Chekhov’s Mistess

Monday Notes

In Sunday’s New York Times, Camille Paglia gave a generally favorable review of Michael Schmidt’s The First Poets : Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets, which, I mentioned in an earlier post, is sitting patiently on my night-stand awaiting its turn behind Young’s The Medici. I read Lives of the Poets some years ago and remembered being somewhat distracted by Schmidt’s subjectivity in parts, but it’s that subjectivity for which Paglia commends him – and criticizes for not having enough:

His widely praised book ‘’Lives of the Poets’’ (1998) was a 900-page meditation on English poetry in which his forceful, witty, sometimes partisan sketches revealed a mind deeply in love with literature.




In ‘’The First Poets,’’ however, Schmidt seems less confident of his opinions. He is excessively deferential to authorities, even when gently rejecting their views. It is always a pleasure to encounter the lucid, astute prose of the late Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra (Schmidt’s don at Oxford), but this book is clogged with too many pedestrian quotations from academics past and present. Whenever he is front and center, Schmidt himself is a fascinating guide who wins the reader’s trust.

What I recall about Lives of the Poets was a striking difference in tone, for lack of a better word, between Schmidt’s discussion of long-dead poets and those of his own century, far easier to dismiss, I suppose, those whose place in the world is not so firmly intrenched. I say that, but also remember him almost casually sweeping Shakespeare’s reputation away when he says “had Shakespeare produced only the epyllia, the Sonnets and the occasional poems, we’d have a more proportioned view of him, smaller in scale than Jonson, Donne Spenser and Marlowe.” This, by the way, about a poet who Paglia says “revolutionized poetry.”

Still, as she says, Schmidt is a true believer and it shows. This passage, if nothing else from Paglia’s review, should be enough to make you want to read the book:

The book’s profiles begin with Orpheus, the legendary father of poetry and music, whom Schmidt boldly treats as a real person: ‘’I take Orpheus to have been an actual man with an actual harp in his hand.’’ After his wife, Eurydice, was lost in Hades, Orpheus turned to boy-love and was reputedly the first to practice it in his native Thrace. His death was gruesome: he was torn to bits by bacchants, and his severed head floated to the island of Lesbos, which was thereby impregnated with poetic genius.

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Kate Atkinson

Drop by the Litblog Co-op for some discussion of Case Histories by the author Kate Atkinson. She starts right out with this:

…i have very vicious thoughts about writers in private but would never air them in public, there is something demeaning in that, i think.  Having said that, i started looking at one ‘minority opinion’ and discovered what – for me – was a total misinterpretation of the first chapter – this is exactly the kind of thing that curdles the morning coffee (I have obviously been too subtle in my writing.  Note to self).  That’s the thing avout books, every reading is valid, every reading is authentic, but the only true reading is that of the author. My dream/goal is to have enough money to write without publishing.

There’s more. Check it out (and don’t mind the typos, she says she’s not too comfortable with the technology).

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Vox Pop

In our ongoing effort to get to know Brooklyn beyond the borders of our own neighborhood, we went Sunday to Vox Pop: Books Coffee and Democracy in Flatbush. It’s not so much a bookstore with coffee as a coffee shop with books, but I like coffee shops with books. Vox Pop is also a small press with recent titles like The Zenith Secret: A CIA Insider Exposes the Assassins of President Kennedy and the Secret War Against Cuba, and The Neo-Cons Knew In Advance of the 9/11 Attack: The Big Wedding: 9/11, The Whistle-Blowers & The Cover-Up (okay so they like long, keyword titles).

The shop is warm inside and bookish with a little cubby hole for kids to play in with books scattered around there too – perfect for the Sun King – and good coffee. They sell a hundred or so titles, host regular events and have a print-on-demand machine where they can make a “professionally printed and bound book with cover art of your choice for as low as $6.00 or $7.00 (per book) for 150 pages.” You can choose from over 15,000 public domain titles or print your own manuscript. The service is perfect for “radicals, liberals, writers, bloggers, writing groups, classes, workshops, 12-step programs…”

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: August 29, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

• Comments:0
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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