Hardly Hedgerows

“After Life-Writing: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal in the Memoirs of William Wordsworth.” by Mary Ellen Bellanca. European Romantic Review 25:2, 201-218.

Digging through early biographies of the Wordsworth, M.E. Bellanca uncovers one by the poet’s nephew Christopher called Memoirs of William Wordsworth, published in 1851. It features, as she notes, heavy quotation (about 45 pgs) from Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere and Scotland journals. So, it should be considered an early publication of Dorothy’s, refuting years of scholarship that had claimed that Wordsworth’s talented sister remained unpublished during her life.

Except scholars made no such claim. In the examples Bellanca herself gives, both William Knight and Ernest de Selincourt mention the excerpted passages. For Bellanca, the credit they give diminishes Dorothy’s contribution, by calling them “a few fragments,” and “short extracts.” From there, Bellanca builds a case for Dorothy’s talent, and her womanly victimization at the hands of a masculine society that didn’t appreciate her intellect.

Bollocks. Dorothy was reverenced by her brother, enshrined in his best poems, noted constantly as an inspiration (even a crutch), and respected for her observation and quick wit by his friends. History has treated her very well indeed. Though she was meddlesome, and eventually lost her mind, she is probably the most respected female figure of the Romantic era, apart from Mary Shelley. I can conjure no image of sibling affection stronger than William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Editions of her work abound. College seminars and graduate dissertations interpreting it flourish.

Bellanca’s reading is ideologically driven, but it isn’t a screed. It’s well-written, especially examples from the Memoirs, and command of the Wordsworth’s reception history. But as ideologies do, the feminism blinds her to more logical interpretive possibilities. “Invested in a gender ideology that exalts Dorothy’s devotion to her brother, the Memoirs…casts her in relation to William,” she chirps (204). See the problem? There’s no reason to think that Christopher Wordsworth exalts familial devotion as a consequence of his investment in a gender ideology. We’re talking about his aunt and uncle. The degree to which they are devoted to one another, or are represented as devoted to one another reflects on his immediate heritage and values. “My aunt and uncle were very close,” reads more convincingly as “I come from a good, moral family” than “women are worthless apart from their servile attachment to powerful males.”

Other overstatements diminish the paper’s real import. Recall that Christopher didn’t likely possess the literary trove a modern biographer might, but certainly had access to family papers, such as Dorothy’s journals. Bellanca claims “the extracts reveal [Dorothy’s] centrality to the poet’s work,” which is saying too much by half. (24). “Centrality” is wrong. No matter how important she was for William—and she was quite important— she was in no way central. It isn’t as though he writes exclusively, or even mainly about his sister, though she plays ancillary roles in a few poems. One might claim that she was central to his life, although that would exaggerate too, but that she was central to his work is insupportable. Also, such overstatements cast her in relation to William: exactly the sin of which Bellanca accuses Christopher Wordsworth. Dorothy’s writing is good and worthy of study; she was also a good and helpful sister, even a sometime muse for her more-talented (or simply more productive?) brother. More than this need not be assumed.

Two more points. The paper concludes with the conjecture-cum-accusation that Dorothy may not have been consulted regarding the publication of journal extracts for her brother’s Memoirs. “One must wonder," the article wonders, " whether she consented to, or was even aware of, the printing of…her writing for strangers to read” (214). Bellanca calls this “troubling,” or, since like most of her claims, this one vacillates, “potentially troubling” (214). How so? The first ¾ of the essay contends that Dorothy is an important author in her own right who ought to be respected as such. The last quarter suggests that she may have been scandalized by publication. Which is it? Bellanca doesn’t seem to know, referring to “her desire or non-desire to be read” (214). In what way would it be “troubling,” for her relatives to publish works she intended for publication? Especially a publication that honors her brother’s memory, whom she had spent so much of her own life honoring and encouraging? The conjecture is unhelpful, particularly the air of grievous offense cast over the proceedings, as though the poor woman were taken advantage of.

