Hewers of wood, drawers of water, and inspectors of prisons

I have a long relationship with the cover of this book (Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey).

Gosh, I love that cover art. The red ink, the handwritten title! Every time I went into a Waterstones I would end up picking it up and considering it, but it's a chunky book to have to fit in your suitcase, not to mention the price of hardcovers; and then the description just didn't seem all that interesting. "An irrepressibly funny portrait of the impossible friendship between a master and a servant." The heart wants what it wants, and the heart likes the cover art way better than that description. But sometimes fate intervenes: I found a copy of the UK hardcover at the Newberry book sale over the summer priced at only $2 ("...that must be a mistake!" said the checkout volunteer as I mentally willed her to just finish the transaction) and obviously.

This was a very enjoyable book in the end, although it gets off to a slow start. The story is told from the perspective of Olivier, the French aristocrat, and Parrot, his multi-talented servant/secretary, in alternating chapters. Parrot is pretty clearly the "main" character here in terms of development/mystery/conflict/interest, although, fittingly for the society they're living in, Olivier's chapters provide the real start-to-finish timeline for the novel as well as the engine for the plot in the novel's present. The book starts out with each character narrating his childhood; you then get Olivier narrating up to the "present"; then Parrot comes into the story, and we find out about his intervening years as we go along.

Parrot's life in particular is shaped by a whole slew of historical forces, and I recognized a lot of the things Carey was playing with in terms of the movement of people and ideas. I feel like there's a more sophisticated reference to make here than Forrest Gump, but let's don't stand on ceremony; Parrot's life story at times feels a bit Gumpian, not because he crosses paths with famous people and events but just because of the sheer number of settings he goes through. He's also blessed by his author with intelligence and skills that make him an equal with Olivier. It's not just "a master and his servant" in other words, but rather more a story of how this guy ends up as a servant as one odd episode in a life full of odd episodes; odd episodes that are nevertheless all firmly within the experience of the working class at this time. I felt aware of all this as I read, but I was still moved by the pathos of his situation.

The inside flap of my copy describes the book as "an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville" and although that description made me skeptical at first, in the end I was totally on board. Somehow Carey manages to strike the right tone of being historically inspired but not quite claiming to be historical fiction, if you follow. Describing it as an "improvisation" is actually perfect: it's pulling out the really fascinating aspects of Tocqueville's life and world and blowing them up so you can get inside and really look at them. As you know(?), I often approach historical fiction with a heavy dose of skepticism, but this book seems like a good example of how fiction can be a means of interpreting and commenting on a particular time and place. Plus it's just plain fun to read (once you get past the childhood chapters, those are slightly rough going although key to the character development).

Now: a final note; an extremely mild observation. This book seems like an example of something else, the diversity problem in publishing, as it was apparently shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Now, I don't know how those awards work and I have even less clue what else was eligible in 2010, but while I enjoyed this book and thought it was really masterfully written I have a hard time seeing it as major-award-worthy. This isn't to take anything away from the book or its author whatsoever, and I've already noted that it succeeds at something I don't often see books succeeding at; but just, when I think about the whole world of UK publishing and English-language writing... it just strikes me as a data point that would, on its own, support the notion that the publishing industry favors established white guys writing about white guys. I will leave the strong criticism to people who actually have a clue about the real world. If I'd read this in 2010 it might have made it onto my shortlist of best books published in that year, but as we all know I only ever read two books a year that were actually published in that year so that's not a particularly high honor.

If there are awards for cover art though, I'm behind it all the way.

Books I inflict upon myself, part one

In my mind, there are definitely some books that No One Reads. Oh sure, maybe some freaks in literature departments (I wouldn't put anything past an English major), but for the rest of us, we get the gist from Wishbone episodes and we're fine, really.

#classicliterature

The main effect that this belief has had on my life is that when I meet someone who has read one of these books, and they recommend it, I feel irresistibly drawn to also read the book. This has happened to me now twice in the last [period of time] [dammit, Jim, I'm a blogger, not a calendar], with mixed results.

Instance the First is Les Miserables. This was brought on, as you might guess, by the movie version of the musical. Hashing it out with girlfriends afterward ("at what point do you think someone started to regret casting Russell Crowe?") it emerged that one of us (not me) could make comparisons to the book. "Oh, the bishop character is so much more wonderful in the book," she sighed, and my fate was sealed.

I honestly cannot remember when I started or finished Les Mis. There's a post here that suggests I was halfway through as of September 2013, so maybe I was done by Christmas? Anyway, reader, I read it.

My first strong takeaway was that the creators of the musical did an impressively good job. Granted, I'm not a real deep thinker when I'm watching things, but the one time I saw the musical and the couple times seeing the film, I felt like it all made sense. Reading the book, I realized how much the musical writers kept in, all the little nods to storylines and character developments that play out at greater length in the book.

The second thing has to do with the infamous digressions. Someone had told/warned me about these: Hugo just spends pages and pages talking about sewer systems or something equally tedious while you're waiting to find out whether Jean Valjean gets rearrested or whatever. Now, granted, I was pretty shameless about flipping through these, but I felt like I understood what Hugo was doing here (beyond being self-absorbed). The digressions pause the action and drop you back in at a different angle. It seemed to me they were creating these almost contemplative spaces in the narrative, inviting the reader not to simply plow ahead absorbed in a fictional world, but to take the time to reengage with the characters as fellow inhabitants of the real world. Maybe it just felt like dipping out and back in because I wasn't really reading the digressions though (heh). Anyway, I still thought they were obnoxious (get on with it man).

So that was Les Mis, and now I've started Ivanhoe, which so far is... Ivanhoe-y. But I'll do you a separate post for that one.

Try not to look too excited, boy.

Debt = bad, love = good

Let's talk about another Trollope novel! I know how you don't love those, and I don't care.

This is another pleasant little Barsetshire book, with lots going on. There's some politics, there's some love, there's some social awkwardness, a little of everything. Plenty of characters, and a few of those awful political chapters where Trollope just spins himself into a satirical tizzy about Victorian politicians that no one really cares that much about anymore. Boo, back to the romance.

better.

One of the main plotlines has to do with the dangers of credit and debt. Trollope goes into great detail about the emotional consequences as well and material and social when a young clergyman, Mark Robarts, foolishly helps a friend borrow money from a shady lender (anti-Semitism, ahoy) and then ends up on the hook for more money than he makes in a year. I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction (like, any) but a plot that warns about the dangers of debt seems sort of old-fashioned, and yet -- let's get topical -- it seems almost timely. Maybe our society would benefit from a little more horror of owing money. It is a little eerie that the dissolute spendthrift friend, who doesn't much care about who gets ruined along with him, is the one who sees borrowing money as completely normal and unproblematic.

