Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position

Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position; Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso, London 1995

One may safely affirm that all popular theology has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction…while their gloomy apprehensions make them ascribe to Him measures of conduct which in human creatures would be blamed, they must still affect to praise and admire that conduct in the object of their devotional addresses. Thus is may safely be affirmed that popular religions are really, in the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of daemonism. David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

…who would be so incurious as to leave unexamined the influence and motives of a woman who once boasted of operating more than five hundred convents in upwards of 105 countries—‘without counting India’? xi

If the baffled and fearful prehistory of our species ever comes to an end, and if we ever get off of our knees and cull those blooms, there will be no need for smoking altars and forbidding temples with which to honour the freethinking humanists, who scorned to use the fear of death to coerce and flatter the poor. Xiii

‘Mother Teresa, what do you hope to accomplish here?’
‘The joy of loving and being loved.’
‘That takes a lot of money, doesn’t it?’
‘It takes a lot of sacrifice.’
‘Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?’
‘I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.’
(11, Press conference, 1995, regarding new home for orphans in Chevy Chase, Maryland.)

Between 1588 and 1988 the Vatican canonized 679 saints. In the reign of John Paul II alone (as of June 1995), there have been 271 canonizations and 631 beatifications. Several hundred cases are pending, including the petition to canonize Queen Isabella of Spain. So rapid and general is the approach that it recalls the baptism by fire-hose with which Chinese generals Christianized their armies…13

…a determination to be the founder of a new order—her Missionaries of Charity organization currently numbers some 4,000 nuns and 40,000 lay workers—to be ranked with St Francis and St Benedict as the author of a ‘rule’ and a ‘discipline’. 14

…direct testimony of Ken Macmillan himself: “During Something Beautiful for God, there was an episode where we were taken to a building that Mother Teresa called the House of the Dying. Peter Chafer, the director, said, ‘Ah well, it’s very dark in here. Do you think we can get something?’ And we had just taken delivery at the BBC of some new film made by Kodak, which we hadn’t had time to test before we left, so I said to Peter, ‘Well, we may as well have a go.’ So we shot it. And when we got back several weeks later, a month or two later, we are sitting in the rushes theatre at Ealing Studios and eventually up came the shots of the House of the Dying. And it was surprising. You could see every detail. And I said, ‘That’s amazing’ That’s extraordinary.’ And I was going to go on to say, you know, three cheers for Kodak. I didn’t get a chance to say that though, because Malcolm, sitting in the front row, spun round and said: ‘It’s divine light! It’s Mother Teresa. You’ll find that it’s divine light, old boy.’ And three or four days later I found I was being phoned by journalists from London newspapers who were saying things like: ‘We hear you’ve just come back from India where Malcolm Muggeridge and you were the witness of a miracle.’” 26-27

Muggeridge: So you wouldn’t agree with people who say there are too many children in India?
Mother Teresa: I do not agree because God always provides. He provides for the flowers and the birds, for everything in the world that he has created. And those little children are his life. There can never be enough. 30

Muggeridge: You don’t think there’s a danger that people might mistake the means for the end, and feel that serving their fellow men was an end in itself? Do you think there’s a danger of that?
Mother Teresa: There is always the danger that we may become only social workers or just do the work for the sake of the work…It is a danger; if we forget to whom we are doing it. Our works are only an expression of our love for Christ. Our hearts need to be full of our love for him, and since we have to express that love in action, naturally then the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing our love for God. 31

…she cheapens her own example by telling us, as above, that humanism and altruism are ‘dangers’ to be sedulously avoided. Mother Teresa has never pretended that her work is anything but a fundamentalist religious campaign. 32

No Philosopher was on hand to tell him that there is no strong sentiment without some terror, as there is no real religion without a little fetishism. 35 –Jospeh Conrad, Victory

…the visit of Dr Robin Fox to the Mother Teresa operation in Calcutta in 1994. As editor of The Lancet, perhaps the world’s leading medical journal… “There are doctors who call in from time to time but usually the sisters and volunteers (some of whom have medical knowledge) make decisions as best they can. I saw a young man who had been admitted in poor shape with high fever, and the drugs prescribed had been tetracycline and paracetamol. Later a visiting doctor diagnosed probable malaria and substituted chloroquine. Could not someone have looked at a blood film? Investigations, I was told, are seldom permissible. How about simple algorithms that might help the sisters and volunteers distinguish the curable from the incurable? Again, no. Such systematic approaches are alien to the ethos of the home. Mother Teresa prefers providence to planning; her rules are designed to prevent any drift towards materialism: the sisters must remain on equal terms with the poor…Finally, how competent are sisters at managing pain? On a short visit, I could not judge the power of their spiritual approach, but I was disturbed to learn that the formulary includes no strong analgesics. Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks Mother Teresa’s approach as clearly separate from the hospice movement. I know which I prefer. 37-39

Bear in mind that Mother Teresa’s global income is more than enough to outfit several first-class clinics in Bengal. The decision not to do so, and indeed to run instead a haphazard and cranky institution which would expose itself to litigation and protest were it run by any branch of the medical profession, is a deliberate one. The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection. Mother Teresa (who herself, it should be noted, has checked into the of the finest and costliest clinics and hospitals in the West during her bouts with heart trouble and old age) once gave this game away in a filmed interview. She described a person who was in the last agonies of cancer and suffering unbearable pain. With a smile, Mother Teresa told the camera what she told this terminal patient: ‘You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.’ Unconscious of the account to which this irony might be charged, she then told of the sufferer’s reply: ‘Then please tell him to stop kissing me.’ There are many people in the direst need and pain who have had cause to wish, in their own extremity, that Mother Teresa was less free with her own metaphysical caresses and a little more attentive to actual suffering. 41-42

Ms Elgy Gillespie, author, journalist and sometime editor of The San Francisco Review of Books. Experienced in the care of AIDS patients, she spent some time at Mother Teresa’s San Francisco branch: “Sent to cook in her hostel, tactfully named ‘The Gift of Love’ (it is for homeless men with HIV), I found a dozen or so very sick men; but those who weren’t very sick were exceptionally depressed, because they were not allowed to watch TV or smoke or drink or have friends over. Even when they are dying, close friends are not allowed. They are never allowed to drink, even (or especially) at the funerals of their friends and roommates and some have been thrown out for coming home in drag!” 42-43

Susan Shields, (nine and a half year member of Mother Teresa’s Order) : “In the Bronx, plans were being made to establish a new home for the poor. Many of the homeless were sick and needed more permanent accommodation than that offered by our night shelter. We had bought a large abandoned building from the city for one dollar. A co-worker offered to be the contractor and arranged for an architect to draw up plans for the renovations. Government regulation required that an elevator be installed for the use of the disabled. Mother would not allow an elevator. The city offered to pay for the elevator. Its offer was refused. After all the negotiations and plans, the project for the poor was abandoned because an elevator for the handicapped was unacceptable.” … She was disturbed that the poor were the ones who suffered from the sisters’ self-righteous adherence to ‘poverty’. She knew of immense quantities of money, donated in all sincerity by people ‘from all walks of life’, which lingered unproductively in bank accounts… “The flood of donations was considered to be a sign of God’s approval of Mother Teresa’s congregation…The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives or on the lives of the poor we were trying to help…For Mother, it was the spiritual well-being of the poor that mattered most. Material aid was a means of reaching their souls, of showing the poor that God taught the sisters how to secretly baptize those who were dying. Sisters were to ask each person in danger of death if he wanted a ‘ticket to heaven’. An affirmative reply was to mean consent to baptism. The sister was then to pretend she was just cooling the person’s forehead with a wet cloth, while in fact she was baptizing him, saying quietly the necessary words. Secrecy was important so that it would not come to be known that Mother Teresa’s sisters were baptizing Hindus and Moslems.” 45-48

Emily Lewis, a seventy-five-year-old nurse who has worked in many of the most desperate quarters of the earth… “My own experience of Mother Teresa occurred when she was being honored at the 1989 luncheon meeting of the International Health Organization in Washington, D.C…She also touched on AIDS, saying she did not want to label it a scourge of God but that it did seem like a just retribution for improper sexual conduct.” 49

Helpless infants, abandoned derelicts, lepers and the terminally ill are the raw material for demonstrations of compassion. They are in no position to complain, and their passivity and abjection is considered a sterling trait. It is time to recognize that the world’s leading exponent of this false consolation is herself a demagogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers. 50

A woman experiencing danger in childbirth, for example, is supposed to sacrifice her own life for that of the child. (Judaism, which has codes no less ethical, tends to mandate the opposite decision, for the greater good of the family.) 52

Teresa, acceptance speech to Nobel Peace Prize, 1979: “Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace…if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves, or one another? Nothing.” 57

Keating made donations (not out of his own pocket, of course) to Mother Teresa in the sum of one and a quarter million dollars. He also granter her the use of his private jet. In return, Mother Teresa allowed Keating to make use of her prestige on several important occasions… 65

Mother Teresa’s letter to Lance Ito: “Dear Honorable Lance Ito, / We do not mix up in Business or Politicts or courts. Our work, as Missionaries or Charity is to give wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. / I do not know anything about Mr. Charles Keating’s work or his business or the matters you are dealing with. / I only know that he has always been kind and generous to God’s poor, and always ready to help whenever there was a need. It is for this reason that I do not want to forget him now while he and his family are suffering. Jesus has told us “Whatever you do to the least of my brethern…YOU DID IT TO ME. Mr. Keating has done much to help the poor, which is why I am writing to you on his behalf. / Whenever someone asks me to speak to a judge, I always tell them the same thing. I ask them to pray, to look into their heart, and to do what Jesus would do in that circumstance. And this is what I am asking of you, your Honor. / My gratitude to you is my prayer for you, and your work, your family and the people with whom you are working. / God bless you/ M. Teresa” 67

“Dear Mother Teresa: / I am a Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles County and one of the persons who worked on the prosecution of your benefactor, Charles H. Keating, Jr. I read your letter to Judge Ito, written on behalf of Mr. Keating, which includes your admission that you know nothing about Mr. Keating’s business or the criminal charges presented to Judge Ito. I am writing to you to provide a brief explanation of the crimes of which Mr. Keating has been convicted, to give you an understanding of the source of the money that Mr. Keating gave to you, and to suggest that you perform the moral and ethical act of returning the money to its rightful owners. / Mr. Keating was convicted of defrauding 17 individuals of more than $900,000. These 17 persons were representative of 17,000 individuals from whom Mr. Keating stole $252,000,000…The victims of Mr. Keating’s fraud come from a wide spectrum of society. Some were wealthy and well-educated. Most were people of modest means and unfamiliar with high finance. One was, indeed, a poor carpenter who did not speak English and had his life saving stolen by Mr. Keating’s fraud. / The biblical slogan of your organization is ‘As long as you did it to one of these Me least brethren. You did it to Me.’ The ‘least’ of the brethren are among those whom Mr. Keating fleeced without flinching. As you well know, divine forgiveness is available to all, but forgiveness must be preceded by admission of sin. Not only has Mr. Keating failed to admit his sins and his crimes, he persists in self-righteously blaming others for his own misdeeds. Your experience is, admirably, with the poor. My experience has been with the ‘con’ man and the perpetrator of the fraud. It is not uncommon for ‘con’ men to be generous with family, friends and charities. Perhaps they believe that their generosity will purchase love, respect or forgiveness. However, the time when the purchase of ‘indulgences’ was an acceptable method of seeking forgiveness died with the Reformation. No church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as salve for the conscience of the criminal. We are all grateful that forgiveness is available but we all, also, must perform our duty. That includes the Judge and the Jury. I remind myself of the biblical admonition of the Prophet Micah: ‘O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you. To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly.’ / We are urged to love mercy but we must do justice. / You urge Judge Ito to look into his heart—as he sentences Charles Keating—as do what Jesus would do. I submit the same challenge to you. Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in the possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? / I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the ‘indulgence’ he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it! / If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession. / Sincerely, / Paul W. Turley.” 68-70

There is no conceit equal to false modesty, and there is no politics like antipolitics, just as there is no worldliness to compare with ostentatious antimaterialism. 86

But we do believe in religion—at least for other people. It is a means of marketing hope, and of instilling ethical precepts on the cheap. It is also a form of discipline. The followers of the late American guru Leo Strauss—a man who had a profound influence on the Republican Right wing—make this cynical point explicit in their otherwise arcane texts. There should be philosophy and knowledge for the elect, religion and sentimentality for the masses. 97

David Gelernter, Feminism and the English Language

Feminism and the English Language
Can the damage to our mother tongue be undone?
by David Gelernter
03/03/2008, Volume 013, Issue 24

How can I teach my students to write decently when the English language has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Academic-Industrial Complex? Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers. But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state. In consequence we have all got used to sentences where puffed-up words like "chairperson" and "humankind" strut and preen, where he-or-she's keep bashing into surrounding phrases like bumper cars and related deformities blossom like blisters; they are all markers of an epoch-making victory of propaganda over common sense.

