Frances Farmer Books

I read this book quite a few years ago and it remains fresh in my memory. There was nothing about it I did not totally love, especially Emilie. I was sad to see that there was only one other review of this excellent book. Everyone should read it, it is absolutely beautiful.

This is a book about endemic people, who, like plants, are rooted to a certain time and place with a specificity that is hard for a lot of us alive today to know. Emilie's tale of her tough life in the rugged mountains near Italy is told with such a wonderful conversational and error-laden english - completely engaging and romantic, with photos of people in the story she is telling. I read it while at my best friends house in Grenoble, and then we drove to the very town in the alps that Emilie grew up in. It was like a time capsule except for the cross country ski inns that have popped up and started a commercialization process. But the story she tells is of people who are like certain french cheeses made in a certain valley, that if you went over the mountain and into the next valley, that cheese could not be replicated. This is a great story and you will fall in love with it if you are someone who is nostalgic for a time and place when harsh weather, rugged mountains, and lots of work to do at home made a journey of 20 miles felt like it took you to another planet.

While there are probably very few people who think justice is truly blind to race, gender, class and sexual orientation, this look at the courts from Restoration until today is still shocking. The systemic protection of 'white male privilege' has made it impossible for just about anyone and everyone to get a fair trial. And throughout this book Berry argues convincingly, logically, simply and clearly why this has been the case.

Berry's thesis is that the court - through judges' decisions and verdicts - uphold the prevailing 'stories' of the day, explaining why some black men - under the protection of white male privilege - were punished less harshly than others. Or why black men were so quickly and easily convicted of raping white women, or why it was considered pretty much impossible to rape a black woman or a poor white one. And on and on and on... According to Berry, judges would twist the understanding of statutes and laws to conform to and support the stories. When, after WWII, stories began to change, the different attitudes and ideas were reflected in court decisions, and Brown vs. the Board of Education, Roe vs. Wade, and other cases were possible.

Berry certainly creates a very compelling case, showing the effects of these 'stories,' the efforts to change them and the ensuing results. Although I do believe that other elements - even, as the Supreme Court illustrated so clearly during the election fiasco, personal ideology - play a role, I still think that Berry is describing a very powerful phenonmenon. And Berry's evidence of a strong bias in the courts is something every American should know about. In fact, I think this should be mandatory reading for pretty much everybody.

The "Pig Farmer's Daughter" is a stalwart exposition describing the fault line of bigotry, and bias that runs through the historical bedrock of the American judicial system. Berry offers a seamless narrative, written eloquently and without malice. Her book is an irrefutable unveiling of the ignorance that so often poses as the truth of popular culture. What is so ironic is that the players she exposes were and are supposed to be the very people who are without bias. Everyone and anyone who has a desire to understand racism and sexism in this country needs to read this book. No lawyer or judge serious about racial justice should enter a courtroom without having read it.

