I decided to keep account of the books I've been reading, mostly for my own records, partly to resharpen my writing skills, and partly for the benefit of you, the viewer, who may trip on something in here you will really enjoy. We start with the last two months, but, of course, I already am behind thirty years.
The last update of the Pynchon section here mentioned Pynchon's fifth novel as being due, though previous pranks have been perpetrated. But indeed, Mason & Dixon arrived at bookstores in 1997.
There is a Moran home page which is, if not official, at least morally supported by the author; enough so that they have a draft up of the first chapter of the next Continuing Time novel, The AI War. Great site, check it out. Sadly, until DKM gets a new publisher, this is the only place you will see it.
Best quote: ""
Best quote: "My dogs wear my collars."
Welcome to England's Golden Age, where the courtiers know their place: those who forget, and wear a, say, French medal in the presence of their Queen, are reminded by Her Majesty's august self. Hibbert spurns pure chronology and deep political history to concentrate on the character of a great British monarch, giving enough information to place the lay reader; he begins, for example, with the marriage and death of Arthur, older brother to Henry VIII.
Elizabeth was a great Godfather-like treatment of her story, but the truth is sometimes even more brutal. From lazy aristocrats "pissing in chimnies" to the solitary death of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, fallen out of circulation at the court he loved to brighten due to ill health. The queen, though saddened at his death, preferred, as did he, the young and beautiful, and her court. Though she had often flown to his bedside whenever his hypochondria flared up, she did not wish to witness his fading away.
In other wise, Elizabeth was a scholar, a beer snob, fond of silk stockings, and a worse clotheshorse and gifthound than Nancy Reagan was ever rumoured to be. Ministers like Walsingham and Burghley flattered and fought her, withholding bad news lest she equivocate on political reversals or procrastinate executions even as they wore cameos of her in witness to their devotion and service. She, on her part, reserved her womanly right to change her mind partly from honest doubt, partly to test her ministers' true minds, and partly to keep everyone a bit defensive and confused.
Other odd facts include the Anglicans refusing to declare themselves separate from the Roman church, only refusing to acknowledge the claimed primacy of His Holiness the Bishop of Rome. It was a politic move, though destined to fail, until perhaps recently when Rome met in friendly concourse with Canterbury. I am currently reading Lady Antonia Fraser's Cromwell and the difference between Elizabeth and Charles in handling the religious settlement is stark. Elizabeth knew the Puritans were the real troublemakers in her realm since the Catholics, after all, were used to obeying authority, but she was firm, moderate and honest in her Anglicanism. Charles, though Anglican, antagonized the Puritans by marrying a Catholic and secretly dealing with the Catholics in Ireland, which eventually threw both Independents and Presbetyrians into a royal, as it were, fit.
The Tudor and Stewart dynasties were both very autocratic for English monarchies, partly due to the rebellious barons of the Wars of the Roses. Elizabeth had two, Essex and Norfolk, who tried to rebel. Parliament was full not only of dissidents, but itself, and was quickly reclaiming power the monarchy had taken for itself. In religious matters, Oliver Cromwell himself, before the Protectorship, trashed a service in a cathedral because the choir (&uqot;Unfledged minions flaunting it in silks and satins"—a Puritan minister) was offending his soldiers' principles. It would be nice to think Elizabeth could withstand such a storm, but perhaps no one could.
Best quote:
It was a small cut disc of silver.... [Once a Day] took my hand and placed the disc in it. It was warm from her flesh. "If I give you Money," she said, "you must do what I say." She closed my fingers around it. "You've taken it now," she said. Painted Red had said people had once given each other Money to do their bidding. I felt as though I were participating in a sin as old as the earth. But I didn't want to refuse the Money in my hand. "What," I said, and found my throat almost too dry to speak, "what do you want me to do?"
She laughed, as though a joke had been told or a trick played. Without answering, she ran out.... It was as if nothing at all had happened between us; perhaps, as she saw it, nothing had. I rubbed the money in my pocket and thought of nothing but her. What was the word Painted Red used? An ancient word—I was bot.
[monarchs, camphor] Sometimes, when I finished tagging a butterfly and launched it into the air in the usual way—as if tossing a hankie—it would fall right to the ground, a tasty morsel for a quick predator. Whenever that happened, I would pick the butterfly up by its closed wings and hold it in my open mouth while I breathed hot air over its muscles. After a few seconds it would be warmed up enough to fly, I would relaunch it, and it would go about its delicate business in the grove.
Oh, to be that butterfly, that I might... ahem. Nevermind.
vanilla, lungs simmering, la coupe sauvage
The Divine Miss P.'s Yale mentor delivers a short history of the religious viewpoint called Gnosticism; I say 'viewpoint' because the ideas are in almost every religion as a kind of under-sect or sub-culture. Strikingly different though Kaballah, Sufism and Taoism are, certain attitudes do prevail: this world is fallen from the True Godhead. Our creation was not planned but spurious, or worse, we are the decay of some divine stuff left out by some imperfect angel (the Demiurge) acting without Orders.
Bloom points out certain Gnostic thoughts reappearing in modern America:
Is "kickass" a proper description for the Pentateuch?
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