I've been slow because of a stupid cold that will not go away. Anyway, one of the things I want to write up a bit before saying goodbye to Gabriel Josipovici is his response to Englishness.
Josipovici is a big fan of modernism and he wants to get the novel back on the modernism track. Right from the beginning, and I mean right from the beginning, of What Ever Happened to Modernism we see that Englishness is a problem for him. In the preface he describes going to see David Cecil give a talk in 1958 about then contemporary English novelists. Cecil recommended the work of Anthony Powell, Angus Wilson and Iris Murdoch. Reading them, Josipovici was disappointed.
Years later, he revisited the three authors just in case he missed something. Notice his response:
What makes an English novel English then if not nationalism? I'm going to suggest there are three things:
Contrary to what you might guess, all three of those characteristics turned out to be easily adaptable to modernity. Which is to say, the English novel had no trouble becoming modern without becoming modernistic. And here is the source of Josipovici's frustration.
I've already hinted at the big one. This style of novel is easily accommodated to the modern notion of randomness. Because of the effects of World War One, all art had to allow fort the possibility that random forces could seriously mes up our sense of order. And the reasons for this are historic as much as they are a matter of art. Life was upset by the war in Britain but it also returned to something like before.
This unexpected resilience of the form is a big problem for modernists like Josipovici.
It's also a problem when it gets to Proust for the Englishness of the English novel tends to influence the way English people read Proust but that is a subject for another day.
*Consider a novel such as Lucky Jim. In the end, Jim Dixon sees happiness in terms of a relationship with a woman he might marry. No matter how ridiculous the challenges become, the novel remains focused on the possibility of his success. Jim could not be an absurdist. One of the primary criticisms the novel makes is of what we might call the professorial class and how the failure of the members of this group to accept the moral obligations that go with their class causes problems.
Josipovici is a big fan of modernism and he wants to get the novel back on the modernism track. Right from the beginning, and I mean right from the beginning, of What Ever Happened to Modernism we see that Englishness is a problem for him. In the preface he describes going to see David Cecil give a talk in 1958 about then contemporary English novelists. Cecil recommended the work of Anthony Powell, Angus Wilson and Iris Murdoch. Reading them, Josipovici was disappointed.
Years later, he revisited the three authors just in case he missed something. Notice his response:
They still said nothing to me, still seemed 'English' in a way Borges and Simon and Robbe-Grillet were not Argentinian or French, still seemed to belong to a different and inferior world to that of Proust and the others.The first thing to note is that Josipovici is not objecting to jingoism here for the simple reason that there isn't much of it in the English novel. No, what he objects to is a general cultural attitude you find in these novels.
What makes an English novel English then if not nationalism? I'm going to suggest there are three things:
- They are about Marriageship. These are stories about people manœuvering there way to marriage and either succeeding or failing. Marriage is the most important element in human happiness; it's more important that wealth, than politics or, and this can be puzzling to modern readers, having a great sex life.
- They are Comedic in spirit. I reversed the normal order to say "succeeding or failing" in the previous point because English novels tend to be about succeeding at love and marriage. They don't necessarily end happily but even when the hero fails at marriage they leave us with a clear sense of what it would take to succeed; the possibility of success, of gaining the wisdom it would take to get there is the point. Behind this is a larger point behind this and it is that the world makes sense and you can get what you want.You might fail and you might even fail for random reasons but the possibility is always there.
- They are committed to social class as a means to social order. Again, the assumption isn't that everyone at each level social status is a good person who takes their responsibilities to society seriously. Some can be complete scum. But the assumption is always that social order depends on people in different classes doing what is expected of them.
Contrary to what you might guess, all three of those characteristics turned out to be easily adaptable to modernity. Which is to say, the English novel had no trouble becoming modern without becoming modernistic. And here is the source of Josipovici's frustration.
I've already hinted at the big one. This style of novel is easily accommodated to the modern notion of randomness. Because of the effects of World War One, all art had to allow fort the possibility that random forces could seriously mes up our sense of order. And the reasons for this are historic as much as they are a matter of art. Life was upset by the war in Britain but it also returned to something like before.
This unexpected resilience of the form is a big problem for modernists like Josipovici.
It's also a problem when it gets to Proust for the Englishness of the English novel tends to influence the way English people read Proust but that is a subject for another day.
*Consider a novel such as Lucky Jim. In the end, Jim Dixon sees happiness in terms of a relationship with a woman he might marry. No matter how ridiculous the challenges become, the novel remains focused on the possibility of his success. Jim could not be an absurdist. One of the primary criticisms the novel makes is of what we might call the professorial class and how the failure of the members of this group to accept the moral obligations that go with their class causes problems.
