by Richard Subber | Mar 17, 2024 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature
very destructive bogus stuff going on…
Book review:
The Witches:
Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem
by Stacy Schiff (b.1961)
Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2015
498 pages
It may be that Stacy Schiff has neglected to include some fact or sentiment about the Salem witch trials, but I can’t imagine what it might be. The Witches is an expansive compendium of the whos and whats and whys and wherefores of this compelling—yet essentially impenetrable—story about a community gone crazy.
Maybe you had to be there to understand it.
It’s too easy to suggest the McCarthy Communism hunting in 1954 as a modern analogy, but it won’t work. The whole dreadful McCarthy thing was a political football, approaching a sideshow even though it attracted the nominal attention of the nation and destroyed many lives.
The Salem witch trials (and the witch hunting that went on in neighboring towns) consumed the waking hours of all the townsfolk, who were deeply convinced that witches exist and that they are in league with satanic forces.
Schiff tells too much of the story. I would have been content with a less detailed account. There is repetition that is dispensable.
For my taste, she struck a good balance between telling the story as it happened, and inviting the reader to suspect that the teenage girls were fooling all along, and that too many accusers had a personal reason to “get” the accused, and that too many religious and civic leaders struggled unsuccessfully with their religious faith and the opposing impulses of their arguably decent selves who quickly figured out that the witch craze was a very nasty game.
You don’t need to read the whole book to figure out that there was some very destructive bogus stuff going on in 1692 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Maybe you don’t need to read the whole book to be convinced that some folks aren’t continuously motivated by a decent streak of good will and a desire to support communal well-being.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire on the Edge
by Nick Bunker
The British really wanted to win
the Revolutionary War,
but they had good reasons
for not trying too hard…
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Mar 12, 2024 | Human Nature, Language, My poetry, Poetry
Dear, dear sprite…
and more…
Her lightest step is all she needs
to round the garden in her tour,
she makes no stand,
and fills the air with cherub chatter,
she makes scant imprint in the earth…
The elfin miss delights in play,
so wild, winsome,
willing to sing
what happiness she feels,
we little know its measure
nor the nature of her laugh, her smile,
the chirp of her siren sound.
Dear, dear sprite, she hops and bounces,
we scarcely reck the eldritch stuff,
what seems of perverse end
does not sustain a care
beyond the moment’s wisp of dread
that’s clapped away in her dance.
Her lightest step is all she needs
to round the garden in her tour,
she makes no stand,
she flutters, frisks in merriment,
and makes her joy…
June 12, 2022
Inspired by the child, Pearl, in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
the good old way…
Book review:
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1921
392 pages
These people talk to each other. It’s face-to-face communications. They pay attention to body language and what you do with your face.
Scaramouche ends the way you think it’s going to end: boy gets girl.
But there’s a lot of road to travel before we get to that ending—I think there’s only one reference to a heaving bosom—there is fastidious bad language, and lots of casual use of Latin—there’s a lot of hand kissing, which is something we could do more of these days.
Sabatini was a prolific writer and he wrote this romance novel in the way it should be written. The reader gets an eyeful and an earful and a heartful of genuine romance, with all the words that make it work.
It’s still possible to make love in the good old way that they did it in the 18th century. Read all about it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is the best
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Mar 5, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
don’t think about John of Arc
Book review:
Saint Joan
by Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, copyright 1924, rep. 1964
159 pages
Imagine that Joan of Arc had been John of Arc.
I’m no fan of “what if” history, but I dare to say that John might have become a saint without the burned-at-the-stake part.
Saint Joan is a play, so if stage directions are a distraction to you, you can just pretend that Shaw is whispering in your ear.
Shaw’s 42-page preface is historical treasure added to the literary treasure. He offers even more than you imagine about the life and context and historical significance of la pucelle de Domrémy.
All of the men whose lives she crossed accepted Joan’s exceptionalism. Many believed her story about hearing voices from the saints and from God.
Joan went to the fire without understanding that the kings and the generals wished that she had never been born.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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