Collected 19th Century English Literature Book Reviews
Now I'm getting closer to the most recent iteration of this blog- the systematic project of reading all the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die started as a bit of a lark, and suffered for years by a chronological approach that required tackling 18th century literature- not the most interesting/accessible subject matter, before getting to higher interest subjects like 19th and 20th century literature. Most of these reviews did really well, several have in excess of a thousand page views and most have 300 to 400. The issue though, like 18th century literature, is that there is not a lot new about books that were published 200 plus years ago.
Some of these reviews I already revised- many of the Dickens titles and the Austen/Bronte sisters titles. They all did pretty well but again, where do you go with that?
Book Review: the Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (9/25/08)
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Hey more 18th century English literature!
This book has one big advantage: It's super short- like 200 pages of regular text. It is so, so much easier to read then any of the other books I've read from this period. This is also the only book you will ever read by Oliver Goldsmith. Sorry- it's true. Goldsmith is a kind of Dickensian character- graduated last in his class at Trinity in Dublin, failed as a writer. Luckily he was buddies with Samuel Johnson- it was his intervention that got Vicar published after a two year delay. It was only 10 or so years before he died. He was just a miserable cat, but Vicar of Wakefield has endured, perhaps because of his kind of "celebrity"- an early Kurt Cobain type, but without the suicide.
The story is about a Vicar who loses all his money and has to move to the sticks, where his elder daughter is seduced by the rakish land lord. The Vicar defies the landlord's attempt to prostitute his daughter, and ends up in prison, only to be freed by the villainous landlord's noble Uncle- who had been pretending to be someone else for the whole novel! Typical 18th century plot twist- the appearance of characters in different roles. Can this not be linked to the practice of the theater, where cast members would re appear.
As I said, it reads fast- maybe three hours tops if you just sit down with it. It's a "minor classic."
The Woman in White (1860)
by Wilkie Collins
Nothing says "budget literary classic" like a Dover Thrift Edition of a 19th century British Novel. The funniest aspect of the entire "classic literature" concept is the way in which a piece of literature can be published and ignored and derided by critics of the time, only to emerge as a classic of it's particular genre decades later. It's not like this phenomenon happens a whole lot, but when it does, the work in question is almost always something that is tremendously popular with the public, but not with critics. The opposite phenomenon: A work hailed by the critics but ignored by the public; happens a WHOLE lot less then critics of ANY age would care to admit. And that's because critics like to pretend they are important in guiding popular taste, but in any age, the popular audience literally doesn't give a shit about the critics.
A viable strategy for modern critics is to look for popular works of art that are critically disfavored: Adam Sandler movies, and Dance Pop Singles are two modern examples, but you can go back in time and make an endless list: comic books, science-fiction, early rock and roll 45s. This experience is best exemplified by the 18th century Rise of the Novel.
Wilkie Collins The Woman in White is an example of a popular novel that has both risen and declined in popular and critical acclaim since being published in 1860. When it was published, it was a sensation- a huge success in serialized form. By the turn of the 20th century it was being hailed as an important fore-runner to the detective novel (both Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote AFTER The Woman in White came out.) At the beginning of the 21st century, it is what you would call a "minor classic" in that you can get yourself a Dover Giant Thrift Edition for a penny, but no one has ever adopted it into a major motion picture.
However, for me the most interesting part of The Woman In White is Collins' well-known friendship with Charles Dickens. Their relationship is the subject of swaths of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biographical treatment of Charles Dickens. According to Ackroyd, "Dickens turned to [Collins] for companionship in what he would describe as voluptuous or sybaritic jaunts." Collins was a generation younger then Dickens and functioned as a kind of Dickensian alter-ego during their relationship. Dickens obviously advised Collins on the writing of The Woman in White, while I was reading it I kept thinking to myself that Collins and Dickens must have been buddies. Indeed, Colllins was Dickens protege.
What does that mean in terms of my enjoyment of this novel? Well, I'll tell you- there is no major novelist MORE out of touch with todays literary tastes then Dickens. Dickens is verbose, his books are hundreds of pages long, boast dozens of characters and delight in the particularistic description of locations. In short, there couldn't be a LESS RELEVANT novelistic style for today. If you want to put DICKENS at one end of the mid 19th century spectrum, and Flaubert at the other, I would be waaaaaaay over on Flaubert's side, just because I appreciate brevity and recognize that NOBODY has the patience for an 800 page novel unless it's about a fucking child wizard.
So yeah, The Woman in White is cool if you are into detective novels, Edgar Allen Poe, Sherlock Holmes, etc. but unless you are a fan of the Dickens style 19th century sprawling character/plot/everything approach, you are NOT going to dig The Woman in White. Me? I didn't really dig it either. I can imagine a place & time when people got literary magazines in the (twice daily) mail and then would sit around at a coffee house and talk about the latest happenings, but I don't have the time. I'll read any "classic" but I don't have to enjoy the experience.
A viable strategy for modern critics is to look for popular works of art that are critically disfavored: Adam Sandler movies, and Dance Pop Singles are two modern examples, but you can go back in time and make an endless list: comic books, science-fiction, early rock and roll 45s. This experience is best exemplified by the 18th century Rise of the Novel.
Wilkie Collins The Woman in White is an example of a popular novel that has both risen and declined in popular and critical acclaim since being published in 1860. When it was published, it was a sensation- a huge success in serialized form. By the turn of the 20th century it was being hailed as an important fore-runner to the detective novel (both Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote AFTER The Woman in White came out.) At the beginning of the 21st century, it is what you would call a "minor classic" in that you can get yourself a Dover Giant Thrift Edition for a penny, but no one has ever adopted it into a major motion picture.
However, for me the most interesting part of The Woman In White is Collins' well-known friendship with Charles Dickens. Their relationship is the subject of swaths of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biographical treatment of Charles Dickens. According to Ackroyd, "Dickens turned to [Collins] for companionship in what he would describe as voluptuous or sybaritic jaunts." Collins was a generation younger then Dickens and functioned as a kind of Dickensian alter-ego during their relationship. Dickens obviously advised Collins on the writing of The Woman in White, while I was reading it I kept thinking to myself that Collins and Dickens must have been buddies. Indeed, Colllins was Dickens protege.
