Is This The Worst 19th C. British Novel?

by Stephen J. Gertz

It’s rarely a good idea to begin a novel with a Preface. It’s never a good idea to write a Preface as apology for what is to come. And what writer in their right mind would trust that their readers be indulgent and not too.critical of what they are about to read? Only a novelist who subconsciously knows that he is issuing a warning: Caution! Train-Wreck Ahead.

Santa left ashes in the author's Xmas 1893 stocking.

No such luck for The Author, one T. Duthie-Lisle. The reviews for this three-decker upon its publication were devastating; this may be the worst 19th century British novel ever published.


"The hardiest spirit may well quail before the stupendous task of giving any accurate idea of what is, apparently, the first-fruits of Mr. Duthie-Lisle's imagination" (The Saturday Review Dec. 30, 1893); "...obtrudes itself on almost every page as deficient in sense as of grammar" (The Academy Oct., 21, 1893); "...this incredibly foolish book" (The Speaker Sept. 16, 1893); and this dart to its heart: "One of the missions of the literary critic is to warn off intending readers from books that are utterly worthless, and 'The Heirloom' comes within this category" (The Athenaeum Sept. 9, 1893). 


Seventy-eight years later Robert Lee Wolff, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, declared it "...unbelievably awful as to style - antiquated, ungrammatical, melodramatic, like a parody of itself." 

Of the author, little is known; it is hoped T. Duthie-Lisle survived the reviews to live in hiding. It appears that this was TD-L's first and last foray into “the wildest schemes which his imagination [could] conceive, the marvelous combinations which a turn of the magic kaleidoscope of eventualities, and what we misname fortune may produce, are again and again out acted in real life.”


Why was this novel issued? It was not the sort of book that its publisher, Gay and Bird, usually published.

Wolff suggests that it was a “‘prestige’ publication.” If so, Gay and Bird’s standards for prestige were decidedly low; the book deals prestige a deadly blow. Could the brain trust at Gay and Bird have been so devoid of taste and discernment? Their publication of this novel strongly suggests that they possessed the editorial instincts of a cane toad, Australia’s answer to promiscuous publishing: cane toads will attempt to copulate with dead animals including dead female cane toads, dead salamanders, dead rodents, dead reptiles. Hence the dead on arrival publication of this dreadful doozy. 

Yet beyond its status as arguably the worst nineteenth century British novel, The Heirloom is significant as being among the last of the three-deckers, a format that ceased to exist by the end of 1894, with only an occasional three-decker published in the twentieth century, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings the most notable example. This copy of The Heirloom was deaccessioned from a circulation library and that tells us a story.

Introduced in the early nineteenth century, three volume novels were expensive - the average retail price was 31 shillings.6 pence  - far too expensive for even middle class readers. But though three-deckers did indeed provide a measure of prestige to the publisher, author, and the book, because of their expense the major source of reading distribution was through a circulation library. Yes, you could buy inexpensive reprints in single volumes but if you wanted to read the latest "prestige" novels you had to borrow from a library. With low print runs (generally 1000 copies or fewer) and high price a publisher could earn a tidy profit. Ultimately, however, publishers of three-deckers had to bow to commercial pressures and began to issue single volume novels. Single volume novels were less expensive to produce, could be sold for less than a three-decker, and though their price was low, greater profits could be earned via dramatically increased sales volume.

At this point, you may be curious about the plot of The Heirloom. It is the sorry plight of the reader to plow through it. Three-decker novels typically possessed complicated plots, often dealing with marriage and property. The Heirloom cubes the complications,  throws in a lot of mush, and the result is a plot so convoluted that one is tempted to go full-Alexander the Great and take a sword to this Gordian knot. It would, alas, take a machete to hack through it but with no guarantee of success. 

