Author: Rohan Maitzen

This Week in My Classes (January 16, 2008)

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For me, at least, and I hope for my students, this is a fun week of reading in both of my winter term classes.

Mystery and Detective Fiction: We’ve begun our discussions of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, a novel that I enjoy more every time I teach it. My main focus for the first couple of classes is on the way the novel sets us up to worry about problems of interpretation and misinterpretation. With its series of first-person narrators, the novel is self-consciously set up to mimic the testimony of a series of eye-witnesses, but right from the Prologue we know that seeing something with your own eyes is not always enough to tell you just what it is that you have seen: you require an interpretive framework, and the first-person narrators also serve to remind us that these frameworks reflect the presuppositions and prejudices of each individual witness. The prologue also introduces the idea of “moral evidence,” as opposed to legal or circumstantial evidence, which relies among other things on understanding of people’s characters (not something an “objective” outsider like Sergeant Cuff can bring to a case). And it sets supernatural or otherwise unscientific theories and interpretations against reason and common sense. By setting the theft of the diamond from Rachel’s Indian cabinet against the story of its other thefts across history, the novel complicates questions of legitimacy and ownership; by emphasizing the bloody aggression of the English against the Indians, it also undermines the fantasy of the main characters that their home represents order, tranquility, and justice that is disrupted only by the invasion of the “devilish Indian diamond.” “Good heavens, mamma!” Rachel exclaims in Chapter XI; “Are there thieves in the house?”–to which the answer is of course, yes, on one interpretation they are all thieves, even before the diamond goes missing. Today we get to talk about Sergeant Cuff and how far his outsider perspective can move the inquiry forward. If we have time, we might do a bit with Rosanna and her friend Limping Lucy, too, one of the many clues we get that the novel as a whole is not entirely (if at all) behind the values so cherished by our first narrator, Betteredge: “Ha, Mr Betteredge, the day is not far off,” she warns him, “when the poor will rise against the rich.” So much fun, and always we’ll be thinking about how Collins is using the form of his novel–the first-person narrations so similar in effect to dramatic monologues, and the juxtaposition of so many of them as if to model one possible way of overcoming their limitations. (In classes when I teach both The Moonstone and Middlemarch, it’s always interesting to compare his strategy here to George Eliot’s use of her omniscient narrator and manipulations of point of view.)

The Victorian ‘Woman Question’: Here we’re moving into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, another novel that foregrounds issues of narrative construction through its nested narratives and chronological doubling-back. Again, we get a telling introductory piece with the letter from our main narrator, Gilbert Markham, to his buddy Halford; the letter, apologizing for a failure of confidence and making amends by offering up the story of Gilbert’s own marriage plot, raises all kinds of questions about masculinity and friendship, and also, by beginning where Gilbert’s story actually ends up–for instance, after his process of maturation and development–helps us understand what the novel will be about. When the story ‘begins’ we go back to his younger self and realize how far he has to develop before he will be capable of such a letter. Then, of course, when we reach Helen’s diary, we see that she too, so strong and independent in Gilbert’s narrative, has evolved significantly through her own experiences. Today’s reading is the first instalment of her diary, taking her from her first meetings with Huntingdon to their marriage. It brings to life central issues in the debate over the ‘woman question’; one aspect I find particularly interesting is its emphasis on Helen’s desire to be Huntingdon’s saviour–just as she has been taught to see her ‘mission’–but of course, as the novel goes on to dramatize in compelling detail, the female influence she so looks forward to wielding means absolutely nothing in the absence of actual power or leverage, social or economic. I think Bronte handles her first-person narrations really artfully as well; though her characters are nowhere near as diverse (or comic) as Collins’s, they do reveal themselves by their language as well as by their self-reporting.

