Quick Review

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain by Leah Price




Ah, what fun this might have been... The hypothesis is clever, the author, it seems, eminently qualified, even the first couple chapters are charmingly titled, as for instance, "David Copperfield and the Absorbent Book." Such larks! That, to my mind, is exactly the sort of cheeky thing I hope for from popular modern scholarship when taking on the all too familiar Victorians. The much milled grist of the golden age of print, of Mayhew's London, Punch cartoons, and the most domestic Trollope needs a little goosing, frankly. And there is fun to be had here; what with books being used as weapons, the means of correction, disguises, dodges, etc. There's some very real scholarship, too, and not just in the hunting up of some interesting things from the very back of some dusty shelves; there are good ideas, close observations, and an obvious and genuine affections not just for her materials but for the period and for books as objects of inherent interest. In fact, I can't help but respect Leah Price not only for the work, but also for her good humor and intentions.

If only the book had been written to some standard other than contemporary academic English, which in its eagerness here to be serious, becomes ridiculous. Thus, from only the second page of that third chapter mentioned above:

"Yet for the omnisciently narrated symmetry that pits the husband's unread newspaper against the wife's unread novel, first-person narrative (or more rarely, free indirect discourse) substitutes a less evenly matched battle between young and old -- the former corresponding to the character through whose consciousness the narrative is focalized (nose in a book), the latter to characters viewed from outside (book in hand)."

Parse that out. Take as long as you need. Now, tell me if that says anything much at all. Even in the larger context, such as it is, of the paragraph and chapter, that is just not much of a sentence. More importantly for a book about books, and the Victorians at that, this barely qualifies as English prose, let alone critical literature. Why "free indirect discourse" as anything like an alternative to the recognizable and straight-forward "first person narrative"? And why "narrative" here, rather than narrator? And from what language "focalized"? Besides being a hideous thing, how is it more precise, or wittier, or prettier, or in any way better than any of the actual English words that might have been the verb there? The whole structure of that sentence tells a sad story of how little might be learns from even the longest study of literature, great or small.

I wasn't looking for Edmund Gosse dressed up, or dragged, up in modern dress, but neither was I expecting to wade through that kind of tasteless, glutenous academese either. How to describe not just my disappointment, but the actual, squirming discomfort of reading this kind of ponderous, meaningless, scholarly gab, specially when the mood is meant to be, what? Bright, I suppose? Irreverent? Fun? It's like dancing in diving boots.

The temptation to root around for days yet in this baggy business, looking for the good idea of a book I followed so hopefully in, I now give up. I was warned, going in. I should probably have stopped when right on the outside, from one of the three completely unfamiliar academics blurbing the thing, were the words "witty" and "book-objects" in the same sentence.

Oh, dear, no.



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