Elisha Cohn is an associate professor in Cornell's Department of Literatures in English. Her Still Life, Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel (2016) strikes me as two books in one. The first is quite lovely and filled with a variety of splendid apercus. Cohn explores "lyric moments" in the novels (confession: I read closely only the chapter on Thomas Hardy, the novelist with whom I'm most familiar). She observes that Hardy (a poet as well as a novelist) occasionally stops the progress of the story and allows his characters to experience a moment of stasis or reflection or reverie that is more a characteristic of lyric poetry than prose. I was much impressed by her analyses of these moments -- and wondered why I had failed to notice such events -- or non-events -- myself. So criticism did what it's supposed to do -- widens our understanding and appreciation of works of literature. I returned to the Victorian novel armed with a new way of seeing. In fact, I'm now reading Little Dorrit again for the express purpose of ascertaining whether a non-poet like Dickens employs the same Still Life method. So far, not the case -- Dickens has his own particular (and very successful) methods of expanding the consciousness of his characters.
Ah, but then there's the other side of Cohn's book which attempts to develop her useful insights within the slough of "theory." I half suspect that Cohn felt obliged to make herself relevant or contemporary or tenure-worthy with her tumble into this quicksand -- but perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps she devoutly believes in an apparatus that I find so incomprehensible and transient. In this second part of the book, many famous names are invoked and admired; some of these are very French and very revered; others are merely professors at American universities. Pages of text and footnotes defend against the horrid possibility that Still Life might be "insufficiently theorized." And in these speculative paragraphs Cohn discusses the deprivilegization of hierarchical thought in favor of forms of lateralization in which individuations are impersonal and singularities are pre-individual and which reterritorialize along the lines of preexisting structures of power which re-consolidate into static concepts, etc., etc. Which is when I either descend into a reverie (or nightmare) of my own or hurl he book across the room.
[February 23 Audrey ap Howell writes: "Vivian de St. Vrain, you've go it wrong. The notion that there are poetic moments in the novels is well established. The originality of this book lies in its theorizing of these moments. You would know this if you had read carefully and not skimmed."
[February 24] J C Occhiogrosso writes: "This is a well-written book. Complicated but not obscure."
[February 25] Reuben Musgrave writes: "I bet that Cohn is a delightful teacher -- if she keeps to the events in the novels and stays away from bewildering 'theory.'"
[February 25] Savannah Courtermanche writes: "All novelists pause the plot for moments of reflection. Nothing new here."
[March 5] Joy Jourgenson writes: "This difficult monograph would have been more useful as a series of short, insightful essays. Too bad it had to be expanded into a repetitive static book. Not the author's fault -- just the tune of the times."
[March 6] Eli Munn writes: "Vivian, you're too old and out of it to have an opinion worth anything. Shut it down and go back to your knitting."
[March 15] Rogers Roggen writes: "I wonder, Vivian, how you can work yourself up into such a snit about Cornell when the USA is going to hell in a handbasket. Shouldn't you put your effort into more pressing matters."
[March 18] Homer vanNess writes: "Reuben Musgrave, are you possibly the "Cousin Rube" that I heard my parents mention? I know there's a Musgrave branch to my family. (I found your name doing a random googlesearch). If you are Cousin Rube, could you pm me at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you. I think you went to Cornell; so did I but much later."
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