This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what arrived this week.

- The Passionate Empiricist: The Eloquence of John Quincy Adams in the Service of Science by Marlana Portolano (SUNY Press, 2009). Book cart.

- Romance, Remedies, And Revolution, 1773-1775: The Journal of Dr. Elihu Ashley of Deerfield, Massachusetts; edited by Amelia F. Miller and A.R. Riggs (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007). Book cart.

- Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England by Jenny Hale Pulsipher (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). Book cart.

- Boston Beheld: Antique Town and Country Views by D. Brenton Simons (University Press of New England, 2008). Book cart.

- Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism by William H. Goetzmann (Basic Books, 2009). Book cart.

- The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in the Early Republic by Timothy Kenslea (Northeastern University Press, 2005). Book cart.

- Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession by Russell A. McClintock (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). Book cart.

- Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 by Alden T. Vaughan (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Book cart.

- Lives Shaped by the Revolution: Portraits of a Boston Family: Speakman, Rowe, Inman, Linzee, Coffin & Amory by Jeannine J. Falino (Harvard University Art Museums, 2005). Book cart.

- The Secrets of Tomb 10A by Rita Freed et al. (Museum of Fine Arts, 2009). Book cart.

- The Boston Athenaeum: Bicentennial Essays; edited by Richard Wendorf (Boston Athenaeum, 2009). Amazon.

- The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay by Umberto Eco (Rizzoli, 2009). Publisher.

- Art and Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World; edited by Noah Charney (Praeger, 2009). Publisher.

Are you Missing Some Books?

Via Everett Wilkie on ExLibris, from Laurel Waycott of the Art Loss Register:

"November 2009 - The New York Police Department has recovered a collection of rare Civil War Era books in the possession of a known thief. The books are believed to be stolen, though the loss has not been reported to the Art Loss Register or the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America. All nine books likely came from the same collection.

The recovered books include:

- Nehemiah Adams, South-Side View of Slavery (1855)
- Albert Barnes, The Church and Slavery (1857)
- Silas Casey, Infantry Tactics (1862)
- Dean Dudley, Officers of our Union Army and Navy (1862)
- William J. Hardee, Rifle and Infantry Tactics (1863)
- Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South (1860)
- Frederick Law Olmstead, The Cotton Kingdom, 2 vol. (1861)
- James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (1860)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 2 vol. (1862)

If you have information on this collection, please contact Detective Michael McFadden of the NYPD at michael.mcfadden@nypd.org or the Art Loss Register at stolen@alrny.com."

Auction Report: PBA & Upcoming

- For the PBA Rare Books and Manuscripts sale on 19 November, full results are here. The expected high spots did not sell. The top prices were $9,600 for Lot 135 (a first edition in English of Plato's Republic, 1763); $7,800 for Lot 159 (a first edition in English of Virgil's Aeneid, 1562); and $7,200 for Lot 138 (a presentation copy of Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945).

Some upcoming Sotheby's sales include Books and Manuscripts in Paris on 26 November and Western Manuscripts in London on 8 December. In the former, some very interesting books with French royal provenance, a neat selection of books on orchids, and some tremendously interesting bindings.

In the latter, just 53 lots, but what 53 lots! A miniature, showing silver mining in Bohemia, which formed the frontis of an illuminated manuscript choirbook (lost since the 1920s and probably not exhibited publicly since the Middle Ages, est. 200,000-300,000 GBP); the missing volume of the Grammont Abbey Missal (est. 100,000-150,000 GBP); an illuminated copy of the gospels in Greek from the 12th century (illuminated late in the 14th), est. 80,000-120,000 GBP; a pre-Wycliffe English translation of the Psalms by Richard Rolle, est. 40,000-60,000 GBP (this once owned by Thomas Phillipps); some classical fragments, and several other really interesting goodies. Do check out this catalog.

National Book Award Winners

The winners of the 2009 National Book Awards were announced last night. They are bolded in the lists below:

Fiction
- Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
- Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)
- Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W. W. Norton & Co.)
- Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction
- David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
(Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
- Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)
- T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
(Alfred A. Knopf)

Poetry
- Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
- Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin)
- Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
- Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

Young People's Literature
- Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Henry Holt)
- Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)
- Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
- Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

LeClerc to Step Down from NYPL

New York Public Library president Paul LeClerc said on Wednesday that he will step down in the sumer of 2011, the NYTimes reports. LeClerc has been with NYPL since December 1993 (his is the longest tenure of any NYPL president).

