Friday, August 8, 2014

The bewildered brain of a poor fictionist - Phineas Finn's recommended course of reading

The disadvantage of reading a Trollope novel on vacation is that I take few notes and thus have forgotten where the juiciest lines are.  True of any novel, I suppose, but the plushness and repetitiveness of the Trollope works against me.  That line I want could be anywhere.

No, wait, I found this one:

He had recommended to her a certain course of reading, – which was pleasant enough; ladies like to receive such recommendations; but Mr. Kennedy, having drawn out the course, seemed to expect that his wife should read the books he had named, and, worse still, that she should read them in the time he had allocated for the work.  (Ch. 23)

I thought bookish people would enjoy it.  The “ladies like” bit is hilarious; that he “expect[s] his wife should read the books” is sublime.  The next line: “This, I think, was tyranny.”  Mr. Kennedy and his wife are newlyweds.

The main thrust of Phineas Finn is about the title character’s ambitions for his political career, but two of the side plots are about the ambitions of women, who are no less ambitious but live under much worse constraints than Finn.  The wife in the passage above, the former Lady Laura Standish, should be in parliament herself, perhaps even in place of Phineas Finn, but since that is impossible she has to direct her energy elsewhere, resulting in the terrible mistake of her marriage.  “[A] certain course of reading,” how awful.

That genial, sympathizing omniscient narrator is fairly restrained in Phineas Finn, a younger, high-spirited Trollope having purged most of his meta-fictional impulses way back in Barchester Towers, although there is one glorious eruption in Finn, when Trollope feels he needs to move into forbidden territory and write up a meeting of Cabinet Ministers:

And now will the Muses assist me while I sing an altogether new song?  On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the First Lord's official residence in Downing Street, and I will attempt to describe what, according to the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said or might have been said, what was done or might have been done, on so august an occasion.  (Ch. 29)

Trollope says that he, “[t]he poor fictionist,” the “strictly honest fictionist,” is used to getting things wrong (“He catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March”) and suffering the rough correction of critics, but when dealing with, for example, legal matters he at least has lawyer friends from whom he can ask advice.  He does not know anyone in the Cabinet, so he just has to make up the whole thing.

But then, again, there is this safety, that let the story be ever so mistold, – let the fiction be ever so far removed from the truth, no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can convict the narrator of error.

A fortuitous result of this meta-fictional fussing is that the chapter is the most finely described scene in the novel, the only one where Trollope describes the furniture, including the “certain papers which lay upon a side-table, – and which had been lying there for two years, and at which no one ever looked or would look.”  Soon enough, the scene shifts to an all-talk format, but not until the imaginative hard, fun work has been done.

11 comments:

  1. I love those metafictional digressions, but I'm a huge fan of Saramago so...

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  2. What I think is going on is that in Barchester Towers, way back in 1857, Trollope had finally figured out novel-writing - how he was going to do it, at least, his own style. It was only his 5th book which, I know, for many writers is a whole career. but for Trollope was close to a beginning. So he was full of excitement and energy about the workings and ironies of fiction itself. It is great fun. But now, on novel #25 or something like that, he is closer to a pure professional, the polite word for hack. But he is not completely pure (so maybe not pure at all) so some of the fun still pops out.

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  3. I'm stuck in the first part of your post, the part about taking notes. Do you mind sharing your technique? More than a Post-It, I assume, and can picture you recording favorite passages in a Moleskine. I want to perfect my method, which basically consists of highlighting a passage on my e-reader and is most unsatisfying for future reference.

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  4. Moleskine, ha ha ha! No, sorry. A spreadsheet, an Excel spreadsheet, that's what I use. As unhip as possible. Thus, when I am away form the computer, no notes. And the bits I record are often highly focused, not really favorite passages but rather evidence for whatever argument I hope to make. Or jokes I plan to wrench out of context.

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    1. Thanks for answering my question; I like knowing how fellow readers manage the quotation bit. I keep a list of the books and authors I read ever year in an Italian leather journal, but just a list is not very satisfying. I like to mark quotes for evidence, as you say, but I also like passages which are particularly eloquent. Or, meaningful. I know I'll never, ever keep a spreadsheet, but I nod my head to your technique.

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    2. Sometimes I find I have evidence for an argument I don't know how to make, and no evidence for the one I could make, and then what? But luckily I read such good books that they always save me somehow.

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    3. For years now, my note-taking has consisted of jotted themes and quotations on both sides of a sheet of A5(?) note paper. With a good book, I have to squeeze late additions in sideways - poor books see scattered words surrounded by oceans of white (and the odd insult). Sadly, once the review is written, these pages end up in the bin (if I ever do become world famous, I apologise here to my future biographers for this error in my behaviour...).

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    4. The biographer may secretly thank you. Less material to read, more room for speculation. I rarely keep my notes, either.

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  5. I fold A4 sheets and then use them as bookmarks and repositories of quotes, and sometimes other ideas. I leave them in the books afterwards so they are a gradually expanding hidden element of my library. Wouldn't really work with e-readers though.

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  6. Notes in the book itself in some form or another would make more sense than what I do. I must have a reason. Oh yes, library books, my gradual but by now substantial shift to library books. No good reason for books I own, though.

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    1. I should really shift to the library but I always seem to have to have an addiction and an addiction to buying books is the least harmful I can imagine - and as I mostly shop in charity shops it's also cheap...

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