The Golden Ass

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Book Reviews

March 2002

Rudolph Hoess "Commandant of Auschwitz"
Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Poems & Prose"
Franz Kafka: "The Castle"
Franz Kafka: "The Metamorphosis"
Karl Keating: "Catholicism and Fundamentalism"
Michael Korda: "Making the List" 
T.Lewis, F. Amini, R. Lannon: "A General Theory of Love" 
Herman Melville: "Moby Dick"
Montaigne: "The Essays"
Bertrand Russell: "A History of Western Philosophy"
Virgil: "The Georgics"
Virgil's "Aeneid"
Virgil: "The Eclogues"

* don't just sit there and avoid attention
"Phoenix: Commandant of Auschwitz" by Rudolph Hoess, Primo Levi (Introduction), Constantine Fitzgibbon (Translator), Rudolf Hoess, Joachim Neugroschel

There are many ways to approach this memoir, and let's not fool ourselves, "objectivity" is not an option. Rudolph Hoess had a strict catholic upbringing, was even expected to join the priesthood, but chose to commit murder on an industrial scale. Hoess had no illusions about the ugly character of what he was doing, in fact he also understood that this was not right. But from a screwed up sense of duty or "sacrifice" he agreed with Himmler, that somebody had to do it, so that normal people could find rest in their sleep and nobody be held accountable for the implementation of the Nazi's eugenic laws and doctrines.

At least, that's the perception, for which Hoess himself would have liked to be remembered. His perverted sense of heroism should fool nobody, but the truly scary aspect is not the image of the monster. It is the perfectly humdrum persona of a committed executive manager and ex-con (Hoess knew the prison system inside out) who since his enlistment as a teenager in the Kaiser's army, had distinguished himself as a man of single-minded tenacity. Hoess was intelligent, but obviously not a thinker; he was efficient, obviously, and not without moral fiber - just of the wrong kind. In other words somebody who in different circumstances easily could be your next door neighbor.

In 1881 an enterprising Jewish family had moved from an obscure place, called Birkenau, to Oldenburg in Prussia. Papa Cohn was an enthusiastic believer in assimilation, his wife a great fan of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They christened their oldest son "Emil." At the age of 19 the young man had made his A-levels, but decided against an academic career. From his tiny inheritance he bought one of those high wheel velocipedes, and pedalled all the way to London. There he rented a two room basement flat in Tottenham Court Road, hung up his vehicle in the window and opened a bicycle shop. A few years later we find him associating with a group of enterprising gentlemen who recently had broken Brazil's latex monopoly.

Acting for the British Government in 1876, Henry Wickham had smuggled rubber seeds and shoots out of Matto Grosso. The seeds were germinated at the Tropical Herbarium in Kew Gardens, London, and from there exported to Ceylon and Singapore. For young Cohn this meant, he did well in the tire business and made a fortune from his possessions in India. An early widower, he employed a mail-dating agency to find his second wife and in 1914 he married my grandmother at a registrar's office of his Majesty, King Edward VII. The British Raj is now not more than a footnote to history, but the paperwork is still filed away in the cabinets of the Indian Office in London.

Had it ever been made available to German authorities, I probably wouldn't be around. Because after the assassinations in Sarajevo, Emil Cohn chose to be a patriot, gave up his citizenship, sold his possessions, expatriated himself and his family to Germany, and, already in an advanced age, enlisted in the Kaiser's army. Emil Cohn was intelligent, but obviously not a thinker; he was efficient, obviously, and not without moral fiber. In 1933 it was the Fatherland's turn to repay his patriotic services. Since there had never been papers filed with the German authorities, his crafty Aryan wife and the four surviving children slipped through.

But for old Cohn there was a packed boxcar waiting, which in 1942 shipped him back to his place of birth - Auschwitz. The National Railway debited the fare to Eichmann's "resettlement department" (Referat IV B44). Eichmann's office squared accounts with funds extorted from the victims and from the proceeds of their tooth fillings. After the war 1,200,000 rail workers, who like the rest of the nation had friends and families, protested to have been utterly oblivious to the nocturnal transmigrations of the rolling stock in their charge.

Did Commandant Hoess take any notice of my grandfather's arrival? Not likely. Did old Cohn get a glimpse of his murderer? Perhaps, if on that day, Hoess had been present at the selection procedure. But I don't know the day. This is a challenging book. Righteous attitudes and hypocrisy won't do. Not to judge in order not to be judged is no option either. What is needed is courage. Unfortunately this too is a gift; it is almost as rare as talent, and it graces the deserving and undeserving alike.

* Dryden's labor of love I
Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BC): "The Georgics"

Virgil had set out to create the perfect poem and he succeeded! Unfortunately we no longer use to speak his language. As the millennia pass by we lose rapport with a culture, which had made a science of oratory and banked its entire stock in learning and political persuasion on the fine art of oral delivery. Inevitably we lose out on Virgil's greatest asset - his incomparable melos of sustained oratory and the onomatopoetic effects highlighting the semantics. It comes with an uncanny grip on the significant nuance. Virgil was known to be an extremely shy man who may have spoken with a rustic brogue.

His choice of words however provoked some of his ancient critics to berate Virgil for his "inappropriate" language. Virgil was felt to have a fondness for the unassuming vocabulary. I feel it still has an edge over our snazzy sound bites designed to titillate for 30 seconds the attention span of hypnotized telly-junkies. Sustained arguments don't ambush you on your solar plexus. A modern reader probably associates something nostalgic and sentimental with this kind of poetry, a hypocritical invocation of good old times and conservative values, but Virgil was never sentimental and the inevitable eulogies on the Imperial regime never exceed a peasant's noncommittal deference.

Virgil owed the Emperor a favor, so he found himself commissioned to write something uplifting and conservative. But the sculptures depict Virgil with a wry smile under a heavy brow; it betrays the epicurean, even if his line of work demanded more than the occasional nod to the mythological pattern. As a farmer's son, Virgil had never lost an affectionate regard for the crowd of genies who protect the soil, spray sparks from the cooking-fire, and guard the lintel. Call it superstition, but it is a world cocooned in spiritual comfort. However we would misunderstand Virgil's entire outlook, if we ignored his admiring familiarity with Lucretius' poem "The Way Things Are," and his keen interest in the only exact sciences available to Antiquity: math and physics.

