Category Archives: book reviews

book reviews, reading

Book Review: Team of Rivals

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On Monday I finished reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, 2005 Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-82490-6, a non-fiction book by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book totals 754 pages, not including extensive notes, bibliography, and index. As I mentioned in a previous post, I expected this to be a two month read, or seven weeks if I could find more time to read on weekends. Well, I completed it in five weeks and two days.

The reason for my better progress? The combination of a well-organized book, easy reading that was at the same time scholarly, and an interesting subject. I found I could ready twenty pages a day without any trouble. On weekend days I did thirty to forty. I wouldn’t say the book was a page turner; few history books are. But it treated the subject matter in such a way that it was perfect for me.

The book begins on a day in May 1860 when the Republican convention in Chicago was to select their candidate for the presidency. The four main candidates–Seward, Chase, Bates, and Lincoln–were in their respective home towns, waiting on the outcome. In those days candidates never attended or even addressed their convention. The opening chapter tells something of how the four men pursued the nomination. Then chapters 2 and 3 go into their lives leading up to that point, and chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 cover the last decade or so leading up to the convention. It isn’t until chapter 8 that we return to Chicago and see how Lincoln’s team bested his rivals. Thus the book is in a D-A-B-C-E order.

Beginning with chapter 8 the book runs in chronological order, covering the Lincoln presidency in considerable detail. As could be expected from the title, the primary subject of the book is how Lincoln put his chief political rivals on his cabinet, and then how it was his personality and leadership style that molded them into a team that carried out what he wanted to do with the nation. Lincoln’s style was one of quiet perseverance and charm. When faced with a disagreement with any of his cabinet, he resolutely forbore the arguments in favor of the opposing position, then with charm and quiet persuasion was able to bring the colleague around, or on occasion slightly alter his own position based on the logic of the other guy’s.

This was no Harry Truman, who would tell his cabinet, “Here’s what I’m going to do. Talk me out of it if you can.” They never could. Nor was this a Teddy Roosevelt, speaking softly but carrying a big stick. Lincoln carried no stick at all, according to Kearns. He entered the presidency as a relative unknown, painted by the Democrats as a rail-splitter. In fact, a few months into his first term someone in power said, “We have voted for a rail-splitter, and that’s what we got.”

As the opening battles in the Civil War went against the Union, everyone questioned Lincoln’s forbearance with non-performing generals. The radical side of his cabinet questioned his toleration of the conservatives, and the conservatives did the same concerning the liberals/radicals. The abolitionists declared Lincoln a friend of slavery, and Southern sympathizers declared him an abolitionist. Somehow, through his incredible forbearance and his refusal to become flustered or angry, Lincoln prevailed and the Union was saved.

Kearns does a masterful job at weaving this story. She tells how Lincoln used diversions to reduce his stress level and allow him to keep focused, diversions such as the theatre, the opera, carriage rides, weekends away from the White House, and simple evenings spent with friends where he could spin his yarns. He became good friends with his chief rival, William Seward (Secretary of State), and the two spent much time together not necessarily discussing government business.

It was not so with Salmon Chase (Secretary of the Treasury). Kearns describes how Chase constantly baited Lincoln, either purposely or just as a consequence of planning to unseat Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln stood for much abuse from Chase, refusing three times to accept his resignation. When he finally did accept it (to Chase’s surprise), the timing was perfect and the rest of the cabinet, the Congress, and the nation understood it was for the best.

Tomorrow I’ll cover a few more items, and summarize the review. For now I’ll say this read is well worth the cost of the book and the hours you will dedicate to it. Don’t take a chance to pass this up.

book reviews

Book Review: Burnt Sienna, by David Morrell

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On Friday I finished Burnt Sienna, 2000, Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-51964-2, a novel by David Morrell. This is the second of Morrell’s novels I’ve read. The first was The Totem. That was a medical thriller. This was…I’m not sure what genre to put it in. A thriller, I guess.

Chase Malone had been a soldier, having piloted helicopters in the Panama invasion of 1989 and come away from that scarred. Yes, he was wounded, but more importantly he wound up with a dislike for authority of any type. Thus he left the military and took up painting–not houses, as a landscape artist. In ten years he won some renown, and some collectors would pay as much as $200,000 for one of his works. He lived in Cozumel, right on the ocean.

