Curious

In 1921, when Sinclair Lewis’s book Main Street was passed over for the Pulitzer Prize in favor of The Age of Innocence, he sent Edith Wharton a congratulatory letter expressing his admiration for her work. She responded warmly, saying that this was the “first sign I have ever had–`literally’–that `les Jeunes’ at home had ever read a word of me.” Although distressed that Lewis’s book had been rejected because it had offended certain readers, she felt that his work had brought her hope: “Some sort of standard is emerging from the welter of cant and sentimentality, and if two or three of us are gathered together, I believe we can still save Fiction in America.” Lewis and his wife came out to Saint-Brice-sous-Forˆt soon after this exchange of letters. His relationship with Wharton was cordial but not intimate. They saw each other intermittently for several years, and he dedicated his novel Babbitt to her.¹

Edith Wharton is one of the few female authors to whom I often return. Her tangled, somewhat awkward relationship with Sinclair Lewis has always sparked my curiosity. Depending one whom one references, Edith’s note was laced with some irony. Last month I finally checked out a copy of Lewis’s Main Street from the library. Continue Reading »

The Mayor of Casterbridge, set in Victorian England, is ripe for critical analysis and worthy of all the attention it can get. It wasn’t until I’d leisurely crept through two-thirds of the novel that I recognized why it felt so familiar. I kid you not: this is the Victorian novel Shakespeare never got around to writing.  That statement is only a slight exaggeration.  (Other critics, it turns out, agreed. [Whew!] Henchard is a made-over Lear; at least, this is the most popular conclusion after close studies of setting, plot, and character.)

Much has been made of its self-conscious Victorian morals, dogged naturalism, romantic nostalgia, and stringent emphasis on fate. Few authors can so forcefully shove the wheel of fortune into the center of a narrative without collapsing the structure and ending with a sour note of adolescent nihilism. On occasion, both Shakespeare and Hardy could.¹ But enough lauding.

Hardy’s MC is subtitled A Story of a Man of Character. Being “a man of character” is a Victorian, and essentially a middle class, ideal. The angst to distinguish themselves, to secure self-assurance in the upheaval of Victorian England, led the middle class to rigorously emphasize a moral education.  Eventually, the Victorian concept of “character” came to define both a social and moral standard of conduct. Middle class England² grew rapidly within the Victorian Age. As its impact on society as a whole deepened (leading in large part to the Reform Bills) in a comparitively homogeneous society, their ideals spread, affecting those of every class and creed.   Continue Reading »

In the past half century, the gap between the study of literature and the practice of writing literature has broadened. Knowing how to write no longer implies that one knows how to read (and vice versa). This fragmentation, although subtle in the modernist period, boastfully crescendoed in the postmodern period. That’s right. Past tense: crescendoed. We’ve hurdled past the height of postmodernism as we’ve known/studied it; and, whether you hold to the psuedo-modernism, micromodernism, altermodernism, fluidism, or network theory, the unraveling of deconstructionist ideals portends something entirely new for the profession. Curious? Marc Bousquet explores the ramifications for academia in his recent cross-posting at The Valve:

The Figure of Writing and the Future of English Studies

This week I began a new training regimen: I stopped watching the stopwatch. In fact, I’ve probably slowed my running pace by at least 25%. The change has been so euphoric (and counter-intuitively productive) that I’ve pondered recalculating the pace of the other 23 1/2 hours of my day.

Time not only reminds us of our humanity, but also betrays it on occasion. Time serves as a threat and a promise. Redeem it well; it’s a promise. Squander it, and it’s a curse. Time itself is amoral, but we allow the way in which we choose to redeem time to infuse our life with meaning. Continue Reading »

1. Read Like a Graduate Student
2. Read Prose Like Those Who Read Poetry Do
3. Read Poetry Like Those Who Eschew Pillow Talk
4. Read a Book With A New Reader Ethic
5. Read Like an E-Book Connoisseur, As If You’re Simply Online
6. Read As a Friend
7. Read Like the Socially Ambitious
8. Read Like the Literary Bloggers
9. Read Like an Editor
10. Read As Those Who Speed Do