Worse still, Dorothy may just as well have been consulted and consented to the publication. At the time, Dorothy was 80 years old, and, as Bellanca notes, “often incoherent” (214). Even at that, her family may have asked her, and may have had a positive, coherent response. We simply don’t know. Bellanca doesn’t know. That doesn’t stop her from implying wrongdoing, alas. “It would be highly ironic if this very private writer…had been conscripted into the public visibility of the print market without her knowledge, or permission” (214-5). That’s a big “if.” And if she were senile, it wouldn’t even be that, but due course: we have no moral qualms about publishing good writing, whether intended for publication or not, by persons deceased or otherwise incapacitated, who occupy important roles or historical perspective.

In a last jab, Bellanca wonders in the footnotes (but of course she never wonders; she accuses), “how did literary history forget…that Dorothy Wordsworth was a writer to be taken seriously,” between the publication of the Memoirs in 1851 and the 1970’s, when she was “recovered”? Predictably, and offensively, Bellanca suspects “such factors as…the rise of professional literary studies with a predominately male professorate” (216). That’s absolutely unfounded, and juvenile. It’s small-minded to imagine that no one acts apart from the interests of their group, especially professional scholars, concerned with aesthetics, influence, history, data, among much else. False historically too, since Austen, Sappho, Aphra Behn, the Bronte’s, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Mary Shelley and other women to numerous to name enjoyed ample (if not equal) attention during the same period of Dorothy’s "neglect."

But she wasn’t even neglected during the interim Bellanca outlines. First, the 1851 Memoirs didn’t vault Dorothy to prominence; they introduced her as an important figure to people who already knew and liked William. Dorothy’s work didn’t achieve prominence will 1884-1902, as Bellanca notes elsewhere. So we’re not talking about a 100+ year gap in attention for whose obvious error we need a scapegoat. If she’s prominent in 1902 and we imagine a gradual, rather than a sudden descent, let’s say interest tapers till the mid-1930’s (counting the number of dissertations and books). That leaves only 40 years till her “revival” in the 1970’s, or not quite half a human life. Assigning that gap a negative valuation, seeking someone to blame for it, and finding that blame in sexism all seem to me intellectually irresponsible. If an explanation were required (again, it is not) more likely culprits emerge.

Genre, for one. What is Dorothy’s writing? They’re not poems (as I see it, and importantly, as most literary scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries saw it, the most important things a person can study), not fiction, not even memoir, quite, but journals whose author may or may not have assented to publication. That’s pretty rarified air. Does one teach them in a History of Poetry class? If there is any sense in which Dorothy’s reputation suffered for a short span in the middle of the twentieth century, it is as likely due to circular needs as anything so nefarious as Bellanca’s Black Shirt New Critics, or Gang of Six, or the Great Satan himself: men.

American Redemption

Two events in the history of redemption happened this week that seem to me related, and indicative of our historical moment: the gangster Jeremy Meeks was awarded a modeling contract, and Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize. I’m fascinated by both, largely because I’ve been reading long Victorian poems.

The poem I’m reading is Phillip James Bailey’s Festus (1839). Like Tennyson, who admired the poem more than he trusted himself to say, I can hardly begin to speak about its glories for fear of rhapsodizing, swooning. It challenges Milton in scope, language, and intellectual power. Maybe it bests him. People don’t read it much anymore because the fusty Victorians were put off by its theology: at the end of the ages, Lucifer is welcomed back into heaven, having done his necessary, evil work on God’s behalf.

Meeks is a thug: a guilty-as-charged, caught-in-the-act thief. And not the clever cat-burglar type, whose impressive whit and dexterity allow him to escape with the jewels minimal disruption. An armed mugger, he terrorizes and assaults innocents. He may have shot and killed some. But he’s also among the most beautiful males the good Lord ever made. He’s an Adonis, an Antinoos. His face is a type of human perfection that transcends sexual preference, that, importantly, sells things. The sheriff’s office responsible for his arrest tweeted his mug-shot in a moment of triumphalism, and it immediately went viral. The comments are the usual: “Smooth criminal,” and “Model Prisoner,” and “can we be handcuffed together?” but the ones I’m interested in say things like: “Maybe all of our love for him and his hotness will help him give up crime.” Some say he’s been offered a modeling contract, but I can’t confirm whether it’s true. If it’s crazy, it’s also kind-of wonderful to think this fellow, whom the police have called “one of the most violent criminals” in a rather violent area, might become a millionaire when he gets out of prison, might even be released from prison, because he’s got nice cheek bones. The thinking is: his beauty puts him beyond the range of our justice systems, which are human, while he is clearly from the gods. There’s a #freeJeremyMeeks campaign going around, not because he’s innocent, but because he’s pretty. What if? What if he straightened right out, seeing the money and fame and women he could have if he’d put on a suit or a bathing suit, and give up the thug-life? Our love, as the commenter said, will have transformed him.