What does that mean in terms of my enjoyment of this novel? Well, I'll tell you- there is no major novelist MORE out of touch with todays literary tastes then Dickens. Dickens is verbose, his books are hundreds of pages long, boast dozens of characters and delight in the particularistic description of locations. In short, there couldn't be a LESS RELEVANT novelistic style for today. If you want to put DICKENS at one end of the mid 19th century spectrum, and Flaubert at the other, I would be waaaaaaay over on Flaubert's side, just because I appreciate brevity and recognize that NOBODY has the patience for an 800 page novel unless it's about a fucking child wizard.
So yeah, The Woman in White is cool if you are into detective novels, Edgar Allen Poe, Sherlock Holmes, etc. but unless you are a fan of the Dickens style 19th century sprawling character/plot/everything approach, you are NOT going to dig The Woman in White. Me? I didn't really dig it either. I can imagine a place & time when people got literary magazines in the (twice daily) mail and then would sit around at a coffee house and talk about the latest happenings, but I don't have the time. I'll read any "classic" but I don't have to enjoy the experience.
 |
| Elizabeth Gaskell |
Published 9/23/11
Mary Barton (1848)
by Elizabeth Gaskell
Oxford World's Classics 2008 Edition
Introduction and Notes by Shirley Foster
Like I said yesterday, the mass market makes all Modern Art possible, it is what they call "sine qua non" in the legal profession. There is no better example of this phenomenon then the example of the so-called Rise of the Novel. The Rise of the Novel led to the hey-day of the Novel as an autonomous art form, Richardson and De Foe, a printer and hack writer respectively, gave way to The Bronte Sisters, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens: Self-conscious stylists who were both aware of the novel as a form of art AND the tastes and needs of the mass market. This is a period that lasted until the "Modern" Literature revolution of 1922, a year in which T.S. Eliot published The Wasteland and James Joyce published Ulysses. The modernist revolution carried with it a rejection of the mass market and the accompanying idea of the autonomous, independent artist/creator typically in the guise of some kind of authenticity/purity requirement.
I would argue that this beginning of audience-less art was a wrong turn. To give an example of how the rejection of mass market appeal began to pollute the form of the Novel, you can look at Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton. Mary Barton was published in 1848, but set in the 1830s, in Manchester during a national recession/depression. Mary Barton is at least partially written in dialect, and it concerns the murder of a Factory owner's son and the ensuing investigation. Mary Barton herself is a Manchester Dress Shop girl (not a factory girl) who is the shared object of attraction between the murdered and the accused.
Mary Barton is kind of like the smash-hit book/movie The Help because Barton herself lived in Manchester and was part of the factory-owning social class in Manchester when this book was published. Awkward talk at parties, for sure. At the time it was published, Mary Barton was hailed for what critics call it's "realism" but that's probably because the vocabulary for expressing concerns over class disparity was in it's infancy- Marxism hadn't even "happened" when Mary Barton was published. Realistic depiction of the living conditions of the industrial working class was definitively a "trend" when Mary Barton was written, and the similar factual depictions of these conditions- in Government and reformers reports, had been available for ten years.
But the introduction of the labor union stuff certainly diminishes the style of the Novel. Her third person Narrator hovers awkwardly over the proceedings, and the essential tie between the underlying economic conditions and the behavior of the characters seems forced. At the same time, there is sheer joy in the depictions themselves, as well as the dialect of the characters. One interesting point along this line is that the word "ask" is repeatedly written as "ax" a linguistic phenomenon that exists up until today.
Already though in 1848 you can foresee the perilous rocks of social concern and grand artistic purpose beginning to creep into a previously joyous art form. Critics are beginning to fence off the territory of "realism" from sloppy description and social consciousness is beginning rear its style-wrecking head. At the end of the process, in about 1922, the novel will take it's leave from the concerns of the audience and depart on a journey into the heart of self-awareness, but in 1848 no one was there yet.
Published 11/18/11
VICTORY (1915)
by Joseph Conrad
Anchor Books Edition
A106
1957 edition
Increasingly I've been considering the books I'm reading through the lens of publishing. My previous digital distributor, with whom I maintain a legacy relationship, recently added an "ebook" section to it's upload services, and my thought is that ebooks are AT LEAST as potentially viable for an indie distributor as music. Ebook sales for genre fiction/bestsellers are approaching and/or surpassing physical books in many cases.
Additionally, the "store front" component of book sales has experienced challenges analogous to those faced by chain CD stores. If I was to design an ebook I would keep the following principles in mind:
1. texts written before the 20th century are almost entirely copyright free, which means you can reprint popular old books without permission.
2. the author and/or subject needs to have an already existing, quantifiable audience, and that audience has to be measurable.
3. the book should take advantage of the digital medium to look really spectacular, the way that a modern LP has to have a cover that looks good in a 1" by 1" space.
So one idea would be to take a lesser known novel of a well known author and find a work in the public domain that could be republished, preferably with an introduction from an individual with their own audience: an artist, perhaps. And you could make it a series of reprints.
All these thoughts were drawn out by reading of VICTORY by Joseph Conrad. Best known as having written the source material for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (Conrad's short story The Heart of Darkness.) Victory fits the criteria that it is not covered by copyright.
Second, there is a market for the underlying author, Joseph Conrad. If you look at Amazon.com's free Kindle Ebook chart, the Kindle version of Heart of Darkness- free, btw- is #1 on the Fiction/Drama/British & Irish- whatever that means- #1 (Lord Jim is #17 on the same chart.)! Victory itself is a free kindle ebook, but with a significantly lower rating, #2677. My sense is that people would pay a dollar or two for a paid version of an otherwise free book if it had some combination of aesthetic appeal OR was a digital version of a limited edition physical book.
I think Conrad, with his "so old it's new again" take on the Imperialist/Colonialist experience, is a man for his time. He was... an internationalist, with a career analogous to that of Jack London but in the context of the British Empire. Victory is what you call "a lesser work" but it has strength and relevance. It's not hard to "get" Conrad's characters- with their "us vs. them" assumptions and casual racism they could be the international corporate businessmen of today. In Victory, the main protagonist is a "Swede" named Heyst. The action is set in 19th century Dutch Indonesia. The nemesis is a "gentleman" known as "plain Mr. Jones."