The Shelf Life (Half-Life?) of Blog Posts

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In a piece on the role (or not) of public intellectuals, Russell Jacoby raises some questions about blogging that I’ve wondered about too:

On the Internet, articles, blog posts, and comments on blog posts pour forth, but who can keep up with them? And while everything is preserved (or “archived”), has anyone ever looked at last year’s blogs?

“Rapidly produced,” he concludes, blog posts are “just as rapidly forgotten.” Jacoby is interested in how blogging has affected “the quality or content of intellectual discussions.” I’m interested in that too, but for now I’d just like to pick up on the issue of the status of past posts. For instance, as I familiarized myself with academic and literary blogs that looked interesting to me, I often found myself trailing through archives sometimes three or four years old. Some of the discussions–the most ‘occasional’ ones–obviously had become outdated, but others, including discussions of books, retain their currency just fine. But do they really? Well, not in practice, of course. Especially with the backwards chronology blogs impose, with newest always first, they do seem designed to keep us moving on. I’m also not aware of an easy way to locate material in blog archives unless the blogger has a particularly thorough index or set of labels or categories. Especially when discussions link back and forth across different blogs, the process of following older threads is extremely laborious. I guess I’m basically wondering about a couple of things: first, is there some “netiquette” principle that governs when a post ‘expires’ and ought not to be commented on any more? and second, does the perhaps fleeting nature of the attention any given blog post can have, as it is relentlessly shuttled down and down into the archives, add an extra dimension of futility to writing in this form?

Meanwhile, on the subject of public intellectuals, there’s much discussion at The Valve about Stanley Fish, who is busy actually being one, for better and for worse, with his own blog at the New York Times. The enormous chains of comments on his recent posts on ‘the uses of the humanities’ (the first one reached around 500 comments, I believe, while the second one is up to 244 as I write this) suggests the rapidly diminishing returns at this extreme end of the commenting scale. A recent comment thread at the Valve raised questions about the importance of commenting for measuring the success or value of blogging; I’ve noted a couple of times the generally low level of discussion on literary topics and, in a more general way, felt that without active back-and-forth blogging is not as worthwhile or rewarding as I’d initially hoped it would be. But, as blogging skeptics have often noted, the greater the quantity, typically the lower the quality of the discussion. I have only scanned the replies to Fish. In general, they seemed to stand up well to the threads over at the Guardian blog, which degenerate pretty quickly. But even so, who can process so many replies or synthesize them in any kind of meaningful way? (I recommend reading the Valve comments instead; there are “just” about 80 of them, including a number of extremely thoughtful and illuminating ones.)

This Last Week in My Classes (January 7, 2008)

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Last week was the first full week of classes for this term and, as usual, it was chaotic despite my pretty thorough efforts to be ready. You just get out of practice at juggling all the parts, at having everything ready to go when you need it, at keeping track of the requests and complications and paperwork. Also, you realize when you get back in the classroom that two weeks nattering at your kids all day and catching up on past seasons of House at night actually diminishes your ability to speak in complete (never mind polite) sentences. However, it’s all underway now and, also as usual, it feels good. The first few class meetings for me are all about trying to get everyone on the same page by giving them some historical and critical frameworks for considering our particular readings. I find there’s often very little common ground among students in terms of preparation, especially since in our department there is no historical survey required before upper-level classes; you’re lucky if very many of them know that Virginia Woolf did not actually know Shakespeare’s sister or that the Romantics preceded the Victorians. And a lower-level survey class in a popular genre, such as the Mystery and Detective Fiction class I’m teaching this term, attracts a lot of non-majors. So here’s how we warmed up:

English 2040, Mystery and Detective Fiction: We led off with a discussion of differences (real and perceived) between “genre” and “literary” fiction, focusing on the different reading strategies and expectations we typically bring to each kind. To get us started on these questions, we read aloud James Thurber’s brilliant little story “The Macbeth Murder Mystery,” in which an “American lady” accidentally finds herself curled up in bed with Shakespeare instead of the murder mystery she was expecting. Her interpretive misadventures are both comic and revealing, perfect for my purposes. It doesn’t hurt, either, in the tender early days of a professor’s relationship with a class, to get some laughs. The next couple of meetings were spent on some background about detective fiction as a genre, a kind of genealogy taking us from Newgate and gothic fiction, through early practitioners like Poe and related forms such as ‘sensation’ fiction, through the Golden Age and the hard-boiled Americans to feminist revisionists (Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, for instance) to contemporary figures such as Ian Rankin. We’ve also spent some time on the history of policing, and on the characteristic features of the charismatic amateur detective so compellingly inaugurated with Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. Next week, we’re done with generalizations and moving into detailed analysis of our first major reading, The Moonstone. Cursed diamonds, eerie quicksand, stained nightgowns, and multiple narrators: who could ask for anything more?

English 4604, The Victorian ‘Woman Question: Here too my opening tactic is laying out some generalizations, this time about the social, political, and historical context of the debate over the ‘woman question.’ Once we get going on our particular literary texts, we will want to spend plenty of time on their formal and aesthetic properties, but we will also be considering how they contribute to this debate by dramatizing or thematizing some of its elements. And most of our readings simply require us to understand some specific issues about the circumstances of Victorian women, particularly in marriage. We begin Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on Monday, for example, an ingeniously constructed, piercingly intelligent and emotionally gripping novel that turns in part on some key 19th-century ideas about femininity and masculinity as well as on the economic and other constraints of a Victorian wife. But this past week our major reading was Mill’s The Subjection of Women–also, of course, piercingly intelligent, and eminently rational and persuasive. We looked at it along with France Power Cobbe’s powerful piece “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors,” which gave us some opportunities to compare the different rhetorical strategies of two writers approaching this highly contentious material from somewhat different positions.

It’s early yet, but I like what I’ve seen of both groups so far. Here’s hoping we can all keep up the momentum!

Go in!

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Yesterday I finally mailed off the typescript (all 500+ pages) of the anthology of 19th-century novel criticism that I have been working on for…well, longer than I like to admit. In the end, will it be all it could have been, or should have been? Who can say? What would be the measure? Still, the experience of preparing it has been a learning experience and even, sometimes, a pleasurable one. In honour of its completion (to this stage, at least), here’s what has come to rest in my mind as my favourite excerpt from the 22 essays on the final list. There are many close seconds, including much of David Masson’s British Novelists and Their Styles, brilliant bits of Edward Dowden’s review essay on George Eliot’s novels, and, of course, many words of wisdom from George Eliot herself. But for sheer exuberance at, and generous appreciation of, the multitudinous possibilities of the genre, you can’t beat this conclusion to Henry James’s classic essay on “The Art of Fiction”:

But the only condition that I can think of attaching to the composition of the novel is, as I have already said, that it be interesting. This freedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it. ‘Enjoy it as it deserves,’ I should say to him; ‘take possession of it, explore it to its utmost extent, reveal it, rejoice in it. All life belongs to you, and don’t listen either to those who would shut you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, breathing a superfine air and turning away her head from the truth of things. There is no impression of life, no manner of seeing it and feeling it, to which the plan of the novelist may not offer a place; you have only to remember that talents so dissimilar as those of Alexandre Dumas and Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Gustave Flaubert, have worked in this field with equal glory. Don’t think too much about optimism and pessimism; try and catch the colour of life itself. . . . If you must indulge in conclusions let them have the taste of a wide knowledge. Remember that your first duty is to be as complete as possible–to make as perfect a work. Be generous and delicate, and then, in the vulgar phrase, go in!’

The 50 Greatest Books?

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Announced in this weekend’s Globe and Mail: a new project to discuss the “50 Greatest Books”:

So many issues, so many books, so few of them great. Watch for our first choice in this space next week. And be prepared to argue. (read the whole column here)

As one of the top-secret ‘jurors’ points out, a venture like this raises all kinds of questions, mostly of the “great in what way, or for what?” variety that I mentioned in my reply to Nigel’s question about evaluation in literary criticism. It would be a more sensible project to set some parameters–even focusing on “50 Greatest Novels” or “50 Greatest Poems” would alleviate the inevitable apples and oranges kind of conversation that is about to ensue. While in some ways I think this is a pointless exercise, because it artificially tries to reduce literary analysis to something like a Billboard chart, I think the process it could initiate for readers is valuable. We ought to think about why we love or value the books we do, not just insist that it’s all a question of arbitrary taste. “Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are,” as Ruskin said. If pressed, we always have a reason, and clinging to our preferences without acknowledging our reasons is just prejudice, in reading as in the rest of life. Further, when thoughtful people articulate, exchange, and argue about their judgments, we can learn a great deal, and our own tastes can evolve; this is the process the critic Wayne Booth called “coduction.” So bring it on! I’m curious, though, about why the panel is being kept so strictly anonymous. Does this have anything to do with mistrust of authority where literary judgments are involved? But we’re told that “each entry will be written by someone with knowledge, usually extensive knowledge, of the book in question,” so unlike “Canada Reads” (which seems to have a deliberate policy of keeping out the scholars and critics), it seems that here expertise, and not just enthusiasm, is being sought. I suppose anonymity keeps us focused on the argument they make for their chosen text–and saves them, at least temporarily, from hate mail of the kind that does, actually, get generated whenever someone waves the red flag of “literary merit” in front of enough readers (“I can’t believe you think Ulysses is a great book when it is clearly incomprehensible drivel!” etc.). Well, let the games begin: any bets on which will book will launch the series? (My money’s on the Bible or the Odyssey.)

Sun spots?

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Wait a minute: did I miss something? Here’s the plot summary of Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun given in a reputable reference source:

Aisha [one of Soueif’s earlier characters] reappears as Asya in In the Eye of the Sun, a novel about a feminist’s failed marriage to a dry intellectual that has parallels to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Moving between various Middle Eastern cities and using passages from Arab newspapers, this long, detailed novel recalls the anti-Western politics Gamel Abdel Nasser, his death, the 1967 war with Israel, and the rise of Anwar Sadat. Asya ignores public events, tries to immerse herself in Western culture, but is forced into an arranged marriage with impotent Saif, who works for Syrian intelligence. Unhappy with her marriage she studies in England for a doctorate, sees in England’s monuments symbols of imperialism and exploitation of Arabs, blames England for the creation of Israel, and becomes disenchanted with English literature. Bogged down in research at a provincial university, she starts an affair. Learning of the affair, Saif accuses her of selfishness and ignoring the consequences of her actions on others. Seeing the parallel between her personal life and her neglect, as an intellectual, of Egypt, she returns home where she teaches birth control while wanting a child of her own.

I’ve only read In the Eye of the Sun once so far, but I’m not sure the author of this source has read it at all–or else I read it very badly! First, I probably would not label Asya a “feminist,” unless that’s what you call any independent-minded woman. Second, Saif is not a “dry intellectual”; it’s Asya, actually, who comes closest to being that for a while, through her linguistic analysis of metaphors (which I thought was meant as a kind of ‘key to all mythologies’). Third, theirs is not an “arranged marriage” and, far from being forced into it, Asya yearns for it and idealizes it. Fourth, Saif is not impotent; the sexual problems in their marriage arise from Asya’s fears of intercourse. Fifth, she does not go to England because she is unhappy with her marriage, as this summary implies. Sixth, I didn’t notice meditations on imperialism or exploitation of the kind described here, though of course these are themes explored (in a more nuanced way, I thought) in the novel. Seventh, OK, she does start an affair, but (importantly) it’s with an idiot. Eighth, is that why she goes back to Egypt? I suppose that may be an interpretive question, but most of these other points are pretty straightforward ones. It was a disorienting experience (no pun intended?) staring at this paragraph.

Novel Readings 2007

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‘Tis the season for it, so here are my lists of my best and worst novel-reading experiences of 2007. I’ve written about almost all of them here at least a little, so I’ve included links to my original posts. As always, I’d welcome comments from other readers.

Novels I’m most glad I read, mostly because of the richness of the aesthetic, emotional, and/or intellectual experience, but sometimes because of new ideas or connections that emerged for my teaching or research:

  1. Ahdaf Soueif, In the Eye of the Sun. I’m very excited about exploring how this novel, often described as “the Egyptian Middlemarch,” complicates, extends, or revises George Eliot’s themes, especially her theories of sympathy and morality. Obviously one major component of this critical project will be thinking about how the particular historical and political contexts of Soueif’s novel matter to the purportedly universal moral prescriptions of Eliot’s.
  2. Vikram Seth, An Equal Music. I found this novel tremendously engrossing, particularly in its evocation of the intellectual demands of music.
  3. Sarah Waters, The Night Watch. This novel is near the top of my list of books I hope to re-read in the near future. I thought its backwards chronology was formally and thematically innovative but it also meant that re-reading will (I think) be quite a different experience than reading for the first time.
  4. Elizabeth von Armin, The Enchanted April. Lovely.
  5. Margaret Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks and Hester. Just think, there are 85 more. I didn’t actually think either of these was a great novel–nothing very striking aesthetically or formally–but both were genuinely interesting, appealing to both the scholar and the reader in me.
  6. Anthony Trollope, He Knew He Was Right. it just kept on going and going, and after a while, I didn’t want it to stop. Like the Oliphant novels, HKHWR doesn’t do anything particularly striking with form, but its many parts are managed and balanced beautifully, and like other great multiplot novels, it contains multitudes.
  7. Monica Ali, Brick Lane. It seemed flat at first, but it drew me in and made me think.
  8. Eugenides, Middlesex. Parts of it are tremendous, moving, exhilirating–but in the end it seemed unfocused to me, especially because the hermaphrodite aspect seemed thematically irrelevant, like a gimmick. Maybe I just haven’t thought it through enough.
  9. Carol Shields, Unless. I was more moved by and involved in this novel when I re-read it this year than when I first read it (note to me: make more time for re-reading in 2008).

Novels for which my great expectations were most disappointed:

  1. Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach. This time his technical skill did not win me over.
  2. Zadie Smith, On Beauty. Maybe I need to read Howard’s End to really “connect” with it–but it’s hard to see how doing so would quiet my objections.
  3. Elizabeth George, What Came Before He Shot Her. I feel about this as some of Dickens’s contemporaries felt about his novels–leave this kind of stuff to the actual experts, rather than writing up a sociology or criminology treatise in the guise of fiction.
  4. Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides. Ick.
  5. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights. The critic in me knows better, but the reader in me really doesn’t like this novel.

Books I’m most excited about reading or re-reading in 2008:

  1. Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy. This was high up on my Christmas wish list and I’m so glad I got it (thanks, Dave!). But how am I ever going to read it when I can barely lift it?
  2. A. S. Byatt, A Whistling Woman. Another one from my wish list (thanks, EB!). I might re-read the first three in the series first so that I can appreciate it fully.
  3. Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I thought The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was a lot of fun; Chabon’s a good story-teller, and I love the premise of this one.
  4. W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz.
  5. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. I last read this in 1988; the posts on it at The Valve piqued my interest again.
  6. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. I keep trying; for some reason, I’m simultaneously convinced that this will be one of my great reading experiences and completely unable to get past page 1. I’ve read most of Francine Prose’s Mrs. Dalloway Reader with interest and pleasure, but still can’t seem to get on with the original. My theory (OK, excuse) is that Woolf’s style demands a kind of micro-concentration that I am (a) not trained for, since I’m most practised at the big baggy books, and (b) unable to apply because my ‘voluntary’ reading (i.e. not for school) goes on either when the children are milling around or late at night, when things are quiet but I’m tired and rely on some momentum in the plot to carry me along…
  7. Mitchell, Gone with the Wind. I keep coming back to this novel when I think about issues with historical fiction, as well as problems with identification and sympathy. Write-ups of Rhett Butler’s People also got me thinking about it again. My problem with this one is that the novel is so intimately familiar, even though I have not read it all the way through for about a decade, that I have a hard time focusing on the words on the page.
  8. Graham Swift, Waterland.
  9. Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip.
  10. Laila Lalami, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits.
  11. V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas.
  12. Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise.