Derek Bellasar, who lived in France, tried to hire him to paint two painting of his wife, one a facial shot and one a nude. Malone turned down the commission, because of his problems with authority. Malone didn’t know Bellasar was a powerful dealer in illegal munitions. Bellasar quickly began interfering in Malone’s life, closing his favorite restaurant and buying his property out from under him. One of Malone’s ex-army buddies showed up. Now working for the CIA, this man talked Malone into accepting the commission, going to Bellasar’s estate near Nice, France, and finding out more about his operation.

The other part of Malone’s assignment was to get Bellasar’s wife out of the compound. It seemed that Bellasar had had three prior wives, all as beautiful as the current one, named Sienna, but they all died in mysterious circumstances about the age of 30, when the bloom of youthful beauty first began to fade. Right before each of them died Bellasar had hired famous artists to paint them, facial and nude.

The story began somewhat predictably. I found myself trying to anticipate the plot (the curse of a wannabe novelist) and being successful at it. I predicted Malone would fall for Sienna, that he would get her out, and how he would get her out. However, all this happened by about the middle of the book; obviously I had miscalculated. Morrell continued to weave his story, giving additional predicaments for Malone to work his way out of. I won’t say much more so as to not give away more of the plot.

The book is an amazingly easy read. Chapters are short, typically two or three pages. Sometimes a chapter break is not even a scene break. Morrell’s writing is spare of excess verbiage, except perhaps in some of the weapons scene. He keeps the story moving. He keeps the plot twists coming. He avoids gratuitous sex and violence. I read it in a little over a week, despite the limited time I had to give to reading. The twenty-five pages a day I had set as a goal was too easy, and I did more than that most days.

I recommend this book to any who like thrillers. It has a few swear words, but it they are sprinkled in very naturally, not gratuitously at all.

book reviews, Mark Twain

Book Review: Mark Twain’s "Letters From Hawaii"

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I found this book, Mark Twain’s Letters From Hawaii, (Edited by A. Grove Day, c. 1966, The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, ISBN 0-8248-0288-8, Pacific Classics Edition 3rd printing 1979), in a place where they sell used books, either a thrift store or a garage sale. I put it midway through the first half of the reading pile I put together last August, and came to it in mid-March. I read a little of it in February, on that business trip to Phoenix, but read it mostly over the last two weeks (when I wasn’t distracting myself with the letters of Tolkein and Lewis).

Mr. Day begins his Introduction with a question some of my readers may be asking: “Why should anyone today want to read the travel letters written by Mark Twain from the Hawaiian Islands more than a hundred years ago?” I chose the book because I want to read more of Mark Twain’s works. Why not this one? And of course it was cheap, an oldish paperback at a used book sale. It’s been decades since I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the only two things by Twain I’ve read. I downloaded a book from the Gutenberg Project, Letters of Mark Twain, Volume 1, but I haven’t done anything with it to date.

Why indeed would anyone want to read this? It’s history. It captures Hawaii in a snapshot in time, 1866. Twain was 31, before he achieved literary fame, and was working as a journalist in Nevada and California when he wrangled himself an assignment from the “Sacramento Union” to travel to Hawaii for several months and write a series of travelogue type letters for publication in the newspaper.

The letters he wrote are full of information and humor. He described the scenery, the people, the government, the missionaries, the agriculture, the inter-island travel, the volcanoes, the commerce. He created an imaginary travel companion, Brown, who became a foil for Twain’s epee thrusts.

While Twain was in the Sandwich Islands (as they were still mostly called at that time), two newsworthy events happened. The crown princess, who was to become sovereign queen upon the death of the king, herself died at age 27. Twain’s description of the month-long mourning and funeral rites tells much about the people. And, while he was there, survivors of the clipper ship “Hornet” arrived at the island after 43 days in lifeboats following the burning and sinking of the “Hornet”. Twain’s account is gripping (to use an over-used word, but it works in this case) as he tells how the men survived and made it across the miles to Hawaii. That one letter did much to begin Twain’s rise to fame in the States.

