[	Tags	|	warfare	]
[	Current Location	|	HQ in the field	]
[	mood	|	cheerful	]

            I have been reading student manuscripts fairly heavily for weeks now, and it shows in how few books have appeared in this blog lately.  That should change abruptly in the near future, but more on that after the review.

            My 48^th completed book of the year is the Strategikon, by the Byzantine Emperor Maurice, composed around the year 600 A.D..  This is another Roman military manual, which contrasts interestingly with Vegetius of 200 years before.  Where the Western manual was all about infantry, this is all cavalry and mounted infantry (which might as well be cavalry, since that's how it's used).  This manual is also far more detailed, and included many diagrams (which still exist) for how the various formations were to be arranged, and how various attacks should be made.  The detail includes the various marching orders (though Greek speakers, they used Latin terms) and horn signals.

            I was surprised by the specifics about the use of artillery, including especially ballistae, in field tactics.  Maurice even describes what amounts to motorized artillery, when he advises mounting two ballistae on a wagon, one pointed forward and one to the rear, so they can fire in both directions, and placing these wagons beside the columns.  He also discusses using them to secure a beachhead, when building a bridge to a hostile shore.

            It seems that the Emperor didn't think much of my ancestors, who would be lumped under the category of "light-haired peoples" which he puts with "other undisciplined peoples" when discussing who is good for what.  "The light-haired races place great value on freedom," he says, and think of retreat as dishonorable; but on the other hand they are "disobedient to their leaders."  I'm sad to say that we are also "easily corrupted by money, greedy as they are."

            It says a great deal about the perilous condition of the Western Empire (for all that it would still last several hundred years longer) that he suggests that the entire army should NEVER practice battle tactics as a unit, for fear of letting spies see what you plan.  Only smaller units should practice tactics.  Hmmm.

            Also, the last chapter discusses the value of hunting with a whole division, practicing the maneuvers of military tactics while herding wildlife into a trap, and then killing them for food.  He suggests operating on as much as an 8-mile front in these hunts, and touts their practical benefit.  This reminded me very much of the Great Hunts that Genghis Khan set up, which did exactly the same thing, though on fronts of 50 miles or more.

            There are some dry pages in this book, but it's only 169 pages, and is full of interesting details for the student of military history.  A classic, that deserves to be more widely known.

            I've been tapped to teach the undergraduate European Literature class at Seton Hill University starting next week, and I'll be reading (in most cases, actually rereading) seven titles for that course.  I don't think it would be quite kosher for me to post lengthy opinions of those books here (when I'm trying hard NOT to interfere with the thinking process of my students) so be prepared for very summary discussions when I do finish those titles.

            However, I'm happy to share the list in advance.  I'll be teaching the following:

Apuleius, The Golden Ass

Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

Laxdaela Saga

Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red

José Saramago, Seeing

Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

            So, three Nobel Prize winners, two minor classics, a couple of world bestsellers, and an anti-Stalinist satire.  That should give them something to think about.

CBsIP:  student manuscripts

The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen

Peter the Great,  Robert K. Massie

Dancing Naked, William Tenn

Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, W.J. Hardee

The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed.

Walt Whitman: A Study, John Burroughs

[	Tags	|	john burroughs	]
[	mood	|	cheerful	]

            I finished two books this weekend.  First was Odgen Nash's The ZOO, or really one should say Etienne Delessert's illustrated work, The Zoo, featuring poems by the then-dead Nash.  Some of his funniest animal poems, and about the third time I've read this.

            I also finished John Burroughs's Riverby, the ninth volume in my assembled set of his complete works.  My copy was originally the property of one Edward S. Daniels of St. Louis (he seems to have owned the first dozen as a set), and this, the ninth, was apparently the last one he read through.  At the end of every essay there is a penciled date, which I take as the date the essay was read.  He started at the beginning, in the spring of 1918, and was reading the first four essays in this volume in July of that same year.  Then 14 months pass until he read the next, and two more until he read the next two.  In the summer of 1920 he finished two more; but it wasn't until September of 1923 that the last several essays get their check mark and date.  The remaining three volumes in his set are undated, but he did go back and re-read Pepacton in 1926.

