bibliographing

The Provost, the first political novel, is the autobiography of “a genuine Machiavellian”—a natural born one, at that. The chief pleasure here for me, as I noted over at Wuthering Expectations, is Galt’s technical virtuosity in producing this amazing narrator, Mr. Pawkie, and his exploits.

It’s hard to explain without just giving examples of the unmitigated gall of the man—but that’s not the right word. If you’ve ever wondered whether politicians were liars or merely blinded by a lifetime of self-serving…

“Since syne they have been trying every grip and wile o’ the law to punish me as they threatened; but the laws of England are a great protection to the people against arbitrary power….”

“Had I been a sordid and interested man, this news could never have given me the satisfaction it did, for Miss Lizy was very fond of my bairns, and it was thought that Peter would have been her heir; but so far from being concerned at what I heard, I rejoiced thereat, and resolved in secret thought, whenever a vacancy happened, Dr. Swapkirk being then fast wearing away, to exert the best of my ability to get the kirk for Mr. Pittle, not however unless he was previously married to Miss Lizy; for, to speak out, she was beginning to stand in need of a protector, and both me and Mrs. Pawkie had our fears that she might outlive her income, and in her old age become a cess upon us.”

“At first, I could not divine what interest my old friend, the Dean of Guild, had to be so earnest in the behalf of the offering contractor; in course of time, however, it spunkit out, that he was a sleeping partner in the business; by which he made a power of profit. But, saving two three carts of stones to big a dyke round the new steading which I had bought a short time before at the townend, I had no benefit whatever. Indeed, I may take it upon me to say, that should not say it, few Provosts, in so great a concern, could have acted more on a principle than I did in this; and if Thomas Shovel, of his free-will, did, at the instigation of the Dean of Guild, lay down the stones on my ground as aforesaid, the town was not wronged; for, no doubt, he paid me the compliment at some expense of his own profit.”

It’s almost…unbelievable. Not the way Pawkie acts, I mean, nor the way he justifies himself—those are some of the most believable things in the world. But the perceptiveness required of Galt to write it all this way, and the genius required to come up with so many set pieces to do it in, so many instances of petty corruption and pathetic skimming of any possible advantage from the public trust, I am still amazed at.

Yes, there is really something to these brief chapters that keep coming at you. It reminds one of our own hopelessly sped-up news cycle. For Mr. Pawkie, this is a lifetime’s political trajectory. But the way one issue follows another, somewhat organically and thus somewhat chaotically, but also somewhat prodded by the interests of the politicians, and there is always something the town’s narrative is converging on as important and needing Doing Something About, is perfectly like our whole political discourse.

Mr. Pawkie really is a great character. Even I could not hate him for his sins, he was so amusing. And what Amateur Reader describes as “the voice of a proud and successful but only lightly educated man who has never written a book before” not only revels in his own political wiles but also gives some memorable and colorful descriptions of the more tumultuous moments in the town. For one:

Gill-stoups, porter bottles, and penny pyes flew like balls and bomb-shells in battle. Mrs. Fenton, with her mutch off, and her hair loose, with wide and wild arms, like a witch in a whirlwind, was seen trying to sunder the challengers, and the champions.

You are a bad, bad man, Mr. Pawkie, but I was sorry to stop reading of your adventures when they were over.

Amid all the obvious nods in The Ayrshire Legatees to Humphry Clinker, it’s the differences that stand out most. Mrs. Pringle is almost too much like her counterpart Tabitha Bramble, but the difference between Mr. Pringle and Matt Bramble, and the resultant difference in attitude between Andrew Pringle (“my son”) and Jeremy Melford (Matt’s nephew), is most interesting to me.

We know from Humphry Clinker week that Matthew Bramble is a misanthrope, in fact, “the most risible misanthrope I ever met with.” But for all that Matt is smart, worldly-wise (though he prefers the country, he well knows how to act outside it), friendly and caring, to be made fun of for his quirks but not, at bottom, ridiculous. Mr. Pringle, on the contrary, is ridiculous. He is a real country mouse, who tries to pull medallions off hackneycoaches, is barely able to carry out his affairs with regards to the legacy, and generally looks a fool more often than not—while insisting on acting the most respectable person in the entire country on account of his superiority of religion, of course.

And where Jeremy Melford comes to really love and appreciate his uncle through acquaintance with his eccentricities and ultimate character, Andrew Pringle is genuinely embarrassed, as when he writes to his friend Mr. Snodgrass:

I know not how it is, that the little personal peculiarities, so amusing to strangers, should be painful when we see them in those whom we love and esteem; but I own to you, that there was a something in the demeanour of the old folks on this occasion, that would have been exceedingly diverting to me, had my filial reverence been less sincere for them.