Victory is a "Conrad-ian" tale filled with existential doubt, loathing for humanity and lack of regard for women. The main villain, Mr. Jones displays a contempt for women that turns into a crucial plot point. The setting, on an isolated island in Indonesia, echoes the idea of the relationship between an individual man and "civilization" like Heart of Darkness, though in a minor key variation. I think given the presence of two other Joseph Conrad novels in the top 20 of the FREE books section conclusively demonstrates that he has an audience. You could print a small amount of physical books as paperbacks for sale to independent book stores- no more then a hundred.
I'll note that one of the charms of this particular edition of Victory is the cover- a two tone orange/blue paperback with a 50s/60s graphic vibe. When I think about the question "is it proper to be nostalgic for periods like the 50s and 60s" this book- published in 1957- makes me answer "yes." This book is close to a half century used- was last purchased in the late 1960s- presumably used at that point, and is still in great shape in 2011 after a trip to Hawaii and back. That's quality manufacturing.
But the main positive aspect of Victory is that it's close to 300 pages and a "page-turner" in it's own early 20th century way. I don't think you would want to re-publish a 500 or 700 book in real life, and no one wants to read a long book unless it's about child wizards, or vampires.
But uh, I think republishing old books could be done- the most obvious thing to do is to have a celebrity write an introduction to a free book and have people download it for the association with the celebrity. I wonder if that is already happening. You could sell the physical edition like a limited edition vinyl record and then if it takes off people buy the download, like they buy the mp3 album. THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES.
Additionally, the "store front" component of book sales has experienced challenges analogous to those faced by chain CD stores. If I was to design an ebook I would keep the following principles in mind:
1. texts written before the 20th century are almost entirely copyright free, which means you can reprint popular old books without permission.
2. the author and/or subject needs to have an already existing, quantifiable audience, and that audience has to be measurable.
3. the book should take advantage of the digital medium to look really spectacular, the way that a modern LP has to have a cover that looks good in a 1" by 1" space.
So one idea would be to take a lesser known novel of a well known author and find a work in the public domain that could be republished, preferably with an introduction from an individual with their own audience: an artist, perhaps. And you could make it a series of reprints.
All these thoughts were drawn out by reading of VICTORY by Joseph Conrad. Best known as having written the source material for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (Conrad's short story The Heart of Darkness.) Victory fits the criteria that it is not covered by copyright.
Second, there is a market for the underlying author, Joseph Conrad. If you look at Amazon.com's free Kindle Ebook chart, the Kindle version of Heart of Darkness- free, btw- is #1 on the Fiction/Drama/British & Irish- whatever that means- #1 (Lord Jim is #17 on the same chart.)! Victory itself is a free kindle ebook, but with a significantly lower rating, #2677. My sense is that people would pay a dollar or two for a paid version of an otherwise free book if it had some combination of aesthetic appeal OR was a digital version of a limited edition physical book.
I think Conrad, with his "so old it's new again" take on the Imperialist/Colonialist experience, is a man for his time. He was... an internationalist, with a career analogous to that of Jack London but in the context of the British Empire. Victory is what you call "a lesser work" but it has strength and relevance. It's not hard to "get" Conrad's characters- with their "us vs. them" assumptions and casual racism they could be the international corporate businessmen of today. In Victory, the main protagonist is a "Swede" named Heyst. The action is set in 19th century Dutch Indonesia. The nemesis is a "gentleman" known as "plain Mr. Jones."
Victory is a "Conrad-ian" tale filled with existential doubt, loathing for humanity and lack of regard for women. The main villain, Mr. Jones displays a contempt for women that turns into a crucial plot point. The setting, on an isolated island in Indonesia, echoes the idea of the relationship between an individual man and "civilization" like Heart of Darkness, though in a minor key variation. I think given the presence of two other Joseph Conrad novels in the top 20 of the FREE books section conclusively demonstrates that he has an audience. You could print a small amount of physical books as paperbacks for sale to independent book stores- no more then a hundred.
I'll note that one of the charms of this particular edition of Victory is the cover- a two tone orange/blue paperback with a 50s/60s graphic vibe. When I think about the question "is it proper to be nostalgic for periods like the 50s and 60s" this book- published in 1957- makes me answer "yes." This book is close to a half century used- was last purchased in the late 1960s- presumably used at that point, and is still in great shape in 2011 after a trip to Hawaii and back. That's quality manufacturing.
But the main positive aspect of Victory is that it's close to 300 pages and a "page-turner" in it's own early 20th century way. I don't think you would want to re-publish a 500 or 700 book in real life, and no one wants to read a long book unless it's about child wizards, or vampires.
But uh, I think republishing old books could be done- the most obvious thing to do is to have a celebrity write an introduction to a free book and have people download it for the association with the celebrity. I wonder if that is already happening. You could sell the physical edition like a limited edition vinyl record and then if it takes off people buy the download, like they buy the mp3 album. THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES.
Published 12/19/11
Kim (1901)
by Rudyard Kipling
Penguin Classics Edition
this edition 2011
Now we're talking classic literature! After over three years of 18th century and early 19th century novels I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. By "light at the end of the tunnel" I mean relieve from the strictures of the 19th century European Realist novel. Soooo tedious. I don't read novels to learn about the well observed rituals of life among the lower bourgeois of 19th century France. And while I appreciate the technical accomplishments of the 19th century realists, I don't fetishize the technique. I certainly don't care to wallow in the morass of Victorian family novels. If I want to learn about the 19th century European bourgeois I'll read non-fiction.
KIM is what you call a Bildungsroman or "coming of age story." It's also a foundation block of any body of "colonial literature," perhaps the progenitor of the genre. KIM is also an enduring classic that maintains an audience among children and adult. The Puffin Classics version of the book I read was published in 2011- the cover shows a sophisticated graphic sensibility and the kind of additional materials you expect from an Oxford Classics Edition- but pitched for high school kids, not college students or adults.
I think it's a testament to the strength of this book that it appeals equally to professors of literature and children all over the world. That is what you call a classic work of art: Appealing to different Audiences over a long time period. Late twentieth century PC derived concerns aside, KIM is a superb example of a top 100 novel- a clear way station on the path between the Novel as mostly European Art Form and it's emergence into the great wide world. I think you could argue that the story of the Novel in the 20th century is the emergence of great novels from countries outside of UK, US, France & Germany. Particularly important are the bodies of work that came from South Asia, Africa & Latin America.
