Books on Books: 'Illuminations' by Walter Benjamin

Why does every book on books include a chapter on Kafka? He seems to be the one author that all literary critics esteem in equal measure, and he seems to be the one author that everyone MUST write about, as if it hasn't all been written before (and quite possibly better).

I read a lot of Benjamin in college, but always individual essays in the context of a larger body of reading on the subject matter; I certainly never sat down and read a volume of Benjamin's writing for pleasure, so this was a very new and not entirely pleasurable experience. His syntax is notoriously difficult and I'm well out of undergrad, so reading his essays required flexing muscles I haven't used in a long time -- it was unpleasant, but that was completely the point.

Books on Books: 'How Fiction Works' by James Wood

I have already espoused my love of James Wood but I was recently re-invigorated by (as usual) the New Yorker OutLoud podcast; I had been saving two juicy James Wood episodes on Elena Ferrante and Hilary Mantel that I finally got around to listening to, and they were as good as ever. If you have even an inkling of interest in either of those two writers, I recommend listening, and even if you don't, I recommend James Wood's 'How Fiction Works' which is essential reading for anyone who reads (see what I did there?). Wood is the ultimate literary critic in that he can simultaneously establish his expertise while he very deftly teaches the reader and the non-expert how to see what he sees in an author's work, and he does so with his own distinctly brilliant prose. He has the authority to tell you how fiction works because he writes as well as he reads. I assure you this volume will not feel like homework, but will instead only serve to enhance your appreciation for the books you already enjoy.

Books on Books: 'The Art of Fielding' by Chad Harbach

The Melville allusions in The Art of Fielding are heavy-handed and very deliberate -- the campus novel is about a baseball short-stop who seeks an NCAA record with his college team, The Harpooners, at a small liberal arts college on the shore of Lake Michigan which re-branded itself around Melville. when a student discovered that Melville had visited the campus as part of a lecture series. Ostensibly its a novel about college baseball, but only in the sense that baseball is about the human condition. Harbach was an English major at Harvard, so a fair amount of literary allusions, some more subtle than others, work their way into the text.

The Art of Fielding received an extraordinary amount of press when it was finally published, after Harbach spent ten long and arduous years perfecting his debut novel (worth every second). If you somehow missed it the first time around, pick it up immediately, as it was one of the best reviewed books of 2011 and absolutely one of my favorite recent reads. I recommend it just about everyone, regardless of their level of interest in baseball. This is a book for those who like good writing and distinctly American fiction.

I'd love to include a photo of my own for this post, but my copy is utterly destroyed from an incident involving a rickety table, a full glass of red wine, and two excitable dogs.

Books on Books: 'Northanger Abbey' by Jane Austen

There are probably no readers of Bookhive who haven't read something by Jane Austen in their lives, but most people skip over Northanger Abbey in favor of the more popular novels. It's certainly not my favorite, but it has its own unique charms, which for me have been recently enhanced by my enjoyment of the audio book version of The Mysteries of Udolpho, a novel that Catherine, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, reads with breathless enthusiasm. (I will take a brief moment to acknowledge that a post on audio books is long overdue; the whole reason I was listening to this particular one was because I wanted to write about the medium as a way of "reading"). 

The naive Catherine reads The Mysteries of Udolpho, a very popular gothic novel in Jane Austen's lifetime, written by fellow female author Ann Radcliffe, and it sparks a kind of paranoid fantasy in her own life, as she sees parallels to the novel in everything, much to her detriment. As to be expected, Catherine learns her lesson and ends the novel happily, but the real pleasure of the novel is in the meditations on the art of fiction and the nature of reading. Jane Austen's genius lies partially in her ability to sneak up on the reader with profundity hidden in what feel like very minute details, so a novel about an 18 year old bookworm is really a startlingly self-aware novel about storytelling, fiction, narrative, and readership. It deserves more credit than it usually gets, and Ann Radcliffe's novel warrants a reading, if only for its own significance in context.

Books on Books: 'The Madwoman in the Attic' by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

I first came across The Madwoman in the Attic via Madeleine's thesis project in The Marriage Plot, but I'm surprised that I made it through four years of humanities studies without having read it, as I, much like the fictional Madeleine, spent a lot of time with books that were described as "discourses." The Madwoman in the Attic is the O.G. of feminist readings of fiction, and its influence cannot be overstated. I've been thinking a lot about it recently as I was reading Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs, whose very title and premise are something of an homage. The book is largely concerned with female authors like Jane Austen, the Brontes, and Virginia Woolf, and it's a really excellent follow-up to anyone who has already read and enjoyed some of the major women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It's easy to find a first edition at any decent used book store (especially those in college towns), but do yourself a favor a pickup a newer copy that include their revised introduction, which should give you a better taste of the cultural impact the book had on feminism and literature.

Books on Books: 'My Life in Middlemarch' by Rebecca Mead

My favorite thing about this book was the way in which I received it; while I was cooking dinner one weeknight, my husband said he was running out for some beer. He was gone longer than usual, but I didn’t think much of it. When he arrived home, he had a six-pack of beer, along with the beautiful pink hardcover of My Life in Middlemarch, which had just been released that day.  It was such a nice surprise, and felt like such an indulgent treat- a book about one of my favorite books. I was particularly impressed that he had remembered my reading Middlemarch last fall; in fact he had heard an interview with Rebecca Mead on NPR that morning and resolved to go pick up the book for me, knowing it was right up my alley. He was very correct.

Books about books and reading are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I can never get enough of reading about and talking about and hearing about literature. The kind of reflection exercised by Rebecca Mead in My Life in Middlemarch is the same hyper self-aware readership that inspired me to blog about literature in the first place, and so I found her connection to George Eliot’s masterpiece very relatable. I haven’t read Middlemarch enough times to experience Mead’s evolving connection to a novel, but my most similar experience would by the evolution of Jane Austen heroines in my life.  {Editor’s Note: it was at this point I started writing a description of Jane Austen heroines and how my perceptions of them have shifted over time. This went on for a good 3000+ word count before I realized what I was doing. I feel closer to Rebecca Mead more than ever}. I was a teenage Elizabeth Bennet, a young adult Emma Woodhouse, and now an older (well, almost 30 anyway) and wiser Anne Elliott.

Like Mead, I found immediate kinship with Dorothea, the heroine of Middlemarch, but in all honesty I related to Fred Vincy more than any other character. I really appreciated her exploration of the central marriages in the novel, and her personal experiences never felt indulgent or self-important. I was surprised by Mead’s depth of exploration and her academician’s approach to the life of George Eliot. For those who love and admire Eliot’s work, My Life in Middlemarch is a nice alternative to the meaty biographies out there. The literary memoir is troublesome genre, and as Joyce Carol Oates points out in her stellar review of My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead manages to combine analysis with historicism and personal reflection with an unexpected level of sophistication.

A final caveat- My Life in Middlemarch is not going to be enjoyed by anyone who hasn't read Middlemarch, and a recent reading would certainly enhance the experience. There is a decent miniseries on Netflix that adheres very closely to the text, and is a recommended crash course in Middlemarch (if ten hours counts as a crash?). Mead discusses several other George Eliot novels and spoils their endings, so if you're desperate to avoid The Mill on the Floss spoilers, save My Life in Middlemarch for a later date.