Anti-semitism, Madame, Writers and Writing

I read a lot of material since I last posted. I read Julia Cartwright's Madame, a biography of the Duchesse d'Orleans, Princess Henriette of England. It was at least a historical treatment, not a novelized version like the other book by Margaret Irwin's Royal Flush/The Story of Minette. I also read Five Stuart Princesses, by Robert Rait, another turn of the century money-maker. On an entirely different subject,I read Key Houses of the 20th Century, by Colin Davies: these are the canon of 20th century architecture, complete with plans and pictures. It was extremely interesting, once I figured out how to read the plans and some of the technical terms. I was flabbergasted at the modern houses built before 1920! I read the two volumes of Janet Sternberg's The Writer and her Work, which was quite interesting although the political correctness got to me after a bit. I also read Sol Stein's How to grow a novel, but I preferred Alfred Knopf's advice as an editor to writers than Stein's. I also read the third and fourth series of Writers at Work, the interviews from the Paris Review. Not all writers are articulate about their work. I laughed out loud at Nabokov's dissing a wide range of other writers in the most animated language. I thought David Morell had a few good points in his Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing, especially about the structure of writing and the proportionality. Finally, I read the three volumes of Histoire de l'anti-semitisme by Leon Poliakov. This was a real eye opener -- I didn't realize that Montaigne was the son of a Marrano, a concealed Jew, or that the Crusades included what I can only call pogroms against the Jews, or that Voltaire and so many others were anti-Semitic. I was floored. I'm really glad I read it, there were some fascinating passages about Jews beginning the diaspora before the destruction of the Temple and their influence all over north Africa.

de Lacretelle, Le Franc, Robert

I read a bunch of novels yesterday. First I read Roman du malade by Louis de Robert (all my authors had the French particle, as a matter of fact). It was wonderful -- full of truth, keenly observed, a quick easy read, luminously simple prose. That first page would get the novel published today. It's the story of a man sick with tuberculosis, and he tels the story simply of how people behave around him, of how he falls in love with someone who visits him, of the careful watch of every nuance of a doctor's pronouncements on his illness. Le Franc's Grand-Louis l'innocent is a love story between a shell-shocked soldier and a country woman. I found it somewhat cliche. I then read a daring novel about anti-Semitism, Silbermann by de Lacretelle. It's predictable, but the topic was not welcome in bourgeois France in the interwar period. Finally, I read Odyssee d'un transport torpille, which tells the simple story of a ship and its crews' adventures, going from port to port, before and during World War I.