Volume 52, Number 4 · March 10, 2005
A Snob in the Garden
By James Fenton
A Rage for Rock Gardening: The Story of Reginald Farrer, Gardener, Writer and Plant Collector
by Nicola Shulman
Godine, 120 pp., $20.00
The recent craze for short books (this one was published first in England by a firm called Short Books) gives a welcome home to what used to be known, when someone like Macaulay or de Quincey wrote them, as essays. We will all still read essays happily, it turns out, as long as we are only asked to read them one at a time. We have an appetite for a subject, even a taxing subject, explained at some length—Dava Sobel's Longitude was exemplary in this respect—providing we can see that the account will not go on and on. We like to entertain ourselves by informing ourselves, and we like to inform ourselves without ulterior motive. No doubt it is true that many of the readers of Longitude were also people who enjoyed messing about in boats (so the subject had pleasant associations for them), but they did not turn to Ms. Sobel in order to learn navigation. Rather, they took a disinterested delight in the history of a navigational problem.
Review, 1689 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |