Comments on On a Pacific Aisle: Mi chiamano Meme

(i am not reading anymore of this gd blog...)

2008-05-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

(i am not reading anymore of this gd blog...)

Thanks, JK. I now have a summer reading project. ...

2008-05-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks, JK. I now have a summer reading project. This very post is why stupid little blogmemes bear some interest (and why we tagged you).

Thanks, Vicki. Yeah, the fox hunts....God help us....

2008-05-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Vicki. Yeah, the fox hunts....God help us. They're tedious, and they're a cheap plot trick on those occasions when Trollope wants to kill off a character, or give someone a long recuperation in the home of the person he wants them to fall in love with. I didn't mention them because — well, I figured I'd let people discover them on their own.

Patrick alerted me to this interesting entry and d...

2008-05-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

Patrick alerted me to this interesting entry and discussion. I have to say that you have made me want to march straight back into Trollope, so thank you.

When I first read Trollope a few years ago, I was in awe of how well he wrote about the complexities of people's inner lives. I was especially amazed at how well he understood women and their thoughts, feelings and motivations. The dilemmas, both emotional and political, seemed so much of today that it was hard to believe I was reading a novel from a century and a half before. I read every word with interest until... I got to a fox hunt. I tried to read every word carefully, but had to admit I found it tedious. Patrick warned me that more fox hunts awaited me, and sure enough, they did.

I love Trollope but I LOVE Dickens because of that strange emotional power that Patrick mentioned. I remember where I was when I finished several Dickens novels because I had so fully entered his world that I had to shock myself back into the one I was living in. There's something to be said for that.

I enjoy your blog and dedicate any Trollope reading I might do this summer to you.

Vicki

OK, here comes the spoiler alert for the fates of ...

2008-05-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

OK, here comes the spoiler alert for the fates of Melmotte (thanks, I had forgotten the name) and Merdle: both are rich financiers who turn out to be swindlers, and both die by suicide.
Yeah, Carker and his teeth! Dombey and Son is also the favorite Dickens novel (again, by a long chalk) of a good friend of mine in DC. Mine are Little Dorritt and Our Mutual Friend.
I take your point about Mrs Proudie, but to me, she is still too much of an ogress to fit into the psychological world of Trollope. I had the feeling when reading about her that Trollope was gradually finding the way he wanted to present such a character, as opposed to the Dickens-type character he started out with (just as he does his own version of Becky Sharpe in Lizzie Eustace). Dickens would indeed have presented her as a cartoon ogress, but the thing is, there are many people we experience in life as grotesques and gargoyles, and there's a certain realism in that. You could say that this is a child's view of the world, and in many ways it is, but I think that is also the source of the strange emotional power Dickens taps into. You could also say that Trollope taps into the mature adult in us who is aware of moral complexity and nuance, so to some extent the two writers are appealing to very different qualities in their readers, so I certainly can't fault anyone for being drawn more one way than another. As you say, others' mileage may vary.

Thanks, Patrick. You're right that there's no inhe...

2008-05-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Patrick. You're right that there's no inherent reason why Dickens and Trollope need be in competition; I can only say that in my case, it is so. The more Trollope I read, the more alive I become to Dickens' shortcomings. Others' mileage may vary.

I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember the final fates of either Melmotte or Merdle — although I vividly recall the fate of Carker the Manager in Dombey and Son, which is by a long chalk my favorite Dickens novel.

But I do want to take issue with your remark about Mrs. Proudie. The wonderful thing about Mrs. Proudie, it seems to me, is that although she's such a horrid person and a thoroughgoing ogress, Trollope makes a successful effort to understand her, and helps the reader perceive her basic humanity — especially at the end. You still want to throttle her, of course, but you have some sense of why she behaves as she does. Trollope does something similar with the horrific religious-fanatic mother in John Caldigate.

I think Dickens would have been content in both cases just to give us the cartoon ogress and be done with it. My memory of the details is hazy, but I'm pretty sure it's Barnaby Rudge that includes a villain of sort of Iago-like gratuitousness. He just does bad things to people, and in the end there's no sense of a recognizable human psychology behind the evil.

Thanks for the compliment, but I prefer your title...

2008-05-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the compliment, but I prefer your title, and wish I had thought of it myself -- I will add that to my list of reasons I resent La Boheme.

There was a spike in Trollope consciousness around the late 70s or early 80s, when Masterpiece Theater presented The Pallisers. I guess it's subsided since then, but you've roused me to continue on my own Trollope voyages.

Here's how to preserve your love of Dickens, though: I just think of Dickens as a magical realist. Trollope is doing something different enough so that they can co-exist. I think you're so right about The Warden and Barchester Towers, both about their weakness and their importance. Mrs Proudie is supposed to be one of his great characters, but I found her to be the sort who is done so much better by Dickens -- Trollope's strengths are just where you stated, in the vivid and subtle depiction of daily dilemmas. It's interesting to compare the fate of the crooked financier in The Way We Live Now (I'm trying to avoid any spoilers) with that of Mr Merdle in Little Dorritt.

Anyway. . . thanks for a great post. It did exactly what good criticism should do, which is send me back to the artist discussed.