Both : A Portrait in Two Parts

Rating:
Summary: Two wealthy gay 20th century lives
Review: "Both" is the portrait, written by a devoted friend, of two wealthy gay men, two men bound by love, inherited wealth (well, one was disinherited for being gay), and a passion for botany. They met as schoolboys at the British "public" school of Harrow, and maintained their intimate friendship through their college years, Dwight Ripley at Oxford and Rupert Barnaby at Cambridge. Devoted to alpine gardening and the identification and collection of new species of plants, the two roamed the hills of Spain after college, and later of Nevada, making significant contributions. The fates of their gay friends, often binational partners, during the Nazi years in Europe are described, and we do get an interesting glimpse at what life was life for wealthy gay men in pre-WWII England -- privileged but criminal. But as far as the two being gay, this is almost the last reference to the fact in the book.

Ripley became an artist whose style was precise, fanciful and delightfully imaginative, as was his poetry. Thanks to his wealth, generosity and his own artistic endeavors, the two became involved in the avant garde New York art scene of the abstract expressionist years after 1950 and were intimates of Peggy Guggenheim, Clement Greenberg, and a host of other notable personalities. As a loving portrait, though, we don't get fully rounded characters. We have no idea, for example, of their attitude toward the hoi polloi -- something which we polloi might well be curious about, particularly because when allowed to speak for themselves they come across as being effete -- or of much else besides art and botany. The two seem to be removed from the world going on around them -- not one word about either the Stonewall riots or the Vietnam War, or anything else going on in the larger world with a few brief exceptions at the end of the book. Atmospheric atomic bomb testing destroyed much of the diversity of plant life in their Nevada collecting area which caused them great anguish. While on a plant collecting trip to Mexico in 1968 Ripley experienced and was dismayed by the mounting military juggernaut against the students at the National University which ended with the killing of 300 demonstrators. And his just outrage is directed at the mindless destruction of the natural world by the atomic bomb testing and by blind uncontrolled land development, and he'd only experienced the run-up to what has since mushroomed unabated. Ripley though obtusely blamed the common man, rather than the economic system, for the latter.

Despite these limitations, those interested in the personalities of the New York art world of that era, and of the unusual devotion of two people to the esoteric passion of botanic collecting and taxonomy, will find the book interesting.

Rating:
Summary: humanity of a citizen of earth
Review: This is a portraint in four parts: a story of humanity of a given period, written by a gifted writer. Beyond details, one is led to see finites of life and at the same time its unlimited potentials and joy.