Dryden's popularization of the heroic couplet introduced into English prosody a new, slightly ironical, and highly conversational idiom of almost unlimited flexibility. Great poets, like Alexander Pope, could completely specialize on the couplet and drag a living out of it. The 18th century has gone out of favor, but the saccharine pseudo-lyricism by Romantics, Victorians, and Edwardians failed to educate the public's taste for something better than candy for the ear. No wonder that Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot felt as if on a mission. However Eliot couldn't bring himself to pick up where the Augustan's had dropped Apollo's quiver.

Because this would have placed him close to the later Byron, and everybody knows how much Eliot detested Byron. Besides, Dryden's and Pope's tone was urban, conversational and of an almost impolite lucidity. For Eliot's taste their irreverent humor lacked the oracular exuberance of the so called "metaphysical" poets. The romantics had felt the same way, but had managed to fudge the issue and to supplant the old and, in their view, outmoded code of ethical decorum, with phony Jean-Jacques Rousseau's constipation of the heart and their own forays into hard-core nihilism. Indeed, in such company, Virgil's "Georgics" must look like a party crasher from outer space.

Yet the greatest miracle in Virgil's poem is something that remains invisible. It originally ended with an eulogy addressed to Virgil's close friend, M. Ælius Gallus, who might have meant more to Virgil than just being a friend. At the time of composition, 27 BC, Gallus had been Augustus' commissioner of Egypt but for some reason fell from grace and was recalled and bullied into committing suicide. So the grieving Virgil took out the entire passage from his poem and replaced it with the narrative of Orpheus' quest for his wife at the gates of Hades. I don't know whether the reader can appreciate what that means purely from a technical point of view!

According to my calculation we look in the final edition at some 380 lines rewritten and seamlessly dovetailed to the tightest knit structure of leitmotifs and cross-references ever done in any poem; a little more than 15% of the entire thing. This is not just surgery, this is heart surgery, because it took Virgil seven years to compose altogether 2,188 lines. If purity of style was his ambition, then Virgil is the purest poet of all times. Text and context totally absorb the means of expression without ostentatiously flaunting the poet's versatility, something I find sorely lacking in James Joyce's "Ulysses."

So Dryden had every reason to put as much effort into his translation as Virgil had put into his composition. And he did. Across the millennia this cooperation of two of the greatest poets has created one of the marvel's of Augustan prosody; a poem, easily on a par with Eliot's "Quartets." It contains everything a poet would want to tell, when he celebrates life, labor and the seasons, and why it is good to be here, even if it is a hard and unsentimental life under a blazing sky. The Georgics are incredibly rich in content, outlooks and insights, they open unexpected and intriguing perspectives on every page.

In a handful of lines Virgil has managed to create an entire cosmos. It even contains the original topography for Dante's "Hell." Lesser poets would need a lifetime to cover that much ground and it would take them a whole library of three-decker tomes to do so. I think I just have found the book to take with me, if a little briefcase and a T-shirt should be my only possessions left.

* Dryden's labor of love II
Virgil's "Aeneid"

Virgil, with more justification than any Greek, could be called the father of Western Literature. His work has set a benchmark for excellence. Dante referred to Virgil as his "master," Dryden hailed Virgil as the perfect poet. Virgil was an extremely shy person and afflicted by tuberculosis. Modern critics sometimes express disdain for passages in his work that make him look like a servile courtier. But the Aeneid's eulogies on the Imperial regime never exceed the noncommittal deference of a peasant, who gives Caesar Octavian what is Caesar's, while he minds his own business. Way back, in the days of upheaval, Virgil had been personally indebted to the former Triumvir, who had intervened in the eviction procedures of Virgil's paternal estate. In the end, it did not really help, but it obliged the poet all the same.

In 23 BC. Mæcenas, Virgil's patron and friend, suddenly lost his status as the regime's financial wizard and indispensable crisis manager. It seems his protegee too felt increasing pressure. It speaks for enormous talent that Virgil's best work was written on commission and not merely a product of gratuitous choice. Dryden's most difficult task as a translator was not just to be faithful to the original, but to ferry Virgil's Aeneid across the cultural divide. There was little appreciation for the polish and subtlety of Virgil's style, and even Dryden himself wouldn't lose his sleep over a piece of unashamed padding. There is a difference of temperament between the two great poets which could have ruined the translation.

It didn't.

"Meantime imperial Neptune heard the sound
Of raging billows breaking on the ground.
Displeas'd, and fearing for his wat'ry reign, 
He rear'd his awful head above the main,

(and now the truly majestic touch:)

Serene in majesty; then roll'd his eyes 
Around the space of earth, and seas, and skies."

One almost regrets that Virgil hadn't thought of it. He only wrote:

"Interea magno misceri murmure pontum,
emissamque hiemem sensit Neptunus, et imis 
stagna refusa vadis, graviter commotus; et alto
prospiciens, summa placidum caput extulit unda."

("meantime great noise disturbed the sea, tossed forth a storm, stirred Neptune on the lowest floor, who, displacing waters of the deep, calmly raised his head above the highest wave") which creates a powerful enough image, though not quite of Dryden's grandeur.

But for his padding, Dryden more than compensates with his absolutely ingenious use of transpositions. Look how Virgil puts his thoughts in sequence: "There was an ancient city, inhabited by Tyrian husbandmen, Carthage, that faces from afar Ostia at the Tiber's mouth, of great wealth and most warlike in its enterprise and being dear, it's said, more than all the land to Juno, who even Samos held in less esteem. Here they kept her arms, here her chariot, and the goddess hatched designs and hopes for a capital of nations, should destiny permit. Yet surely she had heard that a race of Trojan issue was hereafter to overturn the Tyrian towers, a people born to rule and of warlike pride would lay waste her Lybia, according to destiny's decree."

And now compare how Dryden inverted this sequence to squeeze into his rhyming couplets the same amount of information and even throw in an additional explanatory note:

"Against the Tiber's mouth, but far away,
An ancient town was seated on the sea;
A Tyrian colony; the people made
Stout for the war, and studious of their trade:
Carthage the name; belov'd by Juno more
Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore.
Here stood her chariot; here, if Heav'n were kind,
The seat of awful empire she design'd.
Yet she had heard an ancient rumor fly,
(Long cited by the people of the sky,) 
That times to come should see the Trojan race
Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface;
Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway
Should on the necks of all the nations lay."

This is a piece of sure-footed vigor and a rousing good read, but misses on Virgil's slightly subdued and more reflective consideration of circumstances. Virgil's Aeneid is a great work of art. Neither Humphries' nor Mandelbaum's and especially not Fitzgerald's translation do it justice. Dryden's rendition of the Aeneid has its dry spells, but it still is a cut above the mob of modern translations. I have a profound respect for John Dryden (1631-1700). In Elysium I see him presiding over his English peers, including - shall I dare the blasphemy? - even Shakespeare.

These days barely anyone cares to remember Dryden's numerous plays, poems and satirical epics. Scholars still read his essays and sometimes his adaptation of Chaucer. The loss is entirely ours. But whenever an English speaking reader opens Plutarch, Ovid, or Theocritus he may have a translation of Dryden in his hand. However Dryden's labor of love was Virgil. I own an edition of the Aeneid which gives Dryden's translation with his own introductory essay. After the fall of Cromwell, it is the most powerful confession of republican spirit, disguised as erudite exegesis, I have ever read.

* Dryden's labor of love III
trouble in Paradise - Virgil's "The Eclogues"

This translation by Dryden is hard to come by. But it is worth it! Nabokov once called Virgil's poetry "insipid;" the people of Naples, who at a performance in the stadium rose for a standing ovation, didn't think so. Perhaps the crowds merely empathized with Virgil's awkward person and his hacking cough, his rustic accent. Maybe they felt, that he was one of their own. Little does his early work indicate to which length of seemingly servile adulation Virgil eventually would have to go.

The Roman rich were very rich, the Roman poor very poor; in fact poverty decorated the mantelpieces of the upper crust - quite literally: archaeologists have unearthed many little statuettes of that period. They portray low life figures in every realistic detail, warts and all - feisty scullery maids, old fishmongers, a drunk old woman without teeth who dozes off her liquor in the gutter. Apparently such decorations became extremely popular items for a wealthy house. The thinly spread middle-class was trapped in a social seesaw situation and the institution of slavery would make it even more difficult to bridge the widening gulf between the classes.

In terms of income, Virgil came from a rural middle-class background; on her way to the fields, his mother had given birth in the ditches. His parent's single-minded aim, which ever since has become so typical for people of the struggling middle-class, was to provide their son with the best education money could buy. To middle-class people it invariably seems the only way to climb the social ladder. There was an encouraging example: from a small town in rural Italy, a banker's son had ascended to the throne of an empire. But times could be tough. Virgil himself had been evicted from his father's farm because the state confiscated his land to provide for the army's veterans.

When a modern reader thinks of idyllic poetry he automatically associates with it something nostalgic and sentimental, a hypocritical invocation of good old times and conservative values. But Virgil had it not in himself to be sentimental. So in his very first poem Virgil introduces an evicted farmer who lost his homestead to a retired war-veteran. He has a last afternoon to visit his former neighbor and friend, they talk and there is no happy ending to this story: all what is left is a last look at the smoking chimneys of distant cottage-roofs which slowly drown in the sunset's lengthening shadows. And this is sheer magic.

This last image suggests something enduring. Farmers will pass, but farming will be here for ever; suddenly something eternal, a platonic archetype seems to cast light onto the fragility of our world. It doesn't make it any easier for the dispossessed emigrant, but the world is essentially good and beyond reproach. Especially three poems stand out. The enigmatic 4th Eclogue on the birth of his patron's child would earn Virgil the status of a prophet. In the middle ages he was either considered to be a saint or a sorcerer. Eclogue six and ten celebrate important friendships in Virgil's life, but curiously mix the jocular with the tragic. Especially for the 10th it would be important to know when exactly it was written, because the fate of his friend Gallus became a turning point in Virgil's work.

The 'Eclogues' are the only poems in Virgil's work, which refer to slaves as leading characters. Virgil's complete silence on the subject in his mature work, especially the 'Georgics' which seem especially suited to speak of forced labor, certainly means something, but we don't know exactly what. Had he learned to resent the institution, did he see it economically cutting into the franchise of the middle-class? Or had slavery become one of the unmentionables in polite society? We don't know. But we do know, there was no such thing as a lobby for the abolition of slavery. The days of Spartacus had passed for good.

if you absolutely must ...
"Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on Romanism by Bible Christians" by Karl Keating

... then this book is as good a start, as anything. From my other reviews, my position on Christianity in general should be pretty obvious by now. Historically it was a catastrophic event which led to irreplaceable losses of art-treasures and literature, not to mention the losses of lives, slaughtered on the altar of doctrine. Constantine's edict of tolerance had legalized an institution which to the present day sees it as its god-given right to persecute every dissenter. The Church's un-abating hostility to the sciences is not just inspired by the anti-intellectual bias in the New Testament itself.

To be scientific means, to expose yourself to a rigorous regimen of verification and falsification. This is a matter of ethics, as much as of method. But you still have to show me the religious doctrine which would be willing to undergo an equally rigorous test and surrender the keys if it fails to pass. Where the mythological pattern has become doctrine, results of enquiry inevitably become a foregone conclusion. To build bridges on such conclusions and call it "faith," doesn't make the passage any safer. The Catholic Church is still the most enthusiastic votary for thought-prohibitions and instrumental for souring the common peoples' sexuality and their general outlook on life.

If it would be for the Catholic Church, then we all are creatures of some metaphysically construed sin, who, simply for breathing in a fallen world, are periodically required to grovel for forgiveness. Such perspective invites to be abused as a powerful instrument of mind control. And yet having said all this, within its own context, only the Catholic Church has managed to become a cultural factor of noticeable significance. Whenever and wherever Protestantism managed to raise the banner of discontent, it had the effect of a cultural steamroller. In fact, regardless of labels, the tacit premise of evangelical Protestantism is good old-fashioned iconoclasm.

