About this time, the editor, who is spending a total of three weeks in Morocco, is probably sick and tired of Moroccan food and is yearning, yes, licking her lips over the prospect of returning home to the South and eating a great big bowl of grits. Seems like a good time to revisit this […]
Category Archives: The Story of Books
“Go West Young Man,” along with “America’s Manifest Destiny,” was a motto that stirred Americans to dream of traveling to the wild west—an intriguing place away from civilization. Although knowing little to nothing about the “real west” themselves, novelists quickly fueled the flames of the public’s fascination with their stories. New Jersey born James Fenimore […]
Part One Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending with Butterflies, Flames, and Jewels Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things. She is young and blonde (or raven-haired) and beautiful – always beautiful. That is unless she’s old and grey and stout. She sleeps or runs or tiptoes through the […]
“I am Eloise. I am six. I am a city child. I live at the Plaza.” And so begins the intriguing, zany, wonderful story of Eloise, written by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight. This book was given to me in the late 50’s, and, I’m delighted to report, has become a three generation must-read for me, […]
Sadly, many creative people aren’t recognized in their field until they are six feet under. Of course, back in Plato’s day fame wasn’t such a big deal because it didn’t exist as it does today. In fact, before the Industrial Revolution authors were said to be doing well when they were simply recognized in their […]
The history of fantasy maps in books goes back at least as far as Jonathan Swift and Gulliver’s Travels. Swift’s satirical account of adventures in imaginary lands was modeled on the real-life exploration narratives that were popular in his day, and like many of these travelogues, it included engravings of maps. Two centuries or so later, […]
Last week, I speculated about possible tension between Louisa May Alcott and Harriett Lothrop (“Margaret Sidney”), who, along with Nathaniel Hawthorne, lived in The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the week between that first post and this, I was delighted to discover a book by Patricia West, Domesticating […]
On the road from Lexington to Concord, Massachusetts, midway between the welter of orange-striped traffic barrels on the outskirts and the boutiques and pricey restaurants downtown, two old wood-framed houses sit side by side. One of these, Orchard House, is famous as the place where Louisa May Alcott wrote some of her best-known books. The […]
While I was visiting Washington D.C., one of the highlights of my time was spending the afternoon at the Library of Congress, an elegant, imposing building with architecture based on the Opera House of Paris. The interior is simply breathtaking—every kind of artwork you can imagine is on display—you hardly know where to look, as there is such […]
Someone’s coming from the other world, Hiss of night rain. Someone’s going there now. The two are sure to meet. —Ko Un (from Poetry: The Translation Issue, November 2014) Ko Un’s poem perfectly illustrates to me how translated works help us cross the divide between cultures to get to where “The two are sure to […]
Readers Unbound 