Books, and Howard Jacobson

The main problem I have with Howard Jacobson is that he doesn't make me laugh, even when his books are endorsed all over with words like "hilarious" "wit" and plain "funny". This is not problem for him because lots of people find him amusing, but it is for me because I love to laugh and I feel sad about missing the joke.

 

I think it is because there is a male sense of humour that I have no access to; a snorty sort of humour based on a feeling of power and superiority, and I have never had that. Anyway, at present I am reading the collection of his column in the Independent and I knew I liked that - I like his writing. One feels he showcases his skill in the newspaper.

I am particularly taken by a column about books. What to do about one's possessions is a problem that perplexes me. If your possessions are just for you to enjoy right now, you shouldn't worry, but if you are thinking of some future time when you will enjoy your possessions you are probably barking up the wrong tree because many of your things will have deteriorated in condition - the yellowed, fading postcards or pictures, for example, and if you are thinking someone else, in future, will enjoy your possessions when you decide to pass them on, you are also barking up the wrong tree because that other person will not share your taste and will probably only take a mild and passing interest in the things you treasure so much. I am thinking about this particularly in the case of books, because of having to dispose of my mother's possessions and this included a long period of re-reading her books to see if I should keep those by a certain author, and because, although I said that my collection of books would get no bigger and I have imposed a limit, which is the number of bookshelves I already have, I have just authorized the building of three more shelves. The thing is: I have a Kindle. I do not need to buy books unless there is no electronic equivalent and by the way, I have joined The Open Library which is a library online where you can get books that are way out of date, of the kind which previously I had to order through the public library system. One does not need to go out anymore!!

So Jacobson starts by pondering a Montreux prize for a television programme displaying the strongest "human values". He wonders what these are and whether "Getting em off in Ibiza" does not show even more human values? Then he wonders if perhaps we are trying to dignify ourselves but we actually mean something more like spiritual values, or God, even. But if we say spiritual values the words are too light to actually mean anything.

So he's pondering on this while packing up his books; he's moving house. Ah, but his actual words are "relocating his library". That's how many books he has - a library, and he started collecting them from second-hand book stalls when a mere slip of a boy. And people say to you - as his father said to him "How many of those have you read?" They always say that. I remember showing someone who asked me that question a couple of books that I hadn't read. But really I was mystified by the question because I have read more books that I possess, far more. Howard says:

"How do you explain to somebody who doesn't understand that you don't build a library to read. A library is a resource. Something you go to for reference, as and when. But also somethings you simply look at, because it gives you succour, answers to some idea of who you are, or more to the point, who you would like to be, who you will be once you own every book you need to own."

That's neat, it covers the accusation of being pretentious.

He says: "... books worth owning speak to us of our humanity as vexedly as the drunk returning to his own vomit in Ibiza. [OK this is a bit stupid as no-one ever returns to their own vomit, only dogs, in the proverb. But give him some poetic licence.] It's trouble, being human. It's bad for us."

Then he says "books made a bastard out of me, as they are meant to."

Very puzzled about this as it doesn't sound like much of a claim for literature. This very much depends on the books you choose. I know Howard J loves Middlemarch but I can't really see how reading Middlemarch can make a bastard out of anyone. I will have to think about it. However, literature is full of everything you need to know, or think about, and I didn't know that for a very long time, but I was able to tell a young friend of mine, who loved literature but was thinking of studying History and Politics, - don't. Because I did exactly that. The part of politics you love is probably Political Theory and if you study Politics you have to do Comparative Government and things like that which are as boring as can be - leave it to the lawyers - and everything you want to know about is covered in Literature. So she went to the University of Durham and did well in Literature and now she is working in publishing in London. Which was my dream when I was young. So I feel my experience was not in vain.

I think where Howard went wrong is that he didn't try to name the values that he thinks are meant by "human values". The ones I believe form a bridge between man and God are courage, compassion, honesty and humility. These didn't just come into my head. They came from studying art in art galleries. If you get them all in roughly equal quantities you have an awe-inspiring piece of art. But they are not all four displayed together, usually one quality is pre-eminent. But of human values, these, I believe, are the most important.

The Road to Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

If you have just finished reading "Middlemarch", this is the book for you.

George Eliot

This is a book that does three things: firstly, it takes you on a guided tour of places associated with George Eliot, and tells you all about her life, and her struggle to escape the limiting parameters she had grown up with. Secondly, it is a considered appreciation of the novel and guides you in your understanding of why this book is rated so highly. Thirdly, the narrative also acts as a kind of autobiography, telling you about the development of Rebecca Mead as a writer and as a woman.

So we have not one but two good writers to enjoy when we take up this book. Eliot is quoted liberally from her letters and novels, and Mead takes the role of a knowledgeable guide to her life and works who is also prepared to open up to the reader and share her personal experiences, some of which are similar to Eliot's.

I have to quote from the book to give you a feeling for how it works, and for me it works beautifully and is a delight to read, but I have had to cut it a lot:

One morning in late spring I caught the train from London to Nuneaton. I'd only been to the Midlands once before, when I was eighteen, on a week-long school trip spent on a barge that wended its way through the area's network of canals.... The journey takes about an hour on the fast train, which further flattens the fields and pastures and turns the canals into leaden streaks alongside its tracks.

The Midlands are lacking in drama, topographically speaking, and George Eliot is the great advocate of the loveliness to be found in their modest plainness. In chapter 12 of Middlemarch, she paints a picture of the land in which she grew up that is as attentive to each facet and flaw of its subject as the portraits by Dutch masters she admired. "Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood," she writes. "The pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and the trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew..." 

The countryside I saw through the train window wasn't at all like the coastal English landscape of my youth,... , but the note of nostalgia in Eliot's description resonated with me. It was more than twenty years since I'd lived in England, and returning always induced a melancholy in me... These days when I took the train from London to my hometown I was always struck by the understated beauty of the countryside. I'd failed to appreciate it when I was immersed in it...

I first moved to New York to do a graduate degree in journalism, expecting to return to England after a year... Much of the time I felt like I was wasting time. But I also got a part-time job at a magazine where I did research for writers and answered the phones and even wrote a few short pieces, learning skills and gaining experience that only a real deadline and a real pay cheque could provide....

.....

My train arrived in Nuneaton, a market town ten miles north of Coventry. There's a bronze statue of George Eliot in the centre of town, where she sits on a low wall, awash in long skirts, thick hair resting on her shoulders, eyes cast down, a book at her side. Not far away, past slightly dilapidated chain stores, there's a pub named for her, the George Eliot hotel...

A rather romantic (modern) statue of George Eliot

Also within Riversley Park is the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery, which owns a substantial collection of objects related to George Eliot, many of them acquired from local families. When I visited, the gallery in which the collection was usually displayed was being repainted, and Catherine Nesbit, the museum's manager, took me into an upstairs room where the objects were being stored. Wearing latex gloves, she drew items out of boxes one by one and carefully unfolded the tissue paper they had been wrapped in, as if they were the most precious and unexpected of Christmas presents.

.... I thought of a letter George Eliot wrote to Harriet Melusina Fay Peirce, an American activist on behalf of women's welfare... "I was too proud and ambitious to write: I did not believe that I could do anything fine, and I did not choose to do anything of that mediocre sort which I despised when it was done by others," she wrote. I imagined her as a stiff, self-conscious, inhibited girl, warily examining herself for signs of greatness, too proud and too fearful to lay paper to desktop and try.

Griff House, Nuneaton, according to Mead it is impossible to imagine as it was.

As it was when George Eliot grew up there.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

It seems to me that this book's theme is the problem in male/ female relationships due to the inequality of education and employment which existed in European society in the nineteenth century, and continues to exist in many societies to this day.

To start with, if Dorothea had been able to achieve something (intellectual, spiritual or practical) on her own behalf she would not have been so keen to assume a role as a man's helpmeet. Secondly, if she had had sufficient education to engage with Mr Casaubon intellectually, she wouldn't have overvalued his intellectual capability, and then married him on those grounds. As it was, she took him at his own (very high) opinion, and he was insecure, suspicious and jealous when he realised that she might see that he was not as capable as she had first supposed. Dorothea is a fine person but is very conscious that she is, as a young woman who has no particular role in her community, considered less influential and effective than other adults, and is at the mercy of her advisers whenever she wants to take action. She wants to take action by marrying Will, who is a stranger to her society, and she finally grasps (it seems to take several bolts of lightning to show her) that she can take the initiative and do this if she wants to.

Mary Garth is the only woman in the story who is independent in that she earns money as an old man's housekeeper/ maid. She has in front of her a good role-model in the shape of her mother, who is educated to a certain level - school-teacher level -, can teach her own children and complete household tasks at the same time. Mary - like the rest of her family - seems to have a stock of confidence and self-possession that help her to weather her changes in fortune without self-pity. If she had had more education and more independence she would have been able to marry the man she loved without any problem - but the story is about Fred's development into maturity, not hers. She is already mature in that her emotions are fixed and stable, and she can take care of the elderly and of children without questioning her role. That is all she needs to be able to do.

The trouble that one grieves over the most is that of the Lydgate/ Rosamund relationship. Lydgate has high ideals and wants to be able to contribute findings to medical science.

even with close knowledge of Lydgate's character: for character too is a process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making .. and there were both virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding... Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him:... Lydgate's spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, ... that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor, did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons.

(Note that the author is ironic about furniture coming before women. The furniture doesn't matter but the lack of judgment about women becomes his undoing.)

 He wants a funded hospital so that he doesn't have to depend on selling quack medicines to keep himself in funds: he doesn't believe in them. He wants to use his brain; to observe illness and what causes and hinders it like a modern scientist. However, his fellow doctors are jealous of his superiority of manner and dislike his lofty ideals. He meets Rosamund regularly to admire her singing and for a pleasant flirtation but she is determined to have him, finding his gentlemanly manners as attractive as his titled connections.

The marriage works well as long as she responds to being his cherished pet, but Rosamund has no intellectual projects and is easily bored. She enjoys flirting with Lydgate's cousin and disobeys Lydgate's proviso that she doesn't ride a spirited new horse. Disappointment follows in which Lydgate seems to be the kindest and most forgiving of men. However, Rosamund has not changed... She can't understand Lydgate's work, she can't understand his priorities or ambitions. She can only tell him he hasn't made her happy. Making R. happy means indulging her whims. She has none of Dorothea's religious selflessness nor Mary Garth's common sense. She is a child in that she can't identify with an adult's preoccupations, and the novel tells us clearly that she has never even thought about where money comes from. Here is the result of her lack of proper education: had she been educated to the idea that she must make her own money to pay for her own fun she would have been good at it because she is clearly intelligent in a way, will act on her own  initiative and doesn't lack confidence.

But poor Lydgate with his high ideals! finding himself in debt, losing his good reputation and with useless interference and a grudging attitude from Rosy, he starts hitting the opiates and betting on himself in the billiard-hall. "Glittering-eyed" and full of nervous energy, he plays well for most of an evening, but can't stop when he starts to lose. Fred steps in and stops his run.

Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed disgust with himself the next day...

 He at last gets the loan, but it's tainted and compromised and leads to his character being suspected of corruption.

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that had happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which has come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make people who had only vulgar standards regards his reputation as irrevocably damaged. ... His marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably. 

Dorothea knows what to say and Rosamond doesn't because R can't even begin to imagine how her husband feels (here there's a class rift; she comes from trade and he comes from the officer class, thus notions of honour very important to him): D. says:

I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not do anything dishonourable.  

The Lydgates' is a more gripping story because it's all imperfections and compromises - having married they have to make great adjustments, and neither would have married the other if they had been more analytical about what they really expected or wanted beforehand.

But sometime in the future: "he once called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains."   EXTRAORDINARily rude and resentful thing for Lydgate to say!

This book certainly makes one wonder if one understands the hopes and dreams and even moral priorities of one's husband, and in fact, makes one worry that one doesn't understand him well enough. It would be helpful if a man were more communicative - but George Eliot had a wonderful breadth of understanding of different mixtures of strengths and weaknesses in characters of both genders, and she makes one feel ashamed of one's shortcomings in this area.

The book has a number of clergymen in it and within the novel none of them talk about religion. Only the most hypocritical character does. None of the characters is held up to be judged by the tenets of Christianity in so many words, but they show a changing society where town and trade, with their own values, are playing a larger part, but the contribution of the landowning class is still needed.