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brigdhThe Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal That Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern by Maurice Samuels. Nonfiction about the 1830s in France. After the Bourbons had been kicked off the throne for the second time, the duchesse de Berry, widowed mother of the theoretically legitimate king (who was only 11), attempted to lead a civil war in rural France to retake the crown. This obviously did not go so well, and after her defeat she went into hiding, only to be betrayed to the police by one of her followers named Simon Deutz. Deutz had been raised Jewish, and despite his recent conversion to Catholicism was best-known for being the son of France's Chief Rabbi. Unsurprisingly, his actions led to an upswell of antisemitism, and Samuels argues this moment was one of the key shifts from antisemitism's medieval form (blood libel, backwards religiously) to its modern form (global capitalists, pushing the New World Order).
Even if you don't exactly agree with the duchess's pro-monarchy politics, she's a fascinating figure: despite being frequently described as "not pretty" by other members of the nobility, with bad teeth and a wandering left eye, she became a fashion icon who set the most glamorous trends of Parisian style; only 4'7, she was an inspiring military leader and modeled herself after Joan of Arc; idealized as the perfect, devoted mother by her followers, she had an affair and bore a child out of wedlock, who shortly thereafter died, probably due at least partly to parental neglect.
Deutz seems like a bit of a terrible person, even ignoring all of the racist accusations of his detractors: unable to keep any job for long, constantly running up debts and taking advantage of anyone foolish enough to loan him money, given to violent outbursts and heavy drinking and self-aggrandizing. As the aftermath of the clash between him and the duchess played out in newspapers, books, caricatures, and politics, it's easy to see how she came to represent old-school values of honor, trust, courage, and loyalty, while he stood for the modern world of hard cash, putting yourself first, individualism, and immigration (having been born not only Jewish, but in a German village before moving to France as a toddler). Of course, it's the tragedy of the last two hundred years that these symbols accrued not only to Deutz himself, but to all Jewish people.
It's a very relevant piece of history, and one that I'd never heard of before. There's all sorts of interesting repercussions to other areas, from Les Miserables to Alexandre Dumas to the Dreyfus Affair, the more recent and more well-known outburst of French antisemitism. I was particularly interested in the history of French Judaism in the early 1800s, the way the community gained rights and lost them in the swinging pendulum of Revolution, Napoleon, and Restoration. The writing style is smooth and engaging, and Samuels does a very good job of drawing parallels from this singular event to its still-ongoing repercussions.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich. A nonfictional account of an American's time in Greenland. I was never quite sure why exactly Ehrlich went to Greenland – early on, she alludes to a medical problem, something to do with her heart, but I'm not clear on how that would lead one to travel to Greenland, and there never is more of an explanation than that brief allusion.
Regardless, once there, Ehrlich sets out to better understand traditional Inuit (Eskimo? she uses the terms interchangeably, but that might have been more common in the 90s when she was there) life and beliefs, and to experience them for herself. Ehrlich structures her trips around those of previous travelers, particularly Knud Rasmussen, an explorer/anthropologist of the early 1900s, and Rockwell Kent, a painter who lived in Greenland in the 1930s. Mostly though, Ehrlich records her perceptions of months-long night, months-long day, dogsled trips, and icebergs. It's a book that's almost more poetry than it is memoir, travelogue, or history. Unfortunately, the quality of the poetry varies enormously. Sometimes it's lovely. Sometimes it's entirely nonsensical:
Now circling sun augered light down like an arrow of time, pushing us across the great expanse because there was nowhere else to go. Ice is time solidified.
Solid space stands for emotional grasping; an ephemeral cataract, making opaque what it is we long to see.
THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. YOU ARE JUST STRINGING RANDOM WORDS TOGETHER.
More than anything, Ehrlich needed a better editor. Both because someone should have urged her to cut the more ~abstract~ bits of poetry, and because she began to repeat herself frequently in the second half of the book: she tells the story of the ill-fated Greely expedition twice, chapters apart; she repeats the same descriptions of people (not in a poetic way, just in an "I forgot I already used this very distinctive phrase" way); the same conversations with the same people are retold, word for word.
I was also made uncomfortable by some of Ehrlich's relationships with local Greenlanders. It's never quite clear if she was compensating them in any way for taking her on weeks-long trips or allowing her to stay in their homes for months at a time. In particular, she has a relationship with a young girl that veers hard into White Savior territory; at one point, Ehrlich offers to take the girl with her to California so that she can attend a better school, despite the fact that would mean leaving her parents (and younger brother, who Ehrlich doesn't seem to care as much about) behind. Ehrlich's writing style treats all emotions and relationships so opaquely that I have no real sense of how the girl's family felt about her in return, or if she bothered to keep in contact with them when she wasn't in Greenland. It was all just weird and awkward.
