Review copy received 11/04/09 From the time of its announcement, I had been looking forward to this new book by Anne Rice. As I say in every review, I am not a die-hard Anne Rice fan. I found Interview with a Vampire interesting and intriguing, but in hindsight, must lay much of the responsibility of the current vampire as victim and love-object obsession at its feet. After that, I had no patience with her writing until Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. In that book I observed a kind of control and authorial voice that I had not seen in any of the books I had sampled since Interview . So too with Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. Perhaps because of the subject matter, perhaps for other reasons, these two books seemed to witness a level of control of language and story that the other books did not. Gone were messy florid passages that lavished two, three, four paragraphs on the description of the lace and flounce of a jabot. These new books were spare, polished, poetic. The
Steven - I was a de Botton-sceptic until I went to a talk he gave to publicise his The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. From that I came away thinking more of the man, perhaps not enough to read one of his books.
ReplyDeleteDear Anthony,
ReplyDeleteI actually like de Botton's books--I've read three or four with Proust being my favorite. I just don't know how his reputation stands in philosophical circles. Engaging prose, ideas that are interesting--makes for pleasant enough reading (as nonfiction goes).
shalom,
Steven
"I just don't know how his reputation stands in philosophical circles."
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't have ANY standing in philosophical circles. He isn't a philosopher.
Dear Mr. Mitchelmore,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I specialize in the written arts and more specifically fiction--hence I like How Proust Can Save Your Live as Philosophy light and litcrit light--just enjoyable reading. Hence my ignorance on matters philosophical.
shalom,
Steven
The writer in question is a good communicator and has many affectionate readers. Although I find his essays superficial, I recognize his ability to sell books.
ReplyDelete