Books and Personalities
I was thinking earlier this morning in an idle moment – well not altogether idle, because I was looking out the window, because it was one of those staggeringly beautiful autumnal mornings when it has partly cleared up after rain and clouds and the air is bright and clear and hard like diamonds or ginger ale or I don’t know what, and the sun is at just the right angle so that it makes the windows on the boats in the marina wink and twinkle which they certainly don’t do most of the time, and the light and shadows on the water and the peninsula look much more light and shadow-like than usual – one of those mornings. I was thinking, while staring at all this, about the difference – the subjective difference, the cognitive difference, the difference in our heads – between people one knows in real life and people one knows via the written word. That thought led to the related and equally familiar thought about books and their authors and how we think about them. To what extent we have ideas of their ‘personalities’, and how accurate or inaccurate such ideas may be. How some writers have (seem to have, via their writing) more ‘personality’ than others, and how that does not necessarily correlate with the quality of the books. A writer can have bags of personality and write crap books, or have none at all and write dazzlers. And what do we mean by personality, and how does it differ from character, and does the same apply. Can a writer have no discernable character and write brilliant books? Offhand I would say no – I don’t think so. The brilliance, the brilliant-book-writing, is the character, or part of it. But it’s not the personality, so much. Why? I don’t know why. Because personality is more adventitious, and so more beside the point? More just one of those things, like curly hair or buck teeth? Whereas character is more basic, and more important. But I can’t swear that’s not just a mere matter of labeling, rather than a genuine distinction.
Emerson and Carlyle met briefly when they were comparatively young, and had an immediate rapport. They sustained this friendship for years via letters; then Emerson made another trip over, and they found they didn’t like each other at all. Emerson found Carlyle a savage misanthropic terror; Carlyle found Emerson full of moonshine and endlessly talking (one knows the type).
I wouldn’t much want to meet either of them, myself. There are some writers I would want to meet; others I would want to observe but not meet; others I wouldn’t want to meet or observe. But what’s odd about it is that the groups don’t correlate with either favourites or hierarchies. It’s not that I want to meet all the best (in my opinion) writers, or all the ones I like the best. No. There’s something interesting about that fact…but I’m not sure what.
Shakespeare, Keats, Chekhov. Them I would like to meet. Emily Bronte, Byron, Montaigne – them I would like to watch, but not meet. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, George Eliot, Austen – I don’t even want to observe, let alone meet. And yet Austen is possibly my very favourite novelist and the one I think is the best. And Wordsworth is one of my favourite poets – but I would go out of my way not to meet him. Hazlitt, now – yes, I would want to meet Hazlitt. I would be frightened, but I would want to. Thoreau. I would like to meet Thoreau. Emerson said walking with him was like walking with a tree. He sounds like exactly my kind of person. I’m a tree myself. Two trees taking a walk; it sounds very agreeable, in a chilly sort of way.
When you visit Thoreau, I hope he has a visitor’s chair in his cabin in the woods (and a fire on).
And has recently made the short trip home to get his laundry done.
No, I didn’t say I wanted to visit him. Just meet. He could come here, or we could meet halfway, in Minneapolis or someplace. Or the hell with that, we could meet in London. This is my hypothetical, I’ll decide where we meet, HD. You can bring the hickory nuts. I’ll be at the Star and Garter gate of Richmond Park at noon; see you then.
“I’ll be at the Star and Garter gate of Richmond Park at noon; see you then.”
Small world! I drive through that gate and through Richmond Park every day on the way to work. Possibly one of the best views in the UK there, from Richmond hill looking over the Thames up towards Kingston.
I don’t think Henry ever left Massachussetts in his life. Or even Concord for that matter. He was a walker, and it’s a long walk to London, especially since that bridge over the Atlantic fell down.
Oh, man, Chris, lucky you. That is indeed one of the best views – that is one of my favourite views in the world. Looking over the Thames towards Kingston and Petersham meadows, Hampton Court, etc. Richmond Park is no slouch, either. Well, I’ll get another look at it soon.
Henry left Massachusetts a little. Went to New York for a time. Went up Mt Ktaadin (sp) which is in Maine. Spent a week on the – Concord and Merrimack River was it? Went to Harvard, so he lived in Cambridge for awhile. And I think he even made a trip to the Midwest once. He was a walker but not a walker of the monist variety – he took trains now and then. Plus there were the roller skates of course.
I pulled out my Thoreau reader. He spells it “Ktaadn.”
Ah, thank you – what I was too lazy to do. I knew the way I had it looked wrong.
Hazlitt – I’ve been galloping through Lodge’s campus trilogy this weekend, and struck by Swallow’s Turkish host’s continual quoting of Hazlitt. ‘”One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey” said Akbil Borak with a smile, “but I prefer to go by msyelf.”‘
He does sound pretty frightening. At least, he would not suffer fools gladly. Not to suggest you are in any way a fool! But rather, he would be someone to whom one would feel obliged to measure their words so that they would all have something to say, which is scary. Of course, I’m reading all this from second hand accounts from his book, so maybe he’s infintely more welcoming, and fearful only due to some bizarre defect – forked tongue, or hand shaped like a thermometer. Or something.
Exactly. He was scary. Famous for it. I would be afraid of meeting him for exactly the same sort of reason I would be and am afraid of trying to chat with, say, Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. I’ve attempted both, briefly, when they were doing book tours, and I was very afraid.
And it’s similar with Austen and E.Bronte and Montaigne. I’d be afraid of all of them, afraid they would all think I was a silly boring weedy fool. Which is part of what I like about them – as writers – their exigency, their sharpness of eye and mind and wit. But I don’t know that I want to sit next to them and try to chat. I would turn out to be a Collins or Elton, and I’d be crushed.
How did your brief chats with Hitchens and Dawkins go? I never had the pleasure of chatting with Dawkins, but I did twice chat with Hitchens when he came to town. As long as you’re not religious or a prohibitionist or an Islamofascist apologist, he can be quite pleasant and amusing.