The White Goddess
My 14yo asked me to hide the cover The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth , by Robert Graves Oh, wow. I could talk about this fabulously nutty book all day! I had no idea when I picked it up what I was getting into. The short version: Graves was looking for evidence of a European-wide goddess-worshiping Ur-religion that he believed existed before all that male god patriarchy stuff came along. He found his material in myth and poetry, and claimed that bards and poets disguised their lore by deliberately mixing it up. All true poetry is based on the Triple White Goddess as Muse, and no monotheist can be a true poet. Graves, being a true poet, realized all this through poetic intuition. Now the long version: This is 500 extremely dense pages of speculation about myth, poetry, and ancient tribal movements, presented as plain fact deduced by intuition and research. It's from the same school of...scholarship...as The Golden B...

Is it a short stories collection? Well, not bad at all.
ReplyDeleteMine will be Steinbeck's The Red Pony.
You know, I've never read the Red Pony! I have a stupid prejudice against Steinbeck because he wrote about my own California landscape and I tend to assume that it's boring. Even though Grapes of Wrath is really good.
DeleteRussian short stories is always a good thing, enjoy!
ReplyDeleteOh, I just love Turgenev! I'm sure it will be excellent! Have fun!
ReplyDelete