Huxley and the "pessimism of outlook" of the 1920s, with help from George Orwell and William Pritchard - twelve buttocks slabbily resounding

Brave New World (1932) was the first book assigned at the University of Kansas, long, oh so long ago, in a course naively titled “Western Civilization,” in theory the first book a student new to college would read.  I had not read it since then, thirty years ago, when it was used as a source of ethical questions, not really as a work of art, which suits it well, except, for example:

Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to  the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding.  (5.2)

I feel bad I did not file away “twelve buttocks slabbily resounding,” did not even notice it, apparently.  The magic word is “slabbily,” right?

I’ve read two other Aldous Huxley novels, Antic Hay (1923) and Point Counter Point (1928), and boy were they eye-openers, exemplars of “the British novel in the 1920s.”  I was discovering what every read had discovered before me, the phenomenon George Orwell describes in “Inside the Whale” (1940), where what is nominally a review of a Henry Miller novel turns into a quick history of British literature, 1910 to the present, the books of Orwell’s lifetime.  After the war, he argues, major writers had “a certain temperamental similarity…  What it amounts to is pessimism of outlook” (italics Orwell’s).  Caused by, for example, anti-Victorian puritanism, the scientific attack on religion, fashionable philosophers, the war, or all of the above.  Mostly, really, the war.

His other helpful phrase, borrowed from Joyce, is that these writers “see through” all of the old received junk – King, church, country, family, art – or hope they do, or pretend they do.  The title to Robert Graves’s 1929 memoir is a perfect distillation – Goodbye to All That – no, really, all of it.  William Pritchard borrows the term for his 1977 book Seeing Through Everything: English Writers 1918-1940, which spends more time with Lawrence, Eliot, and Woolf, but leads off, more or less, with Huxley, because he is the one who really sees through everything and behind everything sees nothing.  He is, for the British 1920s, a nihilist.  “Antic Hay is the sort of book which might… provide a generation with the illusion that they were disillusioned” (Pritchard, 39).

Point Counter Point was particularly instructive, perhaps because it is longer and covers more topics – “first-rate material for cultural historians interested in how the English intelligentsia talk” (Pritchard, 32).  D. H. Lawrence is a character in the novel, functioning as the reasonable voice of unreason, the person who does not merely “see through” but sees something, who has beliefs and ideas and a purpose.  Often, with Antic Hay and Point Counter Point, I felt like I was reading books that were no longer quite alive, which has not been my experience with Lawrence, however exasperating he might be.

This has been the crushed-down version of an essay I have meant to write for two years, but have not, I suppose because it is just a rehash of Orwell’s masterpiece and parts of Pritchard’s fine book.  But I had wondered, how did the Huxley of the contemporary nihilistic London satire of Point Counter Point turn, in just four years, into the Huxley of dystopian nihilistic London satire or Brave New World?  Expressed like that, it does not seem like such a big change.  Just the one word.  I will turn to the less slabbily resounding parts of Brave New World tomorrow.

There was talk some years ago about novels going out - the rigid artistry of Howells

“The test of the value of Mr. Howells’ work will come fifty years from now, when his sheaf of novels will form the most accurate, sympathetic and artistic study of American society yet made by an American.”

That is Hamlin Garland as quoted by cub reporter Stephen Crane as found in “Howell Discussed at Avon-by-the-Sea” (1891, Library of America, p. 457).  Garland calls A Modern Instance “the greatest, most rigidly artistic novel ever written by an American.” 

“Well,” submitted Irene.  (The Rise of Silas Lapham, last line of Ch. 17)

The characters in Silas Lapham, Bostonian and Vermontian alike, frequently begin sentences with “Well,” or use the word as a sentence.  Writers are told not to mess around with alternatives to “said,” but Howells is comically skilled in that department and I can see how he leads other writers astray.

The critic William Pritchard wrote a helpful appreciation in the Winter 2011 issue of The Hudson Review (“Howells and the Right American Stuff”) in which he traces the Rise of William Dean Howells, by which like Howells he also means the fall, the slow fade of the most powerful American Man of Letters (editor, critic, champion) of the late 19th century at the hands of H. L. Mencken (“uninspired and hollow…  elegant and shallow,” p. 560) and others.

Pritchard takes for granted that the core of Howells’s novels are the 1880s run – A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), Indian Summer (1886), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889) – are significant novels; he reads a couple of earlier novels and four later obscurities.  He is like a book blogger, pawing through this forgotten stuff.  He notes that because these novels are so unknown

my procedure will be more scattershot and partial in an attempt to bring out some of the pungent style of each novel [now we see why I like this essay so much].  This is done in hopes that putative readers may find a well-stocked library with these novels on their shelves, having been borrowed last in, say, 1905 or thereabouts.  (561)

The implicit question is “What have we lost?” by abandoning these books for others.  They’re all good books, obviously.  Pritchard picks out the tormented, even Dostoevskian embezzler of The Quality of Mercy (1892), and the amusing portrait of the publishing industry in The World of Chance (1893) among other passages and characters.  Sort of sad, all of this good writing and inventiveness now necessarily forgotten because the novels that contain it are not quite good enough.

It will happen to Silas Lapham, too.  The biggest loss will be Chapter 14, the long dinner party scene, the peak of the rise of Silas Lapham, where “the talk [runs] off upon a subject that Lapham had never heard talked of before,” meaning novels:

“There was talk some years ago,” said James Bellingham, “about novels going out.”

“They're just coming in!” cried Miss Kingsbury.

Yes, that’s the spirit!

'Tis little I - could care for Pearls - Who own the ample sea - Wuthering Expectations is 3 years old

The title is from, and trivializes, Emily Dickinson, #466.  With 700 posts averaging (at a guess) 500 words each, aside from whatever goes on in the comments, anyone with sense should occasionally ask whether this level of effort should be directed elsewhere.  And that’s not counting the reading, a separate but similar question.  Note that the useful question is not “Why read?” but “Why read so much?”  Do you have a good answer?

Wuthering Expectations has served one purpose I set for it.  Can I write with a certain level of discipline, a post every weekday (holidays and vacations excluded)?  Yes.  Can I write well with that discipline?.  Ongoing.  But see below.

Last year at this time, I quoted the critic William Pritchard, who says that he is attempting to do the same thing that I at least like to think I’m doing:

Under the confines of a thousand-word limit - or in more spacious situations double or treble that length - [the reviewer] can embrace limits as a provocation to speak out, sometimes doubtless recklessly, in order to elicit something essential about his subject.

Perhaps pricked by Pritchard, I’ve been reckless.  How else to explain four straight days writing about mummified cats?  Or two weeks on the great John Galt (seriously, The Entail is one of the great novels of the 19th century)?  Or the thankfully temporary transformation of the site into Weeding Expectations?  That last one was not so much recklessness as tomfoolery. 

None of these ideas were exactly calculated to get hits or followers or whatever the relevant statistic is.  No one is going to be paying me in pearls for any of that - hardly the path to being a Professional Reader.  But a blog gives a writer a radical freedom.  I try to use it.

A week on Rohan Maitzen’s anthology of Victorian criticism.  Sympathetic Character Week.  The Moby-Dick Fantasia.  Where else would I be allowed to do any of that?  Whether it was worth doing –

The thing is, here’s the thing.  Typically, almost always, invariably, I would hit the Publish button with a sense of defeat.  Whatever I was trying to do was only barely there.  So, the next day, I would sharpen my spoon and once again begin tunneling through the prison wall.  Recently, though, and not just once, I have put up pieces that were, I thought, well made.  They were written the way I wanted them to be written, and made the argument I wanted to make.  Maybe I’ve learned something.  Or maybe I’ve lost my judgment.  Dang worrisome.  What does it mean?  I had better write some more - maybe I'll figure it out.

