MD-review in The Nation

[Jessica Rath]

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but The Nation from May 12 has
a review of M&D by John Leonard; it's right at the end, before the
Classifieds and a Puzzle...

No critique or criticizing here; this Leonard-guy has read not only M&D from
cover to cover (and enjoyed it), but TRP's other works as well, and more
than once, it seems. A review full of admiration, wonder, and delight. For
example:
"And from the depths of a jaunty disenchantment, he calls into brilliant
question the very ways we measure, map and misconstrue history, landscape,
time, space, stars and self - as if by pin, needle, pencil, lens, plummet,
clock, pendulum and compass, we will ever settle on an Angle of genuine
Repose, or achieve orbit, or abstract anything important about women and
comets, or see the sailing shapes of love and death and wind and light."

Leonard cites a long list of possible reference-material:
"...Chateaubriand's 'Atala'... the Mary Wollstonecrafts, mother and
daughter, seem to have been consulted, along with their husband and father,
William Godwin, and his 'Adventures of Caleb Williams'. Nor would a
familiarity with Cotton Mather come as a surprise. Or the John Williams who
wrote 'The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion', the Joel Barlow who wrote
'The Hasty-Pudding' and the Charles Brockden Brown who wrote 'Wieland,
Ormond' and a terrific essay on somnambulism (and who, like Dixon, was a
radical Quaker)."

I know _one_ Mary Wollstonecraft, but all the other authors??? Anybody know
anything about those books?

Jessica