A Letter from Dr. Fagan

In which Paul learns of Mr. Prendergast's return to his original calling:

"I have had a letter from Mr. Prendergast stating that he too wishes to resign his post. Apparently he has been reading a series of articles by a popular bishop and has discovered that there is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. This seems to be a comfort to him."

--page 188

Mr. Prendergast on Marriage

I recently had a conversation with a young man who was pretty cynical about marriage. He'd seen so many bad marriages and so few (if any) good ones that he questioned the wisdom and usefulness of it, at least for him.

This young man's pseudo-empirically derived opinion on marriage made me think about Mr. Prendergast's opinions on the same topic. Prendy was a lapsed churchman who had left the church because he no longer believed. In his naivete, he thought that leaving was the right thing to do, it seems. Now teaching at Llanabba, the "School" where Paul is employed, he came out with this interesting observation at dinner with Paul and another fellow instructor:

"I don't believe," said Mr. Prendergast, "that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed. Don't you agree?"

--page 135.

So, do you agree with Prendy?

I Don't Think They're Listening, Donald

Donald Miller in Christianity Today, August 22, 2008:

The issue of abortion is a very sensitive one and it’s an important issue. I look at from a perspective of, what’s the best that we can do. As we elect a Republican House and Senate, and as we elect Republican leadership in the executive branch, we see very little changes on that issue. We’re electing someone who agrees with us on abortion, being sort of a tragedy in our country, and yet can’t get anything done. It’s kind of like saying, I want a pilot on my plane who feels this way about abortion, but he can’t fly the plane. The executive branch doesn’t have that much power, it has some power, but it doesn’t have much power. You look at the reality of that and say, what can I do to defend the sanctity of all human life, including the living, and the marginalized and the oppressed and the poor? What can we do to better social conditions so that less women are put in situations where they feel like they need to have an abortion. What does looking at the issue holistically look like. I hope the Democrats will listen to those of us who lean toward pro-life and those changes can be made.

Associated Press, January 23, 2009:

President Barack Obama has signed an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.

Liberal groups welcomed the decision while abortion rights foes criticized the president. Known as the "Mexico City policy," the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since GOP President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. Democrat Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

Obama signed it quietly, without coverage by the media, late on Friday afternoon, a contrast to the midday signings with fanfare of executive orders on other subjects earlier in the week.

Yes, I've been waiting since August to post this.

A Good Book

When the mind is too worn from the week's cares and the day's troubles to want to tackle a book that requires work, but not quite so smoothly worn as to give up all pretense of thoughtfulness and turn on the television, there are a few authors whose works are ideal, and Waugh is at the top of the list. It might seem pretentious to title your first novel "Decline and Fall", and perhaps it was, but when your whole point is to ridicule the pretentiousness of the upper strata of your society and bring light to its rotten core, maybe it's a good choice. It IS pretty pretentious to write such a book at all, unless you can pull it off with Waugh's sense of humor. He makes you cynical about his character's cynicism; perhaps that's why he reads well in 2009.

Thanks to this book I have a new classification system for all my books. Early in the story, when Mr. Paul Pennyfeather, an orphan who's just been kicked out of college for a morals offense ("sent down for indecent behavior" was the term of the day) for which he seems not entirely responsible, has been cut off by his caretaker and is applying for teaching jobs, the placement agent describes his ranking system for schools:

1. Leading School
2. First-rate School
3. Good School
4. School

Paul has been given an assignment at a "School". "'Frankly,' said [the agent], 'School is pretty bad. I think you'll find it a very suitable post.'"

[As an aside, I note that this ranking system is suspiciously similar to that devised by the Duke of Cumberland's army for Scottish prisoners following the Battle of Culloden in 1745 (see recent reviews):

1. Really gentlemen
2. Not properly gentlemen but above the rank of Common Men
3. A lower degree than the preceding
4. Common Men

Perhaps the somewhat arbitrary four-tier system is common in English tradition?]

So, henceforth, I shall rank all books reviewed by the following classifications:

1. A classic
2. A good book
3. Not a bad book
4. Just a book

Happy reading!

"Business Casual" for the 18th Century Highlander

As part of the English destruction of Highland society, the wearing of traditional Highland dress was strictly prohibited upon pain of imprisonment or banishment overseas. This hit pretty hard.