There was a time, when this sort of thing had almost brought down the Byzantine empire. And in the 16th century it did bring down the Catholic Church in northern Europe. So when the Holy Office issued its infamous "Index" of forbidden books, it had put on top of the list - guess what - the Bible! It was a desperate move, but perhaps the adequate response to the crop of budding heresies since Luther. One could ask: "What does it matter? Orthodox or heretic, both are messages of the irrational." True. But conflict between different forms of the irrational, is still conflict. Religious wars had been the bloodiest on record before the 20th century.

They come in two packages: as wars of aggression and conquest, and as civil strife. The latter is the infinitely more vicious. It took a saint and "Doctor of the Church" to recommend the practice without restraint:

"Why do you object to war? Surely not, because men, who eventually die anyway, are killed in war? ... Any violation of God's laws, and by easy extension, any violation of Christian doctrine, could be seen as an injustice warranting unlimited punishment ... of the enemy population without regard to the distinction between soldiers and civilians. Motivated by righteous wrath, the just warriors could kill with impunity even those who were morally innocent." Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius, 354 - 430.

Augustine was the first among a long line of Christian teachers to call for coercive conversion - cogite intrare. He was not the first to call for punishment of heresy and persecution of other beliefs. But his voice became the most influential. An influence that extended to the enemies of the Church:

"Make short work with heretics, they can be condemned unheard. And while they are burning at the stake, the faithful should destroy the evil root and branch and bathe his hands in the blood of the bishops and the pope who is the devil in disguise," Marthin Luther (1483 -1546).

Luther started his career as an Augustine monk, and ended it as a Bible Christian and founder of Protestantism. So, granting residua of common sense in the ecclesiastic leadership, it makes perfect sense to see the Church frowning on any form of private Bible interpretation, which is usually grabbing quotes from all over the place with no regard for context and application and in the final analysis appears to be completely dishonest and ego driven. To put it in plain language: the Catholic Church and her Greek and Coptic sisters are the churches, period. The rest is heresy. Plain and simple. In the Western World, only they can lay a claim for a relationship to the numinous because among other things they are also the last surviving genuine cult societies from Antiquity.

Their pagan heritage is nothing to be ashamed of, no matter how much Protestants would like to ridicule it. As long as people feel the need to confront the numinous presence in a tangible form, as something that is supposed to occur physically, right in front of your eyes, the old churches continue to fulfill a function. The Eucharist is either the immediate manifestation of a presence, or it isn't! No cop-outs into symbols and rationalizing. This is quite different from the mere constipation of the heart, which a protestant uses to mistake for the foundation of his religious commitments. The Church doesn't trust such fickle thing as the human heart.

She rather observes ceremony and follows procedure. Besides: evangelical protestants wouldn't even be able to enjoy their favorite pastime - Bible thumping - without the Churches' comparably faithful custody over the text for the long period before Wycliff and Luther. However this faithful custody had a downside. Scriptural fundamentalism is definitely a narcotic. Addiction to the letter of the bible has helped to introduce the present anemic dearth of sensual spirituality. One has to be on a mental and intellectual starvation diet to take this drug into ones life, and it becomes an effective deterrent to seek for more and better mental and intellectual nourishment.

Of course, in the final analysis Rome's doctrine is just as home cooked and corny as the heretic protestations. Traditions versus the "traditions of men"; Peter and the papacy; Marian beliefs; honoring the Saints; purgatory; papal infallibility; and infant baptism etc. are not exactly plumes in the Pope's tiara. As it is, scripture is as much a purely incidental reference, as is the ecclesiastic code of conduct a time-honored but arbitrary piece of intellectual cottage industry. Still, Mr. Keating definitely has a case. For a believer the alternative is either biblical dope or therapy in the controlled environment of the (old) Catholic mass.

highly instructive
"Poems and Prose" (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) by Gerard Manley Hopkins (18441889)

"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-
Chríst-for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces."

Gerard Manley Hopkins is not everyone's cup of tea. For more than one reason. In the academic world of mutual masturbation it is a favorite pastime to debate as a "problem" whether Hopkins really was a Victorian, or rather an untimely mutation towards modernism? A topic for graduation essays, but of little relevance. Either way, Hopkins was a consummate expert on Anglo-Saxon prosody and a great talent. He also was a consummate loner. The choice of words a poet uses, is the signature which his temperament impresses on his style.

Only a good writer has any signature at all. Lesser talents may still write an exceptional style, but it is a retro-enginered style, bundling up prefabricated elements of already well established provenance, often in a sleek and appealing package and without a shred of originality. Hopkins, on the other hand, was an innovator. He brushes the refined reader's sensibility with hard bristles, and seems not to care for melody and harmony. Reading his poems can be a mouth full. And his religious proclivities and catholic guilt complex don't help either. It is hard to empathize with Hopkins, if you don't add an "SJ" to your name.

There is an atmosphere of asceticism, of a contorted and awkward nature, of a shy personality. Small talk obviously was not Hopkin's cup of tea. At least not for the persona of his poems, which is the projection of the poet as he likes to be seen. And in this sense he certainly didn't fit in the mold of Victorian exuberance. The circumstances of his time, allowed Hopkins to plug out, and he grabbed this opportunity with both his hands. Which is another way of stating, that he has not much to say which could reach an even favorably inclined reader. T.S. Eliot may have liked him the more for it.

And this is a pity. The man had the power and the language, but to him it was no help to step out of his inner shell:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

Yes. Beautiful, isn't it? Victorian or not. Hopkins is the grandfather of modern poetry.

© - 2/25/2002 - by Michael Sympson - all rights deserved

ridiculous
"Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999" by Michael Korda

Korda traces the changes in the publishing practices, beginning in the Depression when publishers first allowed book stores to return unsold copies. Later came book clubs and chain stores and the mass marketing and the demise of the small book shop across the street. Along the way there was an evolution away from the care and cultivation of promising authors to blockbuster promotion and the care and feeding of bestselling authors who could put out a new one every year. By the eighties most of the fiction bestsellers were by authors who had been there before.

Best-seller listing became a promotion tool, an increasingly narrow list of popular, mass-market novels and sure-fire self help books and celebrity tell-alls. By the eighties the bestseller lists reflected as much the mentality of the big corporate publishing houses as it profiles a certain kind of reading habit. "Like a mirror, it reflects who we are what we want, what interests us, and what we really want to know....and the longer we look into it, the more we clearly see - ourselves. (Michael Korda)."

Well, I wonder! How much of the reader's habit is actually profiled in these listings? Some readers would never touch a best-seller, even with an iron tong. This is of course pointless snobbery - what can you do if you are good and the people love you? You write a best-seller. Provided of course you find a publisher willing to muscle in his P.R. resources. But first you got to find him. "All Quiet on the Western Front" is still holding the record for the highest number of manuscript rejections. Norman Mailer's "The Naked & the Dead" is a close runner up. Publishers know nothing; they are business people. Even their blurbs are provided by Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Many readers apparently buy nothing but best-sellers. At least that's what publishing houses would like us to do. However the percentage of good books presented in best-seller listings, is just as small as the percentage of good books in the total of books ever printed. Let's not forget, most of the real good books are out of print. The discerning reader (a dying breed?) doesn't care how the PR industry labels a book. And that's the way it should be. There are still differences. Good books can be best-sellers, best-sellers are not necessarily good books. (Don't believe me? The "Starr Report" became an instant bestseller.)

No doubt, the avid reader of best-sellers is getting a fair representation in those listings, and I am quite willing to concede that those readers may represent a fluctuating majority. Still: what about the others? It's really like this fast food thing: McDonalds is a huge enterprise, and for a good reason. There are times when even a gourmet could murder a Mac. But does this make connoisseurs of French cuisine yearning to "really" rather "dine" at McDonalds? Korda's argument is ridiculous. In matters of culture and taste, there is no such thing as democracy and egalitarianism. There never was.

entertaining lucidity
"A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell

There are many ways to understand the meaning of philosophy, but I believe Bertrand Russell himself had said it best:

"Is there anything we can think of which, by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown to exist outside of our thought? Every philosopher would like to say yes, because a philosopher's job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing. If yes is the right answer, there is a bridge from pure thought to things, if not, not."

Lord Russell obviously had an eye to spot the baloney and Hegelians and Phenomenologists detest him for that. The dislike is mutual, I for my part can also do perfectly well without Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida. I have a very wide reading in philosophy, but I stopped reading it after I had finished with Kripke in the mid eighties. Since then I lean back and enjoy the show without engaging myself in any debate. But that much is apparent: of all philosophers from the 20th century, Russell is probably the most educational and had been read by more lay-people than any other philosopher. Was that a bad thing? I would say definitely not. His book is still a good travel guide, written by a vociferous and independent mind and in a style of such clarity, that it can't help of sounding offensive, especially to the acolytes of oracular nonsense.

Having said this, I too here and there would prod the old man for an injustice, say about Immanuel Kant or Schopenhauer. In Kant's case however, I can appreciate that we look not only at a fundamental difference of opinion, but differences in competence. Bertrand Russell's own monumental contributions to mathematics and symbolic logic, entitle him to be a bit snobbish. Kant's philosophy still employs a logical tool that had barely advanced since Aristotle. So many points in his philosophy, which he assumes would pertain to cognitive functions, are actually not logical at all, but belong to the set of generic conventions that seem to underpin our linguistic faculties. It's an honest disagreement, and the greater authority here is on Russell's side. But he should have given more space to Charles Saunders Peirce (1839-1914), who, among many other things, picked up on Kant's table of (basically Aristotelian) categories and put them into the context where they really belong. Russell's scant treatment of Peirce, whom he with some justice had addressed as "the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced," is not so easy to understand.

As for Schopenhauer I must say Russell, or his source, is just ill informed. Schopenhauer made his own valuable contributions to epistemology (see my review on Schopenhauer's "The Fourfold Root") which are of interest independently from Schopenhauer's more idiosyncratic views expressed in his later works. In fact by temperament he and Russell had much in common, Schopenhauer being Russel's equally caustic and ebullient Teutonic counterpart, and, like Russell, a great stylist in his language. If you want a more limited but more in debt overview on the history of philosophy in general up to Schopenhauer's time, then read Schopenhauer's essays "On the Will in Nature" and his "Paerga and Paralipomena." Schopenhauer liked to see himself as standing on the shoulders of an illustrious line of philosophers since antiquity, the last link that lays the final stone. "Every author creates his own pedigree," says Borges, himself a great admirer of Schopenhauer, and Schopenhauer was very good at creating such pedigree for philosophical ideas and following their course through history.

But the most telling omission in Russell's book is that of his own protege: Ludwig Wittgenstein. After a brief honeymoon the two headstrong philosophers went on a long journey of irreconcilable differences, and I can't help siding with Russell on this. Wittgenstein is widely overrated these days, but apart from his unpleasant personality and the airs of a latter day saint he contributed to philosophy proper very little worth mentioning. Russell has the grace and malicious charm of Voltaire, and like him he was a great popularizer and educator. His "History of Western Philosophy" is worth every penny.

what else is new?
"A General Theory of Love" by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon

"When each of us came to grapple with the emotional problems of our patients, we saw that the old models provide diagrams to a territory that cannot be found anywhere within a real person. We found new answers to the questions most worth asking about human lives: what are feelings, and why do we have them? What are relationships, and why do they exist? What is therapy, and how does it heal? How should we configure our society to further emotional health? How should we raise our children, and what should we teach them? As neuroscience unlocks the secrets of the brain, startling insights into the nature of love become possible. That is what this book is about -- and if that's not the secret of life, then we don't know what is."

Ambitious claims. But first a word of advice to the authors: hands off from Pinker's "How the Mind Works," The man knows his stuff. So, what is new?

GToL purports to speak about "love." Love as a concept has a a long and checkered history. And it is a telling and regrettable fact, that Western Culture left the development of the concept mostly in the hands of weirdos and driven psychopaths. The contributions of Plato and Jesus have not helped to make things clearer, St. Paul's tirades had been most effective in fudging the issue. At the love-courts in the Languedoc things became less cosmic, but Dante was not only completely at a loss what to do with his sweetheart, his vision of an ideal society resembles a concentration camp more than anything else. Nietzsche and Freud are rapidly becoming footnotes in the history of intellectual bogus, and Wilhelm Reich, in a weird way, brought back the cosmic connection, without having much to say about connectivity. We certainly don't need a new jargon for old insights.

