OK, I Didn’t Remember

OK, I didn’t remember that D’Arcy proposes to Elizabeth about halfway through Pride and Prejudice. And what a terrible proposal it is! At this point, you can’t say that Elizabeth’s view of the man is tainted by prejudice: he really is a jerk here, and she justly turns him down.

And, OK, so I didn’t remember that D’Arcy was such a jerk at first! In my memory, D’Arcy had legitimate concerns about some of the people in Elizabeth’s neighborhood, concerns about which, however, he was unable to speak, and so Elizabeth mistook his reticence for coldness and pride. But, no, he’s something of a misanthrope at first. So why do so many women see him as the ultimate romantic male character in fiction? Well, partly because he looks so good once he cleans up at the end. But also because from the first he declares that his ideal woman uses her mind and reads, thus complementing and justifying every girl who reads the book.

OK, so I didn’t remember that Elizabeth shows her intellect and strength at the end of the book by being so cheeky! Her conversation with Lady de Burgh, who informs Elizabeth that she has heard that she (Elizabeth) and D’Arcy are to be married, is hilarious and amazing. Females are supposed to be quiet . . . unless they have money, but Elizabeth refuses to take any of Lady de Burgh’s bait and professes her independence of body, mind, and will loudly and forcefully. And then that ending! Where Elizabeth alone of everyone he has ever known dares to tease D’Arcy. She knows more than even he himself knows that he will love this treatment because it shows a razing of the artificial walls of their code-bound society, a demolition necessary before any lasting, satisfying, spiritual intimacy is possible.

This I remember: Jane Austen never gets old.

Riding the (Rough) Rails

I’ve loved reading and relished devouring books for as long as I can remember, which is to say since I was three years old. (I remember very clearly asking my dad for help with the word “gambol” in a Little Golden Book of Disney’s Bambi.) So I find it very easy to prioritize my reading plan in my leisure time of every day. Or at least I should find it easy. Two major problems gradually slow my favorite pastime: my eyesight is steadily getting worse in ways that glasses don’t fix, and my mind is growing ever louder with thoughts and memories and memories of thoughts and thoughts about memories.

I’ve discovered two things that help with the second problem: reading while walking and plane rides. I’ve commented in these posts several times about the way walking helps: the regular, rhythmic footsteps absorbing almost all the excess attention so that the part of my mind that feels like the steering wheel can stay pointed toward the words on the page. It works so well, I try to walk and read every day. Plane rides, on the other hand, cost too much to form part of a daily routine, so I haven’t said much – if anything – about them here.

Today I’m here to report something even better: train rides. My wife and I have taken the train from St. Louis to Spokane to see our son and grandkids, and wow! did I ever get a lot of reading done. Where did the buzzing flurry of distracting thoughts go? Did the clicks and bumps of the wheels on the track – frequent, strong, and loud on Amtrak even if lacking any hint of the measured lilt of walking – consume all the peripheral focus? I don’t know. But I finished one book and read two more all in two days. I haven’t read so much in so little time since I was twelve ingesting one Tarzan book after another in the basement.

Interestingly, one of the books I read on the train was a tale of the ape-man: Tarzan and the Lost Empire. Yes, ludicrous. But I’m having a good time reliving those basement days. I’m painfully aware now, though, of the multitudinous problems with Burroughs’s writing, and the fun can turn to tedium when I take five, six, and seven days to read one of these crazy novels. So it was especially good to read this all in one day.

The other book I read entirely while on the train was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This fascinating memoir goes back and forth between the heartbreaking and the hilarious, and I don’t think I would have tired of it if I had taken seven or even seventeen days to finish it instead of one. But I have to say that if Angelou knows why the caged bird sings, she hasn’t successfully imparted that science to me. She ends, abruptly it seemed to me, by simply saying that she chooses to be joyful no matter how bad the world is. So, yes, the caged bird does in fact sing; I just felt disappointment in not receiving the explanation the title apparently promises. It seems that her baby brought her to her happy perspective, but is she saying that the childless can have no joy?

How much can I complain, though? I have no good, comprehensive ending today, either. And the circumstances are very similar: the train ride ended where my grandchildren live, and those two bring me a joy that words can’t fully explain.

He Who Trusts in Riches . . .

        That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere. . . .

        As a vast fire will fill the air to a great distance with its roar, so the sacred flame which the mighty Barnacles had fanned caused the air to resound more and more with the name of Merdle. It was deposited on every lip, and carried into every ear. There never was, there never had been, there never again should be, such a man as Mr Merdle. Nobody, as aforesaid, knew what he had done; but everybody knew him to be the greatest that had appeared.

In these words, which begin chapter 13 of part ii of Little Dorrit, Dickens tells us of the public  fascination, spreading like an epidemic disease, with a rich man named Merdle. Mr Merdle, with no political experience to speak of, has entered Parliament because . . . well, because surely his riches prove him to be a superior human being who understands all that needs to be understood in directing the path of a great nation. People all across London – even in poor Bleeding Heart Yard, where the inhabitants never have enough money to pay their quarterly rent – good Britons everywhere praise Merdle for being “the one, mind you, to put us all to rights in respects of that which all on us looked to, and to bring us all safe home as much as we needed, mind you, fur toe be brought.” They believe that Mr Merdle understands their misery, and they in turn sympathize with his riches to the extent that his very existence provides them the example that assures them that they too would pay their rent if only the roll of the die had caused the slight, trivial change in circumstance that would have made them as rich as the glorious Merdle.

Dickens knows these poor people so well! He understands the psychology that leads them to venerate the rich man who appears to have done everything for them even when he hasn’t done anything for them at all. He knows the rich man very well, too, and describes his downfall with startling realism.

But Charles Dickens didn’t understand everything about people. Silly man! In the tale he spins, when the dreadful truth is uncovered and Merdle’s bankruptcy is known, proving him to be a fraud, a liar, and, contrary to common belief, a terrible businessman, Dickens actually imagines that the people will turn against Mr Merdle.

Prisons and Accounting

Just a few days ago, I wrote that I had to stop trying to write about (capitalized) Meaning in the books I read. And now, all too soon, here am I to pronounce the Meaning of Dickens’s Little Dorrit.

Well, one of the meanings, anyway: redemption from a life of moral accounting.

The idea starts with prisons, a pervasive theme in both literal and figurative forms. The book begins with legal criminals Rigaud and Cavalletto in prison in Marseilles, and the jumping-off point for the main plot is the long incarceration of William Dorrit in the Marshalsea for debt. This much I remembered.

But I'm noticing so much more this time through the book. The workers of London are said to be in prison. The monks at the St. Bernard pass speak of their confinement. Mrs. Clennam says she is imprisoned by her wheelchair and bound to her house. Importantly, even the prisoners who have served their terms are described as having a lingering taint of prison about them. The words of Charles Darnay have been ringing in my ears: “[I am] bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it.”

Many characters keep mental balance sheets of right and wrong, for themselves and for others, operating under the idea that ethical behavior before God (or not) is just a matter of paying off bad deeds with good deeds or jail sentences or money (spent for the good of the state, of course) – just a matter of getting your account into the black. But then at the end (I won't give away all the details on the miniscule chance that you ever read this unjustly forgotten book), one character leaves the prison of keeping accounts and goes out to find the most humble Christian character of the book in order to ask for her forgiveness, and in doing so, the penitent character barely escapes death when the house that represents both prison and accounting literally collapses. The picture is of a passage not just from death to life or from sin to righteousness but from a religious stance that one can bargain with God by means of one's own righteousness to a position of humility, confession, and acceptance of grace.

More words ringing in my ears:

     “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
          because the LORD has anointed me
     to bring good tidings to the afflicted;
          he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
     to proclaim liberty to the captives,
          and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”

Much of my frustration with the American Church can be summarized by pointing out that a great book by one of the greatest authors in all of history can offer this profound Christian message and not be found on the shelves in a Christian book store.

P. S. Seriously? Blogspot’s spell checker doesn’t know the word “miniscule”?!

Burton: So Soon!

Just a couple of months ago, in late November and early December of 2021, I came up to the entry on my reading list, “Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy.” Now I had encountered references to and quotations from The Anatomy of Melancholy many times in my literary travels. I can’t even tell you where now, although I strongly suspect C. S. Lewis has pointed me to Burton once or twice. And at some point I had read something about this book that got me excited enough to put an exclamation point next to the title in my notes. Especially because I've struggled personally with melancholia (see my comments on this subject elsewhere by clicking on the name Joshua Shenk in the index of labels in the right column of this blog), I had looked with eagerness to this meeting for years.

I won’t say I was disappointed when the anticipated meeting finally occurred, but I was surprised. My first surprise was the length of Burton’s treatise: according to the count of Kindle locations, about one-third again longer than the typical long novel by Dickens. But it’s late November! I don’t have time to read a book that long and still finish my list for the year! (I’m usually not so dramatically wrong about a work’s length when setting out my basic schedule for each year of reading.) The second surprise was Burton’s tendency to ramble through every topic on his long way through, for instance, every possible type of and cause for melancholy, although the rambling shouldn’t have been surprising given the length, for how else does one fill a thousand-page book on one subject but by rambling?

My first decision for how to handle the situation was to choose some selections based on the table of contents. It’s hard for me to leave a book unfinished once started, but if I assign myself to do it in advance, I can usually let myself get away with it. My second decision was to look up Burton on the internet to see what others thought of the book. (I usually don’t want to read what anyone else says about what I’m reading until at least halfway through a book; I like to make up my own half-informed mind first.) As it turns out, Burton’s biggest fans love the book exactly because it meanders through every possible topic in human life as it pertains to melancholy.

A dozen days later, having finished my curtailed plans for the book, I didn’t feel at all sure that I understood what the Anatomy’s admirers saw in it and had to settle for being satisfied that I would have a much better context for the quotations the next time I came across any. Little did I know that I had only one month to wait! Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night begins many chapters with epigraphs from The Anatomy of Melancholy, and they did indeed make more sense after having read (or “read at”) only about a fourth of the whole book.

Poor Sayers! Many of her fans consider Gaudy Night her best book, and I’ve addressed it only by commenting on some quotations it includes. But I’ve decided that if I’m going to keep blogging at any appreciable rate, I have to think less about long(-ish) proclamations of Meaning and Worth and more about short(-ish) reports on my reading experience. So far, the new approach is working.

A Theft

Since I know that I will contribute more to this blog if I write short posts, let me attempt something in fewer than five paragraphs.

As a professor, I kept a sharp eye out for instances of plagiarism in the thousands of expository papers, theses, and dissertations I read. In a student’s writing, offering up the work of another scholar as one’s own is rightly seen as a serious wrong. But is that so true in creative writing? Where would Shakespeare have been without Holinshed’s chronicles or Boccaccio’s tales? Scores of imitations followed the publications of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe, and no one was jailed. Dickens wrote a story about a murderer who gave himself away under interrogation when he mistook his own loudly beating heart for that of his victim’s. It is known that a young Poe sent the more established Englishman some stories to review, so it is probable that Poe is the inventor here, Dickens the thief. Yet surely Poe won this encounter by writing the justly more well known version of the story.

But what about one line? One joke? A few days ago, in reading Sheridan’s The Rivals, I came across this line by Captain Absolute: “Though one eye may be very agreeable, yet as the prejudice has always run in favour of two, I would not wish to affect a singularity in that article.” I immediately thought of Dickens’s description of Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby: “He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two.” Dickens certainly knew of Sheridan’s work; whether he remembered reading or hearing the joke in Sheridan or believed he had created it himself is debatable. One thing I know: Dickens’s use of the joke in the description of one of the most entertaining of his loathsome characters vastly improves upon Sheridan’s invocation in the service of a man describing what he looks for in a wife.

Now that I think about it, grading those university papers created another weird habit in reading that, I happily realize now, has disappeared from my private reading, as well. I used to enter every student’s sentence more on the lookout for errors in grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation than I did for content, and I found that my extracurricular reading slowed down from this cautious habit. It occurs to me now that I no longer waste time internally scolding published authors for lack of an Oxfordian comma or idiomatic use of pronoun case.

Book Awards – 2021

I finished my 2021 reading list this morning, just in time for the book awards ceremony. The winners have been written down, put in sealed envelopes, and given to Price Waterhouse. In the mean time, they were all copied, placed in other sealed envelopes and slipped under my mattress, which is a safer place for either valuables or information than Price Waterhouse.

Author Who Understands the Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens always gets his own category in these awards so as to give other fictional writers a fighting chance at winning. This year I reread Bleak House (for I believe the third time) and several of his short stories for the Christmas numbers of his magazines. Bleak House gets better every time. The short Christmas stories don’t. But perhaps I should give some of them another go next December now that it’s so easy to read all the other authors’ contributions to the collaborative novellas.

Best New Read in History: Chris DeRose, The Presidents' War
During the Civil War, five ex-Presidents broke the tradition of refraining from political statements. Martin Van Buren was the most supportive of Lincoln's policies but died soon after the war started. Millard Fillmore remained marginally supportive of Lincoln. James Buchanan supported Lincoln, saying that he would have done exactly the same thing, but spent most of the war trying to redeem his own image. Clearly that plan didn’t work. James Pierce criticized Lincoln openly and engaged in Copperhead messaging. But he wasn’t the biggest problem. John Tyler went to the Confederacy, was elected to the Congress, and is the only President to die a traitor to his country. (Hmm.)

Most Disturbing Read: Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Reading Douglas’s arguments from 160 years ago about White America and the need to keep black Americans from citizenship, voting rights, or any basic human right was chilling.

Best New Read in Fiction: John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Rarely does a book make me laugh on every page. Even more rarely does it do that and leave me with a sense that I understand humanity more deeply.

Most Disappointing Read: Alexandre Dumas, Louise de la Vallière
OK, The Well at the World’s End by William Morris was more disappointing – so disappointing in fact that I gave up on it, something I’ve done to a book only a handful of times in my entire life. But I didn’t expect as much from it as I did from this part of the D’Artagnan series. I’m hoping for a great rebound from Dumas when I read The Man in the Iron Mask next summer.

Best New Read in Poetry: William Cullen Bryant, “November”
I needed Cullen’s love of virtuous life and his love of nature and his understanding that they go together.

Most Uses of the Words “shadow,” “sword,” “delve,” and “precious”: J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
(The category “Best Reread in Fiction” was renamed this year at the suggestion of the Rules Committee.) I needed Tolkien’s love of virtuous life and his love of nature and his understanding that they go together. I also needed some orc killing.

Book Causing the Most Diusruption in the Reading Plan: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
I’ll be floating a way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun past Eve and Adam’s for each of the next fifteen years now. Joyce said that since it took him seventeen years to write the book, readers should take as long. So I’m just following his advice – give or take a year.

Best Mystery: Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors
Read my post about it from earlier in the year, listen to some change ringing, and then read this book!

Best New Read in Biography: Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens
Tomalin’s work reveals much more about the women in Dickens’s life than have other biographies I’ve read. I’ve come to terms with the fact that the Christian hero and promoter of domestic bliss had an extramarital affair with actress Nelly Tiernan. But now I know more about Nelly. And if Tomalin can still find Dickens a hero even if he was “too complicated to be a gentleman,” so can I. In any case, despite his flaws, he left us Bleak House (which I read this year) and Little Dorrit (which I will read in a couple of months).

I’m looking forward to so many books scheduled for 2022: Capote’s In Cold Blood, Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, Augustine’s homilies on I John, even Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. With everything that’s been happening in the family, I’ve still kept up with the reading, even if I haven’t had time to write about it so much. Will I have time to tell you about all these wonderful books scheduled for next year? Somehow I doubt that I’ll give up entirely on blogging this coming year; if nothing else I’ll be back in December with the annual awards. Until we meet again, whenever that may be, may you have a very Happy New Year of reading!