I also recently wrote the single best joke in the history of Wuthering Expectations, “best” meaning, resembling a professional joke.  It is unfortunately buried in a post about Thomas Carlyle that, I would guess, almost no one read.  The perils of recklessness.

Last week, a number of other book blogs or commenters singled out my multiple posts – a week (or three days) on a single book (or mummified cats).  So I want to mention some other people who are also embracing the limits of blogging: Five Branch Tree, bibliographing, Interpolations, IveBeenReadingLately, Fred’s Place, the exhaustive A Common Reader, Anecdotal Evidence (the best written book blog, easily).  They write on a book or idea however they want, for however long they want.  They’re all quite different than Wuthering Expectations, and each other.  But they’re all free.  See, for example, what Brian did with nothing but a bit of an interview with Javier Marías and a Chardin still life.  Please remind me of other blogs that belong in this company.

A little while ago, I suggested that a few good readers was all that some writers should really ask for.  I meant some great writers, but, somehow, I, too, have a few good readers, people who look at my notes on a draft of a notion and then respond in ways that sharpen my thoughts and push me to new places.  Thanks!  Thanks a lot.  I own the ample sea.

The only place where something like a conversation can be started about a poem of Ben Jonson's

William Pritchard has been a literature professor at Amherst College for over 50 years. He's written a memoir on the subject, English Papers: A Teaching Life (1995), of which I have read some excerpts. Looks pretty good.

But today I want to share another bit of the Preface to the new On Poets & Poetry that I think book bloggers will enjoy. In the Preface, Pritchard discusses why he writes book reviews, and then turns to his teaching:

"Selfishly, the classroom is central to my life because it is the only place where something like a conversation can be started about a poem of Ben Jonson's, Shakespeare's Cymbeline, or a novel by Henry James. One doesn't expect to have such a conversation when dining at a friend's or even when passing the time with a professional colleague. They might not have read or been reading the right book at the right time; for that to happen, something like a captive audience of more or less agreeable students is necessary." (p. xii)

Well. I suspect that some book bloggers might want to modify a word or two in that passage. It's almost exactly right.

I started Wuthering Expectations as a result of moving away from a fine, fine book club, still active and reading challenging books. We read Swann's Way, Bleak House, and The Leopard; Balzac and Byatt; Sebald and Waugh. We had a few disasters. Everyone loved Midnight's Children, but no one (including me) had anything to say about it. We could have used a professor that night. And The Crying of Lot 49 - no, I don't want to talk about that. Nine times out of ten, the book conversation, which generally lasted not much more than an hour, was excellent. This is all aside from some extraordinary food and wine.

So I missed that conversation. I still don't exactly count what I do as real conversation. We all understand the differences. But often, it is close, and occasionally very close. Book Blogger Appreciation Week has made visible to me some of the other ways that people try to create what Pritchard finds in the classroom.

Perhaps what I find mot heartening about what Pritchard writes is that, after the perils of a PhD, an admirable shelf of books, and a half century of teaching, he still wants that conversation. The act of reading the book is presumably the priority. But it's not quite enough.

It's not, is it?

Some encouragement from William Pritchard - a provocation to speak out, sometimes doubtless recklessly

William Pritchard is, I think, my favorite living critic.* I can't guess why he's not better known, except that one of his specialties is modern poetry (not such a big audience), and another is John Updike (a fading audience). Pritchard, a longtime English professor at Amherst College, made the deliberate decision early in his career to write for a larger audience, an audience that includes me.

His newest collections of book reviews and essays is titled On Poets & Poetry (2009). I've read some of it already - appreciations of John Dryden and of Johnson's Lives of the Poets - and most of the rest concerns moderns and Modernists. Pound, Eliot, Frost through Bishop, Lowell, Larkin. Someday, I will, inshallah, read those poets more seriously, and then I'll return to this book. For now, I actually just want it for a couple of pieces on Tennyson.

I wanted to mention a couple of lines from the book's preface, one today, one tomorrow.