I could give many examples of how Twain’s humor comes through. I’ll just give this one, about his inter-island trip on a small, coastal ship. “The first night, as I lay in my coffin [how he described his berth], idly watching the dim lamp swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. Lazarus did not come out of his sepulcher with a more cheerful alacrity than I did out of mine. However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time, and I thought it might be a centipede, because the captain had killed one on deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it–cockroaches as large as peach leaves-fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. they were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something.”

With such colorful language and use of metaphor, Twain paints his pictures of the beautiful Sandwich Islands. The book is well worth the time to read, if you ever come across it. I don’t know about going out of your way to try and purchase it, however. Would it be worth full price at a bookstore, if you could even find it? Probably.

book reviews, Dune

Book Review: Dune Messiah

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I completed reading Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah last Sunday, and planned to write my review and post it here by Wednesday, but the food poisoning that laid me low this week put writing far from my mind. Today is the first day I’ve had any desire to write or energy to do so.

I’ll be honest from the start: I did not enjoy this book. The first book in the trilogy, Dune, was good, my main complaint about it being length not content. This one, however, failed to deliver the punch that its predecessor did.

The book starts out with the antagonists, a curious cabal of four galactic misfits: a steersman, who is a fish-ish, manish creature who lives in a mobile, see-through tank of orange gas; a reverend mother of the Bene Gessaret; a “face dancer” of the Tleilaxu (today we’d call him a shape-shifter) of unknown motives; and Princess Irulan, wife of emperor Paul Atreides, the object of the conspiracy. Yes, the death of the emperor, who then had reigned about 16 years, and in whose name jihad was being waged across the galaxy by the Fremen of Arrakis, the planet nicknamed Dune. The goal: kill the emperor and end the jihad.

Paul, also known as Muad’dib, seemed powerless to stop the jihad on his own. In Dune he foresaw that it would happen, and that he couldn’t stop it. In Dune Messiah, these four decide to take matters into their own hands. They plan to kill Muad’dib with a psychological poison–at least I think. The meeting was for the purpose of convincing the princess, the daughter of the emperor Paul deposed, a spouse yet not loved nor a mate, to join the plot. She does so.

Paul knows a plot is afoot, yet seems to do little to stop it. He can’t quite see who the plotters are, and suspects only the reverend mother. When the steersman and face dancer come to Dune as part of a diplomatic mission, Paul doesn’t show any suspicion towards them. He constantly allows them in his presence, often loosely guarded. They introduce two other characters, a dwarf and [I forget who the other was], and Paul lets them in too.

The issue of Paul’s heir, and of a mate and an heir for his sister, Alia, is a major theme. Paul’s concubine, Chani, finally gets pregnant and they plan to go to the desert caves of the Fremen to have the child.

That’s all I’ll reveal of the plot. The writing is good, as it was in the first book. But the writing is strange. Much of it centers around Paul’s powers of prescient memory, and around how he is troubled by his own reign. This sort of thing get tiring after a while, and I had to fight the urge to skip major portions of the text.

I didn’t, though I can’t say I’m better for not having skipped it. While I can recommend Dune, I cannot recommend Dune Messiah–unless you were just so taken by Dune that you feel you won’t be able to live if you don’t read the full trilogy.

book reviews

Book Review: The Powers That Be – Conclusions

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David Halberstam’s conclusion, or what I draw as his conclusion from his 736 pages of The Powers That Be, is: The changes in the media from the 1930s to the 1970s changed politics, and especially the presidency.

Duh. Did he really need 736 tedious pages to come to this conclusion? As I said or implied in my previous posts about this book (here and here), I had a tough time getting though this book. The writing style, the length of chapters, the flood of names, all worked against easy reading. But Halberstam’s main point was obvious throughout, and he makes a fair case. Of course, that seems somewhat obvious. How could politics and the presidency not be changed when the main way news is disseminated changes from twice daily newspapers to sound-bite television? It has to change.

One interesting aspect of the narrative is how the four media highlighted in the book (CBS, Washington Post, Time Inc., and the Los Angeles Times) shifted from conservative-Republican outlets–or in the case of CBS a non-ideological outlet–to become liberal, Democratic-leaning outlets. I’d have to do some more study to necessarily agree with this conclusion, but I won’t dismiss it outright. Maybe these media outlets were conservative once. Interesting concept.

I cannot recommend this book to others. Oh, if you are a media junkie who loves history and easily retains names and facts repeated or updated on widely separated pages, this book may be for you. This will go immediately to the “books for sale box” in the garage, not to a shelf of books being kept. And, to keep from repeating what I feel was Halberstam’s primary error, I will cut this review short.

book reviews, History

Book Review: The Powers That Be – writing style

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I began my review of David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be here, and now continue, this time discussing Halberstam’s writing style.

After the seventeen page Prelude, Halberstam gave us a twenty-two page chapter on CBS, then a forty-nine page chapter on Time Incorporated (Time and Life magazines), then a twenty-seven page chapter on the Los Angeles Times. A hundred pages and three chapters. Looking through this I almost gave up reading before I began. Such long chapters, all of dense writing, presents the reader used to half-hour or hour long reading stints with a daunting task. A chapter break indicates a break in subject; lack of a chapter break indicates no break in subject and that the reader should keep reading. But that was often impossible, and a mid-chapter break became essential. Getting back into the midst of a chapter the next day was difficult.

When I say the writing was dense, I don’t mean intellectually, but rather in terms of names, facts, and opinions. Each chapter was full of names: publication or institution founder, heirs, spouses, spouses ancestors, politicians, politicians’ media assistants, publishers, editors, reporters. Keeping them all straight was pretty much impossible, and a third of the way through the book I gave up. If on page 250 I encountered a name I was pretty sure I read somewhere in the first fifty pages, and Halberstam was now telling of how his career had moved, I knew I should flip back, find the name, re-read what I read the week (or two) before to have the full context, then continue at page 250. I didn’t, however. I just kept reading, hoping new context would give me enough to not worry about exactly what this assistant editor did earlier in his career. Perhaps my understanding of the history was thus lacking, but that was the only way for me to get through the book this decade.

In my review of David Morrell’s The Totem, I talked about the B-A-C writing style; that is, where a writer begins at a certain point of time, the present moment (B), then goes back in time for context (A), then forward from the present moment into the future (C). I used that technique quite a bit in Doctor Luke’s Assistant. Since Halberstam is writing history, not fiction, he had no future to move on to, but he used this B-A-C technique, though in a much more complicated way. He began at a point in time in his history, then went backwards, then forward somewhat but not yet to the starting point, then backward in a tangent thread, then forward but still not to the starting point, then somewhere else. This looked something like a G-B-F-A-C-E-D-I-J-K style. This was way too much, especially in the longer chapters. I became hopelessly confused in know where I was–or wasn’t–in time.

Halberstan liked to mention moments of irony, normally with paired statements of opposites. He tried to show how one generation of owners either passed on or failed to pass on to the next generation the importance of certain values, but I don’t know that he fully accomplished this goal.

In the next (and last) post, I’ll review Halberstam’s apparent conclusions and give some of my own.

book reviews

Book Review: The Powers That Be – refining the subject

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Since some time in October 2008 I have been slogging my way through The Powers That Be by David Halberstam, 1979 [ISBN 0-394-50381-3]. I finished this tome on February 23rd.

Yes, tome is the way to describe these 736 pages. I picked up this book at a thrift store in Mississippi while passing through on vacation last year. While waiting on my wife to finish her shopping, I read about five pages of the Prelude, telling a story about a Democratic Party rally in El Paso, Texas in September 1960, with Sam Rayburn waiting the arrival of JFK and LBJ. Rayburn’s thoughts on how the media was negatively impacting politics were told in an entertaining way. The subject being interesting and the writing good, I took the plunge, paid a buck, and toted it back to Arkansas.

David Halberstam explains his purpose in writing the book, not in the Prelude, but in the end of the book Acknowledgements: “This book is the product of five years of work. It began as a small idea in 1973 and it grew, constantly changing incarnations. At first it was going to be merely a book on a television network and the presidency; gradually it evolved into a book on the rise of modern media and their effect on the way we perceive events.”

