Greetings from Boston!
Oct. 6th, 2023 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerGreetings from Boston! I have been visiting skygiants and genarti and talking about books and watching A Spy Among Friends (someone clearly read Ben MacIntyre's A Spy Among Friends and was like, love it, but wouldn't it be better if Nicholas Elliot and Kim Philby were like at least a little bit in love) and doing far less sightseeing than I had intended. Sometimes one simply gets a bit tired and needs a rest!
However, the little sight-seeing I've done has been top-tier: I went on a tour of Trinity Church, which is the one with the Burne-Jones window, although as it turns out the Burne-Jones part of it is a very small square in the middle of a riot of William Morris vines, which has an interestingly pagan effect. It's an absolutely gorgeous church, stained glass windows in at least six wildly different styles, one of which enraged the congregation, and no, it was not the William Morris vines; it was the up-to-date French stained glass window with perspective?? Whoever heard of a stained glass window with perspective! Stained glass is supposed to look flat my friends!!
But they loved the vines, and they also loved John LaFarge's stained glass windows, which were a totally new technique to stained glass, using sheets of colored glass layered over each other so that the windows look like captured fragments of sky. "Like a Tiffany window?" you say. Exactly like a Tiffany window! LaFarge shared his technique with Tiffany, who rode it to fame and glory. Ain't that always the way?
And alsogenarti and I went on a tour of the Boston Public Library, with all its beautiful murals. My favorite was the Galahad cycle, which features Galahad all in red (an unusual symbolic choice but an excellent pictorial one) bopping along on his adventures: seeing the grail, battling knights, falling in love with Blanchefleur, taking the grail to the king of something or other who decides to reward Galahad by sending him to heaven directly! "But Blanchefleur?" we cried piteously, and the guide assured as that as Blanchefleur is a pure maiden (a white flower, stainless) she will surely reunite with Galahad in heaven someday... "It's a happy story!" IS IT THOUGH.
It is an interestingly Edwardian twist on the Galahad stories I'm familiar with, though. And I do love the way that Arthurian legends morph: a never-ending mirror of whatever society they find themselves in.
***
Also of course there has been some reading! First, a book from a different library visit, to the New York Public Library - the classic main building, with the lions Patience and Fortitude, which is really more of a museum than an active library now, although there are still reading rooms where people can research with an appointment, and yes I did think a little bit about seeing if I could read one of my 1930s Newbery books there next time I’m in NYC...
Also, when you buy a book from the NYPL gift shop, they stamp it with the NYPL lion stamp. “Will you stamp my blank book too?” I asked shyly, for I had also bought a blank book with a cover patterned after the Hunt-Lenox Globe (one of the library’s treasures; also one of the only maps in the world to actually contain the words “Here be dragons,” in Latin of course), and the clerk kindly did so.
"But which book did you buy?" you demand. It's Stéphane Garnier’s How to Think Like a Cat, which is basically a self-help book about being more like your cat: living in the moment, realizing that you are just fine just as you are, letting go of artificial productivity goals in favor of sitting in the grass stalking a mouse for six hours if that’s what you want to do, etc. It's cute!
The other book is Audrey Erskine Lindop's The Singer Not the Song, a.k.a. The Bandit and the Priest, which sounds like the nickname you would give a book when you want to emphasize how gay it is, but is also, in fact, an official alternate title. I've been on the hunt for this book ever since I readskygiants' amazing review, and I regret to inform you that finishing it has simply put me on another hunt, this time for the sequel, even though the sequel can't possibly live up to the sheer intensity of the priest's battle to save the bandit's soul, which the bandit resists to his utmost because he can't stand the Catholic church, while being unable to quell his admiration of the priest as a human being. If only the priest had given his whole heart and soul to a cause less stupid!
