A skilled and unexpected use of the tools of fiction

The Professor was bad enough that a chapter or two pretty much did me in for the day.  I was all too easily distracted by better books – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Great Gatsby, John Ruskin, for pity’s sake.  The most distracting of the distractions was In Hazard (1939) by Richard Hughes, a novel about a cargo ship caught in a hurricane.  Genuinely exciting, but at some point each evening, all too early, I would will myself to close it so I did not miss my day’s Bad Brontë quota.

I would like to direct interested parties to bibliographing’s review of In Hazard, as I proceed to ignore it.  Something in John Crowley’s introduction to the novel caught my eye.  He’s writing about the term “writer’s writer”:

But what writers would mean if they used the phrase (in my own experience they don’t) is a writer who, whether in plain prose or fancy, effusive or restrained, accomplishes things in fiction that writers know to be difficult to do, whether readers perceive this or not.  Writers of fiction often do care less about the characters and story in the fiction they read – they find it harder to suspend disbelief and be touched by made-up troubles and triumphs – but they notice a skilled and unexpected use of the tools of fiction.  (xi, NYRB edition)

Does this help explain what goes on at Wuthering Expectations?  It sounds right to me.  Writing about The Great Gatsby, for example, I barely acknowledged that the novel had either characters or a story.  Do I believe that the specific mechanism Fitzgerald assigns to his narrator is what’s really important about the book?  Heavens, no.  I was dismantling the engine and trying to figure out what a specific part did, a tricky one.  Maybe it was merely decorative.  Maybe it didn’t do anything, a mistake left over from an earlier prototype.  Or maybe the engine is devilishly complex.

I’ve met a very few people who seem to be able to comprehend certain complex objects as a whole.  Seem to – what I assume they are doing is breaking the pieces apart very rapidly, and then rebuilding as quickly.  I’m not so fast, and not so interested in reassembling the clock.  An intellectual flaw, I’m afraid, one I hope to overcome.  Unlike a clock, the book is intact after I have smashed its casing and shaken out the pieces.  No harm done.

An Appreciationist, I want writers to succeed, and I want to discover how they do it.  As a result, I typically root for one character, the same one every time, the writer, the imagined writer.  In fairness, I can read at both levels at once.  I do care about the characters and story, but, just as Crowley says, less; I do want David Copperfield to do well, but not as much as I want David Copperfield to do well.  I’m a writer’s reader.

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.

Elizabeth Spencer's Five Favorite Southern Novels

As if by internet magic, Elizabeth Spencer appears in the Wall Street Journal a day after I write about her.* She provides a list of her Five Favorite Southern Novels.

Let's see. On Agate Hill by Lee Smith. Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman. Ernest Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men; Edward P. Jones, The Known World; Padgett Powell, Edisto. I have read, let me check my fingers, none of them. I've read other books by Percy and Gaines, so that's something.

The thing I like about this list is that it's personal. See, my own list would go like this: Huckleberry Finn, As I Lay Dying, Delta Wedding - no, I'm going to stop. My list is boring. The books are not boring. They're fantastic. But my list is boring. The usual suspects. No surprises at all. For proof, see the recent Oxofrd American Best Southern Novels of All Time poll (1-10 - I've read 8 of 10, 11+).

This is one of my doubts about Appreciationism. I worry that I'm too susceptible to received opinion. I'm told books are great, and when I read them I discover that they're great. Perhaps my judgment is less independent, my thinking less critical, than I like to imagine. Not that something like the Oxford American poll doesn't have its use, especially for people new to the topic. It's a quick way to see the lay of the land.

Maybe Spencer is actually listing her Five Favorites That Aren't on Everybody Else's List. Or maybe she's cusséd and cantankerous. Regardless, her list is pretty interesting.

Hat tip to R.T., who pointed out the list to me.

* Magic or marketing. This is obviously tied into the reissue of The Southern Woman.

Monday literay links - true taste is laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished

It's time for a roundup of literary links. Most people seem to use posts like this to link to other websites. Consider them all linked, in spirit.

***

What a shock it was to come across this passage in Dombey and Son:

"[T]he Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual, held a book from him at arm's length, and read. There was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to work. It left the Doctor's countenance exposed to view; and when the Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, 'Don't tell me, Sir; I know better,' it was terrific." (Ch. XI)

Honestly, it was like looking in a mirror, the kind of mirror that turns reflections into descriptive passages in the style of Dickens. That is exactly how I read. If I am reading your blog, that is exactly how I am reading it.

Note how the meaning of a word changes. When Dickens calls the Doctor's way of reading "terrific," he means it inspires terror. But when I read that way, it's also "terrific," meaning "really good." Don't tell me, Sir; I know better.

