by Edward Champion

Florence Nightingale (Modern Library Nonfiction #74)

For many years after her death, Florence Nightingale was needlessly derided by those who viewed her revolutionary contributions and her eccentricities as an affront. But Cecil Woodham-Smith’s biography turned the tide in her favor.

(This is the twenty-sixth entry in The Modern Library Nonfiction Challenge, an ambitious project to read and write about the Modern Library Nonfiction books from #100 to #1. There is also The Modern Library Reading Challenge, a fiction-based counterpart to this list. Previous entry: The Great War and Modern Memory.)

Of the four illustrious figures cannonaded in Eminent Victorians, Florence Nightingale somehow evaded the relentless reports of Lytton Strachey’s hard-hitting flintlocks. Strachey, of course, was constitutionally incapable of entirely refraining from his bloodthirsty barbs, yet even he could not find it within himself to stick his dirk into “the delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succor the afflicted.” Despite this rare backpedaling from an acerbic male tyrant, Nightingale was belittled, demeaned, and vitiated for many decades by do-nothings who lacked her brash initiative and who were dispossessed of the ability to match her bold moves and her indefatigable logistical acumen, which were likely fueled by undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

As someone who has been diagnosed with bipolar, I am inclined to stick up for my fellow aggrieved weirdos. We bipolar types can be quite difficult, but you can’t gainsay our superpowers. A relentlessly productive drive, a magnetism and a magnanimity that bubbles up at our high points, an overwhelming need to help and empathize with others, and a crushing paralysis during depressive spells that often has us fighting the urge to stay in bed. And yet we get up every day anyway, evincing an energy and an eccentric worldview that others sometimes perceive as magical, but that our enemies cherrypick for lulz and fodder — the basis for unfounded character assassin campaigns, if not permanent exile. Hell hath no greater fury than that of aimless and inexplicably heralded mediocrities puffed up on their own prestige and press.

But regular people who aren’t driven by the resentful lilts of petty careerism do get us. And during her life, they got Florence Nightingale. She was flooded with marriage proposals, all of which she rebuffed and not always gently. She was celebrated with great reverence by otherwise foulmouthed soldiers. Yet she also suffered the slings and arrows of bitter schemers who resented her for doing what they could not: obtaining fresh shirts and socks and trays and tables and clocks and soap and any number of now vital items that one can find ubiquitously in any ward, but that were largely invisible in 19th century hospitals and medical military theatres. She had the foresight to study the statistics and the fortitude to work eighteen hour days practicing and demanding reform. And whatever one can say about Nightingale’s mental state, it is nigh impossible to strike at Florence Nightingale without coming across as some hot take vagabond cynically cleaving to some bloodless Weltanschauung that swiftly reveals the superficial mercenary mask of a boorish bargain hunter.

Florence Nightingale nobly and selflessly turned her back from the purse strings of privilege, hearing voices caracoling within her head that urged her to do more. While she was not the only nurse who believed in going to the front lines to improve conditions (the greatly overlooked Mary Seacole, recently portrayed by the wildly gifted and underrated Tina Fabrique in a play, also went to Crimea), it is now pretty much beyond question that she revolutionized nursing and military medicine through her uncommon will and a duty to others in which she sacrificed her own needs (and caused a few early suitors to suffer broken hearts). That she was able to do all this while battling her own demons is a testament to her redoubtable strength. That her allies returned to her, determined to see the best in her even after she was vituperative and difficult, is a tribute to one of humanity’s noblest qualities: putting your ego aside for the greater good.

A century before PowerPoint turned 90% of all meetings into meaningless displays of vacuous egotism, Florence Nightingale was quite possibly the first person to use colorful graphical data at great financial expense (see above — it’s beautiful, ain’t it?) to persuade complacent men in power to care for overlooked underlings wounded in war and dying of septic complications in overcrowded and unhygienic hospitals. She was savvy and charismatic enough to win the advocacy of Lord Sidney Herbert, who, despite being a Conservative MP, had the generosity and the foresight to understand the urgent need for Nightingale’s call for revolution. Herbert secured funds. The two became close confidants. Yet poor Herbert suffered a significant erosion in his health and died at the age of fifty because he could not keep up with Nightingale’s demands.

