March 05, 2005
Suitable for Arabs and old gentlemen
I started on Andrew Lang's edition of The Arabian Nights Entertainments, which provides a child-safe retelling of the classic shenanigans: "In this book the stories are shortened here and there, and omissions are made of pieces only suitable for Arabs and old gentlemen." The ribald pieces omitted, the anthology still makes riveting reading, and Ford's pen-and-ink elegantly illustrates the adventues of Sinbad. However, I'd like a more thorough, and unexpurgated edition.
Some of the breathless reporting seems drawn straight from Herodotus, Homer, or Marco Polo: "In one place I saw a tortoise which was twenty cubits long and as many broad, also a fish that was like a cow and had skin so thick that it was used to make shields."
