Rich,I know that you're reading this. You have spent your life wondering why nobody except the NYRB has acknowledged your first study, Shelley: The Pursuit. Perhaps you've outdone Ellmann, and you've found the decadeslong hardway: Western society worships Joyce. He was homeless, drunk, blind, purseistant, insane: No one else could get away with spending seventeen years on a book like that. That madness is what we set at the English 203 Altar: There is no room for you, for your precious Shelley. Good thing you moved on to other topics. Knowing full-well in advance Shelley died # Sea # 29, I own your book and will read Shelley's life year by year for the next couple of years. I am too busy to read another 1000-page book - BUT, yours is not ANOTHER 1000-page book. Yours, Dick, is a masterpiece. Probably the only reason this is not common knowledge is because the powers that be are jealous of you. I'm not jealous of you; I am fond of you. This book is fucking astonishing. But I leave it at that - let me weed my way back into reality, like Melmoth the Wanderer.Your friend,JosephPretty much right before and the days after Christmas have been total chaos and the hours I intended to spend cramming in as much reading as possible over the break before full-time work, full-time school, full-time, full-time putting together a website and a proper set-up for my Author page here and the six books to go along with it, at last completed in the near face of insanity and/or death, and part-time, wearily, copyrighting and drinking rum with agents. Today I got to chip away at the first chapter of this one and damn, it is incredible thus far. I pretty much dropped out of the 800+ page literary bio after Joyce less out of exhaustion than figuring there was no where else to go, and to move on with my own traveling, study, and work. I will remember the last day of 2013 more fondly than the year itself: Drinking a beer, listening to insane jackhammers outside of my window yet being so caught in this Tome it's a non-issue. Now the Dostoyevskian snow is coming down harder - 'Apropos of Falling Snow.' 2014 is interesting in that I have no immediate travel/relocation plans. All of my plans are routed in the aforementionedThere are not too many reviews on this NYRB gem - In time I'll get down to a little something. See you all tomorrow, the forevertomorrow. On the occasion anyone reading this has such a fun night they end up projectile-vomiting off of a rooftop, maybe it land on a robber's head, or the policeman chasing him.2014: The Time of the Assassins.
This is a long book - I was a bit intimidated by its heft - but it never slowed down. As Shelley and his family moved and moved from one continent to the next, from one city to the next from one house to the next, I never wanted not to follow them. Holmes admires Shelley but doesn't flinch at the bad behavior. Also, he doesn't come to ready conclusions but gives you the facts as he has found them and lets you consider them and have your own thoughts about what they might mean. I had to keep reminding myself how little time had passed as I moved from chapter to chapter, how awfully young all of the characters were. Shelly was brilliant but frantic and how sad and fitting he did not die in his bed but on a stormy sea. I came very late to this biography (as to the genre itself). I am glad I did not miss it.
What do You think about Shelley: The Pursuit (2003)?