I suspect that men in power resented such noble sacrifices, which could account for why Nightingale was often portrayed as a freak and a deranged outlier in the years immediately following her death. But biographer Cecil Woodham-Smith saw a different and far more complex woman than the haters. Her terrific and mesmerizing and well-researched 1950 biography on Nightingale greatly helped to turn the tide against one of the most astonishing and inspiring women that medicine has ever known. And Woodham-Smith did so not through preordained hagiography, but by taking the time to carefully and properly sift through her papers (and even a well-preserved lock of her bright chestnut hair, still as robust and as lambent as the lamp Nightingale carried in the dark more than a century later). There is a vital lesson here for today’s social media castigators, especially the testosterone-charged troglodytes who casually smear women, that they will likely ignore.
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Next Up: Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce!

by Edward Champion

Withdrawing

What does it mean to withdraw? And why are so many of us doing it when there are hard battles to fight?

Most of us withdraw money from our checking accounts at least once a week. We do, after all, have to survive in this wildly flawed and ever more hurtful world. Even when the money we withdraw doesn’t mean much. Slips of green paper that have touched several hands before us, used to acquire food and other items that allow us to survive. And with inflation, the value of money increasingly means much less. The quiet joke about money is more apparent these days. A dollar bill and a euro walk into a bar. They both measure their value against each other, which is subject to whims that are beyond their control. The dollar bill says to the euro, “Whose wallet or purse do you think you’ll end up in this week?” The euro replies, “I don’t know. But I’m sure some stranger will slide me across a counter to buy something before I have time to get comfortable.” “It’s a transient life, to be sure.” “A transactional one.” “Same diff.” “When do you think you’ll die?” asks the dollar bill. “I don’t know,” says the euro, “we don’t live as long as dogs. Maybe eight years if we’re lucky. All the wear and tear.” “I know,” says the dollar, “I’m starting to feel my age.” “You’re holding up very well,” says the euro, “let me buy you a beer.” But in the euro’s noble quest to honor the camaraderie that he has just established with the dollar, he has no alternative but to submit himself as the instrument of payment when the bartender arrives. And while the dollar enjoys his beer (only to be scooped up from the barstool after a mere two sips by a bipedal ape-descended life form in great financial need), the euro finds himself spending the next several hours inside the dark boxy abyss of a cash register cage before he is eventually transferred to a safe, which is an even more depressing place to exist than the cash register. Small wonder that currency has no soul. This is no way to live.

Not that money has ever meant all that much to me — except as a means to carry on surviving. The things I enjoy doing and that I am particularly good at are far from lucrative. In fact, I tend to lose time and money when I’m doing these things, although I do not consider that I am withdrawing from anything when I am happily doing these things. I have all the books I could possibly need — even if I cannot stop buying them. It is not so much the money I care about, but the books, which have become increasingly more reliable than people in 2022 and appear to be the foundation for whatever sanity I possess. I have all the things I could possibly need. I don’t need anything more. And the idea of playing the crypto market strikes me as one of the most boring pastimes imaginable. Even more boring than gambling, which I also do not do often. The last time I gambled, it was three years ago and on a whim. I had stopped at Atlantic City after recording with an actor in Virginia. I had a car to return the next morning. And it seemed ridiculous to drive all the way back to Brooklyn, only to drive to Newark to return the car, when I could simply stay in New Jersey and thus delude myself into believing that I was still on a journey. I had not been in Atlantic City before and felt, after living in New York City for more than a decade, that the time had come to finally visit this seedy place — a venue perhaps best memorialized by Joshua Cohen in an essay for a magazine run (in part) by someone I strongly detest and who has proven, as I suspected all along, to be largely in this for the money. Anyway, I was in a casino for less than an hour and won big at the craps table and I walked away with my winnings, which most people do not do. Quit while they’re ahead, that is. I had enough for a hotel room and more. Why give this small fortune back to the casino? Yet while I was waiting for an overworked man with a sad angular face to book me a hotel room, and affording the man great leeway because he looked as if he was having a very bad day, I stepped to the side and played the slots and won another jackpot. And these combined winnings were enough for me to live like a king that night — even though I had no aspirations to royalty. I certainly didn’t have any particular desire to throw money around. I didn’t need to withdraw anything. I still don’t feel any overwhelming need to withdraw money unless I need to buy a sandwich or something. But I will stick up for my worth.

