Fielding--Amelia (1752)

I was looking forward to this one, which I had not read before. I have read Tom Jones and Joe Andrews, many years ago now (as well as his absurd play Tom Thumb), and I anticipated that Amelia must be Fielding's Idiot, the third book, in order of fame, of a great writer, inferior to the other two only by the measurement of grandeur or scope with regard to theme, while otherwise, all of the author's great qualities would be on display in barely diminished form. Given this level of expectation, it is probably inevitable that my predominant response to the book was disappointment. I generally enjoyed it well enough, and I was able to get into a good daily rhythm and routine in my reading, but still, the drop-off in excellence in Amelia from the other Fielding novels looms over every aspect of the experience of reading it.

I knew nothing about this book beforehand, apart from the blurb in the IWE, which says it is 'remarkably readable, fitting the 20th-century taste better than nearly any other novel of its century'. No doubt the taste of the general American reading public is much altered from what it was in the mid 1960s, but I don't think this was an accurate assessment even then, with regard to readability. Due to the skill for plotting which Fielding displayed in full in Tom Jones, as well as the general tendency in older novelists to take more time in setting up their stories before putting them in full motion than modern readers would tolerate, I kept thinking that this is what was taking place, first in the long section in the prison, then during the long section in the lodgings in London, and even with about 100 pages to go when Booth's debt and poverty attains its last extremity, I thought there were enough balls arranged in the air, so to speak, to produce a wild and spectacular finish. But it never quite took off. Also the book is devoid of great, or even especially interesting, characters. Fielding himself is still interesting as the narrator, and shows a few flashes of the humor that is one of the glories of his other books when he is writing in an expository manner, but none of the characters in Amelia are funny at all. Indeed, the characters are all either petty, weak-willed, mean-spirited if not vicious, coarse or insipid, without any compensatory endearing qualities. Because of this, similar to Richardson and other 18th century novelists, and distinctly unlike Fielding's more celebrated works, the book seems airless, and lacking in atmosphere. The rooms and houses and even bodies the characters occupy are not vivid, a scene over a bottle of wine or an encounter on a street will have no sense of expanse beyond the space in which the characters are interacting, as if the room or street they are in is either a blank space or made of lifeless cardboard.

One thing that especially bothered me in this book was the way in Dr Harrison--who is supposed, I guess, to be the main moral hero of the story--endlessly rallied and ridiculed Mrs Atkinson, whose father had taught her what was by our standards a considerable amount of Latin and Greek, about her learning every time he saw her, making sure, once he had found the limits of her knowledge (which was beyond, say, the memorization of most of the Aeneid) to barrage her with quotations he could be certain she would not be familiar with. This was all because she was a woman, and for a woman to pretend to classical knowledge was offensive to him, and, evidently, to Fielding. I am certainly not much of a strident crusader against all of the traditional offenses perpetrated against excluded groups and animals and who knows what else by powerful European descended males, but I did find this annoying. What's the harm in knowing a little Latin, or anything else? I guess it was the pretension to equal status in this area with the doctor, which could not be tolerated.

This book was rarely published in mass market editions in the 20th century. The picture above indicates that there was a Penguin edition in the late 90s/early 2000s, but there don't seem to be many copies of it in circulation. My own edition is a 1968 Everyman printing, in two volumes, unnecessarily, I think (the two volumes, which run around 300 pages each).

While I was criticizing the book quite a book, I still had a good deal of fun reading it and thinking about it, which fun I am having with all these old IWE books. Also I like to be thorough, or at least feel thorough, and now I can tell myself that I have gone deeper in my familiarity into Fielding, and into the 18th century English novel generally, and I get a certain amount of satisfaction out of that too.

