As I read this book, I had to search my brain to recall exactly when, and more frighteningly, how I got to Winterthur. I have reconstructed my memories to be it was when I was either a junior or senior in high school, clearly before I learned to drive or had a reason for heading south. So how and why did I visit? I've decided I must have gone with my mother, by touring bus, sponsored by our town's art and historical society that her garden club was affiliated with. The museum and the gardens wiped out all recollection of traveling. It is a magical place into which you are dropped, back in time and beauty. It marked me indelibly, so much so that when I was unsuccessful when compared to my other collegemates (that is, I was not engaged and without a good prospect), I applied to the University of Delaware to pursue a Masters degree in Americana there. I got in, but I never went.
Winterthur was with me during college, though, directing my ventures off campus to the American Wing at the Met, staring for hours at huge pieces of furniture, baffled and wondering how I could ever become an expert in this arena and acutely aware that the golden ring of curatorship often depended on family wealth and class connections, other recognized personal deficit.
Henry F DuPont was an extremely shy, almost asocial child, much more interested in lilies of the valley than in the blossoming of members of the opposite sex. His distance and preoccupation with land and buildings affects his relationship with his family, Ruth Lord being his younger daughter. Her memories of her family seem as displaced as my failure to remember how I came to be in Delaware.
Here, Slackers, we have a book where not only does the principal character create his own place, but by doing so, creates his own legacy. If you love Winterthur, you cannot dislike DuPont, however aloof and isolated his life. Henry relates to his surroundings primitively: through color, scent and space; he is so conventionally awkward, never learning to spell or drive, he perhaps was dyslexic. To paraphrase Lord in her afterthoughts chapter: her father's inheritance of unlimited amount of money was coupled with his capacity to use it creatively; his innate gifts were an unparalleled visual memory, an eye for color, a remarkable sense of proportion, an untiring talent for detail; a restless drive and touch of genius that impelled him to create his masterworks.
Showing up unexpectedly in this story is the influence of Isabella Stewart Gardner (my G biography from last year) being used as the model for establishing the structure for financing the maintenance and upkeep of the museum.
I liked this quiet book, a book to be read in a park full of flowers in early spring.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Taking out "SC" -- More Gone Than You Want
Okay folks, Ella Minnow Pea is what is know as an lipogrammatic epistolary novel. All you English majors out there recall Pamela and Clarissa and probably hoped you would never have to open another volume with such a dated, forced style of writing. Developing a plot through letters, with only one-way dialogue, was a short lived, immature genre, becoming the subject of parody almost as soon as it became popular.
Playwright Mark Dunn, in this his first novel, has overlaid this story using the correspondence format with another layer of device, constraining his selection of words as the story advances by eliminating letter by letter until he is forced to write phonetically and in strained synonyms, with no ability to easily move across time by varying verb tenses.
Okay, none of the Slackers is now interested in reading this book; besides there is absolutely nothing about South Carolina in it, except that it is set on a fictional, independent island off the coast of Charleston. But it does strangely seem relevant as the world begins tweeting and dropping letters left and right. It also makes me remember all those horrible exercises Mercy Groupie had to do for her writers' class. I thought about writing this in Dunn's style, Dear Slackers, but if you carefully read through this review, you will find that the first three lost letters appear nowhere in this review. (Had to reread it and use a couple of synonyms myself.)
Playwright Mark Dunn, in this his first novel, has overlaid this story using the correspondence format with another layer of device, constraining his selection of words as the story advances by eliminating letter by letter until he is forced to write phonetically and in strained synonyms, with no ability to easily move across time by varying verb tenses.
Okay, none of the Slackers is now interested in reading this book; besides there is absolutely nothing about South Carolina in it, except that it is set on a fictional, independent island off the coast of Charleston. But it does strangely seem relevant as the world begins tweeting and dropping letters left and right. It also makes me remember all those horrible exercises Mercy Groupie had to do for her writers' class. I thought about writing this in Dunn's style, Dear Slackers, but if you carefully read through this review, you will find that the first three lost letters appear nowhere in this review. (Had to reread it and use a couple of synonyms myself.)
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Place: Where You Can Be Yourself versus Where You Go to Grow -- Crazy Horse and Custer
Like several of the books in our tour of the States, Stephen Ambrose uses the device of parallel lives to trace the eventual encounter of Crazy Horse and George Armstrong Custer. A blurb on the back cover summarizes Ambrose's differentiation of the two characters: "Custer was never satisfied with where he was. He always aimed to go on to the next higher station in his society. He was always in a state of becoming. Crazy Horse accepted the situation he found himself in and aimed only to be a brave warrior ... He was in a state of being ..." Ambrose uses these men to personify the predominant traits of their people and time, and the inevitable misunderstanding and clash of cultures.
For most of the book, I ran with that premise, until I noticed the word "where" ... our quest to discover the influence of place on personality and story. Both men moved almost perpetually, and the book is hardly limited to Montana. Custer made his moves as career moves, seeing the Plains as his next theater in which to become a national star and potential Presidential candidate. He used his hometown roots to enhance his standing by marrying the most sought after girl in town. He used West Point as yet another credential, and parlayed those connections for plum assignments during and after the Civil War. His usage was almost abusive, pushing social barriers and academic and military discipline. His movement blasted through perceived confinements and rules.
Crazy Horse knew no State boundaries, only the geography of camp sites and the length his horse could travel. He did not manipulate his place/tribe and compatriots. His motivation was the advancement of his people not personal aggrandizement. His travels were often escapes into solitude and reflection.
And so, Ambrose paints two cultures which could not understand or tolerate each other's values, heritage or sense of the future.
Less explicitly, Ambrose uses the transcontinental railroad as a deus ex machina, the real cause of the Army establishing forts and squashing Indian buffalo hunts and free migration across the Plains. The railroad becomes the metaphor for "becoming" ... becoming an industrial power, an avenue for personal reconstruction and profit. It is also the weapon that decimates the herds and hunting grounds, essentially cutting off the Sioux' main trait.
I found the book slow going and scholasti and it does not present a picture of Montana in its geographical uniqueness. Rather it emphasizes two different plot lines common to all character development and good writing: the tragedy of accepting a doomed place and lot and the hubris of marking your ground to write history.
For most of the book, I ran with that premise, until I noticed the word "where" ... our quest to discover the influence of place on personality and story. Both men moved almost perpetually, and the book is hardly limited to Montana. Custer made his moves as career moves, seeing the Plains as his next theater in which to become a national star and potential Presidential candidate. He used his hometown roots to enhance his standing by marrying the most sought after girl in town. He used West Point as yet another credential, and parlayed those connections for plum assignments during and after the Civil War. His usage was almost abusive, pushing social barriers and academic and military discipline. His movement blasted through perceived confinements and rules.
Crazy Horse knew no State boundaries, only the geography of camp sites and the length his horse could travel. He did not manipulate his place/tribe and compatriots. His motivation was the advancement of his people not personal aggrandizement. His travels were often escapes into solitude and reflection.
And so, Ambrose paints two cultures which could not understand or tolerate each other's values, heritage or sense of the future.
Less explicitly, Ambrose uses the transcontinental railroad as a deus ex machina, the real cause of the Army establishing forts and squashing Indian buffalo hunts and free migration across the Plains. The railroad becomes the metaphor for "becoming" ... becoming an industrial power, an avenue for personal reconstruction and profit. It is also the weapon that decimates the herds and hunting grounds, essentially cutting off the Sioux' main trait.
I found the book slow going and scholasti and it does not present a picture of Montana in its geographical uniqueness. Rather it emphasizes two different plot lines common to all character development and good writing: the tragedy of accepting a doomed place and lot and the hubris of marking your ground to write history.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
In Vino Non Veritas: The Billionaire's Vinegar
If this is our blog trip to Virginia, we are sorely DWI.
