Things Happen in England and Italy

Where Angels Fear to Tread 

by E.M. Forster

"Miss Abbott, don’t worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I’m one of them … I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed … I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it’ […]

She said solemnly, ‘I wish something would happen to you, my dear friend; I wish something would happen to you."   - E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster's first novel tackles issues of national identity and the potential for interpersonal connection despite societal inequalities that would preoccupy Forster throughout his career. The action is split between England and Italy. Where Angels Fear to Tread culminates in a "song of madness and death" similar to the sad opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which turns raucously amusing in one of the novel's most memorable sequences, yet at times veers into farce.

The novel is gruesome, accomplished, and darkly humorous. The best intentions fail and well-known ideas of virtue and vice fall to pieces in it. This kind of tragedy is distinctively Jamesian, and Philip's tale unmistakably invokes The Ambassadors' storyline. Similar to Strether in James' novel, Philip goes to the continent in order to save a fellow countryman from disgrace (first Lilia, then her son), only to fall in love with the place, find himself in the unlikely position of defending it, and have additional "ambassadors" (Harriet and Caroline Abbott) sent in order to save his mission. John Marcher, the main character of Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," and, in a way, the model for Strether, have similarities with Philip in his disengagement from life and inability to make snap decisions. However, Philip's tragedy is more difficult to accept because of his conviction that nothing can save him, which is actually the reverse of Strether's.

The action of this novel somewhat presages aspects of Forster's third novel, A Room With A View. As first novels go, this one is one of the best with a literary touch that Forster would continue to develop in his more famous later novels.

A Renaissance Diary

At the Court of the Borgia 

by Johann Burchard

On Christmas Day the pope came in procession to the Basilica where he celebrated High Mass with all traditional ceremony and splendour.  -  John Burchard, At the Court of the Borgia





This book is structured as a diary that narrates a description or overview of Pope Alexander VI's reign. written by Johann Burchard, the Borgia pope's master of ceremonies, on life under his rule. The pontificate of Alexander VI (born Rodrigo de Borja and lived from 1431 – 1503) stands out in Papal history with a reputation that is infamous and unmatched, and the name Borgia symbolizes for everything that is regarded as corrupt and unlawful in the church of the fifteenth century.

Following Columbus' discoveries in 1492, Alexander's papal bulls of 1493 recognized or reaffirmed the Spanish crown's rights in the New World. Alexander VI served as Cesare Borgia's condottiere for the French king during the second Italian war. His foreign policy's main objective was to secure the best possible conditions for his family.

The author tries to avoid some of the more salacious stories about Alexander and he never disclosed the work during his lifetime. It wasn't until the beginning of the twentieth century that a complete edition of his diary was published. Even though I am not a Catholic, nor am I a scholar of the Renaissance, I found this book fascinating. For those interested in the history of the Borgia's or of the Renaissance culture and politics this is an excellent source.

A Romance and a Book

The Bookman's Tale 

by Charlie Lovett

“That must be something to discover a book that nobody's ever heard of or everybody thought was lost."

"It's every bibliophile's dream," said Francis, and Peter knew in a second that it was his own.”   ― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett is a literary mystery with elements of intrigue and conspiracy. It is an extremely compelling narrative of one vintage bookseller's healing from the death of his beloved wife. The author, a former antiquarian bookshop owner himself, spins an engaging story that examines the impact of literature, the agony of dying, and the potential for redemption.

1995 at Hay-on-Wye, England. Peter Byerly is unsure of what brought him to a specific bookstore. He had been devastated by the loss of his cherished wife, Amanda, nine months ago. The young antiquarian bookseller moved to the English countryside from North Carolina in an effort to rekindle his love of collecting and restoring old books. Peter, though, is startled when a picture of Amanda jumps out of an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries. Naturally, she isn't there. Clearly a Victorian work of art, the watercolor. However, the similarity is uncanny, and Peter gets fixated on discovering the image's history.

Peter communicates with Amanda's spirit, discovers the truth about his own past, and comes across a manuscript that might provide conclusive evidence that Shakespeare was the author of all of his plays as he follows the trail back first to the Victorian age and then to Shakespeare's time. Characters in Lovett's debut book are interesting, and the plot is intriguing. It is filled with everything, including romance, mystery, and book restoration. It was a pleasure to read and, since I love books about books, it is sure to have a place as one of my favorite reads.

