The 'Failure' of Henry James's New York Edition - Eric Leuschner

You might not have heard of Coralie Bickford-Smith, but I can guarantee that as someone who's visiting this blog you've seen, and most likely coveted, her work (and I posted a link to her incredible Fitzgerald editions a few weeks ago). Reading through the first half of this essay I was reminded of Bickford-Smith's various Penguin editions, and wondered what exactly they say about the buyer and the work. Someone else in the course (I forget who, I'm sorry!) has suggested that the orange Penguin editions act as a kind of 'uniform' for the books, putting each text on a level playing field, at least aesthetically. On the contrary, I think all of Penguin's editions act in exactly the opposite way, by marking out a text as worthy. You can pick up any of these, they say, and you'll be on the money (the cultural currency money, that is). Bickford-Smith's editions go beyond that, and distinguish the texts (since she generally designs for older, well-established works like Oliver Twist, Moby Dick etc.) not only from other books, but from other copies of the same book. Her designs flatter not only your taste in books, but your aesthetic tastes as well. The hardcover copy of Great Expectations with the chandeliers all over says something quite different to the sombre black spined Penguin Classics paperback.

I'm talking about these editions here because I think they are the modern equivalent of the collected editions Leuschner is talking about. They allow you to put your own stamp on the author, to make a claim on the text, by choosing an edition that reflects you and your own tastes, and to a certain extent your own perceptions of what the text is. My understanding of what Great Expectations is will lead me to choose either the black Classics edition or the graphic clothbound Bickford-Smith edition. This way of looking at the notion of the edition was the only way I could comprehend how on the one hand Leuschner could be saying that the collected editions allow the collector to have the author 'visit', and on the other that this is a 'form that implicitly erases the author.'

At first I thoroughly disagreed with the latter argument. How could an edition of an author's collected works, with his monogram on the cover and his initials watermarked on every page, possibly 'erase' the author? Obviously the form elevates the author, in this case James, but it does so by selling him to a discerning audience. The book's physical form is clearly the most important marker in this commodity.

However, I wouldn't be as quick as Leuschner to write off the importance of binding, as he does in the first half of this essay by quoting rather facetiously from Victorian articles defending expensive editions over cheap paperbacks. Yes, an expensive or particularly attractive binding is a marketing ploy. But a cheap binding is one as well, and a book deserves decent binding. I've been complaining that I picked up the new Jonathan Franzen book and at $33 the cover still feels like the cover of a proof, cheap and flimsy. And that is a big book, it's going to take a beating. I'll still buy it, of course, because the content is more important than the cover, but I don't think books are such a sacred metaphysical experience that their physical trappings can be altogether ignored.

By the way, I thought the difference between the public Henry James, calling his readers 'monsters' and himself a 'conjuror', and the private James writing to his publishers, 'The whole is a perfect felicity, so let us go on rejoicing', was incredible. I know I'm not supposed to, but I find the figure of James himself completely fascinating, he seems such an intriguing character. Seriously, Henry James, what is he LIKE?

Contingencies of Value - Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Well, I certainly chose a humdinger for my second blog. 'I'll pick this one,' she says. 'Never mind that it's a million trillion pages long,' she says.

So, I learnt (or re-learnt) a lot of very nice words from this reading, including 'axiological', 'hermeneutic' and 'hypostasization', and for that I thank Smith. But I was, like I'm sure many were, a wee bit skeptical about the proposed 'project' of devising 'descriptions and accounts of all the other phenomena and activities involved in literary and aesthetic evaluation in relation to our more general understanding... of human culture and behavior.' What a grand idea! I thought perhaps it might work as an approach to the evaluation of a text, perhaps as an alternative branch of theoretical investigation, but as a project? The mind, it boggles. So really, although I sympathised to a certain extent with her criticism of the rather teleological way the canon is built and defended ('We've always called this a classic, and thus it's a classic') I couldn't help but see all that came after in the light of this monstrous task I knew she was proposing.

One part I found interesting in a lot of ways was the idea, which I've recognised in many forms before, that any attempt to instill 'utility' in a piece of 'literature' or 'art' is to 'misuse' it. 'Utility' here is opposed to the 'function' Smith describes later, such as serving mankind etc., I mean rather by 'utility' a more pragmatic usage which is considered outside of the object's original function. This made me think, since I'm a fan of design blogs which feature a lot of DIY, about all the uses I've seen over the years for old books which aren't going to be read. Strap them together and make a table, they say. Fold the pages back in sections and make a nice little stand for a pot plant. Rip all the pages out and use them to decoupage something. And without fail, on every single one of those project posts, there will be a bunch of hysterical, 'You can't do that to BOOKS! THAT'S BLASPHEMY!' comments. I know this is a very literal interpretation of the idea of a functional misuse of an object which is supposed to have unquestionable intrinsic value, but I thought it was an interesting point considering that the overarching topic seems to be the danger of assuming value and 'mystifying' canonical works. Those commenters are 'the reading public', and they obviously have a pretty strong idea of the value inherent in a published work, regardless of which particular work it is (I made a pot stand out of Anna Karenina. I apologise for nothing). An idea, I suppose Smith would suggest, that has been instilled in them by the elevation of the book as an item of intrinsic value by the professional reading class.

I found Smith's arguments regarding the ways value is ascribed to be fairly convincing, but I would be interested to read much more about the ways she would collect and document all the contingencies she lists on which axiological judgement is based, for individuals and the academy. I could certainly see from an anecdotal perspective how those contingencies would naturally affect any reading, even a later reading of the same text, because I know I do that myself all the time. But I really fail to see how they could possibly be collated in any useful or empirical way.

Bunnehz

My one and only - via Today + Tomorrow 

This is what it's like inside my head right now. The end of semester really brings out the corgi video Googling, Armstrong + Miller watching (those three are ALL awesome and so is this one, but it's NSFW/ NSF-aged parents/ small children on account of there's loads of swears) generally procrastinating slackabout in me. Oh and here's an article ABOUT procrastination from the New Yorker if you want to feel intelligent while wasting time. You're welcome. The conclusion: meh. Everybody does it. No biggie.

             So, am I gonna do any study now?

Jon Hamm says no. Jon Hamm is always right.

Onward with the links then! What else do I have... oh, today I saw this video, which I know I'm a little behind the times with since the artist's site says it was exhibited earlier this year, but I just LOVE TiltShift, because I'm a hipster like that, and I think this is so adorable. I don't know if that's how artists envisage their work being described, but there you are. I think it's adorable. TiltShift is a technique which removes the effect of atmosphere from an image and blurs the edges so there's a clear focus on a small area, which makes a picture of normal sized stuff look miniature (and adorable!). And what do you know, there's an app for that!

And finally, youse guys, if you haven't checked out Allie Brosh's blog you are missing an EXCELLENT procrastination tool. She's a treasure. Almost as treasured as Jon Hamm.

Lit theory links

I just found this link to a... fable? Tale? Short story? (I'm not sure yet) By 'the Master', Henry James, called The Private Life. It would seem his underlying interest in this piece is the link, or rather the lack of a link, between the creator and the work created. Haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I thought it was rather apt, all things considered.
I also just read this article about the Chatterley trial and the way it forced authors to staunchly defend a text they actually found rather tedious, which totally vindicated my hatred of D.H Lawrence and inability to read Lady Chatterley. Victory to me!
Apparently we modern student slackabouts are too lazy and stupid to read an entire book, and in the future university literature courses will only feature 'the best bits' of books. Sounds OK to me if the set text was by D.H Lawrence. In which case the 'best of' selection would be about 300 words.
In less serious book related trivia, these posters, with scenes from famous books created out of the text, are SO. AWESOME. I want the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea one.
Even less seriously, this is the funniest video I've seen in a LONG time (and although it features minor nudity it's really not at all NSFW, unless your boss hates hillbillies. AND FUN).

What Maisie Knew

Henry James won't leave me alone this semester. One of my students is reading The Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew is set for one subject, and one of the novels for another English subject is The Line of Beauty, which is heavy on the Jamesian influence. As stalker authors go James ain't so bad, it would really suck, for example, to be stalked by D.H Lawrence, whose books I would like to fling out the window of a swiftly moving train, and who I'm sure is super creepy in person.

There are aspects of James' writing style which I thoroughly detested in reading Portrait, not least the characterisation of Isabel Archer, who I found insufferable (mostly, anyway). But another thing is his endless explication of stuff you would prefer to be shown through action, dialogue, connotation, etc. I find it disconcerting to be continually told, for example, that Gilbert Osmond's mind is like a shadowy room from which she cannot escape, and on the other hand to not have any idea what's just happened in their conversations, which often result in one party being grossly offended by some imputation when it seemed to you like they were talking about somebody else's hairstyle.

In Maisie, I found this style less visible, and more natural. Since we're taking our perspective from the point of view of a child it seems reasonable to be confused by the adult conversations, and the descriptive passages have a uniform aesthetic reference which I thought balanced the novel nicely. Before I found James’ constant comparisons of people and states to furniture, houses and rooms frustrating and repetitive, like in Portrait, but in Maisie they worked. Maisie’s mind in the opening chapter is “a collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attachable... the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn’t yet big enough to play”, in chapter two she is “the little feathered shuttlecock”, and the messages she carries drop “into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box.” They all reminded me of the ways my childhood memories seem to me now, and how they're always revealing new things you didn't realise you knew.

There are exterior aspects too, like the "white and gold salon" in France, which is all hope and clean brightness, everything they want to gain by running away from their problems, although it doesn't have the same positive effect on them that the Countess' drawing room has on Beale. It is “the drawing room of a lady... whose things were as much prettier than mama’s as it had always had to be confessed that mamma’s were prettier than Mrs. Beale’s.” The room is like a flattering mirror for Maisie’s father, who is “presented to her as quite advantageously and even grandly at home... and himself by so much the more separated from scenes inferior to it”.