Wallace's book chronicles a twenty-plus year scam of auctioning bogus bottles of rare wine, the only connection with Virginia being that several of them were purported to have been ordered by Thomas Jefferson before he left Paris for Monticello at the beginning of the French Revolution. The suspect wine adulterater is Hardy Rodenstock, nee Meinhard Gorke, who from the 1980's through just two years ago when a default judgment was rendered against him in a case brought by Bill Koch for fraud, led a high life of a French chateau and vintage snob.
Although there are brief historical references to Jefferson and the Monticello Foundation, the book is basically set in Germany and England, where Rodenstock throws his over the top wine tastings and where Christie's auction house is complicit in the sale of old bottles sorely lacking provenance.
I found the story very reminiscent of charlatan John Brinkley The last few paragraphs of the story emphasize the willing suspension of belief when someone wants something bad enough: "As with all successful cons, the marks and the grifter had been collaborators. One sold the illusion that the others were desperate to buy." With wine rather than goat gonads, the commodity seems so much more tempting. But the bidders are not buying something to drink, not even making an investment ... they are buying an image, paying outrageous dues to enter into a most select club, where their names become as famous as the vineyard that produces the coveted nectar.
In another sense, the book was like a longer version of Wine Spectator magazine, dispensing insights and nuances into viniculture. I will never taste the Bordeaux that is written about; in fact, I am probably a drinker of plonk. But the book does seduce you to blow your allowance on a bottle of Chateaux d'Yquem if only to see if Rodenstock's description of it is honest or just another part of his salesmanship: "... in a bottle of d'Yquem, the entire act of making love occurs, lust for life and depravity, melancholy and lightheartedness, poison and antidote."
Satisfying another one of my penchants, Vinegar contained six degrees of separation surprises: with Bill Buckley showing up endorsing a particular connoisseur and the Ten Broeck Mansion appearing as a source of an old cellar full of prime collectible vintages.
If Vinegar is a pit stop on our blog road trip, and we ended up in the French wine aisle of the store rather than the one showcasing scuppernong, we had a chance to drink heartily and think on Jefferson as one of the first to tip America's preference from beer to wine.
Wallace's book chronicles a twenty-plus year scam of auctioning bogus bottles of rare wine, the only connection with Virginia being that several of them were purported to have been ordered by Thomas Jefferson before he left Paris for Monticello at the beginning of the French Revolution. The suspect wine adulterater is Hardy Rodenstock, nee Meinhard Gorke, who from the 1980's through just two years ago when a default judgment was rendered against him in a case brought by Bill Koch for fraud, led a high life of a French chateau and vintage snob.
Although there are brief historical references to Jefferson and the Monticello Foundation, the book is basically set in Germany and England, where Rodenstock throws his over the top wine tastings and where Christie's auction house is complicit in the sale of old bottles sorely lacking provenance.
I found the story very reminiscent of charlatan John Brinkley The last few paragraphs of the story emphasize the willing suspension of belief when someone wants something bad enough: "As with all successful cons, the marks and the grifter had been collaborators. One sold the illusion that the others were desperate to buy." With wine rather than goat gonads, the commodity seems so much more tempting. But the bidders are not buying something to drink, not even making an investment ... they are buying an image, paying outrageous dues to enter into a most select club, where their names become as famous as the vineyard that produces the coveted nectar.
In another sense, the book was like a longer version of Wine Spectator magazine, dispensing insights and nuances into viniculture. I will never taste the Bordeaux that is written about; in fact, I am probably a drinker of plonk. But the book does seduce you to blow your allowance on a bottle of Chateaux d'Yquem if only to see if Rodenstock's description of it is honest or just another part of his salesmanship: "... in a bottle of d'Yquem, the entire act of making love occurs, lust for life and depravity, melancholy and lightheartedness, poison and antidote."
Satisfying another one of my penchants, Vinegar contained six degrees of separation surprises: with Bill Buckley showing up endorsing a particular connoisseur and the Ten Broeck Mansion appearing as a source of an old cellar full of prime collectible vintages.
If Vinegar is a pit stop on our blog road trip, and we ended up in the French wine aisle of the store rather than the one showcasing scuppernong, we had a chance to drink heartily and think on Jefferson as one of the first to tip America's preference from beer to wine.
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