An Unquiet Mind

Many thanks to Sarah for recommending this book!

Kay Redfield Jamison, the author of An Unquiet Mind, is a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, and is a pre-eminent contemporary psychiatrist. Although I am not familiar with her, she is an accomplished psychiatrist - and a sufferer of manic depression - or bipolar disorder. Actually, she herself writes about preferring the term 'manic-depressive illness' to the newer label 'bipolar disorder', but I won't get into detail about that. At least in this marginal commentary, however, I will generally follow Dr Jamison's preference.

An Unquiet Mind may be called Dr Jamison's 'biography of mental illness', for in it she describes coping - for a long time unsuccessfully - with manic depression. In having such a focus, it is a lot more like C. S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy than it is like the other biographies I've commented upon on The Marginal Virtues, namely; Hitman by Bret Hart, The Apprentice by Jacques Pepin, and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

There is something to be said about the use of the term 'bipolar disorder', and that is the word 'disorder' - manic depression is the 'disordered' form of modes of experience and feeling that everyone experiences. I would go so far as to say, although with the caveat that I am no professional, that all of us have 'manic' and 'depressive' moments, but they are neither so severe nor prolonged, in most cases, to be in any way noticeable.

My focus, then, will be on a handful of passages in which Dr Jamison describes her illness, and what, if anything, I think it also describes of common human experience. The edition from which I cite passages was the re-published version (with a new preface by the author) of 2011 by Vintage Books.

The Guns of August

First, my thanks to Deborah for recommending this book!

The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman, is the first (it probably won't be the last) book on the Great War (the First World War) for which I have written a marginal commentary. Tuchman, incidentally, is surprisingly only the sixth female author about whose work I have written some kind of post. I have written essays on each of J. K. Rowling's books in the Potter septet, and have written marginal commentaries on works by Emma Donoghue, Kate Pullinger, Debbie Macomber, and Jeannette Walls. Once I have finished the marginal commentary on Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, the ratio of 'boys vs. girls' in terms of authors on whose works I shall have written posts will be twenty-nine to seven, or just over four to one.

The edition of The Guns of August from which I am quoting passages is the edition published in 2012 by the Library of America (the publisher is Literary Classics of the United States); the book was published originally in 1962 by MacMillan. This book also includes The Proud Tower, Tuchman's work on the quarter-century preceding the First World War. Incidentally, Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919 (a great book; MacMillan, by the way, is a Canadian and great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George), is the editor of the Library of America edition of The Guns of August and The Proud Tower. As an editorial note, all italics in passages quoted are original to this edition of The Guns of August; save one or two most consist of quotes from or scraps of other languages.

Tuchman's style reminds me of that of Piers Brendon in The Dark Valley: in fairness I should say that his style is reminiscent of hers. Both The Dark Valley and The Guns of August are written in a novelistic, witty style. And, even though The Guns of August takes a closer look at a shorter period of time than Brendon's work, it is still to an extent panoramic.

My focus with respect to The Guns of August will be on its opening chapters, as to how Tuchman skillfully builds dramatic tension, despite the fact that the results of the deliberations, arguments, diplomatic to-and-fro, and so on, which characterised the opening act of the War, are well known. '[O]n Juy 28 [Austria] declared war on Serbia, on July 29 bombarded Belgrade. [p. 89]' With those acts, the Great War began. But it was not to envelop Western Europe until the beginning of August, when one by one Germany, France, and Great Britain (responding to the German violation of Belgian neutrality) were 'dragged... forward' over 'the brink' by 'the pull of military schedules. [ibid.]' Tuchman might have put it as Brendon did when he wrote, 'One by one... the great powers slid into the fiery chasm of conflict. [The Dark Valley, p. 689]'

It is a credit to Tuchman's craft that she is able to generate dramatic tension about events the course of which are known; actually, this is one of the appeals of well-written works of history, I think. In any case, let's see if we can't perceive some of the means by which Tuchman enables us to enter into the tense, calamitous decisions (and, to coin a word 'indecisions') that provoked the definitive historical event of the twentieth century.

Quicksilver

First, my thanks to Graham for recommending Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver!

In the Acknowledgements, Stephenson writes about some of the books which he used as sources for Quicksilver. 'Of particular note', he writes, 'is Sir Winston Spencer Churchill's six-volume biography of Marlborough, which people who are really interested in this period of history should read, and people who think that I am too long-winded should weigh. [p. x; italics original].' Running over nine hundred pages, Quicksilver is big. (So was Cryptonomicon.) Stephenson, it would appear, is in full agreement with Treebeard the Ent's remark to the effect that anything worth saying is worth taking a long time to say.

