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June 29, 2008
San Antonio
Traveling for work again. Arrived in San Antonio today. After checking in to conference, went to Rosario's for lunch--highly recommended if you're stopping by San Antonio. After lunch went on the mission trail--Concepcion, San José, San Juan, and San Francisco del Espada. This last is most interesting. Within the mission Church there is a stature of San Francisco (supposedly Assisi) dressed in wildly inappropriate golden garments and looking a lot like someone from China, with something that looks like a black lace halo on his head. In addition, the Saint is standing on a skull. The name means something like Saint Francis of the Sword. (The del Espada may refer to the patronage of a family that helped to build the mission.)
San Antonio is a wonderful, bright, friendly city. There isn't all that much to do within the city and so it becomes a perfect place for relaxation amidst some beautiful scenery.
Once I return home and have some of my other devices, I'll try to post some pictures of these wonder missions.
Dinner at Rudy's (of course)--absolutely no atmosphere whatsoever, but the really excellent food more than makes up for it.
Tomorrow perhaps more.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Books Carefully Considered
Before loaded into luggage--see TSO, the wonders of that slender machine:
The inimitable master: The Ambassadors Henry James
The End of the Affair Graham Greene
Venetia Georgette Heyer
Arthurian Romances Chretien de Troyes (includes Erec et Enide, Yvain, Cliges, and Lancelot.
While here in Texas, I am going to try to seek out a half-price books and see if there might not be some Georgette Heyer (mystery and romance) on the shelf. Of particular interest The Grand Sophy, which I just re-read about in Michael Dirda's Classics for Pleasure. However, I'll probably snap up anything I can find.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 30, 2008
Georgette Heyer
It is a shame that Mrs. Heyer's novels have always been marketed as "Romances," indeed, that she is considered the founder of that most infamous of romantic genres "the Regency romance," not because her stories are not romances, but because we no longer truly understand what is meant by the term and many potential readers are alienated both by the genre and its marketing. How many young men are likely to pick up a book with a bright yellow cover showing a young woman as though filmed through cheesecloth accepting a yellow rose from a young man in a rather too frou-frou shirtfront and jacket? There was a time in my life when I deprived myself of the enormous pleasures of reading Mrs. Heyer for reasons no better than these. And it is still a little embarrassing to be "caught" in the act of flipping through one of the Harlequin editions.
Thank goodness a trade paperback publisher has recently reissued much of Mrs. Heyer's work in editions that look much more like what Ms. Heyer has written--comedies of manners á la Jane Austen. Romance is the predominant thread and the binding glue of each of the stories, but they are crackling with with poise and pungent observations about the human animal--in love and otherwise. In the new editions, which features covers that look like portraits of the John Singer Sargent age, no self-respecting man will have any difficulty picking them up and reading them. Well, perhaps there is a lingering aura that is no so easily diffused, but the covers go a long way toward helping with the image problem.
I'd like to share a small portion of Venetia that gives you a sense of the snap and crackle of dialog and the undercurrent of a deep and sensitive intelligence that drives the work. Additionally, Mrs. Heyer does her research--her characters are always "in time, in dress, and on the right stage" as it were.
from Venetia
Georgette Heyer"I can't, of course. What is it?" she returned, glancing at the volume. "Ah, Greek! Some improving tale, I don't doubt."
"The Medea, he said repressively. "Porson's edition, which Mr. Appersett lent to me."
"I know! She was the delightful creature who cut up her brother and cast the pieces in her papa's way, wasn't she? I daresay, perfectly amiable when one came to know her."
He hunched an impatient shoulder, and replied unctuously: "You don't understand, and it's a waste of time to make you."
Her eyes twinkled at him. "But I promise you I do! Yes and sympathize with her, besides wishing I had her resolution! Though I think I should rather have buried your remains tidily in the garden dear."
A castoff, a mere bauble of dialog that sets the story rolling and we know Venetia and the brother to whom she speaks. More than that we see an oxymoron--a gentle spitfire who knows a great deal, knows how to use it, and yet does not pull out all the plugs.
Georgette Heyer is a skilled writer whose works continue in print not because of a small population of readers of romance, or even because of a large population, but because the books are good--well researched, well written, witty, and sharply observant. I wonder how many men have already become acquainted with Mrs. Heyer dispite the nearly insurmountable difficulties of the schlock heaped on them by marketers who inadvertantly narrow the market rather than broaden it. I think Michael Dirda hit the nail on the head when he said in The Classics for Pleasure that the nearest things to Mrs. Heyer's novels were not the chain line of modern factory-produced romances, but the very different romances of Patrick O'Brien with Aubrey and Maturin. There is, I think, a good deal of justice in this comparison. While I have found the Aubrey and Maturin novels unapproachable because of the sheer odiousness of the main characters (or because of my finicky taste, more likely), I find Mrs. Heyer's company perfectly amiable--someone to take aside on a summer's rainy afternoon into the book nook or windowseat and spend a while chatting with. Someone who has much to say and says it both well and beautifully.
Man or woman, do not make the mistake of dismissing Mrs. Heyer as the queen and founder of the modern romance novel. You will be giving up a great deal if you do.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:57 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
A Little Later
from Venetia
Georgette HeyerBeyond the stream lay the Priory itself, a rambling house built in Tudor times upon the foundations of the original structure, subsequently enlarged, and said to be replete with a wealth of panelling, and a great many inconveniences.
*****". . . Fair Fatality, you are the most unusual female I have encountered in all my thirty-eight years!"
"You can't think how deeply flattered I am!" she assured him. "I daresay my head would be quite turned if I didn't suspect that amongst so many a dozen or so may have slipped from your memory." . . .
"Spiteful little cat!" he said appreciatively. "How the devil was I to recognize Miss Lanyon of Undershaw in a crumpled gown and a sunbonnet, and without even the chaperonage of her maid?"
"Oh, am I to understand then, that if you had know nmy quality you wouldn't have molested me? How chivalrous!"
Her first encounter with the infamous Lord Damarel goes none-too-well and so provides the reader with delights of the first order.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack