The Little Professor

Scattered Musings

• Acer Aspire One update: So far, so good.  I've been working on a chapter draft for Book Two, and the Acer's keyboard has been comfortable for extended word processing.  (But YMMV if your hands are larger than mine.)   WiFi connections remain reliable and speedy, but, as noted at John Scalzi's site, it helps to have the computer plugged in.  In terms of overall performance, it's working about as well as the older Dell laptop I have at work.  My only caveats are that the screen size makes working with Google Books a trifle tedious (scrolling, scrolling, scrolling...) and the speakers are squawky (adequate for YouTube, but I'm not sure I would bother hooking up a DVD player to this thing).  Incidentally, for those of you who asked about the flexible keyboard: I don't have the documentation with me, but I think it was called a "Poll" (?).
• An urgent request for the Huntington Library: Scholars everywhere are begging for the return of the English high tea plates.  Barring that, some rolls--you know, the sort of thing you put butter on--would be nice, as opposed to scones the size of dinner plates.  
• Epic professional advice fail:   I always tell people to request updates/missing stuff/clarifications/what-have-you whenever The Academics in Charge fail to deliver, but I have never asked what became of my copy of this, which I was supposed to receive in return for writing a (short) entry.  Or is my over-active imagination playing tricks on me, yet again?
• Short: I think this chapter I'm working on may actually come in at a reasonable length.  Of course, I thought the same thing about the previous chapter.  Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to be writing about Dickens instead of, oh, Emma Marshall.

Brief note: Ellmer Castle

Back to research-related reading.  Ellmer Castle (first ed. 1827) was part of the early wave of Father Clement knockoffs, as this review indirectly acknowledges.  Like Father Clement, Ellmer Castle sticks "Roman Catholic" in its subtitle--not the polemically obvious "Romanism" or "Popery"--in order to muddy the waters a bit for the audience.  Moreover, like the Catholics in Father Clement, the Ellmer family has one daughter willing to convert and another, represented as a chilly "bigot," who staunchly sticks to her Catholic guns; the two novels also sort-of share an inheritance plot (although Ellmer Castle drops that thread fairly quickly).  Most importantly, the novels share their argumentative structure: Catholic Layman states an objection, Protestant counters it with reference to the Bible (or, occasionally, ecclesiastical history), Catholic says "oh."  Unlike the eponymous Father Clement, though, the two Catholic priests in Ellmer Castle fail to see the Protestant light; they are both too uneducated (theologically and otherwise) to counter the Protestants, and thus resort to storming off in a huff whenever matters don't go their way.  (These false/stacked dialogues aren't restricted to Protestant novels, I should point out--Catholic novelists take an identical approach, just in the opposite direction.) 

This novel does have a couple of interesting features, however.  First, while the first evangelist we meet in the novel is brother Henry, he himself converted under the direction of an Anglican clergyman, Neville, and Neville supplies the voice of interpretive authority in the inset narrative addressed to Henry's sister Elizabeth.  Unlike Father Clement, an explicitly Presbyterian novel, and many of the imitators that followed it, Ellmer Castle takes what could be called an "establishment" view of conversion: while the  novel follows the mainstream Protestant line on the right of private judgement, sola scriptura, etc., it still grants the Anglican clergyman an implicitly higher pedagogical authority when it comes to exegesis.  Henry needs Neville's assistance (and personal model) to read the Bible properly, and can later spread the good news to others because he has learned to interpret the text from the right source.  Other novels in this evangelical tradition tend to celebrate lay authority with greater enthusiasm.   Second, the novel is set in Ireland, and partly addresses itself to converting the Irish peasantry, which suggests that the author saw him- or herself contributing to the so-called "Second Reformation" agenda (the date is certainly right). 

This Week's Acquisitions

• Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book, trans. Maureen Freely (Vintage, 2006).  A man's wife goes missing in Istanbul; so, it turns out, do various other people. 

Friday (Special Guest) Cat Blogging

My "roommate" at my parents' house is Suzy Q, a rescued feral cat. 

The missing eartip is a veterinarian's mark, indicating that she has been spayed.  Although you can't see it in this photo, she's also missing her tail, which was amputated some time ago because of recurring infections.  She's a very small cat, about eight pounds (and, given her understandably endless enthusiasm for eating, may weigh more than that shortly...), and looks much healthier than when I first made her acquaintance. 

Voyageurs

Margaret Elphinstone's Voyageurs: A Novel (2003) may well be the most Sir Walter Scott-like novel that I've read since...any novel by Sir Walter Scott.  Our protagonist, Mark Greenhow, an Englishman and Friend, leaves the family farm in Cumberland to find his sister, Rachel, who has mysteriously disappeared into the wilds of Canada.  In many ways, the particulars of his quest turn out to be unimportant (when he finally finds Rachel, it's a deliberate let-down).  More importantly, Mark's voyage forces him to reflect on his own identity as a man, on the peculiar nature of his relationship to English patriotism, and on the place of the Society of Friends in a modernizing world. 

Elphinstone represents the novel as a "lost manuscript," concealed in the farmhouse owned by Greenhow's descendant, and its discovery introduces a very Scott-like theme: history as a somewhat melancholy conflict between the old traditions and the new ways, with the former inevitably giving way to the latter.  The twenty-first century Mark Greenhow sells his farm to the editor's family after disaster strikes, and she finds the MS while happily contemplating her "big study that was to run the length of the house, lit by new rooflights, with my work surface directly underneath, and bookshelves all along the back wall" (2).  What was once a working farm, in other words, is about to become the rural retreat for people who want all the modern conveniences without the hurly-burly of urban life ("who wants to raise children in London these days?" [2]).  The narrator's slightly condescending attitude to the living Mark Greenhow ("cannier than I expected" [2]) suggests a conflict between urban and rural Englishness, in good country-and-the-city fashion, that turns out to replay a very similar conflict in the nineteenth-century Mark's narrative.  Mark himself is actually recopying his older notebook, footnoting as he goes along, which tells us that there are really two Marks--the one traveling abroad and the older one, a well-established farmer with a wife and children, somewhat anxious about the less conventional aspects of his tale.  In fact, the novel doubles Mark's distance from his earlier self, since the editor feels the need to cut and update the MS for modern consumption: besides adding punctuation, she edits terminology that "might be offensive to modern ideas" and sharply reduces the "religious discourse," especially "in the women's letters" (3).  This last is a fascinating admission, justified on the grounds that "[o]bviously it mattered to the writers at the time; I can't see that it would have any significance for the modern reader" (3).  It's fascinating because Mark's membership in the Society of Friends is absolutely central to his sense of self, to his understanding of the world, and, indeed, to how others perceive him; cutting out chunks of the "religious discourse" because it seems so anachronistic may make the characters seem less strange, but it also slashes away at what makes them who they are.  The novel remains full of religious discourse, but the editor's anxiety about it--combined with her unwitting condescension to the current Mark--calls her historical privilege, as it were, into question.  Indeed, the editor "others" her author, and in so doing, replicates Mark's own problems instead of transcending them.

While Mark is not quite a classic "mediocre hero"--he's got far more gumption than, say, Edward Waverley, although he does wind up being pushed around by forces outside his control--he plays much the same function: his voyages take him through shifting national landscapes, bring him into close contact with different (sometimes wildly different) cultures, and finally lead him to a more self-conscious awareness of self and country.  In James Buzard's terms, this novel performs fictional ethnography with a vengeance, as Mark tries to reconcile his initially uncomplicated identity as a Friend with other, often violently conflicting ways of living in the world.  Elphinstone's most significant revision of Scott's model, I think, rests in her decision to make all the main characters part of the cultural "periphery," not its center.  Mark's clothes, speech, pacifism, and other traits all single him out as part of a distinct and sometimes reviled minority; his brother-in-law Alan Mackenzie is a displaced Highlander who witnesses the triumph of economics over clan loyalties, journeys to Edinburgh and then the colonies, and manages to remake himself as a successful gentleman.  Rachel and her aunt Judith turn to itinerant ministry, which dismays some of the novel's men, and Rachel herself is clearly frustrated by the restrictions of both her religion and her gender.  And Loic, Mark's and Alan's guide, is half European and half Ottawa, identifying with both cultures but also aware that their relationship trembles on a knife's edge.  Mark and Alan, in particular, must struggle to figure out how to think about themselves as "English," or "British," or "Scottish," or "Canadian"; at the end of the novel, Alan answers "How should I know?" when Mark asks him to name his country (444). 

By emphasizing Mark's minority status, Elphinstone turns Mark into the equivalent of Scott's exotic Highland clansmen; at one level, it's as though Fergus Mac-Ivor was Waverley's protagonist, instead of the title character.  Others study Mark as much as Mark studies them.  At the same time, Elphinstone doesn't collapse all forms of cultural difference into each other.  Mark's education includes the realization that Canada was not exactly empty before the British and French got there, but despite his best efforts, he inadvertently finds himself a party to co-opting the various tribes they encounter for British military interests.  As one ultimately helpful Ottawa warrior grimly notes, "[i]t would be better if there were no white people in our country at all, if you had stayed in your own place, and not come to our lands in order to rob and murder and steal, and entice us with promises that do not last" (385).  The warrior's assessment of British (and American) behavior does not prefigure any possibility of peaceful reunion, as the novel's classic romance plot--straight out of both the national tale and the historical novel--makes quite clear. Mark finds himself torn between his love for Clemency, an American Friend transplanted to Canada, and Waase'aaban, Loic's beautiful young sister-in-law.  If readers are going to be annoyed by anything in this novel, it's Mark's relationship with Waase'aaban, which rapidly tips over into highly problematic cliche territory, although Mark himself remains troubled by the memory.  In this instance, the outcome is rather Ivanhoe-ish than otherwise, but raises more questions than it answers about what "love" means in this colonial context.  The personal certainly provides no cure for the political. 