Halberstam had set himself an immense task. So many years between the New Deal and Watergate, so many media outlets, so many politicians, so many media personalities. How to sift through and refine? You can’t cover everything in a single volume, even at 736 pages. Once again Halberstam covers this in the Acknowledgements: “In selecting the four institutions that have the major role in this book, I tried to give as fair a cross section of the national press as I could. I chose CBS because it has traditionally represented the best in broadcast journalism; Time because among national magazines it reflects something special in the American character; the Washington Post because it has become a serious national newspaper and because this is in part a book about the road to Watergate; and the Los Angeles Times for those reasons and also because it played so large a part in the career of Richard Nixon.”

An eastern newspaper. A weekly news magazine. A radio and television network. A western newspaper. Obviously radio was new, television newer, weekly magazines a little older, while newspapers were, at the time of FDR’s first inaugural, the mainstay of how Americans learned the news.

Technology changed everything. Radio allowed voices to be heard. Printing technology allowed pictures to be seen weekly at reasonable prices. Television brought movement and voice together. Politicians needed to embrace and adapt to these new technologies or they would find themselves voted home. Halberstam does a good job of showing how the changing technologies changed how the different types of media interacted with each other; how the jealousies and competition between owners, publishers, editors, and reporters all had their impact. He describes the rise of investigative journalism and its role, as well as how radio then television rang the death knell for evening newspapers.

In two additional posts, I’ll write something about Halberstam’s writing style, and draw some conclusions from the book–his and mine.

Bible study, book reviews

Book Review: Moses: A Man of Selfless Dedication

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Our Life Group at church recently completed, as a Bible study, Moses: A Man of Selfless Dedication by Charles R Swindoll, 1998, Insight For Living, ISBN 1-57972-097-8. This is a Bible study guide, prepared from Swindoll’s outlines and sermon transcripts by Jason Shepherd. The book is a companion to a larger book of the same name. For our study, we had only the Bible study guide and the Bible itself.

The guide is organized into twenty-two chapters covering the full range of Moses’ life and activities. All but two chapters focus on Moses; those two are on the Israelites and the law given through Moses. Each chapter includes a section of Living Insights–exercises to challenge the adult student to apply the scripture to life. Some of the chapters include a section Digging Deeper, written to propel the student to really analyze the scriptures. The book includes a map and a handful of tables/charts to clarify sequential or parallel events. An appendix lists books for further study.

Moses’ life should be familiar to most who have walked with Christ for more than a few years. This puts a burden on the writer of the study: how to take the familiar material and cast it in a way to keep the student’s interest? You need more than clever phrasing. Deep doctrinal discussion won’t go very far either. To hold the student, you need to do a number of things that Swindoll has done.

– Excellent writing. This should go without saying for any published book, but I have read a number of published books which are not well written; or which have the seed of a good idea but have not had the right editorial attention. Good writing will be marked by: brevity that gets the points across without wordiness; avoiding excess moderators; ample vocabulary that is not loaded with obscure words that show off the writer’s intelligence without elucidating the reader any more than common words would; organization of sentences and paragraphs into an easy to read format, yet not sacrificing meaning for ease of reading. Swindoll and Shepherd have done this. I cannot point to a single place in the study guide where the writing was anything but excellent.

– Point out something different. Different, that is, from what every other Bible teacher points out. I won’t list them here, but a number of times Swindoll pointed out matters of significance that I never thought of before. That’s good teaching.

– Pull out the key passages; supplement with lesser known passages. We have all read the story of the burning bush, the ten plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. But much more happened in those forty eventful years. Swindoll gives us the well-known, as well as some of the lesser-known, and builds lessons around them.

– Place in context of the times. I always try to think of how the original readers of the Bible would have understood these words. Or, how those who participated in the events interpreted those events. When the Israelites watched Moses strike the rock at Rephidim, what did they actually see, and what did they think? When Moses stood face to face with God atop Mount Sinai and plead for God not to destroy the Israelites, what did the scene actually look like? Swindoll helps us with the context, through a series of dramatic narratives (slightly fictionalized descriptions of what might have been going on), as well as through description of the times and places involved in the biblical account.

