The Facts on File Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases by Martin H. Manser
(Checkmark Books, 2002)

Have you ever been at a loss to find the mot juste when writing?  The je ne sais quoi that will elevate your prose from common to cultivated?  Do you simply enjoy being a pompous ass with a veneer of erudition?  Then, you need The Facts on File Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases, mon ami.

I love this handy little volume.  It works not only as a quick reference book in the heat of creative expression, but also as an enjoyable sit-down read.  It is hugely diverting to find that jeunesse dorée refers to "the wealthy, sophisticated and fashionable young; originally applied to the wealthy, young counterrevolutionaries  who combined to bring Robespierre's Reign of Terror to an end in France;" and then reflect on who might fit that bill today in America.  Who will bring our current Reign of (Economic) Terror to an end in this century?  Mental exercises such as these abound when reading Foreign Words and Phrases.

Most of the words and phrases in this book are French or Latin.  While that is not surprising, what may be is that so many more familiar words whose origins I have never stopped to consider have rather exotic roots.  Did you know that juggernaut is Hindi?  Or that kismet is Turkish?  Or that spritzer is German?

My only reservation about this book is that it lacks an easy index to help you find that mot juste.  You almost have to know what foreign word you are seeking to make the book work for you.  At least, that is the way it is in my edition; perhaps this has been remedied in later editions. 

If you are a writer of any sort, or a simply an omnivorous logophile, you really ought not to go any longer without this invaluable resource.  Go on, give yourself un bon cadeau!

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
(Penguin Books, 2004)

I am currently re-reading Vanity Fair.  It is one of those sprawling 19th century British novels that reminds you that many novels of that era used to be serialized in magazines — and that the longer they could keep a story going, the more the authors got paid.  Ol' Bill Thackeray must have made bank on this one — my edition runs more than 800 pages.  You might think this is a bad thing; but, that would only mean that you have not yet read Vanity Fair.

Scheming orphan, Becky Sharp, is one of the truly great creations in all of British Lit.  She jumps off the page — ungrateful, wicked, amoral, conniving, without conscience or qualms.  Sounds lovely, right?  But she is so vividly real, that her manipulative charms work on the reader (who, as Thackeray constantly reminds us, really ought to know better) just as they work on the hapless, feckless fools who surround Becky.  Ah, Becky . . .

I was struck when I first read Vanity Fair with the idea that "Becky Sharp" could only work as a 19th century Briton.  Transfer her to America, and she becomes irredeemably reprehensible.  You see, Becky is smarter, quicker, more clever than anyone else; but, just because she was born into the lower class and is without any money, she is expected to lower her expectations in life and accept a working class marriage and life of respectable poverty.  I guess that I am thoroughly American in my outlook, because I can see Becky's point of view.  She would thrive in a culture that values initiative and promotes social mobility.  Thwarted by birth from her due, Becky turns dark.  She gets emeshed in a desperate dance to expand and improve her social circle — but, for this reader at least, she never becomes completely unsympathetic.  Or, as Becky herself muses at one point, with a sufficient income even she could have been respectable.  

So, I confess, I like Becky Sharp.  I do not love her, as I love Elizabeth Bennet.  I would not trust her, as I trust Fanny Price.  I can not approve of her, as I approve of Flora Poste.  But, I sure as heck find her entertaining and charming.

The rest of the book is masterly as well.  Thackeray clips along at a steady, energetic pace.  Characters pop in and out — some developed with the intricacy of Becky, many serving only to push along the plot.  He writes mostly dialogue and pithy, satirical observations on the human scene — without any of the tedious raptures of nature or philosophy that bog down far too many novels.  You really cannot imagine 800 pages passing more smoothly or pleasantly than this. 

I am only in the first chapters of this current re-read of VF.  I imagine that, further in, I will have more to say.  I shall post on this book again at a later date.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
(Penguin Books, 1938)

Have you ever wanted to "tidy up" the world about you?  Do you have a penchant for cool rationality and find alternately amusing and disgusting emotional excess?  Well then, you may just have a bit of Flora Poste in you — and I think that's a good thing, indeed.

Stella Gibbons apparently wrote Cold Comfort Farm as a parody of intensely emotional and darkly passionate pastoral novels that were popular in early 20th century England.  I had no idea of this the first few times I read CCF.  I have never read D.H. Lawrence or Thomas Hardy, but, without Ms Gibbons's light, tempering, satirical touch, I doubt I would want to.  I loathe the sort of overt narcissistic emotionalism that permeates and plagues society today, and I cannot imagine wishing to read about it during my leisure time.  Life is too short.  But, you need not be familiar with the novels under fire to enjoy thoroughly Cold Comfort Farm.

