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Anne K. Mellor described Frankenstein as “a book about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman.”
Parable
Literature
Criticism
The library of St John’s College, Oxford, used to hold a copy of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene that bore a student’s penciled comment on the last page:
“First I thought Troilus And Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I thought Beowulf was. Then I thought Paradise Lost was. Now I know that The Faerie Queen is the dullest thing out. Blast it.”
It had been written by Philip Larkin, who had studied English there in the 1940s.
Two for One
The plot of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the meter of Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, by Martin Woodhead:
You shall hear how Lady Constance,
Tiring of her wounded husband
(Poor Sir Clifford, high war-hero,
Inconvenienced by shrapnel),
Found a gamekeeper called Mellors
Who would teach her in his lunch-hour
(And in language frank and fearless
Such as wives and servants blush at)
To admire the lower orders
While that blighted Bart, Sir Clifford
(Let us waste no pity on him,
For the man was paraplegic),
In his new electric wheelchair
Tried to drive it up a tunock —
Tried and tried, and couldn’t make it.
From a Spectator competition. Chatterley in Field & Stream. Hiawatha in condensed matter physics.
Strike Up the Bland
In 1986, Michael Kinsley, editor of The New Republic, spotted the headline “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” in the New York Times and challenged his readers to come up with a more boring one. This was a tall order: The Times head, someone said, manages to be “not only boring as a whole, but boring word by word.” Submissions included:
- “U.S. Leadership Needed” (New York Times)
- “Trade, A Two-Way Street” (New York Times)
- “Beyond the News, Larger Issues” (New York Times)
- “Thoughts at Graduation Time” (New York Times)
- “Continue Manned Flight in Space” (New York Times)
- “Chill Falls on Warming Relations Between Australia and Indonesia” (New York Times)
- “University of Rochester Decides to Keep Name” (New York Times)
- “Dramatic Changes Fail to Materialize on Hill” (Washington Post)
- “Surprises Unlikely in Indiana” (Chicago Tribune)
- “CIA Analysis Sees Soviet Economy in Need of Changes” (San Diego Union)
- “Prevent Burglary by Locking House, Detectives Urge” (Boston Globe)
- “Methodists Oppose Use of Nuclear Arms” (New York Times)
- “Economist Dies” (Wisconsin State Journal)
- “Turbulent Days for Donald D. Engen” (New York Times)
The winner was found in the New York Times science section: “Debate Goes on Over the Nature of Reality.”
Alphabetical Disorder
In the 19th century, the index to the London Times was compiled by Samuel Palmer. Palmer had an unusual way of working, which apparently wasn’t noticed until 1890, when a mystified reader, Corrie Thompson, wrote to Notes and Queries with some examples:
- An article about a boy sentenced for stealing a twopenny pie was indexed under “Atrocious Criminal.”
- An article about a floating chapel loosed from its moorings was indexed under “Disgraceful Act.”
- An article about a storm at Saône-et-Loire was indexed under “Fatal Storm.”
- An article about a spell of dry weather was indexed under “Present Dry Season.”
- An article about two women imprisoned for stealing a mare and for shooting at a man were indexed under “Rather uncommon for Females.”
Apparently Palmer had simply been compiling headlines without reading the articles. This accounts for entries such as “Extraordinary Escape of Boy at Erith Station, From a Bull Being on the Line” and “Extraordinary Marriage Adventure.” Thompson wrote, “One would expect to find this system adopted in a ‘table of contents,’ but surely it is out of place in an ‘index.'”
One wonderful exception, which Palmer apparently wrote himself:
“Death of Jane Thomas in her Mother’s Arms in Holborn at Joy in Seeing her parent at the Stage Door to Receive her.”
Shelf Concepts
Henry Wheatley’s 1878 monograph “What Is an Index?” gives a list of “titles of books that have given trouble to bibiographers” or been assigned to the wrong subjects:
- Maria Edgeworth’s “Essay on Irish Bulls” and a treatise on the Great Seal of the United States have both been listed under Zoology.
- A description of Napier’s bones, John Napier’s manual calculating device, has been listed under Anatomy.
- “Under the Microscope,” poet Algernon Charles Swinburne’s 1872 invective against critic Robert Buchanan, has been listed under Optical Instruments.
- A volume of poetry titled The Viol and the Lute has been listed under Musical Instruments.
- John Ruskin’s Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds, an 1851 pamphlet on divinity, has been listed under Agriculture.
- Scottish minister William McEwen’s writings on biblical types have been listed under Printing.
Best: German naturalist Johann Heinrich Linck’s De stellis marinis liber singularis, a treatise on sea stars, has been listed under Astronomy.
A Fable
A paper kite, that soared on high,
While looking down was able to descry
A joyous butterfly,
And cried, “We faintly see your foolish efforts zealous;
Confess that you are rather jealous,
When you behold our elevated lot.”
“Jealous? Oh, surely not.
Your grandeur is a phantom, or an empty vision,
Your tethered flight awakes, believe me, but derision;
Can happiness be got from an existence ever fettered?
And how could life for me be bettered?
As I aspire I venture higher,
And never, solely for another’s idle leisure
And pleasure,
Lose freedom I desire.”
— Ivan Krylov
The Mind’s Eye
I can see the stairs down which Smerdyakov tumbles. Dostoevsky gives us a certain description. As a result, I know exactly what this staircase looks like. I know where it starts, how it gets darker and then turns to the left. All this is clear to me in the most concrete way and yet I also know that no one else ‘sees’ the staircase the way I do. But anyone who is receptive to this masterly narrative will ‘see’ the staircase in a most specific way and be convinced that he sees it as it really is.
— Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, 1986
Onlookers
“Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think creation’s.” — E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951
“Sometimes an admirer spends more talent extolling a work than the author did in creating it.” — Jean Rostand, De la vanité, 1925
Clarity
In Dante’s Purgatorio, souls are surprised to see that their visitor casts a shadow and thus is not dead:
When they perceiv’d that through my body I
Gave way not for the rays to pass, their song
Straight to a long and hoarse exclaim they chang’d;
And two of them, in guise of messengers,
Ran on to meet us, and inquiring ask’d:
“Of your condition we would gladly learn.”
That’s a bit of a puzzle, note Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh. “To be visible, supernatural entities must reflect light (if they do not emit it). But as a consequence they must be opaque to at least some light, and thus they should cast shadows.”
(Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh, The Visual World of Shadows, 2019. Related: Why do ghosts wear clothes?)