"The mountain people had no other clothes but the tartan plaid and kilt. Without them they would go naked. They did the only thing they could do at that moment. They dyed the tartan black and brown. They sewed their kilts between their legs to make breeches. . . .

"Thus Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion ended in a bad joke, with his clansmen in ragged breeches and their women dipping tartan plaids into vats of dye and mud. . . . there was resistance to the Act. Some Highlanders ignored it, a few taking to the hills rather than abandon the dress or accept humiliating compromises. Others carried tartan plaids beneath their coats, draping themselves with them when there were no soldiers about. Some wore strips of coloured cloth about their waists, blue, green and red, pleated like the kilt and worn over comic trews. When caught they were of course imprisoned. Caught again they were transported. Some were shot by the soldiers who had once hunted for the Prince, for fugitives or for arms, but who now searched the glens for rags of woven cloth.

". . . in the beginning, the law against the wearing of Highland dress or the tartan was firmly imposed and the penalties were scrupulously applied, but as the years passed it staggered and died beneath its own inertia. It had served its purpose, however. When the proscription was lifted in 1782 there was no enthusiastic return to the tartan or the kilt. A Proclamation went round the glens:

'This is declaring to every man, young and old, Commons and Gentles, that they may after this put on and wear the Trews, the little Kilt, the Doublet and Hose, along with the Tartan Kilt, without fear of the Law of the Land or the jealousy of enemies . . .'

"But the old attachment to the Highland dress had died in a generation, the old patterns (if they had ever had more than an area significance) were forgotten. Forgotten, too, was the skill of making dyes from the herbs on the hills. The clans were no longer, their true identity had gone with the broadsword and their chiefs, and the wearing of the kilt was an affectation for gentlemen or for those who joined His Majesty's Highland Regiments. It was not until forty years later still, when George IV (a post-Rebelliono Jacobite) came to Scotland and dressed himself in a ridiculous uniform of scarlet kilt, plaid, bonnet, eagle feathers, broadsword, dirk and skean dhu that a romantic and extravagant interest in the Highland dress was born. Walter Scott was hard at work creating his Gothic picture of the Highlands, helped by many Lowland gentlemen whose ancestors had regarded the clansmen as savages. Tartans were invented and ascribed to this clan or that, a religious devotion being paid to setts that would not have been recognized by any Highlander who charged at Culloden. Sentiment spins enduring lies. When Victoria's humourless German consort designed a tartan that was used on the carpets, furnishings and wallpaper at Balmoral all interest in the parti-coloured cloth should have been killed by a giggle. But it was not.

"The banning of their dress took from the clans their pride and their sense of belonging to a unique people. The abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions of their chiefs, which followed, destroyed the political and social system that had held them together."

--pages 311-14

The Ones That Got Away

A few of the prisoners escaped. That made for some good stories.

"Only one man succeeded in escaping from the Tilbury transports, at least only one is so recorded. Stewart Carmichael of Bonnyhaugh had been captured in September 1745, while on his way to join the Prince. He was brought to the Thames and transferred to the Pamela. The prisoners aboard this ship were fed with the offal of diseased cattle and hogs supplied by speculators in Gravesend, and while most prisoners ate what they could of this Carmichael had the wit to see a further use for it. He saved the pigs' bladders until he had four that could be inflated. One night he forced open a port, slipped over the side into the river, and, with the bladders beneath his arms, paddled his way to the Kent shore. He remained hidden in London until the Act of Indemnity.

[As an aside, recall that the first footballs -- really rugby balls -- were made by sewing leather casings around pigs' bladders; hence the otherwise difficult to explain shape of the modern football. Remember Mr. Carmichael's story the next time you watch a football game!]

"The escape of Donald MacLaren was sudden, dramatic and successful. He was a drover from Balquhidder who had gone with other MacLarens to fight with the Appin Stewarts, holding a captain's commission under Ardshiel. For three months after Culloden he skulked with others of his name on the Braes of Leny, the wild and beautiful pass below Ben Ledi, until they were discovered by a party of soliders on a rebel-hunt. Captain Donald fought with his broadsword, shouting 'Creag an Tuire!' as the MacLarens had cried when the Appin Regiment charged against Munro's [Regiment], but a musket-ball broke his thigh and he was captured. He was taken to Stirling and then to the Canongate in Edinburgh. In August he was sent southward for trial in Carlisle, strapped to the saddle behind a dragoon. Before the Border was reached, and when the detachment was riding down the vale of Annan, he managed to free himself from the strap, or saw that it had become loose. It was morning, and the mist was thick above and within the green hollow on Erickstane Brae which local people called the Marquis of Annandale's Beef Stand. There MacLaren slipped from the horse and rolled into the hollow. Lieutenant Howison, the officer commanding, cried out 'By God, I arrest you in the King's name!', which would not have stopped Donald MacLaren even had he been able to halt his descent. The dragoons dismounted, and came down into the bowl of mist, yelling and stabbing, but MacLaren buried himself in a bog, and covered his head with sods. He remained there for some days, keeping himself alive by eating the rotting flesh of a dead sheep. He finally made his way home to Balquhidder, where he disguised himself as a woman and lived thus for two years until he felt it safe to be Donald MacLaren the drover again."

--pages 254-55

What Mysteries Await Within?

Close against a rural exit off Interstate 65 just north of the Tennessee-Alabama border sits the Wyatt Archaeological Museum, pictured above. I didn't get to go in the day I passed by for . . . well, several reasons. It didn't really look open. The kids didn't seem interested. The dog that came up to the truck barking was less than inviting. The little white sign in the door said something like "OPEN SUNDAY THROUGH FRIDAY, 9:00 to 3:00; CLOSED ON THE LORD'S SABBATH".

Oh, what wonderful mysteries await the intrepid patrons of the Wyatt Archaeological Museum?

Fortunately, we have google, and you can get a pretty thorough preview here.

The Sins of the Fathers

If you've seen any movies about historic European wars and rebellions, you may be familiar with the custom of taking enemy heads and impaling them on spikes erected above the local castle or market square. It's a dramatic presentation, to be sure, and you may have thought that it was invented by Hollywood to give a succinct picture of the brutality of the day. But it wasn't invented by Hollywood at all; it was quite real. And one thing I certainly didn't realize was just how long they left the heads up there. Here's Prebble on the heads of the Scottish rebels of the '45:

"Some of the skulls of the hanged, spiked above the gates of the cities in which they were executed, were still grinning down on the streets thirty years later when another King George faced another rebellion, this time in his Colonies." --page 232.

This certainly gives a little more bite to Benjamin Franklin's statement made upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Pause for a moment to remember the life and death of Mr. Thomas Syddall. Mr. Prebble tells his story interspersed with the tales of eight other prisoners, all of whom were tried and punished as a group:

"The middle-aged Thomas Syddall had been the Adjutant of the Manchester Regiment. He was the son of a blacksmith, and before the Rising he had been a reputable barber in Manchester. His family's devotion to the Stuarts was as strong as Towneley's [a 38-year-old Catholic colonel of the Manchester Regiment and commandant of the Rebel forces at the ill-fated Carlisle], and its sacrifices probably greater. They were Catholics, of course, and Syddall's father had been out with Prince Charles's father in 1715, and had been hanged for it. Throughout Thomas Syddall's boyhood he had seen his father's skull whitening on top of the Market Cross in Manchester, and his desire for revenge had grown strong. When the Rebels cam south to Lancashire in November 1745, Syddall left his wife and five children and bought himself a commission in the Manchester Regiment. Exactly one month later he was a prisoner. Sentence: death.

. . . .

"All these men were hanged on 30 July. The magazines and the newspapers kept the public well-informed about the life the prisoners led from the day they were sentenced to the day they died. The reports appeared in tightly-printed, scarecely-paragraphed columns between advertisements announcing the arrival of 'exceedingly good LIMONS and BITTER ORANGES, the Bitter Oranges are fit for marmelade; also fresh chestnuts and walnuts'. The accused were heavily ironed, wrists and ankles locked together by manacles and bars, so that they seemed to move in constant modesty or prayer. At night they were fastened to the flags of their cells by staples. The waiting, the thinking and the dark of the night acted upon them according to their natures. Syddall prayed, and said that he thought unceasingly of his family, his five children for whom the best that he could wish was that they might end their lives in a martyrdom such as his."