Actually, the “want to read” list could just keep growing, so I’ll just stop there, especially since my interests and priorities always shift around a lot as I actually move from book to book.

Post About Books=Lackluster Response?

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In his reflections on “The Best and Worst of Intellectual Blogs 2007,” Joseph Kugelmass remarks “the consistently lackluster response to posts about books.” I’ve noticed something similar in my expeditions around the ‘blogosphere,’ on both academic sites and litblogs, regretted it and wondered why blogging, which seems ideally set up for informal but thoughtful back-and-forth of the kind that so many readers value, does not seem to generate it. Anyone out there have any thoughts on the reasons for that “lacklustre response”? And are there any blogs at which you have seen rich conversations develop about books?

I’ve also seen and regretted the phenomenon that Kugelmass seems to see as a positive development, namely that in response to the apparent lack of enthusiasm for book chat, “most intellectual bloggers turned towards politics and professional matters with increasing frequency.” I’ve regretted it partly, as I noted in my previous posts, because by “politics” they usually mean “American politics,” partly because the political stuff often seems to lower the level of discourse (i.e. people become meaner and ruder, and discussion gets polarized and predictable), and partly because I went online to avoid some of the more confining aspects of professionalism. (It’s true, mind you, that one side-effect of my own blogging experiences has been to make me more appreciative of some features of professionalism in literary studies, including expertise and civility–though it’s precisely the spread of civility in the blogosphere that Kugelmass points to as a problem as he sees it leading to a kind of deadening blandness. He also sees “polish” as antithetical to the spirit of blogging, but given how fast and how publicly you can be taken to task for what you post–maybe rightly, maybe not, depending on the post and the context–there seems more chance of a high quality of debate if you slow down.)

A Very Merry Dickensian Christmas To All!

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There’s no avoiding the association of Dickens with Christmas festivity. Indeed, it’s about the best ‘press’ the Victorian period gets, so I figure we should make the most of it. With that in mind, here are some Dickensian links for the season.

First, the TLS has published the second installment of their “guided tour” to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol:

Does his ecstasy have something of mania about it? Perhaps. And more than a little of evangelical conversion, surely – though only in the loosest sense. (The religious claims made for Carol, which relishes sensual glut, are overstressed.) Because, far from being reborn into that world of systematic moral conviction inhabited by the Murdstones, the Gradgrinds, or the Revd Chadband, Scrooge is on the contrary released into a profoundly happy uncertainty – “I don’t know anything!” – which describes reality rather well: that state of continuous creation and anticipation which we can call doubt, or hope, as we choose. I think, I am almost sure, that Dickens preferred the latter. (read the rest here; for Part I, see here)

Second, if you’ve got anyone who’s fond of Dickens on your gift list, a last-minute idea might be to head over here for a Dickens-themed e-card.

Third, the Guardian offers up Booze By Boz, including ‘smoking bishop’:

Smoking bishop
“‘A merry Christmas, Bob!’ said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. ‘A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!'” (A Christmas Carol)

5 oranges * 1 grapefruit * 1/4 lb sugar * 2 bottles red wine * 1 bottle ruby port * 30 cloves

Bake the oranges and grapefruit in the oven until they are pale brown and then put them into a warmed earthenware bowl with five cloves pricked into each. Add the sugar and pour in the wine. Then, either (i) cover and leave in a warm place for a day, or (ii) warm the mixture gently (do not boil) for about three hours. Squeeze the oranges and grapefruit into the wine and pour it through a sieve. Add the port and heat (again, don’t boil). Serve in warmed cups/glasses and drink hot.

