Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday

[osprey_archer]

Extremely busy tomorrow, so posting Wednesday Reading Meme a day early!

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

At long last, I’ve completed D. K. Broster’s Sir Isumbras at the Ford! Still no idea where the title came from. Presumably it’s a reference from a poem? I went into this expecting a medieval tale, and it absolutely is not. Like The Wounded Name and The Yellow Poppy, it’s about Royalists trying to oust the Republicans after the Revolution.

In this last installment, Vireville rushes to the isle of Sark to confess his love to Raymonde, who accepts his suit. But then Vireville worries that perhaps she accepted his hand only in gratitude for his earlier rescue and pity for his recent loss of an arm… But swiftly his worries are interrupted by the necessity of crossing back to Jersey to catch the sloop that will take Vireville back to France to resume his post as a Chouan leader (now with Raymonde at his side as wife and agent de correspondance), and he and Raymonde rush to sea, only for a deadly squall to blow up…

“BROSTER WOULDN’T,” I wailed, well aware that if Broster felt like it, Broster jolly well would.

But in this case she was merciful! Our lovers do NOT sink to the bottom of the sea. They battle the storm together, and the drenching rain washes Vireville clean of his worries. He and Raymonde love each other! Were made for each other! Are going to France together to carry on the good fight! And FIN.

I also read Charles Finch’s What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year, largely because I’ve read all of Finch’s books hitherto and didn’t mean to break my streak just because his latest book is a diary of 2020. But it turned out to be surprisingly absorbing for a book about such recent events: I devoured it in one afternoon. You’d think it wouldn’t tell you anything new, and in a sense, of course, it doesn’t, but at the same time it was surprising to realize how much I had forgotten from 2020—in particular the absolute misery of having Donald Trump as president, and waking up every morning wondering how the hell that buffoon is going to make everything worse today. (Forgotten may be the wrong word. I may have repressed the memory in self-defense.)

And I’m back in the swing of things with the 1930s Newbery books, this time with Davy Crockett, by Constance Rourke. You may remember Rourke as the one who wrote the Newbery Honor-winning John James Audubon biography positing that Audubon might have been the escaped dauphin of France. Naturally I was agog to learn Rourke’s theories about Davy Crockett.

Sadly, nothing in Davy Crockett is as deliciously nuts as John James Audubon, Escaped Dauphin of France. (Then again, what could?) But the book is highly readable, and Rourke happily relates a great many Crockett legends (Davy Crockett was clearly the Chuck Norris of his time), sorting them generally into “probably true,” “could be true,” “okay these can’t all be true but it sounds like something Crockett might have done,” and “physically impossible for a human being to accomplish, so I must sadly admit that Davy Crockett did not in fact grease a lightning bolt.”

What I’m Reading Now

Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940, which I got because it contains a short story by D. K. Broster. (It’s near the end of the volume, so I haven’t reached it yet.) A few familiar names here (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton – also Edith Nesbit!), but also quite a few I’m not familiar with, so this will be an interesting exploration.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have decided that I am indeed going to dive into all things French! I’ve already read a few of the big ones (Les Mis, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Count of Monte Cristo) - perhaps it is time to read more Zola? To delve, at long last, into Colette? To attempt the first volume of Proust? Recommendations of books and also specific translations greatly appreicated.

Also considering books about French history! troisoiseaux, I know there was that one book you read about the last day of Robespierre. Maybe it’s time for me to give that a try.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

troisoiseaux, I know there was that one book you read about the last day of Robespierre

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

(It's The Fall of Robespierre by Colin Jones— I believe skygiants also read it?)

[osprey_archer]

Thank you! The closest library doesn't have it, so I will have to see about tracking it down. Sometimes you just want to watch Robespierre have a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

[black_bentley]

On all things French - what about Candide by Voltaire? I've got French and English copies somewhere, I'll dig them out and see who did the English translation!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, that's worth considering! It's quite short, too, isn't it? I read some of it in... some class at some point... and always meant to go back and read the rest, and never did.

[black_bentley]

I kept forgetting to go and check my copy! The English version I have is only about 140 pages, and the translation is by John Butt. But it's the only one I've got, so I can't say how it stacks up against any others...

[sanguinity]

I very much enjoyed Les Liaisons dangereuses, as did a few others in my circle. I cannot recommend one translation over another.

[osprey_archer]

That one had a Dracula Daily-type email list, didn't it? I should look and see if that's still running.

[sanguinity]

It did, and I was subscribed to it. It hasn't looped and rerun, nor have I heard about any plans to.

[whimsyful]

Seconding Les Liaisons dangereuses. I also loved Stendhal's The Red and the Black when I first read it years and years ago, but I have no idea how it holds up.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, interesting! The only thing that I know about The Red and the Black is that my father had to read for IIRC college and found it deathly dull. What did you like about it?

[sovay]

Recommendations of books and also specific translations greatly appreicated.

I greatly enjoyed Théophile Gautier's My Fantoms (2008), translated by Richard Holmes; its seven selected stories are populated by diabolical actors and obsessed painters and beautiful vampires and priests and sexually predatory ghosts of Pompeii; they read like proto-Tanith Lee.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, that sounds super fun! I wonder if Tanith Lee ever read the stories (in an earlier translation or possibly French).

[sovay]

I wonder if Tanith Lee ever read the stories (in an earlier translation or possibly French).

I've never seen an interview where she mentioned him, but she worked so much in the Symbolist and Decadent traditions, I would not be surprised. Besides, he writes wonderfully, so on general principle I hope so.

[ethelmay]

Is Millais's painting any more relevant?

[osprey_archer]

Vireville does cross the English channel to rescue a child at one point, so there's a bit of connection there.

[anna_wing]

Valery Larbaud?

Non-fiction? Montesquieu, Montaigne, Chamfort, Tocqueville, Mdme de Stael, Talleyrand.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you!

[luzula]

well aware that if Broster felt like it, Broster jolly well would.
She totally would, if she felt like it! Although I've never seen her kill off both halves of a couple--I suppose killing just one of them makes for more angst...

[osprey_archer]

She absolutely would! But perhaps she decided that having a storm blow up and kill them both at the end is too random - it doesn't grow out of the story naturally in the way that other character deaths do in her other books.

[skygiants]

I think I've given you all my French recommendations already but I'll keep rotating it in my mind! I am sad that Rourke didn't manage to fit long-lost dauphin John James Audobon INTO the Davy Crockett book as I had briefly hoped might be the case.

[osprey_archer]

IF ONLY their paths had crossed at some point! But even if Audubon had showed up, it's hard to imagine how Rourke could have fit in his prospective backstory as the long-lost dauphin. Just doesn't seem like something he would confide to relative stranger Davie Crockett!