Janespotting: Emma (Austen's original)

Emma was my first exposure to Austen, back in college, and at the time it didn't strike me as particularly wondrous. Sure, it had wit, but it didn't make me want to go out and read everything else Austen ever wrote. Maybe that was because I read it for a class—it's hard to really enjoy a book when you're taking notes and on a deadline—or maybe it's because I didn't fall in love with the heroine, as so many other people have. Austen sums her up in the first sentence: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

Unlike Austen's other heroines, Emma does not need to worry about money or marriage, and so she occupies much of her time with matchmaking and other amusements. As the novel opens she is celebrating the marriage of her former governess to a neighboring gentlemen, although the family's close friend (and Emma's brother-in-law), Mr. Knightley, says Emma made a lucky guess, not the actual match. Undeterred, Emma tries to pair her new friend, the lovely but dubiously born Harriet Smith, with the local minister, Mr. Elton. This turns out disastrously when she discovers Mr. Elton has been wooing her, not her friend, and poor Harriet is left disappointed and distressed.

Emma spirits are only temporarily dampened; when Frank Churchill visits the neighborhood, she is ready to flirt with him and promote a match between him and Harriet. In particular, Emma enjoys speculating with Frank about the lovely Jane Fairfax, the niece of their impoverished neighbor Miss Bates; Jane is destined to support herself as a governess. Jane is lovely and musically talented (annoying Emma, who doesn't apply herself and suffers in comparison), and her reserved manner perversely inspires Emma to imagine something inappropriate behind a gift piano. Emma's behavior becomes another point of contention with Mr. Knightley, who has long been accustomed to instructing her. They both enjoy their verbal sparring matches, although Emma is put out when Mr. Knightley tells her she is spoiling Harriet.

Emma's unrestrained pursuit of amusement comes to a head one afternoon when, encouraged by Frank Churchill's flattery, she cruelly insults Miss Bates. She is crushed to see Mr. Knightley's disappointment in her, and determines to apologize and also make up her lack of attention to Jane Fairfax, whom she has come to pity. Not long after she discovers that Harriet is not aspiring to Frank Churchill, but Mr. Knightley—and that she believes he returns her affection. Emma is shocked, for she hadn't realized before that she is the only one for Mr. Knightley. One final surprise remains: after Frank Churchill's aunt dies, leaving him her fortune, it is revealed that he and Jane Fairfax have been secretly engaged. Mr. Knightley and Emma reveal their feelings to each other, and even silly Harriet ends up engaged, to the young farmer whom Emma originally thought beneath her friend's notice.

I can see why Emma is many readers' favorite Austen book. It is light-hearted and playful, like its heroine, who never has the threat of poverty or loneliness hanging over her head. Early on Emma reveals her intention never to marry, noting that "a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else." When you think about it, Jane Fairfax, not Emma, is more like the typical Austen heroine in situation: potentially consigned to poverty and facing many obstacles on her road to romance and happiness. I guess that's why Emma isn't one of my favorite heroines: yes, she's charming and kind, but she's also rather shallow, at least until the end of the novel. On the other hand, the secondary characters are some of Austen's best, between the over-talkative Miss Bates, the enigmatic Jane Fairfax, the obsequious grasper Mr. Elton, and his vulgar, pretentious new bride.

So for me Emma ranks somewhere in the middle of Austen's novels: I don't love it like I do Pride and Prejudice, but I'd much rather read it than Mansfield Park. Actually, how I feel about Emma depends on whether I'm feeling indulgent and playful or not. I'll be considering that playful edge more as I begin exploring all the film version of Austen's classic. Stay tuned.

Janespotting: Mansfield Park (Austen's original)

It's time for me to start looking at Austen's third published novel, Mansfield Park (1814), and I have to admit I wasn't really looking forward to the prospect. I've always considered it my least favorite of her novels, and I suspect I'm not alone in this opinion. The problem for many modern readers is Mansfield's heroine, Fanny Price. She doesn't have the wit and liveliness of Elizabeth Bennett or Emma Woodhouse, the innocent charm and naivete of Catherine Morland, or even the superior sensibility of Elinor Dashwood or Anne Elliot. Fanny Price is a character who triumphs through endurance and inaction, not through any particular achievement or virtues (aside from virtue itself).

A short summary: Fanny is a poor relation who is taken in by her aunt's wealthy family, the Bertrams. She comes to Mansfield Park and finds little kindness nor affection from her relations, who seem most concerned that she remember her place. Her Aunt Bertram is ditzy and thinks of nothing but her own comfort; Sir Thomas Bertram is stern and intimidating; Aunt Norris is most concerned that Fanny not overstep her role or interfere with Aunt Norris's own plans; oldest cousin Tom is in pursuit of pleasure and can't be bothered with a little girl; and her older cousins Maria and Julia ignore her except when they find a third playmate useful. Only her cousin Edmund shows her any kindness when she arrives, and he soon becomes a trusted friend for Fanny.

Not much has changed as Fanny turns eighteen: Tom is more interested in gambling than in business; Sir Bertram is distant (often physically, taking care of the family's business interests in the Caribbean); Aunt Norris is still bossy; Edmund is preparing to enter the clergy; and Fanny stays home to keep ditzy Aunt Bertram company while Maria and Julia go out in society. Maria has just got engaged to very wealthy (if stupid) young man, as suggested by Aunt Norris, when the society at Mansfield Park is interrupted by two visitors, brother and sister Henry and Mary Crawford. Both are attractive, lively, and flirtatious, and they and a friend, Mr. Yates, encourage the group to begin rehearsals for a play. Fanny refuses to participate, thinking the subject (romantic intrigue) inappopriate and believing that Sir Thomas would not approve of a home theatre in general. Even Edmund joins in against his better judgment, thinking it the only way to keep things from getting out of hand. Despite his efforts, Henry Crawford flirts with both Julia and the engaged Maria, and Mary Crawford seriously attracts Edmund's notice.

Sir Thomas's return to Mansfield puts a stop to the business; the Crawfords leave and soon Maria marries, taking Julia with her on her honeymoon. Fanny is left home with a newly appreciative Sir Thomas, and when the Crawfords return to the neighborhood, Henry decides to entertain himself by making Fanny fall in love with him. She is secretly in love with Edmund, however, and her steadfast refusal intrigues Henry to the point where he offers marriage. The family thinks she should be grateful and accept, but when she doesn't she is eventually sent to her parents in Portsmouth to think about the alternative. Her parents loud and slatternly household is a contrast to the peace and quite of Mansfield, but Fanny won't yield. Finally word reaches her that Maria has run away with Henry Crawford, and Julia eloped with Mr. Yates, and Fanny is needed home at Mansfield to comfort the Bertrams. Edmund realizes that Mary Crawford is not the woman he thought she was, and that Fanny would be the perfect mate instead.