We have allowed ideologues to pocket a priceless property and walk away with it. Today, as college students and full-fledged young English teachers emerge from the feminist incubator in which they have spent their whole lives, this victory of brainless ideology is on the brink of becoming institutionalized. If we mean to put things right, we can't wait much longer.
Our ability to write and read good, clear English connects us to one another and to our common past. The prime rule of writing is to keep it simple, concrete, concise. Shakespeare's most perfect phrases are miraculously simple and terse. ("Thou art the thing itself." "A plague o' both your houses." "Can one desire too much of a good thing?") The young Jane Austen is praised by her descendants for having written "pure simple English." Meanwhile, in everyday prose, a word with useless syllables or a sentence with useless words is a house fancied-up with fake dormers and chimneys. It is ugly and boring and cheap, and impossible to take seriously.

But our problem goes deeper than a few silly words and many tedious sentences. How can I (how can any teacher) get students to take the prime rule seriously when virtually the whole educational establishment teaches the opposite? When students have been ordered since first grade to put "he or she" in spots where "he" would mean exactly the same thing, and "firefighter" where "fireman" would mean exactly the same thing? How can we then tell them, "Make every word, every syllable count!" They may be ignorant but they're not stupid. The well-aimed torpedo of Feminist English has sunk the whole process of teaching students to write. The small minority of born writers will always get by, inventing their own rules as they go. But we used to expect every educated citizen to write decently--and that goal is out the window.

"He or she" is the proud marshal of this pathetic parade. It has generated a cascading series of problems in which the Establishment, having noticed that Officially Approved gender-neutral sentences sound rotten, has dreamt up alternatives that are even worse. So let's consider "he or she." In some cases the awfulness of a feminist phrase requires several paragraphs to investigate systematically. Such investigations are worth pursuing nonetheless; our language is at stake.

When the style-smashers first announced, decades ago, that the neutral "he" meant "male" and excluded "female," they were lying and knew it. After all, when a critic like Mary Lascelles writes (in her classic 1939 study of Jane Austen) that "no reader can vouch for more than his own experience," one can hardly accuse her of envisioning male readers only. In feminist minds ideology excused the lie, and the goal of interchangeable sexes was a far greater good than decent English. Even today's English professors have heard (I suppose) of Eudora Welty, who wrote in her 1984 memoirs--just as the feminist anti-English campaign was nearing total victory--that every story writer imagines himself inside his characters; "it is his first step, and his last too." Was the author demonstrating her inability to write proper English? Or merely letting us know that there is no such thing as a female writer?

E.B. White was our greatest modern source of the purest, freshest, clearest, most bracing English, straight from a magic spring that bubbled for him alone. With A.J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell, he was one of a triumvirate that made the New Yorker under its great editor Harold Ross a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The Elements of Style, White's revision of a short textbook by his Cornell professor William Strunk, is justly revered as the best thing of its kind. In the third edition (1979), White lays down the law on the he-or-she epidemic that was sweeping the country like a bad flu (or a bad joke).

The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language. He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with (the dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotations; it is never incorrect.

(Warning: White died in 1985; a later edition of Elements published after his death is a disgrace to his memory.) In his 1984 White biography, Scott Elledge tells a remarkable story about "he or she":
The New Yorker rejected [in 1971] a parable White had written about the campaign of feminists to abolish the use of the pronoun his to mean "his or her." He told Roger Angell [his wife's son by a previous marriage] that he was "surprised, but not downhearted, that the piece got sunk. .  .  . To me, any woman's (or man's) attempt to remove the gender from the language is both funny and futile."
For the New Yorker to have rejected a piece by White, its darling and its hero, the man who did more than anyone but Ross himself to make the magazine the runaway, roaring success it became, and (by the way) a thorough-going liberal, was a sure sign that feminism had already got America in a chokehold.

The fixed idea forced by language rapists upon a whole generation of students, that "he" can refer only to a male, is (in short) wrong. It is applied with nonsensical inconsistency, too. The same feminist warriors who would never write "he" where "he or she" will do would also never write "the author or authoress" where "the author" will do. They hate such words as actress and waitress; in these cases they insist that the masculine form be used for men and women. You would never find my feminist colleagues writing a phrase such as, "When an Anglican priest or priestess mounts the pulpit .  .  . " You will find them writing, "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, he or she is about to address the congregation." Logic has never been a strong suit among the commissar-intellectuals who have bossed American culture since the 1970s. True, "he" sounds explicitly masculine in a way "priest" doesn't, to those who are just learning the language. Children also find it odd that "enough" should be spelled that way, that New York should be at the same latitude as Spain, that 7 squared is 49, and so on. Education was invented to set people straight on all these fine points.

He-or-she'ing added so much ugly dead weight to the language that even the Establishment couldn't help noticing. So feminist authorities went back to the drawing board. Unsatisfied with having rammed their 80-ton 16-wheeler into the nimble sports-car of English style, they proceeded to shoot the legs out from under grammar--which collapsed in a heap after agreement between subject and pronoun was declared to be optional. "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, they are about to address the congregation." How many of today's high school English teachers would mark this sentence wrong, or even "awkward"? (Show of hands? Not one?) Yet such sentences skreak like fingernails on a blackboard.
Slashes are just as bad. He/she is about to address the congregation" is unacceptable because it's not clear how to pronounce it: "he she," "he or she," "he slash she"? The unclarity is a nuisance, and each possibility sounds awful. Writing English is like writing music: One lays down the footprints of sounds that are recreated in each reader's mind. To be deaf to English is like being deaf to birdsong or laughter or rustling trees or babbling brooks--only worse, because English is the communal, emotional, and intellectual net that holds this nation together, if anything can. Occasionally one sees "s/he," which shows not indifference but outright contempt for the language and the reader.

And it gets worse. At the bottom of this junkpile is a maneuver that seems to be growing in popularity, at least among college students: writing "she" instead of neutral "he," or interchanging "he" and "she" at random. This grotesque outcome follows naturally from the primordial lie. If you make students believe that "he" can refer only to a male, then writers who use "he" in sentences referring to men and women are actually discussing males only and excluding females--and might just as well use "she" and exclude males, leaving the reader to sort things out for himself. The she-sentences that result tend to slam on a reader's brakes and send him smash-and-spinning into the roadside underbrush, cursing under his breath. (I still remember the first time I encountered such a sentence, in an early-1980s book by a noted historian about a Jesuit in Asia.)
Here is the problem with the dreaded she-sentence. Ideologues can lie themselves blue in the face without changing the fact that, to those who know modern English as it existed until the cultural revolution and still does exist in many quarters, the neutral he "has lost all suggestion of maleness." But there is no such thing as a neutral "she"; even feminists don't claim there is.

"The driver turns on his headlights" is not about a male or female person; it is about a driving person. But "the driver turns on her headlights" is a sentence about a female driver. Just as any competent reader listens to what he is reading, he pictures it too (if it can be pictured); hearing and imagining the written word are ingrained habits. A reader who had thought the topic was drivers is now faced by a specifically female driver, and naturally wonders why. What is the writer getting at? To distract your reader for political purposes, to trip him up merely to demonstrate your praiseworthy right-thinkingness, is a low trick.
White's comment: "If you think she is a handy substitute for he, try it and see what happens."

Sometimes a writer can avoid plastering his prose with feminist bumper-stickers and still not provoke the running dogs of the Establishment by diving into the plural whenever danger threatens. ("Drivers turn on their headlights.") White's comment:
Alternatively, put all controversial nouns in the plural and avoid the choice of sex altogether, and you may find your prose sounding general and diffuse as a result.

But the real problem goes deeper. Why should I worry about feminist ideology while I write? Why should I worry about anyone's ideology? Writing is a tricky business that requires one's whole concentration, as any professional will tell you; as no doubt you know anyway. Who can afford to allow a virtual feminist to elbow her way like a noisy drunk into that inner mental circle where all your faculties (such as they are) are laboring to produce decent prose? Bargaining over the next word, shaping each phrase, netting and vetting the countless images that drift through the mind like butterflies in a summer garden, mounting some and releasing others--and keeping the trajectory and target always in mind?

Throw the bum out.

It's a disgrace that we graduate class after class of young Americans who will never be able to write down their thoughts effectively--in a business report, a letter of application or recommendation, a postcard or email, or any other form. Our one consolation is that the country is filling up gradually with people who have been reared on ugly, childish writing and will never expect anything else. But the implications of our spineless surrender go deeper. We have accepted, implicitly, a hit-and-run vandalizing of English--the richest, most expressive language in the world. Languages such as French are shaped and guided by official boards of big shots. But English used to be a language of the people, by the people, for the people. "The living language is like a cowpath," wrote White; "it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs." We have allowed our academic overlords to plow up White's cow-path and replace it with a steel-and-concrete highway, hemmed in by guardrails and heavily patrolled by police.

Of course all languages change. A feminist might say that he-or-she is merely the latest twist in our ever-changing cowpath; that he-or-she was the will of the people. But this too is a lie, and in fairness to my opponents I have never heard them deploy it. They know that Americans of the late 1960s were not struck en masse by sudden unhappiness over the neutral he or the word "chairman." Such complaints never did rank high on the average American's list of worries. (Way back in the 1970s, "chairperson" was in fact a one-word joke: an object lesson in the ludicrous places you would reach if you took Feminist English seriously.) In fact the New English was deliberately created and pounded into children's heads by an intellectual elite asserting its control over American culture. The same conclusion follows independently from a language's well-established tendency to simplify and compress its existing structure (like a settling sea-bed) to make room for constantly arriving new coinages. Words like "authoress" would almost certainly have disappeared with no help from feminists. But "he" transforming itself into "he or she" is like a ball rolling uphill. It doesn't happen unless someone has volunteered to push.

The depressing trail continues one last mile. What happens to a nation's thinking when you ban such phrases as "great men"? The alternatives are so bad--"great person" sounds silly; "great human being" is a casual tribute to a friend--that it's hard to know where to turn. "Hero" doesn't work; "Wittgenstein was a great man" is a self-sufficient assertion, but "Wittgenstein was a hero" is not. Was he a war hero, a philosophical hero? (Yes and yes.) "Wittgenstein was a great heart" (also true) can't be rephrased in hero-speak, and can't substitute for "great man" either.

We happen to know also that the idea of "great men" has been bounced right out of education at every level. Nowadays students are taught to admire celebrities and money instead. We might well have misplaced the "great man" idea anyway, but losing the phrase didn't help. Civilization copes poorly with ideas that have no names.

And what should we say instead of "brotherhood"? "Crown thy good with siblinghood"? "Tolerance" is no substitute for "brotherhood"; it's passive and bland where "brotherhood" is active and inspiring. "Brotherhood" has accordingly been quietly stricken from the list of good things to which Americans should aspire.

We allowed ideologues to wreck the English language. Do we have the courage to rebuild?


Personal Assessment:

"The prime rule of writing is to keep it simple, concrete, concise." : There are significant exceptions, and while they prove the rule, they don't convince me of the baseness of the increased word bulk specifically associated with gender sensitivity in English, at least those recent inclusions which are grammatically correct (i.e. excluding 'they' in reference to a singular) and phonetically specific in instruction (i.e. excluding 's/he'), given the premise that 'he' refers always to the masculine. My assumption that 'he' refers always to the masculine is based not on the change that feminist attention has affected in the word's conception, which, though undeniable, I might choose to resist if I found offensive; but rather on the masculine whiff the word possessed prior, a whiff I find deserving of external, top-down philosophical imposition. And none of us is Johnson, but he intervened from above. As to what Johnson had to say about the use of 'he', I don't care: his intervention is my example.

A great compromise comes into play upon being made aware, by Gelernter, how we, with nonsensical inconsistency, do not extend gender inclusion to nouns other than pronouns, for example, 'author'. I must, if I decide to write 'he or she', but not 'author or authoress', accept that gender sensitivity is important to me, but not important enough to change my use of a good deal of the English language and provoke constant misunderstanding and accusation of sexism.

As to the phonetic ugliness of self-consciously interjecting 'she' or 'he or she' or 'he or she' in a sentence, I find it to be ugly if philosophically disagreeable, and not ugly but antiquated if agreeable: for there are lots of little extra words in English past that slow down the language but which are beautiful. I do not, on the whole, value these inflections, these little prepositions and connectives in contemporary speech, but I find them beautiful when I read from the past; and if in one instance I add a few little words (and *little is the key, aesthetically, for me, as I find the inclusion of lots of little words generally beautiful, and lots of big words much less so) to contemporary usage, I do not think it would be such an ugly thing. Now, as to the seeming ugliness of concision and wordiness intermixed (that striving for rapidity of expression yet interjecting 'he or she'): in reading from say, a mid-seventeenth century text, I find very often a mixture of what to a contemporary eye is concision and wordiness, and I find it typically beautiful because done in skilled hands. So it can be done, and a relatively low likelihood of success is no deterrence.

Sir John Suckling, Ed. William Carew Hazlitt

The Poems, Plays, and Other Remains of Sir John Suckling, Ed. William Carew Hazlitt, Reeves and Turner, London, 1892

W. W. [Wordsworth] observes: “Suckling was among the few who read Shakespeare in that age; of all poets he seems to have been his favourite. He not only imitated him in his writings, but praised and quoted him in all the polished circles of the day, of which he was a distinguished ornament.” (Introductory Notice, vi)

…[from J. Lawson] he was also an excellent musician, at an age when music was little cultivated in England. Every poet is supposed to be a musician in his ear, if not practically. Moore, in his ‘Retrospective of Prose’ writing in England, has named Milton as the only poet of eminence in England who was a practical musician, which is a piece of injustice to Sir J. Suckling, who was at least as great a proficient in music as Milton. (Introductory Notice, vi)

…that precocious intellect which Langbaine has assigned him—a return, we are gravely informed, made for the injustice of nature, which had delayed the period of his birth two months beyond the usual term of gestation. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xv)

…I should conclude with Dodsley that he was a polite rather than a deep scholar. Music, languages, and poetry were the accomplishments he most cultivated, and in which he was most desirous to excel; nor is it agreeable to this acknowledged vivacity of his constitution to imagine that more abstruse or graver subjects could very long engage his attention. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xviii)

…father’s decease. He died on the 27th of March 1627, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, an event which the constitutional gaiety of the son rendered peculiarly untoward, as the gravity of the father’s character, which was remarkable, would have operated essentially in diverting him from many youthful indiscretions into which he fell from this early exposure to the allurements of a gay and luxurious court… (Life of Sir John Suckling, xix)

[Footnote] For the amusement of those ladies which may honour this sketch with a perusal, I subjoin the following items of Sir John Suckling [father]’s will, in which these bequests are contained: —“I give to my beloved daughter Martha, a fayre ring, with eleaven diamonds: and to my two pretty twynnes Anne and Mary I give two rings with dyamonds in either of them—viz., to Anne a ring with 13 dyamonds in it, and to Mary one ring with 7 dyamonds in it. Item, I give to Elizabeth, my youngest daughter, a jewell with 19 dyamonds in it, and my late wyfe’s girdle of pearle. Item, I give to my very loving wife all her apparel, pearles, rings, and jewelles, which she now weareth, or hath in her possession: save only one chayne of dyamonds, which I lately bought by the help of Mr. Hardnett, a jeweler, and paid one hundred fifty-five pounds for the same, which is by her to be repayed to my executors within one yeare next after my decease; unless my eldest sonne and she agree about the redemption of the manor of Rose Hall. Item, I give to my well-beloved wyfe my my best coach and twoe of my best coach-horses, and she to dwell in my house in Dorset Court (in Fleet Street) soe longe as she remaynes my widdowe.” (Life of Sir John Suckling, xx)

“He was so famous at court,” says Sir William Davenant, “for his accomplishments and readie sparkling wit, that he was the bull that was bayted, his repartee and witt beinge most sparkling, when most set on and provoked.” But if we take a short retrospect of the national feelings and manners of that period, it will enable us to understand more clearly, how much a man of Suckling’s accomplishments must have been valued in a court like that of Charles I. The growing love of liberty, for which these times were now remarkable, was opposed by a spirit of devoted loyalty, as magnificent in its display as it was elevated in its principle. The severe and ascetic habits which the popular party combined with their democratic opinions served only to render them more hateful to the Cavaliers, by whom the refined amusements and gallantry of the court were pursued with a redoubled vivacity. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxii-xxiii)

He became enamoured of play, and entered into habits of deep gaming with an eagerness unworthy of its cause. He distinguished himself in these, as in more defensible gratifications, and was soon known as the best bowler and card-player in the kingdom, to the neglect, probably, of worthier attainments. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxiv)

As a card-player he was equally notorious, and became so enraptured with the fascinations of play, that he would frequently lie in bed the greater part of the day with a pack of cards before him, to obtain by practice the most perfect knowledge and management of their powers…That he never seriously injured his fortune by [gambling] is certain, from the large sums of money he was afterwards enabled to expend on worthier and patriotic purposes. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxv)

When at his lowest ebb [in gambling], he would make himself glorious in apparel, and said that it exalted his spirits, and that he had then the best luck, when he was most gallant, and his spirits high. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxvi)

The preceding recital of juvenile errors has been demanded by impartiality from the pen of biography; but it more gladly records that an earnestness of purpose, alike honourable and patriotic, marked the employment of Suckling’s latter years. His most valued associates were now men dignified by their virtue and distinguished by their abilities. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxvi)

In this place may be mentioned a circumstance which is not only too singular in itself to pass unnoticed, but deserves recording as a triumph of Suckling’s pen, which on the present occasion reclaimed a relative from the path of folly, and rendered him an useful and respectable member of society. Charles Suckling, the youngest son of the poet’s uncle, Charles Suckling, Esq. of Woodton, had for some years indulged in a strange propensity of paying attentions to very young women, whom he deserted as they became marriageable, when he transferred his love to fresh objects more juvenile, who, in their turn, were in like manner discarded. / To wean his relative from this weak and dishonourable conduct, he tried, at his uncle’s request, the effects of raillery and stature… (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxvii)

It should be observed that this court was an engine of almost absolute authority, and its processes most alarming [footnote: Sir George Markham was fined 10,000 pounds in the Court of Star Chamber for striking Lord Darcy’s huntsman, who had given him foul language.] ; but Suckling so greatly possessed the favor of his sovereign, that he was speedily extricated from the dangers of his situation. He retired, however, without delay to his country seat, in obedience to the royal edict, and devoted himself almost exclusively to the charms of music and literature, till the increasing violence of faction again drew him into more active employment. In this interval were produced his best literary performances. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxxii-xxxiv)

“Sir John came like a young prince for all manner of equipage and convenience, and had a cart-load of books carried down.” The last is a pleasing touch in this lively sketch, as it shows that the love of pleasure and expense in which he so greatly indulged was balanced by an equal ardour for literary enjoyments and rational pursuits. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxxv)

An unhappy domestic occurrence excited a temporary gloom in our poet’s family. His eldest sister, Martha, had married Sir George Southcott, of Shillingford, in the county of Devon, who completed a course of conjugal unkindness by the appalling crime of suicide. This melancholy event drew from Suckling an admirable consolatory letter, the manly style and sentiments of which are worthy of his pen. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxxvii)

But his efforts on behalf of his monarch were not confined to his pen. The Scottish League and Covenant having ended in open rebellion, he resolved on more active assistance…with a liberality which has never been surpassed, and perhaps rarely paralleled, presented his majesty with a troop of one hundred horsemen, whom he clothed and maintained from his private resources…With this reinforcement he joined the king’s army on its march to the north, which is said to have resembled a triumphal procession rather than a military expedition…It is well known that the whole English army fled…Had Suckling and his troops individually disgraced themselves, they would without doubt have been rendered amenable to martial law; but we find him retaining his monarch’s favour… (Life of Sir John Suckling, xxxviii-xlii)

With the utmost anxiety he had long watched the alarming and increasing dissesions between the king and his parliaments, and now addressed a letter on that pressing and important subject to his friend Henry Jermyn…This admirable composition is well known to every one conversant with English history; its maxims of sound policy, its correct judgment and acute foresight, would not disgrace the most refined and experienced politician. In this letter Suckling displays a strong inclination to heal the wounds which party rancour had inflamed between the king and his people; his allusions to the influence and conduct of the queen are beautifully expressed, and he points with delicacy to the necessity of her dismissing the Roman Catholic attendants by whom she was surrounded… It has been supposed that, as this letter was addressed to one of the king’s most confidential servants, it was intended for the royal perusal. That his majesty did read it, and dwelt with consideration on its important arguments, seems almost beyond a doubt, as the subsequent conduct of Charles was perfectly in unison with the advice it contains. (Life of Sir John Suckling, xliii-xliv)

…these active measures of Sir John Suckling and his friends could not long proceed unnoticed by the popular party, who had now obtained complete mastery in the parliament…a conspiracy (as it was termed by the Puritans) then in agitation against the whole kingdom. The conspirators had made arrangements, it was said, for bringing over a French army to co-operate with the Irish troops and the loyalists of the English nation…Suckling and his coadjutors, too well aware of their danger, absented themselves from the House, and were in consequence charged with high treason. This was on the 6th of May; on the 8th a proclamation was issued threatening them with the pains and penalties of their situation, unless they immediately surrendered themselves for examination; but Suckling was already beyond the seas… (Life of Sir John Suckling, xlvi)

Reduced, at length, in fortune, and dreading to encounter poverty, which his habits and temper were little calculated to endure—hurled from his rank in society—an alien, and perhaps friendless—his energies at length gave way to the complicated wretchedness of his situation, and he contemplated an act which he had himself condemned in others. / Purchasing poison of an apothecary at Paris, he produced death, says Aubrey, by violent fits of vomiting. Some writers, with great tenderness to his character, have attributed his end to other causes and dissimilar means; but, I regret to add, family tradition confirms the first and the most revolting narration. / The precise period of his death is uncertain, nor is the obscurity in which it remains enveloped likely to be removed. Aubrey states that he was buried in the cemetery attached to the Protestant Church at Paris… (Life of Sir John Suckling, l)

If this chronology be accurate, Sir John Suckling died in his thirty-fourth year… (Life of Sir John Suckling, li)

In person he was of the middle size, though but slightly made, with a winning and graceful carriage, and noble features. From Aubrey we have his picture touched with all the vigour of an original portrait: “Sir John Suckling was of middle stature and slight strength; brisk round eie, reddish fac’t, and red nosed (ill liver); his head not very big; his hayre a kind of sand colour; his beard turn’d up naturally, so that he had a brisk and graceful looke.” (Life of Sir John Suckling, lii)

Sir John Suckling died unmarried. (Life of Sir John Suckling, liii)

In descriptions of feminine grace and beauty he is peculiarly happy, and in his prose compositions is clear, nervous, and sparkling. (Life of Sir John Suckling, lv)

He fails most as a dramatist, though Phillips, says his plays continued to draw audiences to the theatres in his days. They did not, however, long retain popularity…Besides bearing very evident marks of crudity in the plans and hurry in the execution, they are marred by the recurrence of trifling incidents…They are deficient, moreover, in that sweetness of versification and originality of thought which elsewhere distinguish his compositions… (Life of Sir John Suckling, lvii)

“The Goblin,” it must be confessed, possesses little merit. The idea of the play is evidently borrowed from Shakespeare; and the same arguments may be advanced in defense of the machinery adopted in it as have been so powerfully adduced by Dr. Johnson in support of Shakespeare’s employment of witches in “Macbeth.” A belief in the agency of witchcraft was still an universal notion in Suckling’s time—nay, it had been rendered a fashionable illusion by the publication of King James’s work on demonology. (Life of Sir John Suckling, lx)

Since my coming ashore, I find that the people of this country are a kind of infidels, not believing in the Scripture; for though it be there promised there shall never be another Deluge, yet they do fear it daily, and fortify against it: that they are Nature’s youngest children, and so, consequently, have the least portion of wit and manners; or rather that they are her bastards, and so inherit none at all.
(To William Davenant, London, Nov. 18th, 1629, V2 173-174)

Before, therefore, I went to the king, I attended my Lord Treasurer, and told him that by more particular command I was more specially to wait upon his lordship; that I was to speak to the king that morning, but was come before to kiss his lordship’s hands. (To Sir Henry Vane, V2 176)

In conclusion I told him, that if there were anything in what I had said that could seem less fit to his lordship, or anything besides that his lordship could think more fit, I stood there ready to be disposed of by him, upon which he embraced me, thanked your lordship more especially for that address… (To Sir Henry Vane, V2 176)

I am not peremptory that things are so as I have here represented them; but I am certain they are thought to be so. Your lordship’s better judgment will resolve it… (To Sir Henry Vane, V2 178)

So that now a gallery, hung with Titian’s or Vandyke’s hand, and a chamber filled with living excellence, are the same thing to me; and the use that I shall make of that sex now will be no pother than that which the wiser sort of Catholics do of pictures… (To Aglaura [?], V2 179)

I would have you leave that foolish humour, Jack, of saying you are not in love with her, and pretending you careee not for her; for smothered fires are dangerous, and malicious humours are best and safest vented and breathed out. (A Dissuasion from Love, V2 181)

Though, madam, I have ever hitherto believed play to be a thing in itself as merely indifferent as religion a statesman or love made in privy-chamber; yet hearing you have resolved it otherwise for me, my faith shall alter without becoming more learned upon it, or once knowing why it should do so. So great and just a sovereignty is that your reason hath above all others, that mine must be a rebel to itself, should it not obey thus easily; and, indeed, all the infallibility of judgment we poor Protestants have, is at this time wholly in your hands. (?, V2 182)

…and without all question, the first Christians under the great persecutions suffered not in 500 years so many several ways as I have done in six days in this lewd town. (To Aglaura [?], V2 183)

Madam,—I thank heaven we live in an age in which the widows wear colours… (To Lady Southcot, V2 185)

…it being strange at all that a man who hath lived ill all his time in a house should break a window, or steal away in the night through an unusual postern. (To Lady Southcot, V2 185)

I must confess it is a just subject for our sorrow to hear of any that does quit his station without his leave that placed him there… (To Lady Southcot, V2 186)

Examples of such loving folly our times afford but few; and in those there are, you shall find the stock of love to have been greater, and their strengths richer to maintain it, than [it] is to be feared yours can be. ([addressed ‘Sir’] V2 187)

The ruins that either time, sickness, or the melancholy you shall give her, shall bring, must all be made up at your cost… ([addressed ‘Sir’] V2 188)

This I speak not out of a desire to increase your fears, which are already but too many, but out a hope that, when you know the worst, you will at once leap into the river, and swim through handsomely, and not, weatherbeaten with the divers blasts of irresolution, stand shivering upon the brink. ([addressed ‘Sir’] V2 188)

…I had much rather be mad with him that, when he had nothing, thought all the ships that came into the haven his, than with you who, when you have so much coming in, think you have nothing. ([addressed ‘Sir’] V2 189)

My Noble Lord,—Your humble servant had the honour to receive from your hand a letter, and had the grace upon the sight of it to blush. ([addressed ‘My Noble Lord’] V2 189)

Germany hath no whit altered me; I am still the humble servant of my Lord --- that I was… ([addressed ‘My Noble Lord’] V2 190)

Since you can breathe no one desire that was not mine before it was yours, or full as soon (for hearts united never knew divided wishes), I must chide you, dear princess, not thank you, for your present; and (if at least I knew how) be angry with you for sending him a blush, who needs must blush because you sent him one. If you are conscious of much, what am I then, who guilty am of all you can pretend to, and something more—unworthiness. But why should you at all, heart of my heart, disturb the happiness you have so newly given me, or make love feed on doubts, that never yet could thrive on such a diet? If I have granted your request! O, why will you ever say that you have studied me, and give so great an interest to the contrary! That wretched if speaks as if I would refuse what you desire, or could—both which are equally impossible. My dear princess, there needs no new approaches where the breach is made already; nor must you ever ask anywhere, but of your fair self, for anything that shall concern you humble servant. ([Entire], To Aglaura, V2 190)

Dost thou know what marriage is? ’Tis curing of love the dearest way, or waking a losing gamester out of a winning dream, and after a long expectation of a strange banquet, a presentation of a homely meal. (A letter to a friend [Carew] to dissuade him from marrying a widow which he formerly had been in love with, and quitted, V2 192-193)

Thou now perchance has vow’d all that can be vowed to any one face, and thinkest thou hast left nothing unsaid to it; do but make love to another, and if thou art not suddenly furnished with new language and fresh oaths, I will conclude Cupid hath used thee worse than ever he did any of his train. (A letter to a friend [Carew] to dissuade him from marrying a widow which he formerly had been in love with, and quitted, V2 193)

When I receive your lines, my dear princess, and find there expressions of a passion, though reason and my own immerit tell me it must not be for me, yet is the cosenage so pleasing to me, that I, bribed by my own desires, believe them still before the other. Then do I glory that my virgin-love has stayed for such an object to fix upon, and think how good the stars were to me that kept me from quenching those flames you or wild love furnished me withal in common and ordinary waters, and reserved me a sacrifice for your eyes. While thought thus smiles and solaces himself within me, cruel remembrance breaks in upon our retirements, and tells so sad a story that, trust, me, I forget all that pleased fancy said before, and turn[es] my thoughts to where I left you. Then I consider that storms neither know courtship nor pity, and that those rude blasts will often make you a prisoner this winter, if they do no worse. / While I here enjoy fresh diversion, you make the sufferings more by having leisure to consider them; nor have I now any way left me to make mine equal with them, but by often considering that they are not so; for the thought that I cannot be with you to bear my share is more intolerable to me than if I had borne more. But I was only born to number hours, and not enjoy them; yet can I never think myself unfortunate, while I can write myself Aglaura her humble servant. ([Entire], To Aglaura, V2 195)

When I consider, my dear princess, that I have no other pretence to your favours than that which all men have to the original of beauty, light, which we enjoy, not that ’tis the inheritance of our eyes, but because things most excellent cannot restrain themselves, but are ours, as they are diffusively good;… (To Aglaura, V2 196)

How pleasingly troublesome thought and remembrance have been to me, since I left you, I am no more able now to express, than another to have them so. You only could make every place you came in worth the thinking of; and I do think those places worthy my thought only, because you made them so. But I am to leave them, and I shall do’t the willinger, because the gamester still is so much in me, as that I love not to be told too often of my losses. (To Aglaura, V2 196)

Though desire, in those that love, be still like too much sail in a storm, and man cannot so easily strike, or take all in when he pleases; yet, dearest princess, be it never so hard, when you shall think it dangerous, I shall not make it difficult; though—well, love is love, and air is air; and, though you are a miracle yourself, yet do not I believe that you can work any. Without it I am confident you can never make these two, thus different in themselves, one and the self-same thing; when you shall, it will be some small furtherance towards it, that you have your humble servant, / J.S. / Whoso truly loves the air Aglaura, that he will never know desire, at least not entertain it, that brings not letters of recommendation from her, or first a fair passport. ([Entire] To Aglaura, V2 197)

Though I conceive you, ladies, so much at leisure that you may read anything, yet since the stories of the town are merely amorous, and sound nothing but love, I cannot, without betraying my own judgment, make them news for Wales. Nor can it be less improper to transport them to you, than for the king to send my Lord of C--- over ambassador this winter into Greenland. / It would want faith in so cold a country as Anglesey to say that your Cousin Duchess, for the quenching of some foolish flames about her, has endured quietly the loss of much of the king’s favour, of many of her houses, and of most of her friends. / Whether the disfigurement that travel or sickness has bestowed upon B.W---be thought so great by the Lady of the Isle as ’tis by others, and whether the alteration of his face has bred a change in her mind, it never troubles you, ladies, what old loves are decayed, or what new ones are sprung up in their room. Whether this lady be too discreet, or that cavalier not secret enough, are things that concern the inhabitants of Anglesey not at all. A fair day is better welcome and more news than all that can be said in this kind; and for all that I know now, the devil’s chimney is on fire, or his pot seething over, and all North Wales not able to stay the fury of it. Perchance, while I write this, a great black cloud is sailing from Mistress Thomas’s bleak mountains over to Baron-Hill, there to disgorge itself with what the sea or worse places fed it with before. / It may be, the honest banks about you turn bankrupt too, and break; and the sea, like an angry creditor, seizes upon all, and hath no pity, because he has been put off so long from time to time. For variety (and it is not impossible), some boisterous wind flings up the hangings; and thinking to do as much to your clothes, finds a resistance, and so departs, but first breaks all the windows about the house for it in revenge. / These things, now, we that live in London cannot help, and they are as great news to men that sit in boxes at Blackfriars, as the affairs of love to flannel weavers. / For my own part, I think I have made a great compliment when I have wished myself with you, and more than I dare make good in winter; and yet there is none would venture farther for such a happiness than your humble servant. ([Entire] For the two Excellent Sisters [probably Aglaura and her sister], V2 199-200)

…to despatch to you one of our cabinet council, Colonel Young, with some slight forces of canary, and some few of sherry, which no doubt will stand you in good stead, if they do not mutiny and grow too headstrong for their commander. Him Captain Puff of Barton shall follow with all expedition, with two or three regiments of claret; Monsieur de Granville, commonly called Lieutenant Strutt, shall lead up the rear of Rheinish and white. (The Wine-drinkers to the Water-drinkers, greeting: V2, 201-202)

Since joy, the thing we all so court is but our hopes stripped of our fears, pardon me if I be still pressing at it, and, like those that are curious to know their fortunes aforehand, desire to be satisfied… (Unknown, V2, 202)

I am not so ill a Protestant as to believe in merit, yet if you please to give answer under your own hand, such as I shall for ever rely upon, if I have not deserved it already, it is not impossible but I may. (Unknown, V2, 203)

Honest, Charles,—Were there not fools enou’ before the commonwealth of lovers, but that thou must bring up a new sect? Why delighted with the first knots of roses; and when they come to blow, can satisfy the sense, and do the end of their creation, dost not care for them? Is there nothing in this foolish transitory world that thou canst find out to set thy heart upon, but that which has newly left off making of dirt-pies, and is but preparing itself for loam and a green sickness? Seriously, Charles, and without ceremony, ’tis very foolish, and to love widows is as tolerable an humour, and as justifiable as thine,; for beasts that have been ride off their legs are as much for a man’s use as colts that are unwayed, and will not go at all. Why the devil such young things? Before these understand what thou wouldst have, others would have been granted. Thou dost not marry them neither, nor anything else. ’Sfoot, it is the story of the jackanapes and the partridges: thou starest after a beauty till it is lost to thee; and then lett’st out another, and starest after that till it is gone too! Never considering that it is here as in the Thames, and that while it runs up in the middle, it runs down on the sides; while thou contemplatest the coming-in and flow of beauty, that it ebbs with thee, and that thy youth goes out at the same time. After all this, too, she thou now art cast upon will have much ado to avoid being ugly. Pox on’t, men will say thou wert benighted, and wert glad of any inn. Well, Charles, there is another way, if you could find it out. Women are like melons—to green or too ripe are worth nothing—you must try till you find a right one. Taste all—but hark you, Charles, you shall not need to eat of all; for one is sufficient for a surfeit.—Your most humble servant. / I should have persuaded you to marriage; but, to deal ingenuously, I am a little out of arguments that way at this present. ’Tis honourable, there’s no question on’t; but what more, in good faith, I cannot readily tell. ([Entire] To a Cousin, who still loved young girls, and when they came to be marriageable, quitted them, and fell in love with fresh, at his father’s request, who desired he might be persuaded out of the humour, and marry. V2, 203-204)

Madame,—The distrust I have had of not being able to write to oyu anything which might pay the charge of reading, has persuaded me to forbear kissing your hands at this distance. So, like women that grow proud because they are chaste, I thought I might be negligent because I was not troublesome; and were I not safe in your goodness, I should be, madam in your judgment, which is too just to value little observances, or think them necessary to the right honouring my [perhaps, any] lady. (Unknown, V2 205)

Madam,—By the same reason the ancients made no sacrifice to death, should your ladyship send me no letters, since there has been no return on my side. But the truth is, the place affords nothing: all our days are (as the women here) alike, and the difference of Fair does rarely show itself. Such great state do beauty and the sun keep in these parts. I keep company with my own horses, madam, to avoid that of the men; and by this you may guess how great an enemy to my living contentedly my lady is, whose conversation has brought me to so fine a diet that, wheresoever I go, I must starve: all days are tedious, companies troublesome, and books themselves (feasts heretofore) no relish in them. Finding you to be the cause of all this, excuse me, madam, if I resent, and continue peremptory in the resolution I have taken to be, madam, during life your humbles servant. ([Entire] Unknown, V2 205-206)

Madam,—But that I know your goodness is not mercenary, and that you receive thanks either with as much trouble as men ill news, or with as much wonder as virgins unexpected love, this letter should be full of them. A strange, proud return you may think I make you, madam, when I tell you, it is not from everybody I would be thus obliged; and that, if I thought you did me not these favour because you love me, I should not love you, because you do me these favours. This is not language for one in affliction, I confess, and upon whom, it may be, at this present a cloud is breaking; but finding not within myself I have deserved that storm, I will not make it greater by apprehending it. / After all, lest, madam, you should think I take your favours as tribute, to my own great grief I here declare, that the services I shall be able to render you will be no longer presents, but payments of debts, since I can do nothing for you hereafter which I was not obliged to do before. Madam, your most humble and faithful servant. ([Entire] Unknown, V2 206)

There are two things which I shall not be ashamed to propound to you as ends, since the greater part of the wise men of the world have not been ashamed to make them theirs, and, if any has been found to contemn them, it hath been strongly to be suspected that either they could not easily attain them, or else that the readiest way to attain to them was to contemn them. These two are honour and wealth; and though you stand possessed of both of them, yet is the first in your hands like a sword which, if not through negligence, by mishchance hath taken rust, and needs a little clearing, and it would be much handsomer a present to posterity, if you yourself in your lifetime wipe it off. (My Lord, V2 208)

I confess, though, had vice so large an empire in the court as heretofore it has had, or were the times so dangerous that to the living well there wise conduct were more necessary than virtue itself… (My Lord, V2 209)

Sven Birkerts, Reading Life: Books for the Ages

Sven Birkerts, Reading Life: Books for the Ages, Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, 2007

I first read Madame Bovary in July of 1971 in a bunkhouse in Deer Lodge, Montana. I was nineteen years old and had gotten myself a summer job that gratified all of my fantasies about meeting the “authentic” face to face…Quite simply, I fell in. I transported myself in mind with astonishing ease to provincial France in the early decades of the 1800s, and lost all proper sense of awe before the classic as I felt—as millions had before me—the bitter clench of fate on the extravagantly foolish life of Emma Bovary. (Romancing the Self; Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, 73-75)

Reading the book now, as a man in my early fifties, I am closer to the spirit of my original encounter that I have been for decades. I don’t know if this level of immediacy would have been possible without those years of formal interpretation and pattern-seeking. / I was profoundly moved by the novel all through my most recent re-reading. I felt distinctly that my increased life-experience—having suffered jealousy, remorse, the loss of love, and lived the daily discipline of marriage and fatherhood—allowed me to move past my long-held view of Emma, exchanging a somewhat simple view for a far more conflicted and interesting one…I don’t mean to say that I stopped seeing this as Emma’s character—I didn’t—but now instead of resting in judgment, instead of concentrating my main response on the terror and pity that mark our encounters with the tragic, I also registered a tender protectiveness that felt like something new. The more we experience, I think, the more our tolerance for human weakness increases. (Flaubert, 81)

I marvel now at the interior distance these several readings seem to measure. How much of Flaubert’s wisdom did I recognize back in the bunkhouse in Deer Lodge, Montana, in the summer of 1971? I knew so little of love, what coiled springs of joy and despair are packed down inside that one all-purpose concept. I had so little inkling about the tolls we pay on our inescapably grandiose fantasies, or how cruelly the loss of love can strip us back to our most basic foundations. That was all to come. I was naïve about compulsion and mostly ignorant of the torments of jealousy. But even so I read and was moved. (Flaubert, 87)

Whenever someone asks me to name my favorite novel, I find myself putting on a ridiculous but revealing little performance. I pretend to a natural consternation—after all, who can narrow a lifetime’s evolving preferences down to a single title?—but I use that as a cover for the real calculation, which is whether I have the interest or energy to explain my choice. For in fact I do have a favorite novel—Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow… (The Mad Energies of Art; Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift, 89)

…I read the novel first in October of 1975 in a single great gulp. And this I remember because it was the most desperate season in my life so far, and because for a long time after I credited Saul Bellow with helping to save me from a descent into utter hopelessness. (Bellow, 90)

I read as I’d never read anything before, with a lock-on fury that pushed the world and my extraordinary anxiety aside. At first it was to get away from my situation, but then at some point that shifted, and I was reading to get further and further in. I didn’t finish the whole book that night—it’s a long novel. (Bellow, 91)

I have read Humboldt’s Gift four or five times now… (Bellow, 94)

At some point after this first encounter, Humboldt’s Gift took on a somewhat different significance for me. It became a literary model, a work I nearly fetishized for its voice and narrative energy, for its human reach. Bellow, I thought, had cracked the code. Almost alone among contemporary novelists, he had found a way to show the complexity of our way of living without losing the contemplative register or sacrificing the full emotional spectrum. He could be, as the situation required, philosophical, comedic, descriptively evocative, elegiac, dramatic—and he could get in close to the endless psychological push-pull of relationship, the tenderness and leveraging manipulation of lovers, the odi et amo of embattled friendships. I was enraptured by Bellow’s scenes and, even more specifically, his prose. (Bellow, 98)

I wanted badly to write a novel of equal range and texture, alive down to its least bit character, a novel able to transmit the drama of the inner life even as it staged episodes from the human comedy and registered in its smallest inflection the tone of our times. (Bellow, 100)

In my earlier readings of the novel I missed the importance of the fact that Charlie was a middle-aged man not just living his life, but even more significantly, re-living it. But this is—I would say mercifully—the blindness of youth. Young, we cut the cloth of the world to our own feelings and understandings. To me, back then, Charlie was, as had been Emma Bovary before him, just an adult of indeterminate adult status. I had no way of grasping him otherwise. I hadn’t, certainly when I was first reading Humbodlt, experienced the wonderful and terrible ways in which as we get older the film of our own lives increasingly doubles over on itself, returning us to things we had thought safely buried… (Bellow, 101)

I was finally able to admit that it has never been the “scandalous” aspect of Lolita that interests me. What I’ve always been drawn to its complex presentation of romantic obsession, the wonderfully paradoxical fact that the comedy, scored throughout, does not undermine the ultimate pathos of the story, but even intensifies it. (The Murderer’s Fancy Prose Style; Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, 106)

…with Lolita the first of all things has to be Nabokov’s fabulous prose, which in a matter of a few all-but-immortal sentences ravishes us—a condition from which we never recover for the duration of the reading—even as we know our ravishment is but a pale version of what Humbert Humbert felt early in the book… (Nabokov, 108)

For this reason, Lolita functions as a kind of moral growth chart. Younger readers, like my Mt. Holyoke students, and like me in my early twenties, are more shocked—or titillated—by Humbert Humbert’s lusts and scheming transgressions, and the main tension seems to be between the depravity of the imagining and the beauty of the language that portrays it…When I read the novel most recently it was the flawed, heartbreaking, tragic Humbert Humbert who stood before me, and his situation seemed more pathetic and less morally deplorable. The second half of the book makes this understanding increasingly clear: it is possible to start feeling for the man, and in the process before aware of yourself growing as a reader. (Nabokov, 114)

Nabokov has written a lurid and overblown climactic scene, and I have never taken it seriously. It is, along with the deus ex machina death of Charlotte Haze, part of the other, artifice-laden Lolita, and has curiously little to do with my response to the novel, which is about love and the remorseless work of time. (Nabokov, 117)

