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[personal profile] evelyn_b
What I've Finished Reading

Yes, dear Lotte, I shall arrange and order everything; give me as many things to do as you like, and as often as possible. One thing, though: if I might ask you not to use sand to dry the notes you write me. . . ? Today I raised it hastily to my lips, and was left a gritty crunching in my teeth.


I needed a break from Phil Maddison's semi-coherent crankiness, so I read THE BEST POSSIBLE BOOK for that purpose and also, as befits its role as a Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight antidote, one of the shortest non-picture books I have ever read. It's called The Sorrows of Young Werther and it's the sad tale of an adorable doofus who never reckoned on having to live in an imperfect world when his skin and his summer days have always been perfect heretofore. I mean, he knows there's such a thing as the inherent tragedy of all life, because it gets name-checked in all his favorite songs, but no one told him it would hurt this much!!

The plot is very simple. Thackeray put it best:


Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies
Would do nothing that might hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled;
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by them troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well conducted person
Went on cutting bread and butter.


If it's wrong to receive a story about a promising young dude who idiotically talks himself into shooting himself with his beloved Charlotte's own pistols, ostensibly to "make her life easier," as a hilariously delightful breath of golden springtime, well. . . at least I'm not the first? Werther's crazy emo charm is real, and so is Charlotte's very human equanimity. She's not heartless, and she likes Werther - but life has its way of going on. This story was based partly on a real suicide, partly on Goethe's own hopeless crush on a married friend, and uses the best parts of pity and wry self-awareness.

"We shall see each other again!" I cried. "We shall find each other, we shall pick each other out from among the many. I am going," I continued, "going of my own free will, yet if I thought we were parting for ever I could not bear it. Farewell, Lotte! Farewell, Albert! We shall meet again."
—"Tomorrow, I expect," she countered in jest.


<3

What I'm Reading Now

I didn't give up on the Chronicle, of course! A Solitary War and Lucifer Before Sunrise are both perfectly tolerable 90% of the time, though Henry Williamson seems to have more or less given up on the ensemble cast - as Phil gets crankier and more frustrated, the people in his life fade into catchphrases and cardboard antagonists and one or two pairs of beseeching feminine eyes. The scope of narrative sympathy narrows along with Phil's own. Phil is exhausted trying to live his ideal of honest farm work, whose perfectly predictable failure he is far too inclined to blame on everyone else's decadence. His neighbors spread rumors about him being a German spy, some of which are unfair and some of which he might try to counter by not trying to get other people to listen to his favorite Hitler speeches quite so often. He frets about someday getting the time to sit down and write his generation's War and Peace, and maybe out here beyond the book we're supposed to realize that he has! but it's not enough just being as big a crank as Tolstoy; War and Peace gets its power from its soapiness, and HW is committed to making his narrative as repetitive and nearly joyless as Phil's true experiences of running a farm and failing to write a novel because he's too tired from running the farm. I added that "nearly" because every now and then there is some joy, usually in the form of some grass or a bat or the feeling of being awake at night in an inexpressibly complex living world. HW's nature writing was always his strong point, even back before he developed all these weak points.

There is also Emma Dunning Banks's Original Recitations With Lesson-Talks, an 1896 handbook for the elocution student or dedicated amateur. It's exactly what it says: 54 monologues chosen for their popularity as recitations (as opposed to their literary merit, the introduction is quick to point out - too many budding elecutionists pick their favorite poems only to have them sink like stones because they're too delicate or specific for general audiences) with stanza-by-stanza instructions on how to get the best performance out of each. It's a fascinating look at a lost world.

What I Plan to Read Next

That's the real question! [personal profile] osprey_archer posted about C.S. Lewis' book An Experiment in Criticism a few days ago, so when I was in the library looking for something else, I saw it and took it home. Maybe that! Almost certainly more Phil, until the Phil runs out. Maybe cats who solve mysteries?

Date: 2019-02-20 04:37 pm (UTC)
osprey_archer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] osprey_archer
I have always avoided The Sorrows of Young Werther on the grounds that it sounds so bathetic, but you've made it sound bathetic in the best and most delicious light so maybe I shall have to read it after all. As you say, it's very short! So really I have nothing to lose.

Also Williamson has dropped the phrase ancient sunlight in Tarka the Otter, which made me unreasonably happy because I knew he was going to pick it up again for this ludicrous series of fifteen autobiographical novels. It's weird to me that writing in the post-war world he's not even trying to obfuscate his pre-war love of Hitler, but I guess in a way it's admirable? If you're going to write a giant autobiographical novel then you might as well include all the horrid bits.

Oh, I'm glad you picked up An Experiment in Criticism! It's such an interesting little book.

Date: 2019-02-20 08:34 pm (UTC)
thisbluespirit: (Dracula)
From: [personal profile] thisbluespirit
Farewell, Lotte! Farewell, Albert! We shall meet again."
—"Tomorrow, I expect," she countered in jest.


LOL!

It sounds as if it might actually go in the same box as Castle of Otranto despite very different plots. (I had a whale of a time reading that and trying to work out whether Walpole was serious or trolling. I suspect at least 2/3s trollery.) Does Werther also the Serious Fanfic Remix? (Oh, wait, it has a Thackeray poem so it kind of does. /check)

I didn't give up on the Chronicle, of course!

I don't think any of us would blame you if you did! Although we do appreciate fully the sword you have fallen on for all of us.
Edited Date: 2019-02-20 08:35 pm (UTC)

Date: 2019-02-21 11:23 am (UTC)
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
From: [personal profile] chelseagirl
I have a copy of Werther because I used to teach a class on the Romantics and I SHOULD read it, but I've always rather dreaded it. You have made me reconsider. Especially because I DO still teach Frankenstein and the Creature read it, although he rather admired Werther. But then, since no human being would hold a conversation with him without either running away or trying to kill him, I suppose his overdramatic Romanticism was fairly come by.

Date: 2019-02-22 05:38 pm (UTC)
brigdh: (Default)
From: [personal profile] brigdh
Oh, man, The Sorrows of Young Werther! I've been meaning to read that for ages – not so much for the book itself, but because of its huge influence. Did you know it was a immense bestseller (it's considered one of the first literary phenomenons), and people copied Werther's clothes and got Werther haircuts and there were even some copycat suicides. They called it "Werther Fever". And apparently Goethe came to hate it, and really resented that it was this book that he was famous for, and the only thing people wanted to talk to him about, even decades later. It's all so fascinating modern, to me.

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