Rating: 
Summary: Flight of fancy with little interest as history
Review: The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues by Susan Griffin. Not recommended.In The Book of the Courtesans, Susan Griffin tries to capture the magic that made courtesans some of the most noteworthy and notorious women of their times. According to Griffin, a courtesan would need to have several virtues to succeed, including: timing, beauty, cheek, brilliance, gaiety, grace, and charm. Mixed with these virtues are seven "erotic stations": flirtation, suggestion, arousal, seduction, rapture, satiety, and afterglow. Griffin uses biographies to illustrate how various courtesans exhibited these virtues, for example, courtesan and poet Veronica Franco's beginnings and career are covered under the chapter on "Brilliance." Griffin, who earlier separated the concept of courtesan from those of mistress and prostitute, runs into trouble, for many of her plentiful examples do not fit her definition of courtesans. For example, she talks at great length about Mme. de Pompadour (mistress to Louis XV), Marion Davies (mistress to William Randolph Hearst), and "Klondike Kate" (gold rush saloon dancer). The point of naming these virtues is lost if a courtesan cannot be found who exemplified them. Griffin's information is untrustworthy. She states that Jeanne du Barry's father was a monk as though this is an accepted historical fact. Most biographical information on du Barry, however, states that her father is unknown but could have been a cleric. There are numerous instances of this kind of misleading information throughout. She talks of a suggestive sculpture in the Musée d'Orsay based upon a body cast of courtesan Apollonie Sabatier, but art sources say this story is unconfirmed and originated from a rumour circulated at the salon where the sculpture debuted. It is difficult to separate Griffin's blithe statements from the established facts. The author doesn't stop there, however. She engages in flights of fancy that sound poetic but have little basis in fact or reality. As a child, Mogador and her mother lived in fear of one of her mother's former lovers. She escaped him twice, and, according to Griffin, "the exhilaration of these two escapes must have livened her [dance] steps" later in life. How the terror of running from being beaten and brutalised as a child could lead to "exhilaration" while dancing is clear only to Griffin. She uses "exuberance" in a similar context. In addition, Griffin stretches metaphors past their limits, to the point where they are ludicrous rather than apt or poetic. For example, "even while destiny was robbing Céleste [Mogador] of any sense of safety, like the careening rise and fall of the polka, it also conspired to tempt her with something grander than simple security." She says Marie Dorval "nearly asphyxiated herself for each performance," which seems comparable to being a "little pregnant." She states that, like the other poor people of Paris, Mogador saw the melodramatic events of her own life reflected [on stage]" and that "even today a pulse can be felt to vibrate back and forth between the stage and the audience." What is lost here is that the members of today's audiences are unlikely ever to have been poor in the same sense as Mogador. Courtesans is replete with these kinds of disconnects. When discussing beauty, Griffin gives an example of a canyon, then claims that beauty "needs" to be enhanced-but fails to explain why or how one can enhance the natural beauty of a canyon. In other words, she demonstrates the opposite of her point-beauty does not need to be enhanced, and her concept of beauty is phony and ephemeral. She also says Blanche d'Antigny, at age 10, hid in the attic because of a "desperate longing" stay in the "beautiful countryside." The obvious never occurs to Griffin-that small children are rarely eager to leave the only stable home they have ever known, even an ugly one. Another leap of logic occurs later when Griffin says, "Many men would have been threatened by such potency in a lover." Perhaps this is generally true, but Griffin seems oblivious to the fact that "many men" aren't Louis XV, king of France. His sense of security about du Barry's "potency" is hardly remarkable, since he is the primary source of it. Mostly, Griffin idealises the courtesan's career, and much of Courtesans seems to reflect her personal regret that this lifestyle opportunity belongs to history. She quotes Veronica Franco as writing, "You can do nothing worse in this life . . . than to force the body into such servitude . . . to give oneself in prey to so many, to risk being despoiled, robbed or killed . . . what fate could be worse?" Franco's advice is quite clear-except to Griffin, who says, "In fact, the impassioned tone of her letter does not contradict the passionate defense she made of courtesanry [where?], but instead outlines the perils courtesans faced . . ." "What fate could be worse?" than subjecting one's will and body completely to others seems a very specific condemnation of the lifestyle, but not to Griffin. We can't expect anything more of the author who peppers this "history" with page after page of fiction and who says, "But that is why fiction exists-so we may see the undocumented moments that would otherwise pass out of history, and thus out of our understanding, unwitnessed." In other words, don't file The Book of the Courtesans under "History/Women's History," as the cover suggests. Shelve it under "Susan Griffin's idealist imagination." Better yet, consider reading a different book altogether. Grandes Horizontales by Virginia Rounding has been recommended as an alternative. As an aside, there is no index, which also detracts from any value this book may have had as a reference. Diane L. Schirf, 12 May 2004.
