The Browser's Ecstasy

          How many times have you told someone that you've been 'lost in a book'? Perhaps not that precise phrasing, but chances are that more than once you've experienced that particular feeling that comes from looking at the clock and realising that hours have passed without you noticing. And when you try to remember what it is that you have read, the book becomes a jumbled mix of events in your mind, like Geoffrey O'Brien says of words in The Browser's Ecstasy, "They come upon me like the patches of hieroglyphs in a tomb." (p.53)

          Words are incredibly exciting things! Of and in themselves they have no meaning or value, but what we create through them is a world of possibilities. Like the hieroglyphs, our words symbolise things to us and create pictures in our minds. Words can be used by everyone but certain ways of using words are more pleasing than others. Those who can manipulate words well are given a revered space in our society and, if they can manipulate the words well enough, a place in our history.

          The Browser's Ecstasy reminds us of this wonderful world of words that we are so easily able to take for granted. Legally, every child in Britain today should have the opportunity to learn and learn to manipulate words, but this precious tool of literacy is often ignored, shunned, or never taught properly.

          Those of us who study English Literature, I presume, do so because of a certain amount of love for words. The joy of our experience of, "I'm lost, I seek, I find, I drop the thread again," (p.53) and that single split-second moment where we feel the book makes perfect and absolute complete sense. Though usually gone the very next moment, this feeling is built from the multitude of connected feelings within the book. And, as The Browser's Ecstasy focuses on, not just the words and feelings within the book, but how these words and feelings connect with the whole world of words that exist in our brains from reading them.

          Personally, though this is not the case for many, I dislike reading two books at once and so I avoid this scenario most diligently. I don't enjoy the mixing of essences of two books, or comparing the one to the other while I'm reading. So if any comparison is to be made it is only after I have read both books to the end. Another thing I dislike is leaving a book unfinished. Unless it is a book I really detest or find incredibly boring, I feel that I am cheating myself if I fail to finish a book. Or, perhaps more accurately, I feel that I cam breaking the contract that I made with the book when I picked it up with the intention of reading it.

          One lovely image in The Browser's Ecstasy is that of, "(eavesdropping) on the murmur of overlapping conversations," (p.54) between books. The idea that somehow these books are alive, that there are billions of possible connections linking them and, by consequence, the human race, is a beautiful one. Words that people have written in the past, words that people will write in the future, all part of a web of shared humanity. You just need to find the right thread.

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O'Brien, Geoffrey, Excerpts from The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading. Washington D.C.: Counterpoint, 2000.

Value

            In an episode of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon and the boys are shopping for new comic books when the storekeeper comes over and tells them that the new issue of Hell Boy is “mind-blowing”. Sheldon is furious at this information and complains that now his mind has already been blown, thanks to that information, it cannot possibly be blown again.

            Undoubtedly everyone has had a similar experience of a friend giving their opinions on something. Ascribing their own personal value to something, and this in turn affects your own perception of the value of that object. Your opinion of the value may not have changed, but your perceptions have had to alter to this new opinion, and so you cannot remain the same.

            In chapter one of Barbara Hernstein Smith's book, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory, she explores how this value is created, how we react to it, and how we ensure or dismiss its continuing value. In particular, Smith calls for literary theory to, “explore and describe the dynamics of that system and to relate its operations to everything else that we know about human behaviour and culture.” (p. 16) This rather grandiose idea obviously has inherent problems, of which she points out a few, but the sheer imposibility of creating a universal resource like that is what strikes me first.

            Forget for a moment about the historical problems and the fact that we cannot possibly know the peoples of that history. Forget about the problems of our cultural understandings, and the problems of our Western viewpoint in approaching other cultures. Imagine that we are building this database right here, right now, and only with the immediate and contemporary information. Is it even geographically possible to visit every single collection of peoples on the planet? Is it possible to record every single viewpoint? And what of the cultural activities that simply cannot be expressed intellectually, that are all in the process of being there and personally experiencing?

            When I consider the magnitude of that impossibility I have to look back to Smith's earlier statement, in reference to Shakespeare's sonnet 116, “its really nice to hear a good strong, unqualified absolute or two.” (p. 8) Which, I feel, describes completely our very Western and modern desire to know the definite scientific answers to the great questions in life. The need for boundaries and rules that we can, in turn, play off and develop ourselves in relation to. Smith acknowledges that our ideas of value are very specific to out time, place, history, etc. and I for one am glad that I have that background with which to approach novels.