And finally, Patrick Leary of the excellent VICTORIA list-serv sent us all this inspired excerpt from one of R. L. Stevenson’s letters, and I can’t resist passing it along:

“I wonder if you ever read Dickens’s Christmas Books? I have read only two of them yet, and I have cried my eyes out, and have a terrible time not to sob. But, 0 dear God, I feel so good after them, and would do anything to make the world a little better for people. I wish I could lose no time; I want to go out and comfort some one. I shall never listen to the nonsense they tell me about not giving money. I shall give money; not that I haven’t done so always, but I shall do it with a high hand now. Oh, what a jolly thing it is for a man to have written books like these books, and just filled people’s hearts with a desire to do good!”

A jolly thing indeed!

“You Are What You Read”

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This week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review includes a very interesting essay by literary scholar Leah Price in response to the recent National Endowment for the Arts report “To Read or Not To Read.” Price’s main point is that historically, widespread reading has not been the norm–particularly if by ‘reading’ is meant ‘reading for literary experience.’ Further, as she points out, excessive reading (particularly of fiction) has as often prompted anxiety as applause:

We’re not the first generation to invest reading with miraculous powers. But until radio and television dethroned the book, social reformers worried about too much reading, not too little. Advice about when and where not to read was once a medical specialty. In an 1806 diagnosis, a British doctor hypothesized that the “excess of stimulus” produced by reading novels “affects the organs of the body and relaxes the tone of the nerves.” Reading at the table interfered with your digestion, reading before lunch with your morals. Another expert, in 1867, warned that “to read when in bed … is to injure your eyes, your brain, your nervous system, your intellect.” Cue to the other in-bed activity that makes you go blind. Like masturbation, reading was too pleasurable for its own good; like masturbation, it threatened to upstage real human contact (messy, tedious, disappointing) with virtual pleasures. (read the rest here)

My own work on 19th-century criticism of the novel has had me reading and re-reading many examples relevant to Price’s argument. Here’s Anthony Trollope’s (characteristically temperate) overview, from his 1879 essay “Novel-Reading”:

Fond as most of us are of novels, it has to be confessed that they have had a bad name among us. Sheridan, in the scene from which we have quoted, has put into Lydia’s mouth a true picture of the time as it then existed. Young ladies, if they read novels, read them on the sly, and married ladies were not more free in acknowledging their acquaintance with those in English than they are now as to those in French. That freedom was growing then as is the other now. There were those who could read unblushingly; those who read and blushed; and those who sternly would not read at all. At a much later date than Sheridan’s it was the ordinary practice in well-conducted families to limit the reading of novels. In many houses such books were not permitted at all. In others Scott was allowed, with those probably of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. And the amusement, though permitted, was not encouraged. It was considered to be idleness and a wasting of time. At the period of which we are speaking,–say forty years ago,–it was hardly recognised by any that much beyond amusement not only might be, but must be, the consequence of such reading. Novels were ephemeral, trivial,–of no great importance except in so far as they might per¬haps be injurious. As a girl who is, as a rule, duly industrious, may be allowed now and then to sit idle over the fire, thinking as nearly as possible of nothing,–thus refreshing herself for her daily toils; as a man may, without reproach, devote a small portion of his day to loafing and lounging about his club; so in those perhaps healthier days did a small modicum of novel-reading begin to be permitted. Where now is the reading individual for whom a small modicum suffices?