            Since the next volume is all about Walt Whitman, rather than the usual nature subjects, Daniels may have wanted to linger, but that's probably not the whole story.

            Ah, well.  These are fine nature essays, up to his usual standard, and includes a description of his visit to Kentucky, and particularly to Mammoth Cave.  Another essay describes stories of birds feeding the nestlings of other species, which I'd never heard about.  There were a number of stories to the following effect, as well:

            I have spoken of nature as a stage whereon the play, more or less interrupted and indirect, constantly goes on.  One amusing actor upon that stage one season, upon my own premises, was a certain male bluebird.  To the spectator it was a comedy, but to the actor himself I imagine it was quite serious business.  The bird and his mate had a nest in a box upon an outhouse.  In this outhouse was a window with one pane broken out.  At almost any hour in the day from spring to early summer, the male bird could be seen fluttering and pecking against this window from the outside.  Did he want to get within?  Apparently so, and yet he would now and then pause in his demonstrations, alight in the frame of the broken pane, look intently within, and after a moment resume his assault upon the window.  The people who saw the actions of the bird were at a loss how to interpret them.  But I could see at once what was the matter.  The bird saw its image in the mirror of the glass (the dark interior helped the reflection) and was making war, as he supposed, upon a rival.  Only the unyielding glass kept him from tweaking out every saucy blue feather upon the spot!  Then he would peep in through the vacant pane and try to determine where his rival had so suddenly disappeared.  How it must have puzzled his little poll!  And he learned nothing from experience.  Hundreds of times did he perch in the broken pane and sharply eye the interior.  And for two months there did not seem to be an hour when he was not assaulting the window.  He never lost faith in the reality of the bird within, and he never abated one jot his enmity toward him... I have known a cock-robin to assault an imaginary rival in a garret window, in the same manner, and keep up the warfare for weeks.

CBsIP:  student manuscripts

Strategikon, Maurice Imperator

The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen

Peter the Great,  Robert K. Massie

Dancing Naked, William Tenn

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            It can be difficult to read the published work of a friend or critique partner, because it's difficult to turn off the critique engine.  Not to mention all the times you wonder if this scene was inspired by a life event you know about, or an earlier piece by the same writer, and so on. I had patches of this difficulty while reading Singularity's Ring, by former Worldwright member, Paul Melko.  Otherwise I had no difficulty with this novel at all.

            The pages turn very easily, making it a swift read.  The novel is set in a world where part of the population consists of "pods" of psychically linked humans (who are bioengineered, but not clones), and the fun of the book is that the opening chapters shift 'Point of View' from member to member of a five-person pod, and then the book uses their linked POV to continue.  (Part of this POV shifting involves a narrative tense change, which I didn't notice happening until two chapters after the major shift.  It did make me go back to puzzle out the strategy, but most readers won't even notice, I suspect.)

            I won't give away any plot, lest Paul hunt me down.  I will say, however, that new conflicts and new issues arise in each new chapter, giving the world considerable depth and credibility.  Things are bad on Earth (billions have died) and we get to see the aftermath, and the attempts to recover, from a variety of perspectives.  All that while dealing with the very particular problems of very particular characters.  Nice work.

            So, I have to stand by the opinion I stated here when I first purchased it.

CBsIP:  student manuscripts

Strategikon, Maurice Imperator

The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen

Peter the Great,  Robert K. Massie

Dancing Naked, William Tenn

            I've been asked a couple of times why I don't give Amazon.com links in this blog, anymore.  The answer is that Amazon has been engaging in a number of questionable business practices -- which should be illegal, and probably already are -- and they have become my vendor of last resort.

            These practices include, but are not limited to, extorting the biggest discounts from publishers in the business; strong-arming Print On Demand businesses to use Amazon's POD publisher to the exclusion of all others, and removing the Buy Now button if they do not comply; and demanding fees just to be listed on their service that make small publishers actually lose money on each sale.

