The Classics Question
The question of the role of the classics is hot right now. This issue is not new. As long as there has been literature, the audience has been at odds as to what is worthwhile and what is not. But in time, certain books and certain authors gain canonical influence; we regard them as the standards.
The argument over the classics is without resolve and difficult to bring to application; the facts evade and challenge any easy generalization. Instead of a quantity approach as to how many people read what, let us start from quality, an approach based on admitted observations and values. Here the predisposition is that some books are better than others are, and accordingly, it is better for readers to pay attention to them. Cues come from a couple of authors who are
“classic” in the original sense; they wrote in Latin and came from the first class of citizens.
Cicero, an industrious provincial, so rigorously applied himself to study and self-improvement that he became the most noted Roman orator of his day. In so doing, he gained great political influence and suffered many enemies. In his later years, he labored to preserve the republic against dictatorship and to pass on to his compatriots the learning inherited from the Greeks. Towards the end of On the Orator, he says
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain forever a child. For what is the gain in human existence, unless it be woven into the lives of our ancestors through the records of history? – De Oratore, III, 120 (55 BCE).
Quintillian, an admirer of Cicero, came along a century later. He headed Rome’s foremost school of oratory, the first to be paid at state expense, taught the Emperor Domitian’s grand-
nephews, and received from Emperor Vespasian the designation “Professor of Rhetoric.” In retirement, he wrote The Training of the Orator that is in part a technical work. Of greater value is his declaration on the principles of education, including character formation from earliest
childhood, and reviews of prior Greek and Latin literature.
…I have already said that some profit may be derived from every author. But we must wait till our powers have been developed and established to the full before we turn to these poets. Similarly, at banquets we take our fill of the best fare and then turn to other food that, in spite of its comparative inferiority, is still attractive owing to its variety. …But until we have acquired that assured facility of which I spoke, we must form our minds and develop an appropriate tone by reading that is deep rather than wide – Institutio Oratoria, X, 1, 58-59 (ca. 95 CE).
The values implicit in the classical approach are that each individual lives in the long run of history, shares an inherited culture, and develops in association with the others who surround and interact through everyday life. So to mature into the society and to equip oneself for the fullest opportunity and development, learners will necessarily, as appropriate to them, hone in first on the best sources of the human experience to gain knowledge and understanding. Since young learners have no way to know what is best for them, it is left to their seniors to responsibly lead the way.
You can see that the classical position is based upon an enormous assumption: parents, teachers and other exemplars know their duty and will tend to it. In fact, the upper classes
of Rome often left their children in the hands of unlettered slaves, just as today children are babysat by an indifferent television. And so we must admit that routine reading has always been a minority activity, and intensive reading of the classics, as Quintillian wanted, an activity with an even smaller minority.
We are hard pressed to find any book that is shared among the population as a whole or among any majority of it. The 39 books of the Old Testament canon, a library of varied writing in itself, likely come closest, but even this possibility does not quite fill the bill. When was the last time any random group of people launched into a discussion on the anguish of Job, the bravery of Esther, the tragedies of King David, or the wondrous poetry of the Psalms?
We are so imbued with notions of equality; as educators and librarians we want everyone to have every opportunity and consequent success in equal proportion. We castigate ourselves when we fail at this goal; we hang back from initiatives unless they are going to reach everyone. Yet what can we do in the face of the undeniable realities that daunt us?
Are the classics in decline? Quintillian 1900 years ago thought so then. Yet they do not go away in total. In 1998 an advisory panel to the Modern Library imprint of Random House selected the 100 best English language novels of the Twentieth century. See Newsweek (3August 1998) 64-65. That August I owned 69 of the 100 and my local public library had a comparable number, though a different mix of titles. However, the combined public libraries of the southeast region had all but one. That was Henry Green’s Loving (1945), not a title on the tip of anyone’s tongue.
A standby guide for library acquisitions is The Readers Adviser that over the 20th century grew to 6 volumes comprising approximately 45,000 entries. All of the titles listed in a full range of subjects are judged to be “the best” of their particular field or genre. Another more focused
volume, Literature Lover’s Companion (2001), calls itself “the essential reference to the world’s greatest writers – past and present, popular and classical.” It touts the works of over 1000 authors from Homer, 9th century BCE, to Ben Okri, a Nigerian, born in 1959. Five to eight titles represent most authors. These two guides recommend items for first purchase in greater number than most libraries hold.