Likewise Donna Tartt. She writes trashy pulp novels, full of cliches and sentences that could have come from Stephanie Meyer, that mill of pre-arranged sap. Her new book, The Goldfinch, has been breathlessly praised by people impressed by sales figures, and panned by everyone who cares about writing and literature (NYRB, New Yorker). There’s a summary of the debate, written by a partisan who thinks all criticism is elitist, here. Though the board that decides such things was heavily stacked this year with businesspeople, and light on artists, I’m still amazed they gave it to Donna Tartt. Everybody is. For those looking for scale, it’s like giving the James Beard Award to Burger King. It’s so egregious on wonders if they aren’t doing something with it. Picture the boardroom. 

“No one cares about the Pulitzer anymore; let’s do something to really shake things up.” 

“Yeah, we’ll get the young people, and the women engaged again.”

“Guys, this is going to sound crazy, but what if, this year, we didn’t give the Pulitzer prize to some high-minded literary mumbo-jumbo no one is going to read. What if instead…”

And at a stroke, they’ve changed what the Pulitzer is, what it means. Like those people who aren’t content to let comic books be fun and popular and great, but insist they be respected as a serious art form, the Pulitzer people have used the prize’s prestige to redeem popular, low-brow fiction. Who cares if it’s aesthetically criminal, couldn’t our love transform it? What if, having been treated as author of Serious Literature, Tartt became an author of serious literature?

I think all these moves are audacious, but I really do love them. They’re so peculiarly American, so optimistic, so dismissive of the past. Bailey was British, but his book sold best in America, and one can see why. What if there is nothing so vile that our treasuring it, regardless of merit, can’t save it?

Small Cameras pt.2-Leica x1

When I finally won an eBay bid for my long-coveted Leica x1, when it arrived, after I finished marvelling at the packaging (what care, what consideration these people have) the first thing I did was to climb online and see if it was fake.  Search: "Leica x1 counterfeit scam." Hmm. Nothing.  But this camera is so light, surely it's a plastic knock-off of the dignified Leica of which I've dreamt.  I snapped a picture of the desk in front of me.  Hmm.  Best picture I've ever seen. Not fake then. Or at least, a very, very good fake, featuring luxury optics that outperform any camera I've ever held.  

It took me about two hours to love everything about this camera.  The leather strap (!) the camera comes with isn't adjustable, but it's the perfect length.  I never wanted to mess with those silly plastic toggles on another camera again.  I never wanted to be responsible for choosing a proper camera-hanging-from-the-shoulder-length. Above all, I never wanted to be weighed down with another clunky piece of kit again. Compared with this light little beauty, all other cameras seemed like carrying a laptop around one's neck.  People walking aroudn with thier d5100's or whatever started to look awfully silly.  

No viewfinder? A little ghetto, but that's okay, I thought, I'll just compose right here in this--wait, completely horrible LCD screen. Hmm. Back to the counterfeit theory. Leica is a terrific, and a terrifically arrogant company. They make dictatorial choices, which are admirable in thier audacity sometimes, and sometimes infuriating. They've decided, see, that people don't really look at images on the camera's LCD screen, or, they shouldn't be looking at images that way, so they've put a perfectly-functional, but woefully basic screen on a screamingly sharp piece of design; having maxed out the sensor quality (within reason) and lens quality, they've cut things that don't matter (in their estimation) so much. For more thoughts on the company's approach: its glories and attendant frustrations, check out my favorite camera review ever, or find this beautiful essay by Anthony Lane about the history of Leica Cameras, recollected later in Best American Essays 2008. 

I had a great time making pictures with this device.  I carried it everywhere, some days not clicking a single frame, and still not feeling bad about having toted it around due to its size, weight, and ergonomic reward. I was often frustrated with not being able to focus (the camera does a great job of focusing on its own, but I like to decide what's clear and what's not; plus, I'm faster) but all frustrations melted with the easy intuitive menu, the simple button placement (everything I need in a click, or turn of the smart metal wheel atop the camera), and big, bright files (if occassionally over-saturated colors).

Self. Photo by Amber Willett. Taken with Leica x1.

I had to sell it in the end, because I had to feed my family, and because it can't make videos.  I don't know anything about these things, whether video would be hard to impliment, or whether it's a simple software add that Leica doesn't deign to grant because they're being purists.  Either way, I'm often called upon to make little videos of dance performances, or poetry readings, and I can't very well have a house full of tech equiptment to accomplish tasks that an iPhone can handle. I miss it though.  I sympathize with camera critic Steve Huff, who loved his Leica x1, then sold it, then bought it back after a year because its magic--and that's really what it seems like--called back to him even over the twenty cameras he'd had in between. I may just re-buy one myself when I'm in the position to, unless I find an unbeatable deal on the nearly-identical-but-for-the-added-possiblitiy-of-an-EVF Leica x2. 

Small Cameras pt.1-Fuji x100

I haven't had a proper camera since the digital revolution made my years as film photography student seem quaint, like minoring in tannery, or taxidermy.  Granted, there is still great work being done in film, and I'm not sure that even the best digital cameras match it yet--though they're close--but it still feels a little funny having been in likely the last class to learn hand-processing not as some retro-choice, but as the only option for aspiring professionals, just as it must've felt when the French perfected a county-wide canal system just in time for the automobile to render that method of goods transport adorable and less cutting-edge than they imagined and budgeted for. 

Since I'm travelling around Europe a good bit this year, I thought it was time to step up.  Thing is, I'm sort of particular about what I carry on my person.  I choose my wallet based on whether it will disturb the line of my trousers, and carry my keys in a side-bag for the same reason.  I'm not a diva exactly, but cheap or badly designed things not only disturb me ethically, and obviously, aesthetically, but sensually: the touch of most plastics turns my stomach.  I know enough about myself to realize that if I was actually going to carry a camera with me, rather than have one on my shelf at home, it would have to be small, and pretty cute.  

So DSLR for me then.  At the same time, I didn't want to settle for the quality that comes from most compacts.  Anybody that pays attention to such things will know that we're in the middle of a small-camera revolution, with the advent of the (really strangely beautiful) iPhone camera, and the Micro 4/3, and other mirrorless systems making quality files available from much smaller packages than were concievable a few years ago.  

I spend entirely too much of my time reading reviews of these cameras, and by this point I've owned most of them, and been really satisfied by none, and thought I ought to say why.  

Fuji x100

The first one I bought was the legendary--really this camera and the hype surrounding it will define this decade of camera manufacture in any history thereof--Fuji x100.  I don't want to provide a full review here, since they exist really by the thousands all over the internet; I just want to say a little more loudly some things that all those reviews say in the footnotes.  That is: though this camera makes amazing images, better than anything in its class, including narrowly, the Leica x1 (more on that in a minute), and though it is beautifully-designed as an object (I notice whenever anyone walks by with one around h/ir neck), its menu-design and sluggishness take nearly all the joy out of shooting with such a pretty thing.  

Amber Willett in Dresden, Germany. Shot with Fuji x100.

Again, every reviewer notes this camera's focus-problems and slow start-up speed, but they don't say with sufficient strength (or didn't anyway to stop me from buying it) that what this means is that you'll often miss shots while it "boots up," that if you see some great moment--your wife smiling, kids playing, and bird overhead--you'll likely get to save that only as a memory, while you look at the little rotating wheel on your x100's screen.  If somehow, by the time you're ready, something else great happens, you'll likley get an out-of-focus picture of it, since it's another 10 seconds (more like 3, but that's an eternity to a smile) while the thing focuses.  

I look back at the few good images I made with it from time to time and think: these are gorgeous, but not since the Sega Genesis have I so badly wanted to physically damage a piece of equiptment for dis-obeying me.  If you have a world of patience, or a studio, or if you take pictures mainly of food or other things that hold still, this is the camera for you.  Otherwise, let's all be thankful for Fuji's having moved the proverbial ball so far down the field in terms of style, but lament their accompanying ham-fisted approach to the engine that drives it.  A great camera to look at then, just not much of one to look with.