2008 Dewey Decimal Project: 820.9 3823 09032 (Bonus Book)

[rsadelle]

You may remember that I was contemplating an entry that led me to look up Donne's "Batter my heart" (for the curious, I'm still contemplating it). I also went looking for commentary on it, and Google Books led me to Closet Devotions by Richard Rambuss. I'm in love with Interlibrary Loan (hilariously I got a book from the Orange County Public Library system for free while allegram told me she has to pay a quarter to reserve a book from a different library within the system), so I requested Closet Devotions.

The book is mostly about the intersection of homoeroticism and Christian devotion with a specific emphasis on seventeenth century poets. It's a fairly dense, academic tome, with a full 36 pages of endnotes. (Personally, I prefer footnotes, especially when they contain content rather than just a reference.) Rambuss divides things into three decreasingly interesting sections: "Christ's Ganymede," where he actually looks at the homoeroticism of devotional works (with a quick glance at the devotion of homoerotic works), "Devotion and Desire," which is a more general look at the intersection of devotion and desire, and "The Prayer Closet," which is a not very interesting look at the idea of a prayer closet as a specific physical space and the implications for the growing idea of the individual self.

As you might guess, I found "Christ's Ganymede" to be the most interesting chapter. It starts with a description of the opening scene of More of a Man, a gay porn movie that opens with the main character kneeling before a naked man. In this case, however, the naked man "is an effigy of Jesus on the cross, dangling from the rosary beads bound up in his clasped hands - the video thereby offering Christ's as the first of the uncovered male bodies to be exhibited across its erotic field of vision." If this book were less academic, more plainspoken, and slightly more interesting, it could cause quite a stir. Later in the first chapter, he tackles "Batter my heart" and the criticism that routinely strips out the homoeroticism, and other poets of the same time who had some really kinky ideas about Jesus.

The second section is slightly less interesting, and the third is downright boring. Quite frankly, I'm not sure how I made it all the way through the book. It helps that I kept reminding myself that I didn't have to write a paper or take a test about it, so it's okay if I didn't fully absorb it.

If you're interested in the subject, I recommend reading the first chapter, checking to see if the second chapter holds your interest, and skipping the third chapter outright. They read more like three separate papers than one cohesive book anyway. If you're not interested in the subject, I recommend avoiding the book altogether.

Comments

[archivecats.livejournal.com]

I fully agree that endnotes cannot hold a candle to footnotes.

Also, I'll bet that the book read like three separate papers because it *was* originally three separate papers. The author combined them in order to 1. make them all accessible in one place to academics who might not have caught their appearances earlier in journals, and 2. get another publication for his resume - and not only a publication but a book, much better than an article.

I'm just guessing about the book's origins, of course - but I like to think it's an educated guess. :)

[rsadelle]

Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven has excellent footnotes.

I think he said something in the introduction about "Christ's Ganymede" being published somewhere else before (possibly he expanded it for the book; I already returned the book to the library, so I can't check).

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

In these days of word processors and internet tubes, I don't see any logical or philosophical reason to use endnotes. I find them offensive. In fact, I'm reading a book right now (a compilation of two picaresque novels) that has endnotes. It's awful! I have two bookmarks: one to hold my place, and one in the stupid endnotes. And it's so frustrating to go back to an endnote only to find out that you knew what it was! (One recent was an endnote at the end of a very long sentence that mentioned Narcissus, and I went back there assuming that I was going to learn something about Spanish culture, but no. I was informed that [zomg spoiler alurt] Narcissus, in a Greek myth, fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water, and, trying to reach it, fell in and drowned. <:O Thank you for that incredibly helpful information, Mr. Endnote!)

[rsadelle]

While reading the book, I kept thinking of one my Greek teachers in college who said you had to read Greek using the three-finger or three-book (depending on the edition you were using): One book/finger for the text, one for a lexicon, and one for the commentary. I shouldn't have to do that for something quite a bit less complicated!