            Friends of mine have been on the receiving end of these practices, and these practices have also impacted the sales and marketing of projects involving my work.

            Bottom line, I can't bring myself to steer business their way.

CBsIP:  student manuscripts

Strategikon, Maurice Imperator

The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen

Peter the Great,  Robert K. Massie

Dancing Naked, William Tenn

Singularity's Ring, Paul Melko

            A graduate of the Seton Hill Writing Popular Fiction program gave me Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, Illustrated by Joe Ciardiello last week, and since it's really a brief essay puffed out to book length, I decided to dispatch it forthwith, thereby padding my books-finished-YTD number.

            Doing so was a pleasure.  I teach Elmore Leonard's Rules, which may not apply to all styles of fiction, but which are worth considering even if you're not intending to follow them.

            My wife burst out laughing when she opened the book to Rule #10: TRY TO LEAVE OUT THE PART THAT READERS TEND TO SKIP.

            Though it's a slight volume, I'm glad to have it on my shelf.  This one stays within reach of my office chair.

CBsIP:  student manuscripts

Strategikon, Maurice Imperator

The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen

[	Tags	|	cwoet	]
[	Current Location	|	the mother ship	]
[	mood	|	annoyed	]

            What can I say about Odyssey of the Gods, except Please, Just Don't Bother??  That should go without saying, really, for any title by Erich von Däniken; but to be succinct and clear, this book is a CWOET*.

            I cannot for the life of me remember what impulse caused me to pick it up off the discount table.  Was I thinking I might get an SF story idea from it?  Who knows?

            In my youth I was always being given books like Chariots of the Gods? and The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and (though I was taken in by it at first) America, B.C. by people who wanted my reaction.  For the most part they expected me to be impressed, but instead they got long sets of annotations explaining everything that didn't work in the arguments, based on my initial reading.  I got rather sick of them, after a while.  (I remember setting a "60 mistakes and I can stop" rule.)

            Then I met a science fiction editor at a major publishing house, who explained how the alien abduction books, and the von Däniken books and their clones, are seen by the industry.  Essentially there is part of the public who want their novels to pretend that the text is real, so that the readers can completely immerse themselves in the fiction.  It's a form of escape, in this case from the pressures of science and reason (and responsibility, I assume).  He pointed out that many of the books were written by SF and Horror authors, as a side gig.

            Okay, then I guess I should review this one as a novel.

            As a novel, it sucks.  There is no plot.  There is no coherent argument, and the argument gets even less coherent in the last third when he fights a long straw man battle with another flake who wrote a book saying that Atlantis was Troy.  EvD then keeps telling us that Atlantis can't be Troy, which I wouldn't have thought in the first place, so what's the point?  And then, based on a single piece of ambiguous data, he suddenly suggests it was next to Cuba.  Which makes just about as much sense as the Troy business.

            The book keeps hinting that space aliens were behind most of the Greek myths, but half the assertions he makes are errors in fact to begin with.  The whole thing reads like the drunken ramblings of a guy who loves to be a big shot in the local tavern, acting like he knows more than the people who actually tried to learn something about the world; sneering at experts while depending on them for every fact that he manages to use.  But then he's just as likely to use a retired cheerleader for scientific information.

            No plot, no through line, no interesting characters, and a great deal of stupid argument.  A few interesting inferences, but they never pay off.

            Forget it.         

CBsIP:  student manuscripts

Strategikon, Maurice Imperator

The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen

*Complete Waste Of Everybody's Time

[	Tags	|	warfare	]
[	Current Location	|	in the field	]
[	mood	|	contemplative	]
[	music	|	martial	]

            My latest "conquest" is the relatively short Roman military manual, De Re Militari, by Flavius Vegetius.  My copy is a Kessinger Publishing reprint of the 1944 edition by The Military Service Publishing Company, entitled The Military Institutions of the Romans, and edited by John Clark.  This edition omits the short Books 4 and 5, dealing with sieges and naval actions.  I've read bits of them before, and will be headed to the library to read them again, since I'm giving a talk on fortifications and sieges later this month.

