A return to arms

It's been a long and weird year.

I spent a lot of my second year of study dancing around the subject. I think I was scared of the immense weight of the body of text available to me, and as a consequence I wanted to write about everything - a stance that isn't very conducive to a clear and concise thesis. Updating this blog had also become something I was scared of doing, because I often felt as though I should only update it if I had something meaningful to say, and it very rarely felt as though that was the case. The entry from 24th September 2011, "Losing My Way," is a good summation of my attitude for a lot of the past year.

I'm a great believer in harsh personal criticism, so I have no qualms about saying that my behaviour, in which I put off things I needed to do because I was too scared of doing them, was incredibly stupid. After all, who am I writing this blog for, if not for myself? I can't lie to myself in my own research notes, either.

The second-year blues hit me very hard and I took the long way round with regards to my research, something I wish I hadn't done. I hate the phrase, "I don't believe in having regrets," because the regrets I hold have been very important in shaping who I am. There are things I've done in my life (both personally and professionally) that I'm not proud of, or I wish I'd handled differently. Of course I regret the stuff I did and said when I was twenty-one - I was an idiot when I was twenty-one - and thinking about those things makes me cringe and want to do better. I don't let bad memories consume me, but they're a good motivator.

That's how I'm going to consider last year. I was an idiot, but it was a learning curve; as my supervisor said to me (rather ruefully): "Sometimes you need to explore all the wrong avenues to find out which one is the right one." Last year wasn't a total failure: I managed to get two publications and two conferences in. I wish I hadn't spent so much time exploring, but what's done is done and I've learnt from it. At least I finally feel better-grounded in the literature of the period.

Coming up in the next week: castrati, burlesque opera, and eighteenth-century fears about Continental maleness.

Juba

Happy belated New Year!

I've been writing about Cato recently. Yesterday I came up against the following quotation from W. Davenport Adams' A Dictionary of the Drama (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1904):

"The play was revived at Covent Garden in January, 1734, with Quin as Cato and with Marcus and Juba omitted."

This intrigued me, but I couldn't find any other critical reference to these characters being omitted. I eventually looked up the newspaper advertising for the performance, and I found the following:

(From Daily Journal (London, England), Saturday, January 19, 1734; Issue 4059. Source: British Library online.)

Perhaps I'm deeply misunderstanding Adams' summary - but what might "omitted" mean other than "left out"? Yet as the above clearly shows, in the performance he refers to, Marcus was played by a Mr. Wignell and Juba a Mr. Hale. I was especially interested in the idea of a Jubaless Cato - both in terms of plotting, as to write him out would be to substantially alter the turn of events, and for what it might mean for perceptions of romantic leads by the mid-1730s. (I'd elaborate on that latter idea but, well, the point is moot now.)

It's disappointing that this turned out to be a dead-end, and Anderson's error(?) is baffling - but at least I was able to establish that Marcus and Juba were in the play before I ran away in the wrong direction!

As a postscript, I was finally able to visit the First Actresses exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. There were a lot of paintings that I had no idea that I'd be able to see - Miss Rose as Tom Thumb, several of Dora Jordan, Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse, as well as a Hogarth I'd never seen before. There was even the portrait of Garrick as Sir John Brute which I use as the picture for this blog - which I thought was rather stretching the theme. What took me by surprise was how excited I was to see the paintings I'd already seen a hundred times. I'm a poor art critic but for perhaps the first time, I felt really awe-struck by being in the presence of paintings that I love. I could have stayed for hours.

The Joys of Planning

I began work on my second chapter about a month ago - far, far behind schedule - and my process has been radically different. I've never planned an essay or a chapter in my life before; I've tried, but I get frustrated and end up launching into the fun, writing stage. I usually end up editing and re-editing my work as I go along, having a vague idea in mind which becomes more clearly defined the more I write and edit.

Up until now, it's worked, although it has always been rather an embarrassment to admit to. It certainly doesn't come across as methodologically sound.