Ford is so remorseless in his depictions, and so persuasive in his rhythmic forward thrust, that to turn the pages is almost to accede to a vision of absolute hopelessness. I did put on, of course, but it was with a dark, churning fascination, trying to recall, all these years since I first read it, whether there was finally any redemption offered for all the suffering. There wasn’t, and it’s this fact, more than what happens between the characters, that retroactively gives that opening sentence its ring of absolute rightness. (The Saddest Story, Indeed; Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, 133)

The split between appearances and underlying truths is the obvious point of The Good Soldier. It is the ancient and inexhaustible theme—societal codes versus the unsanctioned imperatives of need and desire. Reading the novel as a younger man, I missed much of the implicit tension. I think I believed that we had all marched on, liberated ourselves from hypocritical posturings—the social revolutions of our times had done away with antiquated expectations of behavior. It took a few years of adult exposure—to the academic world, to the cultures of child-rearing—to grasp that the tyranny of appearances and assumed moralities is a human constant and that only the codes of permission change over time. (Ford, 138)

I am more willing—now—to grant that there may be a method, or at least a point to these phrasings, that they create in the reader a sense of “almost” and make perceptible but ineffable what in fact is perceptible but ineffable: the inward fusion of thought and feeling that stays clear of exact articulation. / That “now” hints at a changed outlook. At last I can congratulate myself for having, on the fourth or fifth attempt, at age fifty-two, after decades of apprenticeship to “difficult” books, finally made it through. It was a victory of the will, to be sure. But not of will alone, for the will was always there, though maybe with less invested pride. This past year I finally hit a limit, telling myself, “If you can’t get the novel on this go-round, you might as well give it up.” / I recognized a difference this time. I felt, in the throes of my exertion, matching my concentration to the text’s resistance like a driver working clutch and gas, that it was not pressure alone that was pushing me through, but something else—a psychological readiness I had lacked before. And this came from changes in my life. I was older; I was a veteran of various obscure rites of passage that I could not have imagined in my thirties or early forties. These rites had less to do with specific experiences, and more with the shifts of vantage and relation, which in turn have everything to do with my evolving sense of time and the steady lengthening of the shadow-line of memory. Looking to bring some of these awarenesses into the light, I decided to write about my experience of The Ambassadors. (Live All You Can; Henry James’s The Ambassadors, 149-150)

As a reader, I can’t abide the irritation of partial comprehension. I can’t make myself go forward if I feel in arrears to what I am reading. And nothing trips me up more that abstractions. Through whatever bent of my psychological makeup… (James, 150)

I explain this by suggesting that there is a mysterious dynamic of accumulation in the prose, a delayed-reaction effect in which each new scene or disclosure brings forward some suggestion that had been left latent before, maybe deliberately…The retroactive firming up of things certainly helped me stay the course. (James, 151)

Indeed, for me the value of the novel lies mainly in its aftereffects, the residues it has left behind—residues that become subtle goads to new awareness. (James, 153)

…that The Ambassadors will stand as one of the private touchstones of this more relatively retrospective time of life… James managed to evoke in me the sharpest awareness of how we accommodate the passing of time. Reading, I recognized how we can inch forward day by day in what feels like one sustained state until, mysteriously, some critical mass is achieved… (James, 154)

…I am looking for a way to avoid the standard midlife clichés. But these feelings come to all of us who are lucky enough to live long. They accompany the ultimately unavoidable realization that our basic relation to time—which is to say to possibility, to memory—has changed. The former diminishes as the latter grows, and there is nothing to be done. At a certain point in adulthood the weights seem equally distributed, the balance is at rest. And then, a moment later, it begins to tip, imperceptibly at first, then more obviously. (James, 156)

I had been reading the novel for several weeks—pacing myself, but also being paced by the opaque-seeming density of it all—and had brought it along to Bennington, to the writing residency I attend every January (and June), determined to finish it there, away from work and family. (James, 157)

Immersing myself in the prose of To the Lighthouse, I have moments when I can’t believe my good fortune at being allowed, at my own pace and discretion, for my own entirely selfish ends, to just drink up these sentences, these little streams of electric sensation, trusting each one absolutely, knowing, as is so rarely true, that the writer is completely in control… (Into the Blue Paint; Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, 161)

Going back now, I see what a better reader I have become, at least in the sense of hearing the music of the prose, and feeling the time shifts and dilations of memory as revelations rather than as tests to be passed. I suppose I’ve gradually trained myself to this kind of prose. I’m certainly more aware of the flow of subjective Time in my own life—I think of it now as one of the core enigmas of living, and I’m avid to see how Woolf deal with it…I understand better how things—situations and relationships—are seldom, if ever, pushed to resolution, at least resolution in the sense I imagined when I was younger. Closure does not happen out there. It is—I can picture my father tapping his head with his finger—in here. (Woolf, 162)

Aesop's Fables

Aesop’s Fables, transl. V.S. Vernon Jones, Barnes & Noble Classics, New York, 2003

1. The Fox and the Grapes / A hungry fox saw some fine bunches of grapes hanging from a vine that was trained along a high trellis and did his best to reach them by jumping as high as he could into the air. But it was all in vain, for they were just out of reach. So he gave up trying and walked away with an air of dignity and unconcern, remarking, “I thought those grapes were ripe, but I see now that they are quite sour.”

4. The Mischievous Dog / There was a dog who used to snap at people at bite them without any provocation, and who was a great nuisance to anyone who came to his master’s house. So his master fastened a bell round his neck to warm people of his presence. The dog was very proud of the bell, and strutted about tinkling it with immense satisfaction. But an old dog came up to him and said, “The fewer airs you give yourself the better, my friend. You don’t think, do you, that your bell was given you as a reward of merit? On the contrary, it is a badge of disgrace.” / Notoriety is often mistaken for fame.

18. The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion / An ass and a fox went into partnership and sallied out to forage for food together. They hadn’t gone far before they saw a lion coming their way, at which they were both dreadfully frightened. But the fox thought he saw a way of saving his own skin, and went boldly up to the lion and whispered in his ear, “I’ll manage that you shall get hold of the ass without the trouble of stalking him, if you’ll promise to let me go free.” The lion agreed to this, and the fox then rejoined his companion and contrived before long to lead him by a hidden pit, which some hunter had dug as a trap for wild animals, and into which he fell. When the lion saw that the ass was safely caught and couldn’t get away, it was to the fox that he first turned his attention, and he soon finished him off, and then at his leisure proceeded to feast upon the ass. / Betray a friend, and you’ll often find you have ruined yourself.

32. The Ass and the Lapdog / There was once a man who had an ass and a lapdog. The ass was housed in the stable with plenty of oats and hay to eat and was as well off as an ass could be. The little dog was made a great pet of by his master, who fondled him and often let him lie in his lap. And if he went out to dinner, he would bring back a tidbit or two to give him when he ran to meet him on his return. The ass had, it is true, a good deal of work to do, carting or grinding the corn, or carrying the burdens of the farm; and ere long he became very jealous, contrasting his own life of labor with the ease and idleness of the lapdog. At last one day he broke his halter and frisking into the house just as his master sat down to dinner, he pranced and capered about, mimicking the frolics of the little favorite, upsetting the table and smashing the crockery with his clumsy efforts. No content with that, he even tried to jump on his master’s lap, as he had so often seen the dog allowed to do. At that the servants, seeing the danger their master was in, belabored the silly ass with sticks and cudgels, and drove him back to his stable had dead with his beating. “Alas!” he cried. “All this I have brought on myself. Why could I not be satisfied with my natural and honorable position, without wishing to imitate the ridiculous antics of that useless little lapdog?”

39. The Flea and the Man / A flea bit a man, and bit him again, and again, till he could stand it no longer, but made a thorough search for it, and at last he succeeded in catching it. Holding it between his finger and thumb, he said—or rather shouted, so angry was he—“Who are you, pray, you wretched little creature, that you make so free with my person?” The flea, terrified, whimpered in a weak little voice, “Oh, sir! Pray let me go. Don’t kill me! I am such a little thing that I can’t do you much harm.” But the man laughed and said, “I am going to kill you now, at once. Whatever is bad had got to be destroyed, no matter how slight the harm it does.” / Do not waste your pity on a scamp.

47. The Fox and the Goat / A fox fell into a well and was unable to get out again. By and by a thirsty goat cam by, and seeing the fox in the well asked him if the water was good. “Good?” said the fox. “It’s the best water I ever tasted in all my life. Come down and try it yourself” The goat thought of nothing but the prospect of quenching his thirst, and jumped in at once. When he had had enough to drink, he looked about, like the fox, for some way of getting out, but could find none. / Presently the fox said, “I have an idea. You stand on your hind legs and plant your forelegs firmly against the side of the well, and then I’ll climb onto your back, and, from there, by stepping on your horns, I can get out. And when I’m out, I’ll help you out too.” The goat did as he was requested, and the fox climbed onto his back and so out of the well. And then he coolly walked away. The goat called loudly after him and reminded him of his promise to help him out. But the fox merely turned and said, “If you had as much sense in your head as you have in your beard you wouldn’t have go into the well without making certain that you could get out again.” / Look before you leap.

51. The Ass and His Shadow / A certain man hired an ass for a journey in summertime, and started out with the owner following behind to drive the beast. By and by, in the heat of the day, they stopped to rest, and the traveler wanted to lie down in the ass’s shadow. But the owner, who himself wished to be out of the sun, wouldn’t let him do that; for he said he had hired the ass only, and not his shadow. The other maintained that his bargain secured him compete control of the ass for the time being. From words they came to blows. And while they were belaboring each other the ass took to his heels and was soon out of sight.

67. The Mouse, the Frog, and the Hawk / A mouse and a frog struck up a friendship. They were not well mated, for the mouse lived entirely on land, while the frog was equally at home on land or in the water. In order that they might never be separated, the frog tied himself and the mouse together by the leg with a piece of thread. As long as they kept on dry land all went fairly well; but, coming to the edge of a pool, the frog jumped in, taking the mouse with him, and began swimming about and croaking with pleasure. The unhappy mouse, however, was soon drowned, and floated about on the surface in the wake of the frog. There he was spied by a hawk, who pounced down on him and seized him in his talons. The frog was unable to loose the knot which bound him to the mouse, and thus was carried off along with him and eaten by the hawk.

76. The Frogs Asking for a King / Time was when the frogs were discontented because they had no one to rule over them, so they sent a deputation to Jupiter to ask him to give them a king. Jupiter, despising the follow of their request, cast a log into the pool where they lived, and said that that should be their king. The frogs were terrified at first by the splash and scuttled away into the deepest parts of the pool. / But by and by, when they aw that the log remained motionless, one by one they ventured to the surface again, and before long, growing bolder, they began to feel such contempt for it that they even took to sitting upon it. Thinking that a king of that sort was an insult to their dignity, they sent to Jupiter a second time and begged him to give them another and a better one. Jupiter, annoyed at being pestered in this way, sent a stork to rule over them, who no sooner arrived among them than he began to catch and eat the frogs as fast as he could.

77. The Olive Tree and the Fig Tree / An olive tree taunted a fig tree with the loss of her leaves at a certain season of the year. “You,” she said, “lose your leaves every autumn and are bare till the spring; whereas I, as you see, remain green and flourishing all the year round.” Soon afterwards there came a heavy fall of snow, which settled on the leaves of the olive so that she bent and broke under the weight. But the flakes fell harmlessly through the bare branches of the fig, which survived to bear many another crop.

107. The Lion and the Wild Ass / A lion and a wild ass went out hunting together. The latter was to run down the prey by his superior speed, and the former would then come up and dispatch it. They met with great success; and when it came to sharing the spoil the lion divided it all into three equal portions. “I will take the first,” said he, “because I am king of the beasts; I will also take the second, because as your partner, I am entitled to half of what remains; and as for the third—well, unless you give it up to me and take yourself off pretty quick, the third, believe me, will make you feel very sorry for yourself!” / Might makes right.

147. Venus and the Cat / A cat fell in love with a handsome young man, and begged the goddess Venus to change her into a woman. Venus was very gracious about it, and changed her at once into a beautiful maiden, whom the young man fell in love with at first sight and shortly afterwards married. One day Venus thought she would like to see whether the cat had changed her habits as well as her form, so she let a mouse run loose in the room where they were. Forgetting everything, the young woman had no sooner seen the mouse than up she jumped and was after it like a shot, at which the goddess was so disgusted that she changed her back again into a cat.

163. The Ass and the Wolf / An ass was feeding in a meadow, and, catching sight of his enemy the wolf in the distance, pretended to be very lame and hobbled painfully along. When the wolf came up he asked the ass how he came to be so lame, and the ass replied that in going through a hedge he had trodden on a thorn, and he begged the wolf to pull it out with his teeth, “In case,” he said, “when you eat me, it should stick in your throat and hurt your very much.” The wolf said he would, and told the ass to lift up his foot, and gave his whole mind to getting out the thorn. But the ass suddenly let out with his heels and fetched the wolf a fearful kick in the mouth, breaking his teeth; and then he galloped off at full speed. As soon as he could speak the wolf growled to himself, “It serves me right. My father taught me to kill, and I ought to have stuck to that trade instead of attempting to cure.”

207. The Ass and the Dog / An ass and a dog were on their travels together, and, as they went along, they found a sealed packet lying on the ground. The ass picked it up, broke the seal, and found it contained some writing, which he proceeded to read out aloud to the dog. As he read on, it turned out to be all about grass and barley and hay—in short, all the kinds of fodder that asses are fond of. The dog was a good deal bored with listening to all this, till at last his impatience got the better of him, and he cried, “Just skip a few pages, friend, and see if there isn’t something about meat and bones.” The ass glanced all through the packet, but found nothing of the sort, and said so. Then the dog said in disgust, “Oh, throw it away, do. What’s the good of a thing like that?”

209. The Athenian and the Theban / An Athenian and a Theban were on the road together and passed the time in conversation, as is the way of travelers. After discussing a variety of subjects they began to talk about heroes, a topic that tends to be more fertile than edifying. Each of them was lavish in his praises of the heroes of his own city, until eventually the Theban asserted that Hercules was the greatest hero who had ever lived on earth, and now occupied a foremost place among the gods; while the Athenian insisted that Theseus was far superior, for his fortune had been in every way supremely blessed, whereas Hercules had at one time been forced to act as a servant. And he gained his point, for he was a very glib fellow, like all Athenians; so that the Theban, who was no match for him in talking, cried at last in some disgust, “All right, have your way. I only hope that when our heroes are angry with us, Athens may suffer from the anger of Hercules, and Thebes only from that of Theseus.”

225. The Fisherman Piping / A fisherman who could play the flute went down one day to the seashore with his nets and his flute; and, taking his stand on a projecting rock, began to play a tune, thinking that the music would bring the fish jumping out of the sea. He went on playing for some time, but not a fish appeared. So at last he threw down his flute and cast his net into the sea, and made a great haul of fish. When they were landed and he saw them leaping about on the shore, he cried, “You rascals! You wouldn’t dance when I piped; but now I’ve stopped, you can do nothing else!”

229. The Monkey and the Dolphin / When people go on a voyage they often take with them lapdogs or monkeys as pets to while away the time. Thus it fell out that a man returning to Athens from the East had a pet monkey on board with him. As they neared the coast of Attica a great storm burst upon them, and the ship capsized. All on board were thrown into the water, and tried to save themselves by swimming, the monkey among the rest. A dolphin saw him, and, supposing him to be a man, took him on his back and began swimming towards the shore. When they got near Piraeus, which is the port of Athens, the dolphin asked the monkey if he was an Athenian. The monkey replied that he was, and added that he came of a very distinguished family. “Then, of course, you know the Piraeus,” continued the dolphin. The monkey thought he was referring to some high official or other, and replied, “Oh, yes, he’s a very old friend of mine.” At that, detecting the hypocrisy, the dolphin was so disgusted that he dived below the surface, and the unfortunate monkey was quickly drowned.

279. Prometheus and the Making of Man / At the bidding of Jupiter, Prometheus set about the creation of man and other animals. Jupiter, seeing that mankind, the only rational creatures, were far outnumbered by the irrational beasts, bade him redress the balance by turning some of the latter into men. Prometheus did as he was bidden, and this is the reason why some people have the forms of men but the souls of beasts.

John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

John Gardner, On Moral Fiction, Basic Books, New York 1977

Even at its best, its most deadly serious, criticism, like art, is partly a game, as all good critics know. 4

That art which tends towards destruction, the art of nihilists, cynics, and merdistes, is not properly art at all. Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. 6

Neither the artist nor the critic believes, when he stands back from his work, that he will hold off the death of consciousness forever; and to the extent that each laughs at his feeble construction he knows that he’s involved in a game. 6

The critic’s proper business is explanation and evaluation, which means he must make use of his analytic powers to translate the concrete to the abstract. He knows art loses in the translation but also gains: people who couldn’t respond to the work can now go back to it with some idea of what to look for, and even if all they see is what the critic has told them to see, at least they’ve seen something. 8

The best critical intelligence, capable of making connections the artist himself may be blind to, is a noble thing in its place; but applied to the making of art, cool intellect is likely to produce superficial work… 9

…nor in fact outmoded but merely unpopular—believed to be outmoded, like sonata form or the novel with fully shaped characters and plot—and the victorious position of existentialists, absurdists, positivists, and the rest are not demonstrably more valid but only, for the moment, more hip…The truth is certainly that the universe is partly structured, partly unstructured… 11

Criticism, when most interesting and vital, tends toward art, that is, bad science, making up fictions about fictions. To make the concrete abstract is inescapably to distort. It turns emotional development into logical progression, artistic vision into thesis. 14

A really good book or painting concerning blacks or women is as hard to sell now as it ever was. True art is too complex to reflect the party line. 15

I have claimed that art is essentially and primarily moral—that is, life-giving…If people all over Europe killed themselves after reading Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, then either Goethe’s book was false art or his readers misunderstood. 15

True criticism praises true art for what it does—praises as plainly and comprehensively as possible—and denounces false art for its failure to do art’s proper work. 16

…since the days of the New Critics (not all of them were bad) we’ve been hearing about technique, how part must fit with part, no matter to what purpose. Not only can such an approach tell us nothing about great works of art that are clumsily put together, like Paradise Lost or Piers Plowman… 16-17

…television—or any other more or less artistic medium—is good (as opposed to pernicious or vacuous) only when it has a clear positive moral effect, presenting valid models for imitation, eternal verities worth keeping in mind, and a benevolent vision of the possible which can inspire and incite human being towards virtue, towards life affirmation as opposed to destruction or indifference. 18

…nothing guarantees that didacticism will be moral. Think of Mein Kampf. True art is by its nature moral…It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach. 19

Plato got it wrong in the Republic. To Plato it seemed that if a poet showed a good man performing a bad act, the poet’s effect was corruption of the audience’s morals. Aristotle…went on to correct Plato’s error. It’s the total effect of an action that’s moral or immoral…23

…the objection that the universe has no moral laws—a false objection because it takes “universe “ here to mean planets and stars, and not what we know the word does mean here—humanity grandiosely conceived. 24

The annoying thing about discredited gospels is that they continue, though dead as doornails, to exert their effect. This is as true of philosophical mistakes as of bad theology. Except for the early books and the general thesis on human imperfectability, most of Freud’s thought has proved inadequate, yet we’re all, to some extent, Freudians. 24

Either there are real and inherent values, “eternal verities,” as Faulkner said, which are prior to our individual existence, or there are not…If there are real values, and if those real values help sustain human life, then literature ought sometimes to mention them. 24

Homer, Dante, and Tolstoy derive art’s morality from divine goodness. But morality as a principle of art need not be abandoned when the sky comes to be “ungoded.” An alternative to the religious interpretation of the notion we’ve been treating—that ideals expressed in art can have an effect on people’s behavior—is what we may describe as the Romantic and post-Romantic interpretation. 35

…the moral position is still popular with writers, however loudly they may claim it’s not so: art instructs. 39

If we agree, at least tentatively, that art does instruct…then our quarrel with the moralist position on art comes down to this: we cannot wholeheartedly accept the religious version of the theory because we are uncomfortable with its first premise: God; and we cannot wholeheartedly accept the secular version of the theory because we’re unconvinced that one man’s intuition of truth can be proved better than another’s…In the name of democracy, justice, and compassion, we abandon our right to believe, to debate, and to hunt down truth…Part of the problem may lie, then, in an excessively timid idea of democracy. 41-42

…we admire more a poem which boldly faces and celebrates thoughts of suicide than we do a poem which makes up some convincing, life-supporting fiction—civilization has lost control of serious art. 43

Few would deny that our humanness is enriched by our increasingly sophisticated notions of guilt and of society’s part in the guilt of individuals; but if the moral artist is to function at all, he must guard against taking on more guilt than he deserves, treating himself and his society as guilty on principle. If everyone everywhere is guilty—and that seems to be our persuasion—then no models of goodness, for life or art, exist; moral art is a lie. 44

This new kind of guilt, more terrible than the other, springs from the fact that, though one has done nothing particularly wrong, one cannot, by one’s very nature, do anything of particular worth. 46

The true artist is the one who—directly assisted by the techniques of his art, his art’s mechanisms for helping him see clearly—can distinguish between conventional morality and that morality which tends to work for all people throughout the ages. 50

A proper balance of detail and generality, the particular and the universal, is as crucial for the critic as for the artist, since critics go wrong in the same way artists do. Some get caught up in the nonessential, creating useless categories, avoiding the real and important questions… 53

The true critic knows that badness in art has to do not with the artist’s interest or lack of interest in “truth”, but with his lack of truthfulness, the degree to which, for him, working at art is a morally indifferent act. 56

Motion, glitter—texture for its own sake—has come to be the central value in the arts. Western civilization has been through this before, in the early Middle Ages, when the message of a work of art was fixed (love charity, shun carnality) and the orthodox poet had only the surface of his work to manipulate, decorating message with the colors of rhetoric, hunting out new tricks of texture, gauding, enameling, gilding. The problem today is not that the meaning of our works is fixed…but that we tend to feel we have nothing to say—or nothing to offer but well-intentioned propaganda—so we keep ourselves occupied with surfaces. 60

…infinite as music’s devices may be, its failures are all alike: even after we have listened carefully again and again, we do not like—that is, believe—the music. The emotion generating the music is fake, or secondhand, or feeble. 62

The sonata is not an imitation of some actual gorilla or day lily but a creation parallel, in its principles of vitality and growth, to the animal or plant, hence a new object under the sun. (This does not make the sonata—as William Gass might maintain—no more significant than a natural object. The sonata is, after all, man-made.)…In texture alone there is no process; there is only effect. 65

In literature, structure is the evolving sequence of dramatized events tending towards understanding and assertion; that is, toward some meticulously qualified belief. What we see around us is, for the most part, dramatization without belief or else opinion untested by honest drama. 65