My early impression of Quicksilver is that Stephenson appears to be using fiction as a vehicle for celebrating the achievements of the modern: he is, it seems to me and in other words, an apologist, if not an apostle, of modernism. (Some confirmation for this impression can be found in the early goings of Cryptonomicon, in which Stephenson, describing Randy Waterhouse's life with his ex-girlfriend and her academic chums, pillories post-modern thinking and behaviour.)

Another impression of the work, reached much further in (if you'll pardon the double entendre), is that it depicts sex in a fashion more cynical than that which was expressed in Cryptonomicon. Whatever your view of the sexual goings-on of the characters in Cryptonomicon, all but one of their sexual interactions possessed a certain kind of innocence: namely, they were innocent of motives other than the mutual consummation of a relationship, however quirky. (The one exception was Laurence Waterhouse bedding a young woman who was a presumed spy for the Germans, but by the time they got around to getting around, it is a foregone conclusion that he won't be giving up any secrets to her.)

By contrast, several of the notable sexual escapades in Quicksilver signify more than just the consummation of a relationship (although they also do that), and their additional significance is never better than morally compromising, even if the results further the plot and lead to good things, overall, happening.

So, my approach to Quicksilver will focus on two aspects; first, Stephenson's apparent apostolate (as it were) with respect to modernity, and, second, how sex is used to control and corrupt - to put it baldly. Whence the label 'sex' on this post, because I'll be quoting passages in which it is somehow a feature. So, with respect to the latter, you have been warned.

Update: Change in Format

Based on feedback from one of my readers, I am going to be revising the format of my marginal commentaries.

The new look will be established upon the posting of my next marginal commentary. It should make the marginal commentaries easier to read.

The changes will be retroactively applied to my older posts as time allows.

The Dark Valley

A favourite book of mine, that I have re-read many times, is The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s, by historian Piers Brendon. My copy is an edition published in 2002 by Vintage Books; it was originally published by Jonathan Cape (London) and Alfred A. Knopf (New York), in 2000.

As the name and subtitle of the book suggest, it is not a cheery work. It is a panoramic view of one of the darkest periods of human history, the 'dirty thirties', the decade of Depression and of the apogee of the great dictatorships.

This is not to say that it does not sparkle with imagination and wit. In addition to being an accomplished stylist himself, Brendon frequently quotes brilliant, or lapidary, or epigrammatic quips.

One of the best passages, for example, consists of a series of quotes that Brendon strings together about Chamberlain's Cabinet:

Chamberlain drew around himself an inner circle of subservient mediocrities, most of them knights remote from the practice of chivalry. Sir John Simon, a serpentine lawyer described as a snake in snake's clothing, was singularly lacking in resolution at the Treasury: he had sat on the fence so long, Lloyd George famously remarked, that the iron had entered into his soul. Sir Samuel Hoare, now at the Home Office, had learned no lessons from the dictators: he was later said to have "passed from experience to experience, like Boccaccio's virgin, without discernible effect upon his condition." Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Coordination of Defence, had little ability, less power, and no perceptiveness: "He could look with frank and fearless gaze at any prospect, however appalling—and fail to see it." Other acolytes, such as Sir Horace Wilson, with his "temporising, 'play for safety,' formula-evolving mind," and Sir Kingsley Wood, who on the outbreak of war opposed the bombing of munition works in Germany because they were private property, were equally unable or unwilling to stand up to Chamberlain. [p. 611]

Another example serves to introduce what I would like to comment upon: writing about the whole book would be impossible, of course, but focussing on one aspect will help give a sense of the whole.

In his chapter on the Soviet Purges (pp. 465-93), Brendon looks at the terrific (in the sense of 'having the quality of inspiring terror') paradox that the Great Purge, and the means by which it was at once concealed and revealed, begat a kind of double mind in people. It certainly begat one of the vastest networks of snitches in history [p. 490]:

According to one (probably exaggerated) estimate, every fifth citizen was an NKVD nark. Russians joked about the man looking at himself in the mirror who says, "One of us must be an informer."

The unreality of the Great Purge and the corrupting effect that this unreality had on the hapless citizens of the Soviet Union, then, is what I wish to look at in greater detail.

