WRB—Feb. 28, 2024

“Donny Johnny”

If a course charted by reason and if the will itself could bring someone to the port of the Washington Review of Books (the port from which one is already advancing onto the region and solid ground of the happy life), then I do not know whether or not I am rash in saying, O Theodorus, you most refined and great man, that men are going to reach it in very small numbers—although actually, as we see nowadays, the men who reach it are few and far between.

N.B.:

The next WRB x Liberties Salon, on Sunday, March 10, will address the question “Can art be useful?” All WRB readers are welcome; if you are interested in attending, please contact Chris or Celeste Marcus.

Links:

• In Commonweal, Marilynne Robinson on forgiveness in Genesis:

  So what constraints are there on Joseph when the lives of his brothers seem to be his to take if he chooses? If providence has a use for them, their survival could be said to be predetermined. But the scene in which Joseph again pardons his brothers fully and finally is beautiful because, Egyptianized as he is, never favored with the visionary dreams like those that engaged and instructed his forefathers, he has seen the actual workings of providence, another kind of vision. When his brothers raise the matter of his possible vengeance against them, he says, “Fear not: for am I in the place of God?” Yes, he is, in the sense that his mercy toward them seconds what he sees as God’s will. And yes, in the sense that he sees beyond a human conception of justice, which shapes his brothers’ fearful expectations, to the good issue of everything that has happened to him—good he reckons in terms of the lives he has saved. “As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” He promises to look after his brothers and their “little ones,” who are never forgotten when people are thought of in their vulnerable humanity.

  [You can listen to the recording of January’s WRB x Liberties salon, “Is forgiveness possible?” wherever fine podcasts are sold. —Chris]

• In the JSTOR blog, Emily Zarevich on Mark Twain and Joan of Arc:

  At the time of its publication, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was barely praised or even acknowledged by critics, who seemed to agree that Twain had strayed too far from his trademark, comically cynical literary persona with this too-serious work of historical fiction.

  “Most critics have found it puzzling, if not infuriating, since the tone of the book—idealistic, uplifting, and at least vaguely reverential—is at odds with the Twain they know,” McWilliams writes.

  But Twain was proud of it and considered it one of his most accomplished and authentic completed projects. The message here to all writers in an age where creativity is becoming increasingly regulated and stifled: write what you love most. Write what speaks to you, as God (allegedly) spoke to Joan. Public opinion is irrelevant.

  [The Managing Editors follow this advice. Also, our literary personas are too all over the place for this criticism to ever apply. —Steve]

• On the Library of America website, an interview with Theresa M. Towner about William Faulkner:

  Faulkner once wrote to the literary critic Malcolm Cowley, “I am telling the same story over and over, which is myself and the world.” His contemporary Thomas Wolfe “was trying to say everything . . . in one volume,” but “I’m trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one period.” That effort led, he thought, to “what people call the obscurity, the involved formless ‘style,’ endless sentences.”

  He did not write to exclude readers—in fact, he didn’t think about us at all when he was working—but to include material relevant to his characters and their own experiences with the world. Sometimes that made for long sentences, as it does in novels like The Sound and the Fury that represent emotional inner turmoil and confusion. The same novel opens with a section made up of simple, short sentences representing the inner life of an adult man who has extremely limited verbal ability but profound emotional distress, and it also contains a section narrated by a smart and talkative pathological liar.

• In Tablet, Rokhl Kafrissen on love and magic in Yiddish song:

  Love is its own kind of magic, and its own kind of madness. In “Vus a mul brent dus fayer greser” (Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter), a woman complains bitterly to the man who has spurned her for another. She threatens to stab herself, to which the man smugly reminds the woman that he is now luckily engaged to another. On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Itzik Gottesman notes that the version sung by his grandmother Lifshe Schaechter-Widman innovated the final line, where the woman tells the man, “dayn sheynkeyt vet fargeyen / vi di rose afn frayen feld” or “your beauty will fade like the dew in the open field.”

  [I like the song mentioned later in the article that’s halfway between “In the Pines” and “Erlkönig.” —Steve]

[Behind the paywall: Steve attempts to track down a quote attributed to Augustine, Julia on the built-in failure of elegy, the Dao, Byron, LeGuin, the answer to loneliness, Milton’s heresies, “Dream-America,” sexism in criticism, and more links, reviews, news items, and commentary carefully selected for you. If you like what you see, why not subscribe, and why not consider a paid subscription? The WRB is for you, and we couldn’t do it without you.]