And This Beside

It came!

A copy of Philip Hoare's "Leviathan, or The Whale" was in my mailbox today. Hoorah! This event warrants a mini-celebration because I have been looking high and low for a copy of this book. You see, US bookstores don't seem to be aware that this book exists, or at least US bookstores in my neck of the woods. I tried. I tried my favorite used books store, I tried Barnes & Noble, I tried Borders; for the latter two I tried both brick and mortar and online stores. Zip. The salesmen who helped me at B&N and at the used books store were stumped (and from my experience with them, these guys were usually knowledgeable about books). When they finally resorted to checking their respective book databases, even their computers denied the book's existence, gasp! So finally, I tried a regional independent bookstore and saw to my relief that it had Hoare's book listed, so I promptly ordered it. Heh, but guess what? The book was being shipped from the UK! Gah! But it finally made it, I now have among my feet-high pile of books to read, all the way from Ashford, Middlesex, Hoare's "Leviathan".

What's all the fuss about this book, you ask. "Leviathan" is a non-fiction book about whales and the author's fascination with them, a fascination which was a product of reading Melville's "Moby-Dick". It recently won the UK's Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, which had a pot of £20,000. The chairman of the judges, Jacob Weisberg, said, "The quality of his writing was just so impressive, it is literary, just beautiful. It is a model of a certain kind of writing and I imagine it is a book that will be read for a long time to come." If I weren't fascinated by whales already, that commentary in itself would have piqued my interest about the book.

So why is this book not in the US?

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Comments [1]

Encore for Eliot's Prufrock

Because I really like it. And I'm pretty sure that T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a favorite of many. (It is a longish poem, so I just gave a link, instead of copying the entire text here. Reading it in its entirety is highly recommended.) The poem is from the collection "Prufrock and Other Observations" published in 1917---the entire collection is amazing. I never seem to tire of re-reading this poem, and every time I do, there is a different set of lines which evokes an intense visceral reaction from me while I recognize the truth in those lines, while at the same time experiencing utmost pleasure at the way the unhappy truth is said. Behold:

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

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Filed under // books literature poetry Prufrock reading T. S. Eliot

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books

It came!

Encore for Eliot's Prufrock