I have just been reflecting on the rather neat confluence of events in my previous post, Mansfield Park and The Way we Live Now, that Matt Yglesias posted his article declaring he was glad he had been forced to read Anna Karenina and Moby Dick at school, but, after reading Infinite Jest, considers it difficult to justify reading novels, and the first comment (bearing in mind how busy this blog is) should link to an article written in The Onion the previous day: Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M.
Now Mansfield Park, written in 1814, and arguably the first truly modern novel (about which I am currently writing an essay), anticipates this very problem. It is worth quoting Tony Tanner’s conclusion from his 1968 essay (which I will quote again in the conclusion of my essay, but it bears repetition).
But if […] Jane Austen could see that a world of frantic change was about to supplant the world of peaceful fixity she knew, why then does she allow the spirit of Mansfield, in the figure of Fanny, to triumph over the forces of change, as exemplified by the Crawfords? I think one could put it this way. To a world abandoning itself to the dangers of thoughtless restlessness, Jane Austen is holding up an image of the values of thoughtful rest. Aware that the trend was for more and more people to explore the excitements of personality, she wanted to show how much there was to be said for the ‘heroism of principle’. It is a stoic book in that it speaks for stillness rather than movement, firmness rather than fluidity, arrest rather than change, endurance rather than adventure. In the figure of Fanny it elevates the mind that ‘struggles against itself’, as opposed to the ego which indulges in promiscuous potentialities. Fanny is a true heroine because in a turbulent world it is harder to refrain from action than to let energy and impulse run riot.
When leading intellectuals are glad they have read great novels but calling into question whether it makes sense any more to invest the time to read them–bearing in mind how central novels are to culture of industrial modernity–we surely have reached a critical point.
And The Onion has called it!
Postscript
Some people might think that this is some kind of swipe at MY. Not at all! Blogging is at its best interactive, improvisational and dynamic; the way Matt’s insight combined with the debate in the comment thread and the link to the Onion was pure genius, initiated by one of its great exponents.
The Nadir of Western Civilisation?
I have just been reflecting on the rather neat confluence of events in my previous post, Mansfield Park and The Way we Live Now, that Matt Yglesias posted his article declaring he was glad he had been forced to read Anna Karenina and Moby Dick at school, but, after reading Infinite Jest, considers it difficult to justify reading novels, and the first comment (bearing in mind how busy this blog is) should link to an article written in The Onion the previous day: Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M.
Now Mansfield Park, written in 1814, and arguably the first truly modern novel (about which I am currently writing an essay), anticipates this very problem. It is worth quoting Tony Tanner’s conclusion from his 1968 essay (which I will quote again in the conclusion of my essay, but it bears repetition).
When leading intellectuals are glad they have read great novels but calling into question whether it makes sense any more to invest the time to read them–bearing in mind how central novels are to culture of industrial modernity–we surely have reached a critical point.
And The Onion has called it!
Postscript
Some people might think that this is some kind of swipe at MY. Not at all! Blogging is at its best interactive, improvisational and dynamic; the way Matt’s insight combined with the debate in the comment thread and the link to the Onion was pure genius, initiated by one of its great exponents.