A Momentary Taste of Being

The many works of Elizabeth Bowen and what to read And a biography of Elizabeth Bowen I have to say that I wasn't impressed with my first try at Bowen-- Death of the Heart . But while in Dublin picked up a collected Short Stories and found several things there worthy of consideration.  I've recently tried Death of the Heart again because so many whom I admire love it.  It still doesn't speak to me.  Maybe later.

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles reviewed

One of my favorite poets--Andrew Marvell

Two books in the Parke-Custis library that George Washington had access to: Conjugal Lewdness   Daniel Defoe and Aphra Behn's The Lover's Watch. via Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life The first of these might be of particular interest to those in communion with Catholic teaching.

An interesting side-note on Washington's ailments. from Washington: A Life Ron Chernow For someone with Washington's robust physique, the dysentery must have had a profound psychological effect. His body had suddenly lost the strength and resilience that had enabled him to cross freezing streams and ride through snowy forests. And it was not the first time he had experienced a sense of physical fragility. By the age of twenty-six, he had survived smallpox, pleurisy, malaria, and dysentery. He had not only evaded bullet but survived disease with astounding regularity. If these illnesses dimmed his fervor for a military commission, they may also have reminded him of the forgotten pleasures of domestic life. We forget that the world we live in is peppered through with all sorts of things that would, given lesser medicine/hygiene, do away with us entirely.  

What is fascinating about Chernow's biography is the way in which you see relatively small moments in history snowballing to become the Revolutionary War.  In the passage below, we have captured a moment in the French and Indian War, but we can see how its complaint and the realization that this is not how the Mother Country regarded the colonial states. from Washington: A Life Ron Chernow Before leaving Philadelphia, Washington wrote to Dinwiddie and vented the bitter outrage at the inferior status foisted upon the Virginia Regiment: "We can't conceive that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British  subjects, nor lessen our claim to preferment. And we are very certain that  no body of regular troops ever before served 3 bloody campaigns without attracting royal notice. As to those idle arguments which are often times used--namely, 'You are defending your own properties.'--I look upon [them] to be whimsical and absurd. We are defending the K...

Ted Hughes's poem on the death of Sylvia Plath

Olympe de Gouges--fascinating How in the world did such a person survive the revolution?

via Books Inq.  Philip Larkin's Letters (some of them at least)

A extract of a forthcoming book about Roald Dahl. via Books Inq. Hard to believe the life behind the man who wrote "Lamb to the Slaughter" and "The BFG."  How terrible--every parent's nightmare. In a follow-up this morning we learn of Ms. Neal's recent passing