The seat for our emotional life appears largely to be located in the neural wiring of the limbic brain, the middle layer between the neocortex and the so-called "reptilian'' brain. From infancy all mammals depend on reading and adapting to the emotional signals of others to develop and make their way safely in the world. Nobody is an island. How such signals are affecting us depends on our individual learning curve, which naturally is steeper for the child than the adult, but never ceases to bend one way or the other. As the case may be, it can lead to an anxious and depressed life, even to self-destructive addiction, or create a warm personality capable of empathy and trust. The present cultural paradigm however favors the self reliant individual, the pioneer and nomad, who takes pride in his resourcefulness and autonomy. Not an ideal breeding ground for amiable sociability.

Development and upbringing depend almost exclusively on genetics and some minor environmental effects. The rest of who we are comes from the media and our peers. At present, the web, television, movies, and friends are the source for 90% of our information. When we are small, teachers are always right, when we become adolescents, parents are always wrong. The briefest look into history shows how rational thought and irrational behavior can exist side by side. GToL's panaceas however are not quite up to speed with the well presented description of our physiological makeup earlier in the book. It is true, "the earlier the better" is good advice. The book never mentions it, but sex is part of the package. It is an incidental feature of history, that chastity and virginity had been political ploys and economical bargain chips long before they went "spiritual" and contributed to the pathology of our moral codes. Prolonged courtship can lead to trauma and complications. Getting to it soon, keeps neurosis under the lid.

However, to promote "Authenticity, or being yourself," as the key quality of love, has a downside. "This book supports my own views that if I am "true to myself" and simply try to be myself, I will experience love." says who? No, not Jack the Ripper, but a raving reviewer. Let's hope he is not an ax-murderer, or your friendly Klansman from the neighborhood. Since Rousseau there is a tacit assumption, which I don't share. Without buying into the metaphysics of original sin, I know that men is not born as a good person per se (neither as an evil monster.) But with an instinct to load the dices and the inborn capacity to manipulate and be manipulated. So just imagine, if the whole world suddenly went insane and everybody presented himself as his or her true self? Deception and lying are social skills we acquire for a reason. Hurting others or concealing the truth is only a small part of it. Something we shouldn't do. But the overwhelming rest of this faculty goes under the labels of "courtesy" and "consideration."

It describes the moment when we sacrifice rude authenticity to the greater good of social peace and well oiled social intercourse. Without it, we would lack in another necessary social skill: connectivity. Yet I must confess, some of my most cherished moments in life had been hours of solitude. Not always, not every time; but meditation and silence should be part of every balanced character. I really see it as a waste of time to "connect," when my instinct is telling me, that I will have to plug out some time later, and perhaps with too much effort. I realize this book is an elegant sales pitch to spend more money on your therapist. Much space is given to stating the obvious on Freud and his theories. Then the authors turn around and say that all of our problems are based on our parents and stem from childhood. I can almost hear it: "Give us a call! Consultation hours from 10 to 5." Just what I need! Why not taking a course in creative writing instead? I have heard, it comes considerably cheaper.

(the following is from a letter to the authors by Stephen S. Mulkey from University of Florida)
"Your book is truly frightening in its final chapters, while much of the initial chapters are seductively scientific, biological and, thus for me, quite compelling. You suggest no realistic neurological mechanisms for "limbic resonance" which is offered as a means of fundamentally communicating love, and also (by implication) as a means of therapy for the love-dysfunctional. You suggest that such therapy may take many years. I find it hard to believe that we are sufficiently ill to require this degree of intensive relations with a professional who is, after all, conducting uncontrolled experiments with our minds (this will remain true until we completely understand the mind). The initial biological basis of your book is compelling, but it falls short when you simply walk away from the essential questions of "how" and "why." You correctly note that at least one side of our neocortical brain processes emotional information, yet you totally ignore the connection that this part of the neocortex has with its limbic foundation. This is critical if there is to be any real hope for those who believe that "insight therapy" (based on neocortical function) will in any way help their problems. Your last chapter is utterly devoid of hope for the epidemic of anxiety and depression that, as you correctly observe, plague our modern culture." ... "As an evolutionary biologist, I welcome your refreshing approach to psychobiology, but I have three concerns about your work. (1) It ignores the power of our recently-evolved neocortex to influence affective disorders. Although I do not understand how this can occur, I would suggest that more research should be done in this area. The physical connections between the two parts of the brain exist. Why? Truly debilitating affective disorder did not develop with the limbic system alone (these organisms would be extinct). Modern affective disease requires interaction with the neocortex. We are missing something here, although I certainly lack the expertise to tell you what it is. You completely fail to recognize that cultural evolution is far faster and potentially more powerful than biological evolution, and how this might relate to the problems that you pose. (2) You offer no mechanisms for the central feature of your theory, "limbic resonance." It could be that we are simply not using our neocortex to its fullest capacity to solve these problems, or perhaps, we are failing to understand the appropriate way to communicate between the two parts, i.e., your poorly defined "limbic resonance." (3) Your final chapter offers no explicit solution for affectively ill individuals, or, for that matter, our society as a whole. While much of the pathology of modern society that you cite is without question true, your link between the limbic brain and these ills is merely assertion, although, I admit that the possibility of such a link is frightening in the context of our evolutionary future. In sum, this work should go through the peer review process."

* a surveyor with nothing to survey
"The Castle," by Franz Kafka

In the era of Stalin and McCarthy and after the horrors of the death-camps it had became fashionable to read into Kafka's novels a brooding indictment against oppression and persecution with metaphysical overtones. Especially in respect to the "Castle," Max Brod's editing seemed to suggest a kind of "Pilgrim's Progress." W.H. Auden in 'The Dyer's Hand' suggested the opposite, that the castle, far from being a place of redemption, appears to be the nesting place for a bunch of Gnostic demons. Instead of salvaging his own work, Max Brod had saved the manuscripts of his friend and this shall not be forgotten. I also have great respect for Auden, but here as always with Kafka, I advise against fetching too far.