NYPL board chair Catherine Marron and vice chair Joshua Steiner will head a search committee to find LeClerc's replacement, and "said that the new leader could come from any number of fields — academics, technology, the nonprofit sector."

Gordon Wood on Writing History

Eminent historian Gordon S. Wood has an essay in yesterday's Washington Post that every practicing historian (or would-be practicing historian) ought to read. He makes the very good point that the oft-heard argument that academic historians have "forgotten how to tell a story" (and thus, write books that very few people actually sit down and read) is not quite accurate: "Academic historians have not forgotten how to tell a story. Instead, most of them have purposefully chosen not to tell stories; that is, they have chosen not to write narrative history."

Instead, he notes, academic historians tend to write analytic history, "specialized and often narrowly focused monographs" which "seek to solve problems in the past that the works of previous historians have exposed; or to resolve discrepancies between different historical accounts; or to fill in gaps that the existing historical literature has missed or ignored." Wood continues: "Their studies, however narrow they may seem, are not insignificant. It is through their specialized studies that they contribute to the collective effort of the profession to expand our knowledge of the past." He points out the roots of this type of history writing ("the 19th-century noble dream that history might become an objective science"), and maintains (correctly) that as a group these histories have "advanced the discipline in extraordinary ways over the past century."

But, he goes on, this type of writing comes at the price of a limited readership: "Like papers in the other sciences, monographic history is written largely for people within the discipline. Since the monographs build upon one another, the writers of these monographic studies usually presume that readers will have read the earlier books on the same subject; that is, that they will possess some prior specialized knowledge that will enable them to participate in the conversations and debates that historians have among themselves. This is why most historical monographs are often difficult for general readers to read; new or innocent readers often have to educate themselves in the historiography of the subject before they can begin to make sense of many of these books."

Wood concludes "So advising academic historians that they have to write more stimulating prose if they want to enlarge their readership misses the point. It is not heavy and difficult prose that limits their readers; it is rather the subjects they choose to write about and their conception of their readership as fellow historians engaged in an accumulative science." Because of the massive accretion of academic monographs, "most academic historians have tended to throw up their hands at the possibility of synthesizing all these studies, of bringing them together in comprehensive narratives. Thus, the academics have generally left narrative history writing to the non-academic historians, who unfortunately often write without much concern for or much knowledge of the extensive scholarship that exists. If academic historians want popular narrative history that is solidly based on the monographic literature, then they will have to write it themselves."

Wood's concerns aren't new: much of the background in this piece will be familiar to readers of his excellent reviews, which were collected in a 2008 volume, The Purpose of the Past (my review here). And writing as an academic historian who can and does engage in the synthesis of scholarly literature in a way that is at once readable and rigorous, as in his new book, Empire of Liberty (my review here), Wood understands as well as anyone that it can be done. But beyond that, scholarly monographs can be readable and interesting too, and that should be something all scholars strive for.

FDR Papers May be Released

The AP reports today that the last major collection of FDR's presidential papers "may soon be available to researchers and the public," pending the final passage of legislation relinquishing government claims to some of the documents. The fourteen-box collection, accumulated by FDR's secretary, Grace Tully, was purchased by Sun-Times Media Group Inc. in 2001 for $8 million. The group is prepared to donate the materials to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum, but the National Archives claims it already owns parts of the collection (including FDR's notes to Tully). In order for the donors to receive a full tax deduction, that claim must be settled. So the legislation states that "any claim of the United States to such property shall be treated as having been waived and relinquished on the day before the date of such gift."

The legislation passed the Senate by unanimous consent in October, and was agreed to by voice vote in the House yesterday. The Senate must act once more, and then the bill will go to President Obama for his signature.

Once the legislative process is completed the 5,000 documents should be available as soon as the archivists at the FDR library can process them.

Auction Report: Skinner

The results for the annual Skinner Fine Books & Manuscripts sale (held in Boston on 15 November) are here. Highlights from the autograph section:

- Lot 96 (a David Hume letter regarding Rousseau's letters to him, est. $10,000-15,000), sold for $18,368.

- Lot 131 (a fantastic Martin Luther letter, est. $15,000-25,000), fetched $106,650.

- Lot 151 (an Isaac Newton manuscript on ancient European history, est. 10,000-15,000), made $21,330.

- Lot 187 (two manuscript pages of Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, est. $4,000-6,000), sold for $21,330.

