Fine Books, Fine Feelings

I love feeling that I’m part of the cultural landscape. As a writer of fiction who is published dozens of times a year in short form and who publishes a couple of books a year as well, one would assume that I feel that way all the time.

Well, I don’t. Mostly, I feel that I’m sitting alone, screaming into the void or writing in the wilderness. There are exceptions, for example, when I go to literary conventions, I definitely feel like I’m part of something, but those only last for a few days.

Better still is when my to-be-read pile releases a gem that makes me feel like I’m surrounded by Oxford dons for a few hours. Every issue of Fine Books and Collections works that way for me. If I lived in the US, these would be a quarterly occurrence, but unfortunately, I have never managed to get the postal system here in Arg to deliver these without losing more than half of them. So I have them shipped to a place in the US and then get them all together when I go there. And then they go into the TBR pile.

This issue is about a year old (such is the state of said pile), and it contains a wonderful article about the Treasures of the NYPL as well as the usual mix of articles about books, book-related art, and maps that make each issue a joy. What do I like most? That’s easy: the fact that you don’t need to be a collector to enjoy it. These articles are for anyone who loves learning or letters in any way, shape or form.

The fact that it’s aimed at collectors does have some good byproducts, however. For one thing, you can see what stuff is worth, which is always good to know. Even more interesting is seeing what is becoming culturally important even as it happens. Normally, culturally important artifacts are something we inherit from the deep past. We know they’re important because they’ve always been important. With each issue of FB&C, we can watch contemporary cultural artifacts becoming part of the canon in real time, and it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, I like feeling intellectual… even if it’s for only as long as the issue lasts.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.

Is the Tide Turning?

Politics annoys me. Whether it’s some right-winger telling me how I should live my life or what I should or shouldn’t drink or a left-winger insisting that I absolutely have to feel guilty about past wrongs I had nothing to do with and tattoo my pronouns on my forehead, I try to ignore them all. If they insist, I will generally tell them to take their insanity elsewhere.

Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past ten years, you’ve noticed that online discourse had moved very hard in the “pronouns and guilt” direction. And then it spilled into real life… and into The New Yorker, which made reading the magazine seem, at times, like an unhinged leftist manifesto.

Fortunately, the tide seems to have turned somewhere in late 2021 or so, and the last three issues I’ve read (this one is from April 2022) haven’t screeched. Sure, TNY is a magazine for urban intellectuals who tend to lean left, that’s fine. In fact, that is why one reads the thing. But the femenist/racist/genderist/identity stuff has calmed way down, making the mag enormously better. Perhaps the people in charge realized that the virtues they were signaling weren’t that relevant after all, and that normal people (even, gasp, intellectuals) just don’t care about adolescent ideologies. We care about the underlying issues, of course, but the way they’ve been treated lately is just moronic.

Aside from that piece of welcome news, this issue was standard TNY fare, with in-depth and intelligent analysis of contemporary affairs, cultural events and books.

But what really delighted me was that the fiction piece was excellent. Entitled “The Repugnant Conclusion”, this story by Elif Batuman is a wonderful piece of writing which I enjoyed and found myself wondering whether it was autobiographical (and special kudos to the writer if it isn’t, as it’s beautifully believable).

An enjoyable issue.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.

More Elegant Times

One of the things that I accept unconsciously is that old cars were built to a more elegant standard than today’s. That doesn’t mean they were necessarily better. Often they were utter crap, and today’s cars are more comfortable, faster and more reliable. It’s one thing to enjoy old cars and another to believe in the rose-tinted world.

But one thing that was certain is that the cars of yesteryear were built more elegantly. By this, I’m not just talking about design, but about materials. I think chrome (used in moderation), metal, brass and leather are more satisfying, respectively, than plastic, plastic, plastic and plastic.

The same happens with society. Elegance used to be an important concept among humans as well as cars. Up until the late 20th century, there was still a class of automobile that was reserved for a certain class of person. Well-bred, well-educated and well-dressed. Nouveau riche need not apply.

Today, however, with mass-production of the high-end cars, any footballer or rapper can buy a Bentley without even getting a supercilious sniffle from the bouncer at the door. Luxury has become ostentation reserved for people who, through no fault of their own, don’t know any better.

Of course, the English still do social strata quite well. But Bentley is owned by VW, who will sell them to just anyone.

Why did I suddenly go off on a tangent about social strata disappearing in many countries to be replaced by the quite different concept of economic strata? It was all caused by the Maserati on the cover of Motor Clásico 29 (above). That achingly beautiful and understated coupe could only be driven by people of a certain class. They needed a certain amount of wealth, as well, of course, but that was secondary.

Now? Almost every prestige car brand aims for the “upjumped pimp” market, and they’re quite painful to look at.