For starters: The "Castle" even more than the "Trial" is an unfinished fragment in which the order of the chapters is still a matter of debate and differs considerably from Max Brod's first edition of the text. But it is his editing which introduced an interpretative bias that played into the hands of Sartre's bogus-philosophy and turned Kafka the writer into a sort of latter day saint. On the other hand it is a little known fact, that Kafka was an activist in the socialist movements of his period. This should give us a clue when we read in the Trial how the meek people judge the well turned, well connected, and completely self-centered Joseph K.

When I read the "Castle" for the first time, I noticed of course the indifference of the Castle's staff to the protagonist's antics. From the outset it is a struggle just to get their attention. I also noticed that "K." the surveyor, is a con-artist, a trickster who tries to wheedle his way into a community that has no need for a surveyor. So when the people in the castle unexpectedly honor his charade and even provide him with two assistants, they actually give him a chance. But "K." doesn't see this as an opportunity. He is too self-centered, a typical trait for protagonists in a story by Kafka. So he starts an affair with the mistress of an official from the castle, only to jilt her later and start another affair, all of which is Kafka's very characteristic brew of illicit sex and dingy circumstances.

Kafka's period as a writer was at the height of the last great art-movement in our Western civilization. And even so I am somewhat bewildered over James Joyce, this does not prevent me from acknowledging him as an honest and very innovative artist. But it is the lesser talented and stylistically rather conservative Kafka who actually managed to introduce something radically new, a different kind of story, a new perspective. After Kafka, literature could never be the same. Kafka himself looked back on a literature under the influence of French symbolism. It is one of the many little features hidden under a deceptively simple surface, that the novel's protagonist is not just a character, a very well developed character, as it should be, but also a cipher for something else.

The "Castle's" community has obviously little need for a surveyor, what need in modern society is left for art and artists? Is there anything that would justify preferred treatment in a changing society? The ringmaster's care for the fragile performer moves the spectator to tears. The hunger-artist dies of hunger in a cage, barely noticed by anyone. The trapeze-artiste instead of fearing heights and loneliness would rather stay up high forever. "K," the surveyor, who has nothing to survey, didn't get very far to change his life, because the author never finished the book. It is left to the thoughtful reader to find out, whether there was any way to bring the "Castle" to a conclusion. Maybe Kafka had abandoned it, because he himself was lost for an answer?

a bit bland
"The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka," Joachim Neugroschel (Translator)

Translating Kafka can be tricky. The closing sentence to "The Verdict" (or "The Judgment") where Georg Bendemann jumps off the bridge should read like: "At this moment an unending intercourse surged across the bridge." Or less literal, but still true to the allusion: "At this moment the bridge was alive with unending intercourse." Neugroschel translates: "At that moment, a simply endless stream of traffic was passing across the bridge." And the Muirs make it: "At this moment an unending stream of traffic was just going over the bridge." Both translations are as faithful as a Victorian nanny to her charge, yet completely neglect the sexual innuendo in Kafka's phrase. It is known that Kafka experimented with 'automatic writing' - not exactly my cup of tea - but he also was capable to dangle quite deliberately his red herrings all over the place; he had no illusions about the nonsense in Sigmund Freud's theories.

Neugroschel in his foreword opens his toolbox and, without naming names, quotes from the Muirs's translation of the Metamorphosis. He rightly points out what has to be improved to do justice to Kafka's style. It comes with the territory; every translator who has to drag a living out of his labor adds a foreword and explains why he thinks he is improving on previous translations. It gets us nowhere if we put our light under the bushel. However even Neugroschel, a noted translator who has received numerous prizes and awards and has more than 130 translations under his belt, was apparently a bit in a rush to get it over and done with.

Translating Kafka can be tricky, but it's not rocket science. His language is comparably straight forward and limited in vocabulary, and the translator knows it. So I guess Neugroschel was perhaps just a tat too confident. In the "Metamorphoses" Kafka speaks of countless legs that "flimmer hilflos" before poor Gregor's eyes, which should translate to "flickered helplessly before his eyes." Held against this, Neugroshel's "his many legs ... 'danced helplessly' before his eyes," catches well enough the image of thin sticks in involuntary spasms, which Gregor only with effort identifies as his own legs, but is this really an improvement over the Muirs's "numerous legs, which ... 'waved helplessly' before his eyes?" You tell me!

It is by such little touches that we recognize an author's signature, his sensitivity, his originality and his particular perspective on things. On the whole Neugroschel's is a more accurate translation than the Muirs's, yet it lacks their stylistic panache and rhythm. The merits of accuracy, if compromised by a tin ear, can spoil the best of all intentions. This collection represents the best part of Kafka's work and a literature, that refuses to stoop to the popular level of Victorian imitation furniture. The latest reprints include the four stories of "The Hunger Artiste," so the book is collecting practically all of the prose Kafka himself had ever published.

The short sketches of the first section are written with the precision of prose poems, in fact what goes as poetry, by comparison looks rather quaint. "The Stoker" is Kafka's celebration of Dickens; "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony" follow Flaubert's recipe to the dot and put extraordinary things in ordinary words. But my favorites are clearly the stories in the section "A Country Doctor," where Kafka's art has fully matured. Especially the title story is the paradigm of modern literature, though overshadowed by the fame, or should I say notoriety, of "The Metamorphosis." "A Country Doctor" is so sad and so funny; it burns with visuals and catches the iridescence of a dream. A good way to acquaint yourself with Kafka.

an American trauma
"Moby Dick," by Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)

Reading "Moby Dick" makes us realize that English is a real language, and not just a verbal substitute for flag-signals. Some people probably can never grasp what it means to completely saturate temperament and persona in the verbal magic of linguistic perceptions. Even people who introduce themselves as professional writers sometimes complain of what they see as Melville's cloying style, especially in the chapter on the Whale's whiteness. But there is a lot more to it than "that, although white is frequently considered a good color, in the case of Moby Dick, it is a bad one, because instead of being reminiscent of purity, it is reminiscent of spectrality on no less than seven and a half pages, including a 469 word sentence." With all due respect, if cut and dry "message" is all there is to imaginative literature, than it would not be worth bothering about.