The slight sense of disappointment that Mark experiences on reuniting with Clemency, who is badly scarred by smallpox, forms part of the novel's overall melancholy about what historical change means for the participants.  Mark's reunion with Rachel is not particularly happy and doesn't bring about any magical change in their always-tense relationship.  Nor, for that matter, does her resumed marriage to Alan have a joyful conclusion.  Mark himself, while happy in his marriage and his children, never manages to really make a dent in the religious practices he finds troubling, and his experiences leave him somewhat alienated from his fellows.  Outside of his narrative, there is nothing left of Mark except for "the grudging record of birth, marriage, and death" (465).  And, as we have seen at the beginning, circumstances beyond their control ultimately force the Greenhows off their farm.  For all of the editor's recovery work, the reader feels left with a sense of loss, instead of accomplishment.   

Ah, the theatre

Mark Evanier has the "privilege" of witnessing a purportedly star-studded production of A Christmas Carol.  Things do not go quite as well as one might hope.  (Via.)

(Actual blogging will resume once I recover from jet lag.) 

Scattered Musings

• TV Tropes has a great name for an all-too-familiar crime: Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma.
• In the department of Hope Springs Eternal, Etc., I am leaving on a jet plane tomorrow. The goal: make it to California without being buried in a snow bank, turned into an icicle, or trapped for several days at O'Hare Airport.   On a positive note, the weather reports predict that Chicago will be sunny tomorrow (unlike Rochester, which will be snowy again).  Then again, as anyone who has ever lived in Chicago knows, "sunny" in winter means that the day will bear an unfortunate resemblance to the lower regions of Hell (Dante version), because the absence of cloud cover is a very, very bad thing.  (In case you're wondering, Chicago is supposed to make it to a balmy high of nine degrees Fahrenheit.)
• Today's baffling weather went something like this:  Sun! WHUMP! (Snow, snow, snow.)  Sun! WHUMP! (Snow, snow, snow.)  Rinse, repeat.  Despite the whumping, it wasn't all that cold.
• A word of advice: if you're going to cite the entirety of someone's article in support of your position, it just might be a good idea to make sure that your Academic Search Premier/General OneFile/ProQuest/whatever search term a) appears on more than one page and b) does not primarily feature as a quotation from another author.
• This Barnaby Rudge chapter is proving difficult, although it's making progress (page eighteen and counting).  I'm hoping to have a complete draft by the time school starts.
• Speaking of school, I appear to have students  in the Victorian survey. The last time I taught it, the course was an...intimate...seminar; this time, it's over twenty students and still counting.  (We have a transfer enrollment session coming up, so the course should get a few more heads.  Er, with bodies attached.)  In the interests of preventing a mass emotional crisis, I took Bleak House off the reading list--my students will read it if asked, but some of them wind up walking around campus with a haunted look, as if pursued by nine hundred pages of text in zombie form--and turned the novel line-up into Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The Turn of the Screw.  This is also the first time in years that I've taught the course on three days instead of two, giving me more room on the syllabus to play with; one of the first things you learn as an instructor is that three hours on two days does not lend itself to the same amount of reading as three hours on three days.  
• A note to a novelist (who shall remain anonymous at this point in time): as a general rule, horses cannot regurgitate.  Under extreme circumstances, food may come up the way it went down, but only if something truly dire is happening--like the horse's stomach is about to detonate from pressure.  Perhaps it's the character's error...

Get a Life

Via Brandon, a film meme.  If you've seen more than eighty-five of these, you have (cue William Shatner) no life.  I'm not an ardent filmgoer; do I have a life? Answer below the fold...

Attempt at Pollyanna-ish thought while wading through several inches of snow

"Well, I suppose I am getting more exercise this way..."

This Week's Acquisitions

(Let's hear it for coupons and charity bookshops.)

• Yoram Kaniuk, Adam Resurrected, trans. Seymour Simckes (Grove, 2000).  Reprint of Kaniuk's 1971 novel about a Holocaust survivor in an insane asylum.  (Lift Bridge)
• Nancy Huston, Fault Lines (Grove, 2008).  Novel moves backwards in time to reveal a festering secret.  (Lift Bridge)
• Hilary Mantel, Every Day is Mother's Day (Owl, 2000).  Dark comedy involving mediums, mothers, daughters, and social workers.  (Houghton Book Shop)
• ---, Vacant Possession (Owl, 2000).  Sequel to the above, in which the daughter returns to wreak vengeance on her persecutors... (Houghton Book Shop)
• John Bowen, Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit (Oxford, 2003).  Critical study emphasizing Dickens' first forays into fiction.  (Amazon [secondhand])
• The Christian World Magazine and Family Visitor (1883).  Congregationalist periodical edited by the novelist Emma Jane Worboise; I also own an earlier volume.  (eBay)