Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight

By James Attlee

“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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780226030982

James Attlee

James Attlee worked in art publishing for 25 years and then as editor-at-large for Chicago University Press. He is the author of the acclaimed Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey; Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight; and Station to Station.

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Reviews for Nocturne

[melanti_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Chock-full of all sorts of anecdotes about the moon.
There's everything from the author's moonlit walks in his own town, to Japanese moon festivals, to kooky New Age contraptions, to the Apollo program, to stories about artists who used the moon as a major motif in their work.

I was hooked from the start when he wrote about having an "assignation" with the moon - as if the moon were his mistress. There's some interesting thoughts about how differences in how the moon is viewed might lead to other differences in cultures, and the portion about the Chinese poet Li Po and how the poems tie into the calligraphy used was particularly good.

However, it does drag a bit when he was talking about particular paintings. Art history has never been my strong suite, so it would have been nice if there had been small reproductions of at least some of the paintings discussed. I wish there'd been a few more personal stories and a bit less paintings.

There is some hostility when the author disagreed with "useless" things such as light pollution from streetlights late at night or wind chimes but other moments that may block moonlight with purpose - like outdoor festivals under floodlights - pass by with just a shrug of acknowledgement.

Overall, it makes me want to go on another camping trip in the middle of nowhere so I can take a moonlit walk.

[pdcread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting meander around the planet looking at different cultures and ways of looking at the moon