This is where I should sigh, I suppose ... it's a happy ending, after all, although Austen shows us very little of it. (No romantic words, a la Mr. Knightley's "if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more," and not even a scene where they discover their feelings. Hmmph.) Fanny triumphs by doing nothing, saying nothing, and being steadfast in her virtue. She's always right, about everything! How boring.

Although as I read the novel this time, I began to wonder ... why is Fanny so inactive? After thinking about it for a couple of chapters, I realized: because it's her survival strategy. She comes to Mansfield at a young age, and soon learns her place is not to stand out:

"I should wish to see them very good friends," (says Sir Thomas of Fanny and his daughters), "and would, on no account, authorize in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they cannot be equals." (Chapter 1)

Though [Fanny was] unworthy, from inferiority of age and strength, to be [her cousins'] constant associate, their pleasure and schemes were sometimes of a nature to make a third very useful, especially when that third was of an obliging, yielding temper. (Chapter 2)

"I am not going to urge [Fanny to act in the play]," —replied Mrs. Norris sharply, "but I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her—very ungrateful indeed, considering who and what she is." (Chapter 15)

"People are never respected when they step out of their proper sphere. Remember that, Fanny," [said Aunt Norris.] (Chapter 23)

It's pretty clear that if Fanny were the type of Austen heroine we adore—witty, assertive, vocal—she wouldn't have lasted long at Mansfield Park at all, and its quiet surroundings are really more suited to her personality. So on this re-reading I came out with a little more respect for Fanny Price and her steadfast correctness ... although I still think Austen could have written a more romantically satisfying denouement. Maybe I'll find one in the several "sequels" that have made written to the novel. We'll soon see.

Janespotting: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

For my last exploration of the Gothic novels that inspired Austen's Northanger Abbey, I decided to go to the Grandaddy of them all, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. It's not that Austen references it specifically in NA; she only mentions The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk in any detail, and Walpole isn't among the seven other "horrid" novels Isabella Thorpe suggests Catherine add to her reading list. But Henry Tilney does make mention of a Gothic heroine named Matilda—also the name of Walpole's heroine, although Tilney doesn't seem to be referencing a specific one—and as The Castle of Otranto is considered the first Gothic novel, and I wanted to try Walpoling (see Monty Python cheese shop sketch), I thought, why not? (Especially since I saw that the Oxford University Press edition is only 176 pages long. Bonus!)

So I downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg and made short work of Walpole's 1764 work, published while he was still serving in Parliament. The book was initially published anonymously—Walpole being the son of the former Prime Minister—and purported to be a translation of a medieval manuscript from the time of the Crusades. All the action centers around the Italian Castle of Otranto, which is owned by Lord Manfred and is to be the setting of his son Conrad's marriage to the Princess Isabella. Within the first ten paragraphs, Conrad is killed: squished by a giant helmet (complete with plumes) that has mysteriously fallen from the sky. By the end of the first chapter, Manfred has decided he should divorce his wife Hippolita, who only gave him the sickly Conrad and his sister Matilda as heirs, and marry Isabella himself. Since Isabella has been living with the family as a daughter, she is sickened by the idea and runs away to the local church, aided by a mysterious but attractive peasant boy.

Over the next four chapters—and that's all there are—the readers discovers that the peasant boy is the son of the prior Jerome, the former Count of Falconara; that Manfred's family stole the Castle from the virtuous Alfonso, Isabella's distant relative, and a prophecy foretells its return; that the Knight who comes to challenge Manfred for the castle on behalf of Isabella's father is actually her father; and that the peasant boy Theodore is actually the true heir to the castle. In the meantime, Isabella and Matilda both fall in love with Theodore; Theodore falls in love with Matilda; Manfred pursues Isabella; and the Knight Frederic is convinced to marry Matilda. Theodore accidentally wounds Frederic (he lives) and Manfred accidentally wounds Matilda (she dies), and we get ghostly noises and apparitions (and that giant helmet and a giant sword) until Manfred eventually gives up the castle to retire to the cloister, leaving Theodore free to marry Isabella. That may sound like a happy ending, but the marriage is only decided after "he was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul." Yeesh.

That's a lot to pack into 176 pages, and a lot to keep track of, but since it happens all so fast, I really didn't need to pay attention. This novel was all plot and no character development (the opposite of Udolpho, if you can consider 700+ pages of moping "character development), so if I got confused, something new would happen soon enough and clear things up. The atmosphere wasn't what I thought of as Gothically spooky—it's hard to build suspense at a breakneck pace—but the novel was chock full of those coincidences, chance encounters, mysterious family resemblances, and endangered young women that Austen pokes fun at in Northanger Abbey.

So after my admittedly brief and incomplete survey of the Gothic novel, I have a fuller understanding of what Austen was parodying. I don't think I necessarily needed that understanding to enjoy the humor and wit of Northanger Abbey, but now that I can see more parallels, I think the next time I revisit it my experience will be enriched. I think I can stop with three Gothics, though and turn my attention to Northanger sequels. Stay tuned.

Janespotting: The Monk by Matthew Lewis

I'm continuing my perusal of Gothic novels mentioned by Austen in Northanger Abbey, and after the interminable tepid delays that made up Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, I had higher hopes for Matthew Lewis's The Monk. After all, the rogue John Thorpe, who lies to Catherine in order to monopolize her time, declares the novel the only "tolerably decent one [to] come out since Tom Jones." The latter novel, a 1749 work by Henry Fielding, was notorious for its inclusion of prostitution and general naughtiness, and Lewis's work, published in 1796, would garner a similarly scandalous reputation.

So I eagerly opened the file (thanks, Project Gutenberg), hoping to be rewarded with loads of Gothic excitement and melodrama. And I wasn't disappointed: not only were we introduced to the title character in the first chapter, we got the essentials of the plot. The Monk of the title is Ambrosio, the head of the Capuchin order in Madrid, noted for his eloquence and piety, and in the first chapter several key figures come to hear him preach: Antonia, a beautiful young girl whose widowed mother is hoping to get financial support from an estranged relative; Don Lorenzo, a cavalier who falls in love with her; and Lorenzo's friend Don Christoval, who is seeking his missing sister.

Chapter two brings several shocking events: a pregnant nun! (The missing sister.) A woman disguised as a novice! Ambrosio forsaking his vows to indulge in carnal pleasures! It just gets dirtier and nastier and more tragic: witchcraft! murder! riots! rape! incest! a couch!* Because Ambrosio was raised in the cloister and never faced temptation, his confidence in his upright character had no basis in experience, and he falls victim to a female temptress, and then to Satan himself. For the other characters there is tragedy and triumph, all equally as melodramatic (and unlikely).

It was much juicier (and shorter) than Udolpho ... and sure, it wasn't particularly deep and meaningful, but at least it was fun. I could totally buy that young girls would be both fascinated and scandalized by the book, whereas Udolpho was a stretch. So which is more typical of the Gothic genre? My next (and last) Gothic experiment, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, should break the tie.

*if you've never experienced the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), get thee to a theater or DVD rental place.

