I ended up spending a few extra hours in the Raleigh airport due to bad weather on both ends, so I was extremely glad to have Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Benjamin Franklin to make the delay bearable. It’s quite well written, and Isaacson casts his tale in the context of the paradoxical juxtaposition of Puritanism and the Enlightenment ideals that jointly formed Franklin’s intellectual background. It’s a very sympathetic portrait, but not sycophantic — he highlights Franklin’s successes and failings, particularly the negotiations and blind spots (against the Penn family) that got in the way of negotiations over the taxation and representation issues. Not that I think any more focus on Franklin’s part would have overcome the beliefs and biases of Townsend & Company, but …
I also finally read Girl With A Pearl Earring, which is an amazingly beautiful novel based on a Vermeer painting. Tracy Chevalier takes the girl in the painting and gives her life, a story, and a personal connection to Vermeer. It’s beautifully written, with very visual prose, as befitting a novel about an artist like Vermeer. In this regard Chevalier’s writing is somewhat like A.S. Byatt’s, who is another writer I devour.