We need also to recognize that one influence of the classics is an indirect one, through their effect on the writing of other authors. About twenty years ago, two Minnesota state university professors surveyed entering students at Mankato state as to their favorite authors. Hands down, the favorite was Stephen King. These students as seniors answered the same survey four years later to show how their tastes had changed. And the favorite was Stephen King, a discovery that brought considerable alarm to academics. In 2000, King published “a memoir of the craft” On Writing. In an appendix, he credits his reading of other authors as making him a writer and lists about 100 entertaining books. Most are contemporary to King, but among them are Heart of Darkness (1902), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), As I Lay Dying (1930), Brideshead Revisited (1945), A Death in the Family (1957) and Our Man in Havana (1959).
Currently, Francine Prose, a well-established writer, but no Stephen King as to popularity, harked back to Quintillian’s emphasis on intensive reading by pointing out how a number of classic authors achieved their successes. Her appendix of 115 titles in Reading Like a Writer (2006) is definitely more literary than King’s and shares only two titles with his preferences, Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From and Richard Price’s Freedomland. Among the older titles Prose lists are Sophocles’ Oedipus in the Young translation, the medieval Song of Roland in Sayer’s translation, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two by Austen, now enjoying a great revival of interest, start off the 19th century – Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Curiously, she also lists Loving, the absent title mentioned above, along with another of Green’s novels, Doting.
That King and Prose have two entirely different takes on reading and writing is typical and highlights the basic situation. We are so overrun with good books that the constant question remains: how do the classics fit in?
While many choices as to title emphasis are possible, I recommend the following overall principles and objectives.
• Everyone should come to understand that relatively few books out of the millions published have lasting influence.
• Books of the past have more than historical importance when they speak to the continuance of human experience; these books continue to affect and change lives.
• These books provide a common ground to understanding ourselves amongst others.
• As works of art, classics are meant for enjoyment, not study, and never picked to pieces.
• Because such books last through time, one can reread them during a lifetime with increased pleasure and greater understanding.
• To whet the appetite for such reading, families, libraries and teachers need to provide, model and encourage quality choices as their charges develop their own personalities, interests and abilities.
• Worthy titles are those that provide readers both enough attainment for satisfaction and additional enticement for more books.
• Everyone should recognize that it takes more than a lifetime to read all the most highly recommended books.
• Everyone should learn how to pursue and obtain more books than are readily or easily available.
I believe that to some extent, we all work towards these ends. The challenge is to do it more consistently, with more resources, and more enthusiasm.
_____
“The Classics Question” appeared in an earlier version in MEMOrandom, v.16 no.4 (January 2007) 6-7, and is here revised.
© 2007, 2009 by Roger Sween.
I welcome substantive comments on the content in this blog. Personal comments may be sent to me at my email address given above.
Showing posts with label Best Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best Books. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Read in 08
When I became a librarian in my early twenties, people startled me by making confession that they did not read enough. Surprised as to why I should be told that, I quickly replied, ‘Neither do I.’ I don’t hear confessions any more, but I still flagellate myself that I do not read all that I intend to read. Worse, because I quit employment in 2000 in order to devote more time to reading and writing, I now worry that I will not live long enough to read everything I intended. Often, I joke with people that I have caught up to the 12th century.
In order to read more, I long ago gave up ephemeral activities. I was never interested in sports, not even as a spectator, I stopped watching commercial television, I skip most sections of the daily newspaper, but never the feature articles. Decades ago, I taught myself that if I start a book and it fails to grab me, I am free to quit it. Because of this choice, most of the books I read rate high with me.
I always have something to read with me, the expression in our family being, ‘You never know when you’re going to be caught in a flood.’ So, we carry our flood books. Because of some specific project, I research and read task-fulfilling stuff almost all the time, but when it comes to reading books generally, I fail my own expectations. Most of the books that I read to the finish are ones that I intend to read on an emerging priority basis or that I read in those hours, often between 2 and 4 a.m. When I cannot sleep, I regard tossing and turning as too wasteful. Because I am in a book club, I read a number of books that I would not otherwise choose.
Books Read in 2008 (listed chronologically).
Note: The ratings given follow the book club’s: 5-best; 4-top 20%, 3-middling, 2-less than average, 1-bottom. BC – Book Club selections. SF – Stratford Festival plays. YA-Title written for teenage or younger readers.
Amy Ephron, One Sunday Morning (2005). BC Though compared to Edith Wharton sendups on the social elites of 19th century New York society, I found this brief novel shallow, stupid, and boring. 1
Penelope Lively, The Photograph (2003). Gift* A landscape historian finds a picture of his deceased wife holding hands with her sister’s husband. He does not rest until he discovers what was going on. This quest starts a chain reaction among all those involved. Excellent treatment of character and manners. 4
Diane Lee Wilson, I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade (1998). YA A young Mongol girl, fascinated with riding and horses, impersonates a boy and by chance is trusted with carrying a secret message to the great Kublai Khan in China. A well done historical. 4
Brian Aldiss, The Dark Light Years (1964). Though I had read the short story that spawned this science fiction novella, the story intrigued me all over again. Aldiss is profound in contrasting human assumptions with alien existence. 5
Ayn Rand, ...Answers (2005). Since Rand’s death, her executors have resurrected a number of unintended books from recordings made of her speaking off the cuff. This one organizes by topic her responses from question and answer sessions following formal speeches. Though Rand was an early influence on my life, and although some of her answers are stimulating, many show her as extreme, violent, merely opinionated, and irritated. I take this collection as revelatory in its chance randomness but lacking in sufficient context. Valuable to students of Rand but cannot be rated.
Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (2005). BC Though Erdrich is a noted Minnesota author, this book is the first of hers I have finished, so I take that as a sign that it is easier. An authentic native drum so captivates an appraiser of antiquities that she steals it from the estate. The magic of the drum haunts her until it brings its own return to its place of origin. A beautiful story that crosses half the U.S., generations, and peoples also, thereby, fascinates. 4
Alfred Duggan, Growing Up in Thirteenth Century England (1962). YA Duggan treats a microcosm of Edward I’s time by profiles of the teenage children in three upper class families. Perhaps this makes sense since these had the most options, but I would have liked to see something more bourgeois. A clear picture of feudalism emerges, most of it comparatively grim. 4
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust (1975). BC An English woman in colonial India finds her life suffocating and to escape it spends more and more time in the palace of the local prince to disastrous results. I had expected more, but the story turned very flat. 2 Another novel with a similar theme, The Holder of the World (1993), by Bharati Mukherjee, I found far superior because of its meaningful merit and evocative movement. Give that one a 4.5.
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1900). SF Though straying from the historical, Shaw’s comedy of the aging Caesar mentoring the teenage Cleopatra is a joyous romp of satire in the face of puritan traditions and illuminates the true worth of magistracy. 5
Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna (1619). SF Previously unknown to me, the prolific maker of Spanish classical drama, regarded in Spain as second to Cervantes in their literature, was a later contemporary of Shakespeare. In this play, the residents of the village “Sheep’s Well,” rise against their vicious feudal overlord and kill him. All face death until the clement understanding of Ferdinand and Isabella reprieve them. As insightful to the time of its setting and time of its writing as any Shakespeare drama. 4
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598). SF Of interest to me is how Shakespeare’s minor plays, some of them very neglected, are so fascinatingly wonderful. LLL is a courtly piece in which the King of Navarre and three of his fellows swear off women in order to devote themselves to study. Then arrive the Princess of France and three of her women. As the principals match up, the women test of the seriousness of the men’s interest and find them faithless. A messenger intrudes with the report of the King of France’s death; the Princess is now Queen, contrary to all history. So the play abruptly ends with this conceit of loss, though they men are set tests for a year and a day, upon which the women shall return to see what is proved. Yes, a slight story, most elegantly told with a hilariously silly subplot. For Shakespeare, this is a 3, overall in literature a 4.
Euripides, Trojan Women (415 BCE). SF Along with Euripides’ Medea, this is one of the most gripping and terrible tragedies I know, not excelled after 2,425 years. The women of Troy, soon to be sent into slavery, and the anguished Helen each have their say bringing the play step by step closer to grief until Hecuba, widowed of King Priam, and bereft of all her sons faces the final disaster. 5!
William Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well (1623). SF As one of the “problem plays,” the problem here is that Bertram refuses to recognize his marriage to Helena so that she must win him by obtaining his ring and bearing his child when he deserts her. Most interesting is that Helena and the other women are heroic while Bertram is a cad. Another 3, 4.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). BC Do you know of Mr. Rochester, the brooding master of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre? Rhys wrote a prequel of Rochester’s earlier life and his wife’s origins in the slave-holding Caribbean. She is the crazy woman who burns down the hall at the end of Jane Eyre. Now you know why. Though a slender novel in size, WSS is profound as an artistic deconstruction of the pretense (or naïveté) of imperial fiction. 4
Vince Starrett, Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933). In a series of chapter sketches, Starrett treats Holmes and Watson analytically as though these characters had real lives, and thereby explains away the inconsistencies in their stories. Entertaining even if you are not a Baker Street Irregular. 4
Kiran Desai, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998). The young son of a middle class Indian family is a disappointment to them. He has a low-level postal job and no ambition. Suddenly he goes off on his own to live in a tree in an abandoned orchard. His joyful solitude lasts until the neighborhood discovers him as a “holy man” and his notoriety spreads. Chaos follows. Desai has a wonderful way of writing with subtlety of connotation and verve of expression. This one was a great delight and I must explore more of her books. 4
Ursula K. LeGuin, Lavinia (2008). LeGuin has been among my favorite authors for 30 years. In her mature writing through this period, she blends exquisite prose, inventive situations, and depth of portrayal that always succeeds. In Lavinia she takes a slight reference near the end of the Aeneid to Aeneas’ Latin wife and builds a whole, marvelous story around her that is visionary, feminist, culturally significant, and artistically satisfying in the finest sense. A 5 once again.
Steven Saylor, Roma (2008). I came to Saylor through his early books on Gordianus the Finder, an early version of detective, who at first appealed to me as an industrious man able to step outside his illusions. His grunt work for Cicero in various cases, though critical of that articulate Roman, illuminate society in the years of the “great men” Sulla, Pompey and Caesar. Though Roma’s subtitle is the novel of ancient Rome, it is not so much a novel as an episodic series of stories and novellas that dramatize key episodes from the city’s prehistoric location to Augustus’ foundation of empire. The novelistic elements are two – two family histories that weave in and out of the major events and the evolution of Rome itself as a polity and culture. Though containing enough pettiness among the characters to wear me down, Saylor always vaults his homework into tensions that reveal as they intrigue. 4
Nancy Freedman, Sappho: the tenth muse (1998). Though Sappho’s poetry exists in scraps and a vaporous mystery surrounds her life, numerous books seek to make her into a whole person. This novel is one that I owned for several years before I got around to reading it. Freedman, new to me, writes with elegance and power and consistently uses metaphor and simile as no one I have read before. My only complaint was the heavy doses of eroticism and subsequent jealousy among characters that detracted from Sappho as a poet, feminist, and intellectual of her day. I wanted to believe that Sappho invented the concept of romantic love, a woman far in advance of her time and place. 4
Penelope Lively, Consequences (2007) Gift* Lively takes refreshing approaches in her various novels. This one tells the story of three generations of women through the 20th century. Each – mother, daughter, granddaughter – must seek her own path and relationships and thereby exercise both will and choice among the chance opportunities that life and history deal out. What a beautifully conceived and executed book of verity and significance! 4
_____
*My friend, Cy Chauvin, and I have exchanged books at holiday times for several years. Because we share many of the same interests, including appreciation of the novel of manners, several of Cy’s gifts have been Lively books in this genre where she excels.
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
In order to read more, I long ago gave up ephemeral activities. I was never interested in sports, not even as a spectator, I stopped watching commercial television, I skip most sections of the daily newspaper, but never the feature articles. Decades ago, I taught myself that if I start a book and it fails to grab me, I am free to quit it. Because of this choice, most of the books I read rate high with me.
