Mellowed, lightly amusing, regional and historical essay- and
assaying, as he contributes various criticisms, literary and
historical, along his peculiar lines of research. These are
freehand improvisations on themes, and carry on Cabell's public
controversies, his polished argument, his love of his native state.
He vindicates the characters in The First Gentleman of America and
other books; he has imaginary conversations with and letters to
Virginia characters of book and history; he defends the lengths to
which Virginia history goes in assembling myths; he records
youthful memories of elders' conversations on Lincoln,
carpetbaggers, the War Between the States; he discusses the place
of The Reviewer in the literary scene of the 'o's; he includes his
articles on Ellen Glasgow; he writes of his life in Virginia's
Northern Neck. For the literary essay market. (Kirkus Reviews)
When "Let Me Lie" was first published in 1947, most reviewers
missed the double meaning of the book's title. Deaf to James Branch
Cabell's many-layered ironic wit, they read the book as a paean to
the old South.
Readers of this new paperback edition are unlikely to repeat the
mistake. "Let Me Lie" is indeed a carefully researched and
brilliantly written historical narrative of Virginia from 1559 to
1946--focusing on Tidewater, Richmond, and the Northern Neck--but
as a fictional scholar remarks in the book, Cabell's history is
"both accurate and injudicious." Virginia's story of itself, Cabell
claims, depends on illusion and myth, and his skill as a satirist
allows him to construct and deflate these myths simultaneously.
Ranging from Don Luis de Velasco and Captain John Smith to Edgar
Allan Poe and Ellen Glasgow, from Confederate heroes to the
oddities of the post-Civil War Old Dominion, "Let Me Lie" remains
compulsively readable, as history, entertainment, or both.
General
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