OMG though the book-on-tape version of “The Education of Henry Adams” could be used for enhanced interrogation, don’t you think?
Brilliant man, extraordinary family, in the thick of history—yet stupifyingly dull!
I don’t find him dull whatsoever, except insofar as I can’t follow his abstruse attempts to fashion a psuedo-scientific unified field theory of history. He was a master prose stylist, in my opinion. I wish more people were exposed to his novels. His thought I find fascinating and original, aside from the aforementioned theorizing.
Look, for example, in “The Eductlation” where the Civil War is foreshadowed in snowball fights with fellow neighborhood kids. Or his portrait of the half remembered John Quincy, or his description if his sister’s death. Not that I can convince you of its interest by how it affected me, if you didn’t feel it.