Is it a bad thing that undereducated and uncultured people from lower strata have gained access to luxury goods in unprecedented numbers? Perhaps, from the standpoint of pure democracy, it isn’t. But if you enjoy elegance in your automobiles… you’ll end up like me: reading classic car magazines.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

They Truly Are Treasures

Every time I go to New York, I make sure to spend at least a while in the 5th Avenue branch of the New York Public Library (I’ve written about this before), which means there is one particular exhibit I’ve seen more than once. This exhibit is entitled Treasures of the New York Public Library.

And wow.

That little stuffed bear you see on the cover of the guide book is Winnie the Pooh. Doesn’t look like the Disney version, right? That’s because this bear isn’t a media nightmare, but the actual stuffed animal that A.A. Milne used to tell stories to his young son, Christopher Robin, about at bedtime. Knowing that, you can probably guess the identities of the other little animals there.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This exhibition proves that the NYPL has collected broadly in the entire Western canon. You want a Gutenberg Bible? Check. A First Folio? Ditto. Handwritten music by Beethoven? Step over here, good sir.

Better still, the NYPL has broad holdings in the literature of other cultures, whether it be East Asian or Islamic, which show the rich tapestry of human creation.

The Library is also set in a diverse and multicultural setting and its collection reflects this. Instead of focusing on only the major high points that formed our culture, it also looks at the streams that flow almost unnoticed into the greater whole, but that represent a very specific people–especially other cultures in New York–in a specific time period. So you have fascinating glimpses into subcultures that, though they might never have been impactful, are still interesting.

With the exception of these last, most of the displays in the exhibit are such that, anywhere else, each individual exhibit would headline the exhibition. Here, some of the glories get lost in the even greater glories around them, and they create an almost overwhelming exhibit that you can see time and again and never tire of.

Gustavo Bondoni has recently completed the Emily Plair Trilogy with the final novel, Amalgam. Find out what happens to each of the characters in the satisfying conclusion, which you can purchase here.

More Cultural Wonder

I’ve mentioned my love of Fine Books & Collections here before. What I probably didn’t mention is that, due to the fact that the Argentine postal system appears to hate magazine subscriptions (I’m convinced they lose every issue on purpose), I have to send them to my brother’s house in the US and grab them if I happen to be in the country.

This results in my having batches to read at any one time, so here are the latest pair I’ve read: Summer and Autumn 2021.

As I’m a genre reader and writer, the article on Niel Gaiman’s illustrated books has to be the highlight of the summer issue for me. But there’s so much to love in these magazines that it’s hard to focus on that alone. After all these publications are a cultural education, and they showcase maps, art and, of course, books on every subject. Still, illustrated fantasy has to take top billing in my own particular case. But another beautiful article featured the maps of MacDonald Gill.

The cover of the Autumn issue was, to me, much more evocative. Though not linked to a specific article, it underlines the eclectic nature of the magazine – it’s an advertisement for travel on a train from Portland to San Francisco courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The most interesting parts of this mag (to be fair, I find something interesting on every page, but I need to try to make sense of it for you guys), were the two major articles–one on the Federal Writer’s Project and another on the illustrated biological books of Mark Catesby.

If you can ever grab an issue of this mag, do so. It’s more than a look at collector’s books – it’s a trip into a different world where everything has cultural value, revealed to you by the magazine’s writers.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest novel is a dark historical fantasy entitled The Swords of Rasna, in which the Etruscan armies attempt to hold the Roman legions at bay… by any means necessary. You can check it out here.

What I’d do if I Won the Lottery

Here at Classically Educated, we’re unabashed anglophiles. But we’re also just a tiny bit elitist, so the parts of England we like aren’t the drear suburbs or the pubs frequented by football hooligans. Instead, we’re drawn to the cultural stuff and to places that Wodehouse would have written about.

If we could, we’d move straight to Castle Blandings, but since that is a fictional place, we have to search elsewhere for the kind of house to buy if we ever win the lottery (or publish a bestselling book that nets trillions).

The English Country House, by James Peill is the kind of book in which to lose yourself on a lazy afternoon. It’s a profile of ten stately manors owned by the same family for a looong time, sometimes centuries.

And it’s a wonderful thing. There’s just something about English country houses as opposed to French Chateaux or Italian Palazzos that makes me want to live in one (even if I could do without the forty-odd bedrooms that some of these have). I suspect the reason they’re so pleasant is that even the larger rooms are somehow inviting (it’s hard to say cozy when one of the rooms in this book is literally the one whose dimensions were used to set the size of official Badminton courts). They are places you want to spend some time sitting and reading (or knitting, or talking) in.

