Halfway through this book, I find out that last summer, our own university library acquired the third print edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. There it waits, just through the glass doors I enter weekly.
Volcanoes can destroy our cities, burn away our flesh, suffocate us with toxic gases, crush us with flying boulders. Most volcanologists keep a safe distance from their subject. But they still emerge rapt.
Favorites of the Gods is a solid collection of short fiction from Louisiana’s Creoles of color written during the most chaotic and perilous decades of the nineteenth century. This collection gives contemporary readers access to these short stories for the first time in English.
To Irwin F. Gellman, Nixon deserved higher marks for the operation and substance of his campaign. He sees Kennedy as more expedient as well as superficially more attractive. However, somehow, this volume does not capture the excitement of a very close contest nor how each candidate tried to increase his support.
A “Year of Vonnegut” was declared in Indy in 2007, but that was deflated by his death that year. Given the centenary, it seemed as if there should be more going on, and that got me thinking about legacy from the start.
Euphemisms let us dart away, pretend, avoid that absence the way we pull back from touching someone who frightens us or might be contagious. We are good at distancing death.
There was no privacy between the 1860s and 1880s; one learned from the newspaper exactly what ailed one’s neighbors.
What was not reported about anyone Black? Social events, trophies and feats, business news, births, deaths, marriages… Pretty much any news except crime.
Fairness was demanded, compassion urged. No one worried about HIPPA. Nor did the news need to be momentous.
Marriage in 1870s-era Missouri was a competitive but disorganized sport, each ceremony removing a potential rival from the fray.