Monthly Archives: August 2008

This is the first book in a long while to leave me speechless. I don’t know anything about it, except that I liked it. Fitzgerald has charmed me out of my need to dissect every piece of writing into intelligible little pieces. It seems only fitting–Romanticists like Novalis were in some measure reacting against rationality.

Ostensibly, the story is about love. But part of Novalis’s legacy to the world is Liebesreligion, “the religion of love,” and it’s unsurprising then that here talking about love entails discussing everything. Underneath the dainty peak of Fitzgerald’s beautiful, breezy prose sits an iceberg of wit, philosophy, and impeccable grasp of history. In the end, The Blue Flower is the most awesomely strange novel I’ve read all year, and the originality doesn’t even seem to be the primary intent. Continue reading →