            There's a good deal of controversy over when this book was actually written.  It appears to have been composed in the late Western Empire.  Some experts put it as late as 435 AD, but my edition, and my home references, like 378-92 much better.  In any case, the Empire is going down the tubes, he tells us, because the soldiers are scum, and nobody makes them do their exercises anymore.  No fortifying the camp every night; no daily exercise with double-weight weapons; no reliable heavy infantry; not all soldiers are forced to learn how to swim (with armor!); and so on.

            Anyway, to correct this situation, Vegetius (not a military person, himself) combed through earlier Latin writers on military science, and produced a Manual Of How It Used To Be Done.  In his day the legions were leaning more heavily toward cavalry, and also to mercenaries, and nobody was really inclined to go back to the old ways.  There's some legitimate debate about whether it would really have helped, but I suspect the discipline would have, if not the tactics.

            I'll be writing an essay, or plan to, comparing two Civil War manuals to this one and the Strategikon, so I won't go into much detail here, but it's quite interesting to get the details of how the Romans organized, what they carried with them by way of artillery (each legion had 55 ballistae, and 10 onagri), not to mention having a pontoon bridge in the train as well.  His explanation of where to put the best troops, and why, mirrors the Napoleonic Age ideas, which may derive from this book.

            A problem with this edition is that some of the illustrations are dead wrong.  They tried to show how each of the seven battle formations of the Romans worked, but the diagrams for the Second Formation and the Sixth Formation do not resemble an A and an L respectively (as he describes it) nor do they make any sense.  The Sixth Formation must, it seems to me, have a fully refused left flank, which would then fit both parts of Vegetius's description.  I'm thinking that the problem with the plan of the Second Formation is that it has the reserves behind the center, and they should be straight behind the right wing, which would then fit the simple A, not the fancy A, simile.

CBsIP:  Strategikon, Maurice Imperator

[	Current Location	|	Back in the Burgh	]
[	mood	|	cheerful	]

            While I was down in Greensburg at the Seton Hill WPF residency, I stole enough moments to finish reading Empress Orchid, by Anchee Min.

            Min is on my list to read Everything She Does.  I've enjoyed (if that's the right word for the largely tragic stories) Red Azalea, Wild Ginger and Becoming Madame Mao.  This novel has only confirmed my attitude, and I'll be heading to the bookstore this week to buy the sequel, The Last Empress.

            The novel is framed as a first person account by the last empress of China, covering the years from her childhood and acceptance as an Imperial Concubine, to the birth of her son, death of the Emperor, and the attempted coup against her.  The number one lesson to take from this book is: Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Become An Imperial Concubine.

            I heard, and will obey.

CBsIP:  De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

            My 40^th book of the year is another Osprey book that I read for my Warfare for Writers project, Indian Castles 1206-1526, by Konstantin S. Nossov.  In contrast to the previous Osprey title, this fulfilled my expectations.  Exceeded them, actually.  It served not only as a resource on the subject, but it provided a bit of a primer on fortifications in general.

            Some things that I learned: 

            1.  That elephants, rather than battering rams, were the favorite way to break down gates in India.

            2.  That as a result, barbicans and gates were designed to make it difficult for the elephant to get to the gate, and that gates had anti-elephant spikes mounted at the height of the elephant's forehead.

            3.  That the bulges at the base of towers and walls in Indian fortifications (called a talus) has two purposes.  First, it makes it difficult to use scaling ladders on the walls.  Second, if one throws rocks down off the towers or walls (they liked to toss rocks in India) they would ricochet off the talus into the attackers.

            4.  That I want to own the Man Mandir Palace, for a winter getaway.

CBsIP:  Empress Orchid, Anchee Min

De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

[	Current Location	|	the steppes of W. PA	]
[	mood	|	drained	]
[	music	|	throat singers of Tanu Tuva	]

            Interesting reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford, so soon after reading the Ibn Battuta volume, which describes some of the same period, mostly from the other side of the frontier from the Mongols.  Each book tries to claim that the European Renaissance largely derived from outside, one claiming it was the cosmopolitan empire of Dar al-Islam, the other that it was the cosmopolitan Empire of the Mongols.  Weatherford seems to minimize the sheer devastation of the Mongol invasions, especially in Persia and Mesopotamia; Dunn emphasized the destruction and poor post-invasion administration, without, perhaps, giving enough credit to the Mongols for the trade network in their area of influence.  (In discussing the trade network in China and the Indies, Dunn discusses mostly the Muslim traders and their settlements and enclaves, while Weatherford emphasizes the Chinese settlements and enclaves.)

            I'm going to end this review with quibbles, so let me say first that I'd recommend the book to any reader interested in history, because it gives a nice sweeping summary of the rise of Genghis, and the Pax Tatarica that followed the succession crises, and then finally the spread of the plague, which essentially destroyed the whole thing.  Weatherford is good with the essentials, good at explaining that Genghis and his close successors didn't torture or maim (if you needed to be killed, they just killed you), and good at explaining the restructuring of steppe society that Genghis pulled off to make this all possible.  He's also good with atmosphere.

            My quibbles begin with the title.  This is clearly a publisher's title, meant to hook the reader rather than truthfully label the contents.  Genghis dies on page 128, though, so this is really The Mongols and the Making of the Modern World.  But hold a minute.  The book focuses on some very modernistic elements of the Mongol empire, mostly those of Khubilai's China, and then claims that all this was carried to Europe by the trade routes, that the Renaissance was therefore all Mongol in origin, and that this transmission created the modern world.  Yeah, except that the whole shooting match collapsed, almost none of it survived, even the memory was erased, and oh, by the way, there's not enough evidence for that wholesale attribution of the Renaissance to the Mongols.  So really the title should be The Mongols and What Could Have Been the Making of the Modern World but Wasn't.

            This book was put into the genre of One Thing Explains All History non-fiction books that have been frequent bestsellers lately, and so the author indulges in lots of sweeping statements.  Many of them were true, but frequently I found myself stopping after each one and remembering a number of exceptions.  I also noted that the footnotes thinned out mightily in these passages, which is often a sign of Kinda Making Stuff Up.

            You don't need to exaggerate the Mongol Conquest.  It was mindblowingly impressive anyway.  (I love the passage where he explains that the Crusaders had been trying to conquer the Holy Land for two centuries, and the Mongols did it in two years, with a smaller army.)

            I also had some trouble with the poetry of the book.  He begins and ends with references to the disappearance (in the 20^th century) of Genghis's Spirit Banner.  This is very evocative, but he doesn't give the event in detail, he just evokes it ... and the two versions didn't seem to match.  Likewise with his discussion of the decoding of the Secret History of the Mongols.  In the introduction to the book he says that the Secret History had "disappeared" and no one could find it, and also that it was partly in code.  He gave the impression that it was only refound and decoded recently.  Then near the end he discusses all the competing attempts to translate it and publish it in the years before WWII.  So it goes from a book nobody can find, to one that everyone is translating??  I'm sure that all the statements somehow fit the facts, but the impression is that the first story isn't really true.

CBsIP:  Empress Orchid, Anchee Min

De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

Indian Castles 1206-1526, Konstantin S. Nossov 

            With the reading of Tony Hillerman's Skinwalkers, I'm only about 20 years behind in the Navajo mystery series.  This is the one where Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn meet for the first time.  Leaphorn's wife is gravely ill, and somebody's trying to whack Chee.

            Yes, just like last time, I realize I'd read this one before, but couldn't remember the plot.  What I remembered was the letter from Chee's girlfriend, off in Wisconsin or someplace.  Also, the cat.  And yes, Hillerman fell into his habit of overly dramatic endings.  The butcher's bill in this one, in killed and wounded, is a bit much.

            That said, it was an enjoyable read.  I'm fairly certain I've read Talking God and Coyote Waits, and know I've read A Thief of Time, so Sacred Clowns will be the next one on the list.  If and when I get back to this series.  (Seton Hill residency is coming up, and with it a pile of student manuscripts.)

