D.C. is sinking like a rock
Into the foul Potomac, what a shock
They wrote a book about it
They said it was like ancient Rome
Links:
In The New Statesman, Sarah Churchwell on the Jazz Age clichés imposed on The Great Gatsby:
Gatsby was Fitzgerald’s third novel. He was 28 when it was first published. It is also his shortest book, which is crucial to its genius: the compacted language accelerates its force. As he settled into work on the manuscript, Fitzgerald told Perkins that he intended to produce “the very best I’m capable of in it or even as I feel sometimes, something better than I’m capable of.” That paradox shaped the novel, a story about aspiration as the measure of the human soul. If Robert Browning described Heaven as the desire to reach beyond our grasp, Fitzgerald went further, implying that aspiration can remake us, that our capability can be surpassed—and that the measure of art is how far it transcends the limits of its creator. For Fitzgerald, that meant releasing his mysterious genius for language and taking it somewhere dazzling and profound. Nick Carraway opens the novel by noting that the revelations of the young men he knows, or “the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic”: hackneyed and banal. If clichés are limited thoughts expressed in plagiaristic terms, Gatsby constantly pushes beyond them, stylistically and thematically.
[Cf. on Gatsby as embodiment of American cliché, as linked to in WRB—June 21, 2023. The British readers of The New Statesman can be thankful that they don’t have to scrape off the additional layer of cliché that comes with every American reading Gatsby in high school. Churchwell writes “Gatsby is peppered with familiar symbols: the valley of ashes, the green light, the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg that are mistaken for the eyes of God,” and no symbol can survive being used to explain to bored fifteen-year-olds how symbolism works in literature. And no book can survive the majority impression of it being what people thought of it at fifteen. Ask anyone about The Catcher in the Rye if you don’t believe me. (I myself haven’t reread Gatsby since I was fifteen for reasons discussed in WRB—June 8, 2024.) —Steve]
In Asymptote, Mia Ruf interviews Charlotte Mandell about her new translation of Paul Valéry’s writing about Monsieur Teste (Monsieur Teste, 2024):
Ruf: In the case of Monsieur Teste, didn’t these writings sort of correspond with Valéry’s big renunciation of writing? Did you try to channel that frustration into this translation, or like a disdain for language in general? I think he talks about how you have to sacrifice your intellect in order to write in the first place. Did that have any bearing on the translation process?
Mandell: I don’t think he really meant that; he would say these things, but obviously, if he really believed them, he wouldn’t have written anything. But it is interesting that he did give up poetry for that long. One does wonder. And then afterwards to come back with some really amazing poems. But I personally didn’t think about it as I was translating.
Ruf: Did you carry your knowledge of his poetry into this?
Mandell: Yes, and it definitely helped. That sort of abstract language, that care for the way images appear, the order of images, I try to keep that. I think it’s important to maintain the order of the images as they appear, and also to stay true to the mind as it unfolds, the thought as it unfolds. I mean, that was the main thing that I tried to do, and that’s the case in nearly all of my translations, really—especially with Proust, just because the sentences and their syntax are so important.
[We linked to an earlier review in WRB—Dec. 11, 2024. Cf. Jonathan Holden on Valéry, which Julia quoted in WRB—Jan. 13, 2024:
Valéry’s attraction to “purity” in “pages of algebra” and in poetry is over-refined, precious. His famous analogy between poetry and dance—that poetry is to prose as dance is to walking, because poetry uses words as a dancer uses steps, as ends in themselves, whereas prose uses words as a walker uses steps, as means to an end, as mere transportation—trivializes poetry, reducing it to merely pretty language, equivalent to an entirely “pure” mathematics concerned only with elegant proofs of its own consistency.
The scientists frequently find unexpected applications for the ideas of the “pure” mathematicians; even if Valéry does not have that defense, I side with Mandell and her desire to keep his “sort of abstract language, that care for the way images appear, the order of images”—his pages of algebra, in other words—over Holden’s feeling that the whole thing is a bit too precious. —Steve]
Reviews:
In , Adelle Waldman reviews a new novel by Susan Minot (Don’t Be a Stranger, 2024):
Sure, it would have been better if Ivy hadn’t been so vulnerable to a jerk like Ansel Fleming. But learning to be more careful about not falling for jerks is not the same as learning—or trying to teach oneself—not to need anyone, not to need romantic love at all. And yet wide swaths of our culture have, it seems, embraced the idea that the desire for love and romance is something we should strive to overcome, or master, in the name of something like self-actualization. In fact—if we’re being real—we ought to acknowledge that self-actualization is a concept as little grounded in evidence as the belief in religious miracles, in that I’m pretty sure no one has ever witnessed self-actualization or knows what it looks like in practice. Rather, it always seems to be just around the corner, slightly out of reach, something this or that influencer or celebrity is about to attain now that he or she has finally realized this one new “truth” and has only to apply it, for all the pieces of their life to click into place. At least happiness in love—if rarer than we might like—is something we’ve all seen with our own eyes, if we haven’t experienced it ourselves.
[If you haven’t seen self-actualization I invite you to watch me finish up this newsletter every Tuesday and Friday night so it can hit your inboxes every Wednesday and Saturday morning.
But of course self-actualization isn’t real. Who told you that you were going to actualize anything in this life? Who told you that you would have any idea what you were supposed to be doing—and even if you did, who told you that you would actually want to do it? Haven’t you heard of the death drive? I thought we were all clear on why making “happiness” your goal is a great way to never be happy—making self-actualization your goal is the same thing, just for people impressed by the four additional syllables in “self-actualization.” —Steve]
[The rest of today’s WRB has even more links to the best and most interesting writing from the past few days, as well as Upcoming books, What we’re reading, and going deeper on the state of criticism and other niche interests of mine in Critical notes. Today, from my desk and the desks of other WRB contributors:
Whether The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001) is good (yes) and what’s up with Gen X male novelists insisting on sincerity
Christopher Ricks on Dylan prompts me to reflect on Dr. Johnson identifying Shakespeare’s negative capability avant la lettre and 2025 Year of—Swinburne, apparently
Grace on a Poem about “the physical work of civilization”
If you’re interested in any of that, and if you want to support the WRB in making the lifelong task of literacy not take anyone’s entire day, please subscribe below. And if you’re already a subscriber, thank you; I appreciate it. —Steve]
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