![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I first noticed it when the 16-year-old daughter, sitting in a cafe at a Mediterranean resort, envies the simple lives of some children she espies because she's sure "these creatures were never threatened by the grimness of history." Then there it was again, with the revelation that the daughter's bedtime mantra is a former teacher's comment: "You show extraordinary insight into the nature of historical research, especially for one of your years." And yet again, with the line of dialogue, "Excellent questions, as usual, my young doubter." When, after many other allusions to historians and historicism, Kostova introduced a character whose last name is Hristova, I was tempted to run out to a pharmacy for some antihristomine. ![]() A gold-tipped fountain pen is to most writers' lives as Monet's haystacks are to piles of dirt.Ī similar kind of romanticizing - but of historians, not writers - is on display in Elizabeth Kostova's first novel, "The Historian," about an Oxford professor, his advisee and the advisee's daughter, who are all, at different times, in search of Dracula's tomb. In part, it's the self-consciousness and fetishism that ticks me off. (And I know you will.) Any time I see a movie that has more than three extreme close-ups of a gold-tipped fountain pen skritching across a piece of paper - or any time I read a text that relies heavily on the words "writings" or "scrivenings" - I know I'm in for a healthy dose of the Romance of the Literary Life, and suddenly I feel irritable and restless and ready to skin a small animal. ![]()
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