Chateaubriand

The NYRB before last (Vol.LXV, No.7) had quite a good crop in it. A number of interesting essays built on books about current affairs. Plus a number of others which got the credit card twitching - but not out. Not enough quality time to go round.

Prairie Fires

Prairie Fires: The American Dream of Ingallis Wilder. Caroline Fraser.

I had vaguely known about the 'Little House on the Prairie' books and the TV series spun therefrom, but that was about all. A sort of United States version of the 'Anne of Green Gables' stories from Canada, about which I knew rather more (see reference 2). No real surprise that the much loved, saccharin series on the television should be some degrees away from a rather more complicated truth. Including the tribes getting angry about the white reneging on their agreements and stealing even more land; robbery with violence even.

Clement Attlee

Clement Attlee: The Man who Made Modern Britain. John Bew.

A man whom I had thought was master of the backrooms, the master of the committee room and consummate master of ceremonies at the Cabinet, adept at keeping his various prima donnas under control.

But it seems that he was rather more than that. Penultimate man off the beaches of Gallipoli. Backed Churchill at a time when it made a difference. Stockpiler of chlorine against the possibility of a German landing after Dunkirk. Enthusiastic backer of the use of the atomic bomb in Japan. Enthusiastic backer of the war in Korea - a war which we could not afford, never mind the rights and wrongs of the matter - with the resultant bout of austerity quite possibly costing him the 1951 election.

Hamlet

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness. Rhodri Lewis.

A play which was not particularly well-liked when first written, in no less than three versions. Three versions which have accounted for much learned ink in their time.

But a play which became particularly well-liked and which has been subject to reinterpretation by each successive wave of players and critics. Reinterpretations which, in some part at least, reflect their own interests, problems and preoccupations. Which is true, I suppose, of more or less any well known and long lived work of art. The reviewer offers the observation that his students would treat any talk of the Oedipus complex with derision.

Also that the rather sombre tone of the analysis might reflect the collapse of funding for Shakespearean studies in US universities - which I had always thought awash with money for this sort of thing, at least by our standards here in the UK. The home, after all, of the Folger Collection of Shakespeare memorabilia (reference 3) and a long list of bardic festivals (reference 4).

Sombre in that on this account, Hamlet is a play about the failure of humanism and its values in the face of the rough and tumble, the often crude realpolitik of the real world. So a play for our time.

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave - François-René de Chateaubriand - in a new translation by Alex Andriesse.

A reminder that this book exists, forgotten since the time of reference 1. So this post named for a book which I may get around to looking at again.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/chateaubriant.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=green+gables.

Reference 3: https://www.folger.edu/.

Reference 4: http://www.bardweb.net/theatres.html.

Reference 5: https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/. The challenge from Stratford, Ontario: no longer exclusively bardic, but with a good dose of same.