Flora Poste, orphaned at 19 and left in financial straits, decides to ignore her friend's hints that she ought to train for a job, and decides to impose upon relatives instead.  She chooses distant cousins — the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm in the delightfully named "Howling" — because she senses that she can amuse herself by "tidying up" their presumably dreary, lurid, inward-gazing lives.  Her instincts were correct, and we find the Starkadders even more decaying, primitive, dank and oppressive than we could have imagined.

There is creepy old Adam, who loves his cheerless cows but never notices when their limbs suddenly detach from their bodies; Amos, whose love of preaching damnation overshadows any vestige of Christian love; Elfine, whose untamed, poetry-writing ways will never win her a county marriage and ticket out of Cold Comfort; Rueben, who is suspicious of any and all who would steal the farm out from under him; Seth, over-sexed and under-brained; Judith, who broods constantly and yearns unhealthily for her youngest son; Urk, who has an unwholesome attachment to water voles; Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed when she was two, and uses that as an excuse to reign over all of them with an emotional iron fist.  Jerry Springer would have loved to have this dysfunctional lot on his erstwhile show.

But, you and I and Flora know that this is simply an unacceptable way to live.  She descends upon them like a very bossy, manipulative angel of mercy — dispassionately directing them all toward peace, happiness, and normal behavior.  The burning question that I had when I read this book the first time is "Will she get her comeuppance?"  Nosy little heroines usually do, you know.  I'll leave that to you to find out.

The best thing about Cold Comfort Farm is the humor.  It is a wonderfully funny book, with many quick, sharp asides directly from Ms Gibbons that are howlers.  The pacing is quite fast — no sooner does Flora arrive in her little room at the farm than she starts improving the Starkadders.  Bumpity, bumpity, bump — the author careens us toward the end at  heartpounding speed; which, in after all, makes you feel a little cheated, as you would have liked a few more hassles for our intrepid heroine to prolong the magic and fun. 

The only drawback to the book — other than its brevity — is that Ms Gibbons chose to set it in the near future.  It was published in 1932, and the action takes place more than 14 years later (the fictional "Anglo-Nicaraguan wars of '46" are a telling reference).  On one hand, this strange timewarp quality adds an unsettling charm to the story; on the other, though, it seems a bit out of place in such a level-headed, matter-of-fact book.  Jane Austen never would have done that; and I think that, perhaps, Ms Gibbons ought not to have as well.  A minor quibble — what do you think?

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery," is the quote from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park that precedes the title page of Cold Comfort Farm.  With such a credo, how could I not have loved this novel?  The very fact that Flora Poste uses Austen novels, in part, as manuals for tidying up the Starkadders ensured my allegiance from the beginning.  But, this book has merit enough to stand on its own — and Flora Poste can certainly stand side-by-side, if not exactly with Elizabeth Bennet, then with Emma Woodhouse.   

Have you ever come across something so heartbreakingly sincere, utterly preposterous, and frankly scary that you only wish your powers to magnify the absurdity were equal to the material at hand? How I wish there were a P.J. O'Rourke or Isabel Paterson or Stephen Cox to convey to you the pain-filled pleasure of perusing the Official Local Voters' Pamphlet for the Washington State primary elections coming up on September 19! Unfortunately, an examination of this parade of parlous pandering political parasites is left to me. Jason keeps looking at the options in brief segments, so as not to burn out his eyes with their unholy glare, and puts down the pamphlet each time with a sigh, a swear and a muttered, "I hate politicians." << MORE >>

I have a review of two books on Shakespeare in the October 2006 issue of Liberty Magazine. You can find it in the finer bookstores and truly classy newsstands across the country. << MORE >>

"To understand Cicero's life," Mr. Everitt writes, "which spanned the first two thirds of the first century BC, it is necessary to picture the world in which he lived, and especially the nature of Roman politics" (p. 9). What follows is a remarkably lucid description of the structure of Roman government and the personalities inhabited therein. Cicero, we learn, was a relative newcomer to the scene of Roman politics, which was dominated in a large part by the optimates, the "best people" whose ancestors had filled the Senate since the founding days of the Republic. Cicero, though an outsider to the machine, quickly rose the rungs of influence by sheer skill and hard work; yet, despite his lack of political pedigree, he tended toward the conservative system that protected the interests of the patricians, instead of those of the plebs (whose supporters were known as the populares). << MORE >>

It's pretty sweet when an author can find an introductory quote as gnarly and kick-ass as this one that John Kennedy Toole used to begin his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces:When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.Jonathan Swift — "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting" To use the great 18th century satirist and social commentator's words to introduce a novel so brilliantly satirical and pointedly critical of society was a stroke of genius that aptly foreshadows the upcoming romp with a singular character, ...<< MORE >>

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