Lost in the Game of Chess

• The Defense 
• by Vladimir Nabokov

“The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question – where exactly had it all gone, what had become of his childhood, whither had the veranda floated, whither, rustling through the bushes, had the familiar paths crept away?”   ― Vladimir Nabokov, The Defense

The story centers on Luzhin, a melancholy, lonesome ten-year-old boy at the start of the book, spending the final days of summer at the family's country home outside of St. Petersburg. His father just broke the bad news that he must start school when they get back to town. He despises going to school. He only has any passion for his attractive young aunt, who turns out to be his father's mistress. On the same day that his mother discovers the affair, she teaches young Luzhin how to play chess. He rapidly becomes a prodigy making his debut in front of the public the following summer.

Dropping out of school, Luzhin devotes himself exclusively to chess until he falls ill. During a prolonged recuperation, he resides in a German health resort where, by chance, a major international chess tournament is being held. Luzhin’s career is launched. In the space of one paragraph, sixteen years passes, and Luzhin is still at the same spa, speaking to his future bride-to-be. At age 30, Luzhin hasn't changed much socially from the melancholy, reserved boy he was as a child. In the intervening years, a Svengali-like chess promoter named Valentinov has been in charge of managing his young prodigy's career. Now that he must compete in a significant competition, Luzhin has traveled to the resort to get ready. He leaves for his tournament in Berlin, the city where his fiancee's horrified parents reside, after an odd romance.

Luzhin plays superbly, moving on to the last round against Turati, whose original opening move he has developed a new defensive for. (He had previously fallen to Turati in a match.) Luzhin spends his evenings at the tacky house of his fiancée's philistine parents. As the days go by, Luzhin, who at best has a shaky hold of reality, loses himself more and more in the chess patterns he imposes on his surroundings. The initial move against which Luzhin had created his unique defense is absent when the final match versus Turati starts. Luzhin is so immersed in the world of chess that he cannot return to reality. He hears a voice say, "Go home," as the game ends for the night.

The denouement that follows is as fascinating as the narrative that precedes it, while Nabokov's novel ends with a strange vision of eternity. This was the third of Nabokov's first ten novels originally written in Russian. It is one of his best.

Transcripts of a Life

Stella Maris 

by Cormac McCarthy

“If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be?

It would be this: the world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.”   ― Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris

BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN - 1972 Twenty-year-old Alicia Western checks herself into the hospital with $40,000 in a plastic bag. Alicia is a paranoid schizophrenia patient who is a doctorate candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago. She does not want to talk about her brother Bobby because of her illness. Instead, she ponders the nature of madness and how people insist on having a single experience of the world. She also remembers a time when, at the age of seven, her own grandmother was worried about her. She also examines the nexus of physics and philosophy and introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, and the hallucinations that only she can see. She continues to be sad for Bobby, who isn't quite dead and isn't quite hers.

Stella Maris is a conceptual novel that is told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia's psychiatric sessions. It examines subjects such as the nature of consciousness, gnosticism, literary allusions, and the eschaton while remaining utterly grounded in reality. It is likely to make you question whether your life is being written by fate. It is a probing, meticulous, and intellectually demanding conclusion to The Passenger, a philosophical investigation that challenges our beliefs about God, reality, and existence. 

If you are a reader like me you will want to immediately reread these two novels after finishing Stella Maris. The combination of these two novels provide a fitting postlude to the literary life of Cormac McCarthy.

Morality and Science

The Passenger 

by Cormac McCarthy

“Mercy is in the province of the person alone. There is mass hatred and mass grief. Mass vengeance and even mass suicide. But there is no mass forgiveness. There is only you.”   ― Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI, 1980 Bobby Western jumps from the Coast Guard tender into the dark at three in the morning after zipping up his wet suit jacket. Nine people are still fastened in their seats, with hair floating and eyes empty of speculation, when his dive light illuminates the sunken jet. The tenth passenger, the black box of the aircraft, and the pilot's flight bag are all missing from the crash site. Yet how? Western is haunted in body and spirit by men with badges, the ghost of his father, the man who created the atomic bomb that burned glass and flesh in Hiroshima, and his sister, who is both his soul's love and its ruin. Western is a collateral witness to plots that can only lead to his injury.

It is Alicia, his sister, who is the most interesting, yet curiously difficult to understand as she has conversations with hallucinatory images. The story explores a plethora of ideas , centered on the nature of mathematics and the limits of using words to describe the world. This leads one to wonder about the nature of literature itself and the reason we tell stories.

The Passenger is a magnificent narrative about morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the insanity that is human awareness that traverses the American South, from the boisterous bars of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the coast of Florida. It also instills in the reader a desire to read its companion volume, Stella Maris.