An Incomplete Book Review, or Two or Three

I really struck out at the library earlier this month and will return the following three books without the diligence but with the good sense not to complete them:

Two who done it or spy novels by William F. Buckley Jr ... The Rake and Getting It Right.  I took out both after reading A Man and His Presidents thinking that his fiction would bear the imprint of his political philosophy.  He is no Dick Francis.

Lightning Man, The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse.  Got through 210 pages but the author Kenneth Silverman cannot get a reader engaged in the mean-spiritedness and aloofness of "Finley."

Let Me Count the Poisonous Ways

OK I admit this is sick  buying a book to match the theme decor of my new guest room, which is supposed to look like an upstairs garden bower, all summer greens and yellows.  So I bought the small, lime green bound book Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart and illustrated by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, the author and artist of The Drunken Botanist which I bought at the Harvard museum when I dragged the "kids" to see the glass flowers a couple of summers ago, pre-Red Sox game, the real reason for the journey to Boston.

I love these two books.  The essentially are encyclopedic reference books, full of history and anecdotes and marvelous humor.  I also feel a sense of complicit witchery in the topic.  So without further ado, let me cite all the wicked plants I intentionally cultivate in my yard, or use for decoration for various seasons, or buy from the local florist with a wry sense of doom:

English Ivy (how apropos that this one comes first)
Pencil Cactus (I may use a computer, but the urge to write in graphite continues, yes?)
Rhubarb
Elderberry
Mulberry
Juniper
Celery
Limes
Periwinkle
Azalea
Rhododendron
Foxglove
Hydrangea
Hellebore
Lily of the Valley
Bleeding Heart
Tulip
Hyacinth
Morning Glory
Aloe
and last but not least, the plant that almost did me in Yew, the source of the dreaded cancer drug Taxol

Maybe I should consult The Drunken Botanist and make a similar list of all the plant fragranced beverage I have imbibed.

History I Know All Too Well

The past few weeks also saw me finishing Failed State by Seymour Lachman, a former NYS Senator, his sequel to Three Men in a Room.  Here is local "history" I know almost too well.  Lachman seems to be using this reprise as his best argument for a State constitutional convention, something that goes to the voters as an option to change every twenty years.  2017, I believe, it should be on the ballot.  I can already predict the vested interests of profiting from political positions will do every thing they can to preserve the status quo, where the chance to profit is preserved.  I assume the major argument will be that a convention is too expensive.

Reading this update to Three Men counterpoints Flaubert's claim that had the public understood Sentimental Education, there would not have been the events in the Terrible Year of 1871.  Had the public read Three Men, would New York as a Failed State go on unabated?

Ironically, "another chapter" in history has made even this sequel out of date ... one of the three men had is conviction reversed on appeal, the second is probably finished drafting his appeal on a corruption/kick back scheme.  The third man eludes.

I also read A Man and His Presidents by Alvin Felzenberg, a biography of William F. Buckley Jr.  I found it one to far removed from the man.  I've read God and Man and other books by Buckley and I missed his active presence and voice.  His one liners still zing as opposed to the Dick and Jane doggerel of current leaders.  Buckley was a mandarin (politics need more of them).  He might have been the author of a play who also doubles as the guy holding up the cue cards ... he knew he wanted a strong national voice not for the status quo but for the return to basic universal principles of humanity and governing, but he also was often able to put the right words as ventriloquist to several key elected officers.

I love the persona of "a thorn in the side" people, especially those who can see the good and the humor in a given course of rule.  Felzenberg lets that characteristic seep into the biography.  Such self-deprecation is sorely missing in Lachman, and in politics large.

I think to close the loop on this brief linked series of history, I will switch to Buckley's novels.  I'd like to see his marriage of positive outlook against recent world issues, should that really be evidenced and interpretative in his fiction.  Signing off to reserve a couple.

The Best Read of Summer, So Far, Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris

Now why would I pick up a book with a title like this?  Am I falling back into that previous theme of minor books by major French authors?  No, after putting the final pieces on the new guest room and having no puzzles in house to divert my attention, I finally went to the library, and, taking the slacker approach to selecting a book, checked out what was hanging on the new non-fiction wall.

This book is the best fiction review I've read.  Period,  Not even trying to remember if there might have been something just as enjoyable in college.  Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris by Peter Brooks focuses primarily on Sentimental Education, a novel Flaubert considered his masterpiece but the public, a flop.  But beyond being literary criticism, Brooks firmly places it in its historical/current events context, a book of deep personal friendship, bloody uprisings, and twin birth of the historical novel genre and modern France.

May 1871, solidly in the Terrible Year, that saw Paris actually burning, and the rise and fall of the Communard.  Flaubert posited that this was not an inevitable crisis, being so self-centered as to say if readers understood Sentimental Education, none of this would have happened.  Which triggered Brooks to analyze the novel as an example of its historical setting as being more important than the main characters ... a new style that seems to me to set the stage for Waiting for Godot and all such opining that finds the main story to be one where the backdrop of place and time fails to go analyzed by the hero.

A thoughtful analysis.  Playing to my need to context from what I perceive to be the overreaction of the press and the public to le temps et le mores.  Should I say at least people are listening or are they merely bombarded with predigested opinion.  Brooks sees Flaubert as placing the protagonist in a turbulent time, sometimes oblivious to what's happening, more often simply carried along, ultimately impacted drastically if not consciously by the events of the larger stage of the drama man calls war, disaster and power.

Rather than a sentimental education, I am looking for a moral education, a calming rationale against which to measure my current events:  failing political institutions, bizarre weather conditions, instant "news" and accusational attempts to set blame rather than find a new course of action.  Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris gave me some breathing space this month ... D C is not burning ... there is still some discourse.  Reading about Annee Terrible of 1871 sets a baseline for defining disaster, causes, for ultimate historical trends both in human evolution and in literature.

Brooks counterpoints his analysis with the letters between Flaubert and his friends, mainly George Sand, a woman whose political perspective differed from his, but who kept their correspondence alive with a Simple Heart.

This book makes me think about having the quiet time to think about what's happening in the world today.  Am I hearing it like Flaubert's characters as just noise around the corner, or can I understand the context is has in my life?  How can I sort out what is truly important, that will end up changing history?