The more noble of us withdraw blood. Often for doctors, who request to see it and study it. More often, in my case, for blood banks. Because people need it. And even though I tend to be squeamish around needles when I donate blood (although not so much when it came to getting vaccinated) — a quality which guarantees that I’ll never attempt heroin as long as I walk this earth — I still do this for the greater good. Whatever displeasure I have when a nurse draws blood from me is worth it. And I can usually disguise or distract myself from my discomfort with a fusillade of jokes that, in turn, helps the nurse to have a better day as she treats largely ungrateful patients. (I know how ungrateful people can be. I once worked in a vaccination center. I still treated everyone like royalty, even when they were rude to me.) But maybe I’m overestimating my squeamishness. Or even the quality of my wit. I recently saw a doctor and sat stoically as great pain flooded throughout my body. And the nurse replied, “You know, most men who go through this cry. You don’t.” And it was true. I am better with my pain threshold these days than I used to be. But I have no idea if this is because of maturity or increased resignation. And the nurse proceeded to flirt with me and asked me why I was still single — this as I was in a largely naked and vulnerable position, this as pain continued to shoot through my corpus. I did my best to be present and not withdraw — even as bits of organic matter were being withdrawn from me. Because the operation needed to happen. There was no way around it. Encounters with doctors become more frequent as you get older. Aging is the body’s ignoble way of announcing that you are inevitably going to die.

The funny thing about the word “withdraw” is that its original meaning involved taking back something. To draw away. A possible variation of retrahere, which is Latin for “retract.” But when we say that we withdraw now, what are we taking back exactly? The money we withdraw from a bank is usually spent on something. The blood that is withdrawn from our bodies doesn’t return to us. But this etymology does provide me with some comfort. Because I find myself withdrawing from people more these days out of self-preservation. People are becoming crueler and more selfish. And it all makes me very sad. The mass shootings. The anti-choicers who want women to suffer and to give up all their autonomy and their identity. The ineptitude of Democrats. The cruelty of Republicans. But I don’t want to have the soul of a lonely euro whimpering in the dark heavy jail of a safe.

And it’s not just political. People who I thought were friends have demonstrated that they do not care about my feelings. They have their reasons. It has nothing to do with me, but that doesn’t stop their egotistical acts from causing hurt. They see the way that I live, which is entirely on my own terms and very much about being there for others, and they resent me for it. While more deranged members of our society would be more inclined to shoot up a school to contend with this imbalance, I’m not a violent man. And my response has been to withdraw from them. I mean, if you’re texting with an ostensible “friend” and pointing out that you’re not feeling all that great these days, and that “friend” replies “lol,” that’s not really someone you want to be friends with, is it? In the last two weeks, I have largely withdrawn from writing — something that I very much enjoy doing — because I am still dealing with the great hurt of busting my ass for someone who claimed to vouch for me and who even called me a “genius” (I’m not) and who fed me to the lions and who betrayed the many hours I put in. This two thousand word essay (or whatever the fuck it is) that I am writing right now is the most writing I have done in one sitting in eight days. And I have enjoyed writing it. And I feel right now a sense of catharsis. And coming to terms with all the flotsam in my head is helping me. And hopefully it will likewise help you — that is, if you’ve read this far. I’m sure that many people will resent me for enjoying the experience of writing this. Certainly someone as bitter as Fran Lebowitz, who I am increasingly believing to be a fraud and who will probably never read this, will see my enjoyment of writing as suspicious, if not worthy of censure. But then Fran Lebowitz likes to complain. It’s her schtick. And it has a limited range and repertoire. It’s enjoyable to some extent, but increasingly less so as I get older. She is not as bad as Ricky Gervais, who is a truly sad and hateful and mediocre man. His most recent transphobic “comedy” special caused me to cancel my Netflix account. Because I don’t need that kind of ugliness in my life. And I don’t want to support that. The world is ugly enough. My schtick is to try not to complain (except in the case of notable injustices, such as various Supreme Court rulings devised by soi-disant “originalists” or income inequality, or to stump on behalf of the many people who seem to trust me with their most vulnerable and heartbreaking stories and whose trust I feel the need to honor and to never betray because I don’t understand why they trust me and see me as a man who they can be open with), but to see and depict quotidian wonder, particularly strange quotidian wonder. And that is the basis for what I do. That’s who I am. I cannot be anybody else but me.