It begins with the near-death ravings of Bertram Gonault, the presumptive hero of the story, as he lies in bed at Vernwood Manor. He made a fabulous fortune, and met a beautiful girl, who mysteriously vanished just prior to their wedding. As usual when a man loses the woman of his dreams, Bertram hit the road of dissipation that ended in deathbed delirium, an old man at 50 on page one, "at what a price!" A half hour after his feverish diatribe he was murdered. By the end of volume one, after an at best wearisome telling of the story of Bertram’s life, “the reader feels relieved when at the end of [that volume] he resumes his place in Bertram’s bedchamber” (The Speaker). You may want to get in bed with Bertie and take a quick nap before the murderer shows up.
 
The remaining two volumes are devoted to discovering the mystery murderer, finding a beneficiary for Vernwood Manor, the title's heirloom, and locating a mysterious ring, another heirloom to pad out the narrative. This is tantamount to asking readers to take a hundred mile hike with a hundred pound rucksack. Really, an army Ranger with a reading habit would be challenged to get though this book without giving up. 

Oh, lordy, this book's a doozy. And quite scarce.
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DUTHIE-LISLE, T. THE HEIRLOOM; or The Descent of Vernwood Manor. London: Gay and Bird, 1893. First (only) Edition. Three octavo volumes (7 3/3 x 4 3/4 in.). vii, (1, blank), 247, (1, blank), 16 (catalog); vii, (1, blank), 222, (2, blank), 16 (catalog); vii, (1, blank), 246, (2, blank), 16 (catalog) pp. Publisher's original gray cloth, gilt lettered title, sprig of leaves in black.  Cloth soiled, lt-mod. wear, a few sm tears to spine tails, spine exhibits library label ghosts, "Lorde Circulating Library" stamped in purple to preliminary blanks, offsets to preliminary blanks from bookplate of Britten Memorial Library, otherwise a Good copy of a genuinely scarce work. Wolff 1966. 

 

The Autobiography Of God

by Stephen J. Gertz

Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1937.

"The vast sweep of history from the days of Abraham down to Hitler and the coronation of George VI of England in 1937 is portrayed as seen by Yahweh himself, the chief actor in the episodes that have shaped the modern world...a novel of great audacity" (Dust jacket blurb).

Ai, ai, ai, I, Yahweh! Great audacity, indeed.

Now, you can call me Yah or you can call me El; you can call me Elah or you can call me Eloah; you can call me HaShem or you can call me Adoshem; you can call me Jah or you can call me Jehovah but you doesn't have to call me Yahweh! In fact, I find it annoying. Adonai will do just fine. Like James Baldwin, nobody knows my name. In my case let's keep it that way.

Addressing me by my first name is simply rude. Maybe it's an American thing, breaking down class distinctions by leveling the playing field with informality. But if you were introduced to George Washington would you say, "Hey, George, nice t'meet'cha. Waz happ'nin?'" followed by a fist-bump? Of course not; you'd be awestruck. But you don't hesitate to dis me, treating me like we're old pals. Jumpin' Jehosephat! Did anybody - besides his wife, in private - dare to call Don Corleone "Vito?"  So, what am I, chopped liver?

It's Mr. Yahweh to you. Better yet, I Am That I Am (אהיה אשר אהיה), but if you insist upon being a boor call me Big Daddy. Or, since we're in the 21st century, Big Data: the invisible know-it-all in the cloud with a host of servers to do my bidding.

First of all, I did not "write" this book nor did I will it into existence. It's a case of identity theft. The first paragraph is a dead giveaway.

"I know not whose prayer gave rise to my being. Who, indeed, can remember the circumstances of his begetting? I recall only the mighty solitude of the world wherein first I found myself There was a great plain which lay round about the city of Ur in ancient Chaldea. Thither do my earliest memories return."

What? Thither doth my displeasure begin, and, please, begone the stilted language. I needed mankind to pray me into existence? Gimme a break. I was here before, I'm here now, I'll be here later, long after humanity bites the dust and returns to it. And, what, I have no memories before humanity came on the scene? Skip the ontology; I AM, that's all you need to know, and I remember more than Sammy "the Bull" Gravano testifying against John "the Dapper Don" Gotti.

