Tag Archives: History

A Year in Books/Days 228-229: Frontier Madam/Amedeo Modigliani

Posted on by
10

FRONTIER MADAM THE LIFE OF DELL BURKE, LADY OF LUSK

  • Title: Frontier Madam The Life of Dell Burke, Lady of Lusk
  • Author: June Willson Read
  • Year Published: 2008 (A Two Dot Book)
  • Year Purchased: 2012
  • Source: Half Price Books
  • About: I really wanted to like this book. It has elements that make it ideally suited to my weird tastes. The narrative focuses on an interesting period and place little discussed elsewhere, and the heroine is something else: strong, fearless, unconventional, and largely forgotten. All things that make my heart flutter with anticipation. If the whole was as good as any of the components were in life, it would be a great read. Instead, it is unsatisfactory. Not bad or shoddy, but oddly flat, simplistic and bloodless. Dell Burke was a girl from a solid working class background, with a loving family but few prospects. A tale as old as time, of course. She turned a pragmatic foray into prostitution into a decades-long career as a powerful, wealthy, fair, civic-minded madam in Wyoming. The contents of her life could probably fill several books. Unfortunately, the lady was something of an enigma. The material for an interesting, complex biography just isn’t there. What we are given is a civic history of Lusk, Wyoming filled with third and fourth hand anecdotes about its most notorious resident. Many of the brief stories are entertaining, but they add little to the flow and structure of the book. The passages of imagined dialogue, which are mercifully few, are stilted and unbelievable: a great idea poorly executed. The conjecture used to fill in the gaps between anecdotes and facts is boring and without colour. I wish I had bigger things, nicer things, to say about this book, but the story is paper-thin. The biographer tries hard. Hailing from the same part of Wyoming as her subject, she is genuinely connected to the legend of Dell Burke. It’s obvious that she is excited to share this remarkable woman with the rest of the world. Perhaps that is the problem: whilst the shell of the legend is intact, the substance of the real woman is long gone. There’s nothing left but a disjointed jumble of local in-jokes worn threadbare and a vague memory woven into the collective subconscious of the town’s residents. It’s no wonder that this book reads like a padded-out pamphlet for an annual town festival in Lusk. Continue reading →

Shopping for the Bookworm: Robert Burns Edition

Posted on by
8

Happy Burns Day! Good old Rabbie Burns, Scotland’s darling, was born on 25 January 1759. As I am certain you know by now, The Chef and I are throwing our annual Burns Supper tonight. Yay, the revelry is almost upon us! I have last-minute party preparations to handle but you, lucky ones, can sit back with a cuppa whilst reading this special edition of Shopping for the Bookworm. Enjoy! Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 227: Swearing

Posted on by
6
  • Title: Swearing A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English
  • Author: Geoffrey Hughes
  • Year Published: 1991/This Edition: 1998 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: A bookstore in Buffalo
  • About: A book about swearing sounds titillating, eh? Actually, the word titillating sounds titillating, but that’s another train of thought. If you think that this book is just an excuse by the author to use words like piss and fuck with impunity, like some naughty school-boy, you’re wrong. (You didn’t really think that, did you?) Swearing by Geoffrey Hughes is one of the many books that make up a larger-than-you’d-expect canon on the subject of the history of impolite language. This late 20th century work is one in a long line of books that date back hundreds of years. It’s a fairly sedate entry, but it offers a fascinatingly detailed history of the origins and subsequent variations of bad words in English. You don’t have to be word mad to be entertained by the fluid nature of profanity. It makes for seriously fun reading, even if the scholarly tone isn’t your normal cup of tea. The best part of the book revolves around religious oaths and how they have become bastardized (ahem) and watered down over the centuries. If you come across this book, it’s worth taking a gamble on; the worst thing that can happen is that you will have a more measured understanding of the words and phrases you use, and a richer vocabulary to inflict on the people around you.
  • Motivation: Words. I love them, in all of their magical, maddening, changing variety. I like to get to the bottom of why things are as they are, and discover, if at all possible, how or what they once were.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 22: “It might be useful to bring into play at this point two observations which raise swearing above the prosaic. G.K. Chesterton commented that ‘The one stream of poetry which is constantly flowing is slang.’ (From The Defendant 1901, cited in Partridge’s Slang (1960), p. 24). Louis MacNeice comes closer to our themes in his poem ‘Conversation’, 1929. ‘Ordinary men, ‘ he writes, ‘Put up a barrage of common sense to baulk Intimacy, but by mistake interpolate Swear-words like roses in their talk.'”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 26th-30th December

Posted on by
5
  • Henry Miller was born on 12/26/1891. “Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.” (Tropic of Cancer; Black Spring; Tropic of Capricorn)
  • Charles Lamb died on 12/27/1834. “Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.” (Tales from Shakespeare; Essays of Elia)
  • Theodore Dreiser died on 12/28/1945. “In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.” (Sister Carrie; An American Tragedy)
  • Christina Rossetti died on 12/29/1894. “Hope is like a harebell trembling from its birth.” (Goblin Market; In the Bleak Midwinter) Continue reading →

Love at First Site: Small Demons Storyverse

Posted on by
6

I have a head for data and a mind that is always ravenously hungry for more: more facts, figures, dates, trivia, all kinds of minutia. Anything that is adjacent or related to what I am thinking, reading, writing, or doing. I collect it all: people, quotes, historical tidbits, pop culture ephemera. As soon as I discovered Small Demons, I knew that it would feed my intellectual gluttony, perfectly and obsessively.

I actually feel a bit shorted right now, as I am taking time away from the Small Demons Storyverse to tell you all about the Small Demons Storyverse. Time that I could be spending immersed in the Small Demons Storyverse. Got it, dear readers? It is a sacrifice I am making only because I love you, and think that you should know about this amazing site. I am going to keep it brief. You can use your new knowledge and run off to discover things for yourselves. To wit, their tagline is: the people, places and things from books, and everywhere they can take you. GO THERE NOW. You are welcome!

PS-You can make your own storyboards.