Since August 12, 1999, Bové has been an icon of the movement against "free" trade and the WTO. It was then that he and nine other members of the French Farmers Union (Confédéracion Paysanne) dismantled a MacDonald's restaurant in their hometown of Millau, loaded the pieces on their tractors and carted them to the local police station. MacDonald's was targetted both as a symbol of corporate domination of public life and as a leading vendor of what the French call malbouffe, food that is not worthy of being eaten.
The actual target of this protest was a 100% duty imposed on Roquefort cheese by the United States. The WTO had ruled that the French were violating trade laws by refusing to import U.S. hormone-fed beef, allowing the U.S. to impose punitive tariffs on Roquefort and 78 other French products. Bové and his fellow defendants raise sheep that produce milk for Roquefort cheese.
The MacDonald's action by the Farmers Union lit the imagination of thousands of activists and was one of the major events leading to the protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle a few months later. Bové and Dufour were in Seattle as part of the official French agricultural delegation but their official status did not deter them from further political theater. They distributed 500 pounds of his Roquefort cheese at the Pike Place Market and they marched arm-in-arm with farmers and AFL leaders at the head of the big march of November 30. In their book Dufour says, "It was an important signal: that in the first mass demonstration of trade unionists and ecologists, farmers were at the front. It's a particularly powerful image for Third World countries, where the majority of the population are farmers or live in rural areas."
In stepping forward as spokesmen against corporate domination of trading rules in general and agriculture in particular, Bové and Dufour have exposed themselves to personal attacks by the major media outlets. They are usually portrayed as nationalistic bumpkins, Luddites or egotistical publicity hounds. Their book puts the lie to much of that. Philosophically they are in favor of policies supporting regional food self-sufficiency--as opposed to policies which promote agribusiness. Why, they ask, should WTO regulations be imposed on all food when less than 5% is actually exported? It is clear that they have spent decades working on agricultural policy; much of the book describes how shifting farm policies since World War II have driven the small farmers out while favoring industrial agriculture dependent on long-distance transportation, monoculture, massive inputs of chemicals and over-reliance on the major agricultural and food distribution companies. Bové and Dufour argue that this is destroying the rural ecology, throwing farmers out of work and putting the world's food supplies at risk of catastrophic diseases (e.g., mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease, which are currently threatening European herds) or of callous market manipulation. Even without such disasters, the quality of food is deteriorating and taking traditional culture with it. The WTO had not specifically addressed agriculture before the Seattle round, but its proposals for Seattle clearly favored agribusiness' interests over those of small farmers and of less developed countries. This conflict led to the internal failure of the WTO in Seattle.
Bové points optimistically to "[b]uilding on the international gains won in Seattle." What his critics saw as a hodgepodge of dissimilar interests without a clear agenda, he sees as a new nonideological politics that succeeded in stopping the WTO . He suggests that the different viewpoints within the opposition to the WTO are exactly the point: local interests should not be steamrollered by the one-size-fits-all approach of the free-traders. Further trade agreements will require openness to public scrutiny. Although The World Is Not For Sale emphasizes globalization's impact on farming and rural areas, it also touches on the dangers of genetic modifications of plants and animals and on globalization's erosion of human rights--including trade union rights--and cultural diversity. The Farmers Union is not opposed to foreign trade agreements like the WTO, but insist that they must incorporate protection for workers, culture and the environment. The book offers tentative proposals on achieving these protections.

Interesting to read firsthand about the work of these courageous activists from France - Jose Bove is certainly not the leader of a group of country bumpkins or Luddites as I had inferred from the popular media. This book covers personal backgrounds & histories of their involvement in various farmers unions , these guys are effective organizers who know their business and also working farmers with a feeling and respect for the land, quality of life and food are goals of paramount importance.

Divided into 3 parts:
1st - The McDonald's story and other planned protests told from the viewpoints of both Bove & Dufour. The McDonald's incident took place in response to import duties imposed on Roquefort cheese in retaliation for EU's refusal to import American hormone treated beef. Not a random or spontaneous incident but a well planned out protest carried out to attract public attention. Both Dufour & Bove have been involved more than 30 years in various movements for change in France.
2nd - History of intensive farming over the last 50 years in France, farming economics, factory farms. Covers topics here such as genetically modified crops, mad cow disease, environmental destruction caused by intensive pig farming
3rd - Farming as a global issue world trade organization and "free trade", protest in Seattle, growth of a movement, a new vision.

An inspiring read for those interested in food, farming and globalization.

Initially, this book caught my eye because the story takes place in the French town where I was born and raised.
While I found interesting and informative to re-discover my hometown through the eyes of the writer, I was totally captured by the many sides to this book: the story about a foreigner adapting to a different culture (which I can relate to, having made my home in the USA...), a international love story between a French man and an English woman (I am French and my husband American), the author learning to become a stepmother, the huge task of nursing back to life a beautiful property which had been abandoned by its previous owners....
There are lots of stories within the main story... All so well written, I lost track of time a lot while reading this book...
I also, through her descriptions, recognized some of the characters!! (small town... VERY small town!!)
It was a true feast and I am ordering the sequel as soon as I am finished writing this review!!
Get this book, it will literally absorb you into its own world... Getting a glimpse of the South of France without leaving your armchair should be enticing enough... I could smell the lavender in the breeze, hear the ciccadas, and almost taste the local foods I so miss here in the US...
I recommend it to you all without any reservation!

The other night I was listening to an audio commentary which featured Robert Hardy and Carol Drinkwater. During the commentary Carol mentioned she had authored a series of books about she and her husbands experience rennovating/operating an olive farm in the south of France. Intriged by what Carol had said I checked the first book "The Olive Farm" out from the public library and began to read. First of all I must say the book is a delightful read. Carol has the ability to communicate on paper in the form of easy conversation, as two friends would have over a cup of tea. You will laugh and cry along with Carol as you read her story of restoring "Appassionata" to its former glory. I would love to see the BBC make a television series out of her books, they are a total delight!