On the whole, our serious novelists, like our painters and composers, are short on significant belief. Though quick to preach causes of one sort or another, and quick to believe slogans, including literary slogans, they’re short on moral fiber… 66

They will not hold up, surely, if their works lack conviction, and conviction is a quality many contemporary writers avoid on principle. 66

With each book he writes, persistently urging his philosophical dogma—the assertion that fish means, simply, “fish,” not the smells, shapes, cultures, with their emotional attachments, in which fish occur… 68

He presents, when he likes, magnificently vivid characters and scenes, the kinds of materials that engage both the reader’s emotion and intellect; that is, revitalize the reader’s consciousness, reminding him of how it feels to stand in an orchard or, say, a large old house. Then, indifferent to the miracle he’s wrought and determined to prove that the energy is the same, Gass shifts to mere language—puns, rhymes, tortuously constructed barrages of verbiage with the words so crushed together that they do indeed become opaque as stones, not windows that allow us to see thoughts or events but walls where windows ought to be, richly textured impediments to light. In Willie Master’s Lonesome Wife, he creates a character, then tells us, in the character’s voice, that the character is only words, she does not exist. One indication that his theory is faulty is our annoyance at the betrayal. 68-69

He begins his philosophical-poetic essay On Being Blue as follows…No one will deny that the writing is beautiful; we ask only that we not get much more of the same. You must take my word for it that Gass does not move from this to translucency; on the contrary, he continues in the same way for pages and pages. 69-70

The more time one spends piling up words, the less often one needs to move from point to point, argument to argument, or event to event’ that is, the less need one has of structure. 71

Why is it that even those of our writers who insist that they care about argument are for the most part incapable of constructing an argument that will hold?...Insofar as we’re unable to care about the characters, we can work up no interest in the issues… 73

Where injustice governs—where those who might reason have no faith in fair-mindedness or intelligence—propaganda replaces thought and art becomes impossible. 76

To fail to be concerned about social justice at a time when, even in the arena of international politics, the civilized impulse is involved with it as never before, would be a mark of artistic—almost criminal—frigidity, such limited perception as to make that person no writer at all…But in comparison with the true artist’s celebration of the permanently moral…are nevertheless secondary and can only produce art which, with the passing of its age, must lose force. 78

…the writer is not deeply involved in his characters’ lives. Things do not happen in the world as Doctorow claims they do. Even in the hands of young and highly excited men, penises do not behave as Doctorow maintains. Doctorow’s mind is elsewhere. He’s after a flashy chapter ending…what truth the writer might have discovered if he’d carefully followed how things really do happen we will never know. 79

Barthelme…The world would be a duller place without him, as it would be without F.A.O. Schwartz. But no one would accuse him of creating what Tolstory called “religious art.” 80

The modern Narcissus dreams up no large goals for all humanity because he’s chiefly interested in his own kinks, pathetic or otherwise; and ironically, what a careful study of freaks reveals is that they’re all alike. 81

…logical and linguistic cautiousness of Wittgenstein, which, misunderstood, claims that truth does not exist—instead of saying, as Wittgenstein did, that certain forms of truth which do exist are philosophically inexpressible. 82

Ultimately, in fact, plot exists only to give the characters means of finding and revealing themselves, and setting only to give them a place to stand. 84

The artist who has no strong feeling about his characters—the artist who can feel passionate only about his words and ideas—has no urgent reason to think hard about the characters’ problem… 84

The morality of art is, as I’ve said, far less a matter of doctrine than of process. 91

…if the reader knows in his bones that the attack is Bellow’s own, that Bellow cares more about his political opinion than he does about maintaining the artistic illusion of a coherent, self-sustained fictional world, then the reader has good reason for throwing out the book. 92

Sot-Weed Factor…We read this book, in other words, because Barth’s mostly sunny personality comes through, and to sunny people we are willing to allow almost anything. 95

…it is one thing to struggle by laborious art for the voice of straightforward, sober-minded thought, the voice that announces in no uncertain terms that the enterprise is serious even when amusing (as in Fielding’s Tom Jones), the entirely trustworthy, authoritative voice that leads us through Pride and Prejudice, or The Sleepwalkers, or The Golden Bowl…Conviction is what counts. 97

Since the irony—the presumably satiric purpose—is nowhere available on the surface, since the novel can easily be read as a piece of neo-orthodox Presbyterian heresy (Christ has redeemed us in advance, so let’s fornicate), one cannot help feeling misgivings about Updike’s intent. 98

To maintain that true art is moral one need not call up theory; one need only think of the fictions that have lasted… 105

…our appreciation of the arts is not wholly instinctive. If it were, our stock of bad books, paintings, and compositions would be somewhat less abundant. 106

A brilliantly imagined novel about a rapist or murderer can be more enlightening than a thousand psycho-sociological studies…Work of this kind has obvious value and may even be beautiful in its execution, but it is only in a marginal sense art. 106-107

Thus at its best fiction is, as I’ve said, a way of thinking, a philosophical method. / It must be granted at once that some good and “serious” fiction is merely first-class propaganda—fiction in which the writer knows before he starts what it is that he means to say and does not allow his mind to be changed by the process of telling the story. A good deal of medieval literature works in this way…Such fiction may be—and usually is—moralistic, and the writer, in creating it, may be morally careful—that is, may work hard at telling nothing but the truth; but in what I am describing as true moral fiction, the “art” is not merely ornamental: it controls the argument and gives it its rigor, forces the writer to intense yet dispassionate and unprejudiced watchfulness, drives him—in way abstract logic cannot match—to unexpected discoveries and, frequently, a change of mind. 107-108

The writing of a fiction is not a mode of thought when a good character and a bad one are pitted against each other. There is nothing inherently wrong with such fiction…but it can contain only cleverness and preachments, not the struggle of thought. When fiction becomes thought—a kind of thought less restricted than logic or mere common sense (but also impossible to verify)—the writer makes discoveries…109

Neither can the honest writer make the reader accept what he says took place if the writer moves from a to b by verbal sleight of hand… 110

It’s because an arbitrary plot is likely to be boring in the end that Aristotle objected to a plot solution by divine machinery. 111

If it is true that words are the writer’s only material, then the only kind of richness or interest available to the writer is linguistic, and—given equal linguistic dazzle—there should be no difference between the emotional effect of a story about a lifelike character with some urgent problem (Gass, or course, would disapprove of the word lifelike) and a character who insists that she has no existence except as words on a page. To think of a fictional character as a person—to weep for little Nell or shudder at the effrontery of Captain Ahab—is, in this view, childishly naïve. 111-112

To say that we shouldn’t react to fictional characters as “real people” is exactly equivalent to saying that we shouldn’t be frightened by the things we meet in nightmares. 113

In fiction we stand back, weigh things as we do not have time to do in life; and the effect of great fiction is to temper real experience , modify prejudice, humanize. 114

…even the most lofty and respectable theories of human motivation—from psychiatrists, biologists, theologians, and philosophers—must always be treated by the serious writer as suspect…When the writer accepts unquestioningly someone else’s formulation of how and why people behave, he is not thinking but dramatizing some other man’s theory… 115

…then it is safe to hazard that he has not made a serious effort to sympathize and understand, that he has not tried to guess what special circumstances would make him behave, himself, as his enemies behave. 116-117

…he is not using fiction as a mode of thought but merely as a means of preaching his peculiar doctrine…Probably none but his family and closest friends would deny that Richard Nixon is a chump and a grotesque. Nonetheless, Robert Coover’s novelistic attack on him—whatever its linguistic and dramatic value, and whatever its value as a warning to democracy—is an aesthetic mistake, an example of immoral fiction. 117

I do not mean that a character ought to be discovered in the setting that best reveals him. A man of the mountains may be found in an automat; but if the man’s nature is to be clear to the reader, the mountains must somehow be implied. 119

…draft is complete. Many writers—perhaps including some great ones—stop here, but it’s a mistake. If the writer looks over his story carefully…he will begin, inevitably, to discover odd connections, strange and seemingly inexplicable repetitions. 121

…the ideas the artist gets, to put it another way, when he thinks with the help of the full artistic method, are absolutely valid, true not only for himself but for everyone, or at least for all human beings. 123

It is here that fake art hopelessly break down. One does not achieve the dense symbolic structure of Death in Venice or The Sound and the Fury by planning it all out on butcher paper, though one does make careful plans. 123

It isn’t true that, as New Critics used to say with great confidence, “Form is content.” The relationship between the two is complex almost beyond description. It is true, as Wallace Stevens said, that “a change of style is a change of subject.”

Critics would be useful people to have around if they would simply do their work, carefully and thoughtfully assessing works of art, calling our attention to those worth noticing, and explaining clearly, sensibly, and justly why others need not take up our time. 127

New Criticism…That school of course served as an invaluable corrective to the almost universal nineteenth-century evasion, which avoided talking about the work by talking, instead, about the man who created it…129

Judging technique, analyzing the artist’s manipulation of such categories as unity, consistency, and appropriateness or decorum, is a good deal easier than judging art, but the technical judgement is sometimes relevant, sometimes not...Insofar as technique is relevant to the purpose of the artist at a given time, insofar as asking about technical perfection is not out-and-out frigidity (as it often is in the case of Moby Dick or Malory’s Morte D’Arthur)… 132

A good book is one that, for its time, is wise, sane, and magical, one that clarifies life and tends to improve it. The qualification for its time is important: at certain historical moments, wisdom is rage and sanity is madness. At times when reasonableness and goodness are live options, an artist ought to be reasonable and good, speaking calmly, as if from the mountaintop; at other times, as in Jacobean England and some parts of the world at the present time, it may be that one cannot support those same lofty ideals except with dynamite. Either way, true art treats ideals, affirming and clarifying the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. 132-133

…and since the possible number of actions in the universe is unlimited—as is the number of possible situations from which actions may proceed and take their tone—morality is infinitely complex, too complex to be knowable and far too complex to be reduced to any code, which is why it is suitable matter for fiction, which deals in understanding, not knowledge. 134-135

Frost was right in claiming that the choice of each image in a poem is a moral choice, but only because it is the poet’s obligation to make no bad choice if he can help it. The immorality of an inept poet is like that of a sleeping guard or a drunken bus driver. 144

Critical standards built on the premise that art is primarily technique rather than correctness of vision—built on the premise that every artist has his own private notion of reality and all notions are equal—cannot deal with important but clumsy artists (Dostoevski, Poe, Lawrence, Dreiser, Faulkner) except by emphasizing what is minor in their work; and they cannot deal with limited men who are masters of technique (Pound, Roethke) except by bloating their reputations… 145

The trouble with the kind of criticism I recommend is that it’s difficult. Anyone can talk about tensions, paradoxes, or unique vision. Anyone can impose magic words like “unmediated vision” (Geoffrey Hartman) or “interpretive choice” (Stanley Fish) and rewrite the poems into magic. Not everyone is capable of judging the moral maturity or emotional honesty of Gunther Grass or Robert Creeley. 146

Only the true artist can know for sure, by the test of his emotions, whether some new, surprising venture that declares itself art is in fact art…that is what the artist is: the one who knows art when he sees it. / Unfortunately, one can expect no precision—not even much agreement—in these matters, since the man who really knows cannot prove he knows. William Blake swore Joshua Reynolds was in the service of the devil, and it was true, though Reynolds got all the commissions. 148

Bad art is always basically creepy; that is its first and most obvious identifying sign. Warhol. Philip Roth. 152