Currently Reading...

Something peculiar happened in the middle of December: I began reading again, for fun. I think I've already finished more books than I did over the course of my four years as an undergrad. So I thought I'd keep track of what I'm currently reading, as well as what I'd like to read next (to be addressed in a future post).

1. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

I actually bought this book when I was 13, and pretentious, and had just finished Great Expectations. Didn't actually make my first attempt at reading it, though, until early 2006, a year after reading and loving Bleak House in my "The Novel and Social Reform" class. I didn't make it past the first two chapters then, but I was finishing up junior year at the time. I started over again yesterday and have read the first four chapters, so it's too soon to have formed much of an opinion yet (though Dickens' sense of humor is very much present, which is a plus). One way in which this won't quite measure up to Bleak House is in the absence of a first-person narrative; Esther's chapters were what I really adored about that book, because she was such a psychologically complex character. She's perceived by others as happy and obedient because of her outward behavior, but she has to remind herself, almost obsessively, of this fact. More importantly, she's possibly the most perceptive character in the novel; at least, she has a better understanding of the needs and desires of characters like Richard Carstone than they have of themselves. This is why I can't stand Masterpiece Theatre's highly-acclaimed adaptation; Lady Dedlock becomes the most dominant character, while Esther's inner-ness, if that makes any sense, is utterly stripped away. One of the most pivotal sections in the book -- Esther's illness, and the revealing dreams and hallucinations that accompany it -- is reduced to a brief side-story about a now-minor character.

Oh, yes, but anyway, OMF seems promising. I caught the miniseries of it several years ago, but don't recall it well enough for it to become a potential source of consternation!

2. Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination - Peter Ackroyd

This is my non-fiction read of the moment, and is another book that's been sitting on the shelf for awhile (though in this case, only a year-and-a-half). It's a little difficult to describe; basically, through a series of brief chapters, organized by linguistic period or subject (i.e. "Old English," "Middle English," but also topics like "Solitaries and recusants" and "Women and silence"), Ackroyd considers thematic patterns that recur throughout English literature, art, and music from its earliest, Celtic origins to at least the twentieth century. I've been very much an Anglophile since 7th grade (10 years now!), so this book is fascinating to me. Also, the dust jacket art is so pretty; I purchased it at this fantastic independent bookstore, which, for some reason, was carrying the British-published Chatto & Windus edition. Images from old portraits and needlework and psalter illustrations...gorgeous.

3. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

This one's a reread; I first read it over a year ago in my "Jane Austen: Film and Fiction" class. I'm actually not a huge JA person; this and Northanger Abbey are the only two I really, genuinely enjoyed (also like her Juvenilia, which is insane and absurd and lots of fun), and my affection for NA might have something to do with the fact that our final assignment for the class was to write a proposal for a screen adaptation of it. That was fun, though I, um, did end up writing the whole thing in eight straight hours, pausing only to eat dinner and watch the ABC Family Everwood rerun, to make sure I emailed it to the class's two professors on-time. But, Mansfield Park's charms were entirely its own, independent of any creative writing assignments. Honestly, my favorite thing about this book is the very same thing that turn many off of it: the character of Fanny Price. Fanny is one of those observant, introverted and introspective, and morally-concerned types whom I tend to adore and relate to entirely too much. I also, sadly, relate entirely too much to passages like these (page numbers are based on the Oxford World's Classics edition):

"[...] she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund had begun writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes [...] It was the only thing approaching to a letter which she had ever received from him; she might never receive another; it was impossible that she ever should receive another so perfectly gratifying in the occasion and the style. Two lines more prized had never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished author---never more completely blessed the researches of the fondest biographer. [...] To her, the hand-writing itself, independent of any thing it may convey, is a blessedness. Never were such characters cut by any other human being, as Edmund's commonest hand-writing gave!" (207-8)

"As she walked slowly up stairs she thought of yesterday; it had been about the same hour that she had returned from the Parsonage, and found Edmund in the east room. --'Suppose I were to find him there again to-day!' said she to herself in a fond indulgence of fancy." (209-10)

So Mansfield Park has a lot of resonance, even if its major details -- sent to live with wealthy, corrupt relatives; in love with first cousin while being pursued by shady neighbor -- bear no resemblance at all to anything I've actually experienced.

Epiphany

Sadly, the first thing Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" brings to mind is Connie Willis's short story "Epiphany," which quotes the first two lines (which are themselves a paraphrase of a passage by 17th-century divine Lancelot Andrewes) at a pivotal moment. I mean, it's a terrific story, but still. I'm not so sure that's what Eliot, Andrewes, or the magi would really want.

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end, we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

***

It's interesting, really; I think as much as this poem is concerned with the magi, it's also concerned with the poet's own spiritual progress, as it was published in 1927, just around the time of his conversion to Anglicanism (which was really an official acceptance of Christianity, period). This whole concept of the journey is one that would culminate in 1941-3's Little Gidding, in which he writes

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. (lines 39b-46)

He's ostensibly talking about the chapel at Little Gidding (a village that had been established in 1625 as an Anglican religious community), but it's difficult not to recall the themes of the earlier poem: the journey, the desire for verification, and the retreat from a spiritually-rich location to one that now seems spiritually barren.

Or maybe I just really, really miss majoring in English.