This is a wonderful book. If you have ever dreamed of running off and creating a brand new life filled with love, laughter and more than a few bumps along the way then this is a book that you'll love. In fact, I recommend all her books-they are that good.

Ms Drinkwater writes a uncomplicated and enjoyable tale of her adventures in old houses,the French, olive oil and love. She brings the same pleasantness to the written word that she did to the small screen in All Creatures Great and Small.

The Olive Farm is a well-executed memoir in the fashion of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence. In it, actress Carol Drinkwater and her fiance, Michel, a film producer, impetuously purchase a rundown olive farm in the south of France and begin the process of restoring it to comfort and fecundity.

This memoir will not disappoint-- Carol and her fiance face the difficulties of limited finances, needed repairs well in excess of initial estimates, and frustrations with the local workforce. All of these, of course, are transcended by the satisfactions of nursing the olive trees into production and the triumphs of beginning to restore the farmhouse to its previous grandeur.

This ground has been trodden before, but Carol Drinkwater tells her tale engagingly, drawing likable portraits of her family, friends and neighbors in Cannes. Sit back, relax and enjoy the journey to Drinkwater's Cannes.

I beg to differ, as one of the earlier reviewers stated, that this book does not offer spiritual fulfillment. I found it awakening many slumbering treasures that I have neglected over the past few years, caught up in other things in my life. I thought it was a delightful treat. I would agree that there is little to no spiritual direction, but it does not purport to be an "owner's manual" for any spirituality.

I would also kindly disagree about its lack of plot. While the writing is more stream-of-consciousness than one typically expects for an autobiography, there is a movement throughout the book which one can follow, and it is not to "nowhere."

I am not a shepherdess myself, and there were times when I thought "ew" (get it - ew/ewe - pun intended!) when presented with graphic descriptions of sheeep husbandry, but it was all part of parcel of the journey. This is definitely one of those books in which the joy is in the journey, and thank you, Mary Rose, O'Reilly, for taking us along!

I was fortunate enough to have found this book in a happy happenstance. I was waiting for colleagues at our local quirky microbrewery on a Friday after work, went over to the shared bookshelf and pulled this off. I intended to return it when I finished, but I think I will donate another book to their library, as this one is too precious to let go! I intend for it to be one of those few books that I re-read over and over.

I found this book boring. Her message was good, but her delivery did nothing for me.

My first impressions of this book were that it was weird. That really describes the first section and a half of this book. It *is* weird reading about the excrutiating details of sheep farming coupled with deep religious insights. But it was weird in a good way, like waking up one morning in the middle of the winter at 6 AM and having the sun already be risen. The further along in the book I went, the more I enjoyed her weird combination of sheep farming, Buddhist retreat, music, and Quaker imagery. I found myself thinking about what she just said constantly; quite frankly, it was an absolute inspiration to me, especially when she starts delving into her life at Plum Village. Her format also makes the book easy to read. You can pick it up for just 5 minutes at a time. With some memoirs, the format of short essays makes the memoir feel disjointed; with this one, it makes it feel whole. I've read many memoirs and many spiritual/religious books. If I had to give a list of my top 3, this book would be on it.

The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O'Reilley is a beautiful and insightful memoir. There is something to be learned, pondered over, and highlighted for posterity on almost every page of this book. O'Reilley's humor and down-to-earth honesty regarding spiritual and personal matters made me feel at home, even in unknown territory. While reading this memoir, I learned to pause, remember, and cherish my own breath, to accept what is and what is not.

In the past 15 years, I've read two, "personal memoir"-type books by women writers that totally blew my doors off: Terry Tempest Williams' "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place" and Mary Rose O'Reilly's "The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd." Very different books, at the end of the day, but both women think and write from deep religious traditions in their lives. Likewise, both have an abiding love for "the land," concretely and metaphorically, so what you hear at the end of that same day are calm but passonate voices that make you listen, make you want to listen hard to the observations, but with sense of deep fulfillment for the experience of it.

