“This Dull Nonsense”

A fictional character dissents from a recent Substack book craze

Battle of giants

It’s not even the middle of March yet, and it seems that every Substacker is reading Middlemarch; or has already read Middlemarch; or is recommending that everyone read Middlemarch. Even some non-Substackers are reading Middlemarch.

To put my own cards on the table, I read Middlemarch several years ago, before the cool kids discovered it. It’s a great book that deserves its high reputation. But is it the single greatest English novel ever? One frequently sees this opinion nowadays. I think designating anything as the “single greatest” – whether it’s a painting, piece of music, gourmet dish, dog breed, or whatever – is a meaningless exercise. With a book, all that really matters is 1) whether it has stood the test of time and 2) whether it’s worth the considerable investment of time required to read it. Middlemarch, which runs to 795 pages in my Modern Library edition, easily passes both tests.

The craze for a particular book is also an occasion to remind us that no book is universally admired, and that personal factors play an important role in reader response. The current Middlemarch mania gives me an excuse to highlight one such response. It’s fictional, but I think it contains some insights worth considering.

The first book I reviewed on this site was Wyndham Lewis’ novel Self Condemned, which is about the difficult exile during World War II of a well-known intellectual named René Harding. Harding is a historian, and judging from this episode (which takes place during his Atlantic crossing), he reads literature as a historian. In other words, what we have here is a case of déformation professionnelle.

Among the few books he had packed was George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which he had been told by Rotter [one of his London friends] was a good book. He had read few of the English classics, and thought he would turn to them now, for a little. With the first volume under his arm, he selected a corner of the ship where he felt he would probably be undisturbed. Disagreeable sensations ensued almost from the first page.

Lewis then provides a one-page summary of the early chapters of the book. We follow the story up to the point where Harding’s disagreeable sensations finally become too much to bear.

At this point René would go no further. This sodden satire, this lifeless realism, provoked him into saying, “Why am I reading this dull nonsense? It is just like Rotter to have recommended a book of this sort.” He continued to ruminate. “The historic illusion, the scenes depicted, and the hand depicting them, could be preserved in some suitable archive; but should not be handed down as a living document. It is a part of history” – with this he dismissed it.

It's not enough for Harding to merely stop reading; he has to express his disgust in graphic physical terms. Here’s what he does next:

He went out on to the deck and swinging his arm back hurled the heavy book out to sea. After that he returned to their stateroom, lay down and instantly fell asleep.

Having exorcised the demons conjured by George Eliot, he is able to sleep soundly again. And somewhere in the depths of the Atlantic, a great big Victorian novel sinks to the seabed.

What can we take away from this? Probably not much, but a few thoughts come to mind. First of all, there is the curious note that Harding “had read few of the English classics.” Since Harding is an English intellectual with a wide reputation, who specializes in a field (history) where understanding is often enhanced by some familiarity with literary classics, this is a rather surprising statement. It suggests that Harding may be missing an important piece of his imaginative equipment.

Second, there is his failure to engage with the novel aesthetically, on its own terms. Harding is only capable of appreciating it as archival material (“it is a part of history”); he rejects the notion that it can be considered “a living document.”

There’s a larger question: Why did Wyndham Lewis decide to include this scene in the novel? Again, I can think of a couple of reasons. Perhaps he wanted to highlight a certain intellectual rigidity in Harding’s otherwise formidable mind. Another possibility is that Lewis is expressing his own hostility, through Harding, to Middlemarch, and perhaps to Victorian “lifeless realism” as a whole. This is pure speculation on my part, since I have no idea of Lewis’ thoughts on the subject. But this little episode does provide the kind of digressive amusement that successful novels thrive on.