Janespotting: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

When it came time to reading adaptations/sequels/variations on Northanger Abbey, I was presented with a bit of a dilemma: there aren't many. There are only two, in fact. That doesn't make for a very thorough examination of the novel and its influence, but I was ready to go ahead with what limited resources I had, when I thought ... wait a minute ... I'm going about this the wrong way. There's no reason for me to search out nonexistent sequels when Austen's novel—a satire on the gothic books of her time—is about other novels! So yes, for fun I am going to do what others have done for school: I'm going to look at some of the novels that Austen mentions in Northanger Abbey. (But this being a blog instead of school, I don't have to be very deep in my discussions. Tee hee hee.)

Of course, the novel I must start out with is Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). It's mentioned 18 times during the course of NA, and the author five times, so it's the one that engendered the most curiosity. It's the book that Catherine and Isabella exclaim over: there is a mysterious black veil with something shocking behind it, and Isabella proclaims that once Catherine is finished she will give her a dozen more books that are just as "horrid." So I was expecting something dreadful (by tame 18th century standards), a novel of suspense and horror.

Sigh. What I got was endless pages of a) descriptions of the sublime (lots of scenery and peasants dancing); b) regular bouts of poetry (mostly inspired by the sublime); c) overly passionate characters on the verge of collapse (physical and emotional); and d) endless hint after hint of secrets to be revealed, which of course weren't revealed until the very last chapter. It's not that I have any objection to being teased by a book, but if you're going to spend 54 chapters on a novel called The Mysteries of Udolpho, you should at least mention Udolpho before Chapter 3 of Part 2. (And let me add that these weren't short chapters by any stretch of the imagination; although I read an e-book from the awesome Project Gutenberg, hard copies run at least 700 pages.)

Instead, the first volume is devoted to showing us the St. Aubert family of France as the father and daughter, Emily, lose their beloved mother and take a trip along the Pyrenees for a change of scenery. And oh, boy, do we gets lots and lots of scenery, all of which uplifts the St. Auberts' souls exactly as the British philosophers of the time said the sublime should. During the trip they meet a very nice young man named Valancourt and travel with him for a few chapters, until Msr. St. Aubert's health fails (another few chapters) and he expires in a little town near an abandoned chateau where mysterious music is often heard. His dying instructions are for Emily to burn some of his papers without reading them, and of course she sees a glimpse that horrifies her, but she burns them before finding anything else out (or revealing it to us). Emily mopes to the point of fainting for two more chapters, until she is put in custody of her aunt, whereupon she mopes for two more chapters in Paris. Her aunt at first refuses to let her see Valancourt, then promotes the match when she discovers it would be socially advantageous. Emily allows herself to fall in love, but her aunt's sudden marriage to the sinister Montoni cuts the relationship short, as he takes them all to Italy.

We get many many more sublime scenes (many of which inspire poetic verses) as Emily crosses the Alps, goes to Venice, and is finally—after some 17 chapters—taken to Montoni's stronghold, Udolpho. There he imprisons Emily's aunt to force her to sign over some property, threatens Emily after her aunt dies, heads his own army (which borders on being brigands), and generally makes life rotten. The mysteries of Udolpho are mainly: what happened to the woman from whom Montoni got the castle; what is behind the black veil that Emily glimpses (but doesn't describe fully until the end); and who is making the mysterious music she can hear at midnight?

It turns out the music is from an imprisoned Frenchman who is not Valancourt, but he escapes with Emily, her maid, and the maid's boyfriend. They end up being shipwrecked near the town where Emily's father died, and there (after 35 chapters!) we are introduced to a whole new family: the Count de Villefort and his daughter, who now occupy the mysterious chateau. They befriend Emily, who sadly learns that Valancourt has fallen into vice and gambling and debt and is too sinful for her to consider marrying any more. They take two chapters to say goodbye, and Emily mopes for the rest of the book, even as the Frenchman who rescued her waits in the wings. We get more mysterious music, appearances, and hidden identities at the Chateau, until all is resolved in a single chapter, after a dying nun reveals her relation to Udolpho and Emily's relation to the Chateau. Valancourt turns out to be falsely accused, and the two can get married, which is good, because they've been so miserable without each other it's been miserable to read about them.

As for the mysteries? Nothing is supernatural or dreadful; what's behind the black veil is a trick (if I had to read 700 pages to discover exactly what, you do too), and hidden passages account for others. It's not shocking or scary at all, which I suppose I should have known from reading NA. After all, Henry Tilney—a man of the cloth—admits to reading and enjoying the novel, while John Thorpe considers it uninteresting. Unfortunately, I have to agree with the scoundrel ... if you're going to hold my attention through 700 repetitive pages of the sublime, you need to show me what's scary, not just show me someone else being scared ... especially if that character is an overly emotional, silly girl with no backbone of her own.

Janespotting: Northanger Abbey (Austen's original)

The holidays interrupted me, but finally I get to resume my examination of Austen and her imitators by moving onto her novel Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously in 1818. Why skip over Mansfield Park and Emma? First of all, NA was actually the first novel Austen actually completed and sold for publication, although the bookseller who initially purchased it decided not to publish after all, and Austen's brother Edward ended up buying back the rights. (What a comfort to us aspiring authors: even Jane Austen had problems getting published.) Second, NA is one of my favorite Austen novels, for it's her funniest. It's a parody of the gothic fiction of the time, and there's more about writing and books in it than in any of her other works. On several occasions she defends novels and the writing of them:

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it.

NA's heroine, Catherine Morland, is certainly not snobbish about novels; she devours Gothic romances like Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho with gusto. There's not much else for her to do at home in the country with her many brothers and sisters, but soon she's called to accompany her wealthy neighbors, the Allens, to Bath. Ah, Bath! Later, in Persuasion, Austen would portray this resort city as tiresome (as she herself found it), but in NA we see it full of all the fun and activity that would enchant a naive 17 year old: plays, shopping, and best of all, assemblies where one might make new acquaintances. Almost immediately Catherine makes the acquaintance of Henry Tilney, a young clergyman with a quirky wit who catches her fancy.

Not long afterward she befriends Isabella Thorpe, the daughter of one of Mrs. Allen's friends. Isabella is quick to claim her as a bosom friend, and introduces Catherine to her brother John, who is a bit crude and wild, but is also a friend of Catherine's brother James, so she tries to be polite. She would much rather spend time with Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, but Isabella and James conspire to usurp Catherine's time, even going so far as to lie in order to get her to accompany them on a drive instead of a prior engagement with the Tilneys. (This "kidnapping" scene is just one of many that parodies typical events in a gothic novel.) Still, Catherine remains close to Isabella, especially after she announces her engagement to James.

Things start to head south in Bath after Isabella discovers that James's marriage settlement will be less than she imagined ... and she imagined quite a lot, it's clear from both her attitude and James's pursuit of Catherine. Catherine, of course, remains clueless to this, just as she doesn't realize that the Tilneys have extended an invitation to their home at Northanger Abbey because General Tilney, Eleanor and Henry's father, believes her to be an heiress. Catherine is excited about the trip to the Abbey, believing it will be just as full of atmosphere as the castles and monasteries of her Gothic favorites. Henry even teases her about it on the trip there:

How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from it.