Check this out, from chapter seven: "From that time forth, forasmuch as I had entered somewhat into the temporal province, Constantine entered more freely into the spiritual. And I took it it not amiss until that day when he said unto me, 'Yahweh, it is made increasingly plain that we must have thee defined.'

"'Defined, sayest thou?' I queried." The nerveth of this guy! I refuse to be pigeonholed. Everybody says I'm unknowable, beyond comprehension - and I am - but that hasn't stopped anyone from determining what they think I want. I'm a mystery without a solution, a Raymond Chandler novel with plot that makes no sense. My challenge to mankind is not to feel secure but to be able to live with insecurity without going insane.

What do I want? I'm not talking; gotta keep you flesh and blood folks on your toes.

I'm pleased to report that this book, a  turkey in the form of an autobiography, has not received a single review on Library Thing, Good Reads, or Amazon. It is, apparently, considered to be one of the ten plagues of Egypt and something to avoid, a toss-up between boils and pestilence. It is forgotten and for good reason. "Friends will find much to ponder on in this book, which is told in the first person by no less than Jehovah, Yahweh, God of the Hebrews. The idea is more startling than the book." So sayeth T. Morris Longstreet in 1939, reviewing the book (two years after its publication, yet!) for the Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association. It needs all the friends it can get, Quaker or otherwise.

Need I add that I have nothing to do with Yahweh.com, the online House of Me? Talk about chutzpah! My Domain is mine and mine alone but try telling that to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). I complained. I said, "I'm Yahweh." Guy says to me, "Right, and I'm Dagon, don't bust my chops." Philistines.

So, enough of this phoney-baloney autobiography of Me. Oy, Yahweh! It's a hoax.

So say I, Clifford Irving.

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GREY, Robert Munson. I, Yahweh. Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1937. First edition. Octavo. [8], 352 pp. Cloth.. Dust jacket.

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The Butterfly Art of Vladimir Nabokov: A Love Story

by Stephen J. Gertz

Vladimir Nabokov

The last substantial group of books and manuscripts to come directly from Vladimir Nabokov's family,  scheduled to sell at auction on Monday, June 13, 2011 by Christie's, has been sold en bloc prior to the auction by private treaty to an important collector.  The price paid was over $730,000.

Most of the volumes were inscribed by Nabokov to his wife, Vera, and son, Dimitri. Books inscribed by Nabokov are much rarer than the quantity in this collection might suggest. Nabokov never signed books for strangers, and inscriptions to friends and relatives are few.

In addition to the books, Nabokov's writing desk, typewriters, and butterfly net were part of the collection.

Butterfly net?

Vladimir Nabokov was totally consumed by two passions: literature and lepidoptery. He adored butterflies, and routinely adorned copies of his books with drawings of them, particularly those given to Vera. She, like Vladimir, treasured nature, art, and life's other intangibles, more highly than material possessions and Vladimir knew that for Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries, Vera  appreciated his thoughtful and delicate butterfly drawings much more than some trinket. She  delighted in these drawings in a way she never did for the landscapes he used to paint for her in earlier days.

Vera, whom the artist Saul Steinberg described as Nabokov's "gyroscope," was indispensable to Vladimir; for over fifty years she was his muse, reader, typist, chauffeur, chess partner, and much else. The books Vladimir gave to her she knew intimately; she had read and reread them in various forms and knew whole passages by heart. 

Nabokov valued the precision of language, the way a specific word can capture the exact shade of meaning or the color of an emotion. But his love for Vera  stretched the limit of language's ability to capture all things. Love struck him wordless and his butterfly drawings provided a way to manifest  his deep love for her, one that could not be expressed as neatly with words; language got in the way.

Nabokov disliked ineffective, syrupy, sentiment. Consider his butterfly drawings to Vera as mash-notes without the slop.