CBsIP:  Empress Orchid, Anchee Min

De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

Indian Castles 1206-1526, Konstantin S. Nossov

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford

[	Tags	|	osprey books, warfare	]
[	Current Location	|	the Pure Land	]
[	mood	|	thoughtful	]

            I have to say that  Japanese Fortified Temples and Monasteries AD 710-1062, by Stephen Turnbull, is not one of my favorite Osprey Books.  I've been to several of the sites and temples mentioned in the book, and I've read several histories of Japan, and yet I found many paragraphs confusing.  Turnbull has written several other books, so I assume this was the off effort.

            Problems:  first, take the title.  The title suggests that the book and the subject start in 710 AD, but that's not true.  While Nara became Japan's first capital then (as mentioned in the Chronology) it had no fortified temples at that time.  The first date for a fortified temple mentioned in the book is 1180 AD, and those are just temporary fortifications.  Next, though it's clear the author had a lot more information than was in the book, the book shows signs of stretching.  There's more white space on the page than most of these Osprey titles, and several of the picture captions are lengthy, and then repeated word for word in the text.  Titles for the bigger pictures appear on the illustration, and then are repeated in large type above the caption.

            Many of the historical discussions seemed to be missing a story arc, or to have lost the lead sentence.

            Ah, well.  I did learn a couple of things, especially about the plaster and wattle firing screens that were built atop the stone walls of many castles and fortifications.  I also understood a couple of threads of the complexity of the period before the unification of Japan.  But, I wouldn't recommend buying this one unless you really need specific information on this subject, and you have a chance to inspect the volume before purchasing.

CBsIP:  Empress Orchid, Anchee Min

De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

Indian Castles 1206-1526, Konstantin S. Nossov

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford

Skinwalkers, Tony Hillerman

            I seem to be discussing the difference between my expectations and the actual book a lot recently, and that's definitely true here.  My latest finished title is The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, A Muslim Traveler of the 14^th Century, by Ross E. Dunn.  I purchased this book online, based on a description that said it was a "new translation" of the Rihla of Ibn Battuta.  Alas, I now realize the description was speaking figuratively, not precisely.  This book is about the Rihla, and Ibn Battuta, not the thing itself.

            On the other hand, it turns out that this book is precisely what I needed to fill a gap in my research for a writing project, and does a very good job of introducing the history of the Dar al-Islam in the Middle Ages.  So I'm quite happy I read it, even though it isn't what I meant to buy.

            Ibn Battuta was born in Morocco, and in his 20s (in 1325) he decided to hit the road and do the hajj.  That alone required crossing the entirety of North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, besides crossing into Arabia.  But the bug of travel got into him on the way, and he didn't stop traveling until he'd been to the Holy Land, Asia Minor, Russia, India, Persia, Indonesia and China, then back to Spain, and across the Sahara to Mali.  It's a bigger trip than Marco Polo took, and, as this book points out, his experience wasn't of traveling in utterly strange foreign lands, but that of traveling mostly within the world of cosmopolitan Islam.  Arabic worked as the language of conversation almost wherever he went, and even in Constantinople and China he found Arabs or Muslims to speak with.

            The virtue of this book is that it uses Battuta as an excuse to discuss the history and condition of each nation as he passes through.  That I found wonderful and fascinating.  The weakness of the book is that it quotes so little, and summarizes so thoroughly, that we get almost no flavor of Ibn Battuta himself in the book.  It would take perhaps fifteen minutes to read all of the directly quoted material from him in this volume.  Which means that I got less Battuta from this book than I already had from visits to the library to chase down an occasional incident I'd read about elsewhere.

            This book took me to cultures and times with which I was unfamiliar, and much of my reading has that experience as its goal.  It worked for me.

CBsIP:  Empress Orchid, Anchee Min

De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

Japanese Fortified Temples and Monasteries 710-1062, Stephen Turnbull

            My 35th completed title for the year is William Dean Howells's Indian Summer.  This is yet another title brought to my attention (though I'd read his The Rise of Silas Lapham years ago) by Noel Perrin's (blessings be upon him) A Reader's Delight.  I had been pleased by Lapham, but this book is better written, more artistically structured and composed.  And, being set in Florence, it allows me to read no further Henry James in good conscience, at least for a while.

            Here's what Mark Twain had to say about this book, in a letter to Howells, as quoted in the Introduction:

You are my only author; I am restricted to you; I wouldn't give a damn for the rest ... I have just read Part II of Indian Summer, & to my mind there isn't a waste line in it, or one that could be improved.  I read it yesterday, ending with that opinion; & read it again to-day, ending with the same opinion emphasized ... It is a beautiful story & makes a body laugh all the time, & cry inside, & feel so old & so forlorn; & gives him gracious glimpses of his lost youth that fill him with a measureless regret, & build up in him a cloudy sense of his having been a prince, once, in some enchanted far-off land, & of being in exile now, & desolate---& lord, no chance ever to get back there again!  That is the thing that hurts.  Well, you have done it with marvelous facility -- & you make all the motives & feelings perfectly clear without analyzing the guts out of them, the way George Eliot does.

            While I'm not quite as wildly enthusiastic about the book, one can't argue too much with Twain.  The book is leisurely for my tastes, and it is sometimes excruciating as it drags the main character, Colville, through the social awkwardness and emotional misbehavior of the story.  But I'm not sure it wouldn't be a lesser book if it didn't let the tale play out just that way.

            The story, in brief, a retired American newspaperman, 40, returns to Florence, Italy, in an attempt to recapture his youth.  He was jilted in Florence, years before.  There he finds the girlfriend of the Jilter, now a widowed dowager with young daughter, in semi-permanent residence.  She is also hosting Imogene, a debutante, who knows Colville's story, finds him charming, and the story of his lost love simply and enchantingly Romantic.  So Imogene flirts with him, he with her, and they sorta become engaged.  Neither of them is thinking straight.  Neither of them is behaving well, and Madam is being ignored, as is the fact that she really loves Colville, herself.

            What makes this tale excruciating (and every detail is finely observed and told without fudging) is that when Mrs. Bowen, and Colville, and Imogene all have doubts, they try so hard to be noble and to obey the very, very, very fine points of manners and duties and etiquette, that they twist themselves all in knots and everybody betrays everybody else, in the midst of being so noble.

            And then, fortunately, there is a carriage accident in which Colville tries to save his young lady, and the young lady screws up.  Everything sorts itself out, as best it can, after that.

            While this has to be read in the context of its time, the book really stands up as well as anything of James, and deserves to be better known.  I'm glad I read it, even though it reminded me rather too much of situations I got myself in, years ago.  Ouch.  And I look forward to the other Howells titles that I have on the shelf, in Riverside Literature Series editions.

            One quotation from the book, illustrating Colville's humorous prattle.  A repeated theme is that Americans have become very Puritanical in the last 20 years (meaning since 1860.)  He and Mrs. Bowen have been discussing whether chaperoning is necessary for a proposed outing:

            ...She played to him on the piano some of the songs that were in fashion when they were in Florence together before.  Imogene had never heard them; she had heard her mother speak of them.  One or two of them were negro songs, such as very pretty young ladies used to sing without harm to themselves or offence to others; but Imogene decided that they were rather rowdy.  "Dear me, Mrs. Bowen!  Did you sing such songs?  You wouldn't let Effie!"

            "No, I wouldn't let Effie.  The times are changed.  I wouldn't let Effie go to the theatre alone with a young gentleman."

            "The times are changed for the worse," Colville began.  "What harm ever came to a young man from a young lady's going alone to the theatre with him?"

CBsIP:  The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, Ross E. Dunn

Empress Orchid, Anchee Min

De Re Militari, Flavius Vegetius

Japanese Fortified Temples and Monasteries 710-1062, Stephen Turnbull