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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.
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