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All images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.

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Of related interest:

Ron Rosenbaum at Slate is Wrong About Nabokov's Pale Fire.

Human Butterflies Aflutter at Christie's.

Early American Butterflies Alight in South Carolina.

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Man Born With Dog's Head!

by Stephen J. Gertz

In this issue of the Weekly World News, featuring the finest in Martian journalism, we report the incredible story of Edmond Du Chaillu of France, born fully human from the neck down but a cocker spaniel from the neck up.

Upon their only child's birth, the Du Chaillu's were, to say the least, shocked:

"When she was told, as tactfully as could be, that she had just given birth to a child with a dog's head, Mme Du Chaillu fainted. After twenty years of sterility, it was a severe blow. M. Du Chaillu was, if possible, even more distraught. For fifteen minutes he seriously felt like killing his spouse, but one glance at her innocent face made him blush for his hideous suspicions. He contented himself with sighing: 'My poor Henriette! We might have been spared this.'

"Mme Du Chaillu burst out sobbing.

"'It's ghastly! How could it have happened? I don't ever want to see it. Do you feel as miserable as I do, Léon?'

"M. Du Chaillu pressed Mme Du Chaillu's hand, whereat she redoubled her tears. Blushing, he inquired in a choking voice: 'Did you think of a dog while you were pregnant?'

"'Never!' cried Mme Du Chaillu. 'Not once!'

"'And . . . before?' murmured M. Du Chaillu, in a still more broken voice.

"'Before?' asked Mme Du Chaillu in surprise.

"The child snuffled in its cradle. The head of a puppy, frail and endearing, surmounted the swaddled body of this newborn human being. Its pink muzzle, its unopened eyes and its soft f'ur wrung from M. Du Chaillu his first tears.

"What will people say?' wondered Mme Du Chaillu."

They will say this is one of the best novels - a grand satire in the tradition of Voltaire - that you may never have heard of, much less read.

Une tête de chien by Jean Dutourd was originally published by Gallimard in 1950. It was issued in an English translation by Robin Chancellor by J. Lehmann, London 1951, and by Simon and Schuster in New York in 1953. As rare books go, the London 1st is most obtainable, followed by the Lion paperback. For some reason yet determined, the 1st American edition is the rarest of the three.
 

London: J. Lehmann, 1951. First edition in English.
Image courtesy of MW Books Ltd.

Related in a dry, understated, deadpan reporter's voice, A Dog's Head is a sardonic critique of humanity, existence, and the plight of the "other." It is at once tragic, devastating, and delightfully witty - at times laugh-out-loud hilarious - written with stylish charm in a sure hand.

Life isn't easy for Edmund. Is his bark worse than his bite? Can he help himself when he presents the morning newspaper to his parents in his mouth? How does he cope with the cruel taunts of schoolmates? Hold a job? Meet women and develop relationships? Have sex?
 

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953. First American edition.
Image courtesy of Between the Covers.

Edmund wants to experience all that human existence can offer. He drinks, uses drugs, visits brothels,  enjoys the whole gamut of human pleasures, illicit or otherwise. He is sometimes a very naughty dog.
 

His parents want him to become a lawyer but he's advised that, with the head of a spaniel, he will likely make a poor impression in court. [Jackel-heads evidently, get along just fine]. He gets a job as a banker. He falls in love with a cruel wanton. She dumps him. He becomes rich, keeps dogs as pets, and establishes a life as human as possible for a man with a head worthy of the Westchester Kennel Club. Edmund finally meets the woman of his dreams, who accepts him fully for what he is. At that point, the story takes a turn leading to a denouement as tragically inevitable as it is deliriously funny.

Dutourd establishes a straight, matter-of-fact tone and then never lets up, rigorously sticking to the fantasy and never tipping his hand. The book is an expertly cut diamond.

While the first editions in French and English are certainly collectible, it is the first English edition in paperback that remains the most desirable, in my opinion; the cover art takes the prize. (The artist, alas, remains unidentified). The publisher, Lion Books, was founded by Martin Goodman in 1949 (he later established Marvel Comics). Copies in fine condition sell for about the same amount as the American first edition in hardcover.

New York: Lion Books 196, 1954. First English edition in paperback.

"Dutourd is a fine craftsman, whose work has the classic virtues of brevity, lucidity, and concentration. He has written a sardonic divertissement that concerns itself with fundamental problems of man's existence-a tale that is sad-eyed, witty, and often very funny" (Charles J. Rolo, New York Times Book Review).

"A tiny masterpiece in the French classical tradition. . . . Stylish, elegant and witty, and told with an apparent lightheartedness that points to rather than obscures the hero's essential tragedy" (P. L. Travers, New York Herald Tribune).

"Wit, a good deal of shrewd classical allusion, and a Voltarian satire are the book's assets" (Edmund Fuller, Chicago Tribune).

"The work of an expert craftsman and of a careful writer of prose, ending with the rarest gift in modern letters: the comic spirit" (Henri Peyre, The Saturday Review).

"Dutourd might well have dropped his story at this point, had it been his intention simply to excoriate the human race for its treatment of those who are physically afflicted. Instead, he presses on in his terse, deadpan prose to teach a lesson to the afflicted of the world as well" (Time).

"A Dog's Head is one of the most curious, most beautifully conceived and written fantasies you've ever come across" (J. H. Jackson, San Francisco Chronicle).

"A Dog's Head is an excellent joke in the worst possible taste, and its author, M. Jean Dutourd, is a satirist of the first rank" (The New Yorker).

University of Chicago Press issued a reprint in 1998; collect the first editions (particularly the Lion paperback) and use this one as a reading copy.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Now go, fetch the book! Atta boy! You're a good d-- er, human!
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On Authors and Author Idolatry in the 21st Century

Throw pillow by, and available through Cafe Press.

From the Booktryst Mailbox:

Within your recent post, The Girl Who (NSFW) Loves Ray Bradbury, you opined that "Once upon a time the novel stood at the pinnacle of culture and novelists were idolized. That time has, alas, passed…."

As an aspiring novelist, I’ve chosen to be a bit offended by your statement.  Taking offense these days seeming to be a pop-culture way of life, it’s probably one of the few ways, at my age, I can ever claim the dubious distinction of being cool enough to be part of that, so I will also choose to take some pride in my choice.

How can you suggest that the time has passed in which novelists are idolized?  How can I go on toiling at my tomes if you are going to dash my hopes that one day, perhaps also at age 90, I, too, can be so honored and lusted after by a gorgeous 23-year-old woman such as Rachel Bloom?  What, then, shall be my motivation to write at all?  Do you, sir, feel no responsibility as a potential tilter of public opinion to support us would-be, nay, all novelists?  How can you disseminate such ugly propaganda?  Have you no shame?

This, then, is my declaration to fight the evil tyranny of your dream-killing ways.  I shall stand in defense of all novelists, would-be or otherwise, and the rightful cultural standing of the novels they create by mounting a defense to counter your questionable practices, no matter how underhanded the tactics to which I must resort.

The very fact that your post relates a story of a hip, intelligent, young woman who clearly idolizes Ray Bradbury underscores the ludicrous nature of your comment, how rife it is in venom and vitriol.  Your egregious faux pas is self-evident.

What manner of journalistic skullduggery and witchcraft do you proffer to back up your ill-conceived, misguided premise?  Hush!  Whatever it is, it simply cannot stand in the face of an endless string of evidence to the contrary.  How can you deny the “pinnacle of culture” standing of the Harry Potter series?  What say you of the incomprehensible, profound popularity of the Twilight novels?  And what of the status to which their authors have rocketed?  Idols?  You speak of passed days of idols?  Ha!  J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer have been elevated to modern-day gods!  I won’t venture my opinion as to which novelists this applies, but some have been placed on their pedestals having vastly fewer skills and talents than those of the estimable Mr. Bradbury.

I will stop here if for no other reason than to continue your trouncing is too easily redundant, and I have no need to stoop to your level of cruelty.  But I’m sure, having been cast upon by the light of incontrovertible reason and justice, repentance is now your master, so all is forgiven.

•••

Hey, tell it to the Marines, buddy. Wait, you're an ex-Marine, as I've subsequently learned; tell it to yourself. 

Irony is not dead. Yet faith in one's sense of it is sorely tested these days. Fortunately, our correspondent provides an out for doubt:

Thanks for conducting and posting the interview, Mr. Gertz, and great applause to Ms. Bloom for her outrageous video.  I loved it!

Last but not least, a very Happy Birthday to Ray Bradbury!  I’m sure not unique in claiming him as a lifelong friend and invaluable mentor, though we only met once in the flesh when he spoke at a function in Venice Beach, CA about 6 years ago.  That was my honor and privilege!

Thanks for the fun!

Sincerely,
Kevin Jones
 

And thank you for the laughs. In re: today's headline - Something is happening and you do know what it is, don't you, Mr. Jones.*

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* With apologies to Bob Dylan.

And with thanks to Kevin Jones for permission to print his letter.

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The Apocryphal Cookbooks of Famous Novelists

LAWRENCE, Cynthia [pseud. of Lillian Hellman?]. Barbie's Easy-As-Pie Cookbook.
New York: Random House, 1964.
Though she preferred anonymity, we're pleased that the Unfinished Woman
had time to finish this book, attributed to her based upon its Stalinist sympathies.

Recently, Kelvin Johnson, an adult-bookstore clerk in Baltimore, MD, bought the contents of a self-storage unit at auction. Within was box of books that upon close examination inspired Johnson to contact lawyers, accountants, and rare book dealers.

“I’m not much of a vanilla-book person,” Johnson said, “but I do know that none of these authors were known for their work in the kitchen. They’re all cookbooks.”

The news has rocked the literary establishment.

“We all feel like we’ve been kneaded, and flattened with a rolling pin,” Marilyn Bagley, Professor of English Literature at West Covina Community College in Southern California and author of Heavy Metal and Hip-Hop Motifs in Victorian Novels 1840-1860: The Foreshadow of Ozzie Osborne, Original 50 Cent, and the Quest For Bling Within the Works of William Thackeray and George Eliot, reported. “All our bubbles have been squooshed.”

Basil Pine-Coffin, a literary forensics specialist and rare book dealer that Johnson has hired to appraise the books, said, “stylistically, they’re spot on; there’s no question in my mind that they are genuine. They appear to be vanity editions, and one-offs – unique. They have certainly never been heard of or seen before. This is an amazing discovery that will provide scholars with plenty to chew on for many years to come. The books are priceless - but we’re working on it.”

A few highlights from the trove:

Mark Twain married his interest in gastronomy with his affection for the vernacular and erotic, and thus brought A Tramp, A Broad, and Huckleberry Pie out of the oven and onto the dessert tray.

Who knew that Charles Dickens was a closet chocolatier? Barnaby Fudge melts in your mouth.

Was Edgar Allen Poe a secret Jew? No one has ever imagined it. But The Tell-Tale Calves Liver, a tract on trayfe (non-kosher), strongly suggests that the idea ain’t just chopped liver.

William Styron suffered from depression for much of his adult life yet he, apparently, found joy in the simple pleasures and so bequeathed Sophie’s Choice Brisket to us.

Portrait of a Lady Finger is surely Henry James’ lightest confection.

We now know what drove F. Scott Fitzgerald to drink. The Beautiful and the Damned Angel Cake is a bittersweet tragedy.