The Challenge

1. Richard Atkinson--Guns at Last Light: War in Western Europe 1944-1945........................1,475
2. Merlin (TV show-2008)............................................................................................................321
3. Walter Moseley--Rose Gold......................................................................................................243
4. Before I Go to Sleep (movie).....................................................................................................223
5. Phantom of the Opera (1925-movie).........................................................................................212
6. Away From Her (movie)............................................................................................................195
7. Love and Other Disasters (movie).............................................................................................147
8. Kit Rocha--Beyond Jealousy......................................................................................................133
9. Cromwell (1970 movie)..............................................................................................................126
10. Mission Impossible (TV show)...................................................................................................95
11. Ain't Them Bodies Saints (movie)...............................................................................................66
12. The Plainsman (movie)...............................................................................................................54
13. Amelia C. Gormley--Strain.........................................................................................................53
14. Eileen Welsome--Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War...50
15. David O. Stewart--American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America..........46
16. Anna Belfrage--Revenge and Retribution...................................................................................43

This challenge is unusual in that it is so heavy on movies and television. Most of the time in this format two or three movies would come up at most. If it becomes a trend though I will have to tweak the system yet again. 43 reviews to qualify for the tournament is a pretty low bar though, so I don't suspect a lot of high quality books were among those that missed the cut this time.

Round of 16

#1 Atkinson over #16 Belfrage (93-67)

Atkinson prevails here by virtue of being by all evidence a serious book, while the Belfrage is the 6th volume of a popular series about time traveling that I do not feel up to trying at this time. While I might also be inclined not to want to read another 877 page history of World War II in Europe, the Atkinson book is the third volume in a trilogy of which the first was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. So it has some credibility.

#15 Stewart over # 2 Merlin (98-86)

In this tournament even more than usual, books have a strong priority over movies and television shows.

#3 Moseley over #14 Welsome (68-61)

I have actually read the Welsome book. It was not terrible, for a book about plutonium anyway, though I found the parts about the geniuses and their university and government careers and researches more interesting than the parts where decent but considerably less brilliant people were abused in the name of science. That at least is what I remember about it. I don't feel the need to read it again.

#13 Gormley over #4 Before I Go to Sleep (59-50)

Going to stick with the formula favoring books over movies except in exceptional cases where I really want the book out of the tournament, and don't want the movie out.

#12 Plainsman over #5 Phantom of the Opera (83-79)

At least here you have two old classics going at it. The 1925 Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera is already on my main movies-to-see list, which is the only reason why I am going to eliminate it here.

#6 Away From Her over #11 Ain't Them Bodies Saints (73-70)

These movies feel to me like similar kind of generic modern middlebrow Hollywood fare. One is from 2006 and the other from 2013, so I went with the older one.

#7 Love and Other Disasters over #10 Mission Impossible (69-63)

Movie over a television series, when I am presented with no other compelling reason.

#8 Rocha over #9 Cromwell (51-49)

The Rocha looks like some kind of romance novel for the biker crowd. If Cromwell were the only movie in the tournament I might have advanced it. But given the dearth of book vs book matchups in the first round I wanted to get the tournament into that mode going forward.

Round of 8

#15 Stewart over #1 Atkinson (96-92)

Stewart wins mainly by virtue of being 400 pages shorter. That is all I am going on during the tournament phase, which I have to do quickly largely influenced by my perception of the kind of book something is.

#13 Gormley over #3 Moseley (75-74)

Since the tournament has no suspense if there are never to be allowed any upsets, I have created a rule that if a single title shows up more than once during the selection of the field it is entitled to an upset in a matchup it would have lost however many times over one it came up. Unfortunately it happens here. I was kind of hoping that Moseley would win in this field. But it was not meant to be.

