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James Attlee

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Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight Hardcover – March 15, 2011

by James Attlee (Author)

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“Nobody who has not taken one can imagine the beauty of a walk through Rome by full moon,” wrote Goethe in 1787. Sadly, the imagination is all we have today: in Rome, as in every other modern city, moonlight has been banished, replaced by the twenty-four-hour glow of streetlights in a world that never sleeps. Moonlight, for most of us, is no more.

So James Attlee set out to find it. Nocturne is the record of that journey, a traveler’s tale that takes readers on a dazzling nighttime trek that ranges across continents, from prehistory to the present, and through both the physical world and the realms of art and literature. Attlee attends a Buddhist full-moon ceremony in Japan, meets a moon jellyfish on a beach in Northern France, takes a moonlit hike in the Arizona desert, and experiences a lunar eclipse on New Year’s Eve atop the snowbound Welsh hills. Each locale is illuminated not just by the moonlight he seeks, but by the culture and history that define it. We learn about Mussolini’s pathological fear of moonlight; trace the connections between Caspar David Friedrich, Rudolf Hess, and the Apollo space mission; and meet the inventors of the Moonlight Collector in the American desert, who aim to cure all kinds of ailments with concentrated lunar rays. Svevo and Blake, Whistler and Hokusai, Li Po and Marinetti are all enlisted, as foils, friends, or fellow travelers, on Attlee’s journey.

Pulled by the moon like the tide, Attlee is firmly in a tradition of wandering pilgrims that stretches from Basho to Sebald; like them, he presents our familiar world anew.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

March 15, 2011
Dimensions

1.1 x 5.6 x 8.6 inches
ISBN-10

0226030962
ISBN-13

978-0226030968
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[R]ambling . . . charming . . . spellbinding. . . . As we reel through Attlee’s idiosyncratic investigation of his subject—with detours that discuss Mussolini, the Madonna, the Victorian painter Samuel Palmer—he provides a magpie assortment of facts. . . . Modern man, in Attlee’s view, has done his best to ignore moonlight. And man will continue to vanquish it—at least until the power runs out. Attlee makes us question such folly. His journey has no final destination, just many stops along a path that could—and should—unwind for a lifetime. In this way, Nocturne is an inspiration. It makes you want to pull a chair out into the garden and bathe in the moonlight. No questions asked."

-- Domionique Brown ― New York Times Book Review

"Attlee is a true enthusiast, and is fascinated by, indeed loves, his subject. He writes beautifully and often thrillingly about the moon in all its--her?--aspects, and it will be a dull-minded reader who comes away from this book without a new or at least renewed regard for the extraordinary, silver satellite that is our world's constant companion" -- John Banville ― Guardian

"One of the things that strikes you is how much pleasure Attlee, an aesthete, amateur astronomer and connoisseur, takes from simply looking. . . . Attlee has a considerable talent for capturing the thrill of historical moments. . . . But Nocturne becomes more than a series of loosely woven vignettes. Attlee's observations of the night sky take on a cumulative weight, forming a kind of guide for good living on Earth: late night walks, the pleasures of looking, the spectacular and forgotten thrills of natural phenomena, how we might find profound pleasure in the here and now we have overlooked." -- Adam O'Riordan ― Sunday Telegraph

"One would be hard-pressed to find a better tour guide than English writer James Attlee. On his global quest for moonlight, he has a gentle sense of humor and an even temper when clouds and rain botch his well-laid plans. Best of all, he is perpetually illuminating about what the moon has meant to humans through the centuries."

-- Jan Gardner ― Boston Globe

"Attlee is a congenial writer, consistently readable, erudite yet modest. . . . Nocturne is never less than absorbing: moonlight may be tenuous stuff but there's a lot of matter here." ― Financial Times

"A stellar appreciation for the myriad quantifiable and amorphous attributes that have made the moon a source of magic and wonder through the ages."

― Library Journal

"Nocturne is an enchanting moonlit sojourn born of wisdom and celestial wonder."

