@Kieran - what are you reading now? (Or lately.)
A group of us, such as
@Chris Koziarz ,
@mrzz ,
@Federberg ,
@Horsa ,
@Moxie and myself, like to discuss what we’ve been reading, and you’re the perfect addition to these conversations.
Well, thanks to my very good friend, I spent lockdown bliss reading the Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall trilogy, which will surely be her masterpiece. Such a level of excellence everywhere in this book, the character of Cromwell being the gem. I missed these books hugely when I finished them, I missed visiting that world, and those people. I missed the way they were written.
I've also read, during lockdown and since, Eric Ambler's
The Mask of Dimitrios, a classic spy thriller written in 1939, I think.
Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles. I remember recently you sent me an article about book prize winners or something, and his book,
A Gentleman in Moscow caught my eye. I highly recommend that one too.
I'm currently reading Umberto Eco's
The Prague Cemetry, which I love. It has a deliciously misanthropic opening few pages. It's the first book of his I've read. Like you, I've seen the film The Name of the Rose, a potboiler of a thing, but never read it.
Speaking of potboilers, I've also read a few of them, some good, some not so.
Non-fiction, I'm reading Tom Holland's
Dominion, which is subtitled The Making of the Western Mind, an erudite and semi-official riposte to professional atheists who pretend the west has developed its morality and ethics in a vacuum. Holland is my favourite writer of history - his
Rubicon and
Persian Fire are page-turners, with footnotes. He's a fabulous writer.
Richard Thomas,
Why Dylan Matters, which is a good read, but at times, far-fetched. Or I should be more clear, he makes connections that aren't very clearly argued.
All of James Shapiro's Shakespeare books:
Contested Will, about the authorship question,
1599, the years Shakespeare wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet, and
1606, the year he wrote Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra. These books are both history and literature reviews, very accessible and interesting. I read these around the time of the Hilary Mantel books, and they act as sequels of a sort, because they give us life in Elizabethan England, with strong echoes of the Mantel books, including court intrigue, the Irish rabble causing trouble abroad, and the ever present plagues.
Another book I read was
Oscar Wilde's Plagiarism, the Triumph of Art over Ego, by Florina Tufesca, which ties in a little with the Shakespeare books, and the Dylan one. The stroy of how plagiarism changed during the Romantic period, and the artists ego asserted its rights. back in the day, Shakespeare wasn't the first to write Hamlet, and he based his King Lear on an older play, King Leir. Common practice, up until the 19th century. Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe were among the classicists who reacted against the restraints of being disallowed from referring to previous authors works, and so The Portrait of Dorian Gray contains elements of Doctor Faust, and so on. The Dylan connection being obvious: old Bob often takes old works and turns them into something bigger, greater in scope and deeper in meaning.
For his troubles, the less fortunate call him a plagiarist. Subversively, like Wilde and Poe, he takes time to make mischief with this new reputation...