            Without my personal history and values I doubt that I would have the first clue where to start with evaluating a novel. And Smith praises this type of personal standpoint as a way for more evaluation, not less. To acknowledge yourself and your values in order to explore how these interact and react with the novel.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0N5Uk7eGvg&feature=related

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Hernstein Smith, Barbara. Excerpts from Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Geography Matters

     Just as the chapter title suggests, it is interesting in literature the way that geography matters. Foster defines this geography as being both the landscape that surrounds people and the people themselves. In certain books this is very obvious, and to explore Foster's chapter further I will be using one of these books, The Secret History by Donna Tartt.


     This novel fits particularly well with Foster's statement, “we feel that those novels and stories couldn't be set anywhere but where they are” (p.164). In The Secret History the enclosed campus life and even more enclosed classes lead to the intricate bond between the Ancient Greek students. The mountains allow for the manner of Bunny's death to appear an accident, and the climate allows for the snow which covers Bunny and leads to the investigation. It is the strict guarding of land in the area that leads to the murder of the farmer and ensuing events. None of this would have been possible for Richard in the flat dusty lands of California. That geography simply would not have been compatible for the events of The Secret History.


    Another interesting statement of Foster's is that “Geography can also define or even develop a character (p.167) and his examples of Taylor Greer fleeing the mountains in order to discover life, and Milkman Dead running to the mountains in order to find roots. I would argue that Richard feels he has found his freedom in the mountains and trees of Vermont and in the exclusive class of Julian. But these dual examples of Foster show that the geography of a novel is not a a scientific equation. We can't simply look at the landscape of a novel and claim to understand what the novel is all 'about' and why the characters react the way they do.


     Geography is also not stagnant. It changes as the character's perception of it changes. What once was the enclosed freedom of campus life changes for Richard at the holidays, and also after Bunny's death. As a prime example of this changing perception, Foster talks of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love and the fact that, “at first the alpine environment seems clean and uncluttered, but as time goes on (...) we- begin to realise that its also inhuman.” (p.174) This fits beautifully with Richard's experience of the Ancient Greek class, and we can only watch as the geography of that situation results in his being exactly like them.


    I think that Foster's chapter has many extremely valid points, but we have to be careful to remind ourselves that he is not offering us a tool to garner the 'correct' reading from a text. Rather, he offers another angle in which it is interesting to appreciate a text. It is far too easy to look at geography or seasons and say, he is surrounded by mountains therefore he feels enclosed. This may in fact be true, but I think Foster's chapter encourages us to look beyond what may seem obvious in the landscape. To interrogate that view with the reactions and perceptions of the characters. To consider where they have come from and how they have been affected by multiple geographies.




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Tartt, Donna The Secret History, London: Penguin Books, 1992.

Foster, Thomas C. Excerpts from How to Read Literature Like a Professor, New York: Quill, 2003.

Against Readings

       My presentation this week was on Mark Edmundson's "Against Readings" and there were just a few points that I wanted to pull out and question. Although being very easy to read, the chapter is clearly for a very specific type of audience; namely the intellectuals who would endeavour to read critically, but Edmundson is so keen to recognise every single viewpoint that in some cases it feels like he's trying to defeat his own argument. Naturally it’s important to recognise social gaps in theories, but Edmundson does this to the point that I began to wonder whether he really believed his own argument or whether it was simply a utopian ideal.

       In relation to viewpoints, as I said above this article is clearly for literary intellectuals, but I did feel that Edmundson’s argument of literature being good because it offers a second chance to be extremely faulty. This I felt because of the nature of literature versus oral and physical culture. Undoubtedly literature can have extreme physical and social responses to it, such as in the cases of religion, but most challenging of social ideals comes through oral and physical challenges, hearing and seeing people doing things that are different to our preconceived notions.

       Carrying on from preconceived notions, certainly my biggest problem with this article was Edmundson's admonition that we should treat and present the text as the author would have wished it (Edmundson, "Against Readings" 2009 pg. 62). This idea has so many inherent problems that I don't have space to deal with them in justice, so I shall move on.

       My second greatest problem with the article was Edmundson's recommendation that if we don't like the text we should lay it aside to gather dust (Edmundson, 2009 pg. 63). This I find problematic because: often I find that I only truly love the text after I have studied it (not just read it), and because often what we don't like is good for us. For example, I hated maths in school but if I had never been forced to study maths then I wouldn't have certain skills that I have now. To simply ignore a book on the grounds that we don't like it, is to me, a dangerous dissolution of academic study. If we only read what we enjoy, or what we think we will enjoy, then we take the risk of never opening our minds to other genres and authors who, despite their difficulty, can advance our minds and theories.

       So, despite Edmundson having some very valid concerns, such as forcing one text upon another, I was left vaguely bemused by his insistence that I love and befriend the text and author, and that I take care not to offend either of them lest I kill the text. It feels slightly like I should be walking on eggshells.

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Edmundson, Mark "Against Readings" from Profession 2009. 56-65.