English literature Archives - Page 13 of 44

Honeymoon

December 24, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Honeymoon was probably written in Paris and first appeared in the Nation and Athenaeum on 29 April 1922. The setting is not specified but seems to be the south of France, and the two characters in the story are ‘abroad’ which suggests that they are probably from New Zealand. In the workbooks for her writing Katherine Mansfield classified many of her stories by the designation L. or N.Z. according to their setting of London or New Zealand.

Honeymoon – critical commentary

George is like many of the male figures in Mansfield’s stories – a catalogue of gaucheness and insensitivity. He summons cabs in a peremptory manner which worries Fanny; he speaks French badly; thinks living in a villa would be ‘deadly’ unless surrounded by other people; deals badly with the restaurant manager; is xenophobic; and congratulates himself on his rudeness.

Whilst Fanny wants to stay at their ‘little table’ and feels that ‘nothing matter[s] except love’, George suddenly wants to go back to their hotel – the clear implication being that since he feels a flush of physical well-being, he intends to have sex with her.

The story is related largely from Fanny’s point of view, so we are presented with a rather negative character sketch of a male as perceived by a female – which is one reason why Katherine Mansfield is admired by feminists. Much of this presentation is made by understatement and implication, so none of her criticism is explicit. Indeed, Fanny is full of admiration for this man she has married – which is why it is important to register distinctions between Fanny’s views and those of the Mansfield-as-narrator.

‘Here you are, sir. Here you will be very nice,’ coaxed the manager, taking the vase off the table , and putting it down again as if it were a fresh little bouquet out of the air. But George refused to sit down immediately. He saw through these fellows; he wasn’t going to be done. These chaps were always out to rush you. So he put his hands in his pockets, and said to Fanny, very calmly, ‘This all right for you? Anywhere else you’d prefer? How about over there?’ And he nodded to a table right over the other side.

What it was to be a man of the world! Fanny admired him deeply, but all she wanted to do was sit down and look like everybody else.

George is gauche and immediately in conflict with the manager. He congratulates himself on his antagonistic view of the interchange, and his suggestion for alternative seating puts everyone into an awkward position. Fanny naively perceives his behaviour as masterful – and yet her instinct is for a simpler, calmer resolution to the episode.

Thus we are provided with three points of view in this one brief scene: the narrator’s perceptive image of the manager’s gesture; George’s self-congratulatory egoism; and (simultaneously) Fanny’s naive admiration of her new husband at the same time as her instinct for a more sensitive response to the situation.

Honeymoon – study resources

Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon US

The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon US

Honeymoon – plot summary

A young couple, George and Fanny, are on their honeymoon on the Mediterranean coast. George is a forceful and positive character, whilst Fanny is rather hesitant and uncertain about herself.

After shopping they decide to go for tea to a hotel-restaurant on the sea front. George patronises their cab driver, and Fanny feels a sense of trepidation at the freedom afforded her by her state of being as a newlywed.

At the restaurant George resists the manager’s attempts to control them, and Fanny admires his masculinity but wonders if he wants to understand her at a deep level.

Meanwhile a small group of musicians begin playing whilst they take their tea. Then the group is joined by an old man in faded clothes who sings in Spanish with passion and fervour.

Fanny is moved by the experience and wonders existentially about the cruelty and suffering in life; but George reacts differently, feeling optimistic and physically stimulated.

George suggests that they go back to their hotel at once, before the man can start singing again – so they leave.

Katherine Mansfield – web links

Katherine Mansfield at Mantex
Life and works, biography, a close reading, and critical essays

Katherine Mansfield at Wikipedia
Biography, legacy, works, biographies, films and adaptations

Katherine Mansfield at Online Books
Collections of her short stories available at a variety of online sources

Not Under Forty
A charming collection of literary essays by Willa Cather, which includes a discussion of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield at Gutenberg
Free downloadable versions of her stories in a variety of digital formats

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, including Mansfield’s ‘Prelude’

Katherine Mansfield’s Modernist Aesthetic
An academic essay by Annie Pfeifer at Yale University’s Modernism Lab

The Katherine Mansfield Society
Newsletter, events, essay prize, resources, yearbook

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace
Biography, birthplace, links to essays, exhibitions

Katherine Mansfield Website
New biography, relationships, photographs, uncollected stories

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Twentieth century literature
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How Novels Work

July 10, 2009 by Roy Johnson

novelists’ techniques – and contemporary fiction

Literary Theory of the academic kind led itself into a one-way, dead-end street in the latter decades of the last century. But traditional literary criticism has survived, largely because it preserved a connection with common sense; it didn’t take itself too seriously; and it was more interested in literature than theory. John Mullan’s guide to understanding novels How Novels Work belongs to this humanist tradition. It’s based on articles he wrote for the cultural supplement to the Guardian. He seeks to examine how novels work by looking at examples of contemporary fiction whilst keeping in mind what we already know about classics.

He does this by focusing on some of the most fundamental parts of the novel – its title for instance, how its story is told, its characters created, its style, and even how it ends. One of the clever parts of his approach is that he situates his analyses within an account of the story. So even if you haven’t read some of the recent Booker prizewinners he uses as his source materials, he tells you enough to make his point comprehensible. And en passant he delivers some really good appetite-whetting accounts of contemporary best-sellers – from Monica Ali, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, and Ian McEwan.

The Guardian articles were originally written with people in book-reading circles in mind – and they are just the sort of readers who could profit from this introductory approach to the analysis of literature and how it achieves its effects. Others include students in schools, colleges, and universities, plus general readers of novels who would like a guided tour of the literary engine room to be shown how it all works.

Such readers will find helpful his explanations of first and third person narratives, unreliable narrators, point of view, and the conventions that surround them. And he moves fluently from Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre to contemporary novels such as Nick Hornby’s How to be Good and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth without any strain or condescension.

Of course you’re not likely to agree with every one of his interpretations. For instance, I think he credits Philip Roth with clever manipulation of author-narrator distinctions which are no more than modish self-referentiality, weak writing, and self-indulgence. But that is the nature of literary interpretation. These things are up for debate.

He has a particularly good section which discusses the distinctions to be made between story, narrative, structure, and plot. And the examples he chooses are fascinating. Indeed, half way through reading the chapter I dashed out to buy all Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, he made the account of their split narratives so interesting.

All sorts of literary and rhetorical devices are examined: diction, parenthesis, hyperbole, pastiche, stream of consciousness, letters, emails, newspaper articles, coincidence, epigrams, quotations, symbolism – and so on. I read the book straight through, but it could equally well suffice as a work of reference.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

John Mullan, How Novels Work, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.368, ISBN: 0199281785

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Howards End

March 13, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, video, study resources, further reading

Howards End, (1910) is what’s called a ‘a State of England’ novel, and is possibly Forster’s greatest work – though that’s just my opinion. Two families are contrasted: the intellectual and cultivated Schlegels, and the capitalist Wilcoxes. A marriage between the two leads to spiritual rivalry over the possession of property. Following on their social coat tails is a working-class would-be intellectual who is caught between two conflicting worlds. The outcome is a mixture of tragedy and resignation, leavened by hope for the future in the young and free-spirited.

E.M.Forster

E.M. Forster is a bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century novel. He documents the Edwardian and Georgian periods in a witty and elegant prose, satirising the middle and upper classes he knew so well.

He was a friend of Virginia Woolf, with whom he worked out some of the ground rules of literary modernism. These included the concept of ‘tea-tabling’ – making the substance of serious fiction the ordinary events of everyday life. He was also a member of The Bloomsbury Group.

His novels grew in complexity and depth, until he eventually gave up fiction in 1923. This was because he no longer felt he could write about the subject of heterosexual love which he did not know or feel. Instead, he turned to essays – which are well worth reading.

Howards End – plot summary

The book is about two families in England at the beginning of the twentieth century: the Wilcoxes, who are rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies, and the half-German Schlegel sisters (Margaret and Helen), who have a lot in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group. Running alongside as a narrative strand are the Basts, a couple who are struggling members of the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The motto of the book is “Only connect…”

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The eldest, Margaret Schlegel, becomes friends with Ruth Wilcox, whose most prized possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her.

Ruth’s own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because notions of spiritual affinities are lost on them. Since Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note on her deathbed. This is delivered to her husband from the nursing home, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox’s widowed husband Henry and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance.

Over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually becomes engaged to him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry’s elder son Charles and his wife meanwhile try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End, even though she is going to be married to its owner.

Gradually, Margaret becomes aware of Henry’s dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. On Henry’s advice, Helen tells Leonard Bast to quit his respectable job as a clerk at an insurance company, because the company stands outside a protective group of companies and thus is vulnerable to failure. A few weeks later, Henry casually reverses his opinion, having entirely forgotten about Bast. But it is too late, and Bast has lost his tenuous hold on financial solvency.

Bast lives with Jacky, a former prostitute for whom he feels responsible and whom he eventually marries. Helen continues to try to help young Leonard Bast, but Henry will not countenance helping him. Then it is suddenly revealed that Basts’s wife had previously been Henry’s mistress in Cyprus. He had abandoned her, an expatriate English girl on foreign soil with no way to return home.

Margaret confronts Henry about his ill-treatment, and he is ashamed of the affair but unrepentant about his harsh treatment of her. In a moment of pity for the poor, doomed Bast, Helen has an affair with him. Finding herself pregnant, Helen leaves England to travel through Germany to conceal her condition, but eventually returns to England when she receives news of her Aunt Juley’s illness.

She refuses a face-to-face meeting with Margaret in an effort to hide her pregnancy but is fooled by Margaret – acting on the advice of Henry – into a meeting at Howards End. Henry and Margaret plan an intervention with a doctor, thinking Helen’s evasive behavior is a sign of mental illness. When they come upon Helen at Howards End, they also discover the pregnancy.

Margaret tries in vain to convince Henry that if he can countenance his own affair, he should forgive Helen hers. Mr Bast arrives having been tormented by the affair wishing to speak with Helen and reconcile however, Henry’s son, Charles, attacks Bast for the dishonor he has brought to Helen, and accidentally kills him. Charles is charged with manslaughter and sent to jail for three years.

The ensuing scandal and shock cause Henry to re-examine his life and he begins to connect with others. He bequeaths Howards End to Margaret, who states that it will go to her nephew – Helen’s son by Bast – when she dies. Helen reconciles with her sister and Henry, and decides to raise her child at Howards End.

Study resources

Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon UK

Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon US

Howards End – Kindle eBook edition

Howards End – Blackstone audio books edition – Amazon UK

Howards End – Merchant-Ivory film on DVD – Amazon UK

Howards End – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Howards End – audioBook version at LibriVox

Howards End – Brodie’s Notes – Amazon UK

Howards End – York Notes – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to E.M.Forster – Amazon UK

E.M. Forster – biographical notes

E.M.Forster at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

E.M.Forster at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

Howards End – film version

The novel is arguably Forster’s greatest work, and this film adaptation by Merchant-Ivory lives up to it as an achievement. It is well acted, with very good performances from Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter as the Schlegel sisters, and Anthony Hopkins as the bully Willcox. Veteran luvvie and Trotskyist Vanessa Redgrave plays the mystic Mrs Willcox. The locations and details are accurate, and it gives an accurate rendition of the critical, poignant scenes in the original – particularly the conflict between the upper middle-class Wilcoxes and the working-class aspirant Leonard Bast. This is an adaptation I have watched several times over, and always been impressed.

1992 – screenplay by Ruth Prawer-Jhabvala

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Principal characters

Margaret Schlegel	cultured eldest sister, aged 29
Helen Schlegel	romantic sister, in her early 20s
Tibby Schlegel	their younger brother
Henry Willcox	a rich industrialist
Ruth Willcox	his first wife, who owns Howards End
Charles Willcox	their priggish eldest son
Dolly Willcox	lightweight fertile wife to Charles
Paul Willcox	middle child, who goes to Nigeria
Evie Willcox	youngest child
Leonard Bast	young autodidactic clerk
Jacky Bast	a former prostitute
Aunt Juley	sister of deceased Mrs Schlegel
Percy Cahill	Dolly’s uncle, who marries Evie

first edition – Arnold 1910

Other works by E.M. Forster

The Longest Journey (1907) is one for specialists, and is widely regarded as Forster’s ‘problem’ novel. That is, it deals with important personal issues, but does not seem so well executed as his other works. Rickie Elliot sets out from Cambridge with the intention of writing. In order to marry the beautiful but shallow Agnes, however, he becomes a schoolmaster instead. This abandonment of personal values for those of the world leads him gradually into a living death of conformity and spiritual hypocrisy from which he eventually redeems himself – but at a tragic price.
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A Passage to India, (1923) was started in 1913 then finished partly in response to the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Snobbish and racist colonial administrators and their wives are contrasted with sympathetically drawn Indian characters. Dr Aziz is groundlessly accused of assaulting a naive English girl on a visit to the mystic Marabar Caves. There is a set piece trial scene, where she dramatically withdraws any charges. The results strengthen the forces of Indian nationalism, which are accurately predicted to be successful ‘after the next European war’ at the end of the novel. Issues of politics, race, and gender, set against vivid descriptions of Chandrapore and memorable evocations of the surrounding landscape. This is generally regarded as Forster’s masterpiece.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Humboldt’s Gift

March 12, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Humboldt’s Gift (1975) was Saul Bellow’s major follow-up to his two previous best-sellers, Henderson the Rain King (1959) and Herzog (1964). It is also his affectionate yet tongue-in-cheek tribute to his friend the poet and short story writer Delmore Schwartz who died in obscurity in 1966. Bellow had already won three National Book Awards for fiction, but Humboldt’s Gift propelled him in 1976 to both a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Humboldt’s Gift – critical commentary

Biography

The novel is a fictional memoir of Von Humboldt Fleischer – a Jewish American poet and philosopher of precocious talent. But the narrative is also a double portrait – both of Humboldt and of Charlie Citrine, his one-time friend who is telling the story, writing the memoir, and revealing the serio-comic events in his own life at the same time.

It is generally accepted that the character study of Humboldt Fleischer is based upon the figure of Delmore Schwartz – an American writer whose collection of poems and short stories In Dreams Begin Responsibilities was published in 1938 when he was only twenty-five years old. He was widely admired and at first very successful; but then later his life and reputation went into decline, and he died in poverty, an alcoholic with paranoid delusions.

Saul Bellow was a protegé of Schwartz, and Citrine has many of the features of Bellow’s own life – problematic relationships with ex-wife and mistress, great success as a writer, and a fashionable life as an intellectual who mixes with politicians and celebrities.

Bellow seems to invite readers to make close comparisons between his own biography and the details he supplies of his fictional narrator. Despite this however, readers should keep in mind that in terms of literary interpretation, a clear distinction should be maintained between biographical and textual evidence.

Characterisation

Without doubt, one of Bellow’s strongest points as a novelist is his creation of vibrant and amusing characters, many of whom combine sophisticated intellectual lives with tempestuous passions, rash behaviour, and modes of expression laced with street language and profanity.

Citrine is an intellectual show-off and a dreamer who wishes to keep the memories of his family and friends alive, long after they are dead. Yet he is driven by his sexual desire for young women; he is impractical and fails to see what is going on around him; and he is lost in a metaphysical haze of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy. But he is driven by the need to talk and reveal himself at the same time as discussing his friend Humboldt. His observations are offered in a mixture of rich cultural reference, compressed philosophy, and street talk.

He was a wonderful talker, a hectic nonstop monologuist and improvisator, a champion detractor. To be loused up by Humboldt was really a kind of privilege. It was like being the subject of a two-nosed portrait by Picasso, or an eviscerated chicken by Soutine. Money always inspired him … But his real wealth was literary. He had read many thousands of books. He said that history was a nightmare during which he was trying to get a good night’s rest. Insomnia made him more learned.

Humboldt on the other hand is a man striving for the ideals of beauty and art amidst the harsh environment of modern American capitalism – yet he threatens people with a gun, tries to run his wife over with a car, and ends up in a psychiatric hospital. He too is an unstoppable fountain of talk, wisecracks, and cultural philosophy – even when it is directed against his old friend Citrine:

he went about New York saying bitter things about me and my ‘million dollars.’ “Take the case of Charlie Citrine. He arrived from Madison, Wisconsin, and knocked on my door. Now he’s got a million bucks. What kind of writer or intellectual makes that kind of dough—a Keynes? Okay Keynes, a world figure. A genius in economics, a Prince in Bloomsbury … Married to a Russian ballerina. The money follows. But who the hell is Citrine to become so rich? … There’s something perverse with that guy. After making his dough why does he bury himself in the sticks? What’s he in Chicago for? He’s afraid to be found out.”

One curiosity of characterisation is Bellow’s introduction of named characters who do not appear in the narrative, are not dramatised, and in some cases have no part to play in the drama at all. For instance, Citrine pokes a lot of fun at his sexual rival Flonzely, whom his mistress Renata eventually chooses to marry. Flonzely is named but never appears: Citrine simply make lots of jokes about the fact that he is an undertaker.

A more acute case of the same phenomenon is Richard Durnwald. He is an old friend of Citrine, by whom he is held in great respect. Yet we never learn anything about him; he plays no part in the story; and has no relevance to the themes or the structure of the novel. In a story that is already over-crowded with named characters, one wonders why he is introduced at all.

Weaknesses

The weakest parts of the narrative are the very repetitive passages of Citrine’s ruminations about the state of his soul. It is understandable that he wishes to keep alive memories of his family and friends who are now dead, but the dwelling on Rudolph Steiner and ‘Anthroposophy’ is somehow unconvincing. It does not sit coherently within Citrine’s other interests and his intellectual background.

Since it is very difficult to escape the feeling that Citrine is a fictionalised account of Bellow himself, it is very disconcerting that he is presented as very successful character, very well educated, and enormously popular with women. Small elements of occasional deprecation aside, the overall impression is one of enormous self-congratulation – of a kind very reminiscent of Isaac Bashevis Singer, who also created fictionalised accounts of himself falling into the clutches of love-hungry women at every turn of his stories.

There may be an element of biographical truth in this. Famous male writers may well have lots of female admirers, law suits, and self-inflicted money problems – but they do not necessarily constitute the material of serious fiction,

The other principal weakness – perhaps inherited from the success of his earlier novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953) a work in which Bellow claimed he found his true voice as a writer – is that of amusing but rather improbable incidents. Citrine within the space of two or three days is kidnapped by a gangster, mixes with underworld figures, is harassed in court proceedings, goes to jail, travels from Chicago to New York and Texas then to Madrid, and finally (and very improbably) makes tens of thousands of dollars from a successful movie treatment he has co-written.

Saul Bellow may have had a colourful personal life (awards, wives, divorces) but this sort of intellectualised bohemianism simply isn’t persuasive as serious fiction – even though it is orchestrated to create some very amusing passages.

It also has to be said that the opening scenes of the novel where Citrine is menaced and taught a lesson by the gangster Rinaldo Cantabile are remarkably similar to the beginning of Norman Mailer’s An American Dream which was published ten years earlier in 1965. The parallels and similarities are quite striking. Mailer’s protagonist Stephen Rojack is a war hero, former politician, and television star, and just as Citrine is menaced on the sixtieth floor of a building site, Rojack goes on a frightening challenge around the parapet of a skyscraper.

Similarly, in a later scene of Humboldt’s Gift Citrine and his lover Renata engage in orgasme a pied under the cover of a dining table – a scene which replicates exactly a passage in An American Dream. Mailer was strongly criticised for his depiction of women in his novel, and Bellow has also been the target of feminist claims that the women in Humboldt’s Gift are either sex objects (Renata) or shrieking harpies like his ex-wife Denise.

The question of plagiarism is one that can be decided in the long term, as the critical reputations of Mailer and Bellow stabilize. At the moment (2017) Bellow’s is in the ascendant and Mailer’s in decline.

The sheer exuberance and verbal fecundity of Bellow’s literary style is enormously attractive, and his concerns for tolerance and what are generally known as ‘liberal values’ make him a distinguished and very talented novelist. But he is not beyond criticism.

Chronology

The novel has a very complex sequence of events – primarily because it is presented in the somewhat rambling mixture of Citrine’s memories of Humboldt, recollections of his own boyhood in Chicago, abstract reflections on Anthroposophy, and the narrative of the events of two or three days as he prepares to fly to Europe with his mistress Renata. These are worth tabulating for the purposes of clarification:

the history of his relationship with Humboldt
memories of a Chicago boyhood
reflections on Rudolph Steiner and Anthoposophy
conflicts with gangsters, lawyers, and an ex-wife

This is a very skilful arrangement of the events in a novel. It encompasses the historical background to its milieu, the presentation of a character, philosophic reflections on the nature of life and death, and a concentrated account of dramatic events over the space of a few days. There are not many novelists who could orchestrate this chronological complexity without resorting to a more clumsy structure.

Bellow keeps these four separate strands of narrative alive at the same time by having them all presented via the very engaging narrative style of his principal character and narrator, Charles Citrine.

Humboldt’s Gift – study resources

Humboldt’s Gift – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Humboldt’s Gift – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Humboldt’s Gift – Library of America – Amazon UK

Humboldt’s Gift – Library of America – Amazon US

Saul Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Saul; Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz UK

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz US

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

Humboldt’s Gift – plot summary

Rich and successful writer Charlie Citrine gives an account of Von Humboldt Fleischer – an American poet and philosopher who has recently died. Humboldt was prodigiously intelligent, very widely read, and a great talker, but after a meteoric rise to success as a young man, his later life has collapsed into poverty, neglect, and alcoholism. Humboldt has high-flown, semi-delusional ideas about Art and Politics, and in his hey-day he secured a teaching post for Citrine at Princeton University.

