If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can perceive merit in a writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a different matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself- not independently of the observer, indeed, but independently of the mood of the observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot be true that a poem is good on Monday and bad on Tuesday. But if one judges the poem by the appreciation it arouses, then it can certainly be true, because appreciation, or enjoyment, is a subjective condition which cannot be commanded. For a great deal of his waking life, even the most cultivated person has no aesthetic feelings whatever, and the power to have aesthetic feelings is very easily destroyed. When you are frightened, or hungry, or are suffering from toothache or sea-sickness, King Lear is no better from your point of view than Peter Pan. You may know in an intellectual sense that it is better, but that is simply a fact which you remember: you will not feel the merit of King Lear until you are normal again. And aesthetic judgement can be upset just as disastrously — more disastrously, because the cause is less readily recognized — by political or moral disagreement. If a book angers, wounds or alarms you, then you will not enjoy it, whatever its merits may be. If it seems to you a really pernicious book, likely to influence other people in some undesirable way, then you will probably construct an aesthetic theory to show that it has no merits. Current literary criticism consists quite largely of this kind of dodging to and fro between two sets of standards. And yet the opposite process can also happen: enjoyment can overwhelm disapproval, even though one clearly recognizes that one is enjoying something inimical. Swift, whose world-view is so peculiarly unacceptable, but who is nevertheless an extremely popular writer, is a good instance of this. Why is it that we don't mind being called Yahoos, although firmly convinced that we are not Yahoos?...
Swift did not possess ordinary wisdom, but he did possess a terrible intensity of vision, capable of picking out a single hidden truth and then magnifying it and distorting it. The durability of Gulliver's Travels goes to show that, if the force of belief is behind it, a world-view which only just passes the test of sanity is sufficient to produce a great work of art.--Orwell (1946) "Politics vs. Literature — An examination of Gulliver's travels."
I read novels primarily for entertainment. As Orwell once argued you get a lot of value for money. But, and this probably marks me as unsophisticated, I also read them for their instruction in the art of living, that is, in wisdom. By the 'art of living,' I do not mean to suggest that novels are sophisticated self-help books (although Alain de Botton is not wrong to insist they are sometimes this, too), but rather that I see them as sources of insight about (ahh) anything. I do so because professional philosophy largely and steadfastly lost interest wisdom. So, for me novels are a means to help perfect my imperfect philosophy. Some of my these Impressions are a partial diary of my engagement with this project.
The previous, paragraph is a kind of apologia for what follows which is an attempt at explaining why, despite its historical significance, I find Aldous Huxley's (1921) Crome Yellow un-instructive. I read the book in a Vintage Classics edition that includes a preface by Malcolm Bradbury, who with the publisher also insists that is "one of the modern classics." (I have quite a bit to say under the influence of Coetzee on the nature of a classic, but ignore that here.) Unlike some, who treat the book simply as satire, Bradbury is more careful and claims that it is a "comic novel of ideas" (and can "go on being read with complete delight and pleasure.") Bradbury does not deny that the book contains "satirical tales cunningly planted in the story," -- including the brilliant Swiftian, "narrative of Sir Hercules Occam, the perfectly-formed [and perfectly named!--ES] dwarf who builds his perfect dwarf estate until all is destroyed by a full-sized heir" -- but he is right not to treat the book as satire. For, the book lacks, despite its invocation of Swift at the start of the novel, say, the "disgust, rancour and pessimism" (and anger) that (as Orwell correctly notes) animates Gulliver's Travels.
The main character is Denis Stone a published poet, who visits a great house one Summer shortly after World War I (so 1919 or 1920).* The house is the estate of the Lapiths (a Homeric name, this is a Swiftian gesture),** and that Summer there are three available young women. (He is interested in Anne.) When we meet him he suffers a writer's block while working on a novel and, perhaps this is connected, he admits to a kind of nihilist lack of faith in anything (including his own art). For faith keeps dullness at bay and transforms each event into something meaningful. Early on the reader (and Denis) learns that the would-be-plot of his projected novel -- which is loosely based on his own misguided understanding of himself -- is completely predictable. While he may lack self-knowledge, Denis has enough sense of shame to blush. Shortly thereafter his lack of originality is revealed (which a scene later he takes to be central to art), when he acknowledges that "things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about then." He blames his "education" for this. He goes on to suggest (in a much quoted passage):
One entered the world [...] having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.
Even if one were to grant the truth of these thoughts (and ignore the false, even fatal opposition between life and ideas), there is no sign that he is willing to struggle free from education's effects. I could go on and on pointing out the contradictions and cliches in this timid poet's outlook. None of these, of course, prevent him from being a potentially sympathetic character. But while his shy, longings are familiar enough sources of sympathetic identification, he is revealed as an empty shell, a self-described lover of "words" (and not "things and ideas and people') in two revealing episodes.
First, Denis's inability to act, even when offered a proper exemplar, is revealed in an extended set-piece in chapter XIX. The estate's pater familias, Henry Wimbush, has been working on a history of the family from which he reads to the gathered guests and family in the evenings. One night he tells the story of his not-so-aristocratic grandfather who won the hand of one of the aristocratic, lovely Lapiths, with a mixture of curiosity and not entirely moral, spirit. Denis is incapable of taking a hint.
Second, and in many ways this is the climax of the novel (chapter XXIV), Denis discovers he is not "his own severest critic" when he reads Jenny's red notebook full of drawings. (He never wonders why he is able to find it.) Jenny is deaf, and he has shown little interest in her throughout the novel. It turns out he recognizes his own ridiculousness and foolishness in Jenny's caricatures of him. While his hurt is understandable, he draws entirely the wrong lesson:
There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes besides himself....One is apt...to be so spellbound by the spectacle of one's own personality that one forgets that the spectacle presents itself to other people as well as to oneself."
None of this is false. But he shows no curiosity about Jenny (not even after his discovery), who is revealed as the most interesting person among the babbling other guests. In fact, it's clear that his lack of curiosity (a leading theme throughout the slim novel) condemns him not to get anything he wants. This is made abundantly clear to the reader.
It may seem perverse that I grant that the book is a comic novel of ideas -- in the way, say Zadie Smith's White Teeth is -- and yet fail to engage with neither the comedy nor the ideas. There is, in fact, quite a bit of comedy, and not a few moments that are the jumping-off places for further reflection (about which some other time). But by not challenging, even flattering the reader's felt superiority to its main character, the novel stimulates our pride and, most fatally, our complacency and so is unworthy of our engagement.***
*Maybe there are other clues that can nail down the exact time, but the main evidence is chapter ix about the effect-less, apocalyptic sermon preached by Mr. Bodiham about four years after the start of the war in 1914 and "having come to an end." Perhaps, the war helps explain the absence of sons.
**The pun is made explicit when we learn that the family's founder, and the first builder of the estate, had an "obsession with the proper placing of his privies." Even so, contrary to appearance, the piss is not taking on the aristocracy.
***This ought to prevent it from being a classic. But, of course, if it keeps finding passionate readers I am wrong.
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