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- - - - COPYRIGHT 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
- - - - BANVARD'S FOLLY: Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck. (Review)_(book review) Jack Matthews. Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 News World Communications, Inc. BANVARD'S FOLLY
The life of John Banvard is the most perfect crystallization of loss imaginable," writes Paul Collins in Banvard's Folly: Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck (Picador USA," $25, 272 pp), a lively treatise on eccentricity, flawed genius and star-crossed obsession. Banvard was a Kentuckian who in the early 19th century took upon himself the gargantuan task of painting the entire Mississippi River. His canvas was enormous, advertised as "three miles" (a gross distortion caused by its 15,840 square feet being translated as linear). It was stretched between two rollers, which were turned so that an audience could see the river pass by, very much as if they were watching it from the deck of a steamboat. The contraption was an odd harbinger of the motion picture, and accomplished without electricity. For a while, Banvard's panorama was the talk of the country. John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and even Charles Dickens were impressed by it. But maybe it was too popular and topical to last, for it soon began to evoke parodies and, eventually, passed into obscurity. Old and discouraged, the artist moved to the Dakota territory, where he died -- but not before writing 1,700 poems and a book on shorthand. His panoramic canvases have long since rotted away, which is a pity, for they must have been spectacular. All the stories in Collins' book are interesting in their documentation of extravagant single-mindedness and unbalanced ingenuity. In spite of its cute subtitle, this is altogether an entertaining and curious book, reminding us once again (and reinforcing the testimony of the daily newspapers) what an odd species Americans are. Named Works: Banvard's Folly: Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity and Rotten Luck (Book) - Reviews Article A76698294
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