of the old station had been cleared away; stacks of building material, steel girders and concrete mixers for the new modern station under construction. Adler experienced a violent sense of shock. It was his first actual contact with the fact to which he had hitherto not given much thought: that not everything would look the same -- or be the same -- as it had looked and been when he left it. I shall have to learn the lesson of the Western Station, he though, and this phrase, repeated silently many times in the coming months, summed up and symbolised for him the situations and experiences he would be having to deal with in the course of his attempt at repatriation.

 Given that it's Vienna, the baggage here isn't just the Second World War, but also Nazism and the Anschluss, as well as the end of Austria-Hungary. The descriptions and blurbs are right: the book does capture a uniquely complex time and place well. There are some passages and incidents -- like the one above -- that really bring the setting alive. Interestingly, I felt that the overtly "historical" aspect of the book slid to the background as it went on (although it never really goes away, of course; it's the setting and creates some of the conditions for the denouement). Again, I don't really like this kind of strawman hypothetical, but I think this is the difference between someone writing a novel about a situation they lived through rather than sitting down to write a historical novel about an Important Time: the latter sort of book would probably keep historically-significant set pieces at the center.

All that being said... and I am not confident of this judgment so let me know what you think if you've read this book... I'm not sure this is all that great a novel. I mean it's fine, I liked it. But the plotlines in the second half were a little meh for me, and I'm not sure Marie-Theres in particular ever really made all that much sense to me as a character. Maybe there's a reason why all the summaries of this book stress the historical side. Or maybe I just read it too fast. (Eee, that's a possibility this time! *flexes muscles*)

It's beautiful outside! Let's talk about CALAMITY

The first thing to say about this book (Sean McMeekin's July 1914 -- I have this feeling that half the posts I write don't actually identify what I'm talking about) is that it came from Powell's Books, and they are awesome. When I went to see (online) how much this newly published hardcover book might cost, I noticed that Powell's had a used copy listed at a respectable discount. Sweet! So I ordered it. What arrived, however, was a brand NEW book with an adorable note saying that the used copy was no longer on the shelf and so they'd sent me a new one. That is thoroughly awesome.

shiny and eager!

So, on to the content of the book. In my world, the fact that this year marks the centenary of the start of the First World War is a really big unmissable deal, and this book, July 1914, is one of many that have been published for the occasion.

McMeekin's account of the July Crisis that led to the declaration(s) of war has several distinct features. For one, it is almost entirely focused on the highest reaches of government and diplomacy. There are a few mentions of public outcry, public reaction, etc, but mostly it keeps to the point: the men who had the power to actually make or influence the decisions about war and peace. Toward the end of the story, there are mentions of "rumors" and "reports" of border crossings and skirmishes which McMeekin dismisses as "mostly false" without much explanation of what's going on here; but you can't fault the guy for sticking to his own can of historical worms and not opening another. (I'll return to this below.)

Most of the book consists of day-by-day chapters, with a few covering overnight periods. Helpfully, there is a "dramatis personae" in the front of the book as well as a summary timeline. The really delightful thing is that McMeekin is meticulous -- like, meticulous -- with his sources. Time and again his analysis slows down to take into account the time a message was decided on, composed, approved, encrypted, sent, arrived, decoded, (possibly translated,) delivered to, and read by various people. I am totally serious when I say that this is THRILLING. Not just because I am a document nerd, but also because it allows the book to retain suspense even when you know all along that everything's going to end in disaster. McMeekin is not telling a story of dominoes falling but of a constantly shifting landscape in which people are choosing from the options they see on the table, based on the options they wish they saw or hope will be made available to them shortly.

One of the themes of the book is thus communications. McMeekin is constantly pointing out where people are making decisions based on bad, outdated or ambiguous information. (This is where I think it could have been proper to discuss the "rumors" that start to factor into decision- and excuse-making at the start of August. But as I say, that's a whole 'nother kind of research, and McMeekin is quite within his rights to leave it alone!) Individual diplomats and politicians tell lies, make unintentionally misleading statements, deliberately leave their answers vague, send cables at the worst possible times and choose exactly the wrong words. I kept thinking about the speed of modern communications as I read this book, and wondering whether we might consider that to be a factor in the crisis.

McMeekin's book prior to this one is titled The Russian Origins of the First World War which might give you a sense of some of his conclusions here. He firmly refutes the idea that the Germans had some special predilection for war, for instance, and argues convincingly that France and Russia were just as guilty of underhanded war mongering as Austria or Germany. In fact, in McMeekin's view, Germany is often disadvantaged by being too honest and rule-abiding, where her enemies are lying and sneaking around and thus saving face. The epilogue contains a straightforward discussion of blame -- which is nice; by that point I was ready to hear how the author would make his judgements.

Perhaps what comes across most of all is human frailty. These men all have their own weaknesses and interests, not all tied to the national interest (however that might be construed). Fear and anxiety, not least over reputation and one's own political future, all play a role in what gets said, when, and in what tone. I don't have an in-depth knowledge of this subject (the July Crisis or the First World War) so I can only judge the book so far; but I thought it was very worthwhile and informative. Above all, this note of human frailty, so effectively conveyed by a focus on the nitty-gritty and practical aspects of diplomatic communications, is an important counterpoint to easy generalizations about national interest and national character. Fathers Day (also Mothers Day -- #FEMINISM) is coming up, and if a War Book is something that qualifies as a good gift in your household, this is a solid choice. It's a bit complex -- there are a lot of names, and sometimes German diplomats have French-sounding surnames and so on -- but I really was surprised how it sucked me in in spite of that, and it ended up being a compelling read. So maybe not the best choice for my dad, who spends a lot of time in airports waiting for flights (to be cancelled) (poor dad), but for a dad who does lots of reading in an armchair. But YDMV.

And what do YOU think?

Alice talked me into going to Open Books a few weeks ago when I was in Chicago for a wedding. I tried to say no, in my defense. And then I wasn't going to buy anything and then I found something I wanted, and then I bought a whole stack of things (= three) because it's Just Wrong to put $5 on a credit card... although then it turned out I had cash. But I bought all the things anyway.

Reference not intended, but I'll take it

So what set me off on this downward spiral? Well, it was a fairly snazzy purple copy of The Book of the Courtier. I'd just come down from an informal reunion at my alma mater so I was feeling susceptible to purple. And then it was nice and new -- there's a post-it note with a few series of page numbers stuck in the front, and lo! there are no books so pristine as those bought by slacker college students.

Why this rando when there's actually an extant portrait of the author?

The Book of the Courtier -- and I suppose there's some deep scholarly reason why Norton has the author's name spelled "Baldasar" and not "Baldassare" -- is what I think of as a Social Studies book. It's something I've mostly encountered for its historical* value and have probably even had as an ID at some point along the line. I took almost no literature classes in college, but I would assume it probably gets discussed in that context too.

I was rather pleasantly surprised with how well the text flows. The format is a kind of courtly debate or discussion: as a "game", the gentlemen of the court are directed to propose and then debate the various skills and qualities that would be possessed by a hypothetical Perfect Courtier. Of course this is all very formal and stylized, and nothing like what we would now call "natural", but Castiglione is very successful at portraying the give and take of a conversation, and the different ways that people express their opinions.

Probably my least favorite aspect of the book was the real estate devoted to "examples" of funny stories. Humor: it doesn't translate across languages or time periods very well. But of course even I can see how this book has a lot to tell us about the culture that produced it. If anything, this historical angle was even a little distracting.

I didn't read the articles in the back because, who's gonna make me?, but I did skim through the one by the improbably named Amedeo Quondam about the origin of the text, and learned how well documented the writing process is. Like, they have the rough drafts and have been able to identify different people's handwriting in the margins. Pretty cool, to say the least.

If I were Alice I would throw in some kind of random GIF here to close this out but... I'm not... so I'm just going to back away awkwardly...

Another post in the books.


*Bah, I really had to stop myself typing "world-historical" there.

Pull up a carpet sample and gather round

Boys and girls, I have a very special book to share with you today!

I've mentioned before, I think, my interest in the Bayeux Tapestry. Well, this is essentially a picture book for adults about the Bayeux Tapestry.

The author, Jan Messent, is an embroiderer, who discusses the tapestry (or "tapestry") as a piece of embroidery: she uses a close examination of the design to propose her theories about how it was created. She extrapolates from her own experience as a stitcher and from contemporary mentions of textile production to construct the whole story of the creation of the tapestry. It's precisely up my alley. The book itself is oversized, exactly like a picture book, and features whole-page drawings in full color, with handwritten text (the second half of the book consists of the text typewritten in slightly larger font on a white background, which is very considerate of those who might have difficulty reading the handwriting).

Messent points out that most writing about the Bayeux Tapestry is focused on the politics of the piece and on the men who commissioned and are depicted in it. In several places she is able to point out how understanding the embroidery process can help clear up discrepancies without a whole lot of complex theories. The culmination of the book is a stunning reconstruction of the missing eight feet -- yes, eight feet. I spent a lot of time peering at the photos before I turned the page and found that the publishers had provided close up photos (heh). A section of her reconstruction is pictured there on the cover.

One of the "problems" in understanding the production of the tapestry is that here you have conquered women embroidering the story of their menfolk's defeat, which tends to make the women seem sort of weak and/or disloyal. Messent argues that women of the time would have been able to acknowledge military prowess and victory without necessarily thinking the worse of their own men. I thought she could have stressed a little more the expertise and skill of large-scale narrative embroidery. She lays out the evidence that big wall-hangings like this were a fairly standard way of commemorating victory, like commissioning a statue or something. In that kind of environment, it seems like it wouldn't be all that strange, in the grand scheme of things, that the losing side would end up depicting their loss, especially given the limits of communication. (And weren't English women known throughout Europe for their embroidery? That must come later.) I thought, at any rate, that there was room to claim that perhaps, in that society, it would have been fairly unremarkable that Anglo-Saxon women, as skilled artisans, would be asked to depict the Norman conquest, rather than the big insult some male authors have apparently interpreted it as. I should probably stop there as this isn't my period by a long shot. I did think one of her most important observations was that many Anglo-Saxon noblewomen displaced by the invasion fled into convents, and very probably ended up pitching in on the tapestry. If you imagine nuns (used to producing commissioned needlework) working side-by-side with noblewomen (used to producing needlework for the glory of their own families), it helps to explode the simplistic question "how did the women feel about it?"

I thought there was a slight gap in the book in that there was very little discussion of the replicas that have been made of the tapestry. That's probably just me thinking in terms of a literature review, though.

Perhaps one of the most striking things about Messent's book is that although she did go to see the original, she had no special access to it. In fact she researched the tapestry mostly through books; which I think really shows how far practical knowledge helps in something like this!

All told, this is probably one of the more satisfying books I've bought in a while. It's perfect for sitting cross-legged on the bed... with a cup of tea or hot chocolate... maybe a cookie? I felt like I ought to have a stuffed animal under each arm. Which is pretty high praise.

Mysteries and tote bags bring the drama

Republishing formerly-popular books seems to have become a Thing, and I am 110% on board with it (as you'll see from the many posts I make in the next few months about books like this). It's historically interesting to read something written in another era, and doubly so if the book was popular when first published; plus there's that added dash of intrigue if the book has since gone out of print.

And supposing we were to add foreignness to this already-irresistible equation? Ooh la la.

I bought The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume at Daunt Books, which is almost always included on lists of interesting London bookstores. Located in the rather trendy Marylebone area, it's old and gorgeous and so on -- I don't want to steal other people's pictures, but if you Google Image search it, you'll see what I mean.

Daunt totebags are very popular at the British Library. I like to imagine that the readers putting their things in the lockers are composing catty little monologues worthy of a fashion week runway show audience. What, did she buy that Daunt tote this morning? That's right, bitch, I bought mine in '95, get a good look. A British Library tote at the British Library? Well aren't you just a delicate creative soul. Ooh, the beach umbrella Strand tote - that's a bold choice. Personally, I carry the Pride & Prejudice tote from Out of Print, a Christmas gift from my BFF. Thank you Laura! I feel like I can hold my own amongst the lit types now.
 