There and Back Again

In light of the fact that, in December 2012, Warner Bros., in co-operation with New Line Cinema and MGM, is releasing the first of the two movies (directed and produced by Peter Jackson, who made the wildly successful films in the early noughts based on The Lord of the Rings) based on The Hobbit, I think it is time for a marginal commentary on that book, one of J. R. R. Tolkien's early works.

The Hobbit, of course, is not of the same calibre as The Lord of the Rings, whose relationship to it is complicated. It would be more accurate to view The Hobbit as a precursor of the larger work, than to view the latter as its sequel, for it took Tolkien many years to write The Lord of the Rings, and into it he poured all of his literary power. However, both The Hobbit (albeit peripherally) and The Lord of the Rings are related to Tolkien's legendarium, his mythopoeic vision.

Except for those two works, Tolkien did not publish anything directly connected to his legendarium (the corpus of which may be found in his posthumous works The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, and in the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth, all of which were edited by Christopher Tolkien) , but we know that he began crafting the stories and languages that would shape and form it (actually, that should be the other way around) while recuperating from trench fever during World War I. An excellent book that traces the development of Tolkien's literary work from its infancy during the Great War is John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War.

My purpose in this marginal commentary will be to explore some of the literary strengths of The Hobbit. As I shall show, much of its excellence stems from passages which are of the same kind of writing at which Tolkien excelled in The Lord of the Rings (about which see my marginal commentary on Brian Rosebury's book Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon). I shall also explore whether The Hobbit's only excellences are those it has in common with The Lord of the Rings, or whether it possesses any peculiar to itself. Given some of its flaws, it is easy to dismiss The Hobbit as a 'kid's book' (even though it, and many other works of children's literature besides, is better than many a 'grown-up' book), so it is worth asking what, if anything, it has of itself that makes it a worthwhile read.

On we go.

Planet Narnia

Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward, is one of my recent favourites. I recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.

I came across Planet Narnia in the library at Huron University College while searching for books to read on another book by C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces. (If I may digress, Till We Have Faces, in my view, is Lewis's best novel; indeed, I would go so far to say that, excepting some of his better academic works, it is his masterpiece). I read it voraciously, and so thoroughly enjoyed it that I wrote a review of it which I posted on my defunct LiveJournal, and even went so far as to post a portion of that review on a site dedicated to reader reviews of Planet Narnia; you can see my humble contribution here.

In my view, Planet Narnia is to the Chronicles of Narnia as Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon is to The Lord of the Rings; that is, it is a work of literary criticism the insight of which is so brilliant it outshines other works. Put another way, I view Planet Narnia as a sun with respect to the Chronicles of Narnia, brightly illuminating every place. Other works of literary criticism on the Chronicles are like the stars, providing a dim and feeble light but often pretty to look at in their own right, or else like the moon, capable of brightening some aspect of the Chronicles but not as strongly as the sun can.

But what is it about Planet Narnia that makes it such an insightful and penetrating work? To discover that is the purpose of this marginal commentary, by peering closely at Planet Narnia and seeing by what means Dr Ward appears to so accurately delve into the Chronicles of Narnia.

The China Study

First, my thanks to May for recommending this book!

The China Study is the second book that I have read and commented upon on The Marginal Virtues that was written by more than one author. The first was The Rebel Sell, the authors of which were Canadian philosophers. The China Study is probably the most technically complex work which I have read for the blog, and the credentials of its authors the most professional, although, as the example of The Rebel Sell shows, they are hardly the only professionals whose work I have written about. (By 'professional' I mean someone with an accredited profession, not whether the authors were paid for their work, which would be true with respect to very nearly every book I have written about.) Ernest Becker wrote The Denial of Death in relation to his profession; and so with Robert Farrar Capon, Rob Brendle, Brian Rosebury, and Paul Scott Wilson.

The edition from which I shall be quoting was published by BenBella Books in 2006. My copy is of the paperback edition, in case the pagination of this edition differs from that of the hardcover.

The Glass Castle

First, my thanks to Kathy for recommending this book!

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, is only the third autobiographical book I have read for The Marginal Virtues, the others being Hitman (by Bret Hart) and The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen (by Jacques Pépin). The subtitle indicates that The Glass Castle is a memoir; and, if its overall style is any indication of the genre, The Apprentice, which possesses a similar style, is also more of a memoir than an autobiography. (This is assuming that there is any real distinction between the genres, which there may not be.) Whatever the question of genre, like both of those other books, The Glass Castle is written in the first person, from Jeannette Walls's perspective.

The edition from which I shall quote passages was published in 2005 by Scribner.

The dust jacket begins thus:

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation.

Reading The Glass Castle immediately following The Rebel Sell was certainly an interesting contrast. The Wallses - the parents of the author - certainly come across as textbook countercultural 'rebels'.

As an editorial note, I have given this post the label 'profanity' because the Walls's frequently curse, and it is both tedious to omit their profane language, and it is necessary to include it to give you a sense of what they are like. (Not that their use of 'cussing' is necessarily bad, just that it expresses something characteristic about them.)

She Buys More, More, More

The title of my marginal commentary, on The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't be Jammed, goes to show that two can play the game of tying a book on (what the authors posit to be) the failure of the 'counter-culture' to a song by Billy Idol. My thanks goes to Christopher for making this recommendation!

The Rebel Sell was written by two Canadian academics, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, which makes it only the fourth Canadian work for which I have written a marginal commentary on The Marginal Virtues, and the first book written by more than one author. With respect to 'Cancon' (Canadian content), the first was for A Strange Manuscript Written on a Copper Cylinder, by another Canadian academic, James De Mille. The second was for Hitman, by Bret Hart. The third was for Room, by Emma Donoghue (who happens to be an Irish emigré, to boot).

These trivial details aside, the edition which I am using in my marginal commentary, a trade paperback edition, was published in 2005 by Harper Perennial.

To begin my marginal commentary, I will provide a brief introduction, and then dive into some of points of the book that most interested me, given that it would be impossible in a post of reasonable length to parse Potter's and Heath's argument fully.

Room

First, my thanks to Deborah for recommending Room! Room was one of my selections for a marginal commentary back in October, but was wildly popular at the library, so I didn't get my hands on a copy until now.

Emma Donoghue, the book's author, lives in London, Ontario, which makes Room another Canadian work for which I have written a marginal commentary on The Marginal Virtues.

This edition was published by HarperCollins in 2010. On the cover of the copy I have, there is an illustration with a note stating that Room was shortlisted (why that is a verb I don't know) for the Man Booker Prize 2010. It did not win, but you have to think that Donoghue must have been pretty thrilled. I don't know how well known a literary figure she was before publishing Room, but I dare say that it is her breakthrough work. It may well even be her masterwork.

Cryptonomicon

Weighing in at over 1100 pages, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is now the longest book I have read for The Marginal Virtues to date, outpacing Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and Gregory David Roberts's Shantaram.

My thanks to Graham for recommending this book!

Cryptonomicon is effectively four stories in one book, although the stories are closely linked, as you might imagine. As it is hard to look in-depth at any particular subject in a book of this length, I will mainly show one of the excellences of Stephenson's style, which is his ability to write distinctly when narrating for each of the main protagonists. In this regard Stephenson outdoes Terry Pratchett (himself no slouch when it comes to style), whose writing I find Stephenson's most resembles, for Pratchett tends toward stylistic uniformity, although unlike some of the other authors whose books I have written commentaries for here on The Marginal Virtues, Pratchett's singular style is excellent.

But back to Cryptonomicon. The edition I am using for this commentary was published in 1999 by Avon Books (an imprint of HarperCollins). It is impossible for me to treat the book's plot with the kind of consideration it deserves, so I will generally try to choose passages which are representative of the distinct styles in which Stephenson writes with respect to the protagonists, but which are not necessarily crucial to the movement of the plot. If time and space permit, I would also like to briefly compare Cryptonomicon to, of all things, The Lord of the Rings. Such a comparison is not inapt; indeed, one of the protagonists, Randy Waterhouse, occasionally interprets what is going on around him in Tolkienian imagery, and there is one passage (which I hope to quote at length) which displays a striking coherence to an idea much more briefly elucidated in Tolkien's work. I won't go into any more detail here, nor do I promise that such a comparison will, in fact, take place. If you like, it's something for you to think about, should you get your hands on a copy of Cryptonomicon.

Finally, Cryptonomicon is true to life, and about two-thirds of it, on the whole, is set during the Second World War. I have included the labels 'profanity' and 'sex' because there is a fair amount of swearing, and not only sex, but also moments where characters are thinking about sex (or about people with whom they would like to have sex) and have, shall we say, appropriate physiological reactions to these thoughts. Actually, the distinction between Stephenson's various 'narrative dialects' (you might call them) is nowhere more evident than in the various sexual encounters in which three of the four protagonists engage. All that said, Cryptonomicon is not a smutty book, simply realistic, in that people in the book swear (some more than others), and either have or think about having sex with other people. In terms of what I will be citing, I won't be quoting anything from sex scenes (unless it is suitably suggestive, rather than explicit), but I won't be able to help quoting profane utterances, as there are, after all, quite a few of those in Cryptonomicon. You have been warned.

