RASSELAS, by Samuel Johnson
A Review
INTRO
Almost all fiction that I read, I come to regard as an end unto itself.
(Luckily, since I don’t take literature courses, I don’t even have to
number course requirements under my rationale for reading.) But Samuel
Johnson’s _Rasselas_ turned out to be a different kind of beast. Though
strictly speaking, I can’t say I hugely enjoyed the book in its own
particular right, reading it did certainly lead me down some unusual
(for me) paths of thinking and investigation.
Johnson wrote _Rasselas_ (hereafter familiarly denoted _R_) in 1759. It
relates the story of a young prince of “Abisinnia” (nowadays called
Ethiopia) who at the start, lives in the “Happy Valley”, where (true to
its non-subtle name) all his needs are ostensibly provided for.
Becoming discontent with such spoon-fed happiness, Rasselas longs to
escape the Valley (where, paradoxically, all residents are kept from
leaving by public policy) to see how people in other, less regulated
parts of the world lead their lives. This search for a “Choice of Life”
(a phrase of Johnson’s which appears repeatedly as a kind of refrain) is
the substance of the book. In his quest, Rasselas is accompanied by
Imlac — an older, more experienced philosopher — and his sister, the
princess Nekayah along with her retinue, notably among them her favorite
servant Pekuah.
Whatever one may think of _R_, it is not long … 99 pages in one
edition that I checked. (I downloaded it from the Web for free [1] and
read it on my Palm handheld, [2] so actually this kind of “page” was not
relevant for me.) Partly due to its modest size, and partly for other
reasons (which we will touch on later), it is rarely been called a
novel. Numerous other tags have been applied to it however; here are
some that I found in the course of some Web browsings:
Oriental Tale
extended prose fiction
short story
humorous moral fable
gentle satire
“Eastern tale”
Bildungsroman in petto
moral tale
moral romance
philosophical romance
Menippean or Varronian satire
Johnson himself somewhat deprecatingly referred to it as “little story
book”. Note that the term “romance” in the list above has nothing to do
with “romantic” (as in love story) or “romance novel” (as in the
20th-century phenomenon of airport paperbacks with busty women and hunky
men on their covers). It is rather, as the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED) puts it,
A fictitious narrative in prose of which the scene and
incidents are very remote from those of ordinary life.
This “remoteness” can be a source of difficulty, especially I think for
the modern reader; I will discuss this more later.
DR. JOHNSON
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was a great literary figure of 18th-century
England. But despite the fact that this period is often called the “Age
of Johnson”, he is not much read today. He has the dubious honor of
being a writer whose most famous book is by someone else; [3] this is,
of course, the book about him by James Boswell (arguably the greatest
biography of all time), which has made Johnson’s conversation much more
familiar to us here in the 21st century than are his actual writings.
Characteristically for Johnson, who as we will see was a great
traditionalist, he never wrote a novel, that literary form that was just
seeing its beginnings in his time. His most important production, at
least from our modern perspective, would undoubtedly have to be his
_Dictionary of the English Language_ of 1755, which, though not the
first English dictionary to be written, was the most important one until
the OED appeared over the years 1844-1928. (The fact that there is no
easily obtainable, reasonably priced, *complete* edition of Johnson’s
_Dictionary_ is in my opinion one of the greatest literary
embarrassments of our present age.)
The versatile Johnson (hereafter sometimes denoted “SJ”) also wrote
poetry, criticism, and travel books. He was the most frequent
contributor to a periodical called _The Rambler_, and put out an edition
of Shakespeare.
RASSELAS: GENERAL
In the early 18th century, the Arabian Nights became known (in French
translation) in Europe. Johnson himself showed his interest in an
exotic locale when in 1735 he translated Jeronimo Lobo’s travel book on
Ethiopia (which is of course the setting for _R_). In 1749, Johnson
wrote “The Vanity of Human Wishes”, a long poem which
(characteristically for him) is based on a classical model — the Tenth
Satire of Juvenal — and whose theme prefigures that of _R_: a survey
of humanity’s attempts at happiness extending “from China to Peru”.
_Rasselas_ itself was written in 1759 (apparently taking just a few days
for Johnson to complete!) with the very pragmatic object of making some
money for his mother’s funeral expenses. Johnson was (amazingly enough,
for a man of his greatness!) poor at this point …his 300-pound-a-year
govenment pension (a rather delayed reward for the _Dictionary_) would
not start until 1762. I have not found out how much SJ actually took in
from the sale of _R_, but one would hope a goodly amount, since the book
achieved solid popularity in his day, both in England and abroad through
translation.