My impression of Moseley is that he is a genre writer, though one who gets a little more respect from real literary writers and critics than most such writers. I have read some what I take to be standard genre books as a result of this challenge, and also because some rabble rousers have been exhorting guys like me to read more of this type of literature, but after a few forays into that corner of the writing world, I want my author to have some cred with legitimate literati before I read another book of that class. Moseley is also black, though I have the impression that this is not exclusively why he is somewhat more promoted to the more literary-oriented reader than other crime writers. If you remember in the last tournament, I decided that a book in translation would get some extra consideration because my record of reading modern translated books is so abysmal. I have been wondering is I should give extra points in this to authors of color, women, people who are extremely non-traditionally heterosexual, and so on, though I have decided to hold off on that for now. This was brought on in part because there was something in the last month that was circulating on the internet about people who had pledged not to read any books by white male authors for a year, the rationale being in most instances, I am sure in all sincerity, that the readers were concerned about all of the exciting books by other types of people that they were at risk of missing, a risk that apparently does not apply if you give up reading white guys for a year. I joke about this more than I should, I guess, and there are certainly many fine books out there that one could argue should be better known (maybe even there are a few by white guys themselves, logically impossible as that sounds upon first consideration). In truth though I think that your legitimate big time literary readers are eager enough for any really outstanding book, or advance in the field, that anything seriously will at least find an audience among these readers, if not the mass public. Some people act at least as if they really believe that there are all of these neglected literary masterpieces out there, the equal of anything in the traditional canon, that people have ignored because racism, sexism, and the like, and I don't think it is likely that that would be the case. That would be the cultural equivalent of another renaissance, though I suppose some people think that we are living through another time like that. If we are, I think the challenge to literature is coming more from the dominance of technology and statistical data in everyday life rather than from non-traditional and unsuspected literary productions.

#12 Plainsman over #6 Away From Her (101-76)

First movie to make the Final Four. An easy victory for The Plainsman

#7 Love And Other Disasters over #8 Rocha. (57-55)

Second movie to make the Final Four. It was entitled to an upset also, and gets the opportunity here, though the Rocha book would have been an almost equally shaky contender. An awful elite 8 game.

Final Four

#15 Stewart over #7 Love and Other Disasters (81-68)

Love was not entitled to a second upset. Cruise control for Stewart.

#13 Gormley over #12 Plainsman (64-58)

Lousy shooting by the Plainsman.

Championship

#15 Stewart over #13 Gormley (79-64)

Gormley does not get a second upset either, and Stewart, with Moseley knocked out, rolls to an easy championship. I guess I will be reading about Aaron Burr at night for the next month or so.

David O. Stewart, the author of this book, is a longtime Washington D.C. lawyer, and not an academic. I don't know how much credibility non-academically credentialed historians have nowadays. But the book won, and I am going to read it.

New Feature! Monthly Reading Update

Given the haphazard nature of the posting on this site, I thought that maybe putting up a short status on the 6th of every month of where I was at, besides being a good record for myself, would make the blog seem a little more regular or 'alive' especially during long absences.

A List Reading (ca. 1994 GRE Literature Guide): Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Progress (pages read) 16 of 940.

B List (1966 Illustrated World Encyclopedia List: Henry Fielding, Amelia. 528/611.

C List (Bourgeois Surrender Challenge books): Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 301/493

It is unusual that I have three novels, and all old ones at that, going concurrently. The A List in recent years has trended heavily towards criticism and books about books with the occasional poem rather than prose fiction, and the C List is not set up to be biased towards novels. The Dostoevsky being such a monument of world literature it might seem that it ludicrous to have other books going at the same time so that one can devote all of one's intellectual energy towards trying to get something out of him; however I have finally managed an arrangement when I read the 'A' list books at work (during breaks and other legally sanctioned down times only, of course), and the 'B' books during the alert times of day at home. A little of the 'C' book is the last thing I will do at night before going to bed, which is why there is an emphasis on their being shorter, easier, and more modern than those books in the other two lists. Also the Brothers Karamazov will be coming up again on the B List, which unfolds in alphabetical order, within the next 3-5 years, so I am taking this first reading (though I did get through the first 300 pages at least back in school), which I just started on Friday, in a less intense manner than some might think proper.

A little anecdote regarding my Tree Grows in Brooklyn reading. We had an old wartime copy of this book at home and I started reading that, but one night when I was evidently too exhausted even to get through a chapter of that I must have put the book down in an unusual place or fallen asleep holding it and had it drop out of my hands because for a week afterwards I couldn't find it again, and finally had to take a more recent copy, which had much larger print, page breaks between chapters and so on than the old war-issue copy, so I am on that now. After another week went by I finally found the other copy placed in one of our book cabinets in which it had not been before, lying on its side where it would not have been visible with the door closed. Obviously someone had found it and put it there without telling me.

For the record, the page progression in the wartime copy would be/is 256/420.

The entirety of this post was written with a screaming (though already well-fed and changed) baby in the background. I guess I will have to go attend to her now.