Yet so far the greatest challenge I've encountered in writing my thesis is finishing my first chapter - and that is entirely down to my way of working. As a consequence, I'm planning my second chapter out meticulously - down to the paragraph. While I'm feeling frustrated again - I want to write, not plan! - I can't deny that this has been invaluable thus far. For instance, I'd originally conceived the idea to write about the conflict between classical and Christian interpretations of heroism between 1710 and 1737 - but quite honestly, it was hard to keep this on the topic of comic sword-fighting. If I hadn't planned out my chapter then it might have taken me weeks of writing and editing before I'd come to that realisation.

I am a rather reluctant convert. I still think that there's a lot to be said for starting out with nothing but a few key ideas in mind - it brings a spontaneity to writing that's hard to replicate. Certainly my more successful creative endeavours have been as a result of writing without planning: I know what I want to say and the mood I want to create, and those things would be lost if I spent too much time considering what ought to go where. Academic writing, on the other hand? Well, I suppose that deserves a little more thought.

REVIEW: Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba the Greek reminded me of nothing as much as Huysman's À rebours, the 1884 homage to the pursuit of pleasure and aesthetic sublimity, and which, if I recall a long-ago undergraduate seminar correctly, served as the inspiration for the misdeeds of Dorian Gray. I couldn't resist spending a while in thought on the similarities - and differences - between the two novels. À rebours tells the story of a French aristocrat who retreats to the country to experience art and pleasure; Zorba the Greek is narrated by a young intellectual who sets books aside and immerses himself in the culture of a Cretan mining village, with the eponymous Zorba as his guide.

Pleasure is a sublime experience in both and Des Esseintes and Zorba are devoted to the enjoyable, passionate encounters and moments of life. Both respect pleasure; both novels are devoted to its discovery. In common they have good, simple food, which is cherished in each - although Des Esseintes spends much of the novel with a delicate appetite. Compare:

The only ones eating were unescorted women in pairs, robust English women with boyish faces, large teeth, ruddy apple cheeks, long hands and legs. They attacked, with genuine ardor, a rumpsteak pie, a warm meat dish cooked in mushroom sauce and covered with a crust, like a pie.

After having lacked appetite for such a long time, he remained amazed in the presence of these hearty eaters whose voracity whetted his hunger. He ordered oxtail soup and enjoyed it heartily. Then he glanced at the menu for the fish, ordered a haddock and, seized with a sudden pang of hunger at the sight of so many people relishing their food, he ate some roast beef and drank two pints of ale, stimulated by the flavor of a cow-shed which this fine, pale beer exhaled.

His hunger persisted. He lingered over a piece of blue Stilton cheese, made quick work of a rhubarb tart, and to vary his drinking, quenched his thirst with porter, that dark beer which smells of Spanish licorice but which does not have its sugary taste.

He breathed deeply. Not for years had he eaten and drunk so much. This change of habit, this choice of unexpected and solid food had awakened his stomach from its long sleep. He leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette and prepared to sip his coffee into which gin had been poured. (AR 75)

and:

I looked at him and was very happy. I felt these minutes on that deserted shore to be simple but rich in deep human value. And our meal every evening was like the stews that sailors make when they land on some deserted beach - with fish, oysters, onions and plenty of pepper; they are more tasty than any other dish and have no equal for nourishing a man's spirit. (ZtG 277)

The latter is but one of many descriptions of a meal in Zorba the Greek; in each description (but perhaps this one especially), Kazantzakis emphasises the simplicity of such rustic meals. Zorba's educated narrator and the aristocratic Des Esseintes both experience a similar rediscovery of food among the people - the Eat, Pray, Love of the 1880s and 1940s, perhaps.

Yet unlike À rebours, which makes the pleasurable experience tedious and hallowed, Kazantzakis realises its underlying human purpose. It seems appropriate here to misquote a scriptural phrase; that Kazantzakis paints pleasure as made for man, not man for pleasure. It is perhaps no coincidence that Des Esseintes' aesthetic ideals are books, art, and perfume while Zorba's are sex, music, and dancing - the active rather than reflective pleasures.