After the men were awakened on the morning of their execution, they were given coffee to drink and brought to the Common. Each man was allowed to say whatever he wanted to say for his final words. The men had written out their speeches the night before, or (as was customary for the less oratorically inclined) paid pastors to write speeches for them. Now the story picks up with Syddall and another prisoner giving their speeches:

"The speeches of Syddall and Deacon had been written for them by a Non-Jurant minister called Creake, who was at this moment selling printed copies of them among the crowd. 'My deal fellow-countrymen', said Thomas Deacon, "I am come here to pay my last debt to nature, and I think myself happy in having an opportunity to die in so just and so glorious a cause . . .' Mr. Creake's zeal for Non-Jurant Episcopacy was strong in what he had written for Syddall: 'If any would enquire into its primitive constitution I refer them to our Common Prayer Book which is entitled A Compleat Collection of Devotions, both Publick and Private.' Both men forgave their enemies, including King George and the Duke of Cumberland, while pointing out that neither had a right to such titles."

The nine men were then hanged for three minutes, cut down, disemboweled and had their hearts cut out, and beheaded with a butcher's cleaver. (Ever wonder where the American Founding Fathers came up with that "cruel and unusual punishment" clause in the U.S. Constitution?) The king had the legal custody of the remains. The bodies were buried nearby, three of the heads were returned to their families, and the other six heads sent in three directions to be placed high on spikes for public display and example. Syddall's head, along with Thomas Deacon's, went to his hometown of Manchester.

"Thus the skull of Syddall rested where his father's had been impaled nearly thirty years before. Bishop Deacon made a vow never to pass the Market Cross lest he see his son's head, but one day a twist in the narrow streets, taken inadvertently, brought him to the sight of it. He raised his hat and passed on. For this small act of sedition he was charged and fined by the magistrates."

--pages 260-69

The Foreshadowing of the Southern Gentleman?

"The long plaid, which could be belted into a kilt and draped over the shoulders in a shawl, was the poor Highlandman's only dress. Elaborations were for his betters, and when gentlemen of high degree dressed themselves in splendor it was with a savage and vivid magnificence. A chief, since he preferred to ride a Sheltie rather than walk, wore trews of skin-tight tartan and not the kilt. His hair was tied back with a ribbon, and powdered if he had acquired the fashion abroad [chiefs, unlike their people, often went away for college]. His bonnet was trimmed with the eagle feather that marked his rank. He wore a tartan jacket and a tartan waistcoat, a plaid tartan that fell from the silver and cairngorn brooch on his left shoulder. If he chose to wear the kilt and not trews, a silver and leather sporran hung from his waist, and his calves were covered to the knee with hose of tartan fret. Tartan from shoulder to brogues, plaid, kilt and stockings often of a different sett, so that his clothes burned and glowed with green and yellow, blue and scarlet [the identification of particular setts with particular clans is a 19th century Romantic development apparently without much tradition behind it!].

"He armed himself with claw-handled steel pistols, known as Highland dags, two of them dangling from his belt. His round, bullhide target [i.e., shield; see the book cover] was studded with silver bosses, and was frequently mounted with a steel spike twelve inches long. On one hip he carried a basket-hilted broadsword, double-edged, a yard long, and two inches wide. On the other he wore his dirk, its haft richly wrought with silver, its scabbard pouched for knife and fork [in former times it was customary to carry these with you; most hosts couldn't afford to supply them, or at least it would have been rude to expect it]. Thrust into the top of his hose on one calf was a tiny black knife. And thus he stood in magnificence, a savage man who might speak French and Latin, who could distinguish between a good claret and a bad, who believed in the blood feud and the Holy Trinity, who would bargain like an Edinburgh chandler to secure a profitable marriage for his daughter, who could sell his tenants to the plantations [in the Caribbean] but who would touch his sword at the slightest reflection on his honor. A man of wild and ridiculous poetry, harsh and remorseless principle, a man who was, by 1746, an uncomfortable anachronism."

--pages 44-45

Why Didn't They Tell Me About This?

As I began to read on my own toward the end of and after the completion of my "formal" education, I came across various references to significant events in British history, and somewhere along the way I picked up the bare fact that what was left of an independent Scotland was finally brought to heel and incorporated into Britain at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. The bare fact always seemed significant to me; certainly much more significant than much of the history I had been taught in school -- which, as far as I can remember, did not include even a single mention of this most significant of historic events for anyone living in the English-speaking world. But then again, maybe they did mention it, or included "Culloden" in a textbook chart somewhere that I studied for a test late one night.

In any case, I had no idea. There is so much to tell about this book and the history it covers. A cultural analysis of early 18th century Highland culture (intensely feudal and clan centered, poor, and independent minded), a fair amount of detail about British army life of the period (viscious, low paying, and frequently punctuated by the lash, yet still better than life in the London slums), a contextual portrait of "Bonny Prince Charlie" who recruited and led the Scottish uprising in an attempt to recapture the throne of Britain for the Stuarts, and a detailed exploration of the inhuman brutality with which the British army handled several thousand captured Highlanders (imagine weeks or months in the hold of a ship crowded with other prisoners, sleeping on ballast stones and eating and drinking insufficient quantities of raw butchered cattle and pig entrails) and crushed the "rebellious spirit" of the Highlands through a months-long occupation during which they drove off all the livestock, burned every house they could find, stole everything they could carry from the locals (often even including the clothes they were wearing) and burned everything else, and then sold what they stole and split up the profits according to rank. It is no exaggeration to say that the British approach to prisoner treatment makes Abu Graib look like a halfway house and Guantanomo look like a Motel 6.

And all of this written in an engaging, accessible style by . . . a Canadian Communist! Google "John Prebble" to learn more. To be sure, he appears to have joined in the early 20th century when huge numbers of intellectuals were pulled in to Communism, and he pulled out of the party by mid-century. In that respect his story is like many other intellectuals of his time. But that's a whole other discussion. Suffice to say that it is obvious from this book that Mr. Prebble approached his subject with honesty and and integrity, albeit with an unusual (for his time) focus on the lot of the common soldier and the common people -- the victims of history that had been ignored so long by professional historians. It's hard to appreciate now how significant a thing this must have been at the time Prebble wrote (this book was first published in 1961), since today virtually all academic history focuses on victim groups and the sweep of events, rejecting the older concept that history is a story of great achievements by great men.

Anyway, this is a very good book, and I'll share a few excerpts in coming days.

The Great Conversation

"During the student revolts that shook the world in the late 1960s, one of the slogans shouted at the lecturers at the University of Heidelberg was Hier wird nicht zitiert!, 'No quoting here1' The students were demanding original thought; they were forgetting that to quote is to continue a conversation from the past in order to give context to the present. To quote is to make use of the Library of Babel; to quote is to reflect on what has been said before, and unless we do that, we speak in a vacuum where no human voice can make a sound. 'To write history is to cite it,' declared Walter Benjamin."

--page 224

No Five Finger Discounts at the Library

"A dictionary from the seventh century B.C. carries this prayer: 'May Ishtar bless the reader who will not alter this tablet nor place it elsewhere in the library, and may She denounce in anger he who dares withdraw it from this building.' I have placed this warning on the wall of my own library to ward off borrowers in the night." --page 109

"All that remains of an Athenian library: an inscription stating that opening times are 'from the first to the sixth hour' and that 'it is forbidden to take works out of the library.'" --Frontispiece

Good Thing the Egyptians Didn't Have Digital Media

"[A]bove all, the argument that calls for electronic reproduction on account of the endangered life of paper is a false one. Anybody who has used a computer knows how easy it is to lose a text on the screen, to come upon a faulty disk or CD, to have the hard drive crash beyond all appeal. The tools of the electronic media are not immortal. The life of a disk is about seven years; a CD-ROM lasts about ten. In 1986, the BBC spent two and a half million pounds creating a computer-based, multi-media version of the Domesday Book, the eleventh-century census of England compiled by Norman monks. More ambitious than its predecessor, the electronic Domesday Book contained 250,000 place names, 25,000 maps, 50,000 pictures, 3,000 data sets and 60 minutes of moving pictures, plus scores of accounts that recorded 'life in Britain' during that year. Over a million people contributed to the project, which was stored on twelve-inch laser disks that could only be deciphered by a special BBC microcomputer. Sixteen years later, in March 2002, an attempt was made to read the information on one of the few such computers still in existence. The attempt failed. Further solutions were sought to retrieve the data, but none was entirely successful. 'There is currently no demonstrably viable technical solution to this problem,' said Jeff Rothenberg of the Rand Corporation, one of the world experts on data preservation, called in to assist. 'Yet, if it is not solved, our increasingly digital heritage is in grave risk of being lost.' By contrast, the original Domesday Book, almost a thousand years old, written in ink on paper and kept at the Public Record Office in Kew, is in fine condition and still perfectly readable.