But back to this “friend.” I believed, after all the years we had known each other, that he would have my back. Much as I have always had his back and have taken significant risk to stick up for him because that is the kind of loyalty I have for people in my life. Because loyalty and honesty and good faith matter more to me than how anyone perceives me. But it was not to be. I was forced to withdraw.

So I am withdrawing from certain people. And my choice to withdraw has proven to reveal who certain people truly are and how little my honest passion and my fierce advocacy has truly mattered to them. I am withdrawing to take back something, per the original definition of “withdrawing.” And the hope is that I can find people who understand what I’m talking about here. Who intuitively know the big problem we’re not talking about. Who can read the room and see that a lot of us are scared and that inaction is no way to go about this tricky business known as life. I am withdrawing in order to be more present. To live to fight another day in a long and difficult fight that is increasingly essential to preserve the joy and beauty of the universe and to inspire other people to live their best lives and to accomplish great things. Which now seems like the hardest fucking thing in the world. It used to be simpler. But it has to be done.

by Edward Champion

Bill Kristol: An Enemy to Women, An Enemy to Human Rights

Like many gutless conservatives, Bill Kristol stands against women’s rights. By demanding that protesters curtail their efforts, he is little more than one of Goldhagen’s “willing executioners.”

Yesterday, Bill Kristol — a vile and cowardly neoconservative opportunist who has deluded himself into believing that opposing Trump somehow makes him a more “reasonable” Republican — landed himself in rightful hot water when he tweeted for “civility.” Kristol, a repugnant man who has never known a day without a hot meal, rebuked protesters for protesting outside the homes of statesmen who stand in the way of autonomy, freedom, and a woman’s right to choose. Echoing the bullshit centrist line from Michelle Obama that has singlehandedly positioned Democrats into a wildly gullible and morally culpable party of eternal ineptitude, Kristol also urged protesters not to “intrude on people attending their houses of worship.”

Bill Kristol clearly does not have any significant understanding of human history. He also doesn’t seem to comprehend that his own wildly dangerous party is operating from a crazypants playbook created and practiced by vicious and duplicitous thugs who have openly flouted numerous judicial precedents that ostensibly upheld the liberties and agency of women and that now threaten to create a new form of slavery in which forced childbirth — even in cases of rape, incest, or when a baby that is fated to die — will become the cruel new norm.

In short, the unhinged assault on our democratic republic is very real — arguably one of the greatest perils to liberty in our lifetime — and it requires that we stop playing nice. “Civility” — or, at least, the bullshit bromides that Kristol cleaves to — hasn’t worked. The time has come to make the life of any atavistic scumbag who stands against women’s rights — and thus human rights — incredibly difficult — a living hell that will communicate in pellucid terms that the failure to respect a view that the majority of the American people support now — and even supported in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade — is completely unacceptable in the 21st century.

Is this fool really so naive as to not know about the Haymarket affair? Hundreds bravely fought for workers rights. A bomb was thrown. And the anarchists who adopted an ostensibly “fringe” position were rounded up and falsely criminalized — including people who had not actually attended this 1886 protest in Chicago. One of the falsely accused defendants committed suicide.

Is this wildly irresponsible oaf unfamiliar with the civil rights movement? Also messy. Lamar Smith — a venerated World War I vet — shot in the streets of Brookhaven, Mississippi for urging Blacks to exercise their right to vote in 1955. Or how about Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965 — in which peaceful protesters were brutally attacked by lawmen in Selma, Alabama? Or Jonathan Daniels? Murdered by an unpaid deputy sheriff after picketing whites-only stores.

I could go on, but Google is free.

Did this nitwit truly deposit his fat complacent head into the blissful sands of clueless ignorance when Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves was interviewed by Jake Tapper — on Mother’s Day, no less — and said, with wanton sociopathic glee, that forcing women to carry pregnancies to term in any scenario was just peachy keen? Here are actual sentiments from a pro-lifer just yesterday: “You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice. Your body is mine and you’re having my baby.” If Kristol refuses to recognize the abhorrent tyranny here, the fight that any card-carrying humanist should not sit out, then he has no business opining in any form.

Weak mediocre men like Kristol are very much one of the reasons why we’re here once again, forced to fight even as we remain exhausted for a right that should have been codified decades ago. Pusillanimous fossils like Kristol not only cheapen the difficult choice that any woman faces with abortion, but they belittle the bravery of anyone who remains rigorously committed to human rights.

With all due respect, Bill Kristol, go fuck yourself. And please be sure to let me know your “place of worship” so that I can show up and say this to your face. You see, if there isn’t a safe place for women, then there really shouldn’t be a safe place for you.

by Edward Champion

How NPR “Covers” Our Obscene Dystopia

One big reason why a Roe v. Wade overturn is likely to happen isn’t just an extremist Supreme Court. It’s also the apolitical fools who try to distract the American public from big issues with celebrity “news.”

Last night, Politico leaked a draft opinion from the Supreme Court — the first time that any early ruling had ever escaped the sacrosanct chambers in the high court’s entire history — that called for the unthinkable: a complete and total overturn of Roe v. Wade (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey). One would think that such an astonishing calumny against women’s rights, the precedents upheld by all justices in the past, and the ostensibly noble practice of jurisprudence would be front-page news for every outlet. One would think that such a significant sign that patriarchal fascism can become a real possibility in the United States would take up every column-inch and every second of airtime. But don’t tell that to the gutless onanistic “minds” at NPR, who took to Facebook with a piece on the Met Gala! Because, as far as NPR is concerned, rich people and what they wear is real news. And women are merely ornamental animals to fuel the next several rounds of vacuous social media speculation. Never mind their rights. Never mind their lives. Never mind their agency. And never mind the fact that all that they bravely fought for in the last several decades is now being rolled back faster than the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket.

Let us be clear about why and how NPR is a dumpster fire. It is a radio organization run by toothless conformists with a long history of looking the other way while catering to an increasingly invented audience of “upper middle-class” listeners with oodles of spare time to devour every celebrity offering (when these privileged mouth breathers aren’t busy sucking up air) and, as any audio producer learns from the whisper circles of mailing lists and DMs, regularly in the habit of stifling and “correcting” any original or unique voice to suit its despicably vanilla and anodyne “coverage” of events, which challenges no one and reveals nothing.

It’s no surprise to see that this bullshit outlet — now a pathetic parody of itself — would rather prioritize an obscene display of vacuous spectacle and empty wealth over far more pressing issues such as the erosion of women’s rights, the rise of American authoritarianism, the growing disparity in income inequality, escalating international conflict, and political corruption — all of which are allocated mere snippets. In short, NPR is a fucking embarrassment to journalism and a significant part of the problem. It “serves” the public much as I participate in triathlons — which is to say not at all. These feckless dimwits lunge for the safe and sane. They never take chances. They never rock boats.

NPR’s superficiality is perhaps best represented by the smug and vapid talking heads on Pop Culture Happy Hour, who bray regularly about the most inconsequential offerings on television with a mildly snarky style that feels as antediluvian as the Tamagotchi. As of Tuesday afternoon, Pop Culture Happy Hour “star” Linda Holmes has said precisely fuck all about Roe v. Wade to her 139,000 followers on Twitter. You see, Linda Holmes is living a comfortable life and she’s eked out such a hollow and cozy existence that she’ll never take a real stand on anything. But she does have plenty to say about the Ozark finale, which nobody will give a shit about in twenty years. You see, for myopic mercenaries like Holmes, Ozark counts as real news! Apparently, Holmes’s biggest problem in life is breaking some superficial rule in which she continued to watch a show that she “did not think was actually good because I just wanted to know the ending.” Someone bust out the smelling salts and the fainting couch for poor beleaguered Linda, folks! Meanwhile, the life, liberty, and health of women have become significantly imperiled thanks to extremist justices who were anointed by an orange tyrant and his fawning sociopathic acolytes.

The reason why we have reached this barbaric nadir in our history is not just because highly gullible and treacherous dolts like Susan Collins actually believed (or, more likely, claimed to believe) that Brett Kavanaugh would honor Roe v. Wade, but because frivolous and completely useless lightweights like Holmes, who have never taken a real chance in their sad and miserable lives, continue to uphold the apolitical status quo. I can genuinely imagine Linda Holmes ratting out liberals as they’re sent to the concentration camps in a few years, not long after telling a reptilian autocrat, “Well, officer, she brought up politics at the dinner table!” By remaining silent about the Roe v. Wade overturn, Holmes — much like all NPR employees who say nothing — is among what Goldhagen called “willing executioners.” And these unprincipled cowards are as much of a menace to our culture as the people who take our hard-won rights away. For hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.

[5/9/2022 UPDATE: In fairness to Holmes, she did finally say something in a thread involving Danielle Kurtzleben on May 6th, 2022 — a good four days after the Supreme Court draft opinion was leaked. But she largely complained about how exhausting it was to say anything — as if anyone presently on the involved front lines isn’t exhausted! Exhaustion doesn’t mean that you stop fighting. And when human rights are on the line, you don’t show up four days late to the debate.]

by Edward Champion

My Henry James Problem: Dinitia Smith and Susan Mizruchi (The Bat Segundo Show #553)

This 75 minute special edition of The Bat Segundo Show chronicles Our Correspondent’s efforts to find appreciation for an author he does not care for — namely, Henry James. Dinitia Smith and Susan Mizruchi are the guests for this program.

This Bat Segundo special chronicles Our Correspondent’s indefatigable and good faith efforts to find appreciation for an author he does not care for — namely, Henry James. Our Correspondent read numerous books for this particular episode and appealed to several James scholars and acolytes to help set him straight. Susan Mizruchi is most recently the author of Henry James: A Very Short Introduction. Dinitia Smith is most recently the author of The Prince.

Subjects Discussed: Dick Cavett, the Correspondent’s failure to love Henry James (particularly the late period), slow reading, how the pandemic stoked Henry James love, William Dean Howells, the initiated reader, James’s unruly prefaces, Lawrence Durrell, rereading The Golden Bowl, the description of afternoon tea in The Portrait of a Lady, Neal Stephenson, James’s characters, being married, Edith Wharton, Finnegans Wake, psychology, William James, Gore Vidal’s essay on The Golden Bowl, James’s “conversational style,” dialogue, Marlon Brando, the Correspondent’s Modern Library Reading Challenge, literary mansplaining, why Henry James film adaptations don’t help the Correspondent, Dark Shadows and The Turn of the Screw, Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise, how James can inspire a novelist, transposing James to the 21st century, pastiches vs. homegrown style, James’s page-long sentences, the four characters at the center of The Golden Bowl, why the Assignhams are annoying, why James’s characters don’t seem to discuss anything other than the relationships that serve the storyline, creating grand houses, the urge to line-edit James’s very long sentences, pre-modern novelists, how The Ambassadors inspires nightmares, James’s class structure, robber barons, whether or not the descendants of rich people are friendly, how a cinematic sensibility meshes with James, taking The Golden Bowl apart, wealthy people and privacy, the Rockefellers, private islands, Andrew Carnegie, Ron Chernow’s The House of Morgan, Frick and the Homestead Strike, Gardiners Island, the friendship between Edith Wharton and Henry James, The House of Mirth vs. The Golden Bowl, having a taste for James, the number of literary people who don’t like James, narrative deficiencies in postmodern novels, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala taking narrative liberties with Charlotte in her adaptation of The Golden Bowl, the tolerable qualities of dictators, vintage clothing and the rich, Rome as an inspirational force for literature, how cities change and how novelists adapt to those changes when writing about these cities, the Hudson Valley, transposing James’s London setting to New York, growing up in London, the dying Victorian echoes in British vernacular, how once dependable London tea spots have become gentrified, the UK aristocracy, passive-aggressive behavior in London, James’s life in England, British politeness and indirection, extramarital affairs, secrets that are buried in families, the secrets within James’s novels, Henry James vs. Lost, the insanity of rereading The Golden Bowl, Marguerite Young’s Miss Macintosh, My Darling, Virginia Woolf and James, when critics praise novels that nobody really likes, Jonathan Franzen, overwritten sentences, hate reading and rage, Henry James’s overuse of “connexion” and his annoying Anglophilia, the fluctuating importance of James, James Joyce vs. Henry James, the lack of humor in James, debating the “poetic” elements of James, how James dictating his work created resentment more than a century later, carpal tunnel syndrome, James as a closeted gay man, the regrettable depiction of women in The Golden Bowl, Proust, how James’s style evolved in his later work, the Oscar Wilde trial, how James’s personal dealings with women may have affected his literary depiction of women, how the transformation of marriage in the 20th century has affected portrayals of women in literature, #metoo and Henry James, the many books on Henry James in 2004 (Coim Toibin, David Lodge, et al.), women and jobs, postwar novelists, Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, George Eliot and Dorothea in Middlemarch, economic developments in the 20th century, writing and children, Iris Murdoch, and feminism.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

CORRESPONDENT: Going back to the whole Henry James problem, here’s the thing. Right now, I’m actually going through all of Edith Wharton. And I love her. I love her. I have no such problems with her. She’s amazing. The House of Mirth. The Age of Innocence. All those ghost stories. She depicts class far more intelligently and far more subtly and with far greater nuance than Henry James. And not only that. I have to ding Henry James for taking ten years to befriend her after Edith Wharton was saying, “Hey, Henry! I love you!” And then he takes ten years and does that false modesty thing. Please give me a reason why I should give Henry James another shot. You talk about the mystery and the ambiguity. I look at his sentences and honestly I see something that is completely on the nose. I don’t see characters here who have the great vivacity of Lily Bart from The House of Mirth or any of these other great classics of that era. You know?

SMITH: Well, you know, I have to agree with you in some bizarre way. I love Edith Wharton. Of course they were friends. They became friends. He was kinda snotty about her first short story. But they became very close. She admired him so much. But I think you’re right in some way. With regard to The Golden Bowl, the only way to see it is as a mystery. But you have to go through these filaments of language and find the truth underneath it. And you have to have a taste for it. And I happen to like being surrounded by the miasma of Henry James, But Wharton is a great, great novelist. She tells you a story in plain English that you can lose yourself in. And I think human beings love stories. They tell stories every day. And my primary goal as a novelist is to tell a good story. So let’s just say that Henry James is a hobby of mine that not everyone shares.

CORRESPONDENT: I know. And look, I want to cultivate this taste, Dinitia, but I am having incredible difficulty with this late period — especially these last three novels. To me, Henry James is the most offensive mansplainer in all of American literature. Am I just missing some DNA that will allow me to appreciate Henry James? Come on! Stump for this guy for me!

SMITH: You make me laugh. I’ve learned as a novelist — and as a sort of literary person — just how many of my literary friends don’t like certain authors.

For example, I tend to not like a lot of contemporary novels, which are kind of postmodern, fragmentary, and usually about a woman with a husband betraying her. Or who doesn’t like her children. I think we can all be forgiven for not liking these novels, which are very, very successful right now.

But I think we all can be forgiven. I might discuss books with my friends and discover. There are certain authors that they just can’t abide by and they are very talented. I’ve learned to forgive myself when I find the authors that I don’t like. I suggest you forgive yourself and leave them alone and read Edith Wharton!

Music used in this show is licensed through Neosounds.