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Index: The Fortnightly Review of Books

From the Øιλοκαλíα to Franny’s pea-green book.

Fr Andrew Louth: ‘The influence of the Philokalia can be thought of in two rather different ways. On the one hand, we can think of what one might call the reception of the Philokalia: that is, how it was read, who read it…On the other hand, we could think of the influence of the Philokalia in another way: how has the Philokalia affected the way its readers understand the nature of the Christian life, the nature of the Church, and even, in particular, the nature of theology?’

Anthony Trollope: ‘Not so exceedingly benighted after all.’

Wilfrid L. Randell: Gifted with the facility in the spinning of paragraphs, with skill in the devising of plots, with a deft and pretty touch in the delineation of men and women, and with extraordinary method and perseverance, what could he not have accomplished with the lovelier gift of inspiration – the power to regard his art as a thing of wonder, mysteriously vital, creative, permanent!

· Alasdair Paterson’s grand poetry of Byzantine governance.

Edgar Mason: While the book is unlikely to aid young emperors in their attempts to maintain power, Mr. Paterson has created something very useful for the rest of us: A way of viewing history as a thing cross-pollinated by itself – and an excellent treatise on the governing of our own, personal empires.

· Oscar Wilde’s ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’ – full-length at last.

Deciding that the novel as it stood contained “a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to”, and assuring his employer Craige Lippincott that he would make the book “acceptable to the most fastidious taste”, Stoddart also removed references to Gray’s female lovers as his “mistresses”.

· Hera’s beguiling girdle, worn for Zeus, found in Verlaine.

Yesterday I was studying Annibale Carracci’s stupendous ceiling frescoes on mythological subjects. There was Zeus, inching Hera toward bed: and bound firmly below Hera’s breasts was the oaristys!

· Dostoevsky’s truth vs the Tsar’s fiction.

Were I to choose any one single episode in the life of a modern writer to fit the “truth is stranger than fiction” bill, it would be a central incident in the life of Dostoevsky that took place in December 1849.

· Karl Marx and the eternal sunshine of the communist mind.

Seventy years after Marx’s death, for better or for worse, one third of humanity lived under political regimes inspired by his thought. Well over 20 per cent still do. Socialism has been described as the greatest reform movement in human history.

All wrapped in white linen, as cold as the clay.

Jesse Mullins: The American frontier forged American character. It might not be going too far to say that the appearance of the cowboy in the late 1800s marked the culmination of the protracted process that yielded the quintessentially American character.

· Newman’s quiet canonisation: no stigmata, please. We’re British.

A study which, from its rueful opening anecdote about Cornwell’s first visit as a seminarian to Newman’s then very quiet grave, strives to paint a full and fair picture of an extremely talented, driven, passionate human being.

· Stephen Fry, with no paper, ink, binding, or covers? You pay twice for that.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) last month launched a similar probe into the prices of ebooks, which can cost more than twice as much as their printed cousins.

Bly in prose: the song of the body, the memory of rhythm.

Myra Sklarew: The Bly of Reaching Out to the World is a presence, a powerful force, all hints and subtleties gathered up into an enormous bouquet that he and his speaker offer to the world.

Poetry from a rock-hard place.

Edgar Mason: This is a valiant first round by Hobblebush Books. The packaging of both titles is quite fine, and great care has been exercised in the selection of both poets and the poems on display.

Marilyn Monroe and Roger Federer in ‘a wonderful world of sacred shining things.’

Anthony O’Hear: Does The Iliad really give us a picture of the Greeks as happy polytheists, or is it providing foundations of Aeschylean tragedy (as Aeschylus himself said), and even in some ways anticipating elements of Christianity, as Simone Weil thought? Then again, there is indeed a tension, as Dreyfus and Kelly say, between Platonism and Incarnational Christianity, but why can the transition to Christianity, as memorably described by Augustine in The Confessions, not be seen as an intellectual and moral advance?

Lost in the loneliness of anti-social networks.

Roger Berkowitz: Sherry Turkle’s incisive and provocative new book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, vividly articulates the ways that our embrace of technology evidences our discomfort and dissatisfaction with our human selves.

Derek Walcott: The TS Eliot (and not a consolation) prize.

Michelene Wandor: And while I’m on the subject, I do wonder how some of the short-listed books got onto the short list in the first place. No names, no lawyers.