The Little Professor

The zombie to end all zombies

I hope to have a post up in a day or two about a rather interesting (and completely fallen-through-the-cracks) Jewish novel, Left to Starve, which is, I think, partly a response to Daniel Deronda.  However, the novel also features the most drastic case of zombification I've encountered in some time.  At one point, one of our protagonists, Dr. Mendes, introduces a young man to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who died in 1792.  I was a bit taken aback by this, as there had been no sign of Left to Starve being a historical novel.  Needless to say, I was even further taken aback when Dr. Mendes wound up in Parliament at novel's end, which would not have been possible for a devout Jew before 1858.  I wonder how many artistic brains Sir Joshua managed to consume?

In which the MLA is attempting to single-handedly start the revolution, or something

So.  The #MLA13 convention account, which appears to be a legitimate thing, tweeted this astonishing proposition:

An #MLA13 challenge: along w daily tip to hotel housekeeper, leave a literary note! E.g. "A clean room makes me happy to be On the Road."

— MLA Convention (@MLAconvention) December 30, 2012

Given that academics are notoriously lousy tippers--I suspect the housekeeping staff will not exactly be raking in bundles of cash during the conference--this is, to say the least, a mind-blowingly inane thing to say.  Even in jest.  How about suggesting that you tip double your usual amount?

This Week's Acquisitions

• Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, trans. Alison Anderson (Europa, 2008).  The fates of a concierge and a young girl undergo an unexpected turn.  (Dollar Books)

Proofreading: A Text Adventure

You are sitting at a desk.  In front of you, there is a laptop computer with an internet connection.  To the NORTH, mirrored closet doors reflect your angsty expression.  There is a window to the EAST.  A closed door is to the WEST.

There are seven hundred pages of ROBERT ELSMERE here.

>go W

You are unable to open the door.

>look E

The window is shut, and ROBERT ELSMERE keeps it.

>this is not LOTR

No, but it's in the spirit of the thing.

>look computer

You begin to watch ballet videos on YouTube.  Suddenly, the connection fizzles out with a sharp CRACKLE. A MYSTERIOUS NOTE appears on your screen.

>read mysterious note

"This is the voice of your all-powerful publisher.  Proofread Robert Elsmere immediately, or you will be cursed to spend all eternity correcting OCR errors."

>read ROBERT ELSMERE

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find a MISSING COMMA.

>insert comma

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find an UNNECESSARY COMMA.

>delete comma

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find a MISSING COMMA.

>insert comma

You read ROBERT ELSMERE. You find an UNNECESSARY COMMA.

>delete comma

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find a MISSING COMMA.

>dude, seriously?

Like, totally.

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find SOMETHING THAT LOOKS ODD.

>check copytext

Yup, that was odd.

>fix typo

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find an INCORRECT SEMI-COLON.

>#*!!

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

>check page

You are on page three.

>#*!!

Have you seen a doctor about your blood pressure?

>check twitter

For some reason, Firefox refuses to let you access Twitter.  You'll just have to continue proofreading.

>eat chocolate

Sorry, there's no chocolate here.  Just keep proofreading ROBERT ELSMERE.

>xyzzy

What exactly was that supposed to accomplish?

For some reason, you hear a hollow voice say, "Plugh."

>read ROBERT ELSMERE

There are six hundred and ninety-seven pages of ROBERT ELSMERE here.

You read ROBERT ELSMERE.  You find a MISSING COMMA...

 

 

Under the Harrow

Mark Dunn's Under the Harrow (2010) is quite possibly the oddest book I've read in some time--which I mean in a good way.   Think neo-Victorian-cum-dystopia-cum-conspiracy thriller, and you'll get the (unusual) idea. Dunn sets his novel in Dingley Dell, a mysterious valley community in the USA whose entire way of life derives from a combination of a) the complete works of Charles Dickens, b) the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (minus a few entries), and c) the KJV.  Dingley Dell, founded in the 1880s, is entirely cut off from the rest of the world (the Outland or Beyond), except for regular commercial exchanges at the barrier; those who explore the outside world and return apparently develop some mysterious mental disorder that leads to their incarceration in the Dingleyan version of Bedlam.  But as the plot leisurely unfolds under the supervision of Frederick Trimmers, crusading journalist, we eventually discover that Dingley Dell was originally the equivalent of a "feral child" experiment on a massive scale, surviving as a reality show-type plaything for the wealthy.  Known officially as the Tiadaghton Project, Dingley Dell turns out to be part of a massive conspiracy that touches even "the assassination of a United States President named Kennedy" (473).  Alas, the project is coming to an end, thanks to profit motive, and the Dingleyans are all destined for immediate execution by some combination of fire, flood, and bullets.

The novel's deliberately arch, even twee style contrasts starkly with its actual subject matter.  Dunn's prose doesn't aim for the Dickensian; instead, it combines archaisms and a somewhat pedantic vocabulary with sentence structures that usually live up to twenty-first century expectations. Even the longer sentences lack typical Dickensian characteristics (e.g., asyndeton).   To give an example from early on: "So began what was to become the longest month of my life, given all that eventually took place therein, as events began to transpire with accelerating rapidity over the course of those tumbling weeks" (19).  Trimmers often shows a fondness for adverbs, adjectives, and auxiliary verbs, all of which expand his sentences.  But, more to the point, the vaguely-but-not-quite cod Victorian style echoes the neither-here-nor-there status of the Dingleyans themselves, whose neo-Victorianness has been stretched and warped by the passage of time. (When presented with modern technology, like a television set or a bus, the Dingleyans tend to be remarkably calm.)   The Grishamesque/Brownesque plot points jar strangely against Trimmers' prose; at first, it's hard to believe that Dingleyans may well be shot on sight if they escape the valley.  However, the Beyonder characters bring with them their own recognizably twenty-first century speech, a stylistic rupture that underlines the intrusive violence to come: "'And then whatever genocidal plans the Project has in store will go into effect immediately--as of right then and there, Ruthie'" (181).  The tension between subject matter--imprisonment, arson, mass murder--and Trimmers' style mushrooms as the novel proceeds, until we reach the literal and symbolic flood that finally does in the valley.  ("Where was fairness and justice in this cosmological equation?" rages our distraught narrator.)

It's tempting to read the novel as an allegory for quite a lot of things, whether for the dangers of exoticizing Others or the moral threat of rampaging commercialism (a.k.a. greed), but what interested me was its twist on the concept of "the neo-Victorian."  Dingley Dell is a culture founded on Dickens, loaded with characters sporting names straight from Dickens--Newman, Fagin, Micawber, etc. Its technology is largely stuck in the Victorian age (although the Moles, who are cooperating with those outside, have modern tech in their basements--sort of neo-Victorian man caves).  Moreover, it initially appears to be a neo-Victorian utopia of conservative cultural values, in which even the badly-behaved children sit up straight, the entire society is Christian, and everyone aspires to a good family life. And, for once, there is no explicit sex anywhere to be seen.  At the same time, we see that the oppressions against which Dickens inveighed return under new guises--a culture founded on Dickens replicates more than the hail-fellow-well-met jollity associated with the end of A Christmas Carol. Still, as the plot unfolds, the novel suggests the inevitable impermanence of this "Victorian values" fantasy: much as some resident of the Dell pens a sequel to Oliver Twist, in which he finally grows up to be...absolutely average, apparently, the novel makes clear that even the most Victorian of values will eventually morph into something else, both declining to the human average (or beneath it) and rising to more optimistic heights.  For all that Dingley Dell appears at first to be a perfectly nostalgic space, forever frozen in metaphorical amber, it in fact has its own historical arc.  Even under artificial constraints, culture still moves on.

 

An observation

Proofreading a 700-page novel is more pleasurable than, say, grading 700 final exams, but somewhat less pleasurable than eating 700 M&Ms.

(In case you're wondering where the blog has gone, blame Robert Elsmere.)

This Week's Acquisitions

• Robert Wilson Evans, Tales of the Ancient British Church (Joseph Masters, 1841).  Second edition of this collection of short stories/novellas set during the early Middle Ages.  (eBay)
• John Banville, Ancient Light (Knopf, 2012).  An aging actor reminisces about life and lost loves as he works on a new project.  (Barnes & Noble)

In which I am rendered momentarily speechless (but will regain my voice shortly)

For reasons familiar to many faculty (and which therefore need no elucidation here), I was poking about the SparkNotes site.  And there, I discovered that some soul has decided that it's necessary to "translate" English classics into something more...accessible.  "Read great texts in all their brilliance — and actually understand what they mean," the site announces. "No Fear Literature gives you the original text on the left-hand page, side by side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right." For example, here's Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

And here's what SparkNotes does to Dickens:

It was one of the best and worst times in history. It was a time of great intelligence and ignorance, belief and disbelief, good and evil, hope and hopelessness. We had everything to live for, and we had nothing to live for. Everyone was going straight to Heaven and straight to hell. Basically, it was just like the present, with experts of the time insisting on seeing its events only in terms of contrasting extremes.

Yes, you can read the entire novel this way.  But...why would you want to? The translation eliminates everything characteristic of Dickens' style--e.g., slowly unfurling sentences composed of rampaging parallel clauses and relying heavily on asyndeton--and flattens out the rhythms, as if the form were utterly irrelevant to the matter.  Some of the added conjunctions alter the meaning, as in the new first sentence, where the "and" eliminates the pointed irony of the swing from "best" to "worst" in the original.   Indeed, there's no sense of tone here at all.  Translating "noisiest authorities" into "experts of the time" is not only inaccurate (Dickens doesn't mean "expert" in our sense, but rather the voices of public morality and order), but also peculiarly clinical.     Where did all the noise-making go?  Putting to one side Dickens' lack of fearsomeness--the last time I checked, he was neither wearing a hockey mask nor vomiting pea soup over unsuspecting clergymen--this translation doesn't help anyone "understand" A Tale of Two Cities.    It does, however, succeed in making Dickens seem rather dull. 

Crawling toward the light...

...the light at the end of the tunnel of grading, that is.  It's that time of year, after all--that time of year when your students surprise you, pleasantly and otherwise.  (Pleasant: Hey, that student really improved on the final exam! Negative: I was unaware that Robert Browning wrote Culture and Anarchy.)  I shall return to grading after tomorrow, when I shall be winging my way to the relatively warmer climes of Southern CA. 

This Week's (Belated) Acquisitions

• Robert Wilson Evans, The Rectory of Valehead (Smith, Elder, 1832).  Popular early Victorian didactic novel detailing how to develop and maintain an authentically "Christian" household; remained in print into the 1850s.  (eBay)
• Rachel Carroll, ed., Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities (Continuum, 2009).  Collection devoted to theoretical problems in all sorts of adaptations (to stage, to film, to TV...).  (Amazon [secondhand])
• Linda Hutcheon with Siobhan O'Flynn, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2012).  Revised edition of one of the more important theoretical accounts of adaptation.  (Desk copy)
• Michael Slater, The Great Charles Dickens Scandal (Yale, 2012).  The hullabaloo surrounding Dickens' relationship with Ellen Ternan.  (Amazon [secondhand])