Years later, a very successful Citrine has his Mercedes-Benz sports car vandalised over a gambling debt. He is heavily criticised by his ex-wife Denise for moving back to live in Chicago. He feels guilty about having avoided meeting Humboldt just before his death, and he resents the money he pays in taxes and in divorce settlements on Denise.

Citrine recalls friendships and his love of Chicago’s run-down urban landscape. He is menaced and humiliated by gangster Rinaldo Cantabile, to whom he owes money and towards whom he feels a certain sympathy. They go to the Playboy Club and mix with dubious elements of the underworld. Cantabile reveals that Citrine was boasting at the original poker game, and the humiliation was a lesson in hubris. He also wants Citrine’s help for his wife’s academic aspirations.

Citrine plans to write a study of boredom. He recalls Humboldt’s anger at being snubbed as a Jew, and his ambition to become a tenured professor at Princeton. They exchange blank cheques as a symbol of brotherhood against an uncertain future, and even though Citrine supports Humboldt’s bid for promotion, his friend takes money from Citrine’s account shortly afterwards.

Humboldt manages to wangle a chair at Princeton, but then the funding for it is withdrawn. He cracks up and tries to run over his wife Kathleen in a car. She leaves him and files for divorce. He starts threatening people with a gun, is taken into police custody, and is then sectioned in Bellevue mental hospital. On release he turns against Citrine and hires lawyers and psychiatrists. Citrine too goes into therapy, and his lover Demmie dies in a plane crash.

Citrine is visited by Cantabile, who claims to have his interests at heart but tries to drag him in to all sorts of criminal schemes. Citrine fears that Renata and her mother the ‘Senora’ are trying to trap him into a permanent relationship. He offers further reflections on death and questions his friend Szathman about Renata. Szathman arranged their first date, at which Renata passed out after too many Martinis.

In court Citrine distrusts his own defense lawyers. Denise is critical, yet proposes that they re-marry. Citrine is harassed by divorce judge Urbanovich. He meets Thaxter, his profligate business partner, and they are ‘kidnapped’ by Cantabile. Citrine reproaches Thaxter for his mismanagement of their publishing venture. Cantabile takes them to menace a crooked financier, who has them arrested. Citrine is rescued at the police station by the daughter of his childhood sweetheart.

He visits Naomi Lutz, who criticises him affectionately about his attitude to women. On the flight to New York he recalls George Swiebel’s advice to marry Renata whilst he still has a chance. He discusses Humboldt’s legacy with Orlando Huggins, who is Humboldt’s official executor. Then he collects the remnants of Humboldt’s papers from his uncle Waldemar in a Coney Island nursing home.

Humboldt’s legacy turns out to be no more than a letter to Citrine excusing his bad behaviour and an amateurish treatment for a movie script. Citrine then discovers that his brother is to have open heart surgery. Thaxter calls with news of new publishing contracts. He meets Kathleen, who has been given the same movie-plot gift from Humboldt – but she has actually placed it with agents.

He visits his rich and successful brother Julius on the eve of his heart operation. Julius offers to cut him into property development deals and advises him to be more realistic and self-protective. The operation is successful, so Citrine flies to join Renata at the Ritz in Madrid. However, he is joined by Renata’s mother, who dumps her grandson Robert on him. Renata meanwhile writes from North Africa to say that she has married undertaker Flonzely.

Citrine is running short of money, and he spends his time trying to communicate with people who are dead. Cantabile suddenly arrives with news that the movie scenario has been turned into a very successful film: he wants a stake in the copyright. Citrine flies with him to Paris where they watch the film. They negotiate a deal with lawyers for the film, and Citrine splits the proceeds with Humboldt’s uncle Waldemar. Thaxter is kidnapped in Argentina, and uses the event to generate money for himself. Citrine uses his share of the film money to re-bury Humboldt and his mother.

Humboldt’s Gift – principal characters

Von Humboldt Fleischer	a celebrated Jewish writer who dies in obscurity
Kathleen	Humboldt’s wife, who leaves him
Charles Citrine	Humboldt’s friend and protegé – the narrator
Denise	Citrine’s ex-wife, who is suing him for more alimony
Renata Koffritz	Citrine’s young lover
the Señora	Renata’s mother – the ‘procuress’
Julius Citrine	a millionaire property developer
Demmie Vonghel	Citrine’s girlfriend in adolescence
George Swiebel	a building contractor
Rinaldo Cantabile	a flamboyant small-time gangster
Alec Szathmar	a lawyer, Citrine’s boyhood friend
Forrest Tomchek	a lawyer acting for Citrine
Solomon Flonzaley	an undertaker, Renata’s lover
Roger	Renata’s young son

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Twentieth century literature

Hyper/Text/Theory

July 2, 2009 by Roy Johnson

essays on literature and literary theory in the digital age

George Landow was amongst the early few to spot the similarities between modern literary theory and the technological possibilities of hypertext programmes. This is the third of his publications which explore connexions between them. The general argument he makes is that the digitization of text coupled with the associative links of hypertext represents a development of revolutionary potential.

It makes new literary forms available, blurs distinctions between existing genres [‘boundary erasure’] and makes possible anything from multimedia compilations started by authors but completed by their readers, to texts which are ‘unreproducible’ because of their size and their constant revision.

His introductory essay is an invigorating mixture of reports on hypertext projects and visionary ideas of the kind promoted by Jay Bolter and Nicholas Negroponte. Unfortunately, his fellow contributors fail to match his standard. The other essays deal with non-linearity as one of the essential features of hypertext, the politics of this branch of IT, and what promotes itself as new writing – ‘hypertext fiction’, a somewhat dubious notion over which there is still much debate.

They range enthusiastically over topics as diverse as Wittgenstein’s notebooks, films and narratology, and forms of classical rhetoric. But much of their exposition is clogged with silly jargon [‘texton’, ‘scripton’, ‘screener’] which is depressingly rife amidst professionals in the field of cultural studies.

At their worst the essays deal in speculation rather than reporting
on practical experiences or successful projects. Mireille Rosello for instance at one point drops to the level of conceptual art when she spends two or three pages describing what an imaginary hypertext programme could be like. Since there are unsung technical writers out there in the field constructing hypertext programmes for real right now, this is a feeble and self-indulgent substitute. There are just too many questions raised, not enough empirical data or answers.

One further dispiriting feature is the tendency of the authors to draw on the same material, and even worse to quote each other. It is one thing for them to [quite understandably] cite Ted Nelson as a hypertext visionary, but when yet another reference to Thomas Pynchon occurs in the fourth or fifth essay, one wonders if these aren’t the papers of some post-graduate club. This suspicion is reinforced by the tendency for them all to quote from the same fashionable cultural theorists – Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, and Lyotard. The collection ends with a piece of post-Modernist tosh by Gregory L Ulmar which weaves a tissue of non-sequiturs around a contrived verbal connection between Wittgenstein [again] and Carmen Miranda.

