Hrm. These poems are obviously translated from the Russian, and I wonder what kind of translation it was…literal, word for word, or did the translator take license to try and replicate the tone of the poem with out the precision of meaning. I guess I can’t just help but feel that I’m missing something here. THESE are the poems a man was exiled over? For what? Maybe I’m just too American, meaning I don’t question a person’s right to dissent, but there hardly seemed to be any criticism of the Soviet Regime AT ALL. There are some poems that deal with atomic power, boats, his exile. But most talk of nature, and the towns he has known, and maybe a few long-ago loves. Hardly the stuff to make you wanna expel him from your country.

More knowledge of context on my part probably would have increased my appreciation. This was admitedly an intro to Brodsky for me.

Emilie du Chatelet is a wonder of nature that sent her lover Voltaire into depression because she was SMARTER than him and he knew it. She didn’t try to show him up, she just was who she was. Where has this book been all my life, and how did I just hear about her for the first time. She’s my new #1 Girl Power Icon. Queen Elizabeth I, your majesty, after a 18 year reign over my heart, you’re bumped to #2.

And, amongst her other lovers, the Duc du Richelieu, aka the basis for Valmont in Choderlos de Laclos’ Liaisons dangereuses. DING DONG! If you’re a big 18th century ho like me, you’ll luvvvvvv this.

The precision with which this book is written is very impressive. There is so much detail in this book, the author presents us with the type of house linens that Vincent purchased to decorate the Yellow House in Arles. He can describe the contents of the house even to what pictures were hanging on which walls, and what chair was placed where. But the details don’t override the narrative. I knew next to nothing about van Gogh before reading this. I knew what everyone knows. He cut his ear off, and he painted sunflowers.

Who knew that Vincent was a bigtime reader, and even possibly a synesthete? Literature was as important to his work as color, but you’d never guess it just by looking at their subject matter. The author of this book teases out the influences and the symbolism behind his works. Yes, SYMBOLISM. And even though Vincent’s references may have been obscure, the author easily connects the dots for us. He can be my Art History 101 prof any time.

JULIE CHRISTIE! TERENCE STAMP! ONE HELL OF A LONG MOVIE! And her hair never moves the whole time!

I am such a huge fan of the original office that I cried when tim and dawn kissed in the Xmas episode, okay? I am totally the prime candidate to be a huge fan of this show. And well, yeah, I’m not. It was seriously not funny. To the point where I’m not sure i’ll watch the second disc. I only laughed out loud once, and not to give it away I’ll just say tracksuits and chesthair in the Ben Stiller episode. And I will admit that I thought it was funny Ross Kemp was playing Lord Nelson.

I don’t know how to say it, but it was just more of the same kind of Gervais humor, without inovation or the spark that came from actual characters (David Brent, for example). The whole trope of the show is “I can’t believe I just had that conversation with X (fill in famous celebrity here), and I’m sorry that just gets boring and contrived after a while, most notably in the Kate Winslet episode.

This was a slim biography, easily digestible, not a large scholarly tome, which is a blessing and a curse. My criticisms for the author mainly come from the format. We learn (a summary of) what she knows, but not HOW she knows it. There is a small notes section at the end corresponding to minimal (less than five) footnotes throughout the text. Now believe me, I am not demanding the kind of intricate note system that has you keeping a finger in the notes section so you can jump back and forth between the text and the additional information at the back of the book. But it would be nice to know when she concludes, for example, that Sand’s father Dupin was not her biological father, whether that is authorial conjecture or common knowledge (at least amongst Sand scholars). For that fact there is no footnote, no way of following the scholarly trail, nothing. There is no doubt in my mind that Ms. Eisler is VERY knowledgeable about her subject, but her choice to largely remove her authorial imprint from the text has a novice “Sandiste” like me wondering how authoritative the work is.

I have long been interested in George Sand, but this is the first biography I have read about her. It will probably be my last, mainly because of Ms. Sand herself. I have a problem with people that absolutely live the life they want to live (at the expense of children) and then blame “class” and “society” when they themselves persist in behaving in a way that always end in drama and sadness.

Then picture it again. Turn the page and picture it more. End a chapter and imagine it still…and that’s all you’re gonna do. Because nothing ever happens in this book. This sadly is a case of an old cliché coming home: I can’t judge a book by its cover. If I do, I will be teased, seduced and ultimately punished by the mean demi-gods in charge of a book’s POTENTIAL. When I reviewed the 2006 Booker long list, this was the work that immediately stuck out. Because of its…title…and…its cover. I waited anxiously for its US printing. I reserved it at my library before it was even in the stacks. I just KNEW I was gonna love this book. I triumphantly read the blurb as I waited in the checkout line and just KNEW I was in for a monumental reading experience. That’s when I should have known it would all end in tears.

Of the titular ruby in a navel, I will say…it appears in the book, and really has nothing to do with anything. They might as well have entitled this book the heron’s feather for the import both objects have to the plot. But then I guess there would be no excuse for the odalisque in the American version’s cover art if another title was used: score another one for the marketing team. Of the “love” and “intrigue” promised (also on the cover) there were scant traces. All the ingredients of THE MOST SPLENDID HISTORICAL NOVEL EVER were there, the characters poised, just waiting to be put to some use (ANY USE!) besides a pretty thinly veiled “allegory on our times”. You know the rhetoric: Western Christianity evil, Muslims noble. Mr. Unsworth was so wrapped up in demonstrating his estimable knowledge of the political and cultural ambiance of this 12th century Mediterranean crossroad (and indicting the state of current world affairs—I SO should have seen that coming!) that he just forgot about moving the plot. By page 300 out of 400 I was still waiting for something even approaching a conspiracy to happen. By page 350, when the “conspiracy” had been finally revealed, I was beyond caring. I couldn’t be bothered to finish the book.

SPOILERS Ok, let’s just get it out there in the open, Blythe Danner can do no wrong in my eyes. She’s fab. So how come Gwyneth drives me nuts? Zack Braff on the other hand drives me crazy. No I don’t think he’s funny, cute, quirky, any of that. So surprise surprise if I don’t really sympathize with his character at all. Oh, I have a gorgeous girlfriend, a great job and awesome friends, but I am so broken up inside…I deserve more. My life is already so hard to bear, I think I’ll just create MORE drama by sleeping with some random 20 year old floutist that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever other than the fact that she’s easy and she aggressively pursues me while my girlfriend is about to go into the second trimester of her pregnancy.
What’s really sad about this movie is that it’s a tale as old as time, yet somehow we need to keep repeating it, because everyone seems to think their circumstance is different, and they’re experiencing a pain that no one else could POSSIBLY understand. I don’t really have any complaints about the actual quality of the production. Just don’t expect it to be new information, and you’ll do fine.

I’ve often heard it said that one’s ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions is the highest indicator of self-esteem. Don’t tell that to the protagonists of this book. Certainly we the readers are entertained by their devastating choices, but it’s their inability to relent in the pursuit of the inevitable consequences that fascinates. I can only liken the behavior of these people to the current exploits of Britney Spears. However, I don’t think Ms. Spears is as enamored with the acting out of the dramatization of her own saga as much as Princess Louise and her erstwhile lover Mattachich. Once on top of the world, Britney is insistent on degrading herself, but in the pursuit of pleasure. For the lovers of this historical novel, pleasure never really comes into it.

I believe the book’s titular “love” was never part of their endgame (sorry to disappoint!). They are two united pilgrims of imagination, seeking to discover what lies beyond the strictures of class in Hapsburg Vienna. Once they find it, puzzlingly, they don’t stop. They continue on in an intractable gyre of indigence and affliction of their own making, only ending, in this life at least, in death. While on the one hand the reader marvels at their brazen, obscene commitment to finish what they audaciously start, one cannot help but ponder, was it all worth it?

I don’t know what everyone is fussing about. It’s not an awful movie, although the script could have been better. Harvey Weinstein trying to buy Sienna an Oscar is maybe a little much, but par for the course. If he really cared about rewarding merit, he would push Guy Pearce’s performance as Warhol which was astonishing.