Monday, September 29, 2014

On a Book Blog Entitled A Commonplace Blog – remembering D. G. Myers

D. G. Myers believed that Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) was “the greatest novel written in English of all time.”  Nabokov himself, in the essay that is now permanently attached to the novel, “On a Book Entitled Lolita,” described his own ideal of literature.

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.  There are not many such books.  (Vintage International edition, 314-5)

Myers was not the insipid aesthete that I am, but rather more of an ethical critic, a seeker after wisdom, yet this is close to how I think of Myers: endlessly curious and generous.  He perhaps kept some of his ecstasy to himself, except when getting excited about a book on Twitter.  He advocated reading literary criticism “with hate in the heart,” but he read fiction with tenderness, not because he feared he might bruise a delicate novel or writer but rather because of his openness to whatever art a book might have.

Actually, Myers was also being kind to the critics, hating them for their own good.  “A true disagreement obliges a literary critic to rethink his conclusions, to reexamine his premises, to doublecheck his logic, to scour for further evidence, to remain open to correction or even the possibility of being proved wrong.”  Myers wanted

book bloggers who are committed to argument—who are sworn to defend the books they cherish from those who would make a hash of them, who understand that the literary heritage can be lost…  when it ceases to be valued.

Nabokov is right – there are not many books worth defending, although in another important sense there are too many to defend.  Either way, Myers wanted to keep good books alive.  He assembled a lot of lists – see the left sidebar of A Commonplace Blog.  An anonymous commenter once asked Myers if there was a database he used to find books for the lists.  “Yeah, my memory,” he said.  He was a model humanist.  In the humanities, you can never quite trust someone else’s description.  You have to read the book for yourself.  And that is what Myers did, even in the face of death.  One of the books worth defending was serially published in an electronic format as A Commonplace Blog, or The Moral Obligation To Write Well, as Matt Hunte calls the collected edition.

I have mentioned that Golem Week was maybe the best idea I have ever had.  I am not joking, since it caught the attention of Myers and thus led me to his work.  He understood what I was doing here immediately.  For some reason that is not always the case.

Myers's passing over the weekend has deprived me of not just a colleague whose name and ideas can be found all over my own blog, but an ally.  Wuthering Expectations will be poorer without his presence.

16 comments:

  1. When reading A Commonplace Blog, I got the feeling that I knew the author personally. I didn't of course, but there persists a sense of loss all the same at his passing.

    An apt and touching tribute: thank you very much.

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  2. Sad news, we often forget there are people behind book blogs. Very well done tribute

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  3. Myers was a good friend of this blog, always stimulating on Twitter and in his other writing, and a fine critic at the micro and macro levels, meaning good reviewing a book at hand and insightful about broader topics, including the thorniest - "What is literature?" and similar questions.

    Then there is his writing about his illness, and the example he set, but I though other people would do better with that than I could.

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  4. "I propose that our common goal should be to establish the limits of literature where 'literature' is simply good writing—where 'good' has, by definition, no fixed definition." In other words, an endless argument. I really miss him.

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  5. Perhaps there is a hint of Myers's religious tradition there - what is midrash if not an eternally evolving argument; what is literary criticism if not midrash?

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  6. I have only a passing familiarity with Myers' blog, Tom, but I appreciate this remembrance of him and am sorry that you've lost such an ally of your own blog. Good readers are worth their weight in gold if you'll pardon the cliché, and so I'd like to take a moment to let you know that the sort of criticism and rethinking of conclusions that you say Myers advocated are just some of the things I appreciate in Wuthering Expectations and the comments you leave at my--and others'--blogs. On that note, sorry again for your loss.

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  7. I have read several other grateful appreciations of Myers in the wake of his passing. I regret that I did not know of his blog until now, and spent time this past weekend exploring some of its many generous and fierce treasures - a humbling and inspiring experience. His final post is one I know I'll turn to again, a light in the darkness for all of us.

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  8. Fierce, boy was he fierce. Go get 'em, I would shout, even if I got bit, too.

    Richard, thanks. Myers's tastes in literature are definitely not yours, but they're not really mine, either. But we shared an approach to literature. I had trouble reading him with the skepticism he advised.

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  9. I didn't habitually follow Myers' blog, but what little I've read showed erudition mixed with sensibility and rigour; in essence he's the book blogger I wish I could be. Such expertise in book blogging is as a rare as Apelles paintings. Hopefully it's not too late to read and appreciate more of his insights.

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  10. In the humanities, certain kinds of expertise require time. Years of reading. We're working on it! Whatever "it" is.

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  11. It's typical for me that I have only discovered Myers after his death, through the memorials on this and other blogs. He is someone I wish I could have interacted with in real time, a model citizen in this new neighborhood of book blogs that I'm just beginning to explore. Alas. But what a shining monument of a blog he leaves behind! -- I spent several hours this morning just browsing in his archives. So as someone who is benefitting from his writing even after Myers's death, I thank you for this memorializing post. (And I am exercised to betake me to the other links in your blogroll, that I may discover any other wonderful interlocutors before conversation with them becomes impossible.)

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  12. The "blogroll," what do you - oh that! Ha ha, just let me grab the blog duster for a minute.

    Well, it's not clean, but it's cleaner. There was a point in book blog history when the blogroll was really quite important, but I think it has been superseded a bit. Still, mine covers - now I am not sure what I mean it to cover. I look at, and even read, a lot more book blogs than that.

    Myers was great fun on Twitter. He could get a conversation going there, a real one, better than about anyone I have seen.

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  13. Since you're adding some new links, Roger recently gave you a shout-out at The Fictional Woods, (http://w11.zetaboards.com/thefictionalwoods/topic/7488914/1/#new), "my favorite book blog, wide ranging, humorous". I'm just sayin'.

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  14. Now that is nice to see - thanks! I have never in my life gotten the hang of a site with a message board structure, but The Fictional Woods is full of interesting things.

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  15. Beautiful eulogy Tom, and one that has had me ferreting around in the none too commonplace blog.

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