An Indecent Proposal (Middlemarch book 1, chs. 1-6)

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, 'Oh, nothing!' "

Historiann asked me last week to talk about why this book. Well, the first answer is: I crowdsourced it, and it got the greatest number of enthusiastic recommendations. But the second answer is: it also got the greatest number of people who were decidedly not entranced by it. I figured: a polarizing book, written by a female author who used her married lover’s first name as her pseudonym at a time when female authors were mostly known for characters who felt things rather than thought things? How could I not read it?

The book is long, and is divided into 8 books, each of which has about a dozen chapters. Monday posts will cover half a book (5-6 chapters) each. I hope that people will use these posts to share  insights both serious and silly. I’ll get to mine as we go. Commenters Laura and What Now offered a recommendation for a Middlemarch reading guide (https://middlemarchforbookclubs.wordpress.com), put together by Rohan Maitzen, who is a professor of Victorian literature at Dalhousie University. I took a look, and it’s good. I plan to lift from it as needed. But let me throw out a few observations, maybe to get us started:

• The characters: Thus far, we have met Mr. Brooke, his nieces Dorothea (a.k.a. “Dodo”) and Celia, Sir James Chettam, Casaubon, and Mrs. Cadwaller. Friends on Facebook who have begun the reading have noted that the characters are not particularly likeable, and I have to agree — at least in that no one (except maybe Celia) has any self-knowledge. But what does a cast of problematic individuals set up for us as readers? Celia, Dodo, and Casaubon stand out; any insights on the other characters?
• The Setting: I think that this is going to be a big deal. After all, the book is called “Middlemarch,” which suggests that the place is as much of an influence as any of its inhabitants. But I’m not sure I have much to say here yet. Anyone else? Or do we put a pin in this for now?
• The historical context: Hoo boy, this book makes me realize that I don’t know squat about early modern England, and I desperately hope that some commenters in there will help us fill in the gaps. So far… um… reform? To paraphrase a friend on Facebook, CASAUBON DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE COTTAGES!!! And speaking of Casaubon…
• That appalling proposal: Discuss.
• The narrator: In her reading guide, Maitzen urges us not to confuse the narrator with the author. She also reminds us to look for the sardonic. What do we think, for example, of her reference to people who are born “a cygnet among ducklings”? What do we think about the prologue, and the framing it tries to set up? For me, it brought up…
• The Woman Question (or: Are you a Dodo or a Celia? Take our quiz!): The author seems to be presenting us with two versions of Victorian womanhood, one conventional, the other unconventional. Or is she? Celia is likeable, but is Dorothea at all sympathetic? When she jumps at the chance to marry Casaubon, is she making a rational choice, in her own way? And for those who have peeked into the author’s own history, how does her own unconventional life frame how we think about her female characters thus far? There are also some hints at repressed female sensuality/sexuality in these earlier chapters; what about that?

That’s what I’ve got for the moment, but I’ll be peeking in and out of the comments as we go along this week.

Next Monday: we finish book 1 (chs. 7-12) and meet back to discuss!

On Being Nibbled to Death by Mice

Is it something about going in to the office?

Seriously: the semester is going to start soon, and there are many small things to take care of. So you go to the office with a finite list of twelve- to twenty-minute tasks. But every time you start one, something happens: A student comes in, randomly; a data something or other doesn't work and needs to be reconfigured. The account information that took you two hours to track down and configure a month ago doesn't work, and three phone calls can't put it right.

Nothing really goes terribly wrong. But you have this feeling that you are leaving the office more behind than when you arrived. It's like there's some workload-related branch of physics, and when you step into the office it all folds and bends and goes through a wormhole and you look up and it's suddenly dark and you have no idea how or when that happened and you've still only checked one item off your to-do list, and a minor one at that. And once it's past six pm on a Friday in winter, you realize you've missed your yoga class and everyone else has been gone for two hours and you think "Well, In for a penny, in for a pound; might as well stay for another hour and a half and see about just one more twelve-minutes-from-finished-but-not-really item on that to-do list."

But at least you took time out to write a blog post about it.

Write All the Things

In addition to reading and blogging, I'm also trying to get back into the habit of daily writing. I'd better, because I have no fewer than four deadline-specific papers or articles to deliver before June 30... and this doesn't even count the book manuscript.

That's a bit too short for a post, isn't it? As Iñigo Montoya said,



Yeah. That's my to-do list in a nutshell.

Once again, I said "yes" to too many things. Each of these are individually worthwhile: a paper for a "why yes, we'll fly you to Europe" conference that will result in a publication of a loose end that I wanted to publish anyway. A conference paper for a panel organized by a friend on a topic that I actually know something about, and that will give me a weekend to see said friend at a conference. Two revisions/updates of things I've already published. All worthwhile. And for the record, I did say "no" to one other writing-on-commission thing that came my way last year.

How will I get through this? Same way I'm gonna get through Middlemarch: one page at a time. But this is going to require a combination of consistency and ambition and persistence that I haven't had to deploy since I wrote my master's thesis in six agonizing weeks while finishing my MA coursework.[1]

The reward? Once I'm done with these things -- and provided I can avoid saying yes to anything else -- I'll get to finish the damn book when I'm done.

And speaking of Another Damn Book... more on that in a future post. I've been away for long, and have much to tell.


[1] I read and explored and researched for the summer between year 1 & year 2. Then, sometime in late January, my adviser said, "Why aren't you writing yet?" And so, faced with the need to crank out a chapter a week, I wrote frantically six days a week. On the seventh day, I drank. 
 

From January 1 to Middlemarch

As promised, I’m kicking off this year with something that will get me back into two good habits: nightly reading, and semi-regular blogging: Over the course of the first few months of this year, I’ll be reading — and inviting others to read along with me — George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

The inspiration: Every year, I set myself a reading goal. Last year, I hit upon the bright idea of reading 25 books: Two books a month,[1] plus one Big Read that I’d slowly make my way through over the course of the year. Last year, the Big Read was Don Quixote. How do you get through a 1000-page novel? The same way that you write a 1000-page novel: one chapter at a time. So every night, I read one of the book’s eight- to twelve-page chapters, and by the middle of the year, I was done. Don Quixote, by the way, is totally worth the effort, and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I got so much out of this that I decided to try it again, but rather than picking a book at random, I asked friends what they’d recommend for a project like this. There was plenty of Dickens, several recommendations for Kristin Lavransdatter, and one joker even suggested Proust. But in the end, Middlemarch was the clear winner. It was also the most polarizing: while numerous people lauded it to the skies, a small but respectable handful told me that they just couldn’t stand it. And while those negative votes at first pushed me away, in the end they were the reason that I decided that this was a book I needed to read for myself.

So, here’s the plan: starting this week, anyone who wants to reads a chapter a night, six chapters a week. We meet on Mondays to talk about what we’ve read. No spoilers if you’ve read it already!

Finally: if you’re someone who knows something about English lit and wants to talk in the comments here about the context of the novel or its author, have at it in the comments to this post! And watch this space for other random medium-form musings in the year to come.

---

 [1] Obviously, this doesn't include books I'm just skimming or dipping into for work. If you're curious, the other book I'm reading right now is N.K. Jemisin's The Stone Sky; after that, I'll be rotating in some nonfiction with Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Post-Facts, and Fake News.

Two Challenges

Many folks make New Year's resolutions. But do you know when the urge strikes me? It's in the calm after the storm of Christmas, when the running around and stress lifts, and it's weeks and weeks before the semester begins, and you are feeling like you have a few weeks of grace.

That's how I woke up feeling this morning. Like there was a window of possibility. And so I'm issuing myself two challenges, and I'd be happy if anyone would want to join.

1. Clean [Digital] House: I've said in this space that I do better with short- and medium-term achievable goals, so that's the I'd like to have some short-term goals, usually one a month. But before the year even begins, I'd like to have a clean slate, a little breathing space. So here is the first challenge: By December 31, organize my digital life, purging as much as possible.
2. The Big Read: Every year, I have a goal of reading 24 + 1 books. The "plus one" ought to be a big, potentially intimidating classic that I've not read before; I take it a chapter a night, and gently work my way through it. This year's "big read" is George Eliot's Middlemarch. Join me beginning January 1. The plan is to read a chapter a night, six nights a week, and blog about it each Monday until we're done. 

That's it. Anyone care to join in?

(Oh, and if you're new here and would rather post anonymously, I'd recommend picking a pseudonym, so we don't have 8 different people named "Anon" posting.)

Planning a Return

Tentatively. In the New Year. Included will be a post-facto narration of my time in Blerg City during a moment of political chaos, and a weekly blogging of a chapter-a-day adventure through Middlemarch, which you are all invited to join in on.

And other random thoughts. As always.

How to Right the Universe (Blerg City Edition)

In response to yesterday's Researcher's Worst Nightmare, I received a couple of messages along the lines of "What will you do?" My answer, for today at least, was to try to deliberately turn things around by eating cheese and going shopping. But even that turned out not to be as straightforward as one would hope.

I set out on a beautiful Blerg City Saturday to do errands. Local SIM card for phone: check. A couple of cheap spiral notebooks[1] for the archives: check. Then: shoes. Blerg City is awash in nifty-looking shoes that you can walk all day in. Here's what I ended up with:

Basically a high-fashion sneaker.

Universal balance well on its way to being restored, right? Except... that while trying them on, I managed to throw out my back.

That's right: I threw out my back while trying on shoes. The indignities of middle age know no bounds. So now, with a cute pair of shoes, but with no archive and a wonky back, I'm still a bit in the negative column in terms of how things are going thus far.

Fortunately for me, this weekend is also the final weekend of Blerg City's annual booksellers' fair. Dozens of bookstores and publishing houses all with booths in a plaza in the city's old center. So I (slowly, carefully) made my way there. And for slightly more than the price of one of those two shoes, I came away with five small books, and the balance of my own personal universe more or less restored.

Of course, I couldn't be content with just "in balance"; I wanted to end the day on the positive side of the ledger.

Cherry with chocolate flakes, in case you were wondering.

And so I had ice cream for dinner.

Finis.


[1] I used to buy those moleskin notebooks. They are things of beauty in their simplicity and tactile perfection. But they are also damned expensive and the elastic on the band doesn't hold up. And they don't lie flat. So: practicality wins out over beauty: I buy sturdy spirals in small and medium, save a bundle,and don't feel at all bad about tearing out pages.