***

I was recently, for one reason or another, looking at this famous passage from The German Ideology, about the division of labor as is and under communism:

"He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

Meine Frau pointed out to me that, assuming the hunter uses gunpowder, Marx and Engels have covered fire, water, earth, and air. The "critical critic" produces, mostly, air.

I've enjoyed this imaginative passage since I first read it, but only now does it strike me that "The After-Dinner Critic" would be a good name for a litblog. The phrase only gets two hits (until this post gets added in), both from Google books! A golden opportunity. "The Critical Critic," also not a bad name, gets 686.

***

If I were collecting quotations for an Appreciationist Manifesto, I would include this one by John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Part III, Section I, Chapter 3, "Of Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Impressions of Sense":

“The second, that, in order to the discovery of that which is best of two things, it is necessary that both should be equally submitted to the attention; and therefore that we should have so much faith in authority as shall make us repeatedly observe and attend to that which is said to be right, even though at present we may not feel it so. And in the right mingling of this faith with the openness of heart, which proves all things, lies the great difficulty of the cultivation of the taste, as far as the spirit of the scholar is concerned, though even when he has this spirit, he may be long retarded by having evil examples submitted to him by ignorant masters.” (pp. 246-7 of the 1851 edition).

Those ignorant masters! This does get at the heart of what I call appreciationism - that the people that came before me are not all fools or frauds, and should be given some attention. My worry is that I am too respectful, with too much faith and insufficient "openness of heart." Well, I'm not done yet:

“But true taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy, lamenting over itself and testing itself by the way that it finds things.” (248)

“I have seen a man of true taste pause for a quarter of an hour to look at the channellings that recent rain had traced in a heap of cinders.” (249)

I wonder if that man of true taste is J. M. W. Turner.

The phrase "Appreciationist Manifesto" gets one Google hit, to me, here, in another post about Modern Painters. Seem to be repeating myself.

John Ruskin the Appreciationist - who would wish the lark not to sing?

"We shall probably find something in the working of all minds which has an end and a power peculiar to itself, and which is deserving of free and full admiration, without any reference whatsoever to what has, in other fields, been accomplished by other modes of thought, and directions of aim. We shall, indeed, find a wider range and grasp in one man than another; but yet it will be our own fault if we do not discover something in the most limited range of mind which is different from, and in its way better than, anything presented to us by the more grasping intellect. We all know that the nightingale sings more nobly than the lark; but who, therefore, would wish the lark not to sing, or would deny that it had a character of its own, which bore a part among the melodies of creation no less essential than that of the more richly gifted bird?"

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. I, II.VI.III, pp. 438-9 of the 1851 edition.

Do we all actually agree that the nightingale sings more nobly than the lark? Never mind, not the point.

Ruskin gives us here a little Appreciationist manifesto. He is not the most obvious example of the type, since he is also a vicious slasher - "The mannerism of Canaletto is the most degraded that I know in the whole range of Art" - but that's part of the idea.

The good Appreciationist critic is not uncritical, but rather searching. What's good here, he asks, or true, or beautiful, or new. It won't be everything in a picture, or a book. Note the underlying humanism - there's something to learn from the encounter with almost anyone, or with almost any work of art, and if I don't find it, it's my own fault. This lets the artist off a little easy, doesn't it? But Ruskin is addressing the viewer here, not the artist.

There's still the question of how we spend our limited time. A diet of the World's Greatest Masterpieces would seem to give the highest return on our intellectual investment. Ruskin is suspicious of this idea, though. He is always looking carefully, at mediocrities as much as masterpieces (and at nature as well as art), and will praise a painting for a single well-painted rock or tree or wave.

I like to think that I read the same way. One great sentence, one new image, one real insight - maybe not much to show for the hours spent with a novel, but not nothing.

Apologia for Appeciationism

We must be as precise as possible. Most novels and poems and essays are failures. Some are honest hackwork, some are the work of con artists, most are just the best the writer could do.

Of the remaining books, most have value in the context of their time, but will eventually be forgotten. Nobody reads Nabokov or Fulmerford anymore.

I don't spend much time with contemporary books. Most of my reading is amongst the tried and tested. The classics and the semi-classics. I like almost all of it. I appreciate the rest. My aversions* are few. On the one hand, it means I'm reading in the right places. On the other hand, it suggests a lack of independent judgment, an overdone respect for authority. What if I like everything because I am told I should? This is the side of Appreciationism that worries me.

The more positive side: some humility in the face of history is a virtue. I have trouble with Stendhal. He's puzzling, he's difficult. Is the intelligent response to dismiss him as worthless? What, am I a bored 12 year old? So I focus my attention, I read some people who are smarter than me (critics, scholars), I slow down a little. I still don't like Stendhal, but I've gotten a much better sense of what he does, and why writers and readers have found it valuable. I sent out a distress signal regarding Hawthorne last year - just writing the post actually seemed to help in that case, helped me read more carefully.