The storyline raises a lot of questions about the proper lifestyles of clergy, and the specific customs and remuneration of Anglican clergy, but ultimately this is a rather uncomfortable corner for Trollope, I think, and nothing is really resolved. Trollope likes to see his clergy living genteel, comfortable lives and being jolly with their genteel neighbors, and on the whole I think he likes the inconsistencies that come with an old system of parishes and livings; but this doesn't do much for those who get the wrong end of the stick -- and it doesn't provide any disincentive whatsoever for men to become "sporting parsons". The debt plot lets him hold forth on the proper distance a man of the cloth ought to have from Worldly Ways, but I don't think he really solves all the problems he raises.

Miss Dunstable returns in this book, which is exciting except her character has been modified since the last book. Trollope makes her older by about a decade, and whereas the last time we saw her she was very shrewd and capable, here she's more bowed down and jaded and Trollope marries her off in a sort of tying-up-loose-ends way. It's not impossible for her character to have evolved along these lines, but Trollope doesn't (I don't think) have her change so much as he just retroactively retools the character.

And so I haven't really said anything about Lucy Robarts and Lord Lufton. This is one of those relationships like Frank Gresham and Mary Thorne, or Luke Whatever and Rachel Ray, where you know they're going to end up together from fairly early on but it's just a matter of working out the details. Trollope's heroes and heroines don't have to do much changing to win their loves; mostly the men just have to be persistent. My inclination is to say that this is more evidence of Jane Austen's superiority, as I think she likes to have her heroes and heroines learn and change and grow, rather than having their parents learn and change and grow enough to stop opposing the match (or just having a big bag o' money fall from the sky to make things possible). If I'm wrong about this don't tell me. I like Trollope but Austen is a god(ess).

In which I ramble my way across a book

It's a major pet peeve of mine when Jane Austen gets referred to as a "Victorian" novelist. It's one of those line-in-the-sand things, like referring to Obama as a "socialist": either you know what those words mean or you don't. (Oooh, edgy!)

Jane (reporting from this rad mug) and I are unimpressed by poor periodization skills

But, y'know, I can sort of understand the inclination. Austen is not only super-famous, she sort of stands apart, time-wise. It's been ages since I've taken an English Lit class, so maybe I'm off base, but who else from the early nineteenth century do we still really read, eh? Scott, maybe. Burney's earlier and only nerds know about her. Radcliffe if you're a suicidal nerd. There are the Romantic poets, but they're poets. Mary Shelley gets treated as a genre author. For all the Austen family's novel-reading it doesn't seem like there are a whole lot of survivals from the period.

Well, here's a book to help round out that picture: Marriage, by Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, published in 1818. I downloaded this for freeeee through Manybooks.com. This is the Project Gutenberg edition, which obviously gets the job done but is slightly annoying in various ways. There's a fairly extensive Victorian introduction that has all kinds of background about Ferrier and the novel, but the lack of formatting obliterates the footnotes and block quotes and makes it sort of a headache. So I skipped it, although probably I would enjoy it if I made an effort. (Bah, effort.)

This is clearly a didactic novel, meant to illustrate good and bad approaches to girls' education and how these lead to success or misery in marriage. At the center are twin baby girls and their three mother-figures. Their birth mother, Lady Juliana, is a spoiled, air-headed London beauty who elopes with her Scottish suitor in the name of love; she keeps one of the twin girls with her when she returns to London from Scotland. The other twin girl is adopted by a saintly aunt by marriage (mother figure #2), Alicia Douglas, who is also English but thoroughly intelligent and virtuous. The third potential mother figure is Aunt Jacky, a spinster aunt who represents the other end of the bad mothering spectrum, being completely small-minded and ultimately almost as empty-headed as the birth mother despite being more useful around the house. Ferrier is pretty scathing about Miss Jacky and her brand of "sensible woman":

Miss Jacky, the senior of the trio, was what is reckoned a very sensible woman--which generally means, a very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women and children--a sort of superintendent of all actions, time, and place--with unquestioned authority to arraign judge, and condemn upon the statutes of her own supposed sense... At home her supremacy in all matters of sense was perfectly established; and thence the infection, like other superstitions, had spread over the whole neighbourhood. As sensible woman she regulated the family, which she took care to let everybody see; she was conductor of her nieces' education, which she took care to let everybody hear; she was a sort of postmistress general--a detector of all abuses and impositions; and deemed it her prerogative to be consulted about all the useful and useless things which everybody else could have done as well. She was liberal of her advice to the poor, always enforcing on them the iniquity of idleness, but doing nothing for them in the way of employment--strict economy being one of the many points in which she was particularly sensible. The consequence was, while she was lecturing half the poor women in the parish for their idleness, the bread was kept out of their mouths by the incessant carding of wool and knitting of stockings, and spinning, and reeling, and winding, and pirning, that went on amongst the ladies themselves. And, by-the-bye, Miss Jacky is not the only sensible woman who thinks she is acting a meritorious part when she converts what ought to be the portion of the poor into the employment of the affluent.

I thought that economic point was rather interesting. The contrast is that Alicia pays the boys and girls of her neighborhood to take care of her garden rather than doing it herself.

Ferrier is an entertaining writer, and so even though most of her characters represent some precisely mapped combination of [good/bad] nature and [good/bad] nurture, they're still interesting personalities. Plus it's just fascinating to see what she saw as plausible "types" of her day. For instance, saintly aunt Alicia, we are told, was a poor cousin raised in a well-bred family, and when she and her titled cousin fell in love -- you know the fall out here, right? The two are separated, forbidden to marry, etc etc. But! Alicia, though heart-broken, accepts that this is totally reasonable, that her high-born aunt has every right to forbid her son to marry a poor cousin, and steels herself to get over him. When he's super-persistent, she marries the nicest of her suitors and goes to live with him in Scotland, and is very happy with this. Contrast this with her sister-in-law Lady Juliana, and you get the feeling that Ferrier has some doubts about this whole "love match" business.

Aside from historical perspectives on education and marriage, Marriage also paints a delightfully nineteenth century picture of Scotland. The contrast between the Scottish highlands and London's highlife (eh, eh? see what I did there?) provides a geographical contrast as background to the moral/intellectual contrasts in the book. Plus it offers lots of colorful scenery and characters.

