Berry brings Cotton Mahone back in thriller that manages to include Cotton’s dead father, an experimental submarine, Antarctica, and an “Atlantean civilization”. While it’s a readable book, each new Mahone thriller is getting more implausible and less interesting.
William Christenberry is an artist from the same part of Alabama made famous by Walker Evan’s photographs in “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”. This book is a retrospective of his life’s work from 1960’s. It includes his photographs, sculptures (many of which look like models), and paintings. I was most interested in the photographs. To me the paintings are interesting because they’re presented in the context of other work: it’s interesting to see an artist explore the same subject in different media.
While Christenberry is best known for his color work, his early tiny black and white Brownie photos (reproduced here in actual size) are also impressive. They’re reminiscent of photographs by Walker Evans or David Plowden, and definitely prove that art is not limited by equipment.
Also interesting are series of the same rural church, residence, or store taken annually over decades.
The book contains several good essays by Andy Grundberg, Howard N. Fox, and curator Walter Hopps, who points out that Christenberry’s color work may have inspired William Eggleston but that Christenberry’s focus on rebirth and continuity stands in contrast to Eggleston’s “violence and destructiveness”.
This is a goofy “ancient astronaut” stew. It’s fun for what it is, but repetitive. I lost track of how many times the floor of an Atlantean building (maybe many different structures - it gets confusing) opens up to alternately drown and swallow people. And I couldn’t try to count the myriads of bad guys the heroine kicks in the crotch.
Terry Falke
We want to think there is a West out there that’s still a wilderness. It’s a fantasy deeply rooted in Americans, or at least those of a certain gender and vintage. Terry Falke undermines that fantasy with large, beautiful color photos that don’t shy from portraying man’s presence - in the flesh or by way of his artifacts - in the Southwestern landscape. The crash of collapsing fantasy is lightened by Falke’s sense of humor; all of this is summed up rather well by the cover photo.
(To see a selection of photos from the book, go to Afterimage Gallery’s web site.)
The main character, an archer, is, literally, a bastard. His nemesis is a crazy, lecherous priest. These are patented Cornwell tropes and the first third of the book reads almost like a parody of a Cornwell novel. Fortunately, things get more interesting later on when our hero arrives in France for the siege of Harfleur. We’re treated to a vivid, detailed siege narrative followed by a action-filled account of the battle of Againcourt that’s pure vintage Cornwell.
(There’s an extensive and interesting author’s note at the end on the history behind the novel. Cornwell credits Juliet Barker’s Agincourt as a great source.)
Kathleen Norris
Modern people are familiar with the language of depression. Acedia, “a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world” is like depression but is more a spiritual condition related to sloth than a psychological one. Or so Kathleen Norris argues in “Acedia & Me”. I think she’s right and that she performs a valuable service by resurrecting the concept of acedia. I only wish the book were less about her experiences of acedia and more about how one goes about the business of defeating it.
Much of the book is devoted to her husband’s death. I found those parts quite depressing (in the non-clinical sense), but that’s more a reflection of my taste in non-fiction than a comment on her book.