Lot 17 (a lock of the hair of John Brown, est. $5,000-7,000, picture on p. 11 of the catalog); Lot 179, a large collection of material relating to Albert Schweitzer (est. $35,000-55,000); and Lot 184 (a Peter Stuyvesant letter, est. $20,000-30,000) did not sell.

Highlights from among the books:

- Lot 204, a Walt Whitman signed and corrected printed folio proof sheet, sold for $17,775.

- Lot 252 (Barton's 1817 Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States, a presentation copy to Commodore William Bainbridge, est. $6,000-8,000) made just $1,541;

- Lot 331 (a set of early printings of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland works, bound uniformly, est. $3,500-4,500) sold for $5,925.

- Lot 359 (a five-volume set of Gould's Birds of Great Britain, est. $60,000-80,000) fetched $56,288.

- Lot 363 (a book from the library of Nathaniel Hawthorne, est. $2,000-3,000) beat the estimate, going for $7,703.

- Lot 397A (a first English edition of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, est. $20,000-30,000) made $21,330.

And from the illustrations:

- Lot 575, Audubon's Carolina Parakeet, (est. $25,000-35,000) made $38,513.

- Lot 602 (a 1705 Visscher atlas, est. $10,000-15,000) fetched only $5,333.

- Lot 617 (a famous and excellent 1755 map of North America, est. $15,000-20,000) sold for $65,175.

Lot 601 (a 1574 Sebastian Munster world atlas, est. $10,000-12,000) failed to sell.

Boston Book Fair Recap

Back from the big Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, after a very nice few days over at the Hynes. I went by Friday night for the first browse, was there Saturday to work at the RBMS and Ticknor Society tables, and made another quick visit today to buy the item that caught my eye.

I thought it was a good fair; the usual suspect dealers were there, although there were a few conspicuous absences (including Oak Knoll, which rather surprised me). It was a real delight to be able to talk bindings with Ian Kahn and Sid Berger, recruit a new bunch of Ticknorites, browse the aisles, catch up with old friends (dealers, plus folks from the AAS, Athenaeum and other places) and make new ones. While the crowd on Friday night seemed slightly thinner than usual, and Saturday's deluge probably kept a few people away, there appeared to be a fairly steady stream of folks moving through.

The book bound in human skin (offered by James Cummins and sold before the fair even opened) was probably the top draw (it stayed on display for a while). It was a fantastic binding, and the endpapers (also human skin) showed the pores quite clearly. Kinda creepy, but very interesting.

I ended up with a surprising little find: from Savoy Books (Lanesboro, MA), a broadside relating to the hanging-in-effigy of the editor of the College Spectator, a student publication at my alma mater which preceded Concordiensis (the current student paper, which I edited while at Union). The Spectator was published between April 1872 and December 1875, and during the middle of its final year the freshmen and sophomores had a squabble (which led to the editor's suspension from the dome).

Can't beat a good hanging (in effigy), right?

Links & Reviews

- In the Globe today, Sarah Schweitzer writes on the Boston Athenaeum and its marketing efforts to attract new, younger members.

- David Ferriero was confirmed by the Senate on 5 November as the tenth Archivist of the United States.

- Michael Lieberman notes there's a board game for the bibliophile on your Christmas list: Bookchase. I'd be interested to see the types of questions they've got, anyway.

- In The Guardian, an interview with McSweeney's editor Dave Eggers about the next issue, which will be in the form of a full-size Sunday newspaper.

- Lewis & Clarkiana collector Roger Wendlick is profiled in The Oregonian. Roger was also featured on a very good "This American Life" episode this summer, "The Book That Changed Your Life."

- John Overholt points out a new Houghton Library online exhibition, "History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection." A very classy presentation about a truly great collector.

- Over at Past is Present, the AAS' Diann Benti offers up "the anatomy of a catalog record."

- In The Telegraph, ten weird facts from the original Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Reviews

- David Liss' The Devil's Company is reviewed by Virginia A. Smith in the Boston Globe. My review here.

- Arifa Akbar reviews Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna for The Independent.

- In The Scotsman, Zoe Coutts reviews Robert Darnton's The Case for Books.

- Nabokov's The Original of Laura, recently published in its unfinished form, is reviewed by David Gates for the NYTimes, and by James Marcus in the LATimes.

- Also in the Times Harold Bloom reviews Peter Ackroyd's new adaptation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

- In the TLS, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reviews Andrew Lambert's Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Exploration and Glyn Williams' Arctic Labyrinth.

- Noah Malcolm reviews Toby Lester's The Fourth Part of the World in The Telegraph.

This Week's Acquisitions

A few things from the McSweeney's sale, plus some others:

- McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Nos. 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 24, 25. (McSweeney's, 2005-2007). Publisher.

- The Grandeur of Life: A Celebration of Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species. An Exhibition of Rare Books from the History of Science Collection, Linda Hall Library; text by William B. Ashworth, Jr. (Linda Hall Library, 2009). Mail.

- Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon (McSweeney's, 2008). Publisher.

- Paul Revere's Engravings by Clarence S. Brigham (AAS, 1954). Brattle.

- Borges: Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Penguin, 2000). Brattle.

- The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel (Center Street, 2009). Brattle.

- Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology by Mark V. Barrow Jr. (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Brattle.

- The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle; edited by Michael P. Zuckert and Derek A. Webb (Liberty Fund, 2009). Publisher.

- Boyle: Between God and Science by Michael Hunter (Yale University Press, 2009). Publisher.

- Bugs and the Victorians by John F. Clark (Yale University, 2009). Publisher.

Revised Google Settlement Released

As expected, Google and its partners released the revised Google Books Settlement yesterday afternoon. You can read the whole 173-page behemoth here [PDF], and the NYT offers a summary.

"The revisions to the settlement primarily address the handling of so-called orphan works, the millions of books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. The changes call for the appointment of an independent fiduciary, or trustee, who will be solely responsible for decisions regarding orphan works.

The trustee, with Congressional approval, can grant licenses to other companies who also want to sell these books, and will oversee the pool of unclaimed funds that they generate. If the money goes unclaimed for 10 years, according to the revised settlement, it will go to philanthropy and to an effort to locate rights holders. In the original settlement, unclaimed funds reverted to known rights holders after five years.

The changes also restrict the Google catalog to books published in the United States, Britain, Australia or Canada. That move is intended to resolve objections from the French and German governments, which complained that the settlement did not abide by copyright law in those countries.

The revised settlement could make it easier for other companies to compete with Google in offering their own digitized versions of older library books because it drops a provision that was widely interpreted as ensuring that no other company could get a better deal with authors and publishers than the one Google had struck."

Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy says in a blog post "We're disappointed that we won't be able to provide access to as many books from as many countries through the settlement as a result of our modifications, but we look forward to continuing to work with rightsholders from around the world to fulfill our longstanding mission of increasing access to all the world's books."

There's also a Summary of Revisions, and an FAQ about the changes (both PDF).

Judge Denny Chin will now schedule a "fairness hearing" on the revised settlement, and the Justice Department is reviewing the revisions. Opponents of the plan don't seem entirely placated: the Open Content Alliance calls the revisions "a sleight of hand; fundamentally, this settlement remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners. ... By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP, and the AG are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution; usurp Congress’s role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class action process."

We'll see - the saga continues!

"Books in Hard Times" Papers Available

The papers from the Grolier Club's "Books in Hard Times" conference, which I recapped here, are now available online, in PDF form. Recommended reading for all.

Auction Report: Highlights & Upcoming

- At the Sotheby's London sale of Travels, Atlases and Natural History on 10 November, the total take was 1,425,825 GBP. A fair portion of that was Lot 43, a watercolor album commissioned by Gdansk's Bartell Schachman, 1590. Looks like a pretty spectacular item, and it sold well, fetching £361,250. Lot 161 is also very interesting; a 16/17th century herbarium containing more than 700 botanical specimens, with Latin and German captions and hand-colored illustrations. That made £67,250. Full results here.

Lots of auctions on the horizon. In addition to those previewed here, PBA Galleries will sell Rare Books & Manuscripts in 163 lots on 19 November. Expected highlights include a first edition (1712) of Isaac Newton and John Collins' Commercium epistolicum, a defense of Newton's priority in the Great Calculus Debate (est. $20,000-30,000); a c. 1550 London edition of the works of Chaucer (est. $10,000-15,000); and a bunch of other interesting things.

Plastic Kills

If you needed another reason to be concerned about the state of the planet, check out the absolutely horrifying pictures here, of Midway Island albatross chicks killed by plastic bits their parents thought was food.

Book Review: "McSweeney's, Vol. 17"

McSweeney's 17 is a bundle of mail. That's right, a bundle of mail (addressed to Maria Vasquez of Arlington, VA), rubber-banded together. A full color advertisement flyer for Pantalaine ("Provisioners of America's Finest Plural Clothing") surrounds the rest of the pile, which includes a brochure for Tyrolian Harvest gift baskets, some "snail mail spam" from a Bangladeshi widow, a very odd legal document containing many pictures of red cars and dead fish, a prospective periodical of "very new artwork" (Envelope), and two journals: Yeti Researcher ("The magazine of the Society for Cryptic Hominid Investigation") and Unfamiliar ("a twice monthly magazine of different fiction").

Very imaginative, and quite entertaining. It must be so fun to sit around and come up with ideas for things like this! While some of the short stories in Unfamiliar were a little bizarre, the rest of the packet was fascinating to read through. Kudos, McSweeney's folks.

Boston Book Weekend!

It's that time again!

The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair will be this weekend (Friday 5-9; Saturday 12-7; Sunday 12-5) at the Hynes Convention Center. Check out the activities, browse the list of exhibitors and cultural partners, and view some highlights. I'll be at the fair most of the weekend, including shifts at the RBMS and Ticknor Society tables on Saturday.

Also this weekend:

- The Boston Book, Print & Ephemera Show will be held at the Radisson from 9-4 on Saturday. Info here.

- The Skinner auction will begin at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning. I've done a preview of that sale, here.

Catalogs & Lists

A few interesting new catalogs out this week:

- from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts, a beautiful list of books about books (my favorite, of course) and a list of post-1820 Americana. I love to read their lists - if there were awards for the best book catalogs/lists (you know, maybe there should be ...) , PRB&M would have to be considered the heavy favorite in many, many categories.

- from Justin Croft, a list of French Books & Manuscripts (PDF).

- from Thomas A. Goldwasser, Americana and World Figures, plus Literature (PDF). The latter includes an 1803 Thomas Jefferson letter priced at $250,000; a copy of Pope's works once owned by Jefferson ($17,500); and a pair of interesting George Washington letters.

- from Lorne Blair, a list of books to be offered at the Boston Book Fair (more on which later this morning). List in PDF.

- from Oak Knoll, the reference library of the Zaehnsdorf Company.

Ring of Library Book Thieves Indicted

The AP is reporting that twelve people have been indicted in Prince George's County, MD for the theft of textbooks from the county library system. "Prince George's County authorities said the suspects, at least some of whom were related [and who range in age from 20 to 51], withdrew close to the limit of 75 books from 12 of the library system's 18 locations. Each is charged with theft over $500 and faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison." Authorities said local colleges were also hit, with the total worth of stolen items approaching $140,000.

"'They're traveling quite far and wide for the little bit of money they get,' said Mary Eilerman, chief of security at Harford Community College, also victimized. 'They were ripping off the bar codes and handing them over to book consignment shops as quickly as they could.' Eilerman said a $100 textbook would yield about $3 or $4 at a consignment shop. She said one of the suspects told her she was using the cash from the thefts to buy Ecstasy."

I'm surprised we're not seeing more of this, frankly.

Greer on Proust

In Sunday's Guardian, Germaine Greer asks "Why do people gush over Proust?" She begins her column with this barn-burner of a paragraph: "If you haven't read Proust, don't worry. This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek."

Greer goes on to criticize Proust's editors, translators, and gushers, but particularly his grammatical style: "If Proust did not make such a snobbish to-do about diction, it might be easier to forgive him for his battering of the sentence to rubble and his apparent contempt for the paragraph. He relies on commas and semi-colons to do what should be done by full-stops, of which there are far too few, many of them in the wrong place. Sentences run to thousands of words and scores of subordinate clauses, until the reader has no recollection of the main clause or indeed whether there ever was one."

Agnès Poirier responds, suggesting that Greer must have been knocked on the head by Proust's works while dusting her bookshelves. "What exactly is the problem with Proust according to Greer? It's too long, apparently, therefore too expensive to acquire, and impossible to read in the bath. Here is literary criticism of the highest nature." She takes issues with Greer's picking on Proust's grammar ("artistic style," she says), and with translations. Poirier concludes "I won't start defending Proust and praise his prose. You only need to read him to know that it won't be wasted time. It could even change your life."

Well. All I know is, having tried to get through about six pages of Proust and giving it up for temps perdu, I'm with Greer. But to each their own. If it makes you happy, read Proust. If it doesn't, don't. And if you're Greer and Poirier, keep up the exchange, it's entertaining for the rest of us.