Of course, after Catherine arrives she lets her imagination run away with her. She looks into a wardrobe only to find a laundry list, and misinterprets General Tilney's reluctance for her to see the late Mrs. Tilney's rooms as something sinister. When Henry catches her peeking into his mother's rooms and intuits her thinking, she is deeply ashamed. She also wises up about the Thorpe family, after Isabella throws over James for the wealthier Captain Tilney, and then writes Catherine to intercede with James after she discovers Tilney was only playing with her. Still, Catherine is puzzled when General Tilney suddenly comes home one day and abruptly orders her out, not realizing that the General has just discovered she isn't an heiress.

She returns home, sad and puzzled, and after a few days everything is resolved quickly, in true Gothic fashion: Henry visits, appalled by his father's behavior, and proposes; Eleanor own, previously unmentioned, suitor comes into money and a title and softens General Tilney's objections; and the Thorpes fade into obscurity.

With a typical happy ending, and a whole bunch of comic subversions of the Gothic genre, why isn't NA more of a favorite with readers? My best guess is that it's because Catherine Morland is a rather unexciting heroine. Although she's honest and sweet, she's naive, not particularly witty, and ignorant. Even Austen recognized Catherine's limitations:

though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.

Personally, I love reading Northanger Abbey; it makes me giggle, all those literary subversions. It even makes me curious about all those Gothic originals ... and I'll be reading those for future "Janespotting" installments, although first I'll be visiting some of the TV adaptations. Next up: the 1987 BBC/A&E movie.

Anna Karenina: The Official Haiku Review

Finally! After three renewals, six weeks, and 850-plus pages, I have managed to finish reading Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina. It didn't take so long because I thought it was boring; it took so long because I've been very very busy. Anyway, let's get to the haiku review:

Poor Anna; she found
passion, but could have used more
mundane happiness

As the title suggests, Anna Karenina is a main focus of the novel; but the first sentence hints that she is only part of a wider story: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Besides Anna's family, which includes her boring, passionless husband and her son, there is the family of her brother Stiva, a spendthrift who cheats on his wife Dolly; Dolly's sister Kitty, who rejects the honest earnestness of Levin for the pretty face of Count Vronsky; Levin the farmer and his tubercular brother; and Vronsky and his class-conscious mother. When Anna meets Vronsky and they fall into passionate, obsessive love, it sets in motion several plot threads that end in both happiness and despair.

Anna's story is the tragic one; she finds real love and passion with Vronsky, but can never be satisfied after consummating the relationship. She becomes pregnant, the affair becomes public, and she must choose between giving up her son or giving up her lover. She chooses the former, but cannot feel at ease: she misses her son, and cannot bond with her new daughter because of it; she cannot marry Vronsky because her husband will not give her a divorce; she cannot go out in public because she has been made a pariah; and as a result she cannot stop worrying that Vronsky will abandon her and she will be left with nothing. Her anxieties eat at her, poison her relationship with Vronsky, and ultimately lead to her destruction.

This is all set in contrast with Levin's journey, and I would argue that Levin is really the main character of the novel, with Anna serving mostly as contrast and object lesson. Levin is of the nobility, but makes his living farming and is always seeking ways to improve things—not just for his own profit, but for those who work for them. He is a man of deep and sometimes contrary thoughts, which we see laid out in great detail as he considers farming, Russian politics, religion, and love. After Vronsky's affair with Anna, Kitty reconsiders Levin's suit and eventually marries him. This brings Levin great joy and great pain, as he must fight his jealous impulses and learn to be a good husband. In the eighth and final part of the book (in which Anna does not appear, as she met her end in Part Seven), we see Levin enjoying the mundane happiness of family life, appreciating his new son, and discovering his faith. Levin seems to be a stand-in for Tolstoy, who wrote about religious struggles of his own, and it's hard not find Levin the book's hero as he concludes that his discovery of faith may not change his character, but now "my whole life, regardles of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!"

One last note on Anna Karenina: yes, it's very long. Yes, it's filled with details about farming, Russian politics, social movements, and religious musings. But unlike Melville in Moby Dick, Tolstoy knows how to make these interesting. We consider all these topics through the eyes and mind of Levin, who is continually struggling to make sense of the world. Where Melville's narrator gives us endless lists about whale parts, Tolstoy's Levin considers what new farming techniques mean to him as a landowner, an employer, even a human being. Anna Karenina has the quality of good historical fiction, where the details transport us into another world and another life, rather than bore us into a stupor.

So, you might have noticed it's now the fall. So much for my good intentions of reading lots of foreign-language classics for this summer's Remedial Lit Project. All those French classics will have to wait until next summer. I'm going to take a few weeks to read just for fun (I've also spent the last six weeks reading biographies for work), and then I'll bring back Janespotting. The library just ordered a copy of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (!), and then I think I'm moving on to Northanger Abbey and its offspring.

Faust, Part Two: The Official Haiku Review

Because Goethe wrote his masterpiece Faust in two parts, that's how I decided to read and review it. The first part was a little confusing—at least, it wasn't what I expected at all. Goethe took over twenty years to write the second part, about ten years fewer than the first. Was it any clearer? Here's my official review:

Gretchen fails? Helen
May tempt the cranky old fart.
Never mind. God wins.

As you may recall from my review of part one, I was a bit perplexed that the Devil would tempt Faust—a scientist seeking ultimate truth—with nothing more than a tasty young morsel of German maidenhood. It didn't work, although we did see the poor girl rescued by angels after Faust abandoned her, accidentally killed her family, and left her pregnant. Faust went on, and Mephistopheles had to come up with a new approach to claim the scientist's soul. I eagerly anticipated a new strategy ... and instead saw the devil playing around with an emperor (presumably that of Germany) by advising him to sell shares in the treasures that lie buried on his lands. While these passages were amusing, reminding me of recent shady Wall Street shenanigans, Faust doesn't even appear until scene four, after a bunch of strange, mythological appearances. Then, challenged by the emperor to do something amazing, he conjures Helen of Troy, and of course falls promptly in love with her.

At this point, Satan is not striking me as a very creative character. In Act Two he uses Faust's dusty old study to create a homunculus, or artificial person, who eventually leads Faust to another crazy Walpurgis Night, this one inhabited by all sorts of figures from Greek mythology. Act Three, Faust finally wins Helen, by defending her castle from intruders. They reside happily in Arcadia until their son Euphorion appears, fully grown, only to fall to his death after trying to reach the sun, like Icarus. (It really helps to have read your Greek mythology before reading Faust.) Faust returns to the emperor and helps him achieve military victory in Act Four. Good for the emperor, but Faust doesn't seem to think it a big deal.