I would have given this one star, except... well, it did really make me want to visit Greenland! So I suppose I have to give Ehrlich some credit for that.
Even if you don't exactly agree with the duchess's pro-monarchy politics, she's a fascinating figure: despite being frequently described as "not pretty" by other members of the nobility, with bad teeth and a wandering left eye, she became a fashion icon who set the most glamorous trends of Parisian style; only 4'7, she was an inspiring military leader and modeled herself after Joan of Arc; idealized as the perfect, devoted mother by her followers, she had an affair and bore a child out of wedlock, who shortly thereafter died, probably due at least partly to parental neglect.
Deutz seems like a bit of a terrible person, even ignoring all of the racist accusations of his detractors: unable to keep any job for long, constantly running up debts and taking advantage of anyone foolish enough to loan him money, given to violent outbursts and heavy drinking and self-aggrandizing. As the aftermath of the clash between him and the duchess played out in newspapers, books, caricatures, and politics, it's easy to see how she came to represent old-school values of honor, trust, courage, and loyalty, while he stood for the modern world of hard cash, putting yourself first, individualism, and immigration (having been born not only Jewish, but in a German village before moving to France as a toddler). Of course, it's the tragedy of the last two hundred years that these symbols accrued not only to Deutz himself, but to all Jewish people.
It's a very relevant piece of history, and one that I'd never heard of before. There's all sorts of interesting repercussions to other areas, from Les Miserables to Alexandre Dumas to the Dreyfus Affair, the more recent and more well-known outburst of French antisemitism. I was particularly interested in the history of French Judaism in the early 1800s, the way the community gained rights and lost them in the swinging pendulum of Revolution, Napoleon, and Restoration. The writing style is smooth and engaging, and Samuels does a very good job of drawing parallels from this singular event to its still-ongoing repercussions.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich. A nonfictional account of an American's time in Greenland. I was never quite sure why exactly Ehrlich went to Greenland – early on, she alludes to a medical problem, something to do with her heart, but I'm not clear on how that would lead one to travel to Greenland, and there never is more of an explanation than that brief allusion.
Regardless, once there, Ehrlich sets out to better understand traditional Inuit (Eskimo? she uses the terms interchangeably, but that might have been more common in the 90s when she was there) life and beliefs, and to experience them for herself. Ehrlich structures her trips around those of previous travelers, particularly Knud Rasmussen, an explorer/anthropologist of the early 1900s, and Rockwell Kent, a painter who lived in Greenland in the 1930s. Mostly though, Ehrlich records her perceptions of months-long night, months-long day, dogsled trips, and icebergs. It's a book that's almost more poetry than it is memoir, travelogue, or history. Unfortunately, the quality of the poetry varies enormously. Sometimes it's lovely. Sometimes it's entirely nonsensical:
Now circling sun augered light down like an arrow of time, pushing us across the great expanse because there was nowhere else to go. Ice is time solidified.
Solid space stands for emotional grasping; an ephemeral cataract, making opaque what it is we long to see.
THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. YOU ARE JUST STRINGING RANDOM WORDS TOGETHER.
More than anything, Ehrlich needed a better editor. Both because someone should have urged her to cut the more ~abstract~ bits of poetry, and because she began to repeat herself frequently in the second half of the book: she tells the story of the ill-fated Greely expedition twice, chapters apart; she repeats the same descriptions of people (not in a poetic way, just in an "I forgot I already used this very distinctive phrase" way); the same conversations with the same people are retold, word for word.
I was also made uncomfortable by some of Ehrlich's relationships with local Greenlanders. It's never quite clear if she was compensating them in any way for taking her on weeks-long trips or allowing her to stay in their homes for months at a time. In particular, she has a relationship with a young girl that veers hard into White Savior territory; at one point, Ehrlich offers to take the girl with her to California so that she can attend a better school, despite the fact that would mean leaving her parents (and younger brother, who Ehrlich doesn't seem to care as much about) behind. Ehrlich's writing style treats all emotions and relationships so opaquely that I have no real sense of how the girl's family felt about her in return, or if she bothered to keep in contact with them when she wasn't in Greenland. It was all just weird and awkward.
I would have given this one star, except... well, it did really make me want to visit Greenland! So I suppose I have to give Ehrlich some credit for that.