I like things with a focus on surroundings, I think, because it helps me sink into a book in that way you do. You know that way. You only notice it afterwards, when you come out of all the golden sunlight and autumn breezes and twisty mind holes and it's like waking up all over again. I can't say I ever expected to feel that way about Henry James. There's that old creative writing advice, 'show don't tell', which I always thought James shamelessly ignored, but after reading Maisie I can see that really he does it so well you don't even notice.

Candice Bushnell books have crabs

Click through for a larger image and to judge my taste in books

If the old adage is correct, this picture should be worth 50% of my assessment for this component of my English subject (which is going to take over the blog for a little while. As opposed to the echoing silence which was previously in command)

In this picture we can see:
My book collection, obvs.
Four elephants.
Three giraffes.
Two Eleventh Doctors.
One Ood.
One Captain Jack Sparrow.
One crazy cat lady.
One painting, a housewarming present from my aunt.
Hours of time wasted maintaining the chromatic arrangement of my books, at least half of which were spent trying to figure out where silver fits in the colour spectrum.
And KARL, Sofa of Legend.

One of the teachers for this course mentioned 'books as furnishings' last week, and I had a bit of a guilty vision of this bookcase, which is probably (next to KARL) the focal point of our flat. I don't think there's anything WRONG with that, but the presence of the Books sometimes does make me nervous that I'm not living up to their high standards. I've heard the Wiley Style Manual muttering about my cavalier attitude towards the distinctions between 'that' and 'which', and I know for a fact that Annie Proulx and Philip Roth have been complaining about how much time I spend slumped on the sofa not doing anything of any use to anybody with an interest in the nuances of The Human Experience.

This is probably why I'm so keen on ebooks now. Files can't judge you for listening to Blink 182 even though it's 2010. (I HATE YOU ALL, YOUR MOM'S A WHORE - how can you NOT want to listen to that?) There are a couple of branches to the 'ebooks are sucky IRL books FTW' argument, all of which annoy me.

1) Books smell good.

Yes, they do. If I rub my face in Roland Barthes he does indeed have a faintly musty smell. That's awesome. But I don't read books by pressing them against my nose. And I suffer from quite severe allergies.

Tangent: when I worked at the second hand bookstore a customer once asked me in a secretive murmur, what kind of parasites lived in the books?
Err, silverfish? But they're not really a parasite, as such...
No no, not silverfish, something small and itchy.
Uhh... where did you come into contact with this... creature?
At Berkelouw's.
Right. Did you sit on the sofas?
Oh, yes, but it was the books...
Pretty sure books don't harbour crabs, lady. Candice Bushnell's might.
But I was handling all those old books and...
Sofa. Fleas. You have fleas, from the sofa. Books don't have fleas. BTW, don't touch me.

But you know what? Files don't have silverfish OR crabs. And spiders can't hide behind them.

2) 'I don't fancy curling up in bed with an iPad.'

My hands aren't small, right, they're normal adult sized hands. But in the same way that I have trouble reaching all the notes required for a dramatic chord in Beethoven, I sometimes find books a bit weighty. The week after I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell I couldn't get the lid off anything. Ebook readers are designed so you forget you're reading an ebook. I was reading a book on my iPhone this morning and at one point I flopped it over to have a look at the blurb. If you can't forget the medium you're reading in, you're doing it wrong.

PLUS I know that one day I'll be able to open a French book in an ebook reader and when I come upon a word or phrase I don't know I'll be able to highlight it and search for it instantly, and that the application will save the definition for me so the next time I see it it'll know what it means. This is what I call 'convenient' and what other people have called 'an eternal state of distraction which prevents meaningful involvement with the text'. My film lecturers are all 'Don't watch the films on your computer because you'll just be answering your email and checking your bookfaces every five seconds and you won't be able to EXPERIENCE the EXPERIENCE so instead stay behind on Monday night until 7.30pm watching them in this cold musty room, k?' and I'd be interested to know if English lecturers have a similar problem with ebooks.

Link to an excellent and amusing grammar lesson I have unsuccessfully tried to teach to my students. Also this blog entry is not actually intended to be part of my assessment submission.

*facedesk*

There's some kind of problem going on with my face, I've noticed. It's growing slowly more independent, attempting to make its own way in the world, heedless of the warnings of my brain.

Scenario: mid-lesson with student.

Face: Right, well, you work on that for a minute, and I'll just run to the bathroom, because...

Brain: BECAUSE? Why on EARTH would you say 'because'? BECAUSE WHAT? Walk away. Just walk out of the room. NOW.

Face: Because...

Brain: YOU DID NOT just do that. Walk. Away. You've already done irreparable damage to your credibility.

Face: Just because, okay?

Brain: Nice save, asshole.