It's very intense! I did however often find myself on the side of the people who tactfully suggested that perhaps Father Keogh ought to put the souls of the rest of his parishioners at least on the level with the soul of Malo the Bandit. Yes yes, no soul is beyond redemption and it would be nice to save Malo, but is it worth endangering every other soul in town?
skygiants and genarti and talking about books and watching A Spy Among Friends (someone clearly read Ben MacIntyre's A Spy Among Friends and was like, love it, but wouldn't it be better if Nicholas Elliot and Kim Philby were like at least a little bit in love) and doing far less sightseeing than I had intended. Sometimes one simply gets a bit tired and needs a rest!However, the little sight-seeing I've done has been top-tier: I went on a tour of Trinity Church, which is the one with the Burne-Jones window, although as it turns out the Burne-Jones part of it is a very small square in the middle of a riot of William Morris vines, which has an interestingly pagan effect. It's an absolutely gorgeous church, stained glass windows in at least six wildly different styles, one of which enraged the congregation, and no, it was not the William Morris vines; it was the up-to-date French stained glass window with perspective?? Whoever heard of a stained glass window with perspective! Stained glass is supposed to look flat my friends!!
But they loved the vines, and they also loved John LaFarge's stained glass windows, which were a totally new technique to stained glass, using sheets of colored glass layered over each other so that the windows look like captured fragments of sky. "Like a Tiffany window?" you say. Exactly like a Tiffany window! LaFarge shared his technique with Tiffany, who rode it to fame and glory. Ain't that always the way?
And also
genarti and I went on a tour of the Boston Public Library, with all its beautiful murals. My favorite was the Galahad cycle, which features Galahad all in red (an unusual symbolic choice but an excellent pictorial one) bopping along on his adventures: seeing the grail, battling knights, falling in love with Blanchefleur, taking the grail to the king of something or other who decides to reward Galahad by sending him to heaven directly! "But Blanchefleur?" we cried piteously, and the guide assured as that as Blanchefleur is a pure maiden (a white flower, stainless) she will surely reunite with Galahad in heaven someday... "It's a happy story!" IS IT THOUGH. It is an interestingly Edwardian twist on the Galahad stories I'm familiar with, though. And I do love the way that Arthurian legends morph: a never-ending mirror of whatever society they find themselves in.
***
Also of course there has been some reading! First, a book from a different library visit, to the New York Public Library - the classic main building, with the lions Patience and Fortitude, which is really more of a museum than an active library now, although there are still reading rooms where people can research with an appointment, and yes I did think a little bit about seeing if I could read one of my 1930s Newbery books there next time I’m in NYC...
Also, when you buy a book from the NYPL gift shop, they stamp it with the NYPL lion stamp. “Will you stamp my blank book too?” I asked shyly, for I had also bought a blank book with a cover patterned after the Hunt-Lenox Globe (one of the library’s treasures; also one of the only maps in the world to actually contain the words “Here be dragons,” in Latin of course), and the clerk kindly did so.
"But which book did you buy?" you demand. It's Stéphane Garnier’s How to Think Like a Cat, which is basically a self-help book about being more like your cat: living in the moment, realizing that you are just fine just as you are, letting go of artificial productivity goals in favor of sitting in the grass stalking a mouse for six hours if that’s what you want to do, etc. It's cute!
The other book is Audrey Erskine Lindop's The Singer Not the Song, a.k.a. The Bandit and the Priest, which sounds like the nickname you would give a book when you want to emphasize how gay it is, but is also, in fact, an official alternate title. I've been on the hunt for this book ever since I read
skygiants' amazing review, and I regret to inform you that finishing it has simply put me on another hunt, this time for the sequel, even though the sequel can't possibly live up to the sheer intensity of the priest's battle to save the bandit's soul, which the bandit resists to his utmost because he can't stand the Catholic church, while being unable to quell his admiration of the priest as a human being. If only the priest had given his whole heart and soul to a cause less stupid! It's very intense! I did however often find myself on the side of the people who tactfully suggested that perhaps Father Keogh ought to put the souls of the rest of his parishioners at least on the level with the soul of Malo the Bandit. Yes yes, no soul is beyond redemption and it would be nice to save Malo, but is it worth endangering every other soul in town?