– Stimulate he student to additional study. This worked for me. As I read Swindoll’s book, and read the applicable Bible passages, I found myself drawn to other places in the Bible to check on things. How much of this was Swindoll’s organization of the material and the writing, and how much was my own recent interest I’m not sure. Before our Life Group picked this for study, I was working on an outline of this material for my own series–though focusing more in Israel than on Moses. For whatever reason, it worked for me. I’m still studying in Numbers.

If your small group (Sunday school class, life group, spiritual formation group, etc.) is looking for a study, consider this one. I do not believe you will be disappointed.

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: The Day Christ Died

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Yesterday I completed the next book on my reading list, The Day Christ Died by Jim Bishop, 1977, Harper & Row (ISBN 0-06-060786-6). This is a paperback version of the original 1957 book by Bishop, with some updates to reflect archaeological finds and changes in scholarship in the twenty years after the original publication. Includes a new Introduction by Dr. Paul L. Maier, about whom I’ve blogged recently.

This is a good book. Anyone who hasn’t read it and has the chance to will benefit from it. Bishop did several of these type books (e.g. The Day Lincoln Died, The Day Christ Was Born). His style was to take the twenty-four hour day on which the event happened and cover it hour by hour. In the case of Christ’s death, he begins at sundown on Thursday, since the Jewish day ran from sundown to sundown. We first see Peter and John making preparations for the Passover meal, and Jesus and the rest of the Twelve en route to Jerusalem from Bethany.

Bishop then takes us hour by hour. His research fills in many details, such as the probable menu of the Passover meal, the sequence of events within the meal–not just those in the Biblical records, but other things that must have been going on based on the typical Passover meal. He then takes us meticulously though the Biblical account: going to Gethsemane, the arrest, the interview before Annas, the trial before Caiaphas, the trial before the full Sanhedrin, the trial before Pilate, the pre-crucifixion torture, the time on the cross, and the burial.

Bishop fills out the account in many ways. He includes description of Jerusalem, describing the routes taken by various people. He tells us what the Passover celebration was like. He describes something of the background of the high priests. Three overviews from outside the day itself take up a good portion of the book: background of the Jewish world, background of Jesus (from the Bible), and background of the Roman world. These help us to think about why certain things happened as they did that day.

Some of the good points:
– We learn what some people were doing that is not described in the Bible. For example, exactly what did Judas Iscariot do after Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly”? Bishop surmises that it was John son of Zebedee who left in the night hours after watching the Jewish rulers convict Jesus, and went to Bethany to bring Mary to her son’s side in time for his death. [“John remained to find out what the supreme council would do. When the word came that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy, and that the judgment had been that he should die, John waited long enough to look once more upon the face of the man who loved him. The young apostle was close to tears as Jesus was led down into the courtyard, because the bound man was bruised and dirty, with spit running down his face, and his legs quivered with weakness and fatigue. Then John left. He needed wings on his young feet because there was much to do. He had to spread the tragic news among those who believed in Jesus and, sadly, he had also to run to Bethany to tell the news to the Mother of Jesus.“]
– Caiaphas’ activities are well described. We see him in all of his evil machinations, and get a sense of some of his motivation.
– We see many Passover pilgrims. Not individuals, but masses of people, and learn what they were doing, how they thronged to Jerusalem and to the temple with sacrifices.
– The rivalry between Pontius Pilate and the high priests is spelled out. Some of the statements that Pilate and the high priests made make a lot more sense with Bishop’s annotations.

A couple of things were not to my liking:
– The book takes a Roman Catholic view of the events. For instance, Bishop insists that when the Bible talks about the “brothers of Jesus”, this word means relative–cousin–and that Jesus was an only child and that Mary was “ever-virgin”. In fact, the copyright page indicates the book received a nihil obstat and a Imrimatur by a cardinal, indicating the book is free of doctrinal error.
– I’m not sure that Bishop fully represents all that Pilate did to try to free Jesus. When I put my harmony of the gospels together, I was surprised at how the different statements about Pilate’s actions in the four gospels seemed to be different actions on Pilate’s part. Possibly some day I’ll blog about that. Of course, perhaps no one else in the world would agree with me on that.

