This wonderful book flows along like a river. Sometimes it bumps into boulders, swirls in an odd corner, or leaps down a waterfall. Connell throws in extraneous facts, skips from here to there,and gives enjoyable reading. He would be an author of great stature if he could refrain from his heavy-handed pose of jaded cynicism. Yes, we know there are nasty people in the world without being reminded at every possible cue. Yes, we know that many people in the English speaking world are execrable, too, even though we have produced nobody of Hitler's rank: where he uses Dresden to provide an example of an apartment crumbling during WWII, London also provided plenty of firebombed apartments, and they didn't even start the war. And anyway, all that is thoroughly traveled territory, inappropriate for a book that takes us into untraveled lands and unknown people.

These are great stories, told superbly. One thing puzzled me, though. Connell's eloquence failed him on perhaps the greatest journey of all. Compare his telling of the Cabeza de Vaca to the same story in DeVoto's Course of Empire. Strange.

But don't let this get in your way. Read and enjoy!

Evan Connell knows how to capture the reader with an array of fascinating details woven into wonderful journeys that weave
through different corridors of human history.

Take the adventure and read this collection of essays!

I first read most of these essays the year I graduated from college. (All but a couple were collected in earlier books which are now quite hard to find.) They are beautifully written, exciting, and fascinating. Connell has an amazing breadth of subjects and communicates complex ideas with ease and clarity. Even years later, I find myself thinking about his essays on the race to the South Pole or near eastern archaeology. In fact, this is that rare book I'd recommend to almost anyone of just about any age. It's full of exciting stories, intelligent analysis, and honest-to-god wit. I'm so glad to see these essays collected in one volume. Hoorah! [Connell's Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge are also fantastic.]

simply one of the best books I've ever read. India will exasperate you and enlighten you. Through her and the other characters in Connell's masterpiece, you will have a feeling that your own life is unfolding before your eyes, complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is simultaneously a disturbing and reassuring experience. Don't miss it.

Evan S. Connell's "Mr. Bridge" stands, together with its companion novel, "Mrs. Bridge", as one of the outstanding works of Twentieth century American fiction. The two works, taken together, form the brilliantly wrought portrait of an upper middle class marriage in the years preceding and encompassing World War II. Linear in its narrative and meticulously realistic in its style, "Mr. Bridge" tells the story of Walter Bridge, a financially successful, but emotionally stunted, lawyer who lives out his proper married life in the wealthy Mission Hills suburb of Kansas City.

Mr. Bridge recognizes that his life did not begin until he knew his wife, India Bridge. His marriage is, in this sense, important to him. But he cannot articulate his deep feelings for his wife and, ultimately, gives up trying to express any emotion at all. "So the years passed, they had three children and accustomed themselves to a life together, and eventually Mr. Bridge decided that his wife should expect nothing more of him. After all, he was an attorney rather than a poet; he could never pretend to be what he was not."

Cold and emotionally repressed, Mr. Bridge spends all of his time at the office, becoming involved with his family only when necessary to ensure that proper middle class respectability is maintained. He spends his time visiting the bank, scrutinizing his stock certificates and counting his profits. Indeed, he is so focussed on wealth that he surprises his wife and children with stock certificates of Kansas City Power & Light on Christmas morning, only to take the gifts back into his possession so that he can properly manage them.

Manipulative and controlling, Mr. Bridge persuades his reluctant daughter, after she has won a contest, to accept a pony as a prize, even though she would much rather have a bicycle. When the day comes to accept the prize, "Mr. Bridge could not attend the presentation ceremony because he was again spending Saturday at the office." Like his self-centered Christmas present of utility company stock, this prize, too, becomes cheerless for his daughter because of his need to impose his will.

Deeply bigoted, Mr. Bridge cannot tolerate Jews or Blacks very well. When he has an opportunity to take investment advice from an obviously successful Jewish stockbroker, Mr. Bridge, instead, becomes offended by the man's ethnicity and ostensible pretension to be a successful upper middle class man like himself. Reluctantly shaking the man's hand, Mr. Bridge "could hardly restrain a shudder." Resonating with antisemitic feeling, "he withdrew his hand, which came away stickily. He wanted to wash it. His hand felt moist and unhealthy, as if during those few seconds it had become infected." Similarly, when his wife shows him horrifying pictures of a brutal lynching in the South, his only reaction is to ask, "what was this fellow doing that he shouldn't have been doing?"

A fiercely conservative man, with political views as deeply repressive as his stunted emotions, he cannot tolerate President Roosevelt. He even suggests that while Hitler was insane, "some of his ideas were sensible."

Indeed, the repressed feelings of Mr. Bridge find their darkest allusions in his feelings about his daughters, feelings that suggest powerful undercurrents of the sexuality that is absent from his marriage. Seeing his grown daughter, Carolyn, one night posing naked in front of a mirror, he cannot get her out of his mind. "He reminded himself that she was his daughter, but the luminous image returned like the memory of a dream."

"Mr. Bridge", like its companion novel, "Mrs. Bridge", is a stunning work of realism, a crystalline pure narrative of a marriage without feeling, a life without love, a man without the ability to move outside the bounds of middle class probity and respectability.

I read this right on the heals of Mrs. Bridge. What a pair. I couldn't put this book down, either.

I remember well the time when I first read "Son of a Morning Star" several years ago. I was about 10 and found it mesmerizing. You know the feeling when you absorb yourself into a book and suddenly find yourself in a daze, half in this world and half in that? I got that feeling reading "Son" and with only a few other books. I haven't felt that way about a book for many years now and had begun to think that it had something to do with youth, and I wouldn't experience that again. And for some reason I never bothered to read another book of Connell's.

Until yesterday, when I started reading "A Long Desire." And I got that same feeling reading it as I did years earlier with SOTMS. Connell is a fine stylist.

"A Long Desire" is about man's constant yearnings throughout legend and history to attain the unattainable. Always grasping at the stars just out of reach, chasing the rainbow for that pot of gold, looking for that lost city that must be just over the next hill.

Through several interconnected essays Connell writes about quests: the searches for Atlantis, Prester John, the Northwest Passage, El Dorado, Cibola; the Children's Crusade to liberate the Holy Land; Columbus's search for the Indies; the thirst for knowledge and experiments in alchemy.

Most of the things they were searching for had a actual basis in reality: the Seven Cities of Cibola really did exist, but they were just a group of seven Southwest Indian villages with very little gold. And the men who found it went looking elsewhere for the Seven Cities. It is the dream men strive for. "It may be that treasure exists for the purpose of tantalizing us," Connell writes. "If so, how strange. Why should something we passionately desire be subtly withheld?"

Strictly speaking, all the people described in Connell's book were failures. None of them really found what they were looking for, that long desire. However, dreams aren't entirely valueless, and history would be pretty dull reading if it was without the passion of "a long desire."

this book held me captive from begining to end. The first page he describes the death of his brother, pulled apart while chained to horses, sort of a medievel torture. The rest of the book follows his search for his brother, in a sort of "wandering mind", best described as rantings. (I am not a poetry critic nor will I ever pretend to be, so forgive the short descriptions)

This is the first book of poetry I ever picked up since reading Homer and I am stuck now, looking for something or some author that can match the magnitude of how wonderful this one was.

It reads as though you have entered his mind for this fascinating trip through a bit of lunacy and mind wandering. If you like th strange and surreal, you will love this one!

When I finished this book I started raving about it to all my friends. "What's it about?" they asked. "Um, this housewife in Kansas City." "Yeah, but what happens?" "Er... nothing really. She gets married and has kids and they grow up."

But trying to summarize "Mrs. Bridge" cannot evoke the brilliance and heartbreak of this novel. Evan Connell understands his characters so well that he simply lets them be, allows them to breathe. "Simply" is the wrong word; few writers are gifted enough to pull off an essentially plotless novel. But "Mrs. Bridge" is never boring.

Incidentally, another reviewer writes about wanting to smack Mrs. Bridge's face. Such a reaction is the exact opposite of mine. Yes, she is guilty of class and racial prejudices; yes, she is repressed. All those with no sins cast the first stone, or smack, and get on with your righteous lives. For the rest of us, it's hard not to sympathize with a woman who struggles all her life to do the right thing, despite having a vague sense that she has never learned the right thing. She longs for something else, something more, but she is barely aware of the longing.

Some day this book will achieve its rightful place as a masterpiece of American realist fiction. But you should read it before that.

Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" is one of the truly outstanding works of Twentieth century American literature, a restrained, yet brilliantly wrought fictional portrait of upper middle class married life in the decades surrounding World War II. Connell tells the story of India Bridge in 117 short chapters, each a spare vignette of her enervated life in the perfectly manicured "country-club district" of an affluent Kansas City suburb. Linear in its narrative and meticulously realistic in its style, "Mrs. Bridge" follows India's life from marriage, to the birth of three children, to the rejection by those children of the repressed life of their parents as they grow into adults, to lonely suburban widowhood. While it is, at its heart, a grim tale of one woman's life of repression and, ultimately, loneliness and resignation, Connell's flawless and restrained narrative ultimately leaves the reader feeling exhilarated at the sheer literary achievement of "Mrs. Bridge".

Ostensibly the story of a marriage, Mr. Bridge is noticeably absent from much of the narrative. A successful lawyer, he is a man who is unable to express love or affection for his wife or his children, a man who is focussed on becoming "rich and successful," the epitome of the status-conscious husband and father whose identity lies in material possessions. "The family saw very little of him. It was not unusual for an entire week to pass without any of the children seeing him. On Sunday morning they would come downstairs and he . . . greeted them pleasantly and they responded deferentially, and a little wistfully because they missed him. Sensing this, he would redouble his efforts at the office in order to give them everything they wanted."

Mrs. Bridge, too, is powerfully repressed, unable to articulate her feelings of dissatisfaction, a woman who is beholden to the expectations of respectability and obsessed with appearances. "She brought up her children very much as she herself had been brought up, and she hoped that when they were spoken of it would be in connection with their nice manners, their pleasant dispositions, and their cleanliness, for these were qualities she valued above all others." Thus, she ultimately drives all three of her children from her life, her unthinking obeisance to social convention destroying any thread of relationship that she might have had with them. Her oldest daughter, "curiously dark", flees to New York City, where she pursues her more unconventional dreams. Her second daughter, an accomplished golfer, enters an ill-fated marriage with a college dropout who cannot provide the country club life that she has been weaned to expect. Her son joins the army, asserting an act of individuality that Mrs. Bridge never seems able to accept or reconcile.

It is, most notably, however, in her relationships with her peers-with the other affluent housewives of the "country-club district"-that the grim and vapid nature of Mrs. Bridge's life becomes most apparent. In particular, her friend Grace Barron becomes a kind of outward manifestation of India Bridge's discontent, someone who lives a life of equal desperation, but not so quietly as Mrs. Bridge. Grace Barron "was a puzzle and was disturbing" to Mrs. Bridge. Why? Because she actually questioned the life she led, moving outside the banal, the conventional, if only in her discourse. As Grace once said to Mrs. Bridge: "India, I've never been anywhere or done anything or seen anything. I don't know how other people live, or think, even how they believe. Are we right? Do we believe the right things?"

Unlike Mrs. Bridge, who talked of "antique silver, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, the price of margarine as compared to butter, or what the hemline was expected to do," Grace Barron talked of "art, politics, astronomy, literature." Ultimately, Grace cannot cope with the ennui, the claustrophobia of her life, and she does what Mrs. Bridge ultimately lacks the fortitude to do; in a sense, Grace is a sort of "double" who acts out the dark alternative to Mrs. Bridge's repression. And when Grace does act, all that comes to Mrs. Bridge's mind is something Grace once said to her: "Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale-the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?"

Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" is one of the truly outstanding works of Twentieth century American literature, a restrained, yet brilliantly wrought fictional portrait of upper middle class married life in the decades surrounding World War II. Connell tells the story of India Bridge in 117 short chapters, each a spare vignette of her enervated life in the perfectly manicured "country-club district" of an affluent Kansas City suburb. Linear in its narrative and meticulously realistic in its style, "Mrs. Bridge" follows India's life from marriage, to the birth of three children, to the rejection by those children of the repressed life of their parents as they grow into adults, to lonely suburban widowhood. While it is, at its heart, a grim tale of one woman's life of repression and, ultimately, loneliness and resignation, Connell's flawless and restrained narrative ultimately leaves the reader feeling exhilarated at the sheer literary achievement of "Mrs. Bridge".

Ostensibly the story of a marriage, Mr. Bridge is noticeably absent from much of the narrative. A successful lawyer, he is a man who is unable to express love or affection for his wife or his children, a man who is focussed on becoming "rich and successful," the epitome of the status-conscious husband and father whose identity lies in material possessions. "The family saw very little of him. It was not unusual for an entire week to pass without any of the children seeing him. On Sunday morning they would come downstairs and he . . . greeted them pleasantly and they responded deferentially, and a little wistfully because they missed him. Sensing this, he would redouble his efforts at the office in order to give them everything they wanted."

Mrs. Bridge, too, is powerfully repressed, unable to articulate her feelings of dissatisfaction, a woman who is beholden to the expectations of respectability and obsessed with appearances. "She brought up her children very much as she herself had been brought up, and she hoped that when they were spoken of it would be in connection with their nice manners, their pleasant dispositions, and their cleanliness, for these were qualities she valued above all others." Thus, she ultimately drives all three of her children from her life, her unthinking obeisance to social convention destroying any thread of relationship that she might have had with them. Her oldest daughter, "curiously dark", flees to New York City, where she pursues her more unconventional dreams. Her second daughter, an accomplished golfer, enters an ill-fated marriage with a college dropout who cannot provide the country club life that she has been weaned to expect. Her son joins the army, asserting an act of individuality that Mrs. Bridge never seems able to accept or reconcile.

It is, most notably, however, in her relationships with her peers-with the other affluent housewives of the "country-club district"-that the grim and vapid nature of Mrs. Bridge's life becomes most apparent. In particular, her friend Grace Barron becomes a kind of outward manifestation of India Bridge's discontent, someone who lives a life of equal desperation, but not so quietly as Mrs. Bridge. Grace Barron "was a puzzle and was disturbing" to Mrs. Bridge. Why? Because she actually questioned the life she led, moving outside the banal, the conventional, if only in her discourse. As Grace once said to Mrs. Bridge: "India, I've never been anywhere or done anything or seen anything. I don't know how other people live, or think, even how they believe. Are we right? Do we believe the right things?"

Unlike Mrs. Bridge, who talked of "antique silver, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, the price of margarine as compared to butter, or what the hemline was expected to do," Grace Barron talked of "art, politics, astronomy, literature." Ultimately, Grace cannot cope with the ennui, the claustrophobia of her life, and she does what Mrs. Bridge ultimately lacks the fortitude to do; in a sense, Grace is a sort of "double" who acts out the dark alternative to Mrs. Bridge's repression. And when Grace does act, all that comes to Mrs. Bridge's mind is something Grace once said to her: "Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale-the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?"

I was saddened when I finished Connell's work -- saddened because I didn't want it to be over. I wanted to read it forever. Connell's book is an absolutely fabulous read! I liken it to sitting around a campfire and listening to him tell marvelous stories surrounding the players, both white (and black), and native American. He even holds your interest while tracing the path of a pocket watch taken in the battle. Connell gives a very good account of Custer, Reno, Benteen, Gall, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Rain-in-the-Face, and virtually every player in that conflict. When Connell flitters about going from one theme to another, it is fun to follow him. I cannot recommend this book too highly. Read it over and over again!!!

This book, in my opinion, is a superb introduction into the world of Custeriana and other characters and invents in U.S. history of that time.

What makes this book unique in it's portayal of the General and the events surrounding the famous last battle is that Evan S.Connell, who is primarily I believe a novellist, approached this topic with absolutely no agenda of his own on the subject.

Whilst this may not satisfy many historians it makes for great reading!! Making this a book ideal for somebody new to the subject wanting to learn more or the learned reader who just wants to be entertained and not swamped with complex time theories or arguments over the size of the village etc. There are plenty of books on the market that do this much better but not all are always as enjoyable.

Connell just reports on various different accounts in an easy going prose without really putting his own slant on the proceedings. He simply just writes about Custer, Benteen, Crazy Horse et all, giving examples of both the good, the bad and the downright ugly in all of them.

It is left to the reader to make up his mind on the events and actions of those who took part in them. Too many historians come to this powerful and contreversial subject with their own ideas on what happened, be it pro or anti-Custer, and this has a tendancy to sometimes, neccessitate a need to distort or bend the facts accordingly.

Refreshingly you come away from this book wanting to know more about the protaganists involved but without having a biased opinion on them. The General himself comes over in a fairly good light considering at the time of publication his character was probably at it's nadir.However Connell also shows up the darker side of the man that made him the paradoxical figure he was and why he remains so fascinating even after all this time.

Indeed what the book clearly shows is that what makes this such an enduring legend in America's history is that arguably it's most famous, or notorious, soldier left his mark not by a glourious victory but rather(as it was thought of at the time)a fairly ignominious defeat.What Connell does do is also give the credit where it's due to the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes at the Little Big Horn who actually won the battle that day, which tends to get forgotten in a lot of literature ammassed on this subject.

This was the first serious book that I bought on George Armstrong Custer and back in 1984(which I think was the year I got it) living in the United Kingdom there wasn't many books around at that time specifically on this subject. I found it an excellent starting point to begin further and more in depth reading on the General and his last battle.It may seem an odd subject for a Yorkshireman to show an interset in(I think it might be Errol Flynn's fault!!)but this book certainly kick-started a long lasting interst in Custer and that particular area of American history.

I have read many books about Custer, Little Big Horn and the plains indian wars, but this one is truly the very best of the lot. Connell has given us an exellent biography of Custer, but we also get to know such men as Major Reno and Captain Benteen. Indians such as Sitting Bull, Gall and Crazy Horse are also prominently featured in this treasure of a book. This is so much more than a book about Custer and his last stand at Little Big Horn river in 1876. It's a book about the whole drama, that is the conquering of the west. Also, the photo section is exellent and the bibliography is unparalelled. Two very good maps helps the reader follow the movements in the 1876 indian campaign. If You're gonna buy just one book about the American west, please choose "Son Of The Morning Star". It's history, for sure, but it's not boring. It's also a source book in the best sence of the word, not to mention a literary masterpiece. Connell is a novelist, and it shows in his quick and precise eye for charaters in the play and their often peculiar behavior and actions. The heroes and/or villains is only so human in this highly entertaining book that leaves the reader wanting more. I have so far never read a better book, fact or fiction. Why don't You read it too?

These are two easy reading books that consist of short episodes in the lives of an "upper class" couple in Kansas City in the 1930s and 40s. Each book progresses through their lives, so you see them age and their children grow. The book "Mrs Bridge", characterizes her as a true ditz, the kinds who always says meaningless "right" things and rich woman preoccupied with shopping. Mr. Bridge is characterized as a remote, clueless kind of guy. The book ends with Mr. Bridge's death and his son sadly recognizing that his dad spent all his life trying to make life better for his family when all his family really wanted was some time with him. Showing the biases of the time of publication, Mr. Bridge becomes much more humane and likeable in the book about him. In "Mr. Bridge," even the annoying Mrs. Bridge is much more likeable. Even though set long ago, there are all sorts of insights that are very human. Everyone can see themselves in this book somewhere.

Connell does a superlative job of illustrating upper-middle class society in the 30's and 40's with these two novels. Each is a series of vignettes that serves to illuminate the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, through their interactions with each other, their family and the society they live in. Subtle, richly textured and very real - these are the people that lived ordinary lives. I recognized people I know in these portraits

Well, I can not say that W.D. Howells was another Nathaniel Hawthorne. But what I can say is that his "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is A LOT better than some books that were made famous (probably for political reasons). Do not expect the superb images and construction of Hawthorne. But what we CAN expect is a timeless message about society. At first Silas is a rich money grubbing monster. (Just think of Dickens' Scrooge.) He finds ways to cut his friends out of deals, alienates his family with the want of more money, and even gets his wife upset. Ah, but later things go bad, and he starts losing money. This is when the human side of him begins to show and he becomes a very sympathetic character. In my opinion, to enjoy this even more, you must assume that before the book opens, he WAS a good and decent man. Once he ran into immense wealth, he grew detestable. So while, this is not exactly a masterpiece, the degeneration of Silas and his return to humanity is ample material to carry this book and place it in the American Museum of Literature.

These days Howells is usually overlooked in favor of the more overtly urbane Henry James or the grittier Stephen Crane or Theodore Dreiser. That's a shame, since Howells at his best is a more varied and thought-provoking author than any of them. The Rise of Silas Lapham is Howells at his best. The title is quite ironic, of course, but ultimately spot-on, as Howells' nouveau-riche bumpkin is redeemed only in losing it all. Lapham is keenly drawn, alternately frustrating in his bluster and affected pompousness and endearing in his genuine (if sometimes poorly expressed) love for his family. Other characters are not so fortunate; one of his daughters remains mostly a cipher, and both Mrs. Lapham and Bromfield Corey, the rich scion of society whose favor Lapham so earnestly covets, are dangerously close to stock characters. Howells excels at elaborate descriptive prose focused on intricate detail, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Some elements of the plot may seem quaint to modern readers, but Howells does not treat them with condescension. The Rise of Silas Lapham is definitely a book of its time. Perhaps it is so rewarding because his time and ours are not necessarily so different as we think.

I've had William Dean Howells' "A Modern Instance" and "The Rise of Silas Lapham," like many, many other books on my bookshelf for a long time. A recent meeting of a reading group of mine finally allowed me to make the time to read Howells' 1885 work, "Silas Lapham". I am extraordinarily glad I did. From the start of the novel, we are drawn into the world of late 19th century Boston, post-Reconstruction America, where newly rich industrialists attempt to enter the society life of old money. Howells crafts an extraordinarily realistic look at the American Dream gone awry.

"The Rise of Silas Lapham" begins with an interview that a local newspaperman is doing of Colonel Silas Lapham, a mineral paint tycoon. Lapham's account of his rise from the backwoods of Vermont to his marriage, to service in the Civil War, to his propagation of a successful mineral paint business is chronicled and gives us a taste of the effort and perseverance necessary for his rise, as well indicating the possibility of some potential failings, especially with regard to his one-time partner, Milton Rogers. We soon learn that Mrs. Persis Lapham aided a society woman in distress the year before, and the return of her son, Tom Corey, from Texas, signals another sort of ambition on the part of the Lapham daughters, Irene and her older sister Penelope. The rest of the novel plays out the ways in which the Laphams try to parley their financial success into social status - and how the Laphams are affected by the gambit.

Howells explores a number of significant cultural issues in "Silas Lapham": isolationism, social adaptability, economic solvency among all classes, personal integrity and familial ties, and the relationship between literature and life. The fact that the story is set about 20 or so years after the end of the American Civil War sets an important and subtle context that runs throughout the novel and inflects all of the thematic elements. The ways that the characters interact, the way that the society functions, even though the majority of the novel takes place in Boston, is importantly affected by the fact that Reconstruction is drawing to a close, Manifest Destiny is in full swing, and ultimately, America was at a point of still putting itself together and trying to view itself as the "United" States.

Howells' treatment of the social interactions between the industrially rich Laphams and the old moneyed Coreys underscores the difficulty in creating and maintaining a national identity, especially when the people even in one northern city seem so essentially different. The romance story involving the Laphams and Tom Corey is obviously an important element of the story, and Howells does an amazing job of not allowing the romance plot to become as overblown and ludicrously sentimental as the works of fiction he critiques in discussions of novels throughout his own work. "The Rise of Silas Lapham" questions the nature of relationships, how they begin, how they endure - the contrast between the married lives of the Coreys and the Laphams is worth noting, as is the family dynamic in both instances.

I'm very pleased to have gotten a chance to read this novel. Generally when I say an author or a work has been neglected, I mean that it's been neglected primarily by me. Having turned an eye now to Howells, I am very impressed with the depth of his characterization, the ways he puts scenery and backdrop to work for him, the scope of his literary allusions, and his historical consciousness. This is certainly a great American novel that more people should read. It may not be exciting, but it is involving, and that is always an excellent recommendation.

The Alchymist's Journal, by Evan S. Connell, according to the inside cover is a fictional tour de force of rich historical re-creation and spectacular prose. A love for historical fiction, the description on the sleeve, and all of the great reviews on the back of the book convinced me to purchase this book. I need not have bothered. I found this book to be unreadable.

This book was most definitely not a rich historical re-creation. There was absolutely no historical atmosphere in this book. This alone would not make the book so terrible. I have read other historical novels that did not have a good medieval feel and still liked them. However, Connell seems to have gone out of his way to make this a hard to read book. The prose is not spectacular, it is incomprehensible. After attempting to read this book, I am convinced that all of the reviews on the back could in no way be about The Alchymist's Journal. They must be describing a different novel.

This is a short, challenging, brilliant book. It's not a traditional novel in the sense that it lacks a discernible plot. It is, rather, a series of journal entries each written by a different imagined character. The characters are developed only through the words they use in their journals. The characters are distinct personalities, what they have in common is that they are all practitioners of alchemy, or alchemical medecine, and as such, have world views quite different from that of any (well, most, at any rate) modern readers. Connell's writing perfectly captures the tone and spirit of arcane writings from the Renaissance and early modern period. Perhaps it helps to have studied the works of real historical alchemists to fully appreciate the feat of mimicry that Connell has achieved here. That he has crafted several distinct voices and characters in this fashion is nothing short of amazing.

3/4 through this i still periodically wanted to throw it at the wall. The author practices the mystification of old alchemists and contemporary language artists. While sometimes it seems to be a word salad gleaned from six obscure thesauruses, he really does unfold the world view of pre-scientific thought from superstition through rudimentary experiment to mysticism. Its Ken Wilbur's evolution of consciousness in antifiction form. Alchemy is not a material science; it is a qualitative knowledge all but lost to our time. In the tone of ecco and borges but more challenging. It wouldn't hurt to read a few histories of alchemy and medieval northern europe first. Check out What IS Painting for a much more accessible treatment.

Just to be clear on this point, Deus Lo Volt! is not a novel per se (or at least, not what I would think of as a novel). It certainly has nothing in common stylistically with the better historical fiction of Graves or the First Man in Rome. It is told in the style of a period history, perhaps as a piece of oral history written down. I must admit I found the style (and the total absence of dialog) rather tedious. For example, every other chapter seems to end with a lengthy rationalization (a.k.a. "rant") on the justness of the Crusades. Such text is also liberally sprinkled throughout the text. Authentic, perhaps, but I became rather tired of reading it after a while (and I think that seeing as we all now live in the 20th Century, most readers will probably agree with me on this point if nothing else).

When I first started reading the book, I found it tedious, boring, and unreadable. The "period recitation of history" style (with zero actual dialog) makes all the characters and events seem distant, indistinguishable, and flat, as if vainly trying to peer through the mist. Even the narrator is a distant, poorly-defined character.

And yet, I do still give it 3 stars - because despite all this, the oddity is that the book did end up capturing my attention. I can only assume it's because of my near-complete ignorance of the Crusades and of the entire time period. Despite a style which could charitably be called "difficult", a lot of stuff does happen, and being such a crucial event in history it is interesting. If you can get into the zone with the unusual perspective, it's an interesting book. My first attempt at reading it I couldn't find it and couldn't even make it through 50 pages; second try, though, I was taken in. Even if it's not going to make my Top N list this year.

Still, even if it is worth trying, I'm not sure this is not a book I would reccomend buying. Check it out of the library first (I'm told these still do exist in many areas of the country; here in the heart of Silicon Valley, I wouldn't know).

If you are a reader simply looking for something to keep you entertained while traveling, lying on the beach or some other pursuit just to pass the time, "Deus lo volt!" is probably not for you. If you are reading with all your twenty first century sensibilities brought to the fore, read something else. If, on the other hand, you have a lifelong fascination with history and seek insight into the mindset of people who lived during a time as different from our own as life on another planet, you will find this book absolutely fascinating. Told through the literary "voice" of an actual person contemporary to the first Crusades, Evan Connell has crafted a novel that personifies a time in the history of the Middle Ages rivaled only by the late Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror: A History of the Clamitous 14th Century". Through the voice of a real life crusader and chronicler of the 12th century life, Connell provides insight into the passions, prejudices, virtues and vices of this turbulent time. For Christians, it is a sobering look back at the murderous prejudices unleashed by "religious" leaders in a naked grab for power and political and military control over the known world in a time before the notions of tolerance and understanding of cultural and religious differences found a home in the minds of western European civilization. The blending a savage cruelty and devout piousness in even the most nobel of the crusaders will disturb even the most sophisticated reader. For Jews and followers of Islam, this book will give insight into the roots of prejudice in western European culture that while chilling may also give some cold comfort that the climate for such beliefs has become much more hostile in our present time. For all readers new to this approach to history, it might be a first step into understanding just how silly the notion of "the good old days" really is. Deus Lo Volt is also a gripping adventure story. Just who are the good guys and who are the bad guys is left up to the reader, and opinions may change from one page to the next. The only flaw in this otherwise brilliant work is Connell's overreliance on the rhetoric of the time which can become tedious from repetition. Still, for a reader fascinated with the darker periods of human endeavor, "Deus Lo Volt" will be an unforgettable experience.

This is a very thick and heavy book, and looking through it, I can understand how someone might be hesitant to read it - every page is packed with dense text. No dialog breaks up the long paragraphs; it's almost as if you're looking at a history book. And in some ways, that's all Deus Lo Volt really is. It's like the history book I always wanted to read. Whereas the texts you read in school were dry and boring, Connell has spiced everything up with gory battle descriptions and popular rumors of the day. Every Crusade is covered, but most attention is given to the First and Third, and later on the narrator's experiences in the last Crusades. What Connell has done is conglomerate a ton of historical texts on the Crusades, most notably that of Jean de Joinville, and expanded upon them. It's hard to categorize this book. It isn't a novel and it isn't history. I'd say it's something like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; like that book, which was deemed creative nonfiction, I'd say Deus Lo Volt is creative historical nonfiction. It also has a healthy dose of Cormac McCarthy-type prose; even Blood Meridian wasn't this descriptive about war and death. I also got a good chuckle out of the narrator's zeal; anytime a Turk is killed, Jean is sure that his soul will go immediately to hell. And anytime a Crusader falls in battle, his soul immediately ascends to Heaven, even if he was in the process of pillaging and destroying. The sad thing is that these Medieval jokers really believed this was true; I don't think they really understood the hypocrisy of their war. In their effort to "serve" a Christ who preached peace, they murdered hundreds of thousands and razed most of the Middle East. But that's not to say the Turks were completely innocent. But anyway, that's a historical debate that's been going on for ages. The point is, I found this book very entertaining and rewarding. The entire First Crusade impressed me the most, especially when the battle-weary Franks would experience "divine visitations," which would increase their desire to capture Jerusalem. Particularly funny is when one of them discovers what is obviously a Saracen spear, but claims that a vision told him that it was really the spear which pierced the side of Christ. Also, the Templars are featured in the book, and that's always good. All things considered, I'd recommend this book, but only if you're into history, or if you really want to delve into another time and place. Because unlike most other "typical" historical novels, Deus Lo Volt isn't just a period piece, with characters much like us who just happen to live in the Middle Ages; it is much more realistic than that, and the characters who populate it and the bloody events that transpire are very indicitave of the times. I wouldn't say it's a fun book, but I got some laughs out of it, especially the Fourth Crusade, when the pilgrims skipped Jerusalem and pillaged Constantinople instead. Those crazy Crusaders. What will they do next?