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Tulip in Air
May. 25th, 2009 01:18 pmThe Cat with the Tulip Face, by A.R. Morlan
An odd and strangely charming little novella. Interesting enough that upon discovering it is a prequel to The Amulet, I ILL'd The Amulet.
(101/275)
Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, by the obvious (edited by Thomas Travisano with Saskia Hamilton)
Okay, the first thing is that these letters are utterly brilliant and if you are interested in writers' correspondence and in the middle decades of the American century as seen by these two people, you might even want to BUY them, let alone just read them somehow. The second thing is that as read straight through? It's an awfully long book (another reason why you may want to buy the book rather than borrowing it). 800 pages of the same two people talking only to each other gets ... not really boring but more just kind of overwhelming or more-than-enough in some ways. Like how watching two best friends have a conversation you're not part of can be interesting for a while, but would you really want to do it for hours on end? The third thing is that as I got further along in the book I got sort of frustrated, because it seemed like some letters that were "lost" were probably deliberately lost either before the authors died or by one or another of their inheritors.... things were much more complete in the early years and the last decade or so is FULL of skips - no longer felt like the "Complete Correspondence" at that point. But really I love books of letters and this is an excellent example of its kind, and if you love books of letters you should dig in to it.
(102/275)
An odd and strangely charming little novella. Interesting enough that upon discovering it is a prequel to The Amulet, I ILL'd The Amulet.
(101/275)
Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, by the obvious (edited by Thomas Travisano with Saskia Hamilton)
Okay, the first thing is that these letters are utterly brilliant and if you are interested in writers' correspondence and in the middle decades of the American century as seen by these two people, you might even want to BUY them, let alone just read them somehow. The second thing is that as read straight through? It's an awfully long book (another reason why you may want to buy the book rather than borrowing it). 800 pages of the same two people talking only to each other gets ... not really boring but more just kind of overwhelming or more-than-enough in some ways. Like how watching two best friends have a conversation you're not part of can be interesting for a while, but would you really want to do it for hours on end? The third thing is that as I got further along in the book I got sort of frustrated, because it seemed like some letters that were "lost" were probably deliberately lost either before the authors died or by one or another of their inheritors.... things were much more complete in the early years and the last decade or so is FULL of skips - no longer felt like the "Complete Correspondence" at that point. But really I love books of letters and this is an excellent example of its kind, and if you love books of letters you should dig in to it.
(102/275)
