The Prince, by Machiavelli

I first read The Prince in high school, and I was tremendously disappointed. It's a small little thing and I was expecting the secrets of the ages. Or at least something that would help me deal with the cool kids who were making my life hell.

This time I decided to use my high school education to understand it better. No, not the mean-halls type of education, actual classroom instruction. That included a detailed history of Florence, where Machiavelli lived, because that was the city my high school was in.

No, I'm not Italian, although I speak it fluently. My parents moved there for work and sent us kids to the International School of Florence. Sounds nice, eh?

I hated it.

13 years later I've gotten over the hating and realized, damn, it WAS nice. I loved Florence, though I didn't love living there.

Machiavelli lived in Florence and grew to adulthood under Lorenzo Medici, who was a shrewed ruler of the city for many years until his death at a comparatively young age in 1492. Lorenzo Medici inherited the rule of Florence, after his father Piero and grandfather Cosimo. Before Cosimo, Florence had been a Republic. Lorenzo was 'Il Magnifico'. After he died, his son Piero was dubbed 'the Unfortunate' for messing everything up and getting the family temporarily kicked out of power.

Machiavelli served as part of the Free Republic of Florence, and when the Medici returned to power, he was tortured and exiled. He wrote The Prince and other political works during this period of exile, but it wasn't published until after his death.

The Prince refers to a surprising amount of chaos. Machiavelli is able to illustrate all of his theories with concrete contemporary examples of war, conquest, betrayal, and error. Italy didn't become a united country until the late 1800's. During Machiavelli's life, it was a boiling pot of different political parties and sovreignties. There was the Pope, who ruled large territories. There were the city-states. There were the neighboring rulers - France, Spain, etc. who had their eyes on plump prizes like Venice. And there was internal warfare as well. Florence tossed the Medici out, then they came back, then they got thrown out again, etc.

The Prince is more of a classification system than a how-to manual. Machiavelli divides the types of Princes into broad categories and outlines the best ways that each must use to hold on to his possessions. He seems to think that the way the Medici came to power was pretty good, because it's not easy for a foreign conqueror to get a Republic to give up its institutions. But of course, the Medici couldn't hold on to power during his lifetime. The book is dedicated to Lorenzo di Piero di Medici, son of Piero the Unfortunate, who is mostly remembered today for the magnificent tomb Michelango carved for him and for being the father of Caterina de Medici.

Why? Was he hoping to gain his favor, or was it some kind of ironic joke?

My theory (tentative and amateurish) is that the dedication is not ironic, and not an attempt at flattery, but made with an honest desire that the person in charge of Florence use his powers for the benefit of the people of Florence. Florentines are intensely loyal to their city.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot

Middlemarch was hefty and glorious and absorbing, the perfect book to read on vacation. Well, the perfect book for me, at least. It's not your James Patterson. It's the literary equivalent of a chocolate layer cake. Delicious, worth savoring, but maybe not the kind of thing you take on an airplane.

Maxine pointed out to me that Middlemarch was a 'community read' at the Reading Middlemarch blog (which has now moved on to Tolstoy and Stendahl), and I poked around there a bit. Rachel claims that There are Dodo people and Lydgate people.

Dodo, Dorothea, is a higher-class young woman with spiritual aspirations. She marries Casaubon, an older man and a scholar, hoping to expand her intellectual horizons by helping him with his work. Too late, she realizes that Casaubon is more closed than open, his work is meaningless, and he is as incapable of entering into her goals as he is of consciously realizing his own deficits.

Lydgate is the tentpole of the second main plotline and Dorothea's mirror. A young doctor with great goals for reform, he is drawn into a bad marriage and political machinations that destroy him.

I am neither a Dodo person or a Lydgate person. I found both of them a teeny bit annoying. Dodo in her unrepentent idealism was going to come to grief inevitably; it's only by authorial grace that she get s ahcnace at a happy ending after her husband's death. Lydgate waltzes serenely toward disaster on every front.

The character who I felt the most sympathy for was Casaubon. Poor guy. He is as trapped by his character faults as all the other inhabitants of Middlemarch, but since his are intellectual and emotional he gets less sympathy and has less fun.

Casaubon is my personal nightmare. This description of him rung in my head for days:

He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life.
To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an
enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame,
and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too
languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight;
it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched,
thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of
that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all
that it should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness
which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy,
and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation
or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon
had many scruples: he was capable of a severe self-restraint;
he was resolute in being a man of honor according to the code;
he would be unimpeachable by any recognized opinion. In conduct
these ends had been attained; but the difficulty of making his Key
to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his mind;
and the pamphlets--or "Parerga" as he called them--by which he tested
his public and deposited small monumental records of his march,
were far from having been seen in all their significance.
He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was
in painful doubt as to what was really thought of them by the
leading minds of Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old
acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension
which was kept locked in a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk,
and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. These were heavy
impressions to struggle against, and brought that melancholy
embitterment which is the consequence of all excessive claim:
even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his
own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in
immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten
Key to all Mythologies. For my part I am very sorry for him.
It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and
yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life
and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--
never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have
our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness
of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action,
but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid,
scrupulous and dim-sighted. Becoming a dean or even a bishop would
make little difference, I fear, to Mr. Casaubon's uneasiness.
Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask
and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little
eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under
anxious control.

Focusing

Given that I can't read five books a week any more, I've decided to refocus the blog on reading the classic works that I originally got into this for. Hence the new title. New year, new business, new blog name. I'm on a roll.

Books I read while on vacation

Here are some of the books I've read over the past two months.

Beguilement: The Sharing Knife, by Lois McMaster Bujold

This was a bit disappointing - only because I have such high expectations for Bujold's work. It was fun, but lighweight. I will read the sequels.

Outwitting History, by Aaron Lansky

The story of the founding of the National Yiddish Book Center. This was a book club selection, and everyone loved it! That never happens! Lansky took a dry story and made it funny and charming. Very good.
The Three Sisters, by Rebecca Locksley

Another lightweight fantasy, marred by typographical errors.

What Came Before He Shot Her, by Elizabeth George

This is a sequel, or prequel, to the frustrating With No One As Witness. Unfortunately, reading it was a complete waste of time. The plot converges with 'Witness' only at the end of the book. What Came is the story of the disintegration of a lower-class family, dis-spiriting and, what's worse, uninteresting. This can safely be skipped.

A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss

Another book club selection. A seventeenth-century detective story featuring a Jewish boxer. I loved it.

The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry

A riveting non-fiction account of the Infuenza epidemic. Very well-done.
The Machine's Child, by Kage Baker

Kage Baker returns to the best time travel series ever, The Company, and this time, she advances the plot. Yay! I thought she had lost her way in The Children of the Company. The Machine's Child made up for it. The narrative was sometimes overly complex, but there is plenty of (ehem) internal drama. Very enjoyable.

Guests of the Ayatollah, by Mark Bowden

Very good non-fiction account of the Iran hostage crisis.

Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman

So good it made me want to cry. From envy.

The Areas of my Expertise, by John Hodgman
Hilarious. I almost bought it for myself, because it's one of those books that I want to keep and leaf through every other day or so. Instead I bought it for someone else as a gift.

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, by Vernor Vinge

Vinge is a very imaginative author. I've loved his novel-length works. These stories were not always as ground-breaking, but there are enough gems to make it worthwhile.

breaking radio silence

I'm still here.

I'm just trying to figure out what to do.

I realized in November that my reading habits had become negative. I was arranging my life around reading five books a week, and I didn't have time to enjoy them thoroughly or think about them thoroughly when writing a review.

Reading was becoming a chore. And I was putting off reading the classics that I wanted to read because they were too long and would mess up my schedule.

This is not consistent with my goals. Since I will be starting a new business, I will have less free time to read anyhow.

I don't think I will keep on reviewing a book every weekday. That means I need a new blog name. And raison d'etre.

I'll think fo one shortly. Meanwhile, I am reading Middlemarch and enjoying it very much.

Blue Hair

A celebration.

Hiatus

Book of the Day will be on hiatus for the month of November for National Novel Writing Month.

And in completely unrelated news.

Recently I have not been averaging a post a day. I have had some personal and professional stresses eating up my time.

Well, on the last day of October (Happy Halloween!) I quit my job. I'm going to take a short vacation and then start my own lecture agency. Wish me luck! I'm very excited.

I hope I will continue to have time to devote to reading. If it becomes a problem, I'll evaluate my time management and make a decision. But as of this moment I intend to get going again at the beginning of December.