The poor Pringles. They hardly know whom to look to for advice on the fashions, once finding they’ve been led astray. But they try so hard! Try so hard, that is, to be something they really and truly aren’t. Writes Rachel:

The Argents, who are our main instructors in the proprieties of London life, say that it would be very vulgar in me to go to look at her, which I am sorry for, as I wish above all things to see a personage so illustrious by birth, and renowned by misfortune. The Doctor and my mother, who are less scrupulous, and who, in consequence, somehow, by themselves, contrive to see, and get into places that are inaccessible to all gentility, have had a full view of her majesty.

And here, another great difference from the Brambles. These stodgy Calvinists do fall in love with vulgar London, and return to Garnock, amid much celebration, in finery. All the more reason to love Matthew Bramble and his retreat to the country with its tides of nectarious milk and cream. On the other hand, none the less reason to love John Galt.

I took great delight in a new and welcome epistolary style afforded by John Galt’s The Ayrshire Legatees, and shall this week add my own small part to the John Galt Clishmaclaver.

In this novel, we have letters much in the style of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker—four family members head off on a journey together and each writes mostly to a single correspondent. Again, we don’t have the benefit of any of the answering letters, but we have something much more interesting: a narrator who keeps the real action of the novel back in the Scottish village of Garnock, where the recipients of the letters read them aloud to each other and go to all the trouble normally reserved for myself.

That is, they judge whose letters are best—Mrs. Pringle is most informative about London by writing about the price of food and millinery, while Andrew Pringle bores them with describing the general atmosphere and attitudes of the place. They judge the wisdom of the Pringles’ actions in trying to secure their legacy, and often judge the righteousness of their minister, Mr. Pringle, who goes so far as to see a play in the metropolis!

Over and over the company are assembled, either in church, or for tea, or sneakily by inviting themselves over to each other’s houses at what they suspect is an opportune moment, so that the narrator can give us the real dirt:

We should ill perform the part of faithful historians, did we omit to record the sentiments expressed by the company on this occasion. Mrs. Glibbans, whose knowledge of the points of orthodoxy had not their equal in the three adjacent parishes, roundly declared, that Mr. Andrew Pringle’s letter was nothing but a peesemeal of clishmaclavers; that there was no sense in it; and that it was just like the writer, a canary idiot, a touch here and a touch there, without anything in the shape of cordiality or satisfaction.

Miss Isabella Tod answered this objection with that sweetness of manner and virgin diffidence, which so well becomes a youthful member of the establishment, controverting the dogmas of a stoop of the Relief persuasion, by saying, that she thought Mr. Andrew had shown a fine sensibility. ‘What is sensibility without judgment,’ cried her adversary, ‘but a thrashing in the water, and a raising of bells? Couldna the fallow, without a’ his parleyvoos, have said, that such and such was the case, and that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away?—but his clouds, and his spectres, and his visions of Job!”

The listeners get a bit nasty when they feel Miss Rachel’s head has been turned by city finery, and even make fun of the way Mr. Pringle (their minister!) always refers to “Andrew, my son.” It’s wonderful. Instead of me just saying, so-and-so is generally reliable, so-and-so is emotional, putting the documents together and figuring out what is going on, I’ve got a bunch of Scottish villagers to do it for me (that is to say, another document to add to the list, of course).

Here’s a good example of the way the whole thing goes, with quite a fun illustration to boot if I do say so myself, as told by the Rev. Dr. Pringle to Mr. Micklewham, schoolmaster and session-clerk, Garnock. The Pringles, just arrived in London, hire a coach to take them to their lodgings, but being unspecific about which Norfolk Street they want, “now it was that we began to experience the sharpers of London.” Being taken to a disreputable address, they put the driver right.

But when we got to the door, the coachman was so extortionate, that another hobbleshaw arose. Mrs. Pringle had been told that, in such disputes, the best way of getting redress was to take the number of the coach; but, in trying to do so, we found it fastened on, and I thought the hackneyman would have gone by himself with laughter. Andrew, who had not observed what we were doing, when he saw us trying to take off the number, went like one demented, and paid the man….

Trying to take the number of the coach

At the public reading of this letter, “Mr. Snodgrass was seen to smile at the incident of taking the number off the coach, the meaning of which none but himself seemed to understand.” Wise Mr. Snodgrass!

One further note on reading the letters aloud: while some of the letters hold secrets so evident that they are suppressed from the general public (though not from a few choice friends), even more hold bits and pieces that the writer might probably have wished to keep private—at least, not have wished to tell the whole gossip circle. But I suppose Garnock has precious little entertainment of an evening to resist.

I have chosen what will probably be the last really nice weekend of the year to completely sequester myself with books. I am laying siege to the shelves, attacking that which has lingered too long. Forget spring cleaning, this is an end-of-year purge. Since Friday evening I have cleared three books off the list (All Things Bright and Beautiful—delicious; The Best Creative Nonfiction, vol. 3—uneven but mostly good; and Whose Body?—Lord Peter Wimsey, need I say more?) And today I am back, en pleine forme, to tackle Miss Evelina Anville. Today will be the day, ladies and gentleman, I swear to it.

I am breaking up my siege into 10-book rounds, with permission to resupply only at those intervals. With two exceptions, of course. The December issue of Playboy will be mine as soon as I can find out the newsstand date*, and then, just a week from Tuesday now, The Original of Laura in its entirety.

Why the siege? Well, it’s not exactly to get rid of things, although I do plan to. Certainly some of these books do not need to be keepers. But everything is so disorganized. Oh, here’s something I found at a library sale, there are some remainders from Powell’s. All stuff I found interesting, but without a larger picture to place it in. My desires to be orderly in my reading are coming to the fore, starting at the beginning—of forms, of movements, of an author’s oevre. This is mostly ridiculous, but also not. It’s a byproduct of my themed reading, I’m sure, which is itself a byproduct of my natural state. But above all else a byproduct of the constant feeling that I know not of what I speak—und darüber muss ich schweigen, or, change my ways a bit at least.

Anyway, coming up for this week: a somewhat closer look at The Ayrshire Legatees and also a bit about The Provost. I’m thinking about doing some Ludwig Tieck for my Friday short story. And perhaps, depending on timing, Evelina. Then we’ll really have made some progress on the epistolary business.

*When, o Readers, will this be? Talk about an uninformative website.
Update: If this remains accurate, it’s November 10—that is to say, tomorrow!

Another update: Just found out via the Playboy Twitter feed (of course) that the December issue won’t hit newsstands until Friday. Sob.

Even without any prompting, my brilliant readers connected Robert Coover’s short story “The Babysitter” with Spanking the Maid when I described the repetition, with variation, in the novel. But I believe there is an important difference between the two, which wouldn’t have been made clear from my first post, now that I’ve read “The Babysitter.”

In Spanking the Maid, there are actually two kinds of repetition. Sometimes, the narrative is repeated and “improved,” but at the same time, the maid’s and master’s actions really do replay, within the world of the novel. The maid really does come in, morning after morning, to clean the master’s room, with slightly different things going wrong each time. Though some of the actions are “undone” and “redone” by the metanarrative, the master and maid clearly have a memory of repeating their general routine time and time again—leading to the increasingly desperate emotions they feel toward the end.

In “The Babysitter,” instead, we are presented only with forking alternatives. There are several forks in which the babysitter takes a bath—in this one, she’s interrupted by little Jimmy; in that one by Jack and Mark; in the other one by Mr. Tucker—but she definitely takes, at most, a single bath. There are several forks in which Jack comes over to play—he brings Mark or doesn’t; he comes with permission or doesn’t; they get caught by Mr. Tucker or don’t—but in any case only one of these, at most, can happen.

That turns out to be a key difference, as it means the reader’s experience of the story differs greatly from that of the characters. The master and the maid are living their lives over and over again along with us; the babysitter & co. are not. When Walpurgisnacht arrives in Spanking the Maid, it arrives for all three of us together. But as the forked threads of “The Babysitter” weave in and out, a moment of horror in one path gives way to a peaceful evening front of the TV in another, while the excitement of the reader can only build—switching narratives jars us, but leaves us on the edge, wanting more, just as bad, bad things are happening.

Thus it is that the second-to-last thread can give us a happy ending, after much anguish. And not one where the characters have gone through hell with us and experienced catharsis, but one where the babysitter just had a sleepy evening on the couch.

And the last last thread isn’t a straight bad one either. Instead, it’s Coover’s signature grotesque element, which he introduces when Dolly can’t get back into her girdle. Now that’s something for a Walpurgisnacht: a room full of middle-aged partygoers greasing up chubby Mrs. Tucker and trying to stuff her back into her underclothes. The comic becomes dark when it turns out everyone dies in this fork, but how dark can it be with the host of the party “twisting the buttered strands of her ripped girdle between his fingers”?