And very evil things have been said of the writers of novels by their brethren in literature; as though these workers, whose work has gradually become so efficacious for good or evil, had done nothing but harm in the world. It would be useless, or even ungenerous now, to quote essayists, divines, and historians who have written of novelists as though the mere providing of a little fleeting amusement,–generally of pernicious amusement,–had been the only object in their view. But our readers will be aware that if such criticism does not now exist, it has not ceased so long but that they remember its tone. The ordinary old homily against the novel, inveighing against the frivolities, the falsehood, and perhaps the licentiousness, of a fictitious narrative, is still familiar to our ears. Though we may reckon among our dearest literary possessions the pathos of this story, the humour of another, the unerring truth to nature of a third; though we may be aware of the absolute national importance to us of a Robinson Crusoe or Tom Jones, of an Ivanhoe or an Esmond; though each of us in his own heart may know all that a good novel has done for him,–still there remains something of the bad character–which for years has been attached to the art.

Trollope, of course, goes on to defend the novel; many of his contemporaries, including George Eliot, were also eloquent proponents of the moral, social, and aesthetic value of fiction. The point is, though, that they had to argue for this–and one reason the merits of the novel, in particular, were controversial was precisely that the reading public was expanding and some saw the attractions of “literary experience” as undesirable or risky. Here’s W. R. Greg, for instance, from an 1853 essay on the “False Morality of Lady-Novelists”:

There are many reasons why we should look upon novels in [a] serious point of view. They are the sole or the chief reading of numbers; and these numbers are mainly to be found among the rich and idle, whose wealth, leisure, and social position combine to give to their tastes and example an influence wholly out of proportion either to their mental activity or to their mental powers. They are the reading of most men in their idler and more impressionable hours, when the fatigued mind requires rest and recreation; when the brain, therefore, is comparatively passive; and when, the critical and combative faculties being laid to sleep, the pabulum offered is imbibed without being judged or sifted. They form, too, an unfortunately large proportion of the habitual reading of the young at the exact crisis of life when the spirit is at once most susceptible and most tenacious–“Wax to receive, and marble to retain;” when the memory is fresh, and has a greedy and by no means discriminating appetite; when the moral standard is for the most part fluctuating or unformed;–when experience affords no criterion whereby to separate the true from the false in the delineations of life, and the degree of culture is as yet insufficient to distinguish the pure from the meretricious, the sound from the unsound, in taste; and when whatever keenly interests and deeply moves is accepted and laid to heart, without much questioning whether the emotion is genuine and virtuous, or whether the interest is not aroused by unsafe and unwarrantable means. Finally, novels constitute a principal part of the reading of women, who are always impressionable, in whom at all times the emotional element is more awake and more powerful than the critical, whose feelings are more easily aroused and whose estimates are more easily influenced than ours, while at the same time the correctness of their feelings and the justice of their estimates are matters of the most special and preeminent concern.

There are peculiarities, again, in works of fiction which must always secure them a vast influence on all classes of societies and all sorts of minds. They are read without effort, and remembered without trouble. We have to chain down our attention to read other books with profit; these enchain our attention of themselves. Other books often leave no impression on the mind at all; these, for good or evil, for a while or for long, always produce some impression. Other books are effective only when digested and assimilated; novels either need no digestion, or rather present their matter to us in an already digested form. Histories, philosophies, political treatises, to a certain extent even first-class poetry, are solid and often tough food, which requires laborious and slow mastication. Novels are like soup or jelly; they may be drunk off at a draught or swallowed whole, certain of being easily and rapidly absorbed into the system.

Like Price, I’m an advocate of “reading for literary experience” and would like to see it sought and practised widely and avidly. But it’s salutary to be reminded that a “crisis in reading”–even “reading” itself–can be defined and measured in many different ways and to different ends. The N.E. A., Price says, “shuns…any use of literacy for something other than disinterested pleasure”–reading done for work or school, for example. Price’s assessment of our current situation is certainly provocative: “It takes some gerrymandering to make a generation logging ever more years in school, and ever more hours on the BlackBerry, look like nonreaders.”