As for "Barn," I am neither a Quaker, a Buddhist, a farmer, a teacher nor an "older, adventurous woman" (as one reviewer suggested would be the type of person who would enjoy "Barn"). SO WHAT! "Barn" is a truly a banquet of wise and penetrating insights into the essence work (and working with and caring for animals in particular), of friendship, love, responsibility, accountability to yourself and to others, silence, mediation, the sacred, and, ultimately living honestly. There is much humor, gentleness, and "character" (for want of a better word to describe her inner strength) in the 90-odd "chapters" (some as short as 1 page) that are more like mini-essays on discrete but interrelated topics, so much so that I found myself going back, often, re-reading passages, savoring her prose and her insights, shutting the book, just letting the writing sink in. "Barn," resonated with me (an "semi-older, adventurous man") on more levels than I could ever have predicted. I'm a big fan of Thich Nhat Hanh's work, so the chapters recounting her experience at Plum Village and Thay's "dharma talks" were an added "bonus." Give it a shot, and take your time reading it; it's worth it.

I had seen the motion picture several times but never read the book. As a behavioral health clinician, I find myself drawn to the "real world" that isn't seen by all. This book held my attention from beginning to end. It was absolutely heart-breaking to view through this woman's words how not only her parents, and of course the 1930's Hollywood, but last but not least the systems charged with caring for the mentally ill, could have treated her so inhumanely. This is to say, unless she could benefit them. Anyone in the field should read this.

It is a definite fact that this book was not written by Frances Farmer at all, but by Jean Ratcliffe, whose close relationship with Farmer was chronicled in the final chapters of this book. For legal reasons subsequent pressings altered the subtitle from "an autobiography by frances farmer" to an "autobiography of frances farmer." It's very disappointing that there really is no definitive biography by or about Farmer. I was deeply moved & horrified every time I read this book, but since Farmer isn't the author, it gives credibility to the many disputes that have arisen regarding the book's veracity. The same can be said about "Shadowlands," on which the 1982 film "Frances" is based. Farmer's sister wrote a biography of Frances entitled "Look Back in Love," but she had as much of an agenda as Ratcliffe may have had, only hers was to exonerate the Farmer family from the beating they'd taken in "Morning" & "Shadowland." Keep this in mind when you read the book(s). Frances Farmer's life is ripe for authentic documentation. This just isn't it.

This is my all-time favorite book. I've read it at least once
a year for the last 20 plus years. Miss Farmer was a brilliant
writer. A brutally honest book. Makes you ashamed to be part of
the human race at times. She was a true warrior and I pray she
has found the peace and joy that eluded her in this world.
The book always makes me cry...and I don't cry often enough.

This is my favorite book ever. I first heard about Frances Farmer in high school. I lived about 10 miles away from the old mental instatute she was in. They have since tore it down but the rubble is still there, and I visited it a few times and became facinated with her life. This book is the best book I have ever read, well almost I also loved Shadowland!! These two books are a must read!!

You can hear the voices change throughout the book. Many events of her life were sensationalized, presumably with a movie deal in mind. This book was partially written by Farmer, partially by Lois Kisbee, who was initially hired to write the book in conjunction with the actress. Frances' "best friend", Jeanira Ratcliffe, took over the project after her death. The result is a heavily edited work which lavishly praises Ratcliffe and her family. It is obvious that Ratcliffe was trying to mask her financial exploitation of Farmer (with both this book and two earlier failed business ventures). The last few chapters were needlessly devoted to Farmer's supposed friendship with Ratcliffe, which borders on boredom compared to the earlier chapters detailing her life.

Ratcliffe also uses the book to dispel rumors that she and Farmer were a lesbian couple. To do so she invented a crazy character, who tried to butcher Frances with an ax. When he couldn't succeed, he spread malicious gossip about Frances' relationship with Ratcliffe througout Indiana. No report to the police were made after his attempted assault. "Frances" claimed she was scared of the authorities.

The description of her life inside the asylum in Steilacoom, Washington, was grossly exaggerated as were her fights with her mother in Seattle. With the exception of Ratcliffe and her family, all of the characters are histrionic. Moreover, there are several errors in the book that Farmer could not have made, such as her uncle's name.

It's unfortunate that we can never know the truth, since the true author of this book and "Shadowland", written by William Arnold, both use Farmer for their own means. If you want to read something closer to the truth, read "Look Back in Love" written by Farmer's half-sister, Edith Farmer Elliot.

This book is a lovely guide for those who plan to travel to Provence as well as those who cannot. It is lovely - just lovely. Beautiful photographs, wonderful insights and descriptions off the beaten path. I high recommend this book.

