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
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse 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 | Feb 27, 2024 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
“We all love you, preacher!”
Movie review:
Pale Rider
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
Revelation 6:8
Pale Rider (1985, rated R, 115 minutes) goes a bit deeper than your usual Clint Eastwood action thriller.
As “the preacher,” Eastwood creates a mostly low-key character who mostly waxes philosophic about life and its vicissitudes, but also persistently urges the good guys to do some good, and (you’re not surprised) straps on his big pistol when he needs it.
The beleaguered “tin pan” miners, emboldened by “the preacher,” battle the vicious takeover attempts by the big bad rich guy, and you can guess who savors victory.
There’s an almost completely platonic love interest with the mother, Sarah (Carrie Snodgress is divinely demure), and 15-year-old Megan (Sydney Penny) learns a lot about unrequited love.
Pale Rider invites you to look into the hearts of realistic people.
The obvious allusion to Revelation 6:8 (“…behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death…”) is puzzling. The preacher is not apocalyptic, there is no hint of theology in his role, and he mysteriously and provocatively rides away into the mountains at the last minute, leaving everyone else to resume their lives.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
–
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 | Feb 22, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
to each his or her own…
Book review:
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan (b1948)
New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday, 2007
203 pages
Most likely you will find yourself undeniably drawn to keep turning the pages of On Chesil Beach.
It’s a quiet book, but it’s loaded with exotically passionate words and moments and discoveries about the very private concepts of love that Edward and Florence bring to their marriage in 1962.
There is almost none of the heaving bosom stuff that corrupts so many tales about love, and the language is realistic, almost chaste.
Ian McEwan lets the two lovers try to talk to each other about stuff that they deeply feel but for which they hardly know the words.
There is a sad, and sadly understandable, ending.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 | Feb 18, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
a real good story…
Book review:
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943
754 pages
You already know something about what The Fountainhead is all about, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this review.
Here’s my contribution: think of The Fountainhead as a novel, as a love story, as a heroic fable, as a celebration of human virtue and the urge to do the right thing. Think about that moralistic gem from Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.”
The Fountainhead is an elaboration of Ayn Rand’s imagination about ambition, self-actualization, courage, endurance, and a kind of love that needs more marshmallows and less of the kind of talk that you wouldn’t expect to hear in the library stacks.
It’s a real good story. Roark, Dominique, and a couple other characters aren’t sketched, they’re lushly painted with many words that you don’t hear in ordinary conversation.
Forget about the political claptrap that’s bandied about using a rubric of “Ayn Rand’s philosophy.”
She was a novelist first, and her talent ran dry when she stepped out of the literary sphere.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Unknown American Revolution (book review)
in the streets, says Gary Nash
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse 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 | Feb 15, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
they’re out there…
“…be ready for every good work.”
Titus 3:1 (KJ21)
…including your own good works!
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
For All the Tea in China (book review)
Sarah Rose brews the whole ugly story
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 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 | Feb 10, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
aspirations, vagrant needs…
Book review:
The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain
New York: Ballantine Books, 2011
320 pages
Paula McLain has done it artfully. The Paris Wife is a richly nuanced account of the transformation of the 1921 marriage of Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway, the first for each of them.
I had not known in detail that Hemingway was as much of an inconstant lover as he actually was.
Now I know that Paula McLain tells me as much as I need to know about the life-interrupting aspirations of Hadley, and more than I care to know about the destructive potency of Hemingway’s vagrant needs.
Excerpt (Hadley is speaking):
“[Ernest] needed me to make him feel safe…yes, the same way I needed him. But he also liked that he could disappear into his work, away from me. And return when he wanted to.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Molly Johnson sings it right…
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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