I always have something to read with me, the expression in our family being, ‘You never know when you’re going to be caught in a flood.’ So, we carry our flood books. Because of some specific project, I research and read task-fulfilling stuff almost all the time, but when it comes to reading books generally, I fail my own expectations. Most of the books that I read to the finish are ones that I intend to read on an emerging priority basis or that I read in those hours, often between 2 and 4 a.m. When I cannot sleep, I regard tossing and turning as too wasteful. Because I am in a book club, I read a number of books that I would not otherwise choose.
Books Read in 2008 (listed chronologically).
Note: The ratings given follow the book club’s: 5-best; 4-top 20%, 3-middling, 2-less than average, 1-bottom. BC – Book Club selections. SF – Stratford Festival plays. YA-Title written for teenage or younger readers.
Amy Ephron, One Sunday Morning (2005). BC Though compared to Edith Wharton sendups on the social elites of 19th century New York society, I found this brief novel shallow, stupid, and boring. 1
Penelope Lively, The Photograph (2003). Gift* A landscape historian finds a picture of his deceased wife holding hands with her sister’s husband. He does not rest until he discovers what was going on. This quest starts a chain reaction among all those involved. Excellent treatment of character and manners. 4
Diane Lee Wilson, I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade (1998). YA A young Mongol girl, fascinated with riding and horses, impersonates a boy and by chance is trusted with carrying a secret message to the great Kublai Khan in China. A well done historical. 4
Brian Aldiss, The Dark Light Years (1964). Though I had read the short story that spawned this science fiction novella, the story intrigued me all over again. Aldiss is profound in contrasting human assumptions with alien existence. 5
Ayn Rand, ...Answers (2005). Since Rand’s death, her executors have resurrected a number of unintended books from recordings made of her speaking off the cuff. This one organizes by topic her responses from question and answer sessions following formal speeches. Though Rand was an early influence on my life, and although some of her answers are stimulating, many show her as extreme, violent, merely opinionated, and irritated. I take this collection as revelatory in its chance randomness but lacking in sufficient context. Valuable to students of Rand but cannot be rated.
Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (2005). BC Though Erdrich is a noted Minnesota author, this book is the first of hers I have finished, so I take that as a sign that it is easier. An authentic native drum so captivates an appraiser of antiquities that she steals it from the estate. The magic of the drum haunts her until it brings its own return to its place of origin. A beautiful story that crosses half the U.S., generations, and peoples also, thereby, fascinates. 4
Alfred Duggan, Growing Up in Thirteenth Century England (1962). YA Duggan treats a microcosm of Edward I’s time by profiles of the teenage children in three upper class families. Perhaps this makes sense since these had the most options, but I would have liked to see something more bourgeois. A clear picture of feudalism emerges, most of it comparatively grim. 4
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust (1975). BC An English woman in colonial India finds her life suffocating and to escape it spends more and more time in the palace of the local prince to disastrous results. I had expected more, but the story turned very flat. 2 Another novel with a similar theme, The Holder of the World (1993), by Bharati Mukherjee, I found far superior because of its meaningful merit and evocative movement. Give that one a 4.5.
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1900). SF Though straying from the historical, Shaw’s comedy of the aging Caesar mentoring the teenage Cleopatra is a joyous romp of satire in the face of puritan traditions and illuminates the true worth of magistracy. 5
Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna (1619). SF Previously unknown to me, the prolific maker of Spanish classical drama, regarded in Spain as second to Cervantes in their literature, was a later contemporary of Shakespeare. In this play, the residents of the village “Sheep’s Well,” rise against their vicious feudal overlord and kill him. All face death until the clement understanding of Ferdinand and Isabella reprieve them. As insightful to the time of its setting and time of its writing as any Shakespeare drama. 4
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598). SF Of interest to me is how Shakespeare’s minor plays, some of them very neglected, are so fascinatingly wonderful. LLL is a courtly piece in which the King of Navarre and three of his fellows swear off women in order to devote themselves to study. Then arrive the Princess of France and three of her women. As the principals match up, the women test of the seriousness of the men’s interest and find them faithless. A messenger intrudes with the report of the King of France’s death; the Princess is now Queen, contrary to all history. So the play abruptly ends with this conceit of loss, though they men are set tests for a year and a day, upon which the women shall return to see what is proved. Yes, a slight story, most elegantly told with a hilariously silly subplot. For Shakespeare, this is a 3, overall in literature a 4.