So forget the lengthy reflections, forget about plot interest, even leave the character cast alone, they are weirdos anyway, every single one of them. "Moby Dick" is not the kind of book where these things matter. Instead focus on the intensity of a dream. Accept the exotic symbols of an alien world, as alien as the Planet "Shakespeare." Accept the warped logic of a nightmare. Yet this is not likely how a product of American high school education is going to receive Melville's gift to his nation. But should you feel ready to commit yourselves to Rabelais, then you are ready for Melville, because you have reached the point where opinions are no longer taken seriously. Only the mentally adolescent is opinionated, and literally billions of adolescents crawl on this plant's surface, like lice on a bald midget. Opinions are cheap, everybody can share from his haversack.

However there are things even I rather not see in a book of this nature. Sensitivity, style, rhythm and visualizations are the meat of a poem, great ideas are hogwash. "Moby Dick" is meant to be a prose poem, not an investigative report on the whaling industry. But Melville does not always exactly know where he is going. We know from his letters and messages to Nathaniel Hawthorn, that at times this book had carried away the author. Automatic writing is not exactly my cup of tea, and I suspect, Melville's absolutely stunning stylistic abilities, cover up a lot of this sort of thing. I am also troubled by Melville's lengthy spells of archaic diction. It can be as irritating as in Kipling's "Kim." I just can't see people indulge in this kind of biblical rhetorics from the heart of puritanism. At least not people of that period. .

So what is going on here? A sudden time warp, hovering over Pittsfield and Concord? Or just a case of Shakespearean intoxication? And yet go shoot yourself, if it leaves you unmoved that: "Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled;" (task: design at least two or three alternative and complete cosmologies to fit this sentence) or: "All wars are boyish and are fought by boys, the champions and enthusiasts of the state;" or the almost Virgilian "Charmed circle of everlasting December" which continues to "going through young life's old routine again." Or "... on the heel of all this," read how "... a cluster of dark nods" replies to Ahab's oath of vengeance; and visualize the swagger of a "bison with clouds of thunder on his scowling brow."

If it is possible to capture an entire universe between the covers of a book, this is it! A fairy tale, cruel, heroic on the verge of the burlesque, full of hidden gateways to a different matrix in the configuration of things. The whale hunt and Ahab's hunt for revenge are really the least interesting aspects in this book. But of course one has to know where to look, and I am afraid few are prepared for such examination of the unexpected. Melville was not the type of writer who speaks in bumper stickers, nor did he spew fortune cookies (apparently the language of democracy these days.) This accomplishment he left to giggle-peppered sitcoms and squeal-fests with a sprinkle of - what's the word? - "spirituality," such as Oprah's show.

Oh, and "Call me Ishmael" is the most perfect opening sentence of any novel. Nothing ever has surpassed it. Melville gave us the bible of symbolism, but when we try deciphering, we find ourselves confounded by tantalizing signals from deep space - sometimes garbled but always of an overwhelming beauty. This is the word before the beginning, and before it became flesh.

* the voice of a good friend
Complete Essays of Montaigne, by Michel E. De Montaigne (1533-1592)

There is always a possibility that war and disaster strike and I could find myself walking the streets with little more than a torn briefcase and a book wrapped in a T-shirt. Short before his assassination, Julius Caesar and his friends discussed which way would be the best to die. Caesar's answer turned out to be prophetic. "A sudden death," he said; and indeed, his end came swift. Though not sudden enough for my taste - twenty-seven stab wounds and only one or two fatal! In this day and age of course, it is more likely that I breathe my last breather at the business-end of a feeding tube in the hospital. I think Montaigne would be a strong candidate to keep me company in that lonely hour. Not that I have a hard time to choose, there are not many other books I would consider. Montaigne always conveyed to me the warmth and comfort of a good friend.

Even when he sometimes loses me and prattles away on some obsession of his, it is like listening to your best friend without really listening. You are just glad he is there. It makes me wonder, how Montaigne's charm could have endured for almost half a millennium? Shakespeare too still speaks to us, but often in a somewhat muffled voice; time and distance are beginning to tell. And Montaigne is even earlier! Hamlet contains clues and phrases from Montaigne's book. I must have read every single line of Montaigne; and apart from his essays, I always took a particular interest in the itinerary of his travel to Italy. It describes places I used to know intimately. Montaigne brings this remote period to life again, its comforts (or rather the lack of it), its smells, its customs, and of course the food - Montaigne was French after all. In Montaigne's book things remain tangible and glow like memories of a distant childhood.

Essays are supposed to enquire into some topic and come up with something conclusive to say about. Well, except for the real great essayists like Charles Lamb, who never gets that far to be conclusive on anything whatsoever. Same here. After the fall of Rome, Montaigne is perhaps the earliest example of a writer in Western literature, who gives us "nature seen through a temperament" (Zola), and Montaigne is nothing if not a temperament. Well read people may contest this and point to Françoise Villon or Chaucer as earlier examples I won't debate it, but who of these gentlemen is still so very much alive as our Monsieur Montaigne? No dictionary or glossary needed, just snuggle up in your favorite armchair and enjoy.

Authors have pedigrees (their favorite authors) and a reader has preferences (his favorite authors): if given the choice between Donne and Herbert I go for Dryden. (Really! It's a bargain: you get Plutarch, Virgil, and Ovid as a bonus. Donne is just Donne, and Herbert just a case of well-spoken paranoia.) With Montaigne you open a window to the entire heritage of classic antiquity sometimes it is like old gramophone recordings of long forgotten opera stars. In fact I have always found Seneca a bearable read only in the odd bits Montaigne cares to quote from him. Which brings us to the question which translation to use.

I own both, Donald M. Frame's translation of the complete works, and Cotton's staple translation of the essays. Which of the two comes closer to the tone of the original? Because despite a certain brand of bogus criticism in the vain of Northrop Frye and "post modern deconstruction," an author's voice does matter! He might be many things, one of which is to be the messenger and witness of his own period, its concerns, its paraphernalia, its perspectives and smells, its way to express itself. So, without putting down Mr. Frame's magisterial accomplishment, I for once shall hold on to my old Hazlitt edition of Cotton's translation, and put Frame out on sale. It may not be the slickest read around, but at least the pacing and the rhythms of Cotton's prose are the closest thing you can get to the original and it has earned Montaigne a citizenship in our own language.

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