-- A. Roger Ekirch, author of At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past

"Nocturne is a charming book, filled with hundreds and thousands of facts and stories about the moon, not one of which we really need to know but nearly all of which are fascinating. As a result we close the book enriched, with a pocket full of change we can spend wherever we want."

-- Dave Hickey, author of The Invisible Dragon: Seven Essays on Beauty

“This is a winner of a book. A luminous meditation on moon-glow and moon-glade and the sub-lunar landscape seen only by glimmer-struck savants.”

-- John R. Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

"Nocturne is a compendious, moving and impassioned guide to the heavenly body that its author calls, in a perfect metaphor, the 'Garbo of the skies.'" ― Irish Times

About the Author

James Attlee works in art publishing in London and is the author of Isolarion and coauthor of Gordon Matta-Clark: The Space Between.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; 1st Printing edition (March 15, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226030962
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226030968
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1.1 x 5.6 x 8.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,729,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,832 in Travel Writing Reference
- #13,187 in Travelogues & Travel Essays
- #15,093 in Buddhism (Books)

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Avid Reader

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 8, 2011

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Sometimes it seems like the genius of writing a really great book is finding the perfect topic. Nocturne is a prime example of this idea: moonlight is both an unlikely subject and, because so ubiquitous in so many aspects of our culture, the perfect jumping-off point for somebody with Attlee's inquisitive mind, broad interests, impressive knowledge, and writing skills. He uses moonlight as an opportunity to talk about religion, art, Japanese gardens, and even Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, as well as an excuse to visit places as unlikely as the Interstellar Light Collector in the Arizona desert and a Tsukimi autumnal moon-viewing festival in Japan. He does all of this in a style that is as smart as it is entertaining. Thanks to Nocturne, I will never look at the moon the same way: my understanding and appreciation of it is light-years richer as a result of reading this luminous gem of a book.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Judith Moore

Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 7, 2013

Verified Purchase

I found this book deeply satisfying--it has a narrative thread, a discursive structure, and a focus on the moon in a variety of cultural and human circumstances that should appeal to readers of the most varied interests--to anyone, at least, who's ever paused at all to look up at the moon. I read it, by choice, as an evening book, almost as a meditation, and it often composed my mind to sleep peacefully. The only qualm I had was when Attlee referred to Murasaki Shikibu as a "courtesan"; she was a court lady of the Heian period, and though the distinction may seem fine to us, given the marital arrangements and moral expectations of the time, it was clear to her.

Judith Moore

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Yorkster

Very nice book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 24, 2011

Verified Purchase

This wonderful little book made me want to go sit out in the lawn chair all night thinking the deep thoughts. The author brings the reader to many times and places and it works. A must for anyone who's ever been interested in history, art, science, and /or the moon and what the ancients (and not so ancients) thought about it. What a nice book.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ralph Blumenau

A selenophile follows the moon across three continents

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2012

James Attlee, by profession an art publisher, could be said to be moonstruck, and this book is full of very discursive accounts of his own experiences of the moon. He often rushes out of doors at night to walk or even drive some distances to where he can observe it unpolluted by street lighting against which he rages many times. He is an acute and intense observer, noticing the minutest effects of moonlight where it touches water or material objects.

These accounts are interspersed with examinations (in which he displays an immense amount of knowledge) of the moon in all its cultural manifestations: in everyday life, myth and superstition (Mussolini, it appears, was afraid of moonlight), in astronomy, in lunar exploration and the junk it leaves behind, in literature and art (with a fine long passage about the art of Samuel Palmer), in the attempts by music to capture it. He discusses the role of the lunar months, the effect of the moon on the tides and possibly on the menstrual cycle, its association with the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception, the role it plays in Islam (there is a delightful story from one of the hadiths) and in the Romantic imagination, especially in Germany (archetypally in the paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. He discusses several painters of moonlight - but Munch is missing). He dives into optical science, explaining the physical difference between day vision and night vision (moonlight "triggers real physiological changes in our bodies"), and talks about the Lunar Society, so called because its members met on a Monday nearest the full moon each month so that the moon could light their way home. But there is only a passing reference to its association with madness and the word lunatic does not appear at all.

When Attlee reads that to this day the Japanese celebrate a particular day in their lunar calendar with a festival called Tsukimi, he made a special journey to Japan to see this autumn moon for himself. As usual, he tells us all about his flight and his railway journey, then describes the festivities and the rituals at the temple and the viewing platform near Kyoto before the moon - mercifully, for it had been raining - appears. After that there is a long account of his stay in Kagoshima, in the far south of Japan, now with scarcely a mention of the moon.

Similarly, a visit of his to Naples gives rise to an account of his doings there, of the city's history and character. Into these he inserts references to paintings by Wright of Derby or by Volaire, a little known painter, in which the moon had figured in some night-time scenes of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; and he tells us about Goethe and Leopardi's raptures about walking about the city by moonlight.

Another detailed travelogue is set in America, as the author travels from Las Vegas, the gambling hell/heaven where electric light turns night into day, to a place near Tucson where Richard and Monica Chapin have constructed a remarkable Interstellar Light Collector. (Do call it up on Google Images). Exposure to the concentrated beams of moonlight apparently cures asthma and perhaps other ailments.

As the book is called Nocturne, it is appropriate that there should be a good deal about Whistler, though the actual moon hardly ever figures in his paintings of the Thames at night.

You can see why I have mentioned that Attlee writes very discursively. When, for example, he describes a painting which shows the moon, he will give a thorough description of everything else in the picture; or, as in the case of a work by an obscure Italian painter like Alonso Cano, he will give us a biography of the artist. (In this instance, as in many others, I again recommend looking up the painting on Google Images.) But if the book frequently loses focus in this way, he writes so well and is so observant that it is almost always interesting.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

JSC Siow

Leaden Moon Fails to Beguile

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 17, 2011

Something about this volume of moon-themed essays made it seem plodding, by which I mean that it called (in me at least) for a level of engagement and sustained attention that felt far more like work than I was expecting i.e. not quite the thing to read on the beach or summer vacation. To qualify myself a bit though, that might say more about my attention span than the book per se even though I read quite a fair bit, but the seemingly sluggish sense of progression did not help. There's a certain academic staidness to the author's cadence, along with a kind of acuity of attention to minutiae that reminded me of Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or Nicholson Baker in The Size of Thoughts. That's not to say that it didn't have merits - the author's breadth of knowledge and references spanning various cultures, realms of knowledge and historical periods had the effect of making one feel that much more informed when one's done reading. The theme though might lead one to expect a bit more levity, a less mulishly introspective and more engaging, lyrically aesthetic or poetic take and approach. I get that the author might have intended to convey a sense of reverence, awe or even devotion but for me at least, his prose seemed to have breached a thin line tilting towards pedantry even though he makes up (somewhat) for this with the range of his nuanced and erudite musings on how different cultures have regarded and appreciated the moon e.g. Japanese cultural tropes and practices, poetry through the ages, paintings of moonlit subjects and landscapes etc. Overall, despite the incipient impatience roused in me at times, the essays provided a larger sense of moon appreciation beyond our individual ken and fancies.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Ralph Blumenau

A selenophile follows the moon across three continents

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 7, 2012

Verified Purchase

James Attlee, by profession an art publisher, could be said to be moonstruck, and this book is full of very discursive accounts of his own experiences of the moon. He often rushes out of doors at night to walk or even drive some distances to where he can observe it unpolluted by street lighting against which he rages many times. He is an acute and intense observer, noticing the minutest effects of moonlight where it touches water or material objects.

These accounts are interspersed with examinations (in which he displays an immense amount of knowledge) of the moon in all its cultural manifestations: in everyday life, myth and superstition (Mussolini, it appears, was afraid of moonlight), in astronomy, in lunar exploration and the junk it leaves behind, in literature and art (with a fine long passage about the art of Samuel Palmer), in the attempts by music to capture it. He discusses the role of the lunar months, the effect of the moon on the tides and possibly on the menstrual cycle, its association with the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception, the role it plays in Islam (there is a delightful story from one of the hadiths) and in the Romantic imagination, especially in Germany (archetypally in the paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. He discusses several painters of moonlight - but Munch is missing). He dives into optical science, explaining the physical difference between day vision and night vision (moonlight "triggers real physiological changes in our bodies"), and talks about the Lunar Society, so called because its members met on a Monday nearest the full moon each month so that the moon could light their way home. But there is only a passing reference to its association with madness and the word lunatic does not appear at all.

When Attlee reads that to this day the Japanese celebrate a particular day in their lunar calendar with a festival called Tsukimi, he made a special journey to Japan to see this autumn moon for himself. As usual, he tells us all about his flight and his railway journey, then describes the festivities and the rituals at the temple and the viewing platform near Kyoto before the moon - mercifully, for it had been raining - appears. After that there is a long account of his stay in Kagoshima, in the far south of Japan, now with scarcely a mention of the moon.

Similarly, a visit of his to Naples gives rise to an account of his doings there, of the city's history and character. Into these he inserts references to paintings by Wright of Derby or by Volaire, a little known painter, in which the moon had figured in some night-time scenes of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; and he tells us about Goethe and Leopardi's raptures about walking about the city by moonlight.

Another detailed travelogue is set in America, as the author travels from Las Vegas, the gambling hell/heaven where electric light turns night into day, to a place near Tucson where Richard and Monica Chapin have constructed a remarkable Interstellar Light Collector. (Do call it up on Google Images). Exposure to the concentrated beams of moonlight apparently cures asthma and perhaps other ailments.

As the book is called Nocturne, it is appropriate that there should be a good deal about Whistler, though the actual moon hardly ever figures in his paintings of the Thames at night.

You can see why I have mentioned that Attlee writes very discursively. When, for example, he describes a painting which shows the moon, he will give a thorough description of everything else in the picture; or, as in the case of a work by an obscure Italian painter like Alonso Cano, he will give us a biography of the artist. (In this instance, as in many others, I again recommend looking up the painting on Google Images.) But if the book frequently loses focus in this way, he writes so well and is so observant that it is almost always interesting.

2 people found this helpful

Alexander the Corrector

curate's egg

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 8, 2012

Verified Purchase

A book-length essay with oblique chapter titles and no index, Nocturne demands to be read from cover to cover and discourages browsing, dipping or reference. But this demand is frustrating for a cultural history of moonlight. Its content is, as it should be, wildly eclectic: from the moon's role in myth and religion to the biology of human night vision to the meaning of the moon for artists such as Samuel Palmer or Caspar David Friedrich. Readers are likely to be more interested in and knowledgeable about some of these strands than others - or might wish to browse thematically and follow their own path. But they are obliged to follow the author, who has threaded these elements through a personal narrative that consists mostly of his own activities, often mundane, in researching the book. There is no obvious structure to the material, and Attlee is not a moon obsessive whose passion might corral the subject in emphatic and compelling ways. He is a writer (a fine, stylish one) who has found an intriguing subject and assembled plenty of interesting material, but the end product feels less than the sum of its parts.

If the publisher can be faulted for not providing an index, they should also be congratulated on a beautiful cover.

SA Brain

Moonstruck for moonlight

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 31, 2012

Verified Purchase

A bravura piece by someone whose enthusiasm, obsession and love for his subject comes through on almost every page.Erudite, part poetry, part scientific journal and autobiographical journey. A wonderful book for those, who like the author, are fascinated by the silver light.

2 people found this helpful

Deepa Shah

Magical

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

A beautifully written homage to the marvel of the moon and how it has come to govern every aspect of our lives for millennia.
You'll never look at the night sky in the same way again.

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