2 comments about Streets of the Near West Side (2nd Edition).

1. Streets of the Near West Side is supposed to be a Chicago history book about one small neighborhood, but it's much more. It's about who the area's streets are named after, so it tells the stories of Presidents, Indians, Civil and Revolutionary War battles, and a lot of other quirky, odd, and fun information that you didn't learn about in high school history. At 117 pages, it can be read in one sitting. You can't put it down! You don't have to be a Chicagoan--just a lover of biography and history



2. I loved reading this book. It is an enjoyable, clearly-written introduction to a neighborhood that was "home" to thousands of Chicago's immigrants, including many of my ancestors. "Streets of the Near West Side" goes beyond those facts provided by such genealogical sources as Censuses. It can help family researchers develop a better understanding of their ancestor's "new neighborhood" in America. So, open the book, along with a map of Chicago, and learn how this neighborhood's history intertwines with the names of its streets.

No comments about Gullible's Travels; and Other Stories.

1 comments about City Smart: Chicago.

1. CITY SMART: CHICAGO is a great book about the Chicago metro area. It tells you where the best shopping, food, and transportation are, as well as describing many of the neighborhoods in both the city and the suburbs. Being that this book was written in 1999, some of what it tells you does need to be taken like the humor in ALONG CAME POLLY, SABRINA, THE TEENAGE WITCH, 13 GOING ON 30, SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE, DRIVE ME CRAZY, and the two GARFIELD movies, but it's still worth picking up.

5 comments about Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour.

1. In 1849 Gustave Flaubert was twenty eight. He had an air of athletic vigor. He was the son of a doctor. He had always written. At this point he had finished THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY. Friends suggested he use a story known to him, perhaps through his father, that became the basis for MADAME BOUVARY.

   Maxime Du Camp accompanied Gustave to Egypt. France had maintained a controlling political interest in Egypt. Flaubert wrote that in Egypt everyone with clean clothes beats everyone with dirty clothes. Europeans were called Franks.

   He wrote that the desert began at the gates of Alexandria. It is suggested that the very act of keeping a travel diary moved Flaubert from being a Romantic to becoming a Realist. There was a sunrise. They saw from the top of pyramids the valley of the Nile being bathed in mist.

   The young men stared at the Sphinx. They visited the Coptic Church in Old Cairo. There were jugglers and acrobats and those very feared persons, snake charmers. Maxime Du Camp busied himself with photography throughout the trip. They saw dervishes. Flaubert described the water of the Nile. It was yellow and carried soil.

   They took a trip down the Nile. They passed Luxor. The mountains were dark indigo. They arrived at Thebes. They saw towns whose buildings were made of dried mud. They saw and described dancing in their writings. They traveled to Assuan. Du Camp's photographic record of temples became famous. Flaubert reported to his mother that there always seemed to be a temple buried up to its shoulders in sand.

   From Luxor to Karnak the great plain looked like an ocean. One's first impression of Karnak was that it was a place of giants. They went to the Red Sea at Koseir. Flaubert found the boats terrifying and was pleased that he did not have to use one. He thought that they carried the plague.

   Flaubert's impressions of Egypt returned to him when he wrote SALAMMBO according to Du Camp. It seemed to Du Camp that Flaubert disdained the journey and looked at nothing. On the contrary, Egypt gave Flaubert his first comprehensive view of colors.

   This is an elegant account of a writer's response to an alien culture. The book consists of journal entries and letters of Flaubert, writings of Du Camp, notes of the editor, and pictures. All in all it is a most interesting compilation.




2. Kerouac isn't qualified to hold Flaubert's pen.
   This is the real deal. From Christendom to the Orient Flaubert sails and records his thoughts, observations and indulengences in his usual excellent prose.
   A must read.



3. I was required to read Flaubert's account of his travels in Egypt, when I was in my senior year of college. We were doing an extensive study on the effects of the mentality of "us" versus "them." A prime example was in the travels, made by Europeans, to the East, as well as to other countries that became colonized parts of North and South America. Though, many people consider this a classic novel (hence, it is one of Penguin Classics' "classic" pieces of literature).
   
   I found Flaubert's observations of Egypt to be pretentious, arrogant, chauvinistic and offensive. His approach was one of several ignorant examples demonstrated amongst other Europeans, who went on to colonize countries, as part of a movement of rescue and possession. As we read of his numerous sexual exploits with the local women, his responses (often of distaste) to the local customs, and his general air of boredom, he epitomizes the example of a bored, rather spoiled man-child, with nothing better to do but objectify and criticize the customs of a culture foreign to his own.



4. "Let me begin by giving you a great hug, holding my breath as long as possible, so that as I exhale onto this paper your spirit will be next to me."
   
   This is the book I read the most. I read it at random, sometimes rereading passages I read only days ago. It's not the exoticism that allures but the colonial/imperial mind at work comprehending and quantizing the East. Read Said's Orientalism to better understand the situation under which these journals and letters were written. Flaubert cuts through Egypt like a shark, almost in on his own joke. Initially he seems to take a typically orientalist posture scandalizing the sexuality of the savages. Upon further investigation one can see that his tone is ambivalent yet cooly giddy at the thought of westerners being perturbed at such behaviour. It's almost as if he knows that the West is the oddball out and everyone else is normal.



5. Having enjoyed "Salammbo," which is a technicolor sandals and swords Panavision epic a century before its time, I wondered about Flaubert's earlier travels in the fall of 1849 in the desert realm. He probably behaved no differently than any other twenty-seven-year-old aesthete from Europe among the natives, and this remains less an indictment of "orientalism" in our P.C.-sensitive era than a pair of journals by him and his companion Maxime du Camp, with commentary by the Flaubert expert Francis Steegmuller. Parts ramble on without a lot of interest, and other sections captivate you, but like any diary and the expanded journal entries made later by Flaubert, the work as a whole is more a miscellaneous notebook of impressions and observations, much as one might expect of this formidably articulate tourist.
   
   I think the relatively few sexual episodes get, if understandably for their candor, too much of the attention here compared to the bulk of this slender book, which is given over to the sights. There's amidst the itinerary and dutifully recorded letters to his mother many marvelous descriptions. Not all were addressed to his mother! You get the sense of the languid pace of a brothel, an early visitor's curious wanderings among the colossal statues of Luxor or Thebes, the sun rising over the graffitied Pyramids, his first sight of the Sphinx-- Steegmuller's notes remind us how magical this would have been before the ubiquitous photographs-- and the decaying splendors of Karnak.
   
   Here's a sample of the prose about this last attraction. "The first impression of Karnak is of a land of giants. The stone grilles still existing in the windows give the scale of these formidable beings. As you walk among the forest of tall columns you ask yourself whether men weren't served up whole on skewers, like larks. In the first courtyard, after the two great pylons as you come from the Nile, there is a fallen column all of whose segments are in order, despite the crash, exactly as would a fallen pile of checkers. We return via the avenue of sphinxes: not one has his head-- all decapitated. White vultures with yellow bills are flying around a mound, around a carcass; to the right three have alighted and calmly watch us pass. An Arab trots swiftly on his dromedary." (169)
   
   Out of such awesome silence, Flaubert also gained inspiration for "Madame Bovary," unlikely as it may seem. He also learned early about the fickleness of women, no matter where they might live, in his closing comments to Louise Colet about an "almeh," a lady of the night who often entertained him, Kuchuk: "You and I are thinking of her, but she is certainly not thinking of us. We are weaving an aesthetic around her, whereas this particular very interesting tourist who was vouchsafed the honours of her couch has vanished from her memory completely, like many others. Ah! Traveling makes one modest-- you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." (220)
   
   These remarks remind us that Flaubert cannot be seen as a mere pawn of mid 19-c imperial strategems. He took advantage of his position, but he also realizes his complicity and the whole game that he by his privilege is able to indulge himself in as long as he pays the price. Another will always be found to accept his payment and render services accordingly, Those who denigrate Flaubert's typically frank account for its coolly documented exchanges might well contemplate how we today are enmeshed in a far greater contest, that began in such initial encounters, a century and a half before the vogue of globalization.

No comments about Insight FlexiMap Chicago (Insight Fleximaps).

1 comments about Fodor's Chicago 2007 (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1. This is the most "up-to date" guide that we used. We also liked it because of the HIGHLIGHTS section in each category and for the excellent maps. We carried this guide with us the whole week.

No comments about Chicago (American Traveler Ser).

No comments about Rural Images: Estate Maps in the Old and New Worlds (The Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography).

2 comments about Resurrection Mary (Haunted Illinois).

1. I decided to give this author one last try. I'm sorry I did. "The first in-depth account of the history, mystery & hauntings of Archer Avenue"? Give me a break. Chicago author Ursula Bielski documented the story of Archer Avenue with grace and depth nearly ten years ago, and better than anyone could hope to. Do yourself a favor and read her book, "Chicago Haunts" for a painful, insightful look into Chicago's most famous ghost story . . . and some of the best "ghost writing" out there.



2. Growing up on the south side, I'm well acquainted with the legend of Mary. While Taylor provides a collection of her activities and sightings, others, as the other reviewer noted, have done a better job of bringing her story to life. While this is a decent collection of the stories and such, it barely touches at the spirit of, well, Mary's spirit. Maybe you'd be better off traveling down Archer Avenue one wintry night, looking for a young lady in a white wisp of a dress....

No comments about Birdless Summer (China : Autobiography, History, Book 3).