the erotics of the bad review
I like my reviews nasty, British, and short. Here's a treatment of G. Hippesley's "A Narrative of the Expedition to the River Orinoco and Apure, in South America; Which Sailed From England in November 1817 and Joined the Patriotic Forces in Venezuela and Caracas," in Blackfriar's Magazine, London, 1819:
"This is an extremely comfortable book to look at and touch, but an extremely uncomfortable one to read. It is excellently well-printed--and the hand slips smoothly over the wire-wove hot-pressed paper, as over a lady's arm, with or without a glove. Indeed it does one's heart good to dally with so comely an octavo--fat, fair, and forty--and we absolutely fell asleep with it in our arms. On awakening from our slumbers, we began to converse a little with our Spanish mistress, but to our unspeakable mortification found her not only tiresome to a degree, but unhappy herself unless she could make us equally so..."
Apparently, Lord Byron abused Hippesly's book in a similar manner:
"It's soporific qualities, he amusingly remarked, were truly astonishing, surpassing those of any ordinary narcotic; perusal of a few pages sufficed to lull him a comfortable siesta even when ill disposed of in bad humor with himself."
* joshua, 4/16/2004 12:52:22 AM