Crucially, Zorba is not an intellectual; he is not bent to consider why some experiences are superior to others; he knows only that they are. Moreover, he realises, as does the narrator of Zorba the Greek, that the best pleasures are frequently the simplest and heartiest. Dame Hortense's world populated with past lovers and champagne is one of dreams; the book's narrator is so caught up with books and Buddhism that he has to relearn the appreciation of simplicity. He initially marks Zorba as "a sensualist...a connoisseur," (12) but this is wrong; sensualism is far too deliberate a philosophy for Zorba.

"Man is a brute!" (57) And indeed, Zorba's words aren't empty: rape and violent death are both hard truths of his world, the price that must be paid for living in it. Des Esseintes suffers for his lifestyle, too, discovering that it is detrimental to his health and that he must return to Parisian society. But his suffering is of a fading variety. If the world of Zorba the Greek is a game of chance, the world of À rebours provides nothing but a fixed, prolonged decay.

Which is the more successful novel? It has been some years since I read À rebours, which I disliked, so perhaps my judgment is at fault, but I feel that Zorba the Greek projects a burning transience, a humanist lust for life that makes the other book seem weaker by comparison. Des Esseintes' journey through the senses seems too artificial, too fractured to be real. Zorba's narrator, by contrast, is thrust into a world of combined physical pleasures, of which even after some resistance, he can't help but take full advantage - and which, unlike, those of Des Esseintes, are common, thriving activities. Is the world of Zorba the Greek à rebours? No - thank God!

Losing my way

Perhaps the most taxing part of writing this first chapter is trying to remember to stay on topic. It ought to be easy, but I keep finding myself writing about poetry, or Interregnum duelling laws, or even just plays that aren't comedies.

Yet from the earliest days, my supervisor has always had to remind me to stick to the topic at hand. She suggested sticking a picture of two men duelling next to my computer.

It's not as though I don't find the topic of my PhD interesting; I do. I want to talk about Behn's The Emperor of the Moon, Sedley's Bellamira, and Vanbrugh's The Relapse. I think they're funny, interesting plays that are minefields of discussion-points about masculinity. The difficulty is the process of getting there; I feel the need to explain the basic situation, and why, the response to it, and why, what this meant, and why...And why is the core of my PhD at the moment! I feel as though I'm going the long way round to get to the core of my argument, and when I finally get there, it doesn't stand out as the central notion I'm putting forward.

Blogger doesn't have the option to share my mood, the way I could in my teenage LiveJournal, but if I could, it would be "exasperated".

REVIEW: Guys and Dolls and Other Stories by Damon Runyon

When I began reading Guys and Dolls and Other Stories, Damon Runyon was an author I was previously entirely unfamiliar with, outside of the musical Guys and Dolls, based on his story "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown". What struck me most - as I'm sure strikes most people - is the style of writing during these stories: the vernacular Broadwayese of the 1920s and '30s, and the near-absence of the past tense and contractions. For example, a description of a female character reads:

"One night I am passing the corner of Fiftieth Street and Broadway, and what do I see but Dave the Dude standing in a doorway talking to a busted-down old Spanish doll by the name of Madame La Gimp…Madame La Gimp is not such an old doll as anybody will wish to listen to…In fact, she is nothing but an old haybag, and generally somewhat ginned up. For fifteen years, or maybe sixteen, I see Madame La Gimp up and down Broadway, or sliding through the Forties, sometimes selling newspapers, and sometimes selling flowers, and in all these years I seldom see her but what she seems to have about half a head on from drinking gin." ("Madame La Gimp", 166)

This is a distinctive piece of Runyon prose, with all the characteristics that typify his writing. Particularly striking is his use of certain slang words which always replace the standard noun: most obviously, "women" are usually "dolls".

Yet aside from the writing style - I am by no means any sort of authority on American dialects - what drew me into the stories was Runyon's ability to make comically ridiculous his characters and his stories engaging and witty. I couldn't think of any respectable American male author before the sixties who writes in this way - O. Henry, perhaps, or Patrick Dennis, but nothing that really equals the slapdash, ironic, masculine cheerfulness that characterises Runyon's writing. Runyon's characters are clowns, and casting my mind around for a writer who also writes clowns, I came up with Wodehouse. Indeed, Wodehouse and Runyon are also similar in that they both use a stylised form of writing Runyon's writing style leaves room only for pure comedy.