Now for the actual content of the book. Johnson is very much harking
back to older models … which is both good and bad! _R_ is “old
fashioned”, both in the normal negative sense in which we use that term
today, and in the positive light of “well made; based on a strong
foundation” — depending on what aspect of the work one is considering.
_R_: LANGUAGE
The language, as one might expect from Johnson, is often elegant,
polished, balanced, rolling. In his penchant for “saying it twice”, he
is evidently influenced by the King James Bible (1611):
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy,
and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; …
In a similar vein, he likes to use parallel phrases:
… in the morning he [R] rose with new hope; in the
evening applauded his own diligence; and in the night
slept soundly after his fatigue.
There are many sentences that prompt admiration, though one might argue
that they are perhaps just a bit *too* well constructed:
(Imlac) “I remembered that my father had obliged me to the
improvement of my stock, not by a promise, which I ought
not to violate, but by a penalty, which I was at liberty
to incur; and therefore determined to gratify my
predominant desire, and, by drinking at the fountain of
knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity.”He was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a
woman who saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that
regard of which he could never know the sincerity, and
which he might often perceive to be exerted not so much to
delight him as to pain a rival.
Some sentences get so complex that — I would argue — they in effect
get in their own way:
With observations like these the Prince amused himself as
he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet
with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence
in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the
miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with
which he felt and the eloquence with which he bewailed
them.
There are some usages that are striking to the reader (at least to this
modern reader) — like the way “who” is used in this sentence:
Imlac, being consulted, was not very confident of the
veracity of the relater, and was still more doubtful of
the Arab’s faith, who might, if he were too liberally
trusted, detain at once the money and the captives.
As for words, some just meant different things then, and the reader is
well advised to read with care, especially when the sentence does not at
first seem to make sense. Since R, at the outset, clearly “wants” (in
the modern sense) to leave the Happy Valley, the word “want”, below,
seems to mean “lack” more than it does “desire”:
“Look round and tell me which of your wants is without
supply: if you want nothing, how are you unhappy?” “That
I want nothing,” said the Prince, “or that I know not what
I want, is the cause of my complaint: …”
The word “pretended” means “claimed” below. (This is still seen in the
phrase “the pretender to the throne”.)
He [Imlac] found many who pretended an exact knowledge of
all the haunts of the Arabs,
Other words, though not really meaning something different, have the
dust brushed off them, as it were … giving them a new freshness. The
word “distinguished” (as in “the distinguished professor”) is a bit
shopworn today … but gets refreshed when we see where it came from —
“set apart from the ordinary”:
Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day with
a splendid retinue at the Court of the Bassa. He was soon
distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a
Prince whose curiosity had brought him from distant
countries, to an intimacy with the great officers and
frequent conversation with the Bassa himself.
I like the unexpected “bite” here (instead of, perhaps, “chew”) … it
really gives this sentence … well … bite!
All animals that bite the grass or browse the shrubs, …
Note here also the use of “browse”, in its original sense, which dealt
with vegetation, and not books or the World Wide Web!
And how about “diversified” here:
… the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers;
…
_R_: IDEAS
There are some intruiging ideas to be found in _R_, though I have a
feeling that the most interesting ones to *me* did not focus on the main
theme of human happiness that Johnson was trying to put across. For
example,
In almost all countries the most ancient poets are
considered as the best; …
The arguments that follow this statement are worth perusing. Of course
Homer is a prime example of Johnson’s point. Leaving _R_ for a moment,
one could also consider (taking “poet” in a more general sense) the
example of Cervantes, who of course was not “ancient”, but whose novel
_Don Quixote_ (1605-15) — arguably the first real novel ever written —
is considered one of the very greatest of all time. [4] It would seem
that the reasonable notion of a writer learning, from his predecessors,
how to better his craft, is not always operative!
On a less elevated note (but one of higher altitude!) there is the
rather surprising Chapter VI, “A Dissertation on the Art of Flying”, in
which Rasselas meets an inventor who feels he can cause a person to take
flight, by creating wings to attach to his body. R is un-surprisingly
drawn to this idea as a means of escape from the Happy Valley. But this
chapter also includes a prophetic warning about the potentially
devastating effect of flight in warfare:
“Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls,
mountains, nor seas could afford security. A flight of
northern savages might hover in the wind and light with
irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful
region. Even this valley, the retreat of the princes, the
abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden
descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the
coast of the southern sea!”