"The director for the electronic records archive program at the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States confessed in November 2004 that the preservation of electronic material, even for the next decade, let alone for eternity, 'is a global problem for the biggest governments and the biggest corporations all the way down to individuals.' Since no clear solution is available, electronic experts recommend that users copy their materials onto CDs, but even these are of short duration. The lifespan of data recorded on a CD with a CD burner could be as little as five years. In fact, we don't know for how long it will be possible to read a text inscribed on a 2004 CD. And while it is true that acidity and brittleness, fire and the legendary bookworms threaten ancient condexes and scrolls, not everything written or printed o parchment or paper is condemned to an early grave. A few years ago, in the Archeological Museum of Naples, I saw, held between two plates of glass, the ashes of a papyrus rescued from the ruins of Pompeii. It was two thousand years old; it had been burnt by the fires of Vesuvius, it had been buried under a flow of lava -- and I could still read the letters written on it, with astonishing clarity."

--pgs. 75-77

When Your Books Won't Fit On Your Shelves

"In the second chapter of Sylvie and Bruno, Lewis Carroll dreamt up the following solution: 'If we could only apply that Rule to books! You know, in finding the Least Common Multiple, we strike out a quantity wherever it occurs, except in the term where it is raised to its highest power. So we should have to erase every recorded thought, except in the sentence where it is expressed with the greatest intensity.' His companion objects: 'Some books would be reduced to blank paper, I'm afraid!' 'They would,' the narrator admits. 'Most libraries would be terribly diminished in bulk. But just think what they would gain in quality!' In a similar spirit, in Lyons, at the end of the first century, a strict law demanded that, after every literary competition, the losers be forced to erase their poetic efforts with their tongues, so that no second-rate literature would survive."

--page 70

A Special Gummy Hell

"During the day, I write, browse, rearrange books, put away my new acquisitions, reshuffle sections for the sake of space. Newcomers are made welcome after a period of inspection. If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page. Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned."

--page 17

The Place To Be

If you love books, you have a warm spot in your heart for libraries of all kinds. School libraries, university libraries (think about the RARE BOOK ROOM and salivate!), public lending libraries, and perhaps best of all, idiosyncratic private libraries little known and rarely accessible. All at once the libraries I've known come at me together -- my elementary school library with Mrs. Brown, the librarian, and the goofy little filmstrip projectors with the "beep" signaling to advance to film to the next frame, my high school library with little of interest and too many rules, my hometown public library where I once did a Boy Scout landscaping project, my undergraduate university's library where I discovered WPA Guides while browsing one night after some heavy research, my grad school library filled with a priceless collection of legal antiquities (I used to study sitting at a 500-year-old table from a European manor house), and even my own (very) modest library that everyone else in my family refers to as the "playroom" because of the children's toys scattered about. But I know the truth -- it's the library, because it contains most of my books!

Mr. Manguel knows a thing or two about books, too. His "job" for the last thirty-odd years has been editor and critic, and the dust jacket dutifully notes his impressive accomplishments, but what impressed me more was how much he'd managed to read in his lifetime, and the impressive settings in which he did so. This book is a collection of Manguel's essays about libraries and reading, and it covers some real treats -- Montaigne's tower, the original Library of Alexandria (or what little is known of it) and its modern attempted reconception, the British Library, the Library of Congress, Ashurbanipal's library (yes, THAT Ashurbanipal), the Bibliotheque Nationale, Aby Warburg's library (most curious indeed), even Hitler's libary (now part of the Library of Congress). And then there are the fantasy libraries such as Captain Nemo's that I won't even try to describe. But the crowning glory is probably Manguel's own library, built in his home in rural France by incorporating a centuries-old crumbling monastery wall. Yeah, my library's like that, too!

As you might expect, Mr. Manguel has favored us with several passages worth quoting, giving me multiple blog posts from a single book. So stay tuned!

Oh, who am I kidding?

No one's going to read my review of this book anyway. And if they did they wouldn't pay any attention. Why bother?