This excellent book was in the kitchen of a house we rented a couple of years ago in Caromb, northeast of Avignon. Not only were the lists of daily markets invaluable, but the recipe for quails with spring onions on tapenade-covered croutons, for example, allowed us to make good use of local products. (With all those fabulous tapenades available at market, I did not make my own, as the recipe suggests.) Patricia Wells's introduction reminds you of her own invaluable guides to food throughout France, and her inspiration and influence are apparent throughout the book -- the level of knowledge, enthusiasm, and appreciation for the wonders of Provençal food is engaging and contagious. The illustrations remind you of places you've been away from too long and get the juices flowing for a return visit for markets you missed the last time.

My cousin and I just returned from a 9-day trip to Southern France. Our highlights can all be found in this wonderful book. We met Henri Tomas and taste-tested and approved the Galette specialty of the house; taste-tested and brought back many bottles of wine from Chateau La Canorgue. We followed the suggestions and pretty much made the rounds to all of the sites. Our last evening in Provence, we sampled the goat cheese, bread from Henri Tomas' patisserie and the wine...we added our own Picheline olives and fresh market tomatoes to make our meal complete...what a last supper to have in France. Joy of Life, Indeed!!!!!! Thanks for making our trip a 10++++++.

As part of a $250.00 order, I ordered the Michelin France Provence map in English, and the Michelin 2006 Red Guide France: Hotels and Restaurants in English - both Items they sent me were written in French, which are of no value to me. I requested a shipping label to return the map and the book and asked they send me the English versions. The Amazon Outsourcing Desk in India refused both request. I requested an American Amazon Customer Service Manager contact me on this Issue. That has never happened. I am also being asked my Satisfaction on a 3d book - Markets Of Provence - which they never sent me. The remainder of my $250.00 order were the English Versions, as ordered. My Overall Satisfaction: Well below the 1 Star shown. Actual Satisfaction "F Minus" for all departments in Amazon and far less for their very poor Customer Service and lack of ethical follow-up for their mistake.

If you or anyone you know plans a trip to Provence, make sure this book goes too! It is an excellent guide to the wonderful Provencal outdoor markets. If you want to experience Provence at its finest, this is one of the very best guide.

Full of gorgeous color photos, this is a beautiful as well as helpful book. After the trip, it is wonderful to go through the book again and savor all of the great memories. For the finest produce, cheese and other delights of the South, this book is a must have!

I thought that this book was so great! I read it for graduate French History and it was the best supplemental piece thus far in my sseries on French history. I suggest reading A Tale of Two Cities before this book. If you appreciate the beauty of France's countryside and want to understand the difficulties and individuality of a very strong French woman, do read this book.

This is one of the best autobiographies I have ever read. Mme. Carles has so much to say about her way of life and her countrymen. Her relationship with her family is described touchingly and well. Her peasant background reminds me of my grandparents' farming lives in the southern U.S. As I read, it seemed strange to me that someone who depended on owning and working land could become a leftist. However, in view of Mrs. Carles' descriptions of the various governments which have ruled France, I can see how someone could be desperate (and naive) enough to turn to anti-capitalism. It helped me understand the political climate in Europe better, but that is not why I recommend the book. It is simply a lovely description of how peasants lived and thought for many centuries. It has a sense of timelessness, of life before the frantic changes technology has brought over the last hundred years. Just take a large grain of salt when you read Carles' economic recommendations.

Emilie Carles started out her life the same as many of her neighbors in her predominantly peasant town in France. Unlike her neighbors, she went on to receive an education and break out of generations of grinding poverty and ingnorance. The very fact that she is able to chronicle her most unusual life is a testament to the power of the human spirit. Everyone interested in issues of class and gender influencing biography should read this excellent memoir.

This was a quick read (I finished it during a plane ride across the Pacific). Carles was born in 1900 in a peasant hamlet in one of the poorest regions of Alpine France. Rare for her time and place, she gained literacy and was successful enough in her studies to gain a teacher's license. She wrote her stories into notebooks for decades and, when the time came, began fashioning their contents into an autobiography. As sickness overtook her, she opted to tell her tale to a publisher, who worked the tapes and her books into this story.

It's worth reading. I've read bits and pieces of the history of isolated, medieval Alpine communities, mostly in books on mountain-climbing; this is a glimpse into the end days of such a community, with its harsh lifestyle, old traditions, and superstitions of its inhabitants. Carles was a woman who challenged many of those traditions and superstitions as she grew and learned.

Toward its end the book bogs down into political statements. Carles married a remarkably free-thinking man for the late 1920s/early 1930s, and his views meshed nicely with hers--pacifism honed by the loss of her brothers to the trenches of World War I and a socialist bent that wants to see the state offer real aid to poor communities like hers. I could have done without her (unrealistic in my opinion) stirring proclamations on the need for a four-hour work day and a return to a simple rural lifestyle. But this doesn't take away from the value of the book on the whole. It's an entertaining look at a strong woman who saw the twentieth century pass in a place that rarely gets written about.

This is one woman's story of life in an age and place which has disappeared over the course of a century. The voice is powerful, although the translation from the French could have been better. Carles truly makes you feel what it was like to be a young peasant woman. This isn't sentimental trash or dry history. It's a very down to earth tale of "this is what it was like for me."

I read this book having first read the powerful book (please read this book), "Will There Really Be A Morning?". A lot of the questions I was left with following my completion of that book were answered by reading "Shadowland" and I think it is a well-written book that is worth the time to find and read. Frances Farmer's story is tragic and thought-provoking and Arnold's book gives a comprehensive look at Frances triumphs and tragedies. I would recommend reading "Will There Really Be A Morning?" by Frances Farmer (partially) (both books are easy to find on Ebay) before reading this book. It will make the story more interesting and easier to follow.

I found my copy in a used bookstore. I can't believe anyone would want to give it up. What an amazing story. It should still be in print, as people still talk about Frances Farmer. I liked this even better than "Will There Really Be A Morning" because it went deeper into her life, and more accurately, since the "autobiography" was in fact written by Frances's friend after her death. I had some trouble believing some of the incidents actually happened, or if they were exaggerated. "Shadowlands" talks about her life before and after Hollywood (as well as the Steilicomb years). However, the author writes about the "This Is Your Life" episode: "seeing it was a truly devestating experience", and says Frances barely uttered a word and was zoned out. We must have seen different shows. I saw that episode too and she looked perfectly fine to me, and she DID speak a lot. Anyway, good book.

I cannot believe that a total stranger, a man who never even met his subject, is claiming to know better than she herself what happened to her and why. Her autobiography was organized by her beloved friend, Jean, as Frances died while she was still writing, and Jean also helped editing as Frances wrote right up until her death. Hence the book just stops, rather than ends, but that doesn't mean that she didn't write it. Does the "reviewer" here really imagine that a family like Jean's would be able to just come up with the horrors Frances experienced, when they, a genteel New England family had never been inside a state institution, let alone been left in one for 8 years, naked, starving, desperate, and then finally hopeless? My mother was in one, and I can tell you, the stories are not exaggerated, though it may comfort you to believe that they are.

External facts, dates, places, performances, extrapolations, are not truth. It is an insult to the memory of Frances Farmer to make another person the "expert" about her--if this man had anything to do with the film that was made (which featured an extraordinary performance by Jessica Lange, but was so full of errors as to be unrecognizable as Farmer's life), then he is further invalidated.

"Will there really be a morning?" was unflinching and difficult to read, but never did Frances lapse into self-pity. Her work to become human was incredibly hard, but she did it, through the love of others, not through a therapist or a group of "survivors," nor any other external force except love. Acceptance. I will always choose to believe Frances' version of her life over anyone else's, however fascinated that person is and however much running around the globe he does, dogging her footsteps, as though he can find her somewhere there on the map he has drawn. It was that very thing which drove her into rages--she could not bear that to act had come to mean Hollywood, and therefore had come to mean that everyone's opinion but hers counted. She fought and fought and fought against that, as she'd had to do at home against her monster of a mother.

And for those readers who here have preferred his distance to her intimacy--her often uncomfortable intimacy--I can only say that it is yet another violation of her sovreignty over her own life to take another person's interpretation of it and declare it more believable. All of her life, she fought for the right to define herself as she was, not as others saw her or wanted her to be, and yet this page is full of writings by people who seem to have missed that point completely and decided to give someone else the final word over a woman he saw first on that thing she despised most: a movie screen. I cannot think of anything she'd hate more than that.