Unfortunately, some of the ideas in _R_ do not seem to hold water as far
as I am concerned. Take the argument given in support of marriage.
Rasselas argues to his sister the Princess:
“Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and
women were made to be the companions of each other, and
therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one
of the means of happiness.”
Perhaps if one thinks in religious terms (i.e. the Book of Genesis,
where God creates Eve as a companion to Adam), this argument makes
sense. (And Johnson being a believer, this might be exactly what he
meant.) But I think the typical modern reader would need a stronger
argument that marriage is, *by its nature*, a happy state!
Still on the subject of marriage, another rather dubious argument is:
“The good of the whole,” says Rasselas, “is the same with
the good of all its parts. If marriage be best for
mankind, it must be evidently best for individuals; …
Even assuming that marriage *is* “best for mankind”, such an argument —
that the good of the group implies the good of the individual member —
flies in the face of the theory of evolution, according to which a
species is furthered through the “struggle for existence” of countless
individuals, many of whom will fall by the wayside. Consider the
unfortunate moth who bears a mutation causing its wings to stand out,
instead of being camouflaged to match the tree it is sitting on. It is
likely to meet an unfortunate end, very soon, as prey to some other
creature!
Speaking of the individual versus the group, we also see in _R_ what I
think is an outmoded view of the poet:
“This business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine, not
the individual, but the species; to remark general
properties and large appearances. He does not number the
streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades of
the verdure of the forest.”
I think many modern humans would argue that the poetry that means the
most to them, *is* in fact concerned with particulars rather than with
generalities. But I will admit that I do see scope for a discussion
here….
As befits SJ’s retrospective stance, Platonism comes in for some
discussion. One could argue that the Happy Valley is something like
Plato’s Cave, providing only the “shadow”, as it were, of true
experience. But there is also a very clear exposition of the Platonic
ideal:
An ideal form is no less real than material bulk; yet an
ideal form has no extension. It is no less certain, when
you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea
of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing.
What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the
idea of a grain of corn? or how can either idea suffer
laceration?
Do the dead return? Imlac, in this celebrated passage, gives the
argument “if so many people believe it, it must be true”.
“That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “I will not
undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried
testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no
people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the
dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which
perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could
become universal only by its truth: those that have never
heard of one another would not have agreed on a tale which
nothing but experience can make credible. That it is
doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the
general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues
confess it by their fears.”
This argument seems a slippery slope indeed! Again, I think we may be
seeing Johnson as a product of his religious upbringing….
_R_: CHANGING “NATURE”
A sidelight of _R_ which caught my attention, was how nature can be
“managed” to increase its esthetic appeal. To be sure, this practice
should not be totally unfamiliar; recall for example that New York
City’s Central Park (created 1860-1873) is much less “natural” than it
looks. But still, these woven boughs and mounds of stone ring strange
to my 21st-century ear:
The shrubs were diligently cut away to open walks where
the shades were darkest; the boughs of opposite trees were
artificially interwoven; seats of flowery turf were raised
in vacant spaces; and a rivulet that wantoned along the
side of a winding path had its banks sometimes obstructed
by little mounds of stone heaped together to increase its
murmurs.
_R_: HUMOR
_R_ is the kind of book that stands in need of humorous relief. And
indeed there is some — though not enough, and what there is does not
have much of a “kick”. Here is one example, where Rasselas has asked a
“sage” what it means to “live according to Nature”:
“When I find young men so humble and so docile,” said the
philosopher, “I can deny them no information which my
studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to
Nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness
arising from the relations and qualities of causes and
effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme
of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general
disposition and tendency of the present system of things.”
The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom
he should understand less as he heard him longer.
RASSELAS AND THE NOVEL
The conservative SJ, though admiring Richardson’s novels with their
moral lessons, was no fan of some other celebrated novels, e.g.
Fielding’s _Tom Jones_, which drew the comment that it depicts merely
“low life” and that it lacks “knowledge of the heart”. In _R_ as well,
we can perhaps see SJ’s disapproving view of fiction. Consider how
Imlac (often considered SJ’s surrogate) uses the word “fiction”
negatively:
“To indulge the power of fiction and send imagination out
upon the wing is often the sport of those who delight too
much in silent speculation.”