Another thing that makes you want to transport yourself there is the fact that the English revere the lawn. So not only do you want to sit and read inside, you also want to spend considerable amounts of time sitting on a well-placed table int he lawy drinking tea with friends.

In an ideal world where I had enough money to do whatever the hell I wanted, I would have a tough time choosing between buying an English country house and its equivalent in Tuscany. In the end, I suspect I’d probably end up choosing the Green and Pleasant land over the land of my ancestors.

In the meantime, I can always revisit this book and be inspired to remember what could happen if one of my books makes it mega-huge. Intellectually, I know it isn’t likely, but you’d be surprised to learn just how much motivation can come from unlikely dreams.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest book is entitled The Swords of Rasna. It’s a dark historical fantasy in which Etruscan black magic attempts to keep Rome at bay. You can check the book out here… and if you get about ten million of your friends to buy a copy, Gustavo will have enough money to make a down payment on the house he has in mind!

When the New Yorker’s Dichotomy Explodes

Even though (or perhaps because…) it so often acts smugly superior, I enjoy reading The New Yorker. I feel comfortable in the sort of layman’s highbrow ambience they cultivate (this probably says a lot about me, but I’ll leave what that might be as an exercise for the reader).

It’s quite clear that this particular magazine isn’t aimed specifically at me, however, as politics in Argentina are different from those in those in the US, but it’s close enough that I don’t mind. The target audience is obviously moneyed, well-educated city dwellers who lean liberal. Most true progressives will be lacking the money or the education to truly appreciate the mag in my opinion, but they’ll like some of the politics.

Even though my own politics lean a little right of the mag (I’m a moderate), I find it a pleasant enough read, with some thoughtful pieces.

But every once in a while, an issue like the one from March 15th, 2021 comes along which is more amusing than pleasant (still perfectly fine, but less engaging intellectually). These are the issues in which The New Yorker‘s fine staff abdicates its position and allows the magazine to be put together by the editors of the Daily Worker.

Sure, a deeper left lean might seem to be a logical extension of the magazine’s liberal stance, but it’s amusing to think what the mag’s normal readers would think of it. These are people who spend 9 dollars on a magazine, and who are very unlikely to suddenly decide that their wealth should be redistributed. I would say that New Yorker readers are the very definition of the moneyed Bourgeoisie that real socialists would line up against the wall… and who enjoy all this talk of diversity and equity as a way to relieve their guilt at the fact that they are affluent and very comfortable.

If some of the sillier attitudes from this issue were to take root in society at large, The New Yorker‘s readership would likely evaporate in a spate of revolutionary zeal.

Fortunately, however, that is unlikely to happen, and TNY’s weirdly socialist issues of this era will simply be remembered as part of the corporate virtue-signaling we’ve all gotten used to over the past years. A marketing ploy aimed at Twitter users with no real meaning in the outside world.

Perhaps the best thing about this mag is that even when the lean is excessive, there are interesting articles to read (yes, even the ones that are tendentious can be fascinating if read with an open mind). The mag asks some wonderful questions and goes in depth to help the reader understand the issues behind them. The honesty behind this allows the reader to come to their own conclusions about the issues, even if the articles do paint one side as the good guys and one side as the bad.

No matter what your politics, the articles on current events make for great reading. The writing is of the very highest level even when the investigation might be superficial (not always the case, but when it happens, you tend to forgive it because the writing makes things so clear).

So every reader will understand what the issues are. And once you get there you don’t really need to worry about the conclusion the author wants you to arrive at. Intelligent readers will supply their own, or none at all.

So if the Daily Worker has temporarily taken over the office, it really doesn’t matter. It’s just a veneer of virtue, completely meaningless to those who can read between the lines.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer from Argentina whose literary works include the linked story collection “Safe and Sorry”, which you can check out here.

And Sometimes the New Yorker Fails

The best part of The New Yorker is probably that feeling of being immersed in a comfortable world of intellectuality where an attempt is made to discuss things like reasonable adults while keeping the infantile extremist dialogue of the far left and far right, which is taking over the rest of the world, out of it. The perfect spot to read this magazine would be in a leather chair in the corner of a good home library (wood-paneled walls would complete it perfectly). Always a lovely experience.

That’s not where this issue fails. It manages to keep the genteel veneer on its treatment of controversial issues (unabashedly from the left side of the spectrum), but it did miss on its coverage of the Chilean constitutional crisis. In attempting to make the Chilean story fit the current fashionable narrative, they published an article which paints Chile as a land of inequity which needed a new political system.

While it’s undeniable that every country in Latin America is ripe for reform, the article barely glossed over the fact that Chile truly was an oasis in the wilderness that is Latin America, and one of the pillars of the fact that it’s the best country in the region was the constitution. And now, a year later, they have a constitutional crisis with the process mired in the deepest of swamps. The left thinks that this is an opportunity to sink the single working economy in Latin America. The right thinks it has to defend everything Pinochet put into the original document. And the people now understand they they voted incorrectly when they decided to completely overhaul a working document instead of updating it progressively.

So yeah, I enjoyed this mag because that sense of genteel intellectuality, that progressive illusion that the world isn’t a hard-edged dog-eat-dog place, is utterly intact. But I was irritated by the over-simplification of something right next door to me.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer from Argentina whose latest book of literary fiction, Safe and Sorry, is a collection of liked stories that explore the world we live in from the point of view of the people doing the living. You can check it out here.

Did The New Yorker Lean Moderate? The End of Days is Nigh.

I’m going to be honest, I had very few hopes for the October 5th, 2020 issue of The New Yorker. The cover was political and the little half cover which tells you what’s in the magazine said: “Why Biden Must Win.”

So I was expecting it to be a prog-leaning rant issue.

Now, I’m both a non-US-citizen and a moderate, so I have very little love for the former US president, but reading an entire magazine written by his most radicalized opponents is as vomit-inducing as reading Trump’s twitter account. And that part of the magazine read exactly how you’d have expected, a laundry list of the Democratic Party’s election arguments.

That’s not why one reads The New Yorker.

Of course, the cultural section is also politically driven to a degree, with certain artists who’d never get a mention being included for the sake of diversity–but that’s fine. It’s easy to tell which are really good and which are just modern examples of angry political activists creating crap art or music or cinema.

The meat of this issue, however, is utterly brilliant.

First off, there’s an article arguing for the immediate opening of schools. This isn’t some far-right conspiracy-theory stuff, though: it’s science driven, measured and intelligent. It shows that the people who were against the reopening of schools for the 2020-21 year were driven exclusively by incorrect data (ministerpreted by politicians) and blind following of political leaders. A wonderfully unexpected piece.

Then we had an interview with Marilynne Robinson whose work seems to be anything but progressive. Another intelligent piece about an intelligent writer. And, though the piece on Artemisia Gentileschi might seem fundamentally feminist, it turns out that it intelligently argues against the fundamentalist feminism in some of the narrative about Gentileschi, and analyzes her as she would probably have wanted to be studied: as a brilliant painter who saw the world through female eyes.

All in all, a really strong issue, despite the framing, which was unfortunate.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel is a science fiction thriller entitled Splinter. If you’ve ever wondered how the limits between man and machine will be blurred in the future, you can check it out here.

Bright Young Things Satirized

My copy of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies (I read the one in the picture) had an intro by Waugh that stated that, at one point in the writing of the book, he’d gone from gleeful to bitter–although he doesn’t say so, I assume it’s because of his divorce from his wife (it’s his own fault. When A dude named Evelyn marries a girl named Evelyn, it can’t end well).

That comment began to worry me about halfway through the book. You see, the first part of Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite pieces of writing ever. The description of aristocratic college life in the 1920s has always seemed to me to represent a perfect idyll (and if you want more of it, but from the academic side, I strongly recommend The Inklings of Oxford), while the second half, the “serious” half, dropped off sharply. I was enjoying the pell-mell anarchy of Vile Bodies, and I didn’t want that to happen in this one.

Luckily, it wasn’t possible–at least not for me–to easily separate Waugh’s biting satire of the “gleeful” part from the bitterness he says happened in the second section. Not on a first reading, anyway.

The book continues as it started, with the nuttiness of young people discovering their independence in a time just coming off the repressive age. While it can’t rival Gatsby as the ultimate expression of the Roaring Twenties, it does give you just enough reality beneath the exaggeration to give one a sense of what the London scene looked like.

As with Gatsby, it was a great time to be alive (as long as you were in the right set, of course).

The temptation here is to compare this one with Scoop, as they are both similar in conception: take an institution (journalism in Scoop, the Bright Young Things in Vile Bodies) and go to town on the satire. It’s a valid comparison, but Scoop is both funnier (unless you’re easily offended, in which case we pity you) and more chaotic, while Vile Bodies, though good, does fall a little flat at the end. It’s probably very symbolic, but I’m reading this one as a regular reader, for the fun of it, and have little interest in social commentary about stuff that happened almost a hundred years ago.

As such, it’s a good book, and I have yet to find a Waugh that I didn’t like, but it isn’t quite up to the wonderfulness (I was sure the autocorrector would clobber wonderfulness, but apparently it’s a real word. Who knew?) of the first half of Brideshead and the entirety of Scoop. Still better than most everything else, of course.

Read Waugh. Don’t let his books go out of print. If not for you, do it for future generations.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer. His literary fiction is collected in the linked story Love and Death. You can check it out here.