Haters to the left.

Aside from being pretty and whatnot, Daunt bills itself as a "travel" bookshop, and probably 60-70% of the store is arranged by countries, with travel guides, maps, essay collections, and fiction shelved together. Yes, it's pretty darn cool, and it makes you want to read lots of things from countries you don't usually read things from. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is an 1886 Australian mystery novel set in Melbourne. Yes please.

The book is the sort of thing that makes me think, "ah, so this is why the Sherlock Holmes stories are such classics." It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's not particularly great. I know there's always a fair amount of angst about "the canon" and what gets called a classic and so, and certainly I'd never say that The Classics are the only books worth reading or anything like that -- if for no other reason than that people ought to read whatever they particularly like -- but at the same time, some books definitely stand the test of time better than others.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is one of those books that features a lot of Victorian angst. Why yes, I do have a good example:

But when Frettlby turned to go to the door, Madge, who had her eyes fixed on the doctor's face, saw how grave it was.
     "There is danger," she said, touching his arm as they paused, for a moment, at the door.
     "No! No!" he answered hastily.
     "Yes, there is," she persisted. "Tell me the worst, it is best for me to know."
     The doctor looked at her in some doubt for a few moments, and then placed his hand on her shoulder. "My dear young lady," he said gravely, "I will tell you what I have not dared to tell your father."
     "What?" she asked in a low voice, her face growing pale.
     "His heart is affected."
     "And there is great danger?"
     "Yes, great danger. In the event of any sudden shock--" he hesitated.
     "Yes -"
     "He would probably drop down dead."
     "God!"

BUM DUM DUM!!

The plot is plot is pretty contrived and the ending is fairly ridiculous -- moral of the story, kids: as long as secrets stay secret, everyone is much happier -- but it's entertaining enough. You know how people sometimes use the word "workmanlike" as kind of a diss for artistic things (I think they do anyway)? I kept thinking that the writing in this book was pretty workmanlike. The characters and the plot points clicked along but there wasn't an enormous amount of feeling to it. Lots of very convenient coincidences, people collapsing and throwing themselves at other peoples' feet as the story demands, that kind of thing. Again, it sort of shines a light on why, of all the Victorian detective fiction, Sherlock Holmes has endured. (Which reminds me that another curious feature of the story is that there are two detectives, one in the first and one in the second half of the case, and they aren't actually all that central. Is the star detective a development in the genre?)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I didn't buy it because I thought it was going to be the most thrilling mystery I'd ever read: I bought it because I was intrigued by its being Australian. For the most part the local color doesn't come in until the second half of the book, but it's there in spades. If nothing else, the solution to the mystery hinges on a contrast between the wild old days of the colony and the more respectable contemporary society. But there are little digressions that stress the "John Bull" character of the Australians and also discuss the backwardness of the weather and so on. And there's a foray (of course) into Melbourne's equivalent of Seven Dials:

If there is one thing which the Melbourne folk love more than another, it is music, their fondness for which is only equalled by their admiration for horse racing. Any street band which plays at all decently may be sure of a good audience, and a substantial remuneration for their playing. Some writer has described Melboune as Glasgow, with the sky of Alexandria, and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon.
     In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clarke regarding the future Australian, which he describes as being 'a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship,' it is more likely that he will be a cultured, indolent individual, with an intense appreciation of the arts and sciences, and a dislike to hard work and utilitarian principles. Climatic influence should be taken into account with regard to the future Australian, and our posterity will be no more like us than the luxurious Venetians resembled their hardy forefathers, who first started to build on those lonely sandy islands of the Adriatic.
     This was the conclusion Mr Calton arrived at as he followed his guide through the crowded streets, and saw with what deep interest the crowd listened to the rhythmic strains of Strauss and the sparkling melodies of Offenbach. The brilliantly lit street, with the never ceasing stream of people pouring along; the shrill cries of the street Arabs, the rattle of vehicles, and the fitful strains of music, all made up a scene which fascinated him, and he could have gone on wandering all night, watching the myriad phases of human character constantly passing beneath his eyes.

I am assuming that this book has featured in some kind of academic work, although my quick JSTOR search didn't turn anything up.

Anyway, on the whole, even though I did not discover a new favorite piece of fiction, this book was quite entertaining, intentionally and unintentionally.

Go on, cue up the Beyonce

One of the sub-sub-topics on one of my minor exams had to do with marital status as an analytic category in women's history, and one of my classmates must have known about that (probably I was venting loudly about it in the hallway at some point) because he sent me the information for this book in November. He kindly introduced it as something I would have already read; in fact I'd never heard of it. I read the introduction and the first chapter on the Ebrary software at our library, and was immediately drawn in. If you've ever had to endure Ebrary (or eBrary or whatever), you'll know it must have been good for me to read essentially two chapters rather than reading two pages and smashing my fist through the screen. Seriously, you know how Blackboard seems to have been designed in a world where Angelfire is cutting edge? Ebrary is worse, somehow.

(Before I move on, I want to register a complaint about the Kindle version: namely that it sucks. The chapters aren't marked, so you can't toggle forward, and whenever I click "previous page" it beams me back about five pages for some reason. Granted, my Kindle is starting to get slightly elderly and has started to do weird things, but I'm blaming this on the actual book. Which, FYI, cost me $10. Less than cool.)

I have a couple of historian's quibbles, which I suppose boil down to saying I would have done things differently. The author doesn't ignore class, but I thought at several points it could have been handled more explicitly. For instance, her descriptions of prewar expectations are pretty much limited to the debutante experience. The experience of different classes are there and acknowledged for the most part, but they're woven together, presumably because the author thinks the similarities are more important than the differences; a point I might take issue with, or if I agreed, it's a point I would be arguing as a new circumstance of the 1920s.

Which leads directly into my second criticism, which is that the presentation of change over time is also a little flat. The changes in the importance/perception/experience of marital status of the 1920s, however much directly caused by the First World War, were nevertheless part of longer shifts in the way people thought about sex, religion, family, etc. The book has a tendency to paint a sort of "before and after" picture that glosses over the particular development of ideas and trends. In many cases, being more specific would have helped her point (at least for me). Ironically, the "before and after" tactic actually muddles the changes in a lot of cases since her evidence doesn't always fit that sort of stark contrast. It's hard for me to describe this, but I felt on the whole that I was mentally supplying or clarifying a lot of the context.

And one very specific nitpick: there's a whole chapter about single women's attitude toward motherhood, which makes much reference to Victorian and Boer War-era notions about women as breeders, but manages to completely ignore the enormous attention paid to the children of dead soldiers in the 1920s! That's quite an oversight. And now that I think about it, there's no explicit mention of eugenic ideas either, even when she's talking about those ideas in relation to the Boer War. Basically what I'm saying is, this chapter completely drops the ball.

To be honest -- I'm only halfway through the book. It's starting to drag, it's felt repetitive for a while now (although this could easily just be me; clearly I have issues), and although Kindle assures me I'm right in the middle it's... daunting to imagine that. By far, the book's best asset is its source base; the author has pulled together an amazing range of first-hand accounts, many from very lowly women whose lives, trust me on this, are often hard to uncover. I'm dying to get to the bibliography. Curse you Kindle!

It's the anecdotes that are worthwhile. For the single woman (or at least, for me) it's interesting and even a little heartening to realize that people are people, and that many of the struggles single women (I) face today are things that women lived through back then. Many of the emotions experienced and strategies pursued are things that seem very relatable and even familiar today. Of course, loads of important things have changed, but the core drama of these women's lives is perfectly recognizable. Even if you read the book and think, "she's crazy pathetic, I don't identify with this at all," well, the book would really shed light on the various advantages of the present. (And stop judging me!) The book is full of really fascinating people, and in more than one case I wanted to find and read the whole biography being cited.

So by all means, obtain and then consume this book.* I would recommend getting it in paperback, which would make it easier to skim -- and check the bibliography. But I feel compelled to note that it fails more than it succeeds to really say anything about the interwar period or the way "singleness" developed as a result of the First World War. Then again, I haven't finished it, so take that as you will.

* Trying to change up my vocabulary.