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Leviathan
Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2022 with the help of original edition published long back [1924]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume, if you wish to order a specific or all the volumes you may contact us. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. - English, Pages 196. EXTRA 10 DAYS APART FROM THE NORMAL SHIPPING PERIOD WILL BE REQUIRED FOR LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. COMPLETE LEATHER WILL COST YOU EXTRA US$ 25 APART FROM THE LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. {FOLIO EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE.} Complete Leviathan (England--France) by William Bolitho. 1924 Bolitho, William, -.
172 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
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July 15, 2022
In my review of Camera Obscura, William Bolitho's 1930 collection of articles from the New York World, I expressed my surprise that this long-out-of-print book was much more than a dated reproduction of newspaper articles, instead proving to be a mesmeric selection of pieces possessing great literary quality. Bolitho, at his best, is a sort of journalistic Shakespeare: able to find things that others cannot, and bring it out through language. Leviathan, however, an earlier collection of articles from 1923-4 – also mostly pulled from the New York World – does not possess this magic with the same consistency.
Bolitho here is still working out his style and his tone. When it works, it works well, and some of these essays – throwaway pieces, remember, for a daily newspaper – read as complete short stories ('Epinard Loses' being one good example). Another of the more successful articles, 'Old Man Bender's Orchard', is the story of a gruesome piece of true-crime that anticipates his book Murder for Profit. There is little information about Leviathan to be found online, but I found the Wikipedia summary that this book is primarily about international politics to be false. There are essays on the politics of the time here, including a noteworthy one about German hyperinflation ('An Empire's Funeral in the Strand'), but my impression was of varied, perhaps even eclectic, contents. An article on the people who use dating agencies to find a partner ("all of those outside of the universal law that nothing is made in vain" (pg. 160)) shows that the dating scene hasn't really changed much in one hundred years, even if it is all on apps now. The women "beckon innocently for the man they dreamed of in the schoolroom, 'dark, pale, tall, with a thousand pounds a year, and affectionate'. He has been long coming, they are tired and a little peevish at his delay" (pg. 159).
Because Bolitho is still honing his approach in this, his first published book, there are a few moments where it sags, a problem exacerbated by Bolitho's ornate writing style. But there is always enough to bring you back: a turn of phrase, an insight of literary quality, a successful turning of an unpromising topic into something you are eager to indulge. While Camera Obscura and Twelve Against the Gods remain the best of Bolitho, Leviathan has enough in it to bring forth the same response: a rich joy, a feeling of possessing wealth, followed by a bafflement that writing of this quality has become so obscure, so entirely eclipsed, and ending with an acceptance, cultivated by Bolitho's own worldview, of "the ruin that lies in wait for human effort" (pg. 60), however undeserved that ruin. To describe Bolitho as journalism's Shakespeare may seem absurd, but even in the lesser of his works – which is what Leviathan is – he can write a strangely gripping account of something as mundane as an after-dinner speech and create a line that sounds like a minor attendant reporting the outcome of a battle to a doomed Shakespearean lord. One of the dinner's speakers, trying to salvage the night, is babbling in a vain attempt to fill the awkwardness at the table with words. Enter Bolitho, to find the art in it: "Cold, not fatigue, conquered him at last; the extreme and freezing ice of those absent-minded smiles, that stuck unmelted on those red, honest faces with the persistence of plaster." (pg. 22)
Bolitho here is still working out his style and his tone. When it works, it works well, and some of these essays – throwaway pieces, remember, for a daily newspaper – read as complete short stories ('Epinard Loses' being one good example). Another of the more successful articles, 'Old Man Bender's Orchard', is the story of a gruesome piece of true-crime that anticipates his book Murder for Profit. There is little information about Leviathan to be found online, but I found the Wikipedia summary that this book is primarily about international politics to be false. There are essays on the politics of the time here, including a noteworthy one about German hyperinflation ('An Empire's Funeral in the Strand'), but my impression was of varied, perhaps even eclectic, contents. An article on the people who use dating agencies to find a partner ("all of those outside of the universal law that nothing is made in vain" (pg. 160)) shows that the dating scene hasn't really changed much in one hundred years, even if it is all on apps now. The women "beckon innocently for the man they dreamed of in the schoolroom, 'dark, pale, tall, with a thousand pounds a year, and affectionate'. He has been long coming, they are tired and a little peevish at his delay" (pg. 159).
Because Bolitho is still honing his approach in this, his first published book, there are a few moments where it sags, a problem exacerbated by Bolitho's ornate writing style. But there is always enough to bring you back: a turn of phrase, an insight of literary quality, a successful turning of an unpromising topic into something you are eager to indulge. While Camera Obscura and Twelve Against the Gods remain the best of Bolitho, Leviathan has enough in it to bring forth the same response: a rich joy, a feeling of possessing wealth, followed by a bafflement that writing of this quality has become so obscure, so entirely eclipsed, and ending with an acceptance, cultivated by Bolitho's own worldview, of "the ruin that lies in wait for human effort" (pg. 60), however undeserved that ruin. To describe Bolitho as journalism's Shakespeare may seem absurd, but even in the lesser of his works – which is what Leviathan is – he can write a strangely gripping account of something as mundane as an after-dinner speech and create a line that sounds like a minor attendant reporting the outcome of a battle to a doomed Shakespearean lord. One of the dinner's speakers, trying to salvage the night, is babbling in a vain attempt to fill the awkwardness at the table with words. Enter Bolitho, to find the art in it: "Cold, not fatigue, conquered him at last; the extreme and freezing ice of those absent-minded smiles, that stuck unmelted on those red, honest faces with the persistence of plaster." (pg. 22)
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