Pritchard mentions the example of T. S. Eliot, who wrote hundreds of book reviews "most of which have never been available in book form":

"At the peril of inviting comparison with Eliot, it appears to me that, unlike the scholarly essay which must justify itself by bringing out a new aspect of a writer's work or correcting the inadequate interpretation of earlier critics, reviews are bound by no such rules. The reviewer is not only free but expected to take the book at hand as a chance to direct attention to central issues. As a critic he may speak to large matters of a poet's achievement, comparing the writer with contemporaries and predecessors in an effort to capture his or her distinctness. Under the confines of a thousand-word limit - or in more spacious situations double or treble that length** - he can embrace limits as a provocation to speak out, sometimes doubtless recklessly, in order to elicit something essential about his subject." (p. x)

He follows with a famous bit of Randall Jarrell, from "The Age of Criticism," in which Jarrell writes that the responsibility of the critic is "taking the chance of making a complete fool of himself."

Now that last part, I have that covered. Chance, taken; fool, made. That reckless freedom is a great part of why I keep writing here. When something does not work, I can try something else, with no costs at all. I guess I could damage my ability to "Monetize" Wuthering Expectations. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Prof. Myers expresses disappointment that so few bloggers are "committed to argument" (although he clearly understands why they are not). My Appreciationist temperament is all wrong for that task (mostly). But I think Pritchard is absolutely right. There are different kinds of provocation, different breeds of recklessness. Anyone who writes about books should discover the kind that works for him and cultivate it. If Pritchard, writing for professional publication, is free, think of the liberty possessed by we book bloggers.

I didn't set out to write anything related to Book Blogger Appreciation Week, but I obviously just did. And there's a bit more tomorrow.
* Along with Joseph Epstein. And Christopher Benfey. Ruth Franklin's good. Frank Kermode. Ingrid Rowland could hardly be better. Enough of this.

** Gotta say, any blogger going over three thousand words maybe ought to consider if anyone will read that much. I am being very generous allowing three thousand words.

Edmund Wilson's permanent criticism - in other words, he's still readable

One more glance at a Hudson Review article, this time "Edmund Wilson's Permanent Criticism: 1920-1950," (not online) a review essay on the two Library of America volumes of Wilson's work. The article is by William Pritchard, himself a favorite critic of mine.

Pritchard acknowledges a real intellectual debt to Wilson (as does the more ambivalent Joseph Epstein in an essay that can be found in In a Cardboard Belt!). The question for Pritchard is why a reader should spend time with Wilson now; Pritchard concludes, roughly, that Wilson wrote well enough and was insightful enough, so why not? That may not be exactly it, but any Amateur Reader who spends too much effort reading any critics is probably misallocating his time. There're a lot of books out there.

In my experience, Wilson does write well enough, and is insightful enough. His long essay on Proust, in Axel's Castle, is as good an introduction to that writer as I know, and might give a burst of momentum to any reader stuck halfway through The Guermantes Way. Wilson has a particularly strong gift with plot summaries - he describes the plot of In Search of Lost Time in detail, but somehow weaves his criticism in with the synopsis. The final result is utterly un-encyclopedic.

The Shores of Light, a thick collection of essays from the 20s and 30s, was less interesting to me for its specific insights than for its sense of The Spirit of the Age. The Wilson of that period wanted to read everything, and tried. His reviews of the promising young writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald communicate the thrill readers found in their books better than anything else I've read. Wilson makes the new writers of the time sound so exciting.

Here's Mark Sarvas, describing his Summer of [Philip] Roth, a reading or rereading of all or most of Roth's books, all in preparation for reviewing the new one. Whatever you do Mark, don't calculate your hourly wages for that review. Anyway, this is exactly what Edmund Wilson would do, read an author all the way through before reviewing him, no matter how long the shelf of books. He even decided that he had to learn Russian before he could understand the great Russian novels, and then he did it, more or less. The man could pack away the books.

P.S. Look, the Letter-writing Librarian recently read Axel's Castle, and wrote about it here.