This transition begins with the literature of colonialism and imperialism because it developed an Audience for novels about those locations. It was the desire of people from those places to develop their own stories in the colonizing format that created the explosion of diversity in the novel during the 20th century.
Kim (1901)
by Rudyard Kipling
Penguin Classics Edition
this edition 2011
Now we're talking classic literature! After over three years of 18th century and early 19th century novels I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. By "light at the end of the tunnel" I mean relieve from the strictures of the 19th century European Realist novel. Soooo tedious. I don't read novels to learn about the well observed rituals of life among the lower bourgeois of 19th century France. And while I appreciate the technical accomplishments of the 19th century realists, I don't fetishize the technique. I certainly don't care to wallow in the morass of Victorian family novels. If I want to learn about the 19th century European bourgeois I'll read non-fiction.
KIM is what you call a Bildungsroman or "coming of age story." It's also a foundation block of any body of "colonial literature," perhaps the progenitor of the genre. KIM is also an enduring classic that maintains an audience among children and adult. The Puffin Classics version of the book I read was published in 2011- the cover shows a sophisticated graphic sensibility and the kind of additional materials you expect from an Oxford Classics Edition- but pitched for high school kids, not college students or adults.
I think it's a testament to the strength of this book that it appeals equally to professors of literature and children all over the world. That is what you call a classic work of art: Appealing to different Audiences over a long time period. Late twentieth century PC derived concerns aside, KIM is a superb example of a top 100 novel- a clear way station on the path between the Novel as mostly European Art Form and it's emergence into the great wide world. I think you could argue that the story of the Novel in the 20th century is the emergence of great novels from countries outside of UK, US, France & Germany. Particularly important are the bodies of work that came from South Asia, Africa & Latin America.
This transition begins with the literature of colonialism and imperialism because it developed an Audience for novels about those locations. It was the desire of people from those places to develop their own stories in the colonizing format that created the explosion of diversity in the novel during the 20th century.
Published 12/27/11
New Grub Street (1891)
by George Gissing
Oxford World's Classics Edition
There are two main problems with the idea and the execution of the"1001 Books to Read Before You Die" series The first problem is that the editors use the word "BOOKS" to mean "NOVELS." All 1001 Books to Read Before You Die are Novels, not one is non-fiction. Even the books that aren't novels are there because they are antecedents of the novel.
The second problem is the over-representation of the significance of works from the recent present. In a book that take up close to 1000 pages (960 if you must know.) the last hundred or so years take up 800 pages- meaning 200 pages for every novel before the 20th century. I would humbly suggest that if there are only a hundred or so worthy novels written between 1700 and 1900, there were the same amount or fewer in the 20th century, rather then another 800 or so books.
The time immediately prior to that transition from the "long 19th century"- till 1914, to the twentieth century is a crucial period for the transformation of the Audience, similar to the transformation that occurred during the so-called "rise of the novel" in the late 18th century.
New Grub Street by George Gissing is a solid attempt to portray the beating heart of artistic self awareness about the market. This locale is London England in the late 19th century- late 1870s- 1880s. His characters are Authors trying to succeed in the world of publishing- either by writing fiction, stories and articles in the London Press of the period- which has to count as the first modernish marketplace for Artistic product. It's certainly the first Artistic marketplace where an Author could portray such a market place in a work of art.
Although the style of Gissing's writing places him squarely inside the mid-late 19th century realist/psychologist tradition of novel writing, there are moments of self awareness that resonate with the modern reader. The main characters- all male writers with varying degrees of Artistic self importance and worldly success range from Reardon- the "tortured Artist" who dies- abandoned by his heiress wife and forgotten by the public. Harold Biffen- author of the "stream of consciousness" anticipating "MR. BAILEY, GROCER" is the fierce, uncompromising modernist Artist- he ends up poisoning himself. Milvain is the knowing young hustler who "understands how the game is played."
You could easily imagine the plot of New Grub Street transferred to any local indie rock scene in America or Europe, because Gissing so perfectly captures the mind-set of Artists struggles with the reality of the Market.
The message of this book really hit home with me- call it the futility of artistic endeavor- because it takes place in West London- in the exact same place where I studied abroad... IN THE 90s. Harodl Biffen's garret was three block from my dorm/hostel. It was in London, during this time, that I essentially decided to pursue a legal degree rather then a career as a "writer." Unlike me, Gissing's characters are all in on writing- to stop writing- as Reardon does later in the novel- is considered the ultimate disgrace and considered good cause for spoual abandonment.
If I could have given advice to the characters in this novel I would have said, "GET OUT OF LONDON IMMEDIATELY!"
Published 1/16/12
NOSTROMO (1904)
by Joseph Conrad
Originally published
This Edition
Everyman's Library 38
1962
Does anyone else find it funny that the universal method of teaching high school students about literature/English is by reading Novels/other literature and then "analyzing" it. Like, describing the plot and asking why the characters did what they did? That's what I remember. I think educators would make more headway with students if they treated each book like a hit record, and talked about why it was popular, focusing specifically on why the students DON'T like it- what has changed in their world. Confront them about their taste and try to explain why they are reading this specific book.
From the perspective of looking at a classic work of literature as a hit, Nostromo is interesting because it wasn't well received at the time. It's "generally" considered to be a top classic Novel, even the best by Joseph Conrad since Heart of Darkness is more of a short story/novella. Part of what makes Nostromo so classic is that it's a late example of pre "modernist" novels. This is not a novel that sets out to toy with expectations of the Audience regarding a Novel, it's a novel that sets out to wow you with command of detail, richly drawn characters and enough pre-modern racism and prejudice to give the material an edge.
Nostromo tells the tale of a made-up Central American/South American nation that sounds like Venezuela, Columbia, Panama or Nicaragua. The central character set are Mr and Mrs Gould- native of English descent, who control the "richest coal mine in all the land." They are just the anchors for a cast that ranges across class, with Nostromo himself being the equivalent of a ranking longshoreman.
Other the course of 500 pages you get a lot of political squabbling in latin america- perhaps the premiere example of that specific dynamic IN ALL of literature. The backdrop is pleasantly appealing, richly drawn and stuffed with detail. It's great that Conrad just brings the thematic thunder, and the whole time, doesn't feel compelled to apologize for his point of view. That is key to the classic Novels of the 19th and pre 1920's 20th century: STRENGTH OF VIEWPOINT.
So I read Nostromo, I'm glad I read it- I love Joseph Conrad. It's everything I'm about in classic literature. Novels were better before Authors felt that to apologize for every thing that has gone wrong in the world. Conrad knew life was cruel- he worked as a sailor for twenty years- but he conjured up worlds in his mind, and then wrote it all down, and didn't say "Sorry!" afterwards. That's like it should be with Art, and how commerce so rarely is: Stated with conviction.
There's a way to look at Nostromo in terms of "colonialist literature" but I say, embrace the label. You can seek to understand colonialism without being a colonialist in matters of international politics.
New Grub Street (1891)
by George Gissing
Oxford World's Classics Edition
There are two main problems with the idea and the execution of the"1001 Books to Read Before You Die" series The first problem is that the editors use the word "BOOKS" to mean "NOVELS." All 1001 Books to Read Before You Die are Novels, not one is non-fiction. Even the books that aren't novels are there because they are antecedents of the novel.
The second problem is the over-representation of the significance of works from the recent present. In a book that take up close to 1000 pages (960 if you must know.) the last hundred or so years take up 800 pages- meaning 200 pages for every novel before the 20th century. I would humbly suggest that if there are only a hundred or so worthy novels written between 1700 and 1900, there were the same amount or fewer in the 20th century, rather then another 800 or so books.
The time immediately prior to that transition from the "long 19th century"- till 1914, to the twentieth century is a crucial period for the transformation of the Audience, similar to the transformation that occurred during the so-called "rise of the novel" in the late 18th century.
New Grub Street by George Gissing is a solid attempt to portray the beating heart of artistic self awareness about the market. This locale is London England in the late 19th century- late 1870s- 1880s. His characters are Authors trying to succeed in the world of publishing- either by writing fiction, stories and articles in the London Press of the period- which has to count as the first modernish marketplace for Artistic product. It's certainly the first Artistic marketplace where an Author could portray such a market place in a work of art.
Although the style of Gissing's writing places him squarely inside the mid-late 19th century realist/psychologist tradition of novel writing, there are moments of self awareness that resonate with the modern reader. The main characters- all male writers with varying degrees of Artistic self importance and worldly success range from Reardon- the "tortured Artist" who dies- abandoned by his heiress wife and forgotten by the public. Harold Biffen- author of the "stream of consciousness" anticipating "MR. BAILEY, GROCER" is the fierce, uncompromising modernist Artist- he ends up poisoning himself. Milvain is the knowing young hustler who "understands how the game is played."
You could easily imagine the plot of New Grub Street transferred to any local indie rock scene in America or Europe, because Gissing so perfectly captures the mind-set of Artists struggles with the reality of the Market.
The message of this book really hit home with me- call it the futility of artistic endeavor- because it takes place in West London- in the exact same place where I studied abroad... IN THE 90s. Harodl Biffen's garret was three block from my dorm/hostel. It was in London, during this time, that I essentially decided to pursue a legal degree rather then a career as a "writer." Unlike me, Gissing's characters are all in on writing- to stop writing- as Reardon does later in the novel- is considered the ultimate disgrace and considered good cause for spoual abandonment.
If I could have given advice to the characters in this novel I would have said, "GET OUT OF LONDON IMMEDIATELY!"
Published 1/16/12
NOSTROMO (1904)
by Joseph Conrad
Originally published
This Edition
Everyman's Library 38
1962
Does anyone else find it funny that the universal method of teaching high school students about literature/English is by reading Novels/other literature and then "analyzing" it. Like, describing the plot and asking why the characters did what they did? That's what I remember. I think educators would make more headway with students if they treated each book like a hit record, and talked about why it was popular, focusing specifically on why the students DON'T like it- what has changed in their world. Confront them about their taste and try to explain why they are reading this specific book.
From the perspective of looking at a classic work of literature as a hit, Nostromo is interesting because it wasn't well received at the time. It's "generally" considered to be a top classic Novel, even the best by Joseph Conrad since Heart of Darkness is more of a short story/novella. Part of what makes Nostromo so classic is that it's a late example of pre "modernist" novels. This is not a novel that sets out to toy with expectations of the Audience regarding a Novel, it's a novel that sets out to wow you with command of detail, richly drawn characters and enough pre-modern racism and prejudice to give the material an edge.
Nostromo tells the tale of a made-up Central American/South American nation that sounds like Venezuela, Columbia, Panama or Nicaragua. The central character set are Mr and Mrs Gould- native of English descent, who control the "richest coal mine in all the land." They are just the anchors for a cast that ranges across class, with Nostromo himself being the equivalent of a ranking longshoreman.
Other the course of 500 pages you get a lot of political squabbling in latin america- perhaps the premiere example of that specific dynamic IN ALL of literature. The backdrop is pleasantly appealing, richly drawn and stuffed with detail. It's great that Conrad just brings the thematic thunder, and the whole time, doesn't feel compelled to apologize for his point of view. That is key to the classic Novels of the 19th and pre 1920's 20th century: STRENGTH OF VIEWPOINT.
So I read Nostromo, I'm glad I read it- I love Joseph Conrad. It's everything I'm about in classic literature. Novels were better before Authors felt that to apologize for every thing that has gone wrong in the world. Conrad knew life was cruel- he worked as a sailor for twenty years- but he conjured up worlds in his mind, and then wrote it all down, and didn't say "Sorry!" afterwards. That's like it should be with Art, and how commerce so rarely is: Stated with conviction.
There's a way to look at Nostromo in terms of "colonialist literature" but I say, embrace the label. You can seek to understand colonialism without being a colonialist in matters of international politics.
Published 2/17/12
Kidanpped (1886)
by Robert Louis Stevenson
originally published 1886
this edition Penguin Classics 2005
Introduction and Notes by Donald McFarlan
I didn't realize until finishing Kidnapped, that it was written not a year after H. Rider Haggard's classic early adventure novel, King Solomon's Mines. I think when you start reading the late 19th century adventure novels, of which King Solomon's Mines and the entire Robert Louis Stevenson catalog, you are getting into subjects that still pull an audience today. There is a relationship between the late 19th century adventure novel and many, many, many top selling books today- see THE AIRPORT for examples.
Notable about the creation of the modern adventure novel are a couple of main themes to keep in mind. First, is the issue of advances in style that occurred between the 18th century, when many of the "first" novels had "adventure" themes. Second, is the change in Audience size and composition that began to happen in the late 19th century. Specifically, the growth of mass market periodicals (Kidnapped was first published in serial form, as were many classic 19th century Novels), second the growth of children and young adult readers as an audience for those periodicals and resulting books.
King Solomon's Mines and Kidnapped are a good illustration of different market segments- King Solomon was published initially as a book, as an adult book- with publicity etc. Kidnapped was published serially in a magazine called "YOUNG FOLKS" and was self-consciously a "boy's novel."
An interesting aspect of Kidnapped that certainly does not fit within the historic designation of "boy's novel" is it's relationship in time to the setting depicted. Specifically, this book written for children in 1886 is set in the Scottish highlands of the mid 18th century. This is a time and a place riven by rebellion against the King of England and it has the same kind of romantic quality embodied in more familiar places like the post-Civil War South or the late 19th century Western United States, i.e. it's a wild place, with restless natives and danger/intrigue abound.
Mind you, Stevenson was actually writing during a period when both those other examples- the Wild West, and Post Reconstruction South, were closer to the present then the time/place depicted. It is just another example of the tenacious hold on the imagination of the English/British exercised by the Scottish Highlands of the 18th/19th century. Truly, were one to look up a definition of "Romanticism" in the early 19th century you'd probably see a charcoal outline of a Scottish highlands scene.
The plot of Kidnapped involves David Balfour, a "young laird" who comes into the Scottish village of Cramond to see about his inheritance, only to be hustled off onto a ship bound for the United States by his a-hole uncle- where he is to be sold into slavery (!) Once afloat he teams up with a Jacobite Scottish nobleman trying to smuggle himself into Scotland to collect taxes for his laird, exiled and penniless in France as a result of the recently unsuccessful Jacboite rebellion.
The ship wrecks and David Balfour has to walk across the Scottish highlands, pursued by English soldiers and wanted for a murder his Jacobite buddy is suspected of committing. The pacing and observational style are closer to what we think of as modern prose then antecedents like Robinson Crusoe. Also, many of the rough edges of the 18th century novel- most assuredly written for adults- have been smoothed out by a half century of Victorianism and what's left is a truly classic work that stands up to the present day.
Kidanpped (1886)
by Robert Louis Stevenson
originally published 1886
this edition Penguin Classics 2005
Introduction and Notes by Donald McFarlan
I didn't realize until finishing Kidnapped, that it was written not a year after H. Rider Haggard's classic early adventure novel, King Solomon's Mines. I think when you start reading the late 19th century adventure novels, of which King Solomon's Mines and the entire Robert Louis Stevenson catalog, you are getting into subjects that still pull an audience today. There is a relationship between the late 19th century adventure novel and many, many, many top selling books today- see THE AIRPORT for examples.
Notable about the creation of the modern adventure novel are a couple of main themes to keep in mind. First, is the issue of advances in style that occurred between the 18th century, when many of the "first" novels had "adventure" themes. Second, is the change in Audience size and composition that began to happen in the late 19th century. Specifically, the growth of mass market periodicals (Kidnapped was first published in serial form, as were many classic 19th century Novels), second the growth of children and young adult readers as an audience for those periodicals and resulting books.
King Solomon's Mines and Kidnapped are a good illustration of different market segments- King Solomon was published initially as a book, as an adult book- with publicity etc. Kidnapped was published serially in a magazine called "YOUNG FOLKS" and was self-consciously a "boy's novel."
An interesting aspect of Kidnapped that certainly does not fit within the historic designation of "boy's novel" is it's relationship in time to the setting depicted. Specifically, this book written for children in 1886 is set in the Scottish highlands of the mid 18th century. This is a time and a place riven by rebellion against the King of England and it has the same kind of romantic quality embodied in more familiar places like the post-Civil War South or the late 19th century Western United States, i.e. it's a wild place, with restless natives and danger/intrigue abound.
Mind you, Stevenson was actually writing during a period when both those other examples- the Wild West, and Post Reconstruction South, were closer to the present then the time/place depicted. It is just another example of the tenacious hold on the imagination of the English/British exercised by the Scottish Highlands of the 18th/19th century. Truly, were one to look up a definition of "Romanticism" in the early 19th century you'd probably see a charcoal outline of a Scottish highlands scene.
The plot of Kidnapped involves David Balfour, a "young laird" who comes into the Scottish village of Cramond to see about his inheritance, only to be hustled off onto a ship bound for the United States by his a-hole uncle- where he is to be sold into slavery (!) Once afloat he teams up with a Jacobite Scottish nobleman trying to smuggle himself into Scotland to collect taxes for his laird, exiled and penniless in France as a result of the recently unsuccessful Jacboite rebellion.
The ship wrecks and David Balfour has to walk across the Scottish highlands, pursued by English soldiers and wanted for a murder his Jacobite buddy is suspected of committing. The pacing and observational style are closer to what we think of as modern prose then antecedents like Robinson Crusoe. Also, many of the rough edges of the 18th century novel- most assuredly written for adults- have been smoothed out by a half century of Victorianism and what's left is a truly classic work that stands up to the present day.
Published 3/19/12
She (1887)
by H. Rider Haggard
Originally published 1887
This Edition- Project Gutenberg Public Domain Edition
Read on Ipad Eboks Program
I've held out on buying a Kindle because I see it as a device to read celebrity biography's and romance novels, but as I found on my wife's Ipad- all of the classics are available in a couple different common Public Domain Formats- Project Gutenberg did this book- An Interesting Narrative by Equiano- was done by Oxford University.
