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Grendel's Laundry List: Book Notes for Monday
My family doesn’t know much about the whims and desires of this prodigal son. They play it safe when it comes to Xmas presents. They know I have a house full of books, and that I like to cook, so I tend to get gift cards to Barnes and Noble and Borders, and some sort of kitchen gadget. This year was no exception: I accrued eighty dollars of credit to B & N and Borders, and got a really nifty knife sharpener.
After much browsing, I purchased three books:
Lewis Carroll, Photographer: The Princeton Library Albums
Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal as translated by poet Richard Howard
The Lost Gospel, The book of Q and Christian Origins by Burton L. Mack
I have been coveting The Lost Gospel for some time; the Carroll and the Baudelaire for a long, long time, years in fact. This edition of Les Fleurs was published by David R. Godine back in 1982. Godine has great taste in poetry; he also published Charles Simic’s Dismantling the Silence and Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, back in the seventies. Richard Howard’s translation is excellent, the best I’ve read. I have been fascinated by the photography of Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll ever since I saw his stunning picture of Alice Liddell as “The Beggar Girl” and read the accompanying article by Anthony Lane in an old New Yorker. My wife recently saw an exhibit of Carroll’s photographs at the Art Institute while she was in Chicago on business, she was amazed, and now shares my fascination. Mack’s book on the Q gospel feeds my pet obsession with the “historical Jesus” and early xtianity. I have close to a bookcase full of books on the subject.
I have been turning to my bookshelves a bit more than usual. I recently reread Kaplan’s biography of Walt Whitman, and also have been rereading bits of Leaves of Grass. Long lone walks and long loping lines of Whitman. Feels like Blindman’s Bluff; must be flirting with the muse.
Alice Liddell by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Girl"
(this image is not as good as the one in the book, but will do for now)
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