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Just spotted this reviewed in my second fave newspaper, The New YOrk
Observer, Dec. 4, 1995.
James S. Romm
The edges of the earth in ancient thought: geography, exploration and
fiction. Princeton, P.U.P., 1992 [seems to have been an earlier
edition also, accd to OCLC]
isbn: 0691069336
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Reviewer's comment excerpted:
..."Mr. Romm had the clever notion of taking as his subject all those
phantasmagoric, ancient mythic geographies -- the ones about the
fantastic, hybrid, monstrous creatures said to lurk at the edges of
the earth. All those stories we were taught to laugh at in grade
school because Columbus proved them wrong. Mr. Romm examines as a
deeply revealing body of literature. Literature that reflects the way
the very first thinkers, writers and conceptualizers tried to make
sense of finitude and infinitude, the boundaries not just of the
physical world but of [knowing] itself. [italics] And how they
projected upon the blank screen of terra incognita, shadowy, distorted
reflections of some truths about themselves--about the unknown within,
the terra incognita of human nature."
Quoted as written, incomplete sentences and all. He makes this seem
like good snowbound reading...something to help deal with lake effect
snows and all that. Not that I know anything about lake effect
snows...
Now, this same reviewer has a picture of Bill Gates next to a sketch
of the unabomber and asks if they have ever "been seen together in the
same room..."
ok, ok, reviewer's name is Ron Rosenbaum, and his column is The Edgy
Enthusiast, in The New York Observer. a local weekly.
Alice Hudson
Map Division, NYPL
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