All in all, it is a good book. Well worth the read. I may hang on to this one rather than sell it in a garage sale.

book reviews, poetry

Book Review: The Ode Less Travelled

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The next book on my reading list was The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within, by Stephen Fry, 2005, Gotham Books, ISBN 1-592-40248-8. I won this book, the second place prise for the February 2008 sonnet contest at Absolute Write. I began reading it less than a month ago, and finished just this afternoon.

This is a teaching book, a primer on writing poetry. No, that’s not exactly right: it’s a primer on writing formal poetry–that is, metrical poems in rhyme, typically to some specific form. Here are a couple of excerpts from the author’s Forward.

“I believe poetry is a primal impulse within us all. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. I believe our poetic impulse is blocked by the false belief that poetry might on the one hand be academic and technical and on the other formless and random.”

“I have written this book because over the past thirty-five years I have derived enormous private pleasure from writing poetry and like anyone with a passion I am keen to share it.”

Fry does this by focusing totally on formal poetry. Free verse is not mentioned, not even as something he plans not to cover. He begins with a 121 page discussion of meter, describing all the metrical feet, how they are put together in lines, and how lines can be grouped for metrical effect. He next covers rhyme, 66 pages worth: the basics of end rhyme and internal; full rhymes, partial rhymes, and identical rhymes; couplets, triplets, envelope rhymes, interlocking rhymes, cross rhymes. Next is a long section, 136 pages, on various forms. He begins with defining stanzas, and then defines a bunch of forms and discusses them: terza rima, quatrains, rubai, rhyme royal, ottava rima, Spenserian stanza, ballad, heroic verse, odes, villanelles, sestinas, pantoums, ballades, rondeau and its many cousins, etc. Last is a short chapter on poetic diction and poetics today.

I find much to commend in this book, and much to fault. In an era dominated by free verse and the “poetry as emotional release crowd”, I find the emphasis on formal poetry refreshing, especially the section on meter. Fry also emphasises that modern poetry should have modern diction. He speaks against what he calls “wrenched syntax” just for the sake of meter and rhyme–I like that, as I believe poetry should be written in the language of the era in which it is written.

I found some things I disagree with, that were treated either shallowly or were, IMHO, inappropriate for a primer on poetry.

– The section on forms contained too many forms, and hence they were not treated either sufficiently or well. What makes for writing a good poem in that form was never discussed, only the specifications for the form.
– There was no discussion of free verse. I understand, by its content, that the book was about formal poetry. But not having stated that, the impression is given that only formal poetry is poetry and free verse is not. I’m a formalist, but I found this handling of free verse somewhat baffling.
– The order of the book seemed backwards to me. The discussion of poetic diction and the condition of poetry today should have been first, since poetic diction is common to all poems, formal and free, metrical and non, etc.
– The book had no discussion of the line as the fundamental element of poetry, nor of metaphor, simile, figures of speech, imagery, personification, and many other poetic devices. Some of these should certainly be in a primer on writing poetry.
– As I mentioned, there was little discussion on poetic quality, or regardless of formal verse or free; what makes for a good poem? You won’t learn that by reading this book.
– Fry uses his own, “made-up” poems to demonstrate most forms. Sometimes he uses the poems of others, but not often. This was somewhat annoying, though I think part of Fry’s argument: See how easy it is, with just a little knowledge.
– The book has some cursing. This is almost all towards the end, with increasing frequency the closer you got to the end. It’s as if Fry knew cursing would turn some people off, and held off with using it till the readers was well into the book and hooked. The book could have easily been written without it, and this fact alone will limit the number of people to whom I can recommend the book.

And I can recommend the book, though with cautions. It does not give a beginner’s treatment to the broad spectrum of the poetry world, but rather to a small part of it. And, it is unlikely to be much help by itself. The one who desires to learn how to write poetry will need to find other books to supplement this one.