This book should be on the MUST READ list of all students in any branch of the human service field. Although blunt at times it remains factual through-out. The author was good about letting fact speak for itself and not falling prey to the "want" to embellish in order to make a great drama. You start out thinking that the events of Frances Farmer's life could never happen - at least not with the ease at which they did. And they centainly could not continue. The book answers many questions. But they may not be what you expect.
I am not one who reads often but I had a hard time staying away from this one. If you are one who has a hard time concentrating for long periods of time you can stop anywhere and pick up the book again; you do not need to wait until the end of a chapter. I have not seen the move that was made from the book called "Frances", which I understand is quite good also, and I am not sure I would want to take the chance on spoiling an excellent book.

"Shadowland" is the book that seems to have introduced most people to the story of Frances Farmer. It is a riveting, disturbing and visceral read--until you find out that it is in large part "fictionalized," as its author admitted himself in the copyright infringement case he brought against the producers of the feature film "Frances," which used his book as source material (despite the producers' denials). "Shadowland" is so rife with factual errors and outright fabrications (including the lobotomy, which never happened to the real Frances) that it would be comical if it weren't such an insult to the memory of this valiant woman who struggled so hard to regain her emotional equilibrium. The reviews below which claim "Shadowland" is thoroughly factual are simply wrong--the list of outright factual errors in "Shadowland" is truly mind-boggling, starting, for example, with her birthyear which Arnold incorrectly states as 1914 (Frances was born in 1913). Unfortunately, Frances' ghost-written autobiography "Will There Really Be A Morning", despite the well-intentioned review below, is also filled with errors and fabrications, which its author Jean Ratcliffe was at least honorable enough to admit she had sensationalized in order to facilitate a movie sale. The best biography of Frances available is the self-published one by her sister Edith Farmer Elliot, entitled "Look Back in Love." For an in-depth look at the many errors and "fictionalizations" in "Shadowland," use a search engine and search for the web article "Shedding Light on Shadowland." The truth about this incredible woman deserves to be known.

It's not what I thought it would be. It seemed to be advertised as an esoteric Rosicrucian document, but it's really just Bacon's portrait of an ideal society. It's true that society has Rosicrucian ideals, but it is mostly a politcal book.

I loved this book. It tied so much together for me regarding the mystery schools. If you are an esoteric fanatic like me, then this must be added to your collection.

This is a fascinating read and my favorite of all Bacon's writings.

This is a very short text: 85pp for the two pieces, plus an intro. Each piece gives a brief description of one thinker's ideal world, a Utopia of a sort. This book is strengthened by presenting two such different views, casting them into sharp contrast.

The first, by Bacon, makes much of pomp, ceremony, and fine accoutrements. He starts by describing the wonderful pageant put out for any man whose living descendants exceed thirty in number. He is paraded among and served by his issue, and granted gifts by the benevolent ruler. At this point - only at this point - is a woman of the realm mentioned. His wife, should she have survived such a feat of childbearing, is to be presented as well, in a carriage, tightly enclosed. A featureless box, the best to which a woman might aspire. (Bacon goes out of his way to disparage More's Utopia, in an amusing aside.)

The remainder of the story details the alchemical feats and workshops of the land. They interested Bacon much the way a candy store might interest a child, with no thought as to how they might be provisioned or staffed. Although the many labs are of interest to today's technologist, the country's means of feeding itself and its voracious researchers remains unsaid.

Campanella's "City of the Sun" is a Utopia of very different character. Above all, it focusses its energies on war more than any other city since Sparta. He demands training in arms for men and women both from the earliest age on, though women would enter combat only in final resort. Even the infirm are put to service however they may serve: the lame can watch and guard, the blind can work in some crafts, and so on. Women are expected to participate in industry, too, except in the woodworkers' and armorers' trades. This city is surprisingly free in religion - Jews are tolerated, if not too jewish, as well as Brahmins and others who acknowledge a soul. Hey, in those days, it was radical.

Both authors express ideas that repulse a modern mind. Even Campanella's enlightened treatment of women and religious minorities sounds brutal, until considered in the context of his time. Bacon's blinkered self-involvement would barely be worth a chuckle, until one considers his influence on history.

It's not formal, but it's a way to view history: what is it that each age most wanted itself to be? What views existed, and what views have survived? And how did the writers of each age differ from the man in the street, or more likely the man behind the plow?

//wiredwierd

This is Francis Bacon's model for America. Many believe it is the vision of the ancient spiritual adepts. Fascinating reading and most provoking.