James Womack
Tales from the Peninsula
The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories
By Margaret Jull Costa (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Thomas Bunstead, Peter Bush, Kit Maude, Kathryn Phillips-Miles & Simon Deefholts)
The best anthologists in Spanish literature are the barber and the curate of some place in La Mancha, whose name I don’t wish to recall. While Don Quixote lies asleep after his first sortie as a knight errant, the two of them – kind, careful, slightly hypocritical – go through his library and get rid of the books that have turned his brain. But they also show a fine sense of which books or parts of books should be kept (while reserving judgement on Miguel de Cervantes’s own La Galatea). The irony is that all this sensitive discrimination is useless:
That very night the housekeeper set fire to, and consumed, not only all the books that were in the yard, but also every one she could find in the house; and no doubt many were burned, which deserved to have been kept as perpetual archives. But this their destiny, and the laziness of the inquisitors, would not allow; so that in them was fulfilled the old proverb, a saint may sometimes suffer for a sinner.
There is another moral to be drawn from this scene, of course: an anthologist’s lot is not a happy one. There will always be some critic who deprecates the principles behind the selections, who is willing to burn everything down rather than praise what has been saved. It’s very tempting
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm