I'm reading L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon with a long-term student, a middle-schooler. (My assignment: to teach whatever I want. She's a very good student, so it's not a question of remediation.) We take turns reading out loud. I read it when I was in middle school, and it made a huge impression on me. It's sentimental, and there are frequent patches of purple prose (which I thought very fine back in the day), but on the whole I'm delighted and astonished by just how good it is — much better than Anne of Green Gables, which is saying a lot — the Anne books, at least the first two or three, deserve their reputation. The descriptions in Emily of New Moon may be too rich, but they're very imaginative and well-written, and the dialogue is great — especially the way Emily tries to redefine terms in arguments in which she's being bullied. And her eagerness to make friends, her interest in underdogs and outcasts, her curiosity about old family stories and town legends — it's all very good. Last but not least, she wants to be a writer, and there's a lot on the impulse to write and the process of writing, all of which is accessible to a middle school student without being in the least condescending.

Maybe I'm getting carried away, but I think the Emily books offer an education in Romanticism: I have in mind Emily's appreciation for natural beauty, her fascination with fragments and unfinished things, again her sympathy for misfits, her constant fight against the philistines of Blair Water. I think it was under the influence of the Emily books that I sought out anonymous poetry. (In fact for about a year I scorned poetry by known authors.)

And she's a free thinker: I remember that in Emily Climbs she boards with a very strict Presbyterian aunt who's active in her church, and a local newspaper assigns her to review the new pastor of her aunt's church. She thinks his sermons are incoherent and formulaic invective, but of course she can't say that. So she writes both a dishonest review, and (for her own satisfaction) an honest review, and by mistake sends in the honest review, which gets published. Her aunt is incensed, etc etc. It's very funny.

When I read her father's deathbed farewell I coughed and sniffed and all but burst into tears, until my young student said gently, "Maybe I should read."

I went to hear André Schiffrin, the editor, talk about his new book, A Political Education. He said some interesting things about Yale and Cambridge in the 1950s, and some things about what's happening to publishing (which I'd heard before, but he made it sound very dire). At one point he said that independent publishing was a key — perhaps "the key" — to democracy. Now I'm all for independent publishing houses, but I felt a twinge of resistance: surely other things are more important, like intrepid journalism, civic associations, and, of course, schools that produce curious, skeptical, articulate citizens. I felt a bit churlish for taking exception, but afterwards I was able to put my finger on the reason for my resistance. Schiffrin thinks we need new ideas in order to make political progress, and how would those new ideas be propagated if not through books? I don't agree; I think the pursuit of new ideas is a huge diversion. The ideas are all there, we just need the will, the energy, and a healthy capacity for indignation.
But we all try hard to justify what we do.

A piece of very good news:

A middle school student I tutored pro bono for almost a year between 2005 and 2006 won a full scholarship to one of the best New England boarding schools!

!!!!

She's homeless, so (as Kaveri says) two birds with one stone.

The first essay she wrote for me was on the topic "The best things in life are free. Agree or disagree." (I did not choose it! It was randomly assigned!) She agreed, and adduced the example of public libraries. Still, it was a cruel assignment.

Whenever my cleaning lady crosses the threshold I feel sheepish about the state of my apartment, and worry that I'm her messiest client. But today she told me about an apartment she once cleaned in which the refrigerator was full of maggots, the walls were crawling with cockroaches, and the floors covered with thirty years of papers and dust. She ended up carrying forty bags of trash out of the place. But the worst was this: the woman who lived in this house of horrors said, "I think my cat is dead, but I don't know where it is. Probably somewhere under all those papers." And so it was.
And I was worried about a few dusty piles of junk mail!

I went to an awful talk a few weeks ago. I hesitate to publicize this, because in the grand scheme of things, who cares? How much harm can a lecture for graduate students and faculty do? On the other hand, life is short, and I wasted two hours. And I worry about what kind of teacher someone who thinks along these lines might be.
So, the paper was prefaced by this observation: "My scholarship is inspired by Derrida's insight that we don't know what it is to read, and we don't know what it is to write." You may as well say, we don't know what it means to eat a ham and cheese sandwich, we don't know what it means to look into a human face. "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence." But never mind. This bit of pretentious nonsense was laid down and never mentioned again. (Thankfully.)
There followed an extremely detailed discussion of "flowers," known to font fans as "ornaments" or "fleurons." (Most word processing programs come with one such font.) They became extremely popularly in the sixteenth century. Typesetters sometimes made mistakes in assembling the patterns. Did they take apart flower forms after having printed an edition, or did they preserve the forms for use in another book? The speaker had gone through countless volumes, trying (by keeping track of "mistakes" in patterns) to see if the forms were used in different books. Results inconclusive. Then: what did these decorations mean? Were they associated with a particular author? A genre? No, no. After twenty minutes of fruitless speculation (and many, many overhead transparencies), a half-conclusion: at most one might say that the books of members of the same coterie on occasion might have shared the same pattern of decoration. (An acquaintance remarked, "It sounds like cinema of the absurd.")
Last point: editions of sonnets often had a strip of flowers at the top and bottom of the page. It was put forth that sonneteers wrote with this frame "in mind." Ergo —? With what consequences? None were suggested. (Not one poem was mentioned in the whole talk.) Why adduce a cause for an imperceptible — a nonexistent — effect? (Marcel Duchamp: "If no solution, then maybe no problem.") In the Q&A a grumpy old professor asked if the speaker "had any evidence" for this assertion. (Uncomfortable laughter from the audience. But I felt relieved.) Of course not. "But when I write a 1000-word review, I'm acutely conscious of the word limit." Surely a sonneteer is acutely conscious of the fourteen-line limit, and the restrictive rhyme pattern. Once one has signed on with poetry's most demanding form, what difference could a strip of flowers in the header and footer possibly make?
Kaveri tells me about the harsh comments people make in MFA critiques. (Sometimes too harsh: "Your art is nothing.") And I can't help thinking, "Why aren't people a little tougher in humanities seminars?" I don't want anyone to run to the bathroom in tears, but this is ridiculous. Then I realized: maybe people aren't just being polite: I'd half-assumed that the laudatory (fulsome) comments and questions were less than sincere, but one listener assured me (on another day) his admiration was sincere. One man's medicine, another man's poison. I guess.

I went to hear Christopher Ricks at the Y. I like him a lot! His books, of course, and now I can say I like him as a speaker. He apologized for the scruffiness of his talk, but it didn't matter. On the level of insights and sentences it was a treasure chest. The older I get the more I think, "To hell with essay structure. Sentences are what really matters." (Within limits — the conclusions of Hazlitt's essays are sometimes so flat I wonder if he was doing it on purpose.)

A two-part anecdote:

Last spring my supervisor (one of them) left a message on my voicemail: "You should read your student evaluations, which were very positive. I always read them after a term is over — it's heartening."
In spite of this friendly encouragement, I was too afraid to read them. (Asking one of the secretaries to find my file seemed, conveniently, like an imposition.)

Then last October I was in the computer room and happened to read this entry "On being observed." In the sixth paragraph White Bear begins to describe "That One Bad Evaluation." It sounded like every single evaluation I got in the PGCE. For example: "She went on to give advice like how to turn all my difficult, open-ended questions into yes-or-no questions. She said I should make each of them "especially those immigrant kids" give a response to one question per class, going around the room. She said I shouldn't read aloud... "
By the time I finished reading the entry I was shaking. "I must see those evaluations!" I thought, and raced up the stairs. But both the secretaries were out to lunch. As I dashed past my pigeonhole I noticed something. What's this? A big envelope. I sat on the floor and poured out its contents. The first thing I saw was a smiley face. ("Do you have any additional comments?") Then I read them. They were good. They really were. In one class all the students (as if by agreement) had ended their evaluations with "I [heart] her!" I nearly wept with gratitude and relief.
(I still can't believe the coincidence.)
I know, according to the observer, it doesn't matter what students think. But it does, of course.

I wonder how many positive evaluations it will take to undo the damage of the PGCE.

Beatrice's figures of speech from nature:

"Lo so che sono un po' orsa." = "I know I'm a bit of a bear,"

orsa: an unsociable woman. (orso: an unsociable man.)

"Cosa farei, lì come un carciofo?" = "What would I do there, like an artichoke?"

carciofo: a silly, useless, incompetent person.

These are dictionary definitions. The bear idiom makes sense, but how did artichoke get to mean "silly, useless, incompetent"?! I always thought of it as a mysterious, elegant vegetable. But then I thought of the way an artichoke stands on its stalk — once in my life I saw a thicket of artichokes — like a stumpy, fat, too-earthly flower, and the way it seems (naturally) so unconscious of its ridiculousness. It began to make sense.

Tony Nuttall has died. I just found out. It's hard to believe. I wish I had studied with him! Something, anything. I went to one of his lectures at the beginning of the term and loved it — so concentrated and so lively. I resolved to attend them regularly, but in the end couldn't because of some schedule conflict. (I think it was the PGCE — God help me) I thought nonchalantly: "I'll audit some time in the future." Then he retired, and now he's gone. He was so friendly and approachable.

I've seen The Lives of Others twice, and highly recommend it. I'm haunted by Sebastian Koch's face, a face that holds, that withholds, so much. And by his manner, which is such a canny mixture of caution and innocence. Canny's the wrong word: it seemed completely unconscious, an aura of divine favor. Consider, for example, the way so much of he said was not really offensive to the regime, and at the same time not hypocritical either. He was always honest, and he never compromised himself.

The face of Ulrich Mühe also gained depth at a vertiginous rate, even though his expression never changed. Depending on where you let your eyes focus, you saw in their faces a blank wall, or infinitely complicated reserve.

And the first time you see them you think you have their measure: smug egotist; sadist.

I was reminded of:

Divided We Fall: the man whose job it is to spy and persecute turns by imperceptible shades, almost without knowing what's happening to him, into a saviour.

The White Rose: for the chessboard interrogations in German.

and, maybe because I'm reading We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, Hotel Rwanda, again for the tightrope negotiations with an evil power.

I read Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy and "The Brahmine's Journal." They're not masterpieces — the Journal lacks his usual verve, is in fact boring and repetitive — but I found them both very moving, and when I finished, I would have straightaway started re-reading Tristram Shandy, if I'd had my copy.

That's not quite fair: the Sentimental Journey, which reads like a supplement to Tristram Shandy, has some brilliant passages. It's almost entirely set in Calais, Paris, and Versailles (shades of Shandy, in which the protagonist is born only in the second half of the novel). Sterne did in fact make it to Italy, but the book was published two weeks before his death; perhaps he had given up on finishing it, or needed the money. (He was in the enviable position of knowing that anything with his name on the cover would be lapped up in several countries.) It reminded me a bit of Hamsun's Hunger for the comical hypersensitivity of the narrator, adrift in a large city, to every gesture, expression, and modulation of tone — a kind of grasping at straws, because the city itself is unreadable. And for the way in which the author and narrator are indistinguishable, and for his bursts of love for all mankind, which are always so hard to express. (They both try.) In Hamsun these effusions are balanced by bouts of misanthropy and misogyny, and an inability to communicate. Not so in the Sentimental Journey — it's as joyful and exuberant as Tristram Shandy.

There's a very funny episode in which — but here it is:

The Passport — Paris

When I got home to my hotel, La Fleur [Yorick's French valet] told me I had been enquired after by the Lieutenant de Police — The duce take it! said I — I know the reason. It is time the reader should know it, for in the order of things in which it happened, it was omitted; not that it was out of my head; but that, had I told it then, it might have been forgot now — and now is the time I want it.
I had left London with so much precipitation, that it never enter'd my mind that we were at war with France; and had reached Dover, and looked through my glass at the hills beyond Boulogne, before the idea presented itself; and with this in its train, that there was no getting there without a passport. Go but to the end of a street, I have a mortal aversion for returning back no wiser than I set out; and as this was one of the greatest efforts I had ever made for knowledge, I could less bear the thoughts of it; so hearing the Count de *** had hired the packet, I begg'd he would take me in his suite. The Count had some little knowledge of me, so made little or no difficulty — only said, his inclination to serve me could reach no farther than Calais, as he was to return by way of Brussels to Paris; however, when I had once pass'd there, I might get to Paris without interruption; but that in Paris I must make friends and shift for myself — Let me get to Paris, Monsieur le Count, said I — and I shall do very well. So I embark'd, and never thought more of the matter.
When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant de Police had been enquiring after me — the thing instantly recurred — and by the time La Fleur had well told me, the master of the hotel came into my room to tell me the same thing, with this addition to it, that my passport had been particularly asked after: the master of the hotel concluded with saying, He hoped I had one — Not I, faith! said I.
The master of the hotel retired three steps from me, as from an infected person, as I declared this — and poor La Fleur advanced three steps towards me, and with that sort of movement which a good soul makes to succour a distress'd one — the fellow won my heart by it; and from that single trait, I knew his character as perfectly, and could rely upon it as firmly, as if he had served me with fidelity for seven years.
Mon seigneur! cried the master of the hotel — but recollecting himself as he made the exclamation, he instantly changed the tone of it — if Monsieur, said he, has not a passport (apparemment) in all likelihood he has friends in Paris who can procure him one — Not that I know of, quoth I, with an air of indifference. — Then, certes, replied he, you'll be sent to the Bastile or the Chatelet, au moins. Poo! said I, the king of France is a good-natur'd soul — he'll hurt nobody. — Cela n'empeche pas, said he — you will certainly be sent to the Bastile to-morrow morning. — But I've taken your lodgings for a month, answer'd I, and I'll not quit them a day before the time for all the kings of France in the world. La Fleur whispered in my ear, That nobody could oppose the king of France.
Pardi! said my host, ces Messieurs Anglois sont des gens tres extraordinaires — and having both said and sworn it — he went out.

The Passport — The Hotel at Paris

I could not find in my heart to torture La Fleur's with a serious look upon the subject of my embarrassment, which was the reason I had treated it so cavalierly; and to shew him how light it lay upon my mind, I dropt the subject entirely; and whilst he waited upon me at supper, talk'd to him with more than usual gaiety about Paris, and of the opera comique. …
As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone down to sup himself, I then began to think a little seriously about my situation. —
— And here, I know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the remembrance of a short dialogue which pass'd twixt us the moment I was going to set out — I must tell it here.
Eugenius, knowing that I was as little subject to be overburthen'd with money as thought, had drawn me aside to interrogate me how much I had taken care for; upon telling him the exact sum, Eugenius shook his head, and said it would not do; so pull'd out his purse in order to empty it into mine. — I've enough in conscience, Eugenius, said I. — Indeed, Yorick, you have not, replied Eugenius — I know France and Italy better than you — But you don't consider, Eugenius, said I, refusing his offer, that before I have been three days in Paris, I shall take care to say or do something or other for which I shall get clapp'd up into the Bastile, and that I shall live there a couple of months entirely at the king of France's expence. I beg pardon, said Eugenius, drily: really I had forgot that resource.
Now the event I treated gaily came seriously to my door.
Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity — or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius?
And as for the Bastile; the terror is in the word — Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a tower — and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out of — Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year — but with nine livres a day, and pen and ink and paper and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within — at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.
I had some occasion (I forgot what) to step into the courtyard, as I settled this account; and remember I walk'd down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning — Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I vauntingly — for I envy not its power, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them — 'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition — the Bastile is not an evil to be despised — But strip it of its towers — fill up the fossé — unbarricade the doors — call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemper — and not of a man which holds you in it — the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint.
I was interrupted in the hey-day of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "it could not get out." — I look'd up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, or child, I went out without further attention.
In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage — "I can't get out — I can't get out," said the starling.
I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach'd it, with the same lamentation of its captivity…
I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; [n]or do I remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly call'd home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walk'd up stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I — still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.
…
The count de B****, of whom the bookseller at the Quai de Conti had spoke[n] so handsomely the night before, came instantly into my mind — And why should I not go, thought I, to the Count de B****, who has so high an idea of English books, and English men — and tell him my story?
…
I found no difficulty in getting admittance to Monsieur le Count de B***. The set of Shakespeares was laid upon the table, and he was tumbling them over. I walk'd up close to the table, and giving first such a look at the books as to make him conceive I knew what they were — I told him I had come without anyone to present me, knowing I should meet with a friend in his apartment, who, I trusted, would do it for me — it is my countryman the great Shakespeare, said I, pointing to his works — et ayez la bonté, mon cher ami, apostrophizing his spirit, added I, de me faire cet honneur-la.
The Count smiled at the singularity of the introduction; and seeing I look'd a little pale and sickly, insisted upon my taking an arm-chair: so I sat down; and to save him conjectures upon a visit so out of all rule, I told him simply of the incident in the bookseller's shop, and how that had impelled me rather to go to him with the story of a little embarrassment I was under, than to any other man in France — And what is your embarrassment? let me hear it, said the Count. So I told him the story just as I have told it the reader. — And the master of my hotel, said I, as I concluded it, will needs have it, Monsieur le Count, that I should be sent to the Bastile — but I have no apprehensions, continued I — for in falling into the hands of the most polish'd people in the world, and being conscious I was a true man, and not come to spy the nakedness of the land, I scarce thought I lay at their mercy. — It does not suit the gallantry of the French, Monsieur le Count, said I, to shew it against invalids.
An animated blush came into the Count de B****'s cheeks as I spoke this — Ne craignez rien — Don't fear, said he — Indeed I don't, replied I again — …
The Count heard me with great good-nature, or I had not said half as much — and once or twice said — C'est bien dit. So I rested my cause there — and determined to say no more about it.
The Count led the discourse: we talk'd of indifferent things — of books, and politics, and men — and then of women — God bless them all! said I
…
The Count said a great many civil things to me upon the occasion; and added, very politely, how much he stood obliged to Shakespeare for making me known to him — But, à propos, said he, — Shakespeare is full of great things — he forgot a small punctilio of announcing your name — it puts you under a necessity of doing it yourself.

There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am — for there is scarce anybody I cannot give a better account of than myself; and I have often wish'd I could do it in a single word — and have an end of it. It was the only time and occasion in my life I could accomplish this to any purpose — for Shakespeare lying upon the table, and recollecting I was in his books, I took up Hamlet, and turning immediately to the grave-diggers' scene in the fifth act, I laid my finger upon YORICK, and advancing the book to the Count, with my finger all the way over the name — Me voici! said I.
Now whether the idea of poor Yorick's skull was put out of the Count's mind by the reality of my own, or by what magic he could drop a period of seven or eight hundred years, makes nothing in this account — 'tis certain the French conceive better than they combine — I wonder at nothing in this world, and the less at this; inasmuch as one of the first in our own church, for whose candour and paternal sentiments I have the highest veneration, fell into the same mistake in the very same case, — "He could not bear," he said, "to look into the sermons wrote [sic] by the king of Denmark's jester." Good, my lord! said I; but there are two Yoricks.
…
The poor Count de B*** fell but into the same error —
— Et, Monsieur, est il Yorick? cried the Count. — Je le suis, said I. — Vous? — Moi — moi qui ai l'honneur de vous parler, Monsieur le Comte — Mon Dieu! said he, embracing me — Vous êtes Yorick! The Count instantly put the Shakespeare into his pocket and left me alone in his room.

I could not conceive why the Count de B**** had gone so abruptly out of the room, any more than I could conceive why he had put the Shakespeare into his pocket — Mysteries which must explain themselves are not worth the loss of time which a conjecture about them takes up: 'twas better to read Shakespeare; so taking up Much ado about Nothing, I transported myself instantly from the chair I sat in to Messina in Sicily, and got so busy with Don Pedro and Benedict and Beatrice, that I thought not of Versailles, the Count, or the Passport.
…
When I had got to the end of the third act, the Count de B**** entered with my passport in his hand. Mons. le Duc de C****, said the Count, is as good a prophet, I dare say, as he is a statesman — Un homme qui rit, said the duke, ne sera jamais dangereux. — Had it been for any one but the king's jester, added the Count, I could not have got it these two hours. — Pardonnez moi, Mons. le Count, said I — I am not the king's jester. But you are Yorick? — Yes. — Et vous plaisantez? — I answered, Indeed I did jest — but was not paid for it — 'twas entirely at my own expence.
We have no jester at court, Mons. le Count, said I; the last we had was in the licentious reign of Charles II. — since which time our manners have been so gradually refining, that our court at present is so full of patriots, who wish for nothing but the honours and wealth of their country — and our ladies are all so chaste, so spotless, so good, so devout — there is nothing for a jester to make a jest of —
Voilà un persiflage! cried the Count.

***
Isn't it delightful?! It never gets stale.

It would be unfair to judge the Brahmine's Journal, since Sterne conceived of it as therapy, not as literature. It's a journal written for the woman he loved, who had gone to India to join her husband. At first he meant to send it to her; later he changed his mind, and though he still addressed the entries to her, gave free rein to his fantasies about her husband's death. It was written in the last year of his life, when he was very ill. I could call it maudlin, self-indulgent, and obsessive, but that would be like losing patience with a friend because he's ill and unhappily in love, and not as entertaining as his wont. It's amazing that he wrote the Journey, so light and sparkling, at the same time as the Journal. But then we have the author's word that every sentence in Tristram Shandy itself was written "written under the greatest heaviness of heart."

The Journal can't be compared to Keats's letters, or to the letters and journals of Katherine Mansfield, but I was reminded of them because all three writers are dying of consumption, and detailed, happy plans for the future (when you can see "only 30 more pages to live") alternate with desperately needy pleas to the distant beloved.

Sterne, for example, describes in detail a sitting room he's furnishing for the Brahmine.

I particularly like Sterne's fondness for "sentiment." (It's in Tristram Shandy, but it's even more of a leit motif in the Journey and the Journal.) It's not something one naturally associates with his sparkling wit, but only because the word has become debased. A friend of mine once tried to redeem it, in writing and in speech. But we are so addicted to cheap irony that I'm afraid her efforts were unsuccessful.

Sometimes I think he uses the word "sentiment" as Austen uses the word "taste": it's what refined spirits recognize and appreciate.

By the way, Thackeray — a "sentimental" writer in the worst sense of the word — I hated Vanity Fair — penned a vehement denunciation of Sterne. The spirit of one age attacking the spirit of another. ("That's not fair." I know.)

I hope you've all read the brief but moving — sentimental! — exchange of letters between Sterne and Ignatius Sancho, Britain's "first black man of letters," a greengrocer by trade.

The other day someone told me that Jean Paul, Schumann's favorite author and the source of his butterflies, is like a German Laurence Sterne.

Patrick was late to class. "Where's Patrick?" I asked. "Probably shovelling snow," a classmate suggested. At these words Richard turned around and demanded, emphatically, "Dude, do you think for one minute that Patrick would let shovelling snow get in the way of his education?" I had to smile. Partly because Richard teases Patrick to his face, so it was nice to hear him stand up for Patrick in Patrick's absence (not that the imputation was so scandalous). And partly because ever since I've known these children, which is to say ever since they were 10, they've shown — nearly all of them — an extraordinary commitment to learning, a kind of patient/eager organized curiosity.