Euripides, Trojan Women (415 BCE). SF Along with Euripides’ Medea, this is one of the most gripping and terrible tragedies I know, not excelled after 2,425 years. The women of Troy, soon to be sent into slavery, and the anguished Helen each have their say bringing the play step by step closer to grief until Hecuba, widowed of King Priam, and bereft of all her sons faces the final disaster. 5!
William Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well (1623). SF As one of the “problem plays,” the problem here is that Bertram refuses to recognize his marriage to Helena so that she must win him by obtaining his ring and bearing his child when he deserts her. Most interesting is that Helena and the other women are heroic while Bertram is a cad. Another 3, 4.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). BC Do you know of Mr. Rochester, the brooding master of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre? Rhys wrote a prequel of Rochester’s earlier life and his wife’s origins in the slave-holding Caribbean. She is the crazy woman who burns down the hall at the end of Jane Eyre. Now you know why. Though a slender novel in size, WSS is profound as an artistic deconstruction of the pretense (or naïveté) of imperial fiction. 4
Vince Starrett, Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933). In a series of chapter sketches, Starrett treats Holmes and Watson analytically as though these characters had real lives, and thereby explains away the inconsistencies in their stories. Entertaining even if you are not a Baker Street Irregular. 4
Kiran Desai, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998). The young son of a middle class Indian family is a disappointment to them. He has a low-level postal job and no ambition. Suddenly he goes off on his own to live in a tree in an abandoned orchard. His joyful solitude lasts until the neighborhood discovers him as a “holy man” and his notoriety spreads. Chaos follows. Desai has a wonderful way of writing with subtlety of connotation and verve of expression. This one was a great delight and I must explore more of her books. 4
Ursula K. LeGuin, Lavinia (2008). LeGuin has been among my favorite authors for 30 years. In her mature writing through this period, she blends exquisite prose, inventive situations, and depth of portrayal that always succeeds. In Lavinia she takes a slight reference near the end of the Aeneid to Aeneas’ Latin wife and builds a whole, marvelous story around her that is visionary, feminist, culturally significant, and artistically satisfying in the finest sense. A 5 once again.
Steven Saylor, Roma (2008). I came to Saylor through his early books on Gordianus the Finder, an early version of detective, who at first appealed to me as an industrious man able to step outside his illusions. His grunt work for Cicero in various cases, though critical of that articulate Roman, illuminate society in the years of the “great men” Sulla, Pompey and Caesar. Though Roma’s subtitle is the novel of ancient Rome, it is not so much a novel as an episodic series of stories and novellas that dramatize key episodes from the city’s prehistoric location to Augustus’ foundation of empire. The novelistic elements are two – two family histories that weave in and out of the major events and the evolution of Rome itself as a polity and culture. Though containing enough pettiness among the characters to wear me down, Saylor always vaults his homework into tensions that reveal as they intrigue. 4
Nancy Freedman, Sappho: the tenth muse (1998). Though Sappho’s poetry exists in scraps and a vaporous mystery surrounds her life, numerous books seek to make her into a whole person. This novel is one that I owned for several years before I got around to reading it. Freedman, new to me, writes with elegance and power and consistently uses metaphor and simile as no one I have read before. My only complaint was the heavy doses of eroticism and subsequent jealousy among characters that detracted from Sappho as a poet, feminist, and intellectual of her day. I wanted to believe that Sappho invented the concept of romantic love, a woman far in advance of her time and place. 4
Penelope Lively, Consequences (2007) Gift* Lively takes refreshing approaches in her various novels. This one tells the story of three generations of women through the 20th century. Each – mother, daughter, granddaughter – must seek her own path and relationships and thereby exercise both will and choice among the chance opportunities that life and history deal out. What a beautifully conceived and executed book of verity and significance! 4
_____
*My friend, Cy Chauvin, and I have exchanged books at holiday times for several years. Because we share many of the same interests, including appreciation of the novel of manners, several of Cy’s gifts have been Lively books in this genre where she excels.
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
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