Reviews for Siren Land

The average rating for Siren Land based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-10-06 00:00:00 Kim Holmes Douglas is considered by some as the father of modern travel writing. This book ranges over such a wide variety of topics as the mythical sirens, the Emperor Tiberius, local food and wines, the Blue Grotto, ruins and archaeology, religions and superstitions, the Capriot mystic Sister Serafina, the landscape, legends, the weather and climate, and the general stupidity, sordidness, and dishonesty of the locals. His tone is often condescending and contemptuous, so I enjoyed it a great deal. The sort of travel Douglas discusses requires wealth, leisure time, intelligence, culture, taste, and education--all in large and equal quantities. I'm not sure that sort of person exists anymore. A traveler may have a lot of money, but lack cultural depth, or he may possess taste and intelligence, but not have more than a few days or weeks at most to visit a destination. I also cannot imagine there are many people nowadays who would enjoy Douglas's writing style. He was clearly a well-read and highly-educated man, with quite the faculty for languages. The text is full of scholarly references, and the quotations in foreign languages are left untranslated. He does not not talk down to his readers--he assumes they are as intelligent as he is. And I must admit that I preferred being treated as an intellectual equal, even if I didn't understand everything Douglas was talking about some of the time. (I must also confess that I've been guilty of the same sort of pedantic obscurity in my own writing, and people have criticized me about it.) Before I read the book I read up on Douglas himself, and learned that, unfortunately, he was a pedophile. He went to Capri not only for the scenery and the history but also because it was in his time what Thailand is in ours--a hotbed for kinky sex tourism. Often our society is presented with this dilemma--can we enjoy and appreciate a work of art if we know that the creator, be he a painter, a writer, a composer, or a director--a Picasso, Celine, Wagner, or Polanski, say--is a truly despicable person? I certainly can't answer that. But I will say that my background knowledge of Douglas caused me to try to read closely between the lines.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-07 00:00:00 Derek Davis Douglas is eloquent, indeed beautiful in his evocation of the regions around Capri. He meanders through history by means of a stream of consciousness, with seemingly random (but surely crafted) associations, in a manner reminiscent of W.G. Sebald's "The Rings of Saturn". By this means he burrows into the psyche of the people and the region, borne of centuries of ebb and flow of people, empires and their mythological, as well as economic cargo. Douglas brings a gentle, outsider's lens and sarcasm to his discussion of the ad hoc hybrid mythologies of the locals (these designed to cater to the naive expectations of the tourist), but exudes asperity in his critique of the clergy, especially towards the vindictive and twisted Spanish variety. His peregrinations through history are peppered with gems like this: "Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes."; perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt, but perhaps not. His knowledge of Mediterranean history is profound (exemplified best by his criticisms of Tacitus), but the corollary of this is that, occasionally, he is challenging to read (in an age when most of us (Plebians) are not well educated in Greek and Latin). I am sure that I would never have encountered the off-hand use of the word "hyperborean" unless I had read this book. I will now use the word at every opportunity. However, although the book is likely to be challenging to the modern reader, it is worth the effort, especially for those who love southern Italy.