"Like" - there's part of the problem. I like a book, I don't like it. Who cares? As an Appreciationist, even I don't care. My curiosity about the variety and history of creativity is what I cultivate now, and I'm not sure that knowing what a book is and how it works doesn't sometimes provide almost as much pleasure as its actual contents.

Appreciationism has a long history in English criticism. William Hazlitt is my model. One of his best essays is called "On the Pleasures of Hating," but open the Lectures on the English Poets (1818), or the Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819, the man gave a lot of lectures) and see what he actually does. He describes a play, for example, reads a passage, and then says he thinks this line or that line is especially good, this character or that is especially well drawn. He points, and says "Look, isn't that good." This is not deep stuff.

Charles Lamb is not so different. Neither is John Dryden. Neither is Dr. Johnson, Our Greatest Critic, a lot of the time - throughout The Lives of the Poets for example (the Preface to Shakespeare is more complicated). The criticism of Coleridge may be Appreciationist, or not. I don't understand a word of it. To push the tour of English criticism forward a little, Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot are definitely not Appreciationists. They don't just want to Understand, but to Interpret. I have enough trouble understanding.

Anyway, when a litblogger does nothing more than post a poem, or a passage from a novel, it's an act of Appreciationist criticism - not deep, but criticism none the less, like Hazlitt. "Look at this. Isn't this something?"**

Thus ends Egomania Week at Wuthering Expectations. Next week, some actual books.


* I love this word, common in Restoration comedies. "You mean to say you don't admire Sir Fopling Foppington?" "Fy, fy, he is my aversion."

** Here's a recent mention of appreciation, by a Spanish professor at the University of Kansas, which I may have entirely failed to understand, and which seems to identify it with "prescribing an attitude of silent awe." My impression is that Appreciationists are a noisy and enthusiastic bunch. Remember, we like everything! We'll talk your dang ear off. Silent awe!

The Appreciationist

I spent all last week admiring Edgar Allan Poe's hatchet jobs. Lovely, blood-soaked things. Joseph Epstein's latest collection, In a Cardboard Belt!, has a section forthrightly labeled "Attacks". He takes pokes at George Steiner, Harold Bloom, Mortimer Adler, Edmund Wilson, and the position of American Poet Laureate. They're great fun, and very instructive (although the piece on Wilson is a lot more complicated than a mere attack). Here's Epstein on Bloom:

“Bloom has no problem mastering the tone of authoritativeness. If he came off any more ex cathedra in his judgments, he’d be pope.” (264)

“Apart from Shakespeare, Bloom’s great culture heroes are Emerson and Freud, who, in combination, yield a gasbag with a dirty mind.” (266)

“In a profile of Bloom in the New Yorker, he is quoted as remarking, apropos of lecturing at Oxford, 'I watched the faces of my audience... and I saw blank incomprehension. I had a vision of an airplane flying over cows in a meadow.' A vision of reading Harold Bloom – my own – is of standing in an airfield and watching a cow fly over.” (270)

Epstein, unlike Harold Bloom, always goes for the joke. The piece on Steiner is just as good, but let's instead try James Wood on Steiner (from The Broken Estate):

“The less precise his prose is, the more it speaks of the importance of precision.” (145)

“George Steiner offers a parody of Europeanness while fighting a parody of Americanness.” (158)

Vladimir Nabokov called his book of interviews Strong Opinions. Here's why (quote actually from his letters to Edmund Wilson, collected in Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya):

“What are you writing now? I have read (or rather re-read) What Maisie Knew. It is terrible. Perhaps there is some other Henry James and I am continuously hitting on the wrong one?” (209)

Or this, from somewhere in Pnin:

“Literary departments still labored under the impression that Stendhal, Galsworthy, Dreiser, and Mann were great writers."

Great stuff. You can hear the whish of the rapier. One thing I would like to do on Wuthering Expectations is join in with this, deflating overinflated reputations, knocking the pretentious off their pillars, returning received ideas to their senders. Slash, slash. What fun.

It will never happen. Almost never. "Know thyself," Socrates, or Heraclitus, or some be-togaed fellow, tells me. An ongoing process, but I know one thing. I'm not a Hatchet Man. I just don't have it in me. Constitutionally, intellectually, I am a softer, more pacific, creature, a respecter of authority, a reasonable re-rater of the overrated. I am: The Appreciationist.

Tomorrow, an attack on, and defense of, Appreciationism.

By quoting Epstein, Wood, and Nabokov, I am not endorsing their positions. I can appreciate both sides!