Rating: 
Summary: Chapters provide absorbing stories
Review: The courtesans of Paris, Rome and even New York City rose to prominence by seducing some of the most influential men of their times, accumulating the wealth and position rare to women. Griffin's Book Of The Courtesans examines the lives and achievements of these courtesans, from early Greeks to the 1900s. Chapters provide absorbing stories which go beyond biography to examine the special strengths which set these women apart from their peers.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but....
Review: The subject matter is exceptionally interesting, and the stories the author provides are engaging. She presents the courtesans sympathetically and in a positive light as women who made opportunities for themselves in a society with limited opportunities for women. However... Her prose is rather purple, annoyingly so. I realize that she is trying to be evocative of a by-gone time. However, there is a difference between evocative and trying to evoke with a sledgehammer. I also found her use of the word "corpulent" ill-advised and questionnable. In the words of The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya, "I don' thin' that word means what you thin' it means." Whether the word originally had the meaning and negative connotations that it has now is immaterial since she is writing for a modern audience she needs to consider how they will respond to the word. (In case you hadn't guessed, her use of this word really, REALLY bothered me.) I think the book would have been helped by footnoting. As a grad student in history I wanted footnotes. It lends a bit more authority to your words and statements to be able to back them up from sources, also allows your reader to judge the worth of your sources, ie. the difference between citing The New York Times versus The Enquirer.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but....
Review: The subject matter is exceptionally interesting, and the stories the author provides are engaging. She presents the courtesans sympathetically and in a positive light as women who made opportunities for themselves in a society with limited opportunities for women. However... Her prose is rather purple, annoyingly so. I realize that she is trying to be evocative of a by-gone time. However, there is a difference between evocative and trying to evoke with a sledgehammer. I also found her use of the word "corpulent" ill-advised and questionnable. In the words of The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya, "I don' thin' that word means what you thin' it means." Whether the word originally had the meaning and negative connotations that it has now is immaterial since she is writing for a modern audience she needs to consider how they will respond to the word. (In case you hadn't guessed, her use of this word really, REALLY bothered me.) I think the book would have been helped by footnoting. As a grad student in history I wanted footnotes. It lends a bit more authority to your words and statements to be able to back them up from sources, also allows your reader to judge the worth of your sources, ie. the difference between citing The New York Times versus The Enquirer.
Rating:
Summary: Les Grandes Horizontales
Review: The subtitle of the book is "a catalog of their virtues". They are: Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace and Charm. The author tries to tie in these virtues with short biographies of, mostly French, cocottes of the 19th century. This simply does not work, no matter how much source material is dragged into the book. Besides, I have trouble describing Klondike Kate or Marlene Dietrich as courtesans. Besides, Ms. Griffin uses rather harsh and basic language, although she is given to occasional flights of lyrical fancy that can evoke a chuckle or two. Any courtesan having all of the required seven virtues would be Wonder Woman. And the main item missing here is CLASS.
Rating:
Summary: Les Grandes Horizontales
Review: The subtitle of the book is "a catalog of their virtues". They are: Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace and Charm. The author tries to tie in these virtues with short biographies of, mostly French, cocottes of the 19th century. This simply does not work, no matter how much source material is dragged into the book. Besides, I have trouble describing Klondike Kate or Marlene Dietrich as courtesans. Besides, Ms. Griffin uses rather harsh and basic language, although she is given to occasional flights of lyrical fancy that can evoke a chuckle or two. Any courtesan having all of the required seven virtues would be Wonder Woman. And the main item missing here is CLASS.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointed reader
Review: This book is poorly organized and very badly over written. There are so many poor editorial decisions, for instance, for a book organized as loosely as this one, it would have been extremely helpful to include dates and footnotes and, most inportant to have included an index.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointed reader
Review: This book is poorly organized and very badly over written. There are so many poor editorial decisions, for instance, for a book organized as loosely as this one, it would have been extremely helpful to include dates and footnotes and, most inportant to have included an index.
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