Sign of the Times

I just received a flyer from the (Republican) state assemblyman for my district. In it, among other things, he describes a certain prominent Illinois politician as "combining the worst features of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton". There is a photoshopped picture blending their faces, and yeah, it's pretty grotesque.

I'm voting for his opponent. (I know her, as it happens....)

An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

Yep, that's the title. I was poking around on Project Gutenberg, looking at Trollope's books other than the Barchester Chronicles and the Palliser novels, and I ran across this. It turned out to be fairly interesting; I'm not going to give a full review, but I'd like to point out a few items that interested me.

1) He had quite a bit to say about his mother's literary career; she started late, but managed to be both popular and prolific, and he learned his authorial habits from her. Of her Domestic Manners of the Americans, he said that she had a keen eye for what was, but not for what could be; his opinion of USAns was considerably higher than hers. Of course, the US that he visited was not the US she wrote of, and an 1870s Tory like him was not an 1830s Tory like his mother.

2) He believed that The Last Chronicle of Barset was his best work, and I'm inclined to agree. He felt that the plot didn't quite hold together - he was not best pleased with the maguffin of the mysterious check - but he was proud of his depiction of Mr. Crawley. (He generally laid more stress on characterization than on plot, and more on plot than on beauty of language.)

3) He tells one interesting anecdote about that book. It seems that, one day while he was writing it, he was dining out, and two gentlemen at a nearby table were discussing his books - unaware, of course, of his presence. At one point, they reached firm agreement that Mrs. Proudie was not a pleasant character, and that it would be best if Trollope would stop writing about her. At this point, Trollope, who considered Mrs. Proudie one of his best creations, stood up, introduced himself, and told them that, very well, he would go home that evening and kill her - which he did. In the process, he wrote what is, in my opinion, one of the most moving passages he ever wrote.

4) He also spends some time discussing his contemporary British authors, talking of Bulwer-Lytton (whom he liked rather more than history does), Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, and... several more people I've never heard of. Of Eliot, he says that in her later books she let her philosophical bent overcome her writing talent; they - and he specifically includes Middlemarch - were inferior to her earlier work, in his opinion. (Humph, says I.)

Feelings

There's been a discussion on tor.com for a while about books that evoke strong feelings, every time you come back to them. Commenters are giving their favorites in that category.

One of them simply wrote, "Rohan had come at last," and I teared up when I read it.

I think maybe it's time for a LOTR reread.