Well, enough of all that rigomarole. Let's get on with Cryptonomicon.

Shantaram

Another long book, this one courtesy of Martha & May, both of whom recommended it. Thank you both!

Shantaram reminded me of Rudyard Kipling's classic, Kim, although obviously it has little in common with that twentieth-century masterpiece, other than being set in the Indian sub-continent. Another point of contact between the two works is that the protagonists of both take part in a spiritual quest.

The edition of Shantaram from which I am quoting was published by St. Martin's Press in 2003. Its author is Gregory David Roberts, the first Australian whose work I have written a commentary for on The Marginal Virtues. If you haven't read the book, you might want to turn to it first before reading this commentary, as I will reveal details about the plot and the like as I deem it necessary.

I think it could be fairly said that Shantaram does for Bombay, to a certain extent, what The Lord of the Rings did for Middle-earth, which is provide an aesthetic structure in which the 'world' in which the novel takes place takes on a life and character of its own. We shall see whether this is the case. Meanwhile I found that because the entirety of the work is written from the perspective of the first-person, semi-authobiographical narrator, Lin, it lacked a distinct prose style. On the other hand, I feel that Roberts does do a good job of writing distinct styles of dialogue, as we shall see.

Lamb

First, my thanks to Chris for recommending this book!

Lamb, by Christopher Moore, is a popular book - at least at the Ottawa Public Library. Its subtitle is The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. As you probably know, it is a comic look at the 'lost years' between Jesus' nativity and the beginning of his ministry in Galillee.

The edition from which I shall be citing passages was published in 2007 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. The book was originally published in 2002. The edition I got a hold of was a special edition with that faux-leather cover that you find on Bibles, a red ribbon to mark your page, and gold (or gold-coloured) edging. Its appearance was droll.

I found it hard to find a common theme to focus on in this marginal commentary. Indeed, from my perspective, what was most consistent about Lamb was its theological 'offness' (on coining or using such a term, may I say faute de mieux). This 'offness' is odd, particularly considering, as Moore writes in his afterword (written for the new edition of the book), that he 'made certain assumptions about who Jesus was, mainly that he was who the Gospels say he was'. But I don't intend to write a dissertation about Moore's 'Christology' (so to speak). Rather, better to focus on the kind of 'important question[s]' Moore 'felt needed to be addressed,' such as '"What if Jesus had known kung fu?"' [p. 405]

For the most part Moore's take on Jesus' 'missing years' is witty, with a dose of charm, some juvenile hijinks, a bit of 'buddy movie' and a little Pratchett. It ends, as all good stories about Jesus outside the Gospels do, with tragedy, of course. (There is, I find, something about the Resurrection which is impossible to communicate effectively in accounts of Jesus' life other than the Gospels.)

So let's look at some of Moore's good stuff, and maybe take in an oddity or two.

The Denial of Death: What is the Heroic Individual?

We come at last to the final chapter of Ernest Becker's work, The Denial of Death. I have found that each successive marginal commentary of mine has become longer and longer, as his argument became more and more complex.

For the sake of reference, here are the links to the other posts in the series, each of which focussed on one chapter of The Denial of Death. I did not see fit to comment on every chapter of the work, but I think I have got enough of Becker's own argument in for anyone reading the posts in order to be able to follow along; of course the best thing to do, if his thesis interests you, is to read the book for yourself.

1. Styx in Denial
2. The Terror of Death 
3. Existential Dualism and You
4. Human Character as a Vital Lie
5. The Nexus of Unfreedom
6. Becker's Heroes
7. Rank Neurosis

Now we'll proceed straight to the commentary. This post will be much more like the first of the series, for I think, at this point, that not many more of Becker's own conclusions need to be cited at length.

The Denial of Death: Rank Neurosis

When last we left Ernest Becker and The Denial of Death, he had just finished going through the various 'solutions' we humans have arrived at to cope with what I think Becker would accept as being called the 'dualistic dilemma', or, to use one of his more colorful metaphors, the problem that we are 'gods with anuses'. Ironically, his chronicle of solutions begins with the fact that in the modern era we had rejected the 'religious solution', and ends with the insight - reached, apparently, much earlier by the psychoanalyst and former disciple of Freud, Otto Rank - that, all of the other 'solutions' having been tried and found wanting, we are back to the religious one.

Genesis: The Movie

First, my thanks to Elizabeth for recommending this book!

Second, before I begin my marginal commentary in earnest, I should tell you how I came to possess a copy of it. It was in the sale bin at the entrance to the bookstore in St. Paul University in Ottawa some years ago, and the title, not to mention the image on the front cover, caught my eye. Naturally, I had to pick it up. (Back then I was also ready to buy a book at the drop of a hat.)

The edition of Genesis: The Movie (whose author, Robert Farrar Capon, is an Episcopal priest) which I will be using for this marginal commentary was published by William B. Eerdmans in 2003. Eerdmans, by the way, is a Christian publishing company which can claim to be truly ecumenical, and I have found pretty much every book I have read published by Eerdmans to be thought-provoking, intelligent, and helpful.

Finally, before we begin in earnest, allow me to make two editorial notes. First, in all of the passages from Genesis: The Movie which I subsequently quote, any words or passages in italics or all capitals are original, unless otherwise noted. I find that Capon so often uses unusual editing which under normal circumstances would need to be commented upon that remarking 'italics original' and the like just cluttered the quotation. Second, I have been writing 'Genesis: The Movie' as the title of the book throughout, but the punctuation is actually Genesis, the Movie. However, I'm too lazy to go through my post, long as it is, to change how I've written it, so you will have to live with that particular recurrent typographical error. Mea culpa.

Urban Meltdown

Urban Meltdown is written by Clive Doucet, a former city councillor of Ottawa. He is the second Canadian whose work I will have written a marginal commentary for (not counting Kate Pullinger, who was born in Canada but moved to the United Kingdom thirty years ago), the first, of course, being James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. The full name of the book is Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual (the sub-title, incidentally, also being the title of one of the chapters of the book). According to the 'About the Author' blurb at the back of the book, Doucet has roots in the Maritimes, which is another (admittedly incidental) connection he has with De Mille. Well, the Canadian literary scene is, in many respects, a small world.

My thanks to Emily for suggesting this book!

The edition from which I quote passages was published in 2007 by New Society Publishers. Incidentally, one of the blurbs on the back of the book (obscured, as was the case with a blurb on the back of The Mistress of Nothing, by an OPL bar code) is by none other than James Howard Kunstler, whose book World Made by Hand I also wrote a marginal commentary for - and which was also recommended to me by Emily.

The Apprentice

I should reassure you straightaway that this has nothing to do with Donald Trump's show. This is a marginal commentary on The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pépin.

My thanks to Lauren for recommending this book!

The Apprentice is the second autobiography I will have commented on for The Marginal Virtues, and its author, Jacques Pépin, is a French emigré to the United States who, along with Julia Child and others, introduced French cookery to America. (One wonders what they and others of their school thought of the American backlash against the French in the noughts.) Oddly, there seems to be no popular name for this group (whose work will, I presume, be featured in Pépin's book), so I will dub it 'the French School'.

The edition I am using was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2003.

The Mistress of Nothing

First, my thanks to dee for recommending this book! She recommended it all the way back in December, but, thanks to the vicissitudes of random selection and being placed on the back burner, I didn't select it to read until July, when I picked it for this month.

Anyhow, The Mistress of Nothing is written from the perspective (and, indeed, using her as a first-person narrator) of Sally Naldrett, the lady's maid of Lady Duff Gordon, when the two women travel to Egypt for Lady Duff Gordon's health. It tells the story of Sally's gradual self-discovery ('awakening', one blurb on the back cover puts it) and the consequences thereof.

I would have liked to address one of the blurbs which praises The Mistress of Nothing for not being 'an Orientalist fantasy' while yet 'bringing 1860s Egypt to life' (at least I think that is what it says), but because my copy of the book, which is from the Ottawa Public Library, has a library bar code obscuring the blurb, I can't make out what it says to comment upon it. Not having read Edward Said's famous book Orientalism, I cannot comment on why I felt somewhat irritated by the blurb's reference to 'Orientalist fantasy' and its relation to the notion of 'Orientalism', but suffice it to say that I am, as a rule, suspicious of terms or words whose only function, it seems to me, are to serve as components in an ad hominem, or else a straw man, in argument or debate. But that is a matter for another time.

The edition of the book from which I quote was published in 2009 by McArthur & Company, a publishing house based in Toronto. I should mention that I will be going into quite a bit of detail about the plot of the book, so if you are keen to read it for yourself, I suggest you do that before turning to this marginal commentary. I believe, however, that this will be intelligible even if you do not read the book.