No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon—or really, shouldn’t it be “No Tomorrow,” as this is more a short story than anything else—is a small, fine thing, not unlike the figures that grace its cover in the new NYRB edition.* The 1777 erotic tale is clear and precise without being explicit or coarse. It is not even erotic so much as addressed at the idea of eroticism, the story of a libertine affair mature enough to examine the ethics of pleasure, but without removing the pleasure of the affair itself.

I have no complaints about Lydia Davis’s translation, but I think it’s especially wonderful that NYRB has made this a bilingual edition. The much-discussed opening is, I must say, most beautiful in the original, but I don’t think the rest loses much at all. But I’m very pleased to get both in this little volume, and would love to see more of that in future.

Denon has fabulous control: “The night was superb; it revealed things in glimpses, and seemed only to veil them so as to give free rein to the imagination.” The narrator, looking back on a night spent with Madame de T— when he was just twenty years old, perfectly foreshadows how both the evening and the story will unfold. He is whisked off by Mme de T— (though they both have other lovers) to her husband’s chateau, on the night when she reconciles with him after eight years apart. A strange situation to be sure, but Mme de T— is undisturbed and leads the narrator on a stroll, where she first acts coy, talking about his friend the Countess:

“Oh, what power an artful woman has over you! And how happy she is when, in this game, she feigns everything and invests nothing of her own!” Mme de T— accompanied this last pronouncement with a very meaningful sigh. It was a masterful maneuver.

I felt that a blindfold had just been lifted from my eyes, and I didn’t see the new one with which it was replaced. My lover appeared to be the falsest of all women, and I believed to have found a sensitive soul.

Well, I hardly need to tell you what all that means. Or where it goes. But how lovely. And how well it all matches the mannered, eighteenth century world Denon and his creatures inhabit.

Our narrator begs us to remember that he was only twenty years old, implying that he knows better now, before telling us of more of his missteps.

We even dared to jest about the pleasures of love, distinguishing moral pleasures from others, reducing them to their simplest forms, and proving that love’s favors were nothing more than pleasure; that there was no such thing as a commitment (philosophically speaking) except for those commitments contracted with the public, when we allow it to discover our secrets, and when we agree to share in some indiscretions.

But Mme de T—, no matter what the light of the next morning may bring, is “decent,” cannot lose her dignity in the narrator’s eyes. What does he really think of the ethics of pleasure, then—and when there is point de lendemain, “point de questions, point de résistance” and—a moral?—“point“?**

*Please, someone, what is the cover art?
**The French title of the novella is Point de lendemain (“no tomorrow”), the kind of thing that leaves you looking for more “point”s all over. Here we have “no questions, no resistance” and simply “none,” when the narrator finally asks himself what the, erm, point of it all was.

Thanks to NYRB and LibraryThing for an advance review copy of No Tomorrow.

Check out the following passage from Shoplifting from American Apparel’s opening Gmail chat conversation between Sam and Luis:

“When Marissa and I fight we lay on our sides for an hour in different rooms and wait for the person that was mean to come into the room and say they are sorry, then we existentially attack each other in very quiet voices,” said Luis.

Jonathan Franzen, hip but unhip enough that he was forced to reveal to the handlers of the State of New York that he did not live in Brooklyn, wrote in his 2006 memoir The Discomfort Zone:

We reacted to minor fights at breakfast by lying facedown on the floor of our respective rooms for hours at a time, waiting for acknowledgment of our pain.

Actually, re-reading this passage in the Franzen book, which I remembered only imperfectly, brings up more similarities. Franzen and his wife are losing it after spending too much time isolated together; Sam and Luis talk about how they “go inside ourselves, and play around inside our own mental illness.” And both are really hard to read, and that sure isn’t because I’m not sympathizing.

From the beginning I equivocated about whether to read Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel, both intrigued and turned off by the idea of reading anything with “American Apparel” in the title. Too current—and yet, isn’t American Apparel already dated? But I am all about novellas, and awesome book design.* But then again I am often turned off by the Melville House blog. This profile of Tao Lin from The Daily Beast put an end to it in my mind (“shoplifting from publicly traded companies and spending the money I gained at independent stores that were socially conscious, such as organic vegan restaurants” was more than I could handle), but then John Self’s review of the novella at The Asylum reopened the issue (he wisely notes in a comment that the quote is another bit of “expert self-promotion” designed to do exactly what it has done to me—what a sucker, oh well). The Gmail chat conversation excerpt in his second blockquote sold me; less than 36 hours later the book had arrived, been read, and, somewhat surprisingly, been enjoyed.

I would say I only liked it because I am a member of the target demographic, only apparently I am not (except that I am at least somewhat detached from reality). Actually it made for a strange sort of enjoyment, something you see a former self in that is still part of your self but not really part of your life anymore. For all my aversion to over-currency in books, the Gmail chats at the beginning of the novella were my favorite bits, and the bits that made me stop reading at the realization that I had had these conversations before, or ones very like them, in a hazy previous existence.

“I’m alone,” said Sam. “What would happen if I started sniffing coke.”
“You would kill yourself in a panic attack.”
…
“I woke at 10:30 then said ‘this is fucked’ and went back to sleep,” said Sam. “I forced myself back to sleep.”
…
“Luis. What are we.”
“Fucked,” said Luis. “Was that like a cheer. What are we! Fucked.”

John Self says, “The spirit of Shoplifting from American Apparel is that the minutiae of our lives are rarely dealt with in fiction – that the things which take up most of our time are deemed unworthy of writing about.” Lin—for me, at least—successfully subverts that idea. Self is right, though, that the result is “maddening” and “saddening.” I might be old and stuffy now but no less alienated or fucked, you know.

“This is fucked,” said Sam.
“You know those people that get up every day, and do things,” said Luis.
“I’m going to eat cereal even though I’m not hungry,” said Sam.
“And are real proactive,” said Luis. “And like are getting things done, and never quit their jobs. Those people suck.”
“We get shit done too,” said Sam. “Look at our books.”
“I know, but that brings in no money,” said Luis. “Are we, like, that word ‘bohemians.’ Or something. Our bios: ‘They lived in poverty writing their masterpieces.’”
“We are the fucked generation,” said Sam.

On just the second page, this should close me out: I suck. But fortunately it doesn’t, for whatever reason. Because then I can go on to enjoy Lin’s style, prose so affectless it can only be affected, but very even and very right for the project. At times it felt like a tightrope of reading about people and things that would normally bug me, but generally didn’t here. You don’t think you can sympathize with hipsters, but it turns out when it comes to the minutiae you can, because the things that take up most of our time aren’t that different, are just as mind-numbing, maddening, and saddening, even if we don’t all discharge that through pure liquid irony. And hell, even Sam craves a Wendy’s chicken sandwich at one point, despite his usual thoughts of “Raweos,” energy drinks, and organic grapes.

So yeah, I’m putting Tao Lin’s earlier work on the list, even if the gonzo personality still turns me off in a lot of ways.

*But, on the back, it says, “The inmate with a mop held back the inmate without a mop.” But in the novella it’s the reverse. Feature, or bug?

Even with a free hour of rest today, I’m lazy and foggy and should save my energy for (finally!) some real posting this week (promise!). So, a bulleted Sunday Salon:

• Go read Sympathetic Character Week (the whole series).
• As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been watching a ton of “All Creatures Great and Small” and reading the books as well. Everyone involved is portrayed sympathetically, except for a few bad apples, but I was thinking of something a bit funny about it. A lot of the stories that, in the books, happen to James Herriot (because naturally it’s mostly about his own stories) get assigned in the show to Siegfried or Tristan Farnon, because we follow them all around in their veterinary practice. So the Farnons also get this whole measure of sympathy due to Herriot. And in the show, at least when I watch it, James comes off almost as the least sympathetic, because he’s not as funny-crazy as they are, and is often the sort of skeptical, aloof bystander. Which normally you’d sympathize with, right? There’s something about him, though, I don’t quite know what.
• Tomorrow I’ll have up a post on Shoplifting from American Apparel, which raises the issue of sympathizing with hipsters.
• I read “The Babysitter,” so that should be coming up for Friday.
• Yesterday I wanted to go to Powell’s so bad it almost killed me, but I feel like I am drowning in unread books. Right now I’m telling myself I will read 10 for each one I’m allowed to buy. Note that I already got two last week before making that little decision. Plus, I’m feeling desperate for more Raymond Chandler after finishing The Long Goodbye and remembering how super good he is.
• “Guess what season it is—fucking fall.”

But I did take your advice on the boozing…

Anyway, I’m back, exhausted, and back to work. Looking forward to catching up on my blog reading tonight, and then maybe on my blog writing. But really wishing I was here: