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Banvard's Folly
Download PDF Banvard's Folly
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From The New Yorker
Thirteen wry biographical essays about people, once famous, who have disappeared from memory. In 1903, the French physicist René Blondlot was so eager to follow up the recent discovery of X-rays that he discovered N-rays, which do not exist. In the eighteen-forties, the American painter John Banvard gained international celebrity for his painting of the Mississippi River—a panorama which measured over fifteen thousand square feet. And in the seventeen-nineties, when England was suffering a fit of bardolatry, a London lawyer's clerk, William Henry Ireland, began "finding" Shakespeare documents. After these forgeries became collectors' items as forgeries, Ireland met the demand by making forgeries of his forgeries, and every line from his pen remains extremely valuable. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
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Review
“No writer better articulates our interest in the confluence of hope, eccentricity, and the timelessness of the bold and strange than Paul Collins. [This book is] sublimely odd, frequently funny, and better yet, thrillingly factual.†―Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius“Though the most profound question is 'What is the meaning of life?' the most human question 'Don't they know how special I am?' Paul Collins knows. Thanks to these fascinating tales, his forgotten attention-seekers must be rolling over in their graves, if only to finally bask in the limelight.†―Sarah Vowell, author of Take the Cannoli“Collins's swift, humorous prose makes for satisfying schadenfreude.†―Time Out New York“[A] lively treatise on eccentricity, flawed genius, and star-crossed obsession.†―The Washington Times“An unqualified success.†―The Seattle Times“A remarkably lucid and entertaining peek into the admittedly strange lives of the characters [Collins] has unearthed . . . A witty meditation on the vagaries of fame and the human drive for validation.†―Tucson Weekly“With crisp prose and engaging storytelling, Collins contemplates the whims of fortune and the foolhardiness of humanity.†―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Hearteningly strange . . . Stretching the bounds of nonfiction's propensity for weirdness, Collins exhumes little-known figures [and] recounts their perversely inspiring battles against the more logical ways of the world.†―The Onion“The thirteen lives and times to which Collins devotes his considerable scholarship and manifest narrative gifts in Banvard's Folly are the flash-in-the-pan, briefly notable, and long-ignored ones-of-a-kind, who remind us of the nobility and futility, the grandeur and begrudgery of our endeavors. Of Collins's endeavor, however, we can proclaim our permanent thanks and amazement and heartiest welcome.†―Los Angeles Times Book Review
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Product details
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (May 3, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312300336
ISBN-13: 978-0312300333
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.7 out of 5 stars
15 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#826,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The author is a very clear writer and makes these short biographies very entertaining and interesting to read. The stories are engaging and offer insight into human nature. A very useful mirror for our own behaviors sometimes.
This book is filled with windows into the the lives of people who did or tried to do very interesting things, and never had their stories told until now. Very interesting slices of life. Fun to read.
This is a great book. A current trend in popular history is to write histories of great people who achieved success but who are not household names (consider the book "Longitude"); Paul Collins turns this idea on its head by writing the stories of 13 people whose ideas, frankly, did not have a lot of merit, but who were famous in their day.The title story, Banvard's Folly, tells the tale of the artist John Banvard -- world famous in the 1850s, but utterly forgotten today, whose great moving panorama of the Mississippi River made him rich, but who ultimately was destroyed competing with P.T. Barnum.Other stories include "The Man With N-Ray Eyes", which relates how a French scientist believes erroneously that he has found a new source of radiation; "A.J. Pleasonton's Blue Light Special", which discusses the 1870s fad concerning the healing properties of light reflected through blue glass, and numerous others, including the story of a Shakepeare forger, a woman's quest to prove Shakespeare's works were written by Francis Bacon and others, and the development of the pneumatic train.The book is a little sad, because each of the characters really believes in their ideas, even though they are rejected by society. But instead of a happy ending, these stories all end badly for the protagonists -- they end up mocked and forgotten.The book is remarkable for its scholarship -- researching the forgotten intellectual and cultural history of a previous century is no easy task; but Mr. Collins brings the reader back into the culture of the times easily. The stories are entertaining and very amusing.
"Banvard's Folly" is a wonderful book, thanks to the talents of author Paul Collins. As you have probably gathered by now from other write-ups, this book tells the story of 13 people, once prominent, and now largely forgotten. They each earned inclusion in this book because of a grand failure of some sort. In other hands, this material could have been a tool for ridicule; but Collins strikes just the right tone here. While not forgiving his subjects' excesses or blind spots, he manages to tell their stories with a real sense of empathy. It's obvious that a lot of research went into this volume, but Collins never overpowers the reader with it; each chapter just seems to glide along. If history's lesser lights are of interest to you, you should enjoy this.
So maybe I have a bit of a crush on Paul Collins and everything he writes, but truly Banvard's Folly is quite clever. Its been a few years since I first read Banvard's Folly, but I was able to dig up my initial thoughts thanks to shelfari.Paul Collins is a genius and I love him. If I have children, they will learn history from this book (as I will home school)... these people will all be included in their lessons from when we're studying Nathaniel Hawthorne and Emily Dickinson to Thoreau and the Concord Grape. John Banvard will be discussed when learning about art and art history as well as financial wisdom. We will discuss Delia Bacon in relation to the people she corresponded with as well as when we study Shakespeare... along with her, Coates' adventures as Romeo will be a humorous anecdote to read between plays and the discussion of various acting techniques. This was a fantastic piece of history that I find amazing the world has forgotten. Let's bring these stories back for the future generations! Thank you Paul Collins for bringing them all back to life in the pages of your book.Now, I do have a child, and true to my word I have written this book into the curriculum I have been creating for her since I discovered I was pregnant. I cannot wait to share these stories with her!Follow my blog: anakalianwhims.wordpress.com
I discovered this book via a QI podcast. It's brilliant, fascinating and so well written. Worth a read
interesting. good transaction too
All of the 13 people depicted in this book were eventually mocked and forgotten. Even though their ideas were rejected, they really believed in themselves and their work. The author did vast amounts of research on these formerly famous people. He left no stone unturned to accurately describe them. What a clever subject for a book! My hats off to Mr. Collins.
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