Novel Readings

In Mystery and Detective Fiction we’ve just wrapped up our discussion of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It’s been an interesting fall to be teaching this course. I always open it with some discussion of the differences between “literary” and genre fiction–not just what those differences are presumed to be but how they shape people’s expectations and evaluations of books on either side of the supposed divide. I imagine, however, that to students already accustomed to a literature curriculum that incorporates not just popular culture but a wide range of media (we have courses on both Chaucer and comics, on Shakespeare as well as Tolkien, on poetry and on television and video games) it sometimes seems as if in advocating for the intellectual gravitas of our course material I am arguing against a straw man.

This term, however, both Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail and Luke Brown in the TLS stepped up to show my students in real time that the debates about the literary merits of crime fiction are ongoing and can be both intense and judgmental. Wente published an op-ed decrying the degradation of our curriculum–yes, ours in particular: she singled out Dalhousie’s English department and Mystery & Detective Fiction was among the courses she specifically mentioned as symptoms of our decline. (I won’t link to Wente’s column, because I don’t want her bad faith and shoddy practices rewarded with clicks, but here’s a link to a tweet showing the letter I wrote to the editors in response to it.)  Brown, in his turn, wrote a rather grudging review of Belinda Bauer’s Snap, which was (regrettably, in his opinion) long-listed for the Booker Prize. Not satisfied with explaining why he didn’t think highly of Snap in particular, Brown drew broader conclusions about mysteries as a necessarily lesser form of fiction. As part of my commentary on Christie, I also quoted Peter Keating’s 2018 book Agatha Christie and Shrewd Miss Marple (which I reviewed myself for the TLS), in which he observes tartly at the outset that Christie is “hugely read, greatly loved, widely admired, and critically ignored” — a situation his own book, of course, sets out to correct.

I bring these “show and tell” materials into class because I think it is valuable for students to see that our work has resonance and relevance outside the classroom. These are debates that are actually going on “out there”–though not always, as Wente’s column exemplifies, to a very high standard. She is not well-informed, but they will be, and I hope this helps them see that there is both a place and a need outside the university for what they are learning–not so much the assigned content of the course as the nature of the conversation we’re having about it.

In 19th-Century Fiction we’ve just finished our work on The Warden. I’ve written a couple of times already about why Trollope feels unexpectedly pertinent to our current moment, whether as a respite from or a tacit commentary on its crises. Working on The Warden during Brett Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS hearings was … well, disorienting. Could there be a sharper contrast between meek Mr. Harding–who, faced for the first time with a challenge to the privilege he has so enjoyed (and, by some lights, done such amiable good with), resigns rather than live at odds with his now-provoked conscience–and Kavanaugh, who ranted and raved in outrage at the very idea that he should be investigated thoroughly, never mind held accountable, for any past misconduct? When John Bold rather sheepishly tells Mr. Harding that he is launching a legal inquiry that may prove damaging, the Warden replies, “if you act justly, say nothing in this matter but the truth, and use no unfair weapons in carrying out your purposes, I shall have nothing to forgive.” Then, even after he is assured that Bold’s complaint will fail and there is no legal or regulatory reason for him to give up his contested position, Mr. Harding is not satisfied, because “he was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.”

The Warden is an odd little book, and in many respects it is hardly a radical one. As we discussed in class, for instance, the bedesman who speak up for what they think is theirs by right are characterized as greedy and ungrateful, and they are ultimately punished for it, ending up worse off both economically and emotionally than they were under Mr. Harding’s wardenship. The novel’s social vision is fundamentally paternalistic. There is something at least potentially radical, though, about its ethical vision–about its casting as a modern-day hero someone who, when criticized, does not lash out but turns inward, and who then will not be dissuaded even by the most powerful people around him into ignoring what his conscience decides is right. Mr. Harding’s resignation does not really fix anything: the novel explores at several levels the complicated relationship between individuals and larger systems and institutions, and in doing so it raises timely questions about the possibility of meaningful moral agency in corrupt circumstances. I think a lot of us are struggling with this right now: the things we can do on our own seem so insufficient that it is tempting to stop trying to do anything. There’s some encouragement to us in the vicarious satisfaction we get from seeing the Warden persist. Even Archdeacon Grantly, imposing bully that he is, is ultimately no match for him! We all probably face a version of the Archdeacon’s exasperated “Good heavens!” sometimes, maybe especially when we try to take some small, imperfect, corrective action of our own. The Warden is not about taking to the barricades–but most of us aren’t going to do that anyway. Mr. Harding might at least inspire us to play our imaginary cellos with renewed vigor as we carry on living our own ethically complicated lives as best we can.

 And do you know what I’m going to do now?” “No,” she said. “What?” “Buy a copy of Hamlet,” I said, “and solve that!” My companion’s eyes brightened. “Then,” she said, “you don’t think Hamlet did it?” “I am,” I said, “absolutely positive he didn’t.” “But who,” she demanded, “do you suspect?” I looked at her cryptically. “Everybody,” I said, and disappeared into a small grove of trees as silently as I had come.

We talked a lot about suspicion in my classes this past week. That seems only natural, of course, for Mystery & Detective Fiction, in which we adopt “Suspect everybody!” as our interpretive motto. As we work through our readings for the course, an ongoing theme becomes the cost of such eternal vigilance: it may be necessary for solving crimes, but it is corrosive to human relationships. We’re not reading The Maltese Falcon this time around (our hard-boiled example is The Big Sleep), but I always find that the saddest part of its ending: Sam, victorious in principle but emotionally marooned. In Sherlock Holmes that isolation seems (perhaps) more heroic; Ian Rankin’s Rebus toughs it out; Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski counteracts it with friendships and alliances.

In David Copperfield, trust and innocence and guilt and suspicion are also key themes. We’ve suffered through Steerforth’s great betrayal now, and also through David’s misguided marriage to Dora — that “first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.” There’s no doubt that practically speaking it would have been better for everyone if David had been suspicious of Steerforth. We see the clues to his character long before David does, or at least long before he admits he sees them or knows, seeing them, what they mean. One question I keep putting to my students, though, is what the cost would be of that saving suspicion. Isn’t David’s trusting heart, undisciplined though it may be, one of the beauties of the novel? Doesn’t the novel show us naiveté as something to be cherished and protected? The David who looks at Steerforth and suspects him–who believes him capable of the kind of evil Steerforth perpetrates, who even knows such evil is possible, much less lurking in someone he loves– wouldn’t that David be someone we would care less about? Maybe not: maybe we would respect him for not being a gullible fool. But I still think, even if that’s our conclusion, that we would regret that it proves foolish and gullible to believe the best of people, to be above all loving and trusting. Growing up, for David, includes outgrowing his innocence and becoming the kind of man who would not make that mistake again. This has to happen or he’d be morally like Mr. Dick, a perpetual child. But Dickens is so good at making sure we regret what is lost in the process.

I asked Friday if the same is true of David’s love for Dora: that it is wrong, a mistake, as both he and she eventually acknowledge, but that it is the kind of mistake it’s hard to wish David didn’t make. I’m less sure about this one, because he chooses Dora deliberately, while Steerforth grooms him into adoration when he is very young and very much in need of a friend. David realizes belatedly that he wants a partner, not a “child-wife.” Still, the child-like starry-eyed quality of their relationship, and Dora’s playful tenderness, while cringe-inducing considered as any kind of actual marriage, seem to me affectively like something we want to protect, to have a place for in our lives–even our adult lives. (In a similar sort of way, I often find myself defending Dorothea’s mistake about Casaubon–not because he is someone we want to have a place for, but because her innocent idealism is beautiful in a way that Celia’s skeptical realism is not.) Perhaps I indulge this feeling in spite of my intense theoretical, political, and personal dislike of Dora because I find Agnes such a dull alternative.

I’ve been thinking about suspicion in another way this week as well. I don’t teach very suspiciously, by which I mean my classes in many respects take our readings at face value rather than approaching them with a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (a phrase I use somewhat flippantly, rather than really technically). It’s not that we don’t consider what they are saying and doing beyond their surface stories, or beyond what their authors might have consciously realized, or that we don’t analyze how those stories are told and to what ends. Perhaps a better way to put it is that we don’t take a deliberately antagonistic approach to our readings–or an overtly theorized approach (which is not to say–and can you tell that trying to explain this makes me defensive?–that I don’t realize all readings are underpinned by some kind of theory, if only implicitly). Sometimes when I overhear (on Twitter, say) other Victorianists talking about their classes I feel anxious because I worry that there’s something naive (innocent, even) about the kinds of conversations I encourage my students to have about our readings. But then I reassure myself that the things we talk about, the responses we have and analyze, are both interesting and urgent, and that the enthusiasm I cultivate not only (I hope) motivates students in the moment but also (I hope!) fosters their love of reading alongside the experience of reading critically in such a way that they are more likely to continue being engaged and demanding readers long after they leave university. Something would be lost–something I cherish–in trying to turn them into more suspicious readers, which is something I’m not sure I know how to do anyway. (I tried it on myself, back in graduate school; the experiment was a failure.)

Thinking about this has reminded me that I should finish reading Rita Felski’s The Limits of Critique, which looks like it will give me a more sophisticated way to understand and talk about the tension I feel between what I do and what I sometimes think I’m supposed to be doing. In her introduction she comments that many current critical approaches “subscribe to a style of interpretation driven by a spirit of disenchantment.” That sounds right to me.  “Why,” she asks a bit later on “are we so hyperarticulate about our adversaries and so excruciatingly tongue-tied about our loves?” Since I escaped graduate school, my own critical practice has, I think, focused on becoming as articulate as I can about my loves, but I’ve sometimes felt a little sheepish about that, as if my methods, if challenged, wouldn’t really stand up to scrutiny. I look forward to Felski’s arguments–even more since I noticed that one of her chapters is on crime fiction, which rather neatly brings this post back to where it began.

We’re barely a week into the term but already the sultry summer weather has mostly given way to the cooler crispness of fall. There will still be plenty of warm days well into October, but we won’t be able to take them for granted: they will have the golden haze of precious time stolen from looming winter. I am grateful, this year, for the change in seasons; the heat and humidity were oppressive this summer and the sense of being stifled and confined by the weather made my usual difficulties getting through the summer doldrums that much harder to deal with.

I’m happy, too, to be back in the classroom, partly just to have people around and things to talk about but also because both of this term’s courses begin with books I love. In Mystery and Detective Fiction, after quick stops on Thurber’s “The Macbeth Murder Mystery” (which is a great way to foreground some of the questions about genre expectations and reading strategies that we will address throughout the course) and Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” it is time for The Moonstone, which is one of my favourite novels to teach. It isn’t always universally popular, but over the years it has turned more than a few unsuspecting students on to Victorian fiction!

I’ll lead off the discussion tomorrow with some questions about the implications of the Prologue–among other things I like to make sure we notice, its juxtaposition with Betteredge’s self-satisfied view of England’s moral superiority helps us recognize the limits of his point of view, while its account of the theft of the diamond during the siege sets up key questions about eye-witness testimony, evidence, and interpretation. Then we’ll spend some time on Betteredge himself, the world and the family he represents and cherishes, and what he perceives as threats and intrusions. For Friday, when we’ve read further, we will turn our attention to the crime and the first phases of the investigation, with a lot of focus on who becomes a suspect, to whom, and why.

In 19th-Century Fiction from Dickens to Hardy we’ve had a couple of classes on David Copperfield already. I used the first session to give some general introductory remarks on Dickens and then on Copperfield–comments on the exuberant excesses of Dickens’s style, for instance, and how we might think of it as a deliberate or strategic response to the kinds of problems his fiction is typically about. What could be less utilitarian than the joyful abundance of character and incident in a novel like David Copperfield? And what could be better nourishment for our hearts and imaginations than its sentimentality, its humor, its pathos, and its metaphorical and symbolic richness?

There are a few things about the new term that are more depressing than exhilarating — the growing number of my colleagues who are retiring without being replaced, for instance, some of whom I will miss very much personally and all of whom represent significant losses to the depth of expertise and experience in the department. There are larger trends–in enrollment and in institutional and departmental priorities–that I find disheartening too. It is no doubt true that disciplines change for both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons, but that is not really much consolation if the changes mean less and less attention and value to the things that drew me to this profession in the first place. Though of course I know how lucky I was to get a tenure-track position when they were already scarce (though not as vanishingly rare as they have become), I find these days that I am particularly conscious of its costs, which that very rarity makes difficult to calculate or admit to earlier on. Still, as long as one regular part of the job is showing up to have the best conversations I can with students about great Victorian novels, I will still have a reason to look forward to coming to work.