One suspects that many novels, for SJ, were the kind of superficial
diversion that occupied the female companions of Pekuah, during the time
of her abduction (she was held for ransom by an Arab chieftain):
“The diversions of the women,” answered Pekuah, “were only
childish play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger
operations could not be kept busy. I could do all which
they delighted in doing by powers merely sensitive [i.e.
involving only the senses], while my intellectual
faculties were flown to Cairo.
RASSELAS: THE MESSAGE
It seems clear that SJ, in writing _R_, wanted to deliver a particular
message … about (without giving away the ending!) one’s own happiness
versus that of one’s neighbor (or a king or a philosopher or a hermit or
a married person or a single person or …). I am not so sure that this
message comes clearly across — perhaps because the logic that SJ used
in his arguments is so at variance with modern thinking. (See the
marriage example above.) But alternatively, one might interpret this
book along the lines of: happiness lies in the quest, in the process.
As long as R and his sister are out in the world, investigating how all
kinds of other people live, I think it might be argued that they have a
kind of contentment — even if they are not aware of it!
RASSELAS AND CHARACTERIZATION
At least for this reader, it must be said that none of the characters in
_R_ — the personage of the title included — really comes alive. It is
only too clear that they have been brought into being as a vehicle for
the exposition of the author’s ideas. The wooden nature of the dialogue
definitely does not help … consider, for example, this exchange
between R and his sister:
“You are then,” said Rasselas, “not more successful in
private houses than I have been in Courts.” “I have,
since the last partition of our provinces,” said the
Princess, “enabled myself to enter familiarly into many
families, where there was the fairest show of prosperity
and peace, and know not one house that is not haunted by
some fury that destroys their quiet.”
Could you ever imagine a brother and sister actually speaking this way
to each other?
Perhaps the only time the characters shows the spark of life is when
Pekuah is abducted. During the search for her, and her subsequent
relating of her experiences, I did find my interest perking up.
_CANDIDE_
In the same year (1759) that SJ wrote _R_, appeared (apparently by a
total coicidence) Voltaire’s _Candide_. _Candide_ is much more popular
than _R_ is today, and it is not hard to see why. While both works
could be called “philosophical romances” — and both are concerned with
the problem of human unhappiness — _Candide_ reflects the progressive,
secular, skeptical view of the Enlightenment, while _R_ holds with the
traditional view of religion, God, and the hereafter as the ultimate
answer to life’s problems. That is to say, for SJ, making a significant
improvement in one’s life may be beyond our unaided human powers.
What’s more, the character Candide (even though perhaps not as
well-rounded as he would be in a novel) is much more vivid than Rasselas
— acting considerably more like an actual human being, especially where
his relationships with women are concerned. And Voltaire’s wit just
about jumps out of the page at you.
One of the best “side effects” of tackling _R_ was that I was motivated
to read _Candide_ again. [5] And perhaps (I must admit) because I read
it right after _R_, I enjoyed it more than ever!
As one might expect, SJ and Voltaire had little use for each other. V
called SJ a “superstitious dog”, no doubt referring to SJ’s pious views
on religion. As for the other way around, consider this snippet from
Boswell’s biography of SJ: [6]
BOSWELL. ‘Sir, do you think him [Rousseau] as bad a man
as Voltaire?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, it is difficult to
settle the proportion of iniquity between them.’
Incidentally, though SJ apparently never met Voltaire (V was in England,
but SJ would have been only 17-19 years old at the time), Boswell
definitely did.
The following paragraph from Boswell’s biography is worth quoting in
full for its discussion of _R_ versus _Candide_:
Voltaire’s Candide, written to refute the system of
Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant
success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to
Johnson’s Rasselas; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson
say, that if they had not been published so closely one
after the other that there was not time for imitation, it
would have been in vain to deny that the scheme of that
which came latest was taken from the other. Though the
proposition illustrated by both these works was the same,
namely, that in our present state there is more evil than
good, the intention of the writers was very different.
Voltaire, I am afraid, meant only by wanton profaneness to
obtain a sportive victory over religion, and to discredit
the belief of a superintending Providence; Johnson meant,
by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of things temporal,
to direct the hopes of man to things eternal. Rasselas,
as was observed to me by a very accomplished lady, may be
considered as a more enlarged and more deeply
philosophical discourse in prose, upon the interesting
truth, which in his Vanity of Human Wishes he had so
successfully enforced in verse.
MEDITATIONS ON THE NOVEL
Reading _R_ now, it is hard to believe how popular it was back in its
own time. Though some of this perhaps has to do with stronger
traditional religious beliefs back in those days, I think one should
also consider that in 1759, the novel was just in its early stages —
and that the typical reader just did not expect the kind of
verisimilitude that we have come to take for granted.
What novels were actually around in 1759? Some important ones were:
1719 Robinson Crusoe
1726 Gulliver’s Travels
1740 Pamela
1747-8 Clarissa
1749 Tom Jones
The novel did not really reach its heyday until the 19th century. One
theory of its rise ties it to the emerging middle class, with its buying
power and thirst for stories about people recognizably like themselves
[7] Novels did not have to have royal characters. They did not have to
be lofty or profound; in fact it was probably better if they were not.
When Virginia Woolf referred to George Eliot’s _Middlemarch_ as
the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is
one of the few English novels for grown-up people [8]
she was flying in the face of the rage for the new 19th-century novel.
Charles Dickens could be called the Elvis Presley of literature. In
1955, when Elvis first burst into public notice, he was 20 years old.
Dickens’ first novelistic success, _Pickwick Papers_, came when he was
almost as young (24). In both music and literature we can see the two
camps pitted against each other. One can just about be a “fly on the
wall” and witness the literary conflict: In 1853, the English novelist
Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a novel called _Cranford_. In this portrait of
middle-class life, we can find an energetic discussion between the
elderly Miss Jenkyns, who admires SJ’s style as a “model for young
beginners”, and Captain Brown, who favors _Pickwick Papers_, which was
just then (presumably _Cranford_ is set in 1836-37) appearing in
“numbers” (installments). Needless to say, neither side manages to
convince the other! [9]
Despite the overwhelming success of the realistic novel in the 19th
century, the romance still managed to retain a foothold. Hawthorne is
an important example; in fact, he explicitly calls _The Scarlet Letter_
[10] a “romance”. If this book seems on the stiff and wooden side, it
is well to call to mind, that Hawthorne has his sights set on higher (or
at least different) things than simply being “true to life”. I believe
one should take a similar reading approach with his _House of the Seven
Gables_ [11].
Are novels (the un-elevated Pickwickian kind, that seem to carry no
profound messages) really worth reading? I suspect that every reader
has asked themselves this question at one time or another. (Funny
though, one hardly ever thinks about if (moral-free) paintings are worth
looking at, or if (message-free) music is worth listening to.) In a
recent interview with Peter Watson (author of a new book on the history
of ideas), the anti-novel sentiment is expressed:
The rise of the novel generally is a great turning in.
But I don’t think it has given a lot of satisfaction to
people. It has not achieved anything collective. It’s a
lot of little personal turnings that lots of people love
to connect with. But these are fugitive, evanescent
truths. They don’t stay with you very long or help you do
much. [12]
Doing a Google web search with the phrase “are novels worth reading”, I
found a 1935 article by Joseph Wood Krutch [13] that, while admitting
Every few years, perhaps, the persistent reader meets some
wholly original work — some “Ulysses” or “Magic Mountain”
or “Remembrance of Things Past” — which stirs him again
to the excitement he once felt in every substantial novel
…
also opines that
[the novel] is a form from which, as time goes on, one can
learn less and less, since one has come to know more and
more about the subject with which the novel deals.
as if *instruction* were the primary rationale for reading novels! (If
that were so, why does reading a novel in translation seem to me so
fundamentally different from experiencing it in the original language?)
On the other hand, a recent article on “literary Darwinism”, approaching
our subject from an unusual angle, enumerates 6 ways in which reading
novels might improve our adaptation to life. [14] [15]
The trickiness of this issue is underscored by the paradox of _Don
Quixote_, which is on the one hand one of the greatest novels ever
written, and on the other hand the story of a man who is driven gaga
from reading too much fiction! But even with that possible fate hanging
over my head, I must confess that I love novels too much to even
*imagine* no longer partaking of them.
I will conclude this discussion with a quote from arguably the greatest
novelist of them all:
“Oh! It is only a novel!” … or, in short, only some
work in which the greatest powers of the mind are
displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human
nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the
liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the
world in the best-chosen language. [16]
CONCLUSION
Perhaps _Rasselas_ belongs more to the past than to the present, and
therefore strictly speaking is no longer worth reading, except by
literary scholars. But I for one am grateful for the paths it sent my
mind on, and the areas it prompted me to explore.