True, she didn’t write fiction. Yet environmentalists and litterateurs will be seared when they learn that when not spraying the truth on pesticides Rachel Carson tacitly wrote The Silent Spring Chicken. No comment on this understated gustatory salute to Cornish game hens and the many ways to prepare them, sotto voce, and hormone-free.

It is likely that no one will ever tackle James Joyce’s contribution to the dinner table. No kitchen consultants have been able to make head or tail out of Finnegan’s Cake, much less bake it. But that shouldn’t stop it from winning the Pillsbury Bake-Off; it’s a modern classic that will be much admired though rarely eaten.

William Faulkner, it turns out, spent as much time with a baking sheet as a sheet of paper. One afternoon, he asked his Hollywood employer, studio-chief Jack Warner, if he could finish writing at home. Warner looked at his watch and said, sure, go ahead. A week later, Warner was pissed-off. “Where the fuck is Faulkner?” Turns out, Faulkner had something in the oven – at home in Oxford, Mississippi, where he apparently fled to compose the following soufflés: The Sound and the Fricassee; As I Lay Frying; Intruder in the Crust; Requiem For a Bun; and Albacore, Albacore!

Johnson is very excited. And the stakes are high. At a press conference this morning his team announced their appraisal of the collection, a staggering $200,000,000.

Yet all is not well in the world of literary dishes - instant riches.

James Salt, the respected rare book dealer that Johnson originally brought in to help with the project, excused himself early on. He believes the collection may only be worth $200, at best.

“I smell fish,” Salt sniffed, “and I’m not talking about Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea Bass: 20 Lite N’ Easy Meals.

“While it’s true that Tolstoy hated Italian food I seriously doubt that he would devote his time and labor to a 1,000 page book about his struggle with it. I don’t care how many so-called experts assert otherwise, I will never be convinced that he wrote War On Pizza.”

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Winslow Homer and the Women of “The New Novel”

The New Novel. Watercolor, 1877.

In 1877, Winslow Homer exhibited his watercolor, The New Novel, at an exhibition of the American Watercolor Society.

It is an image that below its surface of innocent, leisurely repose churns a contemporary cultural scene fraught with change and fear; the culture-war in the U.S. had begun.

“...Avoid also all those miserable sensational...novels and illustrated papers which are so profusely scattered around on every side. The demand which exists for such garbage speaks badly for the moral sense and intellectual training of those who read them...The extent to which the press is used in the publication of romance and fiction, and of books which, if they do not corrupt the heart, do little but to dwarf the mind and give perverted and false views of life - of its duties and responsibilities, transcends any means at our command to ascertain…In nothing perhaps is the taste of our people so lamentably demoralized as in respect to our reading matter” (READ, Rev. Hollis. The God of This World; The Footprints of Satan. 1872).

The New Novel captures the moment and encapsulates its cultural context. This is a young woman languidly lying down on her side, embracing a book as she might a lover, holding it close and dear, almost caressing its binding, her eyes half-lidded in dream-state transport. She is not engaged in “productive” activity at all; she is consumed within an inner life that leaves her unavailable to responsibilities, family, and potential suitors: She’s here but not here, gone into a world unavailable to those closest to her, that of her imagination, a dangerous place for a woman to be in the 1870s. Opening a woman’s mind to imagination was tantamount to opening Pandora’s Box.

This young woman may be going to hell but Winslow Homer is enchanted by her. And why not?

The image crackles with latent sexuality and the eroticism of feminine power. It is a deeply intimate portrait, and Homer seems to spying on her, enjoying the scene as a voyeur enraptured by the young girl’s complete lack of self-consciousness. Her foot emerges from her dress, stretched, cat-like, as if the passage she’s reading requires a physical response. Reading here is a pagan act, a mystic rite performed in a sylvan setting that almost begs for fauns spying upon her from within the background brush.

Considering how low an activity novel reading was considered to be by contemporary social critics, the image borders on soft-core porn:

CHAPTER VIII
Novels and Novel-Reading

Definition of a Novel - A Vice of the Age - FOUR MAXIMS:
1. No Fiction if Little Leisure
2. Only the Best
3. Fiction to be but Small Part
4. If any Harm results, Stop at Once!

SEVEN REASONS AGAINST COMMON NOVEL-READING:
1. Wastes Time
2. Injures the Intellect
3. Unfits for Real Life
4. Creates Overgrowth of the Passions
5. Produces Mental Intoxication
6. Lessens the Horror of Crime and Wrong
7. Wars with all Piety, Disciplinary Rule.

The preceding public service announcement is found within Popular Amusements by Rev. J.T. Crane (Cincinnati, Hitchcock and Walden, 1869). By these standards, Homer’s new woman reading The New Novel is something of a slut: to the prudes, the “overgrowth of passions” needed to be curbed lest they need to be pruned yet by then, it’s too late.

Sunlight and Shadow. Watercolor, 1872.

The New Novel was not the first time Homer would examine the new phenomenon. Ostensibly a study of light and color values, 1872’s Sunlight and Shadow is a portrait of the new woman of leisure, reading. There is an odalisque-like quality to the image, the young woman alone and utterly relaxed, her legs and dress casually draped over the side of the hammock that swaddles her, and, though fully clothed, in dishabille: A woman at ease with impropriety, visually “loose.”

Girl Reading on a Stone Porch. Watercolor, 1872.

Girl Reading on a Stone Porch, again from 1872, is another example of Homer’s pre-occupation with the reading habits of contemporary young women. Here, the girl is almost reclining in her chair while reading, her posture most unlady-like. She’s holding her book as one might loosely hold a lover’s head around the neck, draw him near, and gaze into his eyes. The image is the antithesis of the contemporary model of prim, modest femininity.

Five years later, Homer's motif of young woman-reader as model of new womanhood reaches its height with The New Novel. In both Sunlight and Shadow and Girl Reading on a Stone Porch, Homer keeps himself at a distance, an objective, reserved and somewhat chaste observer. In these prior watercolors Homer has not made up his mind about the subject; he is chronicling current events, neither condemning nor approving, merely, if intensely, curious.

Yet Homer is being seduced by the phenomenon of the new novel as his women are: In Porch, the girl is almost carried away by her book but remains seated, her feet on the ground but not firmly. In Sunlight, the girl is reclining yet her legs hang over the side of the hammock; she hasn't yet completely lost control of herself.

All pretensions to objectivity are dropped, however, with The New Novel; Homer has made up his mind, has a subjective opinion, and his personal interest is palpable. The girl has totally abandoned herself to the passion, her fall is complete; so, too, Homer for the girl. He gets close to his subject, draws as near as he dares without disturbing her, without his voyeurism caught in flagrante. The other two watercolors have a sense of open spaciousness, the act of reading radiating out from the reader to the outside world and viewer. The New Novel reverses this order, drawing viewers inward into the mystery of this woman, her mind, and what might be going on inside of it. Her languid position, dreamy, half-closed eyes and pointed toe suggest a moment of erotic tension.

Winslow Homer has it bad for this woman.

The woman, alas, has it bad for the book.

And so, despite his charged attraction, she is unattainable. And it is that unattainability, that diversion of women from standard cultural roles and social mores toward independence of thought and action that challenged traditional American notions of femininity, the moral status quo, and seized Homer's imagination and desire.

A woman might prefer the company of a good book to the company of a man; reading as an act of self-pleasure. Irresistible!

The young woman in The New Novel, lost in her novel, her thoughts private, her pose provocative, remains an enigma. The New Novel is Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila meets DaVinci’s Mona Lisa, introduced by Winslow Homer.

Winslow Homer is famous for his landscapes. With his women-reading trilogy, he captures a new landscape, that of the inner world of of the new woman reading The New Novel.

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Of related interest: Note To Novel Readers: "If Any Harm Results, Stop at Once!"