"It's impossible the bagpipe could frighten anybody," said Miss Jacky, in a high key; "nobody with common sense could be frightened at a bagpipe."

On descending to the dining-parlour he found his father seated at the window, carefully perusing a pamphlet written to illustrate the principle, Let nothing be lost, and containing many sage and erudite directions for the composition and dimensions of that ornament to a gentleman's farmyard, and a cottager's front door, ycleped, in the language of the country a midden--with the signification of which we would not, for the world, shock the more refined feelings of our southern readers.

If you like historical fashions, this book is worth looking at: there are plenty of intriguingly detailed descriptions of the Scottish women's practical clothing as compared to Lady Juliana's finery. For instance, one highland lady arrives at the house with her skirt "carefully drawn through the pocket-holes" and wearing "a faded red cloth jacket, which bore evident marks of having been severed from its native skirts, [and] now acted in the capacity of a spencer."

In re education, "true religion" seems to be the magic bullet. Here is Alicia summing up the take-home lesson:

"Oh, what an awful responsibility do those parents incur," she would mentally exclaim, "who thus neglect or corrupt the noble deposit of an immortal soul! And who, alas! can tell where the mischief may end? This unfortunate will herself become a mother; yet wholly ignorant of the duties, incapable of the self-denial of that sacred office, she will bring into the world creatures to whom she can only transmit her errors and her weaknesses!"

I'm only halfway through; the twin raised by Alicia has just arrived in London to meet her sister and her mother, and that's going about as well as you could expect. I'm considering not finishing, just because I'm a little frustrated with how long I've been reading this already. It's not the book's fault; I no longer have a daily commute which means I have to figure out some other way to get reading time into my day. So I rate this: Worthwhile, if you like old books.

(There's no reason for that to be there, but I think you'll agree, it had to go somewhere.)

Oh hey, it's a book I read

I find it orders of magnitude more difficult to pick a book to read when I'm not currently reading something. Or maybe I should turn that around and say, when I'm in the middle of something I have no trouble at all queueing up three more books with a sense of enthusiasm. My favorite theory (of the five minutes I've spent thinking about it) is that it has to do with a perceived level of difficulty. When I'm currently reading something I'm aware that it doesn't actually take me that long to read a book, and I don't feel like I'm condemning myself to a potentially boring week every time I set a book on the stack. Whereas when my hands are empty, I'm picking something for right now, and right now I want something good. At such moments I am particularly susceptible to recommendations; the possibility of blaming someone else if the book turns out to be a stinker is always attractive...

As you may have guessed, I have recent experience with this dilemma. I got back from Paris (lovely if damp and intimidating) having finished the scholarly Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe (predictably uneven and ultimately disappointing, although containing invaluable insights into national histories usually overlooked in the English literature). What to read, what to read. Nothing on my Amazon wish list looked any good of course. Finally a blog I read mentioned Evelyn Waugh's Scoop in a recommending kind of way, and off I went.

Sadly there is very little Waugh available on Kindle. As long as I'm complaining about this, I'll note also that Amazon has volumes 2-4 of Sigrid Undset's Master of Hestviken for Kindle... yes, 2-4. This is the kind of moment that makes me feel impatient with "OMG e-readers are killing books" articles. Don't worry, people; the sellers of e-readers are not in danger of making the experience too attractive. But: Waugh's complete stories are available, and for the sake of getting on with something, I bought it.

 
Now, short stories are not my favorite thing. The format lends itself to more insinuation and ambiguity than I usually like. Furthermore, I tend to think that collections of a novelist's short stories are a bit more for the completist or literary scholar than for Jane Reader. But although that latter assumption was more or less borne out, I did enjoy this quite a lot.

There are some really wicked little stories here, in which people are the victims of monumental irony. There are a couple are are simply howls of rage against contemporary social trends. There are also two chapters of an unfinished novel that are so good I was sad to remember it was unfinished. The sad thing about the Kindle is that it's difficult for me to go back and tell you anything more specific about the stories; but I enjoyed the collection.

After the unfinished/fragmentary works comes the juvenilia -- if there is a better argument against becoming a famous author than the possibility of having your juvenilia published, I don't know it. For the most part this stuff is not particularly good reading, although there is a pretty awesome introductory letter in which the (teenage?) Waugh congratulates himself on overcoming the handicap of a literary family to write a novel. There are no notes or anything on these pieces to indicate when they were written or how old he was when he wrote them, which I thought was disappointing. Sure, maybe there aren't dates attached to the manuscripts but surely some scholar out there has a theory and it would be better for the average reader to offer something rather than nothing.

So there we are; back on the book-horse. Although all this rain is really putting a cramp in my reading-on-train-platforms style.

I will only be reading "like bricks" from now on

I'm supposed to be writing a one-page proposal so I can present a dissertation chapter at a seminar, but that doesn't seem to be happening, so I figured I could at least be useful and post something over here.

Doctor Thorne is another Trollope book, which I downloaded for freeee and therefore don't have a cover to show you. So here's some ladies from an 1858 fashion plate, which is the year the book was published! Yaaaay dresses.

PS, of course there's a Trollope Society. I like that literature people have all these Societies; it seems very convivial of them. It seems like the offline predecessor of liking things on Facebook. (Shhh, shhh, don't tell me about Serious Academic things, I don't want to hear it.)

Doctor Thorne is a delightful slice of Trollopey goodness. I would say there are two "current affairs" themes running through the book -- one is the evils of alcoholism. The second is the overly stringent laws against electoral fraud. You could probably describe that one as hostility toward the hypocrisy of politicians on the issue of electoral fraud, but no, I choose to take the man at his word.

The main plot of the book is a bit... un-plot-like. Mary Thorne is an illegitimate child being brought up by her uncle (the eponymous Doctor) in close company with the local squire's children; unsurprisingly, she and the heir (Frank Gresham) fall in love. He has to marry a rich woman in order to save his family's property which is entirely mortgaged, but is determined to have Mary despite his snobby mother waging a social war against the Thornes. Meanwhile, as only the Doctor is aware, the nouveau riche alcoholic who lent the money to the Greshams is actually Mary's uncle also, and his will is worded vaguely enough to leave the whole shebang to her. So you know, from maybe halfway in, that Mary stands to become that very rich woman whom Frank needs to marry. And so indeed she does and happily ever after. There are a handful of ways this conclusion could be screwed up, but really none of them even come close to happening. Which makes this only a nice novel, rather than a really good one.

But, c'mon, we're here not for genius plotlines; we're here for delightful wording and characterization! Did you know that "Trichy" is a nickname for Beatrice? Or that "read like bricks" means something like "put your nose to the grindstone? Love it! Little things like this:

It would not be right that I should say anything against your father to you; but it is impossible for any of us not to see that all through life he has thrown away every advantage, and sacrificed his family.

Of course there's a good clergyman character, even though he's very minor:

He delighted in lecterns and credence-tables, in services at dark hours of winter mornings when no one would attend, in high waistcoats and narrow white neckties, in chanted services and intoned prayers, and in all the paraphernalia of Anglican formalities which have given such offence to those of our brethren who live in daily fear of the scarlet lady.

It's interesting to note that in this book, it's the young unmarried men who are the problem; Frank, of course, urgently needs to marry money; the vicar above arrives set against marrying and the women set out to change this; and there is some fretting over the dissolute drunken son of Mary's alcoholic baronet uncle, who, various characters consider, really only needs a good wife. None of the women characters are worrying about being "on the shelf".

And then there is this; prepare to "awww":

     We are inclined to think that these matters are not always discussed by mortal lovers in the poetically passionate phraseology which is generally thought to be appropriate for their description. A man cannot well describe that which he has never seen nor heard; but the absolute words and acts of one such scene did once come to the author's knowledge. The couple were by no means plebeian, or below the proper standard of high bearing and high breeding; they were a handsome pair, living among educated people, sufficiently given to mental pursuits, and in every way what a pair of polite lovers ought to be. The all-important conversation passed in this wise. The site of the passionate scene was the sea-shore, on which they were walking, in autumn.
     Gentleman. "Well, Miss ––––, the long and short of it is this: here I am; you can take me or leave me."
     Lady—scratching a gutter on the sand with her parasol, so as to allow a little salt water to run out of one hole into another. "Of course, I know that's all nonsense."
     Gentleman. "Nonsense! By Jove, it isn't nonsense at all: come, Jane; here I am: come, at any rate you can say something."
     Lady. "Yes, I suppose I can say something."
     Gentleman. "Well, which is it to be; take me or leave me?"
     Lady—very slowly, and with a voice perhaps hardly articulate, carrying on, at the same time, her engineering works on a wider scale. "Well, I don't exactly want to leave you."
     And so the matter was settled: settled with much propriety and satisfaction; and both the lady and gentleman would have thought, had they ever thought about the matter at all, that this, the sweetest moment of their lives, had been graced by all the poetry by which such moments ought to be hallowed.

SO. CUTE.

I haven't even mentioned what great characters Frank Gresham and Miss Dunstable are. With someone like Frank, Trollope has the ability to show you what a dope he is, even though his heart is in the right place. Miss Dunstable, on the other hand, is a woman with an enormous fortune from trade, who is well aware of the score and parries mercenary marriage proposals like a pro. I loved the detail about her wearing her hair in unflattering and unfashionable curls.

I gather that Miss Dunstable will be back in at least one of the next books in the series. THIS is why a series is awesome.

Whining, procrastinating: the usual.

So! I have got to the end of Book Three! Hooray! That's exactly halfway, well done me. However, this means I am now on the edge of Book Four, which is a Frodo-and-Sam book...  hence I am typing on Blogger instead of reading, even though I only have a week (!) (!!!!) to finish this.

Does it make me a terrible person if I don't particularly like the Frodo-and-Sam part of the story? It's so dark and gross and long, and a little Gollum goes a long way. Reading Gollum's dialogue is like, I dunno, reading a Yorkshire peasant's dialogue in a Victorian novel -- jeez o pete, if this is the price we pay, do we really need to hear from this character so often? Incidentally, I feel the same way about Andy Serkis' performance in the movies. Oh sure he's a genius blah blah innovation blah, but still: a little goes a long way. Plus, I get a little tired of the modern obsession with making bad guys sympathetic. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I only tolerate eeeevil characters with black hats and capes and twirlable mustaches; and I would point out that Tolkien makes Gollum, like most of his characters, complex and ambiguous; but I hate when movies (especially) feel the need to provoke some kind of emotional "awww" moment in addition to just understanding who this person is and what they've done.

Anyway, I don't think not liking the Frodo-and-Sam part makes me terrible but it might make me shallow. Whatever dudes! I stand by my impatient desire to get back to the kings and battles and ancient civilizations and hilarious hobbit dialogue!

Too many words, have a random picture of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Maybe this time around I will appreciate the hard slog into Mordor better. Maaaybe. But look at the awesomeness you get in the other part of the story:

'They are shepherds of the trees,' answered Gandalf. 'Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick the answer to your question. You have seen Ents, O King, Ents out of Fangorn Forest, which in your tongue you call the Entwood. Did you think that the name was given only in idle fancy? Nay, Théoden, it is otherwise: to them you are but the passing tale; all the years from Eorl the Young to Théoden the Old are of little count to them; and all the deeds of your house but a small matter.'
The king was silent. 'Ents!' he said at length. 'Out of the shadows of legend I begin to understand the marvel of the trees, I think. I have lived to see strange days. Long have we tended our beasts and our fields, built our houses, wrought our tools, or ridden away to help in the wars of Minas Tirith. And that we called the life of Men, the way of the world. We cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land. Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of strange places, and walk visible under the Sun.'

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY EARLY 20TH CENTURY PHILOLOGY.

Oh! I shall miss you, Théoden King, until we meet again in Book Five. Which had better be soon!

A couple of loose thoughts

The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan has been living in my purse for the last week or two as my go-to public transit read. It would make me feel very brainy reading medieval poetry on the bus except that my inspiration was the incomparable "Take Back Halloween" website. Thus I was first drawn to this book by its author's awesome horned headdress.

There are extant portraits of Christine, why didn't they use one for the cover?

I never had much interest in "medieval stuff" as a kid, and the medieval history class I took in college didn't have much impact on me at the time. In the last couple of years though I've had the opportunity to admire some really lovely medieval artwork in London, and the period has begun to grow on me. Now that essay we had to write in college about whether or not "the Renaissance" is a useful historical (as opposed to art historical) period seems much more compelling to me.

Anyway, I haven't gotten terribly far into the collection but it's already clear that Christine was a pretty nifty lady. I'm especially charmed by her work The Letter from Othea. Basically she wrote a mock-antique text along with two commentaries: one literary/historical, and the other moral/theological. Commentaries like these were common literary forms of the period, but here all three pieces were written by Christine. What a fascinating project!

I'm also intrigued by the way she explains ancient Greek deities. Like so:

And because the ancients had the custom of adoring everything that seemed blessed beyond the common level of things, they called several wise women who existed in their time goddesses.

Or here:

Minerva was a very wise lady... and because this lady possessed such great wisdom, people called her a goddess.

Now, if you're a medieval writing about the ancient gods, "by God's grace illuminated by the true faith" as Christine puts it, you can treat them as entirely imaginary literary figures, as real spiritual entities of some kind, or you can pull this little historicizing move apparently. I have no idea whether this insistence on the historical existence of "goddesses" is unique at all, but I do think it's pretty interesting. Maybe that's what's so great about medieval art and literature: even when you know that the stereotypes are wrong, it's still really delightful when you get to see what's actually there.

Unsurprisingly, this book is not for children.

I know I ought to be getting some dissertation work done this afternoon, but I'm having trouble identifying my next steps, so I'm going to tell you about The Children's Book instead. Responsibility!

The first thing one might notice about The Children's Book is that it's huge, and this is not an illusion. My edition is 879 pages long, and the margins and the text are all normal sized. By my rough count, there are about 14 main-character children and nearly as many main-character adults. It sounds crazy to have 25-30 main characters, but that is just the kind of book this is.

"Cast of thousands," as they say

I really enjoyed the book, don't get me wrong, but I would say that anyone less than A.S. Byatt submitting this manuscript would have been told to cut it down, for goodness' sake, don't you know people don't have attention spans anymore? I laughed when I realized (through the acknowledgments) that Byatt dedicated the book to her editor. I think if someone wanted to cut this book down they could find inessential passages to cut -- I skimmed over the historical-context passages in particular -- but at the same time everything that's there makes for good reading.

The book is basically about a group of children and how they grow up; most of them are members of Fabian/aesthetic movement/Arts-and-crafts-type households, but some come from more humble or more "establishment" backgrounds. You see how the children are affected by their parents' and their parents' associates' ideas, actions, and sins. There are secrets and scandals, but they don't dominate the core of the book. The characters are really well-written, and diverse without seeming forced. The only slightly false notes were the two working-class children, Phillip and Elsie; Byatt was a little more solemn with these two, I think, and they come across as a bit more flat. Maybe a little too noble.

It seems very high school lit class to be all, "What is this book about" but I couldn't help but ask myself, what is this book about, anyway? (Don't worry, I will not attempt to discuss Symbolism.) The most immediate thing that leaps out at me is that Byatt is showing how flawed the progressive/permissive movements the characters are part of were. Whether the children embrace or reject or ignore their parents' ideologies doesn't seem to affect their lives much. The world rolls on and goes up in flames in the Great War regardless. The adults have big ideas and bold, radical new ways of seeing the world, but in the end their actions end up being narcissistic. If this were high school I'd say that they fail, on the whole, to be truly radical because they fail to really love the children and put them first.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book: it's heaven for those of us who just like to see how things turn out for people. I got some of the characters confused now and then because I can never remember names, but for the most part -- and I credit this to Byatt -- I kept them straight. "Good writing" is a very difficult thing to define or describe, but this book is full of it, and is a very worthwhile read.

Another churchy novel, but Catholic nuns instead of Anglican clergymen

 
Rumer Godden's In this House of Brede is something I've been meaning to read for a long time, and it didn't disappoint. It's a really beautiful novel about a house of Benedictine nuns in England.

The life of the great monastery flowed as steadily as a river, no matter what rocks and crosscurrents there were; Philippa often thought of the river Rother that wound through the marshes of Kent and Sussex, oldest Christendom in England, watering the meadows whose grass fed the famous marsh sheep, then winding below the town to the estuary that flowed to the sea. Brede Abbey was like that, thought Philippa, coming from far sources to flow through days, weeks, years, toward eternity.

The nuns of Brede Abbey are cloistered; they're not the sort of nuns who teach school or run hospitals or bring food to poor families, although they do give food to those who come to their door and produce things like books and church linens. Their primary work, though, is in praying the Liturgy of the Hours. The church prescribes psalms, hymns, and other texts to be prayed at eight specified times throughout each day; now, not everyone, of course, can do this, so the idea (simply put) of nuns like those portrayed at Brede is that they sing the prayers as fully and beautifully as possible on behalf of everyone else. They set themselves apart so that their primary work can be prayer.

There are various plot lines in the books: aspiring nuns and the challenges they face; a financial crisis; personality conflicts; a group of foreign postulants; intrusions from the outside world; and revelations about the nuns' previous lives. But really the focus of the book isn't on any one of these things. It's on the living out of the nuns' contemplative vocation: how do these women spend their time, what do they do? How can they give up their futures and everything they have to live like this, and why? What good does it do? Obviously, I am not a nun nor have I ever been, but the book feels very honest, and like a good representation of the life. There's plenty happening in the book, but not so much that it feels contrived or manufactured. Set over the 1950s and 1960s, the changes and enthusiasms surrounding the Second Vatican Council feature but don't overwhelm the story. If Godden sees "continuity in spite of individual failings" as the characteristic of the monastery, the style and plotting of the book carry that message as much as any individual plot development or moment.

Godden's writing style is interesting; she weaves bits of one conversation into her account of another. I guess you could say there are lots of "flashbacks" except they're very frequent, sometime as sort as one line of dialogue, and there aren't an excess of markers to help you get your bearings as to when and where you are. It's an interesting effect, although I found it slightly disorienting for about the first half of the book. Since In this House of Brede is about a community, this writing style helps to convey the sort of layers of memories and interactions that make up a network of relationships, so once I got used to it, I thought it really worked well.

My copy is the "Loyola Classics" edition, part of a series "connecting today's readers to the timeless themes of Catholic fiction". I think all the books in the series are 20th century, but I might be wrong. Anyway, it has a nicely designed cover, a couple pages of introduction, and some discussion questions. There's also a section of notes about monastic life and terminology, although I thought Godden does a good enough job of explaining Benedictine practices that if you wanted to know more, you ought to just go get a proper book on the subject. And then the "notes" have some odd features themselves. The biggest example I saw was that under the heading "The Miserere" (I don't know where this pops up in the text; there's not any sort of reference system) it says:

The verse: Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed; wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow is used in all Catholic churches before the chief Mass on Sunday when the celebrant comes down the nave, sprinkling the people with holy water.

This, to be perfectly frank, is not really true; it's true of the old mass, but the new post-Vatican II mass doesn't have this "asperges" rite. So I'm left wondering where these notes are from and how old they are! The discussion questions at the end are all right, but overall I was a little underwhelmed with the "Loyola Classics" format even though I think it's a good concept.

When I was planning to spend a weekend at St Cecilia's Abbey in Ryde, one of the places Godden based Brede on, a friend recommended this book to me with the warning that it could make anyone think they had a vocation to become a Benedictine nun - even a man! I've admired contemplative nuns for years, as long as I've known of their existence, and even after St Cecilia's and In this House of Brede I'm sorry to say I don't think it's my calling. But the book is an excellent and engrossing depiction of life in a religious community, and I'm certainly glad to have read it. Although I'm still not sure if it's Brede like "breed" or "bread". I gather there's a movie version; maybe I'll have to get that to find out.

Bewitched by Barchester!

It sounds like I'm slowly luring some of you in to my new Anthony Trollope Fan Club. Yes... yes... join me.

Like The Warden, Barchester Towers is centrally concerned with church politics, although, being a longer book, it's not so focused on one conflict. A new bishop arrives with an ambitious evangelical chaplain and a domineering wife, and conflict emerges not only between them and the high church archdeacon, but within the bishop's palace as the various players struggle for power. Lots of scheming and maneuvering, politics, politics, politics, and some especially sappy Victorian gender nonsense. And I loved it!

You warlock!

I hate politics, and although I like churchy things in general, I'm just bored by church politics. I'm not one of those people glued to announcements about episcopal appointments. So I'm here to say that, for what it's worth, the political focus of the plot certainly didn't turn me off.

How? How did Trollope do this thing?

For one thing, the characters are all very distinct and lively. Whenever Trollope introduces a new character, he gives a sketch of the person's character and situation, and so you can see quite clearly that while this person and that person agree, they do so for different reasons and so this one isn't as committed as the other. Or they have opposite goals but with similar temperaments and strategies. Each character has particular goals and priorities, particular ways of going about things, particular things or people they consider sacred and others they're ready to throw aside. It's plenty entertaining watching all of this play out, and the politics of preferment and patronage are just a good stage.

Trollope can be awfully smarmy about women -- there's a fair amount of Victorian sugar about "tiny hands" and how unbecoming it is for women to get angry or try to give orders to men. In general, though, this doesn't get in the way of the characterization. The women characters all feel "right" enough to me; they all have well-rounded personalities with interests and priorities and preferred tactics, and they act accordingly. If you can sort of screen out the more egregious parts of the narrator's judgments, it's not that bad; and there isn't that much of it to begin with.

Another reason the church politics doesn't prevent this book from being entertaining is that it's not entirely the only thing going on in Barchester Towers. There's also some good old fashioned maneuvering about marriages. And the Stanhopes. The Stanhopes are a family who return to Barchester and are described as being essentially selfish people. The children are all fairly parasitic and see nothing wrong with using other people for their own ends, and the parents, who never bothered to correct this when the children were younger, are now sort of detached and resigned to the situation. They're a bizarre group, and yet, for me at least, I thought Trollope brought it off. They're so far removed from the rest of the Barchester world that they manage to stir things up and throw wrenches in everyone's plans just by being there.

And then I just plain enjoy Trollope's writing! This sort of thing just works for me:

A new sofa had been introduced, a horrid chintz affair, most unprelatical and almost irreligious; such a sofa as never yet stood in the study of any decent high church clergyman of the Church of England.

Unprelatical! And of course there's my favorite archdeacon, who is so pleased by the end of the book that he's showering everyone with lavish presents.

'Twas thus that he sang his song of triumph over Mr. Slope. This was his paen, his hymn of thanksgiving, his loud oration. He had girded himself with his sword, and gone forth to the war; now he was returning from the field laden with the spoils of the foe. The cob and the cameos, the violoncello and the pianoforte, were all as it were trophies reft from the tent of his now conquered enemy.

I'm not sure what's wrong with me that I find passages like that so amusing, but I do.

There's also a very romantic proposal scene toward the end which I thought was very well done, although you might find it sappy. If you did, though, you'd be wrong, because the characters involved are adorable and the proposal is adorable.

In short, I was plenty entertained by Barchester Towers, and I expect to get back to this series soon.

Anthony Trollope does not believe in Spoiler Alerts

I was in high school when the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out, and I was obsessed with them as perhaps only a high schooler who had few friends or after school activities to distract her could be.

This image is playing the role of a LOTR message-board-nerd secret handshake.

The main fuel and outlet for this obsession was a message board of which I was a devoted citizen for years and years. Of course spoilers were a major source of contention; although it wasn't always clear what was a spoiler (were plot points from the books spoilers?), it was widely agreed upon that Spoilers Must Be Marked. If I recall correctly, our antiquated bulletin board software even had a feature where if you checked the "spoilers" box, a little red tag would show up by the title of your post to warn people not to click. Some people preferred to be surprised, and the people who didn't were the party poopers who had to be careful not to let their own enthusiasm taint others.

In a slightly less dorky corner of the world (and getting closer to the main focus of this post), it seems that we, the consumers of entertainment, love the "will they-won't they" romance. I was just chatting with some friends this weekend about The Office, and of course the orthodox view is that the show went downhill once Jim and Pam got married. We liked it best when we weren't sure whether or when they were going to act on their feelings and just go for it.

Well, it seems Trollope has a somewhat different view. I apologize for the very lengthy quotation, but it's so interesting, I think it's worth it.

     But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance?
     And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs. Ratcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either the frame or the veil. They are to us merely a receptacle for old bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently buried out of our sight.
     And then how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader. "Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta; of course she accepts Gustavus in the end." "How very ill-natured you are, Susan," says Kitty with tears in her eyes: "I don't care a bit about it now." Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay, take the third volume if you please—learn from the last pages all the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.
     Our doctrine is that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a dupe is never dignified.

(Hooray for Project Gutenberg, saving me having to type it all out.)

First of all: love the reference to Mysteries of Udolpho, which I have actually read of my own volition, once upon a time. Secondly: Kitty and Susan remind me of Belinda and Bettina, the twin pig daughters of Kermit-Bob Cratchet and Piggy-Mrs Cratchet in The Muppets Christmas Carol.

"I'm Belinda, she's Bettina!"

But beyond those shallow reactions, what seems so odd about this little philosophy of Trollope's is that, really, on the whole, I like it. He does this in The Warden, too, I think, with less fanfare.

I think what I like about it is that you know (or you hope) that the author won't be so cruel as to let a main female character get tricked into marrying some piece of scum -- although, to give Trollope his due, he dishes out good and bad in a fairly realistic way, so I wouldn't quite put it past him. But note what he does: he tells you what won't happen, not what does. In a way it ratchets up the suspense; you know how it won't end even as the events all seem to be pushing in that direction.

This is another good example of what I mean when I say that Trollope is very present in the book. In the passage above, and elsewhere, he talks about himself as the novelist, someone inventing the tale. In other places he writes as though he had met the characters in person.

I never could endure to shake hands with Mr. Slope. A cold, clammy perspiration always exudes from him, the small drops are ever to be seen standing on his brow, and his friendly grasp is unpleasant.

 I wouldn't say that the two modes are contradictory, exactly, they just make a nice little ambiguity.

In praise of Dr. Grantly

The weather was so nice this weekend! Which is another way of saying I didn't do too much reading.  (And I've been delinquent in answering comments; sorry!) But I did start in on Barchester Towers, the sequel to The Warden. I'm enjoying it, a lot, and I'm looking forward to being able to write about it here... aka finish it...

Anyway, much of my enjoyment of Barchester Towers thus far comes from the most excellent character of Dr Grantly, the archdeacon. He's just so filled with righteous rage! In Trollope's world, Mr Harding is the central character in more ways than one; he's described as a good-hearted older man who is concerned to do the right thing and therefore takes very seriously the criticisms raised by reformers. Then the reformers on the one side are balanced by Dr Grantly on the other.

Dr Grantly is completely convinced of the rightness of his own position. He's shocked and appalled by the slightest suggestion to the contrary. And most of all, he's offended by those who don't behave according to a gentlemanly code of conduct.

And now, had I the pen of a mighty poet, would I sing in epic verse the noble wrath of the archdeacon.

So he's not necessarily the nicest of people (although since Trollope is pretty conservative, he always seems to be on the "right" side of things; and since I tend to be more on the conservative end myself, I suppose I'm more sympathetic than others would be). But really I think he's just an entertaining character.

As I think about it, it seems like a fair amount of modern comedy involves a bewildered "straight man" surrounded by exasperating absurdities. Off the top of my head, Oscar on The Office does this, right? Or Michael Bluth in Arrested Development. You could put together a whole subset of 30 Rock plots where Liz Lemon sets out to set people straight. Maybe that's part of why I find Dr Grantly's self-righteousness so amusing.

Imagine a non-awkward ending here :)

On exceptions and hypocrisy (and other, less important things)

The Radetzky March has to go back to the library, but I wanted to copy out and share this little paragraph before I hand it back:

During her brief marriage to Herr von Eichberg, his wife had made many friends, and after his death she had rejected a few ardent marriage proposals. Out of pure esteem, people ignored her adulteries. That was a stern time, as we know. But it recognized exceptions and even liked them. It was one of the rare aristocratic principles, such as that mere commoners were second-class human beings yet certain middle-class officers became personal adjutants to the Kaiser; that Jews could claim no higher distinctions yet certain Jews were knighted and became friends with archdukes; that women had to observe a traditional morality yet certain women could philander like a cavalry officer. (Those were principles that would be labeled "hypocritical" today because we are so much more relentless: relentless, honest, and humorless.)

Interesting. Maybe too thinky for Friday though. Let's see, what kind of amusing quotes are lurking in my Kindle's clippings file?

Then and now I thought about politics with the indifference a grizzled city coroner has toward the body of a murdered prostitute. (How I became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely. Go read it, it's fantastic.)

Things never seemed quite as grim with a tallboy in the house. (An Evening of Long Goodbyes, by Paul Murray. He's talking about furniture, not beer.)

The great Gothic spaceship known as the Albert Memorial was built just west of where the Crystal Palace had stood... (At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson.)

Talking to him you would say: he is an ass, but an agreeable ass, a humble, transparent honourable ass. He is an innocent and idiotic butterfly. (GK Chesterton quoted in the biography by Maisie Ward.)

My husband drives the whole seven hours because I don't have a driver's license. It's just one of the many ways in which I am developmentally stunted. I don't drive. I can't cook meat correctly. And I have no affinity for animals. I don't hate animals and would never hurt an animal; I just don't actively care about them. When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst. (Bossypants, by Tina Fey. I know it's cliche for girls in their twenties to identify with Tina Fey/Liz Lemon but... seriously.)

There we go.

"Trollope" is kind of an unfortunate name.

What does one read in this setting?

Not bragging, recapping.

I spent a good long time wandering around the fiction section at the Chicago Public Library pondering that question. I wanted something reasonably light, but not stupid; although normally a pool is a good place to read stupid things, I went to Florida with my parents and grandma and was feeling a little self-conscious. Anyway, I meandered around the shelves for a while trying to think of something and then I thought of Anthony Trollope. I knew (know) next to nothing about Trollope but I had it in my mind that he was a fairly popular Victorian novelist and that sounded good enough for me. So I spent some further time getting my bearings in the Trollope section and settled on The Warden.

Action shot with mango blender drink.

This might appear to be a very thin novel for the Victorians but it's actually the first of six novels set in fictional Barsetshire -- so, phew, there's still a few thousand pages to go. I enjoyed The Warden and plan to keep going in the series, although I have a few other things to get through first.

Trollope is an interesting writer; he's very "present" in the book and explicitly implies (I know that sounds contradictory but you know what Victorians are like) that he is relating events that he's witnessed. He's also prone to big, florid digressions, including long passages about the power of the press, which are interesting historically but less so when sitting by a pool. There are many excellent little turns of phrase, e.g.:

Here was a nice man to be initiated into the comfortable arcana of ecclesiastical snuggeries; one who doubted the integrity of parsons, and probably disbelieved the Trinity!

Oh man, comfortable arcana of ecclesiastical snuggeries. Fantastic.

The choice of topic for the book is really interesting, at least on a meta level. The plot revolves around the conflict between the Anglican clergy and a reformer who accuses them of financial impropriety in their handling of a charity. There are various personal and even romantic relationships that shape this conflict but really, that's about it: it's a book about a reform campaign and its consequences. And it's very much a book about the Church of England and her clergy. Granted, most of my experience with Victorian novels is actually with women authors, but this seems like a strange sort of thing to still be good 156 years later.

But it is really good, partly because the conflict allows Trollope to develop the different characters and show how a political and ideological question can impact personal feelings and relationships. And while the novel's conflict itself is, of course, deeply rooted in 19th century British politics, it's not hard to feel a certain affinity with the situation. Take this passage for instance:

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and a laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a lifetime to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling numbers.

Fair warning, though: Trollope is not very sympathetic to the cause of reform -- or maybe I should say, populist methods. The reformers in this book are idle and self-serving, and their pursuit of a public outcry causes more harm than, clearly, Trollope thinks is justified. Then again, the establishment isn't quite the side of angels, so the whole thing is nuanced enough not to feel flat.

There's also a great chapter in which the main character spends a day in London, considering his problem and trying to avoid someone. The descriptions of where he goes and what he does are great for a historical view of the city.

I know; if you took all of my recommendations you'd never read anything else (and the "Help! I have not read The Help!" read-along is coming up in November so we've got to clear the decks) -- but The Warden has a couple of points in its favor. It's only 203 pages long (in my edition) and, having been published in 1855, it's in the public domain and available as a free ebook.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone writing about Jane Austen must start out with that phrase.

So here's where I was this week:

I figured out how to do captions!

More on what I was reading by that pool in the next post.

I, like all other 25 year old women, am trying to save money and also lose weight, so I went to the airport thinking in a self-congratulatory way that I was very smart to have eaten a sandwich and packed a library book before I left home. Of course by the time I reached my gate I was carrying a McDonald's value meal and the latest issues of Allure and -- oh, the irony -- Cooking Light.

Best laid plans, etc. If there's a better way to pass a short flight than by reading about makeup and listening to dancey pop I don't know about it. It all turned out for the best, though, since there in the middle of Allure was a fairly long article about Jane Austen. As they say at AustenBlog, she's everywhere!

Get ready for some literature.

To be honest, I do not expect good things from an Austen article that has a big picture of Keira &$*%ing Knightley at its top and appears in a magazine with "Rock & Roll Hair!" as a major headline. The little teaser subheading is also pretty cringey with its "Jane Austen expertly dissected the social networks of her era" and its "she's more relevant than ever". But! Many apologies and kudos to essay author Liesl Schillinger, because this was actually quite good. And, for the record, she does not start out with the "truth universally acknowledged" business but rather like so:

Have you ever asked yourself what Jane Austen might have thought of you if she'd known you? It's tempting to think you would number among her heroes and heroines... But what must it have been like for the English women and men of her era who read her novels and guessed that they were caricatured in her pages--perhaps as a naive country girl (Harriet in Emma), a calculating social climber (Mrs. Clay in Persuasion), or a deceitful frenemy (Isabella in Northanger Abbey)?

Setting aside the use of the word "frenemy", which I do not condone, this is exactly what I like to see. It's all too easy to focus on the love stories, but the real accomplishment in Austen's novels is that she gets all these various characters, good, evil, and silly, just exactly right.

Schillinger says she first read Austen at age nine, and every time she's read (and re-read) the books she's marked the initials of friends and family in the margins next to passages that remind her of them. This isn't something I'd ever think of doing, but it sounds really sweet, particularly when she describes re-reading a book and being reminded of what her life was like the last time she read it.

Of course, we know that Schillinger is Good People when she says that Persuasion is her favorite. Persuasion is my favorite too -- arguably it's the favorite of anyone who's read all six (she says snootily). It's hard to resist the idea that all your wishes will come true in the end, that your regrets can be undone with time. And even though that aspect of the story might seem too "fairy-tale" to be realistic, Persuasion still might be the best example of how "rooted" Austen's romances are. For Austen, people are part of a society; they have real circumstances and connections and limitations. There's no riding off into the sunset, and while love can conquer many things it can't necessarily conquer all. Of course, my own interpretation of Persuasion is that Anne wasn't wrong in refusing Wentworth, and while she regrets it from the heart and with hindsight can see that it would have worked out, rejecting him was, at the time, the only sensible thing to do. But that's me.

Anyway, I will be back on Monday to tell you about my new pal, Anthony Trollope.

Serious historical fiction

After heaps of very light material, each book selected for the very profound reason that it was the next in the series, I got a little cocky and decided to take on something more literary, at the urging of my old friend Amazon. Behold: The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth.

And let's all take a moment and the proximate excuse to listen to the Radetzky March, shall we? I came to this book by a typically circuitous route. I had been reading the Frank Tallis mysteries set in Vienna, and realizing that I was reaching the end of the series, looked them up on Amazon to see whether there were another one coming soon or if there were something similar the Big A could recommend.

I realize that every time I use Amazon for recommendations librarians and indie book store clerks around the country experience stabbing pains, but such are the lazy, degenerate times we live in.

Anyhow, A-dog suggested Roth, which rang a bell; I'm reasonably sure I've had this book recommended to me before. And then the library had it, and the back of the book described it as a "classic saga". In spite of my demonstrable love of unchallenging fiction, I, like most academics, prefer to think of myself as a reader of Important Books, so this was calling my name. "A masterpiece"! "One of the most readable, poignant, and superb novels in twentieth century German"! "A universal story for our times"! Just like me!

Plus, I have a fondness for the name "Radetzky" ever since hearing it pronounced by a Dutch professor in the resoundingly awesome way that only a Dutch professor on an impassioned tangent can.

As a book about the whimpering end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, this is a Serious book and really a very sad one. Emptiness and aimlessness seem unavoidable; real human contact and love are non-existent. It's a sad, dying world, in which the exterior and interior, never terribly closely allied, are moving unavoidably apart.

It's not all doom and gloom, of course; there are some very sweet moments and although it's hard to judge the style of a book in translation the writing is excellent too. Here's a lovely little sentence that was practically made for excerpting:

Lieutenant Trotta wasn't experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written.

Although there's also a bad-weather storm that kicks up as they receive the news that the Archduke has been assassinated, so.

It's a very "male" novel; the emotional trials and inhibitions (mostly inhibitions) of men are the core of the book. In a way, the book doesn't portray a culture or a society so much as a creaking mechanism, in which there is only one way to act, one direction to take, and little or no choice about anything. In this way, although it ostensibly follows various individuals' lives, the book is directly "about" the empire rather than the people.

All of this is unsurprising, I suppose, but especially unsurprising given that Roth wrote the book in the early 1930s (first published 1932). That, in itself, is fascinating.

The Radetzky March is very good (and I'm sure Harold Bloom and the New York Review of Books et al. are relieved to have my confirmation of their judgment). It does not make for the best commuter reading -- although carrying it almost certainly makes you look smart in a non-trendy way, so if that's your goal, bypass the so-last-year thick plastic frames and give Joseph Roth a try.

In all seriousness, if you have an interest in European history leading up to the First World War, this would make a good choice. Austria-Hungary tends to get overlooked in survey courses, not without good cause, but it's a fascinating and central (also literally central) part of understanding the long-19th century, and indeed the 20th.