These public domain editions are bare bones- no introduction, no non-textual notes or bibliography or index- all you get is the book itself in a readable format. That's fine for ALOT of the "1001 Books To Read Before You Die" list of books. She by H. Rider Haggard is a good example- his King Solomon's Mine is also on the list, and once you've read on scholarly essay on Haggard and his work, you've read enough. Haggard was the inventor of the "Lost World" genre, and his books have a breezy, popular feel that resembles the pace of modern Airport thrillers.
In the Ebook format, the Project Gutenberg version of the She text runs about 350 pages- with the Ipad held up right. That's a great deal shorter then most of the books of the 18th century, and many from early in the 19th century. Haggard was in many ways an early Modern writer, Imperialist/Victorian stylistics aside.
I probably would have never paid for a paper copy of the book- but for Free? On an Ipad? Shoot- it is an adventure novel- fun stuff.
by H. Rider Haggard
Originally published 1887
This Edition- Project Gutenberg Public Domain Edition
Read on Ipad Eboks Program
I've held out on buying a Kindle because I see it as a device to read celebrity biography's and romance novels, but as I found on my wife's Ipad- all of the classics are available in a couple different common Public Domain Formats- Project Gutenberg did this book- An Interesting Narrative by Equiano- was done by Oxford University.
These public domain editions are bare bones- no introduction, no non-textual notes or bibliography or index- all you get is the book itself in a readable format. That's fine for ALOT of the "1001 Books To Read Before You Die" list of books. She by H. Rider Haggard is a good example- his King Solomon's Mine is also on the list, and once you've read on scholarly essay on Haggard and his work, you've read enough. Haggard was the inventor of the "Lost World" genre, and his books have a breezy, popular feel that resembles the pace of modern Airport thrillers.
In the Ebook format, the Project Gutenberg version of the She text runs about 350 pages- with the Ipad held up right. That's a great deal shorter then most of the books of the 18th century, and many from early in the 19th century. Haggard was in many ways an early Modern writer, Imperialist/Victorian stylistics aside.
I probably would have never paid for a paper copy of the book- but for Free? On an Ipad? Shoot- it is an adventure novel- fun stuff.
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| H. G. Wells |
Published 4/6/12
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
by H.G. Wells
Project Guternberg EBook #159
Read on Ipad/Ebook
Mostly people just know the Marlon Brandon starring film that is based on this novella. Who can forget that creepy little guy up above?
I think it fair to observe that Wells is the author who put the "science" in the term "science-fiction" in that he invented a category of fiction drawing inspiration from science as supposed to social interactions between rich people, history, or the renaissance era tradition of written wit.
Today, science fiction and fantasy are lumped together as a single genre, or two sub categories- see Amazon where the category is "Science Fiction & Fantasy" and the sub-categories are Science Fiction, Fantasy and "Gaming."
If The Time Machine is H.G. Wells contribution to the "time travel" category of sci-fi, The Island of Dr. Moreau is his contribution to the "bio-horror" category- best known today through the Sigorney Weaver Alien series of films. Like The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau is a novella- about 150 pages long.
On the whole, The Island of Dr. Moreau is more interesting the The Time Machine because the biology based man-animals of Dr. Moreau are more relevant then the class based evolution featured in The Time Machine. What is amazing is that both themes remain relevant to the point where they've been divorced from important source material in literature.
Unlike The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau has some fairly indelible images- Wells' description of the man-beasts being foremost among them. It's important to recognize that "horror" tropes related to the treatment of "monsters" were becoming well established in the late 19th century- Bram Stoker's Dracula was published three years later(based on semi-published source material written by Lord Byron that dated back to the time Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelly), and Frankenstein itself had been out for more than half a century. Poe had been out for more then a half century.
The division of course, being between monsters of science and monsters of the supernatural- Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau's creatures on one side of the room, Dracula, Werewolves and Ghosts on the other. You get that kind of expansiveness in the word "monster" because in it's original meaning it covers all things not found in nature- including both the supernatural and any successors. Monsters of science obviously succeed the monsters of the supernatural, but you would have to say the supernatural retains an upper hand with the Audience because of the strong association with Religion.
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| Jane Austen Published 5/11/12 Sense & Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen READ ON KINDLE ALSO MOVIE REVIEW Sense & Sensibility d. Ang Lee p. 1995 screen play by Emma Thompson 135 million gross world-wide. You can watch the 1995 movie on Netflix Streaming, FYI. I tempted to recommend the movie over the book, since the movie is directed by Ang Lee AND written by Emma Thompson AND stars a young Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, the younger sister. Emma Thompson also stars in her own script as Elinor Dashwood, the older sister. You've also got your Hugh Grant playing Edward Farrars AND- AND! Alan Rickman as Colonel Christopher Brandon. BOOM-SHAKA LAKA. A YOUNG HUGH GRANT. OK, OK. One of the stylistic changes in the form of the Novel that Austen more or less "invented" was the quick open- wherein the initial status-altering scenario happens to the main characters at the beginning of the novel. This is an aspect of the Novel that Dickens fully manipulated, and in Austen's contemporary Walter Scott you can see a prior approach- the use of real "documents" and the shifting of authorial identity to create a much more elaborate opening scenario. In the early 19th century, Austen knew that there was an Audience for novels about the "adventures" of young women. She had read Samuel Richardson's Pamela, and all the subsequent books that referenced it, she had read Frances Burney, she had read Maria Edgeworth. Significantly, Sense and Sensibility was originally written in epistolary format, and Austen abandoned it- a seminal moment- the moment she abandoned the epistolary format- the equivalent of the fusing of blues and country that created rock n roll. If you've read every major novel of the 1700s like I have, it's easy to see the different ways that Sense and Sensibility represents a colossal step forward in the development of the art form. Specifically, Austen seems aware of the use of language in a way that would be quite foreign to writers just before her, and writers working at the same time. Style aside, the genius of the plotting of Sense and Sensibility is that it is focused, that it covers both the relationship between the sisters and the relationships between the two sisters and their would-be (and wouldn't-be) swains. Austen is relatively short on the depiction of social space, but long on depiction of inter personal relationships and the complexity of human emotion. Austen's characters are what you call "relate-able" and they always have been, because of their sophistication and depth. 1700s heroine's are like cardboard cut outs next to Marianne (younger sister/Kate Winselt in 1995) and Elinor (older sister/Emma Thompson in 1995.) |
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| Jane Austen Published 5/14/12 Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen Public Domain Books 1998 Read on an Amazon Kindle, and Kindle For Ipad This book is number one in the Amazon category of "FICTION CLASSICS/FREE." Pride and Prejudice was her next book after Sense and Sensibility. Sense and Sensibility was the artistic equivalent of "LP1" and Pride and Prejudice was "LP2." Since this is essentially the most popular classic in the world, I thought I would take the opportunity to make some general comments about the manner in which I read this book, which has been "in print" and read continuously since being originally published in a 3 volume set in 1813. I "purchased" this item on my work computer for my Amazon Kindle on April 12th, 2012. Between April 12th and May 2nd, Pride and Prejudice was sitting on my Kindle. On May 1st, I finished reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. On May 2nd, I began to read Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle at home but found it "too much" and dropped it after 20 pages. On May 3rd, I was waiting to make a court appearance and read Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle in the Court Room, I read about 50 pages or so. Later on in the day on May 3rd, I downloaded the App for Kindle on my wife's IPAD and read Pride and Prejudice while A&E Reality television was being displayed on our television. And then on May 4th I read Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle twice, and once on my wife's IPAD. On May 4th, I watched most of episode 1/5 of the 1980 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and thought about it. I also finished reading Mode of Production of Victorian Novels by N.N. Feltes. Although Feltes is discussing a later time period (1830s vs. 1810s) he discusses trends that were relevant to the publication of both Sense and Sensibility AND Pride and Prejudice. Novels published in the early 19th century were often published as an expensive 3 volume set. The primary consumers were not direct purchasers, but rather circulating libraries, which would then make money by lending out and eventually re-selling the 3 volume set. Sense and Sensibility was published in a 3 volume set. (HISTORY TODAY) Pride and Prejudice was ALSO published as a three volume set, so it seems accurate to assert that her Audience was the Audience described by Feltes, lending libraries and their patrons, wealthier readers and then probably some kind of bootleg audience based on unauthorized editions. I would argue that the early 20th century lending library was the functional equivalent of the 20th century juke box, or vice-versa, helping to disseminate works of Art in an Audience that "can't afford" to purchase a full work of art. It would seem that it would bring a social aspect to the Act of reading a novel, a community aspect if you will. Jane Austen herself was probably part of a community of that sort. When you consider an early 19th century Lending Library audience, it's interesting that in Pride and Prejudice, the depicted class is not that of Lords and Ladies, but rather various strands within the trade and land bourgeois. The essence of Pride and Prejudice in my mind is the scene near the end between Elizabeth Bennett (heroine) and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the Aunt of Darcy (Elizabeth Bennett's intended husband.) In that scene Lady Catherine de Bourgh basically says, "Well, we are "commoners" but Darcy's family and the family of this other chick that I want Darcy to marry are a higher sub-class then your family. And Elizabeth Bennett basically wins the argument by saying, :"No, if none of us are Nobility then we are all the same so there." And then, most importantly, she gets the guy. That must have been an appealing message to the women who were checking out books from these early nineteenth century lending libraries. The Lending Library Audience for early 19th century fiction was important but small in terms of the numbers that were to come. A successful work might print 5 to 10,000 three volume sets. Not until the later part of the 19th century did a truly "mass" market begin to develop for the "one volume" novel, and this was preceded by a half century of publication by magazines and journals. When you are evaluating art forms from different time periods you need to take account of the publication format, and how that format influenced the Audience. Lending Libraries were not limited to fiction, they lent sheet music and non-fiction books as well. The Editions they bought were meant to be passed around from person to person. It just shows that books were more valuable objects in the early 18th century.
Published 5/15/12 Emma (1815) by Jane Austen Read on an Amazon Kindle I hesitate to write about a subject like Jane Austen books, but the bottom line is that she is a hitmaker AND her status as a hit maker was late in developing, which puts her into the exalted Romantic category of "misunderstood genius." Her books were not in style when published. Rather, the Audience favored the historic novels of Sir Walter Scott. You only have to compare the two names on the Google Ngram viewer to see what I am talking about. Specifically, you can see a dramatic rise in the prevalence of Sir Walter Scott's name by Zeroing in on the period 1800 to 1830 on the Google Ngram Viewer. The first notable uptick in popularity of Sir Walter Scott occurs in the period of 1818 to 1820. Now, the number of books published during that time period was quantifiable, but much smaller then the number of books today, obviously. Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy and Ivanhoe were published between 1817 and 1819, so it's fair to say that those two books actually "moved the needle" upon release, unlike his earlier fame-making work of Waverely, published 1814. From the period of 1820 to 1830, Sir Walter Scott skyrockets and Jane Austen is a flat line. This state of affairs persists into the mid 20th century, but Jane Austen doesn't even get off the Mat until the 1880s. According to the Google Ngram Viewer, the eclipse of Sir Walter Scott by Jane Austen in popularity happened in the mid 1940s. However you want to interpret the data, it's clear that Jane Austen was the beneficiary of what modern music fans and critics call a "Revival." Thus, part of the appeal of Jane Austen- in the 1890s up until today is the biography or "myth" of Jane Austen. It's not true that she was ignored- her books were published, purchased, read and reviewed- it's just that they never "took off." In subsequent decades the format that she published in (three volume set checked out a lending library) declined in importance and her books went out of print. The bottom line though is that Jane Austen wrote because it amused her, and the best evidence of this is Emma, which is either the best or worst of her novels- I can't decide which. Certainly, recent Hollywood remakes, including the remake starring Gywenth Paltrow and of course, Clueless with Paul Rudd and Alicia Silverstone, probably weigh on the "worst" side of the scale. Austen's Emma Woodhouse, set in the context of her other heroines and contemporary fiction, comes off with shades of the Picaro of 18th century literature. Like the Picaro, everything works out in the end, and it's questionable whether Emma learns her lesson. One of the initial criticisms of Emma was the "small town" setting: specific to a time and place but vague as to the exact details. There are no trips to the pleasure gardens of London in the novels of Jane Austen. Jane Austen never went to London. At the time, this feature likely diminished the potential size of her audience, but over time the generality of ALL of Jane Austen's novels proved to be an enduring strength. A pleasing vagueness of time and place, I suppose you could call it.
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