|
The Enormous Room
by ee cummings Reviewed by Christine Fitzgerald "The Enormous Room" is a novel by ee cummings set in WWI. I’m sure knowing that is going to serve you well some day when you want to appear well-read. Not that I’m all that well-read, but I find that since I’ve been writing this review section, obscure things I read a long time ago are coming to mind. Now the only problem will be rolling the conversation around so you can show that you know about the existence of this book. Once we were having a chat with an insurance agent about our policy and he managed to squeeze in he fact that he is an authority on Jean Cocteau and that the librarians at the Jean Cocteau Library were groveling before him when he went there on his trip to Europe. I said “Get outta town!” and I meant it. He really needs to live a little closer to the Jean Cocteau Library. If my insurance agent can do it, so can you. I think just knowing that the book "The Enormous Room" exists will suffice for most people. However, you and I are not most people, as they say. First off, you are going to have to know a little French because "The Enormous Room" is full of French phrases. Ce parce-que ee was over in France during WWI. There was a problem with his uniform or something and il se trouve en Paris avec un ami pendant le plupart of his military service. The whole book is sprinkled with French phrases like that. While in Paris, ee brushed up on his French, and he found that very useful later during his stay in prison. The enormous room of the title is a room he shared with the other prisoners. ee is quite cheerful about his stay in the prison, and it apparently compared favorably with his stint in the ambulance corps which was his original military assignment. I read this book a long time ago, but I recently checked it out of the library on interlibrary loan. Malheursement, the library made me return it before I was finished with it. Definitely read "The Enormous Room," or is it "the enormous room"? There is a discussion about the capitalization of the title and the author's name in the prefatory material. |