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pickett22's review against another edition
3.0
I read this book because Leavis' name was coming up a lot in research about non/inherent heroism. This book was not about that. Imma be honest, I seriously skimmed the last quarter of the book, because I have other stuff on my research pile that I need to get through that is more focused on what I need. However, I did rather enjoy this book. Leavis oscillates between throwing shade on other critics and authors, seriously studying his chosen authors, and something akin to fanboying. It was nothing if not entertaining.
I will say, though, massive amounts of this book were given over to plot summary and quotes. There were whole pages of text that were just quotes out of the novels he was discussing. He seems to think the novels speak for themselves, and all he has to do is show us a few pages and we'll totally agree with what he's saying. "It's obvious, here look!"
Unfortunately, it's been a really long time since I read any of the books he was discussing (the most recent being about six years ago), and many of them I have never read at all. I'm not sure if I agree with his conclusions, because his descriptions of Middlemarch are not how I remember that book. I think he's missing a fundamental truth of what it was like to be a woman in that time and in that position. However, he often displays a serious... almost awe, really, of some of the female characters he discusses. I just wish I knew the characters so I could get a full picture of what he was looking at.
He's super into the gender divide too, but he really leans into the whole "different, but no less capable" thing, which I'm pretty okay with. He's often "missing something," but I think the dude tries.
Anyway, super interesting, not terribly dense, often entertaining, but not what I was looking for so I didn't pay as close attention as I could have.
I will say, though, massive amounts of this book were given over to plot summary and quotes. There were whole pages of text that were just quotes out of the novels he was discussing. He seems to think the novels speak for themselves, and all he has to do is show us a few pages and we'll totally agree with what he's saying. "It's obvious, here look!"
Unfortunately, it's been a really long time since I read any of the books he was discussing (the most recent being about six years ago), and many of them I have never read at all. I'm not sure if I agree with his conclusions, because his descriptions of Middlemarch are not how I remember that book. I think he's missing a fundamental truth of what it was like to be a woman in that time and in that position. However, he often displays a serious... almost awe, really, of some of the female characters he discusses. I just wish I knew the characters so I could get a full picture of what he was looking at.
He's super into the gender divide too, but he really leans into the whole "different, but no less capable" thing, which I'm pretty okay with. He's often "missing something," but I think the dude tries.
Anyway, super interesting, not terribly dense, often entertaining, but not what I was looking for so I didn't pay as close attention as I could have.
nwhyte's review against another edition
3.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1557214.html
Back in my Cambridge undergraduate days, we Natural Scientists had a joke about the guy studying English who did not want to look out of the window in the morning, because then he would have had nothing to do in the afternoon. But as I have got more interested in sf criticism, I have felt that maybe I did miss something by not sampling what was on offer in terms of literature studies in the department which was still resting on its laurels from the glory days of Leavis (or rather the Leavises). So I picked up this volume to get a sense of what, if anything, I have been missing.
Well, it's as I expected in one way: Leavis is very judgmental and allows little room for argument. The first half-sentence affirms that "[t]he great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad", and the rest of the book is an elaboration of the greatness of the latter three (Jane Austen having received a separate book of her own). Not having read much of the authors in question, let alone of those who Leavis dismisses as less than great, I can only really react by assessing whether or not Leavis gives me a fresh understanding of those books that I have in fact read, and also by taking his recommendations of books I haven't read as potential future reading.
Leavis does not really satisfy me on the first count. His concept of "greatness" is nowhere clearly enough defined for me to feel whether or not I agree with it, let alone whether or not it's a useful criterion for assessing the quality of a novel. We all know that there are good books and bad books, and most of us will agree that, say, Pride and Prejudice is good, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is bad, and American Gods is good but flawed. Not everyone will do so: there are plenty of people who find Austen's prose impenetrable, Bach deep and meaningful, or Gaiman either indigestible or worthy of uncritical admiration. It is sometimes nice to imagine that there are vaguely objective criteria out there which one can appeal to, and I had sort of hoped that Leavis would fairly clearly signpost what those criteria might be. But he doesn't.
However, if I take Leavis' analysis as an expression of taste, his taste is sufficiently close to mine (we diverge on Wuthering Heights, where I know that I am in the minority who find the book pretty unappealing, but are agreed on Middlemarch and Heart of Darkness) that I did find his recommendations of other novels worth reading, including several by writers outside his chosen few, very interesting.
Back in my Cambridge undergraduate days, we Natural Scientists had a joke about the guy studying English who did not want to look out of the window in the morning, because then he would have had nothing to do in the afternoon. But as I have got more interested in sf criticism, I have felt that maybe I did miss something by not sampling what was on offer in terms of literature studies in the department which was still resting on its laurels from the glory days of Leavis (or rather the Leavises). So I picked up this volume to get a sense of what, if anything, I have been missing.
Well, it's as I expected in one way: Leavis is very judgmental and allows little room for argument. The first half-sentence affirms that "[t]he great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad", and the rest of the book is an elaboration of the greatness of the latter three (Jane Austen having received a separate book of her own). Not having read much of the authors in question, let alone of those who Leavis dismisses as less than great, I can only really react by assessing whether or not Leavis gives me a fresh understanding of those books that I have in fact read, and also by taking his recommendations of books I haven't read as potential future reading.
Leavis does not really satisfy me on the first count. His concept of "greatness" is nowhere clearly enough defined for me to feel whether or not I agree with it, let alone whether or not it's a useful criterion for assessing the quality of a novel. We all know that there are good books and bad books, and most of us will agree that, say, Pride and Prejudice is good, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is bad, and American Gods is good but flawed. Not everyone will do so: there are plenty of people who find Austen's prose impenetrable, Bach deep and meaningful, or Gaiman either indigestible or worthy of uncritical admiration. It is sometimes nice to imagine that there are vaguely objective criteria out there which one can appeal to, and I had sort of hoped that Leavis would fairly clearly signpost what those criteria might be. But he doesn't.
However, if I take Leavis' analysis as an expression of taste, his taste is sufficiently close to mine (we diverge on Wuthering Heights, where I know that I am in the minority who find the book pretty unappealing, but are agreed on Middlemarch and Heart of Darkness) that I did find his recommendations of other novels worth reading, including several by writers outside his chosen few, very interesting.
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