The post has arrived, or, We begin to read Clarissa

"The first impression the reader receives from Samuel Richardson's masterpiece is of its great length."

That's Angus Ross, opening his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which, indeed, impresses by running to 1,499 oversized pages. And while I've long since been convinced by friends who have sung the novel's praises (including in this space) that Ross's next line--"and rightly so, since that is an integral part of the work's reach and meaning"--is true, and that the novel is worth reading, I've never been willing to make the commitment. As my friend Maggie put it:

I read nine other books while working my way through this one, and I'm haunted by what I could have read instead. Three Dickens! The entire works of Graham Greene!

I simply could never bring myself to commit the time. Even with as much and as quickly as I read, it would likely be a month's labor.

Enter my Twitter friend Stephanie Hershinow, scholar of eighteenth-century literature and  Richardson fan. At breakfast in New York last month, she revealed a scheme for reading Clarissa that seemed eminently manageable: read this epistolary novel by reading each letter on the date it carries, beginning with the first letter, dated January 10, and finishing with the last on December 18. A year of broken-up reading--this would do!

Now it is January 10, and I am embarking. You're welcome to join me, and some other folks who've been caught. There will be some posts here throughout the year, and if you're on Twitter you can find us at #Clarissa. The first letter is a mere two pages! Join us!

"I am extremely concerned, my dearest friend, for the disturbances that have happened in your family . . . "

"The dust and smoke and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with the pure, silent air of immortality."

Despite having never read any of Samuel Richardson's monumental novels, I have recently gotten into the habit of taking note when I come across valued authors delivering themselves of opinions of the man and his work. It's the least I can do for my friend Maggie, who valiantly slogged through the 1,630 pages of Richardson's Clarissa (1748) when I gave it to her for Christmas a couple of years ago--and retained the energy and goodwill to report on the book's pleasures and pains. ("I would not say that I didn't enjoy the book, but there is so, so much of it.") It seems only fair that, having followed Clarissa through her near-endless travails, Maggie should feel she has company, should be able to see herself as part of a centuries-long chorus of voices of those who've done the same--a survivors' support group, say.

So yesterday I as I was reading William Hazlitt's pleasantly meandering essay "On Reading Old Books" (1821), to which I'd been directed by Patrick Kurp at Anecdotal Evidence, I was pleased to encounter some strong praise for Richardson. Hazlitt writes,

I consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. I like the longest of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious; nor should I ask to have anything better to do than to read them from beginning to end, to take them up when I chose, and lay them down when I was tired, in some old family mansion in the country, till every word and syllable relating to the bright Clarissa, the Divine Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, "with every trick and line of their sweet favour," were once more "graven in my heart's table."

Now, Maggie, surely that makes you feel that you could have done better by the bright Clarissa? Perhaps you should re-read her story, attempting to approach it this time in a more generous frame of mind?

Strong as is Hazlitt's praise for Richardson, it pales next to his words for Edmund Burke later in the essay. Burke's conservatisim was anathema to Hazlitt, but in some ways that made his appreciation of Burke's mind and writing even more powerful:

To understand an adversary is some praise: to admire him is more. . . . For the first time I ever cast my eyes on anything of Burke's . . . I said to myself, "this is true eloquence: this is a man pouring out his mind on paper." All other styles seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts; and even Junius's (who was at that time a favourite with me) with all his terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic points and well-trimmed sentences. But Burke's style was forked and playful as the lightening, crested like the serpent. He delivered plain things on plain ground; but when he rose, there was no end of his flights and circumgyrations.

But even the finest of prose styles can only go so far if the reader disagrees with the argument they decorate, and Hazlitt has fun reminding the reader of that:

I did not care for his doctrines. I was then and am still, proof against their contagion. . . . I conceived, too, that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion.

Hazlitt's essay--which he opens with the bald statement,

I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all.

--has not only caused me to reopen my volume of Burke, but has also inspired in me a general spate of re-reading, sending me back yesterday to Penelope Fitzgerald's light and lovely Gate of Angels and today to Moby-Dick . . . and all the while my favorite book to re-read, Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, maintains its perpetual beck. We'll see if I'm strong enough to resist and instead pluck something from the stacks of the unread instead.