That leaves Act Five for Satan to try to claim Faust's soul. Does he offer understanding of the universe? No, we just see Faust as a cranky old man, ignoring the hospitality of Philemon and Baucis (another Greek story about hospitality) and pooh-poohing the military/political power he has gained from the emperor:

I merely raced across the earth,
Seized by the hair each passing joy,
Discarding all that did not satisfy;
What slipped my grasp, I let it go again
I have merely desire, achieved, and then
Desired some other thing. Thus I have stormed
Through life; at first with pride and violence,
But now less rashly, with more sober sense.
I've seen enough of this terrestrial sphere.
There is no view to the Beyond from here.

After that Faust glimpses a moment of bliss and dies, thwarting Satan's bet because he technically did not achieve perfect satisfaction. Since choruses of angels come down to argue the point and collect Faust's soul, Heaven triumphs, winning a wager that framed Satan's interactions with Faust. So never mind that Faust committed adultery and murder, God wins the bet so he goes to heaven!

If you're confused, join the club. It was evident that Faust is a work that was written over a lifetime, because it can't seem to make up its mind on anything. What's the plot? There doesn't seem to be much to the story beyond re-creating classic myths. Who's the hero? Faust the character is missing from half the story; Mephistopheles has the best part (if you were actually going to perform it as a play), but he loses in the end. I'm not sure why Faust is considered a classic; it may not successfully explored modern issues, but at least it made a very grand attempt. And it's hard to argue with Faust's conclusion, that modern man is never satisfied but is always striving for something.

As far as judging Faust as a work of poetry, there I'm in the dark. The library couldn't be bothered to purchase translations by the same person, so this time I had an Oxford University
Press translation by David Luke. While the Peter Salm translation of part one eschewed poetic scheme for keeping meaning, this translation goes all out in trying to reproduce the poetic effects. Rhyming couplets, varying rhythms, it's all there—and often to distracting effect. With great poetry (like the Dante translation I read last month), the rhyme sneaks in, enhancing the words and playing with sound. With mediocre poetry, you get distracted by the rhyme and the sing-songy rhythm as you overlook the rest of the words to get to the couplet. So I found it a lot harder to get into this translation than the other one, which had music and meaning to it even though it didn't rhyme.

There, I've spent almost as much brain power writing this entry and trying to figure out Faust as I did actually reading the stupid thing. But next time I'm going Russian: Anna Karenina is up, and hopefully it won't take me the rest of the summer to read it. All 50,000 pages of it.

The Inferno: The Official Haiku* Review

*I lie, it's actually terza rima, but that title doesn't scan as well.

This summer I decided to resume my Remedial Lit Project by covering those classic authors of Western literature who didn't write in English. Sure, I hit Homer and Aeschylus and all those Greeks back in my college Great Books class, and I had great British literature coming out of my ears, but unless they were written in Spanish I didn't get much in the way of foreign-language classics. So last year, after boning up on American classics, I decided I really needed to broaden my basics.

First up is The Inferno by Dante Aligheri (1265-1321), the Italian poet considered one of the founders of Italian literature. His Divine Comedy, of which The Inferno is the first part, is considered one of the world's greatest epic poems. As you can probably tell from the title, The Inferno is Dante's portrait of hell, told via 34 cantos (aka chapters) of terza rima stanzas. (Terza rima=three-line stanzas, rhyme pattern aba / bcb / cdc / ded / efe / fgf / and so on and so on.) In tribute to the original verse, I offer my review in this poetic format:

So Dante takes a little tour of Hell
Sees devils, sinners, and the river Styx
Escapes above to Italy to tell

Of beasts and images that would transfix
The reader, were he not compelled to add
A ton of old Venetian politics.

So all in all, I'd say it's not half bad.

Even if you've never read Dante, you're probably familiar with some of the concepts he elaborates: the virtuous heathens of Limbo (including his guide, the Roman poet Virgil); the gluttons wading in a river of waste; the suicides transformed into thorny trees; the false prophets walking around with their heads on backwards. The torments he concocts for the many different kinds of sinners are both inventive and appropriate. It would be a very fascinating exploration of human sin, except almost all his examples were contemporary figures from his home city of Florence, from which he was exiled in his mid-thirties. I was forced to continually refer to the detailed notes, to figure out whether Ugolino was a Guelph or a Ghibelline, and if the former, whether he was a Black or White Guelph, and whether he was loyal or a turncoat, and ... you get the idea. It was a weird combination of familiar Greek mythology and alien Italian politics, and it was just hard to wrap my head around it.

Of course, I didn't read this in the original Italian. I was lucky enough to stumble upon the 2002 translation by the Irish poet Ciaran Carson, who not only reproduces the rhythm of the original (an approximation of iambic pentameter, the old "la-DAH la-DAH la-DAH la-DAH la-DAH"), he also gets the rhyme. This may mean that his translation is a bit loose in some places, but the sounds! Check out the beginning of Canto III, when Dante is reading the engraving above the portal to Hell:

"Through me, into the city full of woe
through me, the message of eternal pain;
through me, the passage where the lost souls go.

Justice moved my Maker in his high domain
Power Divine and Primal Love built me;
and Supreme Wisdom; I will aye remain.

Before me there was nothing made to be,
except eternity; eternal I shall endure;
all hope abandon, ye who go through me."

Zowie. The whole thing is full of similar instances of beautiful wordsmithing—and it's not all as high-falutin' as the above example, there are also some wonderfully earthy lines as well. If you're of a mind to check out Dante, I highly recommend this version.

Janespotting: Sense and Sensibility (Austen's original)

I'm giving P&P pastiches a rest for a while and moving on to Sense and Sensibility and the works it has inspired. Perhaps I should say I'm moving back, as S&S was the first novel Austen wrote (as Elinor and Marianne at the age of 19) and also the first novel Austen published, anonymously in 1811 (when she was 35, after a long process). This is one of the novels that I didn't read early on. I first experienced the story via the 1995 film adapted by and starring Emma Thompson, a film I found so delightful that it immediately sent me back to the original text. Having first encountered it in that context, I still find it hard to read and think about Austen's original without having the film in mind ... but I shall try.

A brief summary: The three Dashwood sisters and their recently widowed mother find themselves losing their home, which has been bequeathed to their elder half-brother. (It is the same situation that Mrs. Bennet fears in P&P, making her so obsessed with marrying off her daughters.) With their avaricious sister-in-law Fanny now mistress of the house, the Dashwoods look to find a new living situation, and eventually move to Devonshire—but not before the eldest sister, Elinor, falls in love with Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars. Edward is heir to a fine estate, but Fanny has made it clear the family expects him to marry highly, so Elinor does not believe an offer of marriage will come her way any time soon. She is the sensible one in the family, often having to encourage her mother to economize, and she will not indulge her feelings when they may come to nothing.

Her younger sister Marianne, however, is an emotional girl full of romantic (small and big R) notions. She pooh-poohs the need to control her feelings, and when she meets the dashing (of course) Mr. Willoughby, she soon falls head over heels and doesn't care who knows it. Obviously she embodies the "sensibility" of the title, while Elinor represents "sense." Both girls find themselves in the same situation: in love with a man who, it turns out, is not free to marry them. Elinor responds by keeping her feelings secret, even when she becomes the unwilling confidente of Edward's scheming fiancée. Marianne, on the other hand, indulges her emotions, refuses to eat, and eventually becomes ill and nearly dies. In the end, both girls find love and marriage: Elinor through her steadfast devotion and convenient plot twists, and Marianne by acquiring sense and learning to appreciate a worthy man who was close by all along.

As I re-read the book, I tried not to envision the film—just focus on the text, I told myself. I found it difficult, and I think it's because of the the conflict inherent in characters Austen chose to represent the contrasting viewpoints of the title. Elinor's viewpoint wins out in the end, but Elinor herself is a restrained character, with little sparkle or wit, always having to be the voice of reason. Marianne, on the other hand, is beautiful, musically talented, passionately articulate, and modern in her outlook. So while Elinor's behavior is more sympathetic, she's not as appealing a character as Marianne. I know some people are unsure about how to feel about the end, when Marianne accepts a man she previously overlooked as too old and boring. Has she been tamed? Is she settling? I don't really think so, because Colonel Brandon's character is shown as sweet, faithful, and intelligent from the beginning of the book. But there still seems to be a little something lacking.

Of course, there is still plenty of wit and amusement in the minor characters. The scene where Fanny Dashwood convinces her husband that his promise to take care of his sisters shouldn't mean more than an occasional basket of fruit or piece of game is priceless. Many minor characters provide tons of fun through their inappropriate behavior (as is typical for Austen). And while I may have mixed feelings about the characters themselves, the journeys they make are interesting and emotionally satisfying. So overall, I consider this mid-range Austen: not my favorite, but not at the bottom of my list. And mid-range Austen is still better than any modern romantic fiction I might encounter.

A last note, about editions. There are tons of versions of each Austen novel out there, some cheaper, some more detailed, some fancier than others. The one I have I picked up at a very small bookstore (the only one within half an hour of where I lived at the time, long defunct) so I could use the cover for work. Now, this edition came out shortly after the 1995 film, from a publisher who normally focuses on genre fiction but had recently decided to branch out into young adult. So, take a classic romance that's public domain (no royalties to pay, yay!), slap a girly cover with frilly dresses and secretive whispers on it, and boom! Extra money! Of course, they would have done better to pay a little more for their foreword. The more expensive editions get literature professors to write their forewords. This one ... I'm not sure who it was, but I don't think they'd read the novel recently. It says, "Elinor, the eldest sister, is engaged to be married to conservative Edward Ferrars...." Well, no, she isn't, that's the whole point of the book! Then it says, "Marianne, the younger sister, is smitten with Holloway, a man of dubious lineage." Well, no, it's Willoughby—I don't think there's any character named Holloway in any Austen novel—and he isn't of dubious lineage, just behavior. I should just tear that page out of my book so the next time I read it I don't start it in a bad mood. Or else spring for a new edition with a real foreword. Because, of course, I will read it again (and again) in the future.

Janespotting: Pride and Prejudice (Austen's original)

Of course I have to start my Janespotting feature with Austen's Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1813. Although it wasn't her first novel written or published, it is first in the hearts of most Austen fans I've met. Austen sets the stage with her opening sentence: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." After this wry observation, we are introduced to the Bennet family, who have five daughters and no sons; with the estate legally obligated to pass to a male heir, this means marriage is the only means for the Bennet girls to maintain, let alone improve, their lot in life. So when the aforementioned rich, single Mr. Bingley comes to their neighborhood, Mrs. Bennet is determined one of her daughters should snag him. It is likely to be Jane, the eldest, who is so beautiful and virtuous we should hate her, but her kind heart and sensible nature make it impossible to inspire anything but fondness. (And when she finally does snag Mr. Bingley, we rejoice for her.)

Jane is the favorite sister of the second Bennet daughter, Elizabeth, aka Lizzy. Lizzy Bennet is one of Austen's most beloved heroines, and for good reason: she has all the good qualities we ourselves would like to have. She is pretty but modest about her talents, similar to Jane. She is witty and can take a joke, unlike middle sister Mary. She is also sensible when it comes to romance: she is determined she will only marry for love, but she is not obsessed with men, unlike youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia. Although she is introduced to our romantic hero, Mr. Darcy, in the third chapter of the book, she is unmoved by his wealth and status or even his avowed love for her until the last third of the book. Lizzy does make mistakes—it is her prejudice that leads her to overlook Mr. Darcy's good qualities—but she triumphs over them at the end. Who wouldn't want to be Lizzy: intelligent, independent, humorous, pretty, and lucky in love?

Some people will admit to preferring other Austen heroines, especially Emma, but I've rarely heard someone choose anyone other than Mr. Darcy as their favorite Austen hero. Now, that might have something to do with Colin Firth's swoonworthy portrayal in the 1995 BBC miniseries, but somehow I don't think so. It isn't just that Mr. Darcy is handsome, rich, and has excellent taste in women—how could we not love him when he is so head-over-heels with our beloved Lizzy? No, I think Darcy's appeal boils down to the journey his character takes during the course of the novel.

Think about it. We see Darcy through Lizzy's eyes, and he begins the novel by overlooking her and demonstrating his arrogance. When he first proposes to her, he expects to be accepted and is surprised at Lizzy's refusal. She tells him, "From the first moment ... of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable dislike."

Wow. That's pretty harsh. But does Darcy turn ugly, become a stalker, or refuse to think of her again? No: he listens to what Elizabeth has to say, and then he changes his behavior in order to win her. (And she didn't even have to ask, let alone nag!! You didn't know Austen wrote fantasy, did you?*) After Lizzy gratefully accepts his second proposal, he tells her, "What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased." So in Mr. Darcy we have a man of mostly good qualities who is inspired by love to reform his few bad ones. No wonder we find him so appealing, and why Pride and Prejudice has been a favorite with generations of readers.

Oh, and also popular with generations of filmmakers; I'm going to check out film adaptations of P&P next. First up: the 1940 MGM production with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier.

*I'm kidding, of course. I generally have a good opinion of the male gender. And who knows, after they got married Darcy might have annoyed Lizzy by constantly ruining his clothes taking dips in Pemberley's pond.

What is Janespotting?

So I mentioned the other day that I was going to start a new feature in my blog, with the strange title of "Janespotting." It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I'm a big fan of Jane Austen, author of such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and several shorter and/or unfinished pieces. Many people are devotees of Austen—especially many of us literary types, it seems. Not only do many editors profess their love for Jane, but many authors admire Austen so much they create new novels (and series!) inspired by her work. Filmmakers can't stop making adaptations; last year PBS devoted a whole Masterpiece season to her work, and there have even been films based on her life. I'm a sucker for all things Jane, so "Janespotting" is going to be my excuse for revisiting her novels and exploring the myriad adaptations and reworkings she has inspired.

First, I have to make a confession: I did not always love Jane so well as I do now. But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable.* That's right, I wasn't one of the girls who had a dogeared copy of Pride and Prejudice that she had read ten times by the time she was sixteen. I wasn't a very girly girl, and during my teenage years my reading consisted almost entirely of fantasy and science fiction, leavened by the occasional YA classic by authors like Paul Zindel. And look at my copy of P&P, which I probably acquired during college: it looks like the box for a feminine hygiene product from the '70s. I didn't want to read something prettified and girly, all simpering and dances with no fun to it.

Now, if I had known that Jane Austen heroines had nothing to do with simpering and that her narrators were dripping with wit, I probably would have got around to reading all her books before I reached my 30s. But it took a couple of really excellent movie adaptations (especially Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility) for me to delve more deeply into her oeuvre. (Of course I had read Austen in college, Emma being the professors' favorite, but I hadn't been inspired to go further.) And now, like many latecoming fans, I tend to be more rabid than some who may have been lifelong devotees. But perhaps that's why I'm not a purist, and can enjoy an adaptation even if it cuts a few characters or scenes that might be my favorites. I guess we'll see—and I do hope you'll join me for some fun discussions.

Coming up first (and soon): Pride and Prejudice, the original book.

*Pride and Prejudice, vol. 3, chap. 17

O Pioneers!: The Official Haiku Review

It's amazing the difference one word (and ninety years) can make. It took me three weeks and much toil to get through James Fenimore Cooper's 1823 novel The Pioneers. It took me less than two days to devour Willa Cather's 1913 novel O Pioneers! So without further ado (or complaint), here is my official Haiku Review:

For her, the land is
work, love, grief, poetry, self
Land is life; life, land.

Cather's short novel follows one woman over twenty years as she tries to make a success of her family's Nebraska farm. Sounds terribly exciting, right? But listen to how Cather turns the prairie into poetry:

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab building huddles on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that after this opening description Cather soon recounts the story of a kitten being rescued (awwwww!), but she punctuates her entire story with similar examples of beautiful writing. Her main character, Alexandra Bergson, isn't stunningly beautiful or spunky or clever; she seems an ordinary farmgirl, albeit one with dedication, determination, and a willingness to take risks. Despite her older brothers' hesitance to adopt newfangled techniques, Alexandra brings prosperity to her farm through canny management. It allows her younger brother to go to college and leave Alexandra and the land behind. There seems to be no room for adventure or grand passions in her life, but she sees that such passions can bring tragedy. In the end, she has love and her farm (although her older brothers attempt to take it from her—bad men, grrr!), and the simple life suits her: "We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while."

Beyond the pure beauty of her words, Cather's talent is to portray the essence of her subjects in just a few scenes. The novel is less than 200 pages long, but I felt I learned more about her characters and their Nebraska farmlands than I did from Cooper's 450 pages. After finishing I immediately wanted to hit the library and find Cather's other books. Of course, they will have to wait for the end of the summer, after I read a couple more American classics. But it does make me wonder what other marvels I have missed.

The Pioneers: The Official Haiku Review

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I'd been having trouble making my way through the overgrown forest that is James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers. It's really not my fault; even the great Mark Twain opined that Cooper broke several literary rules, explaining: "I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote." I guess I should be glad I picked The Pioneers to read instead of The Deerslayer. And I did finish it, despite the struggle. So here is my Official Haiku Review:

Earth and her bounty
Are not a way to keep score
We should be stewards

The Pioneers was the first of the Leatherstocking Tales to be written, but it falls last chronologically. It is set in 1793 in upstate New York, lately civilized by men such as local judge Marmaduke Temple (Cooper has some great names, at least). The new roads and towns and laws are making life difficult for the elderly Natty Bumppo (aka the Leatherstocking, aka the Deerslayer), who lives off the land much as the dwindling Native American population used to. The book opens with Bumppo and Temple arguing over which one of them shot a deer (and thus owns the carcass). This argument lasts a long time—they and other characters rehash it several times, much to my intense boredom—but it is representative of a larger problem: who owns the land and its resources? Bumppo used to hunt and fish at will; now Temple insists he observe a hunting season. This leads to a confrontation that enlivens the last 100 pages of the book. (Why is it only the last 100 pages? sigh.)

Ironically, while Temple tries to control the land and restrict Bumppo's hunting, he agrees with the old hunter when it comes to the wasteful ways of other townspeople. Instead of catching only the fish they need to eat, the locals use nets to trap the biggest fish, leaving the smaller ones to go to waste. When a pigeon migration flies overhead, the locals see it as sport, shooting as many as they can and leaving most of the meat to rot. Temple even worries that the trees may be overharvested. Of course, Temple's concern isn't purely out of love of nature; he is biggest landowner in the county, and depleted lands could lose their value.

Interestingly enough, there is a romance in the novel that almost exactly parallels the one in The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne's classic that I read last month. Of course, the novel's resolution favors white landowners like Temple; it's no great spoiler to tell you that the two characters who are closest to the land end up either die or move west at the close of the novel. Maybe Cooper thought this was progress, or Manifest Destiny; maybe he thought it was a tragedy. (He published the novel in 1823, less than a decade before the Trail of Tears forced the relocation of most of the South's Native Americans to the west of the Mississippi.) I can't really tell; either the author is too subtle for my poor understanding, or else Twain was right:

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are–oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language. Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

American Lit 2, Poor Me 1

So I've been following the lead of my friend Jacqui in her Remedial Literature Project, trying to get caught up on some of those American authors and novels I somehow missed when I was farting around playing Lode Runner immersed in British and Latin American Lit in college. I'm not nearly as ambitious as Jacqui, trying to read one book a week; I've got other important things to read, like the latest for my children's book club (checking out the competition) and Entertainment Weekly's New Classics! the newspapers and newsweeklies I need to keep up on local elections and various important events in the world.

So if you've been following my blog, you'll know so far I liked Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, while Meville's Moby Dick totally kicked my ass. So I turned to James Fenimore Cooper, author of the classic Leatherstocking Tales, to break the tie. The Pioneers (1823) is the first and most realistic of the Tales, and made Cooper an international success. One critic called it his masterpiece. As a bonus, I was pretty sure there weren't going to be any chapters on whale heads.

I'm sad to report, however, that for me, reading The Pioneers is like undergoing "advanced interrogation techniques" at Gitmo. It may not technically be torture, but it sure feels like it. I'm a third of a way through the book, and so far Judge Marmaduke Temple has shot and grazed a young woodsman while trying to hit a deer. Then he argued with Natty Bumppo (aka Leatherstocking) about whether the deer was his or not. Then they took the young woodsman home to treat his minor wounds while they argued some more. Then they went to church. Then they went to the pub, where they argued about both the sermon and the deer. It's like Cooper decided to avoid breaking the classic literary rule of "Show, don't tell" by both showing and telling. (And I hate to break it to you, but having people sit around discussing what just happened counts as "telling," even if it is dialogue.)

That might not be so bad if he didn't break another rule regarding dialogue, namely, MAKE IT READABLE. Let's say you have a character who you want to portray as "uneducated." Ya cud do it by makin' everythin' he says drop a 'postrophe in ever' friggin' word, until yer reader feels like 'e is drownin' in 'postrophes. Or you could throw in a few choice words like "reckon" and "yonder" and the reader will supply the right voice.

Now, I understand that Cooper is trying to portray the diversity of the New York frontier. (It is set in 1793, back when New York state was the frontier.) There are immigrants from all over: a German major, a French gentleman, and an Irish barmaid, not to mention an African-American slave and the Native American John Mohegan. And Cooper had the right idea with the Monsieur, who speaks half in French, half in legible English. But then I had to endure the following within the space of two pages:

German major: "Ter teer is not so plenty as in ter old war, Pumppo; put ter lant is not mate as for ter teer to live on, put for Christians." Holy crap. At least I had the clue they were already talking about deer (teer), but mate for made? Put for But? Someone get me an aspirin.

Irish barmaid: "It's varry pratty men is the French; and jist when I stopt the cart, ... to kape the rig'lers in, a rigiment of the jontlemen marched by." I guess she's saying something nice about French soldiers, but exactly what is beyond me. If I have to stop to decipher what your characters are saying, I'm not reading anymore, I'm translating. And that's work.

Stubborn person that I am, I do plan on finishing The Pioneers. I'm pretty sure I know one of the major themes—who owns the land's bounty—and I think there might be a romance hidden among all the discussion about the deer. Here's hoping it's not so much more work to uncover it.

The House of the Seven Gables: The Official Haiku Review

After struggling through Moby Dick's 700 whale-detail-filled pages, it was a pleasant change of pace to open up Nathaniel Hawthorne's 300-page romance. (Strangely enough, it was published the same year, 1851, as Melville's epic, which he dedicated to Hawthorne "in token of my admiration for his genius.") So here is my Official Haiku Review:

Aristocracy
Suits not the New World's temper
Love is the best wealth

Granted, there were some places where Hawthorne's prose approached the lavender, if not downright purple. But this story, which on the surface is about a New England family cursed by an ancestor's greedy land grab, really explores the American temperament of the mid-1800s. Were we to be a country where family wealth or prestige (for good or ill) predetermined the course of our lives? Or were we to truly embrace the brave American experiment, where "all men are created equal" and an individual could achieve his own destiny through hard work and determination? It is clear where Hawthorne stands on the matter. That he explores these questions through a story which involves mystery and romance made it all the more fun to read. It may not be a grand epic, but I'm glad I included it in my summer Remedial Lit Project. I think next I shall tackle another American writer I overlooked, JF Cooper, and see if he breaks the tie.

Moby Dick: The Official Haiku Review

Finally. Two weeks after this post about how I was floundering around in Moby Dick, I have finished reading! And here is my official Remedial Lit Project Haiku Review of Melville's masterpiece:

Melville and Ahab
Both obsessed with great sperm whales
In deadly detail.

Now, in fairness, I can see why this novel has the reputation of an American classic. The last 100 pages are splendid. Some lovely descriptions, a sense of foreboding and passion driving the plot, great action, a tragic conclusion. (Whoops. I hope I didn't spoil the ending for you. You were thinking Ahab and Moby made up their differences and sailed off into the sunset together, right?) And the first 100 pages were pretty entertaining, too, as Melville introduced some interesting characters and how they find themselves enlisted in the Pequod's doomed voyage.

However, I can also see how easy it would be to make one of those "Abridged Illustrated Classics" out of the novel. Simply cut out the many, many chapters with such scintillating titles: "Cetology"; "Monstrous Pictures of Whales"; "Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales"; "Of Whales in Paint, in Teeth, etc." (those last three were consecutive, ye gods!); "The Whale as a Dish"; "The Sperm Whale's Head"; "The Right Whale's Head"; "The Tail," and so on, and so on, and so on and on and on. Now, as I wrote before, I can understand the need for some of this detail. Melville's contemporaries truly would have had no idea what whales were like--the immensity and scale of them, the hard work of harvesting them (shudder), the dangers of life at sea. And at times Melville writes compellingly on these subjects. But too many times the details aren't so compelling--they're overwhelming. It's like the college lecturer who drones on and on for an hour, only to get to the really interesting and important stuff in the last ten minutes of class.

Still, through perseverance and pure stubbornness, I managed to finish. I can now say, Yes! I barely survived have read Moby Dick!

Now onto Hawthorne, to whom Meville dedicated MD, "in token of my admiration for his genius." Let's hope he didn't inspire that dogged devotion to detail.

Floundering around in Moby *expletive deleted*

So, inspired again by my pal Jacqui, I decided to participate in her summer remedial literature project. After all, despite the numerous classic novels I read during my college days--and sometimes on my own, just to feel virtuous--there are a quite a few gaps in my education. (Especially in American lit, due to the particular bias of my degree program.) Anyway, Melville's "Moby Dick" suggested itself pretty quickly. First of all, everyone seemed to have avoided reading that one, although everyone knows it's about a big white whale. And hey, they quoted it in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," and that was a pretty cool movie. If it inspired an upper-division Trek flick, how boring could it be?

Oh. My. Lord.

Now, one thing I will grant MD is that the chapters are short. Sometimes very short--less than a page. So I'm feeling like I'm making progress, because I'm on chapter 48 (out of 135), even though I've only been reading bits here and there. Unfortunately, I'm on chapter 48 and they've only been at sea a couple of days. I thought this book was about chasing a white whale, so what gives? The character sketches have been pretty interesting, but why the 10-page chapters classifying different kinds of whales, and talking about whales through history, and recounting tales of whales attacking ships? It seems like Ahab is not the only one obsessed with whales, I thought to myself.

Then I really thought about the why behind all this seemingly dull information. When Melville was writing, his audience had no real idea what whales looked like. There was no Discovery Channel HD to show us whales in all their glory, both above and below the water. There was no Sea World so that landlubbers could see Shamu in action. The best any of his readers might do, assuming they weren't whalers themselves, was to catch a glimpse of a fin at a distance off shore, or in rare cases see a beached or butchered specimen. So the idea of a whale as large as a ship, one that could attack people and destroy boats, must have seemed pretty fantastic. For Melville's contemporaries, reading about the different types of whales and their capabilities might have been as captivating as reading about hippogriffs, phoenixes, and spells in the latest Harry Potter is for us.

So, a couple of lessons for me in this observation. The first is to have a little patience with ol' Moby, and try to see the sense of wonder that Melville was trying to create with these descriptions. (It wasn't like I was going to quit the book without finishing, I can be particularly stubborn when it comes to books. And maybe the best part is at the end.)

The second lesson applies to my own writing, especially fantasy: I may have lots of details to share with you about this world I've created, but don't spend ten *expletive deleted* pages on mere details!