Hardcover: 466 pages
Publisher: Basic Books 2008
"Survival kits of the 1860s, packed in wooden barrels and deposited on tropical islands for use by the shipwrecked on their way to New Zealand, contained, as well as the predictably useful knife, matches, rope, and fish-hooks, a three-piece tweed suit - presumably to allow any latter-day Robinson Crusoe to welcome his rescuers with appropriate decorum." p. 24
Philip Blom's book is near perfect. The Vertigo Years is an elegant yet robust narrative of the turbulent pre WW I years, an era traditionally described as the belle epoque. Blom pays witness to beauty - in the sentimental, intentional lapses of memory - beauty only to those who wished to stay blind in the face of the modernizing and rapidly changing, increasingly austere world. This was a time when social, moral and economic fundamentals were overturn - time of people visioning "society as a great collective dream designed to force people into being useful instead of enjoying themselves"... and where "man was nothing but a mass of highly unstable perceptions creating the impression of personality"... Epoch of 1904-1914 made peoples head spin - everyone was forced to realize that "there was, in fact, nothing stationary in the world at all"... (Quotes from pp. 55, 59, 79)
"Indeed, there seemed to be no end to the beneficial properties of this new, mysterious substance. Soon the cosmetics industry seized on the public interest and produced balms and creams containing traces of thorium and radium, such as Tho-Radia, a supposedly miraculous cream produced in France. 'Stay ugly if you want to!' trumpeted the slogan of the manufacturer, whose products were wont to lend altogether new meaning to the idea of radiant beauty." p. 87
Second Opinion: Juliet Nicolson / The Guardian
¶ 11/24/2008 03:54:00 ip.
Paperback: 293 pages
Publisher: Picador 1997
"The driver pushed open the door and shoved me through into a narrow passage with another door at the end. I tapped on this and a growl came from the other side which I took to be an invitation to enter. I did so and found myself in a bedroom. Hemingway was seated on a bunk bed. He hauled himself to his feet and turned to face me. He was in his pyjamas and I was bewildered by what I saw. Hemingway had remained for ever young in my imagination, boisterous and vigorous - a moving spirit in the never-ending fiesta of life. This was an old man, slowmoving, cumbersome and burdened with flesh. The room was lined with bookshelves, and many bottles were stacked within reach of the bed. He mumbled a belated welcome and went to find the drinks, moving slowly under the great weight of his body. To my great surprise he poured himself a tumbler of neat Dubonnet, half of which he immediately gulped down. Above all it was his expression that shocked, for there was an exhaustion and emptiness in his face: the corners of his mouth were dragged down by what might have been despair, and his eyes gave the impression that he was trying to weep." p. 171-172
