An artful analysis of the lives of two poets separated by centuries, geography, and culture, united by hope.
A biographer and former professor examines the texts and contexts of Edward FitzGerald’s 1859 translation of Omar Khayyam’s medieval quatrains, initially ignored but later a worldwide publishing success.
Richardson (Splendor of Heart: Walter Jackson Bate and the Teaching of Literature, 2013, etc.), a winner of the Bancroft Prize, is uniquely qualified for his task. The biographer of William James, Thoreau, and Emerson and editor of anthologies of poetry, Richardson compresses these two lives into fewer than 200 tight pages, but the compression generates significant light. He acknowledges that little is known about Khayyam, but he weaves some significance from the few threads that remain. Born to a tentmaker in 1048, Khayyam later became involved with some powerful Persians and wrote myriads of quatrains, some finding their ways to the Bodleian Library, where FitzGerald (1809-1883) found them. Fascinated by what he found, he studied Persian with a friend and spent much of the rest of his life translating and tinkering. He lived to produce several editions of his book. Richardson writes about the life of each man, revealing in his sections about FitzGerald an astonishing series of influences and friends, including Thackeray, Tennyson, Carlyle, and others. The author is also curious (though not excessively so) about FitzGerald’s sexuality—he had a brief marriage but far preferred the friendship of men. Richardson ruminates about the nature of translation, noting that Khayyam’s quatrains were self-contained, not linked in a narrative, a situation that FitzGerald altered. The author credits FitzGerald for making the verses appeal to all sorts of modern (and, now, contemporary) readers. Finally, he lists what he sees as the values of the work—among them, its “ungendered vision of love” and its hope that maybe we can all get along.
An artful analysis of the lives of two poets separated by centuries, geography, and culture, united by hope.Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62040-653-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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