In Landow’s own survey of current programmes and projects [written, one supposes, circa 1993/94] it is interesting to note how often he describes the hypertext systems available by using the telling metaphor of a ‘web’ of connexions. The World Wide Web which was under development at that very time now makes available many of the linkages dreamed of from Vannevar Bush onwards. And most importantly, they are available not merely for some technological elite as in the past, but for whoever wishes to use them. This is a democratizing influence which will have a profound effect upon the construction, assembly, and cross-linking of information – and Landow knows it. One of the driving forces behind this collection of essays is to make these possibilities known. I imagine that a further post-WWW volume is on its way right now – but I hope he writes the book himself.

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George P. Landow, (ed) Hyper/Text/Theory, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp.379, ISBN: 0801848385

More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Il Conde

September 18, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Il Conde first appeared in Cassell’s Magazine in London (1908) and Hampton’s Magazine in New York (1909). It was later collected in A Set of Six, published in 1908 (UK) and 1915 (US). The other stories in this collection of Joseph Conrad’s work were The Informer, An Anarchist, Gaspar Ruiz, The Duel, and The Brute.

“Vedi Napoli e poi mori”

Il Conde – critical commentary

In his prefatory notes to A Set of Six Conrad outlines the genesis of his stories, putting his emphasis on the fact that they are based on true incidents:

In all of them the facts are inherently true, by which I mean that they are not only possible but that they have actually happened. For instance, the last story in the volume, the one I call Pathetic, whose first title is Il Conde (misspelt by-the-by) is an almost verbatim transcript of the tale told me by a very charming old gentleman whom I met in Italy.

It is curious (with over a hundred years’ hindsight) that he should think that the ‘real’ origins of the tale lend credibility (and even artistic merit) to what is not much more than an anecdote. It is indeed rather shocking if an elderly and cultivated man is held up at knife point and robbed by a university student from a wealthy family who is also connected to a Mafia-style gang. But since nothing further is made of this confrontation (and contradiction) it’s not clear what point is being made. The elderly man is so shocked he returns to somewhere in middle Europe – but that is all. Conrad goes on to say that the tale concerns a ‘problem’ – but then admits that he’s not sure what it is:

Anybody can see that it is something more than a verbatim report, but where he left off and where I began must be left to the acute discrimination of the reader who may be interested in the problem. I don’t mean to say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I am certain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at all clear about it myself by this time.

The tale is an anecdote, a character sketch, an evocation of time and place, but not much more. It lacks the biting irony of An Outpost of Progress or the terrible themes of Falk and Amy Foster. We cannot expect every one of Conrad’s tales to be equally powerful, and it is fairly clear that his greatest literary strength lay as a novelist and a writer of novellas, not as an artist of the shorter literary forms.

Il Conde – study resources

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

A Set of Six – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Il Conde – plot summary

An un-named narrator describes the Count he meets at his hotel in Naples. He is a cultivated, rich, and sympathetic character, yet the narrator does not know his name or where he is from. The narrator leaves for ten days to look after a friend who is ill. When he returns the Count tells him about an unpleasant experience.

The Count goes after dinner to listen to music played in a public garden. Afterwards he strolls on a darkened boulevard, where a man robs him at knife point. He gives him his money and watch, but refuses to give him his rings.

Afterwards, the Count retreats to a cafe, where he sees his attacker again at a nearby table. He asks a cigarette vendor for information and is told that the young man is a university student from a very good family and the head of a Camorra (Mafia-style gang). The young man threatens to pursue him further, so the Count decides to leave Naples, even though he believes that its climate is necessary for his health. The narrator sees him off on a train bound for Vienna.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Il Conde	a cultivated traveller
—	a young man

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

April 3, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (1938) is a collection of short stories which propelled Delmore Schwartz into literary prominence at the age of only twenty-five. He was a young Jewish writer from Brooklyn, New York who went on to become a prominent figure in the literary and intellectual life of the city.

Most people will know about him from the fictionalised portrait that forms the basis of Saul Bellow’s novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975). This invention charts the rise and fall of their friendship, and the tragedy of Schwartz’ descent into madness, alcoholism, and an early death in 1966.

The title story In Dreams Begin Responsibilities appeared in the very first issue of the influential magazine Partisan Review. It is based on the disastrous marriage of his parents who divorced when Schwartz was only nine.

In the story a young man recounts the courtship of his mother and father – as if he were watching the event projected as a silent film in a movie theatre. His eager father takes his mother to Coney Island for the day in order to make a marriage proposal. At first the event goes well and they are both very happy; but then his father becomes irritated and impatient – at which point the boy in the cinema bursts out with a passionate note of warning:

“Don’t do it. It’s not too late to change your minds, both of you. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous.”

it transpires that the story is being presented by the son at an older age. The narrative gains much of its force from what has passed in between the childhood ‘memory’ and the narrative present, which is not directly related. The story suggests that what started out as a positive relationship eventually resulted in a failed marriage that has left one of its offspring traumatised.

This petulant outburst achieves its dramatic effect because the story is being related simultaneously on three separate time planes:

the father’s courtship of the mother
the boy’s experience of the picture show
the son’s revelation at twenty-one

There are also two further levels of meaning in the story – both of which suggest the influence of Franz Kafka, whom Schwartz had read. The first is that the narrator, having made his premonitory warning against the marriage of his parents, is reproached by the usher who shows him out of the ‘cinema’. The usher’s admonition completely undercuts the assurance of the boy’s outrage:

“What are you doing? Don’t you know that you can’t do whatever you want to do? Why should a young man like you, with your whole life before you, get hysterical like this? Why can’t you think of what you’re doing?”

The second level of meaning which also strongly echoes Kafka, is that no matter that the boy’s retrospective warning against his parents’ marriage (which he perceives as a disaster), it is also an example of a child’s primordial fear of its parents’ sexuality. Kafka’s stories and literary fragments are packed with similar scenes.

Schwartz’ precocious skill was to compress all these levels of chronology and meaning into one quite short story. He wrote it in one weekend when he was only twenty-one

America! America! is a sketch of immigrant family life = their hopes, aspirations, and failures. The Baumanns carry the culture of the Old Country with them, but they have high expectations of the new Utopia. Unfortunately, in the years of the 1930s depression, it cannot live up to them:

The expectations of these human beings who had come in their youth to the new world had not been fulfilled in the least. They had above all expected to be rich, and they had come with a very different image of what their new life was to be.

The character through whose eyes the events unfold is Shenandoah Fish. He sees the weaknesses and failures of the American Dream, but realises that he is part of the collective experience:

His separation was actual enough, but there existed also an unbreakable unity. As the air was full of the radio’s unseen voices, so the life he breathed in was full of these lives and the age in which they had acted and suffered.

The collection also contains one or two stories offering satirical views of life amongst young New York intellectuals. These are coded sketches of the fashionable people with whom Schwartz was mixing in the late 1930s and 1940s. However, without editorial explanations they are unlikely to be identified by most readers today.

In The World is a Wedding Schwartz captures the language and attitudes of a whole group – second generation Jewish immigrants who have been educated in the Brave New World to which their families brought them for a better life. They have the comforts that their parents have worked hard for, but they do not want to work in the shop or continue the family traditions.

They have even had time to develop pretensions. A young bohemian parades his know-it-all attitudes to a middle-aged first generation woman. The woman’s son then remarks “You have just seen a genius” – to which his mother replies “How much money does he make?” The answer to this (which is not given) is nothing – because he doesn’t have a job.

Delmore Schwartz never fulfilled his early promise, and his final years were truly tragic, but this collection of early and mid-period stories illustrate why so many people rated him so highly. He seems to have paved the way for the next generation of Jewish writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. And the collection is worth it for the title story alone.

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Delmore Schwartz, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, London: Souvenir Press, 2014, pp.202, ISBN: 0285636693

Twentieth century literature
More on short stories

In the Cage

April 30, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

In the Cage first appeared in book form in both England and America in 1898. It was later revised and included in the complete New York edition of James’s work in 1909. The tale is quite unusual in James’s oeuvre in that it takes its subject matter from the daily life of a working-class woman. The milieu is also novel, because the events of the narrative are set in one corner of a grocer’s shop – albeit located in Mayfair.

In the Cage – critical commentary

Story? Novella? Novel?

At almost thirty-three thousand words, In the Cage is too long to be classed as a short story. It strays beyond the limits of this genre both in terms of length and subject matter. Of course James never claimed that any of his shorter fictions were short stories in the sense that this term is now used. The collective title he used for his shorter works was Tales – which turned out to be very well chosen, since this term does not carry any fixed expectations in terms of form or content.

The issue of categorisation depends very much on the interpretation given to the content of the piece. If it is regarded as an innocent and brief interlude during the summer months of a young woman’s life, it would be quite legitimate to classify it as a long short-story. She indulges in an imaginative romance, but then settles for a safe if predictable marriage.

But if the issues of modern telegraphy, transmitting messages, the different expectations and behaviour between working and liesured classes, and the educative process of the young woman’s lesson in realism are taken into account – a case could be made for it being a short novel. These are large enough issues to warrant classification in the heavier and more serious genre.

However, in even a short novel we would normally expect a more even-handed and fully rounded account of the principal characters. In the Cage provides characterisation for only the young woman, her friend Mrs Jordan, and her fiancé Mr Mudge. We really know very little about Captain Everard and almost nothing about Lady Bradeen except through the imagination of the young woman or the social gossip of Mrs Jordan. This is not the substance we expect of the realist novel, no matter how foreshortened.

That leaves the possibility of classifying the work as a novella. The tale certainly has a number of the ingredients we expect to find in the genre that James particularly admired – what he called “the beautiful and blessed nouvelle“. . Novellas are like simplified and densely compressed novels, with few characters and an intensely concentrated subject which usually has universal significance.

Narrative interest in this tale is focussed on the educative experience of one character – the young woman telegraphist. The location (apart from one brief holiday excursion) is largely her commercial environment in Mayfair and the pressure she is under from social conditions at work and home. Her professional skills working with contemporary technology are a fitting symbol for communications between the classes which form the backbone to the narrative. And it could be argued that her final decision to realistically accept her fate as the wife-to-be of a grocer is a universal theme.

On all these grounds In the Cage qualifies as a novella. But there are some problems with this interpretation which fits the tale to this genre.

Problems

Foremost is the issue of inevitability. The novella (and even the novel) does require a certain degree of persuadable, logical, inevitable outcome from the premises it has laid forward. It also has to be said that most novellas have a very serious, and often a tragic outcome: one thinks of classics in the genre, such as Benito Cereno, Death in Venice, and even James’s own The Turn of the Screw, which was written in the same year.

The problem with In the Cage is that the young lady, for the majority of the narrative, is a hopelessly romantic fantasist – imputing all sorts of characteristics and motives to her customers without any supporting intelligence. James deliberately satirises this attitude, as he does the comparable snobbery and pretention of Mrs Jordan. What he does not really supply is sufficient evidence for her change of heart when she decides to settle for marriage to Mr Mudge.

Quite apart from his semi-comic name, Mr Mudge has been characterised throughout the tale as a well-intentioned man but a monumental bore of Dickensian proportions. He represents a realistic marriage prospect for a young woman of the telegraphist’s position in society – but since we have been made aware of his shortcomings largely from her point of view throughout the narrative, her conversion to accepting him at its end doesn’t seem altogether persuasive. Neither is such a resolution the substance of the novella, which normally deals in serious issues. The future for Mr and Mrs Mudge in Chalk Farm is nothing more than the prospect of a life of unremitting Pooterism, The Diary of a Nobody having been published only a few years earlier in 1888). This sort of bathetic outcome is not normally the substance of a novella.

On these grounds, it might be safer to simply leave In the Cage categorised as the completely amorphous Tale, a long story of sorts (which is more or less the same thing), or a very short novel. It is interesting to note that it is placed in all these categories by members of the book trade such as Amazon and AbeBooks.

In the Cage – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 18—18 – Library of America – Amazon US

In the Cage – Kindle edition

In the Cage – eBook versions at Gutenberg

In the Cage – audioBook versions at LibriVox

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

In the Cage – plot summary

Part I. An un-named young woman works as a telegraphist in the post office within a grocer’s store in Mayfair. She has become engaged (without much enthusiasm) to Mr Mudge, a grocer, and she lives in rather poor circumstances with her mother and her elder sister.

Part II. Her fiancé wants her to move to an ‘outer suburb’ (Chalk Farm) so as to be nearer to him, and to save money. But she prefers to stay in Mayfair, the social life of which gives her scope for her imagination.

Part III. She despatches telegrams and cryptic messages, and she fantasises about the lives of her customers – particularly a ‘handsome lady’ who might be called Mary or Cissie.

Part IV. She interprets the lives of her customers from the contents of their telegrams – particularly a man who comes in with the handsome lady, who she assumes to be the ‘Everard’ mentioned in some messages.

Part V. She is very conscious of class differences and the profligate way her (largely upper-class) customers spend their money (judging by the length of their messages – which are priced per word). She feels powerful in knowing people’s secrets and she generalizes that her women customers are on the whole in pursuit of her men.

Part VI. Her friend Mrs Jordan invites her to join her flower-arranging enterprise, which she enjoys because it brings her into contact with upper class society.

Part VII. She is tempted by the idea, because she wants to meet people from the upper class. Mrs Jordan claims to be on intimate terms with her clients, but it is clear that she is exaggerating any such connections.

Part VIII. The two women begin to compete over who has the closer connections with fashionable society. The young woman also begins to have doubts about her engagement to Mr Mudge.

Part IX. She has mixed feelings about Mr Mudge, who is boring and predictable, yet she respects his simplicity and honesty. She can see his limitations, and she aspires to ‘greater’ (more romantic) things.

Part X. She tells Mr Mudge that she is appalled by the rich people who are her customers, but it is clear that she feels a snobbish pleasure at ‘mixing’ with upper class society. He too is attracted to the idea of rubbing shoulders with the well-to-do.

Part XI. Meanwhile,, she continues to inflate the significance of her (non) ‘relationship’ with Captain Everard. She invents excuses for querying his written notes, but sees them as having been planted there deliberately for that purpose.

Part XII. She imagines that Captain Everard would like to share his problems with her and confide in her about his love affairs. She goes to the building at Park Chambers where he lives and fantasises about meeting him.

Part XIII. The handsome lady returns, and she helps her to correct a mistake in her telegram, which reveals her knowledge of the lady’s affairs.

Part XIV. When the summer arrives Mr Mudge wants to plan a holiday together. She is bored by the excessive details of his preparation, and starts walking past Park Chambers every night. On one occasion she does meet him there.

Part XV. They walk into Hyde Park and sit on a bench together, talking. He reveals that he knows she has been taking a ‘special interest’ in him, which makes her cry.

Part XVI. Thinking that she is unlikely to meet him again, she tells him the whole truth of the interest she has taken in him, but that she will be leaving to work elsewhere. He asks her to stay and ‘help’ him.

Part XVII. She admits to him that she enjoys knowing about people’s private lives and says she will do anything for hi. He implores with her to stay working in the post office, and she leaves him saying that she will never give him up.

Part XVIII. She goes on holiday to Bournemouth with her mother and Mr Mudge, where he is more boring than ever, but she retreats from him into a private world of the imagination. However, he announces that having been given a rise at work, he is now ready to marry.

Part XIX. She relates her recent experiences in the Park with Captain Everard to Mr Mudge, and explains how she wants to protect him from danger. She also wants Mr Mudge to wait longer before they marry – at which Mudge is (understandably) miffed.

Part XX. Some weeks later Captain Everard returns to the post office. She feels that something is wrong, and possibly reaching a dramatic climax. Everard lingers in the shop, but they do not get a chance to speak to each other.

Part XXI. The same thing happens again later. She persuades herself that Everard is somehow trying to help her. She also interprets all his telegrams as signs of danger of some kind.

Part XXII. She thinks her services as Everard’s protector will come to an end, and she will be obliged to accept Mr Mudge. However, the very next day Everard arrives with an urgent telegram. Next day he comes back again saying he wants to recover a telegram sent some time ago.

Part XXIII. She procrastinates in trying to locate the telegram for him, but in the end supplies the information he needs. She has memorised it, because of her interest in his correspondence.

Part XXIV. During the late summer low season Mrs Jordan continues to boast about her connections with high society. She invites the young woman back to her humble rooms in Maida Vale. She is engaged to marry Mr Drake.

Part XXV. Mrs Jordan reveals that Mr Drake is due to be engaged (as a butler) by Lady Bradeen – who is a correspondent of Captain Everard’s via his telegrams. Lady Bradeen is due to marry Captain Everard, following quickly on the death of her husband. The two women ‘compare’ impressions of Lady Bradeen – who neither of them know.

Part XXVI. The two women then compare their own marriage prospects comeptatively. The young woman realises that they are both doomed to live in obscurity. Nevertheless, compared to Mrs Jordan, she feels fortunate.

Part XXVII. Mrs Jordan then reveals that Captain Everard has no money at all, but lots of debts, and was involved in a social scandal from which Lady Bradeen saved him – but forced him to marry her as the price for doing so.

The young woman departs, more glad than ever to have the prospect of her own home and marriage to Mr Mudge.

Other works by Henry James

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

In the Orchard

September 6, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and full text

In the Orchard was written in 1923 – between the composition of Jacob’s Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925). It was first published in the magazine The Criterion in April 1923 – edited by he friend and fellow Bloomsbury Group member T.S. Eliot.

Virginia Woolf – by Vanessa Bell

In the Orchard – critical commentary

Structure

The story is in three parts, each one starting with the same words ‘Miranda slept in the orchard’. The external events alluded to remain the same in each section, but the images and leitmotifs, and to some extent the perspective changes in each section – which are only signaled by extra space between paragraphs.

Content

Part One – In this section the dominant motifs are sounds – the cries of the children learning multiplication tables; the church organ where Hymns Ancient and Modern are being played; the church bells when women are being churched; and the squeak of the weather vane on the church tower as the wind changes direction. These elements are also are also discussed on a vertical axis in relationship to each other.

Part Two – In this section the content is largely Miranda’s thoughts about herself in relationship to the world – on a cliff or in relationship to the sea. She perceives these elements as connected. But they are interspersed with some of the same elements from Part One – the children in school, the cry of the drunken man, the Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Part Three – In this section there is an almost geometric account of the orchard space itself, with the apple-trees growing out of the ground, birds flitting across between its walls, and an emphasis on the relationship between the earth and the air.

The elements of this piece are distinctly rural – an orchard, a village church, apple trees, the herding of cattle – though it has to be said that Virginia Woolf went on to produce the same effects in the urban landscape of Mrs Dalloway.

Biography

It should be noted that at a biographical level of commentary, all of the elements of this story would be available when sitting in the garden at Monk’s House, where Virginia Woolf was living at the time. The garden of the House is adjacent to both the church and the local school, and the whole area is surrounded by the working environment of farming and livestock production.

Style and experimentation

Virginia Woolf was very close to a number of painters who were members of the Bloomsbury Group – primarily her sister Vanessa Bell and Bell’s lover Duncan Grant, but also the painter and art theorist Roger Fry whose biography she wrote.

They were all interested in escaping the demand for descriptive detail in painting, and rendering only what Roger Fry called ‘essential form’. That is, they wanted to render only the basic visual elements of a composition. It was a step towards what we now call ‘abstraction’. In the Orchard is fairly clearly an experiment in doing something similar with prose, rather than paint.

In Woolf’s case she removes the normal substance of prose fiction – the element of a human being involved in some form of drama – and substitutes a combination of visual imagery, of philosophic reflections, and grammatical constructs which tie these elements together. This experimental story is an exercise in what might be called literary cubism – the same scene is viewed from different perspectives. It also has elements of what many people would probably wish to call ‘impressionism’ – the fleeting evocation of sounds, light, colours, and wind to create a sense of the flux of everyday existence.

When the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and tat just above her face.

The changing subject – the flitting from visual image to aural echo, and on to geographic context – from light and shade to chimes, and on to clouds or the waves of the sea – is a literary device she used in major works from Jacob’s Room (1922) to Between the Acts (1941). She made it her own – like a signature style.

The only other prominent modernist writer who used it (but at a far slower tempo) was Marcel Proust, and interestingly enough he was doing it at the same time in the volumes of A la recherche du temps perdus he published between 1913 and 1927 and which Virginia Woolf read with great enthusiasm.

Woolf also moves fluently between narrative modes – from third person omniscient to (briefly) first person, and then back again

and then she smiled and let her body sink all its weight in to the enormous earth which rises, she thought, to carry me on its back as if I were a leaf, or a queen (here the children said the multiplication table) …

The human element of fiction

There does appear to be a human subject in the narrative – Miranda in the orchard. But she is asleep (or may not be) and she has no more importance than the other elements of the narrative except as an object to which the focus of attention keeps returning.

It is a successful exercise, a sketch, a literary experiment to place alongside Monday or Tuesday or Kew Gardens. But it does emphasise the fact that the essence of fictional narratives (as distinct from word-painting and lyrical descriptions) is that we expect to find some sort of human drama enacted, no matter how simple or understated.

The nearest we get to this here is Miranda (provided that she is not asleep) enjoys a sort of epiphany when linking together the elements of her sense experiences and feeling a one-ness with the world around her. But it has to be said that the epiphany is more of the author’s making than enacted properly in Miranda’s consciousness. Woolf as author is making these connections between the earth, the air, the wind, the orchard, and even the cabbages. She does not persuade us that Miranda is conscious of them.

In the Orchard – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon UK

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon US

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

In the Orchard – the text

Miranda slept in the orchard, lying in a long chair beneath the apple tree. Her book had fallen into the grass, and her finger still seemed to point at the sentence ‘Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde ou le rire des filles eclate le mieux. …’ as if she had fallen asleep just there. The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy, and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees, filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and that just above her face.

Four feet in the air above her head the apples hung. Suddenly there was a shrill clamour as if they were gongs of cracked brass beaten violently, irregularly, and brutally. It was only the school-children saying the multiplication table in unison, stopped by the teacher, scolded, and beginning to say the multiplication table over again. But this clamour passed four feet above Miranda’s head, went through the apple boughs, and, striking against the cowman’s little boy who was picking blackberries in the hedge when he should have been at school, made him tear his thumb on the thorns.

Next there was a solitary cry — sad, human, brutal. Old Parsley was, indeed, blind drunk.

Then the very topmost leaves of the apple-tree, flat like little fish against the blue, thirty feet above the earth, chimed with a pensive and lugubrious note. It was the organ in the church playing one of Hymns Ancient and Modern. The sound floated out and was cut into atoms by a flock of field-fares flying at an enormous speed — somewhere or other. Miranda lay asleep thirty feet beneath.

Then above the apple-tree and the pear-tree two hundred feet above Miranda lying asleep in the orchard bells thudded, intermittent, sullen, didactic, for six poor women of the parish were being churched and the Rector was returning thanks to heaven.

And above that with a sharp squeak the golden feather of the church tower turned from south to east. The wind changed. Above everything else it droned, above the woods, the meadows, the hills, miles above Miranda lying in the orchard asleep. It swept on, eyeless, brainless, meeting nothing that could stand against it, until, wheeling the other way, it turned south again. Miles below, in a space as big as the eye of a needle, Miranda stood upright and cried ‘Oh I shall be late for tea!’.

Miranda slept in the orchard — or perhaps she was not asleep, for her lips moved slightly, as if she were saying ‘Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde … ou le rire des filles … eclate … eclate … eclate’, and then she smiled and let her body sink all its weight in to the enormous earth which rises, she thought, to carry me on its back as if I were a leaf, or a queen (here the children said the multiplication table), or, Miranda went on, I might be lying on the top of a cliff with the gulls screaming above me. The higher they fly, she continued, as the teacher scolded the children and rapped Jimmy over the knuckles till they bled, the deeper they look into the sea — into the sea she repeated, and her fingers relaxed and her lips closed gently as if she were floating on the sea, and then, when the shout of the drunken man sounded overhead, she drew breath with an extraordinary ecstasy, for she thought she had heard life itself crying out from a rough tongue in a scarlet mouth, from the wind, from the bells, from the curved green leaves of the cabbages.

Naturally she was being married when the organ played the tune from Hymns Ancient and Modern, and, when the bells rang after the six poor women had been churched, the sullen intermittent thud made her think that the very earth shook with the hoofs of the horse that was galloping towards her (‘Ah, I have only to wait!’ she sighed), and it seemed to her that everything had already begun moving, crying, riding, flying around her, across her, towards her in a pattern.

Mary is chopping the wood, she thought; Pearman is herding the cows; the carts are coming up from the meadows; the rider — and she traced out the lines that the men, the carts, the birds, and the rider made over the countryside until they all seemed driven out, round, and across by the beat of her own heart.

Miles up in the air the wind changed; the golden feather of the church tower squeaked; and Miranda jumped up and cried ‘Oh I shall be late for tea!’

Miranda slept in the orchard, or was she asleep or was she not asleep? Her purple dress stretched between the two apple-trees. There were twenty-four apple-trees/in the orchard, some slanting slightly, others growing straight with a rush up the trunk which spread wide into branches and formed into red or yellow drops. Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves. When the breeze blew, the line of the boughs against the wall slanted slightly and then returned. A wagtail flew diagonally from one corner to another. Cautiously hopping, a thrush advanced towards a fallen apple; from the other wall a sparrow fluttered just above the grass. The uprush of the trees was tied down by these movements; the whole was compacted by the orchard walls. For miles beneath the earth was clamped together; rippled on the surface with wavering air; and across the corner of the orchard the blue-green was slit by a purple streak. The wind changing, one bunch of apples was tossed so high that it blotted out two cows in the meadow (‘Oh, I shall be late for tea!’ cried Miranda), and the apples hung straight across the wall again.

Writing – I

Mont Blanc pen – the Virginia Woolf special edition

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
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Orlando (1928) is one of her lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures. Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at one time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.
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Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

It All Adds Up

May 14, 2017 by Roy Johnson

essays, memoirs, cultural history and criticism

It All Adds Up (1994) is a collection of non-fiction writing that Saul Bellow published shortly before his last two novels, The Actual (1997) and Ravelstein (2000). The collection includes reflections on the relationship between literature and politics, travel writing, potted biographies of his famous contemporaries, and a clutch of interviews – one of which he conducts with himself.

The collection benefits from spanning more or less the whole of his writing career – from the immediate post-war period when he visited Europe for the first time, up to his personal memoir of friendship with Allan Bloom that formed the basis for his highly acclaimed and last novel.

The assembly of these essays and social criticism also confirms the consistency of his interests and beliefs. He was very conscious throughout his writing career of being the son of a poor Jewish immigrants (his father was a bootlegger during the Depression). He was also from Canada – though the family moved to live in Chicago. This was a city with which he felt powerful emotional ties, even though he was well aware of its violence corruption.

As he became more successful he took up university teaching posts in New York and the Eastern seaboard – which he repeatedly contrasted with the mid-West in order to take the moral and social temperature of America as a whole. And as an immigrant he never stopped thinking about the choice every immigrant has to make – to maintain ethnic origins, or to assimilate as an ‘American’, even though it might never be possible to comfortably believe in oneself as such.

The earliest study is a piece of reportage commissioned by Partisan Review the left-wing journal with which Bellow (as a Trotskyite) was closely associated. The essay documents travels through Spain at a time when General Franco still held his dictatorial grip on the country. It includes details of the grinding poverty, the police arrests, and such bizarre details as the fact that possession of a radio required a permit.

He clearly felt at home with the freewheeling (and hard-drinking) intellectuals with whom he shared his academic life. He taught joint courses in political philosophy and what we now call cultural history with Allan Bloom. He supported the poet John Berryman in his battles again an unsympathetic administration and against the alcoholism that eventually contributed to his early death by suicide.

The collection also includes his acceptance lecture on being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 The essay is a spirited and thoughtful summation of his reflections on literature and society. As something of a conservative he sketches a picture of falling standards and trivialization in public culture. (His friend Allan Bloom’s major opus was called The Closing of the American Mind.) Against this perceived vulgarity and ignorance he poses the humanising influence of classics:

The essence of our real condition, the complexity, the confusion, the pain of it, is shown to us in glimpses, in what Proust and Tolstoy thought of as ‘true impressions’. This essence reveals and then conceals itself. When it goes away it leaves us again in doubt. But our connection remains with the depths from which these glimpses come.

This is quite a difficult argument to justify theoretically, because it assumes that we are somehow ‘morally improved’ by exposure to high art. John Carey in his excellent study What Good are the Arts? challenges this supposition using the term ‘the religion of art’. But it has to be said that Saul Bellow, throughout all his novels and his non-fiction writing has wrestled with this problem of the potentially ennobling power of great literature – and it was for this reason he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

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Saul Bellow, It All Adds Up, New York: Viking, 1994, pp.327, ISBN: 0141188820

More on Saul Bellow
More on the novella
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Writing – I

Further reading

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Virginia Woolf – web links

essays, memoirs, cultural history and criticism

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