FolioDeux Blog

A number of colleges and universities are working with the Library of Congress and the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America) to sponsor a national book collection contest for college students.  There is a list at the ABAA site, and FD knows that some institutions (like the University of Iowa) have contests that have not yet been listed.

FD supports book collecting and hopes these contests encourage many more people to become bibliophiles and to buy books — both used and new and NOT electronic!

Mr. FD received a copy of the Academy of American Poets poster for National Poetry Month.  It’s pretty awful.  The color is fine — lots of our favorite blue — but the overall design is extremely busy and generally not appealing.  See for yourself, here.

The poster includes a quotation from one of FD’s favorite poets, Wallace Stevens (for information on WS one good site is the Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens).

We make a dwelling in the evening air, / In which being there together is enough

(Sorry about not printing that in a better format — FD has not totally mastered the wordpress coding system).  Anyway, these lines are from the poem, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour,” and FD’s view is that they are just not wonderful enough for a poster that’s supposed to invite everyone to celebrate poetry.  And Stevens, deathless as some of his poetry may be (”Thirteen Ways of Looking at  a Blackbird,” for example) is an old, dead, white, male.  Is that the face of poetry that the Academy wants to put forward?

FD is contemplating what to do for this year’s public library altered book benefit.  People with real skills do amazing altered books:  painted, carved, embellished…  FD has few skills, so last year the did these altered books:

Trapped in the Mauve Decade which was a copy of the old (1926 but reprinted often) and weird work of criticism by Thomas Beer that had been totally encased in a mauve and pink knitted cover.

and

Altered Red and the Black which was a copy of Stendhal’s novel in which everything except “red” and “black” were scribbled out and every instance of “red” and “black” were circled in either red or black.  It took a long time, but since FD had never read the novel, it was not totally boring!

So, what to do this year??

FD recently read a new-ish translation of Epictetus’ The Art of Living. This version by Sharon LeBell, is called “an interpretation”  rather than a translation.  LeBell has re-imagined Epictetus’ teachings for a modern audience, but even more faithful translations retain the flavor of this work, which, while it is “philosophy” is not at all like much of current philosophy.

Epictetus is not primarily concerned with how we know what we know, or whether our language can express our thoughts, or if we even have thoughts.  Instead, he provides ideas for living a good life, a topic few professional philosophers seem to care about these days.

Epictetus is a stoic, and his ideas are somewhat dry — even LeBell can’t completely sex them up, and Alain de Botton ignored him in his amusing collection The Consolations of Philosophy (though he does discuss other stoics) but FD likes him, particularly for  his plain speech.  When times are hard, Epictetus provides some good ideas for how to face difficulties, and he is also supportive in acknowledging that it isn’t easy.

FD tries to say “twenty-ten” rather than “two thousand ten” or “two thousand and ten”  when talking about what year it is.  Why “twenty-ten” sounds more cool and correct isn’t clear to FD, though the fact that FD spent a lifetime saying it was  ”nineteen-whatever” and, when writing about US history, always said “Eighteen-whatever,” or “Seventeen-whatever.”

So why didn’t that work for 2000 – 2009?   True, one never said “Nineteen-00,” it was always “Nineteen-hundred,” which was somehow idiomatic.   There doesn’t seem to be a similar “twenty-hundred” in the language, so 2000 became “two thousand” and then 2001, well that was Arthur C. Clark’s fault, FD thinks, that we all said “two thousand one.”  And once that got started…

Anyway, FD tries to say “twenty-ten” but hears lots of people (including the announcer on The Daily Show?) saying “Two-Thousand Ten” and variations thereon.

FD is reading Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye.  FD doesn’t often read historical mysteries, nor is FD a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes pastiche (a pretty large genre, and one  that shows no sign of lessening) but a good friend suggested this, so FD borrowed it from the local public library.  So far, it’s OK, providing the particular pleasure of a pastiche:  a new way of thinking of those old characters.

Particularly interesting to FD is that a woman author is providing the voice of Dr. Watson. FD believes (though perhaps this is more created than actually perceived) that the author has subtly enhanced Watson’s feminine side, that there is, more than in the Doyle originals, something of a woman’s eye in Watson.

FD was surprised to see that the original Publishers’ Weekly review (as quoted by Amazon) calls the book “impressive if flawed,” complaining that the solution to the mystery is too obvious too soon.  This seems a bit harsh for a first book, especially one whose pleasures are to be found as much in the author’s creativity in using the givens of the Holmes genre, not in the creation of a clever plot.  Many mysteries fail to mystify for long — indeed, sometimes it seems to FD that there has to be a balance —  if you cannot form at least a good guess for the identity of the murderer before the “reveal” it is a failure of the author, rather than a strength.