Harper\'s Magazine - 03.2020

REVIEWS 79

there’s Rome, right. But there never

were any Romans with togas and shit,

and helmets and feathers. A fairy tale

out of the Vatican Library. They even

dreamed up the idea of a Vatican Li-

brary. There isn’t one!... The Greeks!

There weren’t any Greeks, not ever. I

know there are Greeks, but they’re

not the Greeks. I’ve been to so-called

Greece. Plato? Mickey Mouse’s dog.

Babylonians. Israelites? The pyramids

are like forty, fifty years old ... This

shit is all made up by the government.

Once more unto the breach, dear

friends—what a laugh. You think

people in iron suits rode around on

horses? Horse shit is more like it.

Don’t give up the ship? I mean—

come on!”

On page seventy-six of my copy, a

brown stain marks where I started

laughing so hard that I spat out my

coffee, to the consternation of

my waitress.

The only other time I can re-

member laughing that hard at a

passage in a book was when I read

Stone’s memoir of the Sixties,

Prime Green. I had reached chapter

eleven, an account of Stone’s period

of employment at a cheap tabloid,

which he calls National Thunder.

One of his jobs was to come up

with outrageous headlines, and his

triumph was “Sky-Diver Devoured

by Starving Birds.” Stone was so

proud of that headline that much

later he wanted to use it as a title

for a book.

One finishes Bell’s biography,

which could almost have been titled

Darkness and Laughter, with a re-

newed respect for its subject and a

feeling of awe for the love he in-

spired in his biographer, wife, chil-

dren, and friends. Writing in an es-

say about Malcolm Lowry, author of

Under the Volcano and also an alco-

holic, Stone observed,

In Under the Volcano Lowry used the

grim experiences he had gone

through to express his love for the

world. He applied his considerable

learning and generosity of spirit to a

hundred things beyond his own de-

spair, even if the experience of despair

informs it.

“So we pardon Lowry his unhappy

life,” Stone goes on. “The alcohol

was bad luck.” Q

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Louise Erdrich

The Night Watchman

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MAR 2

Hilary Mantel

The Mirror and the Light

“The greatest modern English prose

writer writing today.”

—Peter Stothard, Chairman of the

2012 Man Booker Prize

MAR 18

Elizabeth Gilbert

City of Girls

“Vibrant, sexy, and wise.”—People

APR 6

Elizabeth Strout

Olive, Again

“A thrilling book in every way.”

—Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

JUN 17