Book Commentary
February 7, 2002
By Michael
Jeezus, where did the time go? Well, there's no excuse and I do apologize to any of you folks out there who have been checking here and, you know, there's absolutely nothing new.
Well, there's lots of new stuff in here since August, of course, but especially in January, when about nine boxes of good, mostly scholarly non-fiction came in all at once. Amongst other things, a very attractive paperback of Irish legend published by Faber and Faber: Over Nine Waves. These are fine retellings by Marie Healey, and have pleased such as Colm Toibin and Nuala Ni Dhomhaill. At least, so claims the back cover. No, really, they read better than the Penguin collection, well, the Penguin collection reads aloud well; it's sorta like the difference between Sir Thomas Malory and Rosemary Sutcliffe. If you know what I mean.
Also on Faber is a book on those preserved bodies they find in various marshes in western Europe. The Bog People, by P.V. Glob (I'm not making this up) has lots of interesting photos and is a good introduction to the subject. Neither of these two books are in that little bitty paperback format; no, they are of a nice and comfortable size. Just the thing to read in bed.
Boy, did we get a lot of history, especially Early Modern. I really had to keep my mitts off of those. Here's a history of the relationship between Spain and Hispanic America by Carlos Fuentes, called Buried Mirror. Beautifully illustrated and well-written, a fine refutation to the old quip about the Spanish American Empire as having no history other than its beginning and ending. Along with Diaz' purported "Poor Mexico; so far from God, so near to the United States." Fuentes' book (this is what we're talking about, isn't it?) is of a good heft, nice Velasquez on the cover, print isn't too small. But too heavy to read in bed.
And speaking of heft, they don't make them like they used to at Oxford any more. I've recently been given a copy of Strachan's History of the First World War, just the first volume and still clocking in at over a thousand pages, still the familiar Oxford blue boards but lacking the Oxford arms on the spine. What is the world coming to. I always found that comforting, if only to glance up on the shelf. We have a slightly worn copy of C.S. Lewis' grand old English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, the 1954 edition, no dustwrapper but shield still prominently on the spine. It's right next to George Steiner's After Babel, in the Literary Criticism section. The Steiner is paperback, also Oxford; first published back in 1975, it was the first novel look at the process of translation since the eighteenth century. And I think this is the first copy in paperback I've ever seen.
Finally, one day when Scott was here all on his lonesome there arrived a whole box of books on film. You know, cinema. So I had to find room to make a film section. Oh, the horrors of the used book trade. This book, Hall of Mirrors, Art and Film Since 1945, is a big, slick exploration of the relationship between cinema and the visual arts since the war. It came out in conjunction with a exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, in 1996. And its bigger, but not heavier, than the Carlos Fuentes.
Over Nine Waves, A Book of Irish Legends, by Marie Heaney. Faber and Faber, 1994. $9.
The Bog People, Iron Age Man Preserved, by P.V. Glob. Faber and Faber, 1998. $10.
The Buried Mirror, Reflections on Spain and the New World, by Carlos Fuentes. Houghton Mifflin, 1992. $26.
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century by C.S. Lewis. Oxford, 1954. $40.
After Babel, Aspects of Language & Translation by George Steiner. Oxford, 1998. $15.
Hall of Mirrors, Art and Film Since 1945, organized by Kerry Brougher. MOCA Monacelli, 1996. $40.