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5.0 out of 5 stars
A short, smart and funny work of art, Jul 19 2004
Zuleika Dobson was published in 1911, a little less than a decade after the Boer War ended. It is a meditation on how beauty and love can mascarade for death: "Yonder, in the Colleges, was the fume and fret of tragedy--Love as Death's decoy, and Youth following her." There is a lot of love in the book, and a big dollop of death, too, and it remains a hilarious read.The book is a sort of mascarade ball. It was, according to itself, a gift to Clio--the Muse of History--from Zeus, who finally gets to bed her by granting her wish to provide a historian "invisibility, inevitability and psychic penetration, with a flawless memory thrown in" to cover the events thrown into action by a certain Ms. Zuleika Dobson at Judas, College at Oxford. In the novel several ghosts, including George Sand and Chopin, play minor roles as do several Roman Emperors, who are all forced to suffer the indignities of the elements year-in, year-out, and, as statues, usually make their thoughts known by such actions as sweating. You learn quite a lot about the late 19th century activities on Olympus--given that it is a place less reported on in our times--what it means to be an omniscient voice, are treated to a few lectures and even tantrums by the author, and to beware phrases in French, Latin, and Greek. (Not to worry, there are but a tiny smattering of these.) That said, it is a very funny book which won't take you too long to read and which foreshadows Flann O'Brien's work as well as other, less interesting, magical realists. One further note of explanation: Zuleika Dobson was recommended to me as a cautionary tale on the perfect woman. Ms. Dobson was not perfect, unless you mean she was an idea. I think that Mr. Beerbohm--and all men--are far too Aristotilean to be so physically transported by her. That, of course, is part and parcel of the joke. Zuleika Dobson is one of the Modern Library's "100 Best Novels" and deserves the honor, without doubt.
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