Dangerous empathy, slush systems, flowers, a hellcat meme-minter, and an escaped gorilla.

The irregular book review review. vol. I

The irregular book review review is an experiment. Paid subscribers will receive a small number of links to interesting literary essays, approximately once a month. I will offer a short commentary, either on the essay or the topic. As you can see below, this will range from recommending old novels and grouching about modern publishing to enthusing about the golden year of fiction that was 1954 and finding Johnsonian echos in modern culture.

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Dangerous Empathy

Nicola Griffith argues writers should be careful with empathy in an essay that reminded me of Samuel Johnson. Johnson worried that presenting bad behaviour in fiction with (tacit) approbation would encourage it. As he said in Rambler No. 4: “that which is likely to operate so strongly, should not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects.” Griffith, contrariwise, is concerned that readers will suffer through empathy.

If your protagonist must suffer (and to a degree we all must), at that point use the reader’s mirror neurons judiciously. Empathy is a powerful tool, and sharp. Be careful how you wield it.

I just read The Colony by Audrey Magee, a study of the individual behaviours involved in colonisation, which contains plenty that made me wince, and arguably fails Johnson’s test. I can’t agree it that ought to save my feelings or minimise representing evil to try and discourage it, though I confess I skipped one page. It was simply too tragic.

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Hackenfeller’s Ape

Lucy Scholes briefly reviews Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy, a novella from 1953 about a professor who saves a gorilla from being used in a bizarre experiment. I’m thrilled to see the book reissued. Hackenfeller’s Ape is short enough to finish in a couple of hours and you certainly won’t have read anything quite like it. With so much interest in animal rights today, it’s a good choice for revival.

The early 1950s was a golden age. Other novels from 1953 include The Go-Between (now overshadowed by Ian McEwan’s second-rate knock-off, Atonement). 1954 gave us (as well as Lucky Jim and Lord of the Flies) A Villa in Summer by Penelope Mortimer, The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, Under the Net by Iris Murdoch, and The Key that Rusts by Isobel English. The 1950s is also the decade of The End of the Affair and The Fountain Overflows. All recommended.

And I didn’t even mention any American novels…

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Reading Herbert

I enjoy everything Brad Skow writes on his Substack, especially this short reflection on reading George Herbert, which focusses on The Flower (a good poem for late bloomers):

How do these poems achieve their effects? The answer lies in the changing uses to which the floral metaphor is put, and also surely in the way line length is varied and rhymes are chosen. Is saying that enough? It does not amount to a recipe for producing such effects in one’s own poetry.

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John Donne: a hellcat meme-minter at the pulpit

An interesting essay by Maxi Gorynskiabout why people aren’t more ambitious, with reflections on the decline of literary culture. People were once exposed to the Bible every day, talked in detail about sermons they heard, and were used to long, complex sentences. Today, we are not constantly in the vision of greatness, and are plagued everywhere by the short simple sentences online-writing coaches approve of (a syntactical pollution plagued upon us by George Orwell, among others). Easy to disagree with some of the particulars, hard to dissent from the overall picture, however much difference you feel it has made in the end. And he’s right about Donne. Read the sermons!

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Slush Systems

In the past, people got published through nepotism. That gave us Proust and Joyce. Today, we use slush piles thousands of manuscripts deep with the same stuff from the same MFA programmes. “To find and elevate brilliant new art that breaks the mold, we first need to create paths for such work to reach the surface and be seen.” But what system? The idea that local journals can flourish seems wrong: journals are currently closing down. And do you remember La Revue Blanche? Theatres are a strange comparison: many in theatre lament the decline of reparatory playhouses.

Doesn’t this just add up to: run the system better? Maybe part of the answer is something we don’t want to hear—a lot of people in charge have bad taste and a lot of aspirational writers spend too much time in the system? Every age has chaff, we pay too much attention to ours. Changing the system might not much difference. MFA-style is a symptom, not a cause…