Fielding, Richardson, and Dr. Johnson, or, This one's for Maggie

Last Christmas I gave my friend Maggie a gift that was at least as much a challenge as a true present: Samuel Richardson's 1,536-page epistolary novel Clarissa (1748). Her letter to me in response--for Maggie is not one to back down from a dare--is nicely summed up in her line, "I would not say I didn't enjoy the book, but there is so, so much of it."

I thus couldn't help but think of her tonight when, flipping through The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (2006), I came across this deliciously nasty account of Richardson's self-regard, from Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature (1791-1823):

The extreme delight which he felt on a review [revision] of his own works, the works themselves witness. Each is an evidence of what some will deem a violent literary vanity. To Pamela is prefixed a letter from the editor (whom we know to be the author) consisting of one of the most minutely laboured panegyrics of the work itself, that ever the blindest idlolator of some ancient classic paid to the object of his frenetic imagination. To the author's own edition of his Clarissa is appended an alphabetical arrangement of the sentiments dispersed throughout the work; and such was the fondness that dictated this voluminous arrangement, that such trivial aphorisms as "habits are not easily changed," "men are known by their companions," etc. seem alike to be the object of their author's admiration. And in Sir Charles Grandison, is not only prefixed a complete index, with as much exactness as if it were a History of England, but there is also appended a list of the similes and allusions in the volume.

Literary history does not record a more singular example of that self-delight which an author has felt on a revision of his works. It was this intense pleasure which produced his voluminous labours.

Even the staunchest partisan of Richardson have to admit that D'Israeli's vitriol has a certain fierce glory, no? It makes me think a trip to the library in search of that volume may be in order . . . what other authors suffered under his withering gaze?

In the interests of Richardson fans, such as Laura of Popscratch and Jenny Davidson of Light Reading, I feel that I ought to at least allow a defense of Richardson; since I'm not qualified, having not read him, I'll allow Samuel Johnson to enter the lists as his champion. In James Boswell's Life of Johnson we find this vigorous praise, wrapped up in a blast of denigration heaped on the wonderful Henry Fielding (with the role of Johnson's friend Erskine played, admirably, by Maggie):

Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a blockhead;" and upon my expressing my astonishment as so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is that he was a barren racal." BOSWELL. "Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones. I, indeed, never read Joseph Andrews." ERSKINE. "Surely, Sir, Richardson is very tedious." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment."

Elsewhere in the Life, Johnson says of the pair,

[T]here was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate.

Boswell, characteristically, prefers the livelier Fielding. Though in conversation with his hero Johnson he seems to have only tepidly argued the point, in the Life he offers a defense that I think truly touches the heart of the charm underlying Fielding's comedy:

Johnson used to quote with approbation a saying of Richardson's, "that the virtues of Fielding's heroes were the vices of a truly good man," I will venture to add, that the moral tendency of Fielding's writings, though it does not encourage a strained and rarely possible virtue, is ever favourable to honour and honesty, and cherishes the benevolent and generous affections. He who is as good as Fielding would make him, is an amiable member of society, and may be led on by more regulated instructors, to a higher state of ethical perfection.

Clarissa is of course doomed to die for sensibility; for my part, long live Tom Jones.

"I cannot deny there is much repetition," or, Letters Week, Part VI!

From Canto XXI of The Beauty of the Husband (2001), by Anne Carson

To say what letters contain is impossible. Did you ever touch your tongue to a metal surface in winter--how it felt to not get a letter is easier to say.

In a comment to a post from earlier this week, Warren Hynes wrote,

Makes you wonder how much we're losing in our own chronicle of the modern day now that so many of us choose e-mails over old-fashioned letters. I can't imagine someday reading "The Collected E-mails of Dave Eggers."

It's a thought that's inescapable if you spend enough of your time reading letters collections: what have we lost with the decline of the letter? To take a simple example, So I Have Thought of You, the new volume of Penelope Fitzgerald's letters that I wrote about yesterday, is rich with business letters, notes to her editors and agents and publishers about various details regarding the publication of her books. Working in publishing, I find them fascinating--they offer a certain pleasant element of, "So that is how they used to do this!" And there's the occasional straight-up gem that originates in a work letter, like this one to Fitzgerald's publisher at Duckworth, Colin Haycraft:

I am in hopeless trouble (as usual) with all my Georgian permissions. Except for yourself, everyone who has to deal with them becomes maniacal, secretive, suspicious, very old or very ill. I'd no idea there would be such trouble.

Such communication does continue in today's offices via e-mail. But if my own e-mail archive is any indication, business e-mails in general attempt to make up in volume what they lack in clarity or lasting interest; if editing a chaotic trove of letters is a largely thankless task, then editing a lifetime of business e-mails would surely be resemble diabolic punishment.

It's the lost personal letters that are more pang-worthy, of course: what resources for understanding (or wickedly gossiping about) today's authors have we lost to the ephemerality of cell phones? At least The Collected E-mails of Dave Eggers is conceivable. The Collected Cell Phone Calls of Dave Eggers, with a New Appendix of Dropped Calls is a book only shelvable in the Imaginary Library.

I do still write letters fairly regularly, though more from of a dislike of the telephone than out of concern for posterity, the very thought that someone might want to someday collect my letters being ludicrous. (And, I have to confess, were it not ludicrous, the thought would almost instantly send me--despite all my complaints about destructive authors--matches in hand, to the nearest trash barrel.) I've maintained reasonably reliable paper correspondences with a couple of friends for nearly fifteen years, as we've lived in different cities or even countries.

That leads me to today's letter, with which I'll close Letters Week: in part because of our years-long correspondence, for Christmas this year I gave my friend Maggie Bandur a copy of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748), whose 1,536 pages reign over the form of the epistolary novel. Knowing that Clarissa has its fans (including Jenny Davidson), I gave it in all kindness--but I will admit to being unsurprised when the cynical and worldly Ms. Bandur assumed I had given it as a cruel dare, an unspoken challenge to her honor. Refusing to take umbrage at her impugning of my intentions, I pleased myself instead with the knowledge that her misconception meant she would plow through the book with unstoppable determination.

Which she did. The result was a letter, received Friday, from which I draw the excerpts below:

My Dear Mister Stahl,
I hope you will excuse the familiarity of my addres, but I know not how else to express my boundless gratitude for the gift of the most virtuous, but most ill-used Clarissa. What a noble creature! What an excellent moral leson! Alas, for me, it has come too late. But what are the sorrows and disappointments of this earth, compared to the comfort of being held in our Father's bosom for eternity? And believe me, I now know what eternity feels like.

In truth, I must confess the book is exceedingly long. . . . Although Clarissa longs for escape from this mean existence and her meaner troubles, she learns, "Death from grief was the slowest of deaths." Cowars and villains expire in one epistle; a saint of nineteen requires 1,300 pages.

In answer to your question if it is worth reading, yes, yes, a million times yes. Put aside all other pursuits and pick up--nay, heft, this volume, eyesight and back problems be d----d! I know this is not womanly speech; you must excuse the violence of my passions. How can anyone not love this most exemplary of women? . . .

The book is full of beautiful language, charming observations of human nature, and an excess of moralizing. . . . . I would not say I didn't enjoy the book, but there is so, so much of it. The moments of intense action come as a surprise. I cannot imagine that even in simpler times, people were desirous of such a very long, complete, and earnest lesson. I was not unhappy while reading, but I cannot deny it has been an albatross around my neck. . . . I read nine other books while working my way through this one, and I'm haunted by what I could have read instead. Three Dickens! The entire works of Graham Greene! And surely there is a paradox, that one can write a book so improving to the spirit and yet leave young people absolutely no time to pick up a Bible.

Richardson's conclusion warns against happy endings. For virtue to always be rewarded and evil always to be punished in literature creates an unreasonable expectation in the reader. Life is not fair, and we must be prepared for such. All the justice is in the hearafter. I do confess I yearn for the order I've seen only in art. Like punishments for those who give presents that can be seen only as a dare.

Ah, but you know my prideful ways as well as anyone. What are months of study and a new eyeglass prescription compared to the bragging rights I've acquired?

So thank you, dear sir. I am much improved in mind and spirit since last we met, although I remain,

Your humble servant,
Maggie Bandur

Ah, but Maggie, think of all the fun you can have once you get to the afterlife slagging on the book with Henry Fielding! Isn't that alone worth your investment of time?

As for me, well, as I'm sure my letters over the coming months will reveal, I'm busy developing a serious dread of next Christmas.