{"id":196,"date":"2018-12-31T11:10:06","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=196"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:10:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:10:06","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

<\/span><\/span>Travel \/ Essays<\/p>\n

C. W. Smith<\/p>\n

A Throttled Peacock: Observations on the Old World<\/p>\n

Dallas: DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University<\/p>\n

978-1-878516-09-1, hardcover, $25.00<\/p>\n

160 pages<\/p>\n

April 30, 2015<\/p>\n

Y\u2019all know how writing guides advise an opening line<\/span> that grabs the reader straightaway? The first essay in this collection addresses too much togetherness: \u201cSearching for the flower clock in the Jardin Anglais, I think of nifty ways to kill my wife.\u201d Yep.<\/p>\n

So begins A Throttled Peacock: Observations on the Old World,<\/span><\/a><\/span> Southern Methodist University professor C. W. Smith\u2019s<\/span> collection of essays inspired by six months in Europe with his wife, Marcia. Smith takes pains to point out that A Throttled Peacock<\/span> is not a travel guide. He \u201csought rather to record the psychological, emotional or intellectual shifts that have come from being estranged from [his] usual life\u2026.Traveling in foreign countries\u2026encourages comparison and contrast and calls on dormant parts of your psyche the way using weights in a gym results in new aches and pains but also new strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a (mostly) pseudo-curmudgeonly humor, Smith muses on a wide range of subjects. He learns that \u201call manners are local\u201d when a French chef is insulted by their brie-carving skills (this is also the location of the Great Texas Chili Debacle). The sometimes anxiety-inducing necessity of trusting strangers in an unfamiliar place where you don\u2019t speak the language inspires \u201cThe Brotherhood of the Backpack\u201d and Smith discovers that \u201cwhat we thought were our \u2018instincts\u2019 about other people or a situation were feelings that depended upon an elaborate system of coded signals derived purely from a cultural context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith waxes philosophical about Mother England and her breakaway colonies while contemplating Thomas Hardy and the Ancient Mariner, as literature professors are wont to do: \u201cThe veneration of history, of tradition, gives people a sense of identity, but it likewise fixes their feet in concrete. If everything must be justified by precedent, how does something new come into being….So the idea of America begins for me in how you flee from history, not embrace it.\u201d An encounter with an ascetic lifestyle prompts musings on American religion: \u201c[O]ur televangelists constantly beseech us to see that wealth is how God shows his approval of our lives; therefore, the wealthy are the Chosen, their money\u2019s the very sign of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s imagery is richly evocative. On a wintry day in Geneva \u201cthe sun is a pearl button behind a gauze of high cirrus; the wind sweeps away its pale white light.\u201d Marveling at the stone architecture during a stroll through the streets of Madrid: \u201c[W]hat your Westerner\u2019s eye sees as a hand-built canyon of stone, with a dry, cobbled creek bed and granite banks and neat gray or ocher bluffs coming up from the banks to box the sky above.\u201d And at sunset in Oxford: \u201c[T]he stone had caught the yellow light and held it. Spiced-mustard light, dusty dusky-yellow, wine-yellow, apple-yellow light thick as warm candle wax.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Throttled Peacock<\/span> is a combination of the prosaic and the profound, of droll humor and thought-provoking observation. I recommend it for travelers planning to strike out across the globe on summer vacations and for all Texans abroad.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}