"The Portable Voltaire"

[fiefoe]

If only all scholarly writings were as lively as Ben Ray Redman's introduction. Bless his heart, he didn't have to amuse, but he did - '(infant Voltaire) defied fate by remaining alive for many weeks... Indeed, the miracle extended itself in a way that threatened to become monotonous, for the notary's son spent his whole life - as we all do - in the act of dying, he was at it rather longer than most of us; since it was not until May 30, 1778, that the expectation aroused at his birth was finally realized.'

Of course, it helps that Voltaire himself was quite a character. 'We know, with a knowledge abundantly and noisily documented, that he was even Whistler's superior in the gentle art of making enemies'. He was a lifelong valetudinarian, very good at making money, and once carried out a fiery but futile love affair in Hague with a Protestant young lady 'who endures in history under the nickname of Pimpette'.

Here's an alarming phrase I won't soon forget - "the mating of eagles" (Helen Waddell on Abelard & Heloise); and here's a saddening one - "a failure of rational nerve" (Redman on the past century).

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Amazon is recommending "The Curse of the Blue Tattoo". It's like they know me.