Linell Nash Smith

Eh. An interesting history of a Arabian bred in Poland on the eve of World War II. I hadn't known about the horse, and I'm glad I now do. However, the fairy tale the author made out of Witez's birth and early upbringing, particularly when the book starts with her going to Poland and talking to people who actually knew what happened, is a disservice to the book and to the Poles who lived through that time. I have no idea if any of her facts are accurate; I know that she made several scenes up out of whole cloth, because no one involved was still alive when she was looking for info (or would have talked about it beforehand). The whole thing with the Gypsy grandmother and sister, for instance - she made it so that they knew what would happen, but they never admitted it to Stasik, and I can't imagine that anyone else would have known about it either. At least, not anyone who was able to pass it on to her. Which means the first half or three-quarters of the book, until Witez II fell into American hands, is pretty much fiction on a thin skeleton of facts - a great horse story, but not accurate, not a good biography. And then he was imported to America - and the book abruptly becomes a simple recounting of facts, aside from a few mentions that *Witez II really wanted a home and a family (of humans)". My impression is that once she was constrained to facts (because the people she would be writing about could read her book!), she ran out of steam. Glad I read the book, I'll keep an eye out for more info on the horse, I won't be rereading this. I'd rather read Marguerite Henry, if I want fictionalized horse stories.… (mere)

Not a review as such, but an example of why I like Ogden Nash ..


Very Like a Whale


One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wold on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of
wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket
after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of
snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.… (mere)