Or is it pure comedy? There is an underlying conservatism that runs throughout the stories, in spite of the seedy speakeasies, the gambling, and the cavorting with starlets. Marriage remains a consistent, central preoccupation; marriage is something that women can expect, even if, as in "Romance in the Roaring Forties", the groom is switched halfway through the wedding. The subjects of homosexuality and the career woman get scarcely a mention in any of Runyon's writing here - unlike other literature of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s - and one could be forgiven for thinking that they don't really exist in the world he created.

Moreover, there is an ongoing need to restore order that makes it a conservative text. The typical Runyon story follows the pattern of SITUATION > EPISODE > SURPRISE > CRISIS > RESOLUTION > SITUATION. Thus in "Lonely Heart", the main character, Nicely-Nicely is a Broadway gambler (SITUATION) until he leaves to marry a widow in New Jersey (EPISODE). A farm-hand reveals that his new wife is something of a black widow (SURPRISE) which gives him some concern (CRISIS), until he convinces her that the ghost of an old husband is haunting her, and she commits suicide (RESOLUTION). Finally, Nicely-Nicely returns to Broadway and resumes his gambling lifestyle (SITUATION). We see this same basic plot in the majority of Runyon's stories: the denouement takes the characters back to where they were at the start, with little opportunity for growth. Again, this is a very Wodehousian mode of plotting: the restoration of order to a seemingly-impossible chaos is the bread-and-butter of the Jeeves stories.

There is no sense of life-death cycle in Runyon; his characters get engaged and married but there is an absence of birth and death in all but a small few of the stories; an absence of any world-altering event. In spite of the undercurrent of violence - Runyon's characters risk murder, kidnap, and assault on a near-daily basis - but there is only one actual death that I can recall, in the story "The Brain Goes Home". I was reminded of Orwell's essay on Dickens: "Dickens sees human beings with the most intense vividness, but sees them always in private life, as 'characters', not as functional members of society; that is to say, he sees them statically."

Of course, Orwell's complaint of Dickens was that his plots were outlandish and rigid; Wodehouse and Runyon, by contrast, excel at making believable the intricacies of elaborate plots, and in Runyon's case this is frequently at the expense of individual characterisation. Harry the Horse? Dave the Dude? Regret? Nicely-Nicely Jones? These are all the same person, bar some superficial differences. Even the nameless narrator of the stories blends into the background, a passive character who observes and concurs with what is before him; he has poor blood pressure in the story "Blood Pressure" but otherwise I couldn't come up with a single fact about him.

During August, I read books that were better-written (The Day of the Locust, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Miracles of Life) and books that brought me more enjoyment (The Thin Man, The Magnificent Ambersons). Yet none of them made me think about them to the same extent as Guys and Dolls and Other Stories did. Colourful isn't quite the word for these stories - for, as I said, the characters are not so clearly defined. Yet it's a fascinating collection; an excellent example of what a talented storyteller is capable of.

Conference

I spoke at the conference yesterday - and now that it's past, what a weight off my mind! I think my paper went fairly well; I tried to be engaging and informative, not going into too much unnecessary detail as almost everyone there was a classicist rather than a historian of modernity. I was filled with a strange, nervous sensation - I was speaking in the same hall where I had my very first lecture when I was an undergraduate. To look up at an audience, to be from the opposite angle for the first time, felt oddly surreal, as though I wasn't meant to be there.

There were questions at the end, which relieved me - one of my worries was boring everyone into silence - and after the conference was over, a nice postgraduate came over to me to talk about both of our papers. I wasn't expecting that at all, so I was thrilled.

I don't think I'd realised quite how much my thesis work had been put on hold by preparing for the conference; looking at what I've written so far for my first chapter, I feel quite rusty. I think one of the most awkward things about holding down a job while doing a thesis isn't so much the lack of time to write as the lack of continuous time. I have to snatch hours here and there most days - such as on my lunch break or when I wake up in the morning. It would be far better if I were able to gather up all these loose hours and use them properly at the end of the week.

Oh, well, time to get back to my thesis now that the conference is over. No excuses!