Tea at Trianon: Better Than a Masterpiece

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Better Than a Masterpiece

From Signature:

When you read a book like Gatsby, you’re battling the obligatory feeling of reading a book that was assigned in high school—I remember throwing my copy on the ground outside of class to demonstrate that I hated this story about rich people’s problems. You’re battling Tobey Maguire and Leonardo Dicaprio and Carey Mulligan, Sam Waterston and Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. You’re even battling the back cover of the book: “A true classic of twentieth-century literature,” “The American masterwork.”

But if a book is really worthy of such adoration, there will be moments that cut through the portentousness of its reputation. You’ll find unexpected details that aren’t easily interpreted, sharp surprises that seem smuggled in. In these kinds of little passages, where Nick is so bothered by some dried lather that he waits until the guy passes out and then wipes it off of his sleeping face, books like Gatsby surpass their own themes and step down from being icons of a culture to being pieces of art again—peculiar, funny slippery. Much better than a masterpiece. (Read more.)