The End of Chateaubriand

I complete reading the complete works of Chateaubriand. I found the last six volumes, those of his memoirs, to be the ones I most anticipated. I find, however, that I reacted much the way I had with John Diefenbaker's memoirs: he struck me in print as less intelligent than I expected. Part of it, of course, is that he probably wrote to earn money, not for his own edification, as with Saint-Simon. He is not incisive, I find, not does he have the gift of the telling detail -- but then, Mountbatten didn't either. And, of course, his memoirs are stuffed with correspondance and documents he retained from his career. That broke up the pace quite a bit. So in the end I find him to be correctly placed in the second rank.

And I found myself last night with only the latest issue of The Economist to read. What do you know? I'll have to get going on interlibrary loans today!

Magazines and more Chateaubriand

I read an issue of The Economist that was two weeks old, then three issues of Eclectic Reading, then the latest Esquire. Now I'm heavily into all 18 volumes of Chateaubriand -- his travels to the Middle East, which reminded me of Rebecca West's travelogue to Yugoslavia; his book on the early Christian martyrs (is Chateaubriand an ultramontane?); a very dated novel about north American aboriginals, called Les Natchez; Le genie du christianisme, which anticipates by 200 years what Balthasar did with La gloire et la croix; a north American travelogue, complete with descriptions of wildlife; and studies of antiquity, which I am reading now. This will bring me to Volume 10 of his complete works. To come: annotated French history; and his memoirs in 6 volumes! I look forward to it all.

The End of the Bronte's, The Start of Chateaubriand

I finished reading Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, which I liked for its satirical age and modernity. That means I have now read all the novels of all the Bronte's. I found them excellent in general, and their life stories very sad. All in all, I was impressed with their realism.

I also read Chateaubriand's Essai sur les revolutions anciennes et modernes. What erudition there was in that century, what knowledge of Antiquity in all the writers.

Chateaubriand, Desportes, Hamalainen

I completed the biography of Chateaubriand, in anticipation of the 18 volumes of his complete works being shipped out to me to read (!), and I was disappointed. The author is a great expert on Chateaubriand, but sold the editors (Flammarion Grande Biographie) a bill of goods: there are four large essays on Chateaubriand instead of a chronological biography, i.e. work the author had already done. So there was no sense of how the man developed over time, along his various careers as writer and politician.

I also read Pekka Hamalainen's Comanche Empire. This was interesting both for the content and the approach. The author detailed the Comanche tribe's history as if it was, say, 18th century France, as if it was an independent nation. As far as the content is concerned, the Comanche empire collapsed not because the might US Army conquered it, but because it had overstressed its natural resources, resulting in a terrible hunger, and then survived because it adapted. I am starting to think this is significant in the case of many civilizations, and I thought of course of the European settlements in Greenland.

I also read Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, which I didn't like. I don't understand why anyone would write a novel about someone else's novel's character. However, she was prolific, and maybe she was making a feminist or nationalist point I'm missing.

I also read two more books by Vincent Desportes, on the US armed forces, which was very acute in its discussion, and an earlier book, Comprendre la guerre. This second book contained much that was familiar to me, but it was still clearly written and identified many points in which I am in agreement.

I read Cave Painters by Greg Curtis, which was more about the archaeologists working on the French prehistorical cave paintings, than about the cave paintings themselves. It actually said that there was little sexual content in the cave paintings, something counter intuitive that has since become disputed.

On my nighttable are the novels of Charlotte Bronte, a book on the Heidegger controversy, and Madame de Stael's Corinne, which I plan to read either this afternoon or on my return Friday.