When Johnson was writing his old-fashioned fiction, a whole new kind of
fiction was starting to come into being — in which the traditional God
tended not to figure prominently, but rather (one might say) in which
the novelist himself (or herself) became a kind of deity, populating a
mini-universe and (if successful) breathing life into it.
NOTES
[1] _Rasselas_ is available for free download on the Web via the Online
Books Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
[2] Read _R_ on my Palm handheld: For information on how to do this,
see my reviews of Dickens’ _Pickwick Papers_ and Richardson’s
_Clarissa_.
[3] SJ’s most famous book by someone else: For this memorable turn of
phrase, I thank Jack Lynch. See:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/Guide/who.html%5D
[4] _Don Quixote_ voted greatest novel of all time: an international
poll of 100 noted writers. See
https://lessthanamegabyte.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/top-100-fic-international.pdf
[5] My (downloaded, of course) edition of _Candide_ was translated by
Tobias Smollett. See my review of TS’s _Humphry Clinker_ .
[6] Boswell’s biography of Johnson — or at least an abridged edition of
same — is available via the Online Books Page (see [1])
[7] Rise of novel tied to emerging middle class in 19th century: See
David Daiches, “The Victorian Novel: Charles Dickens’ World” at:
http://www.ellopos.net/dickens/copper_daiches.html
[8] V. woolf’s praise of _Middlemarch_: from her 1919 article on George
Eliot, available at
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/woolf/VW-Eliot.html
[9] Miss Jenkyns vs. Capt. Brown on the novel: See Chapter I of
Gaskell’s _Cranford_ (available via the Online Books Page — see [1]).
Once inside _Cranford_, search for “Pickwick”.
[10] See my review of _The Scarlet Letter_.
[11] See my review of _House of the Seven Gables_
[12] Peter Watson on the novel: New York Times Magazine, 11dec2005.
[13] Joseph Wood Krutch: “Are Novels Worth Reading?”, The Nation, Feb.
13, 1935. Available at
http://members.aol.com/plato31547/Krutch-novels.txt . Also available
online via The Nation’s digital archive
http://www.thenation.com/archive/ .
[14] Literary Darwinism: New York Times Magazine, 6nov2005. Here are
the 6 ways in which reading novels might be positive:
One idea is that literature is a defense reaction to the
expansion of our mental life that took place as we began
to acquire the basics of higher intelligence around 40,000
years ago. At that time, the world suddenly appeared to
homo sapiens in all its frightening complexity. But by
taking imaginative but orderly voyages within our minds,
we gained the confidence to interpret this new vastly
denser reality. Another theory is that reading literature
is a form of fitness training, an exercise in “what if”
thinking. If you could imagine the battle between the
Greeks and the Trojans, then if you ever found yourself in
a street fight, you would have a better chance of winning.
A third theory sees writing as a sex-display trait.
Certainly writers often seem to be preening when they
write, with an eye toward attracting a desirable mate. In
“The Ghost Writer,” Philip Roth’s narrator informs another
writer that “no one with seven books in New York City
settles for” just one woman. “That’s what you get for a
couplet.”Yet another theory is that the main function of literature
is to integrate us all into one culture; evolutionary
psychologists believe shared imaginings or myths produce
social cohesion, which in turn confers a survival
advantage. And a fifth idea is that literature began as
religion or wish fulfillment: we ensure our success in
the next hunt by recounting the triumph of the last one.
Finally, it may be precisely writing’s uselessness that
makes it attractive to the opposite sex; it could be that,
like the male peacock’s exuberant tail, literature’s very
unnecessariness speaks to the underlying good health of
its practitioner. He or she has resources to burn.
[15] For another article on the positive side of novels, see “Why Read
Novels?” by Dan Jacobson, in The Nation, Nov. 14, 1959. Available at
http://members.aol.com/plato31547/Jacobson-novels.txt . Also available
online via The Nation’s digital archive
http://www.thenation.com/archive/ .
[16] “Oh! it is only a novel! …”: from Jane Austen’s _Northanger
Abbey_, available for free download on the Web via the Online Books
Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
—
Tom Frenkel
email: frethoa@aREMOVEol.com
30apr2006
revised 07may2006
lessthanamegabyte 