To Raise the Temeraire
To Raise the Temeraire I remember the first time I saw The Fighting Temeraire by J.M.W. Turner. It was on the cover of an anthology of literature book. It was a collegiate tome that my father had acquired, when he took business classes at a local community college (In America, this is a two-year university level program). He wasn’t much of a reader, but he held onto that book. One night, when I was about seven or eight, he read Hemingway’s The Undefeated to me from that book. It was an odd choice, as my mother loved Hemingway, and my father knew practically nothing about him. However, that book was to become influential in other ways. It was the first place I’d read James Joyce, as it reprinted The Dead , the final story from Dubliners. It was also where I read H.G. Wells’ Country of the Blind , and were I was first exposed to the name Oscar Wilde. Reprinted in those pages was The Picture of Dorian Gray. I still have that book, al