On this day in 1792, the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born. And he is quite good. His lyrical poetry is about as good as one will find. But I’m not that interested in it. The whole of Romantic poetry has become a cliche, and it is hard to read it without its historical baggage. As early as 1811, Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility lampooned the Romantic sensibility as affected and silly with the characters Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby. None of this is to say that Shelley was affected and silly.

In fact, the Romantics tended to be political radicals, and Shelley was no exception. To give you some idea, I remember the conservative writer Paul Johnson going after Shelley with his usual glee in Intellectuals. The chapter on Shelley was titled, “Shelley, or the Heartlessness of Ideas.” I think that is a little play on the full title of Frankenstein. But having read much of Johnson over the years, I’ve come to think of him as one of the most intellectually dishonest historians of the 20th century. He has a political ax to grind, and boy does he grind it. It reminds me, sadly, of some of my own early writing. But in my defense, no one ever mistook my books for history. In Modern Times (and elsewhere), Johnson misrepresents and diminishes imperialism. Like most of what he wrote, it was pure apologia masquerading as history. So the fact that Johnson took the time in his snark-fest (the chapter on Tolstoy is “God’s Elder Brother”), indicates that Shelley was liberal enough to warrant Johnson’s concern that modern readers might like him.

And what were Shelley’s offenses? (Not what Johnson wrote about; he was only interested in Shelley’s personal life; Johnson is a typical conservative Christian in his intense interest in other people’s sex lives.) Shelley’s longest work of prose was, A Philosophical View of Reform. And in it he argues for the elimination of a standing army; religious equality; and judicial reform. For conservative Americans who deify the founding fathers, Shelley’s ideas should be very appealing. He was also for a balanced budget, but that was a big concern at that time among liberals. See Mark Blyth’s excellent Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea for more on that. (My discussion of the book: History of Austerity.)

But Johnson isn’t the only one who has had a problem with Shelley. In general, later generations tried to neuter him and turn him into that nice young man who wrote about the joys of nature and died young by drowning. This is one reason why Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is probably the best single example of what the Romantics were up to. They were very interested in serious ideas that even most people today don’t think about. (In the defense of modern people: they are mostly too busy working three part-time jobs.) But lest I be accused of completely slighting Shelley’s excellent poetry, here are eight lines that condense the scores of books Proust would eventually write:

Happy birthday Percy Bysshe Shelley!

On this day in 1878, the writer Don Marquis was born. Even though he was a prolific writer, most people have never heard of him. The only reason I know about him is that I have a habit of roaming libraries. When I had first gone to college, I was looking over the music section and came upon the score of an operetta called Archy and Mehitabel. I read the introduction and found out that it was about Archy, a poetry writing cockroach, and his alley cat chum, Mehitabel. The gag was that after all the reporters had left the office, Archy would jump around on the keys of the keyboard. Because of his limited abilities, he only typed in lowercase, except for that one time when he typed in all uppercase.

Marquis wrote far more than just cockroach poetry, however. In fact, “Archy and Mehitabel” was apparently created as a space filler, because he was writing a newspaper column six days per week. In the old days, this was considered quite the feat. Now in the internet age, it seems to be the norm. But actually, there is a lot of repetition and a lot of stuff that just isn’t worth writing. But Marquis’ output was prodigious. He wrote five novels, five plays, numerous short stories and essays, and lots and lots of poetry.

People seemed to die around Marquis. His son died at the age of six; his daughter died at 13; his first wife died after 14 years of marriage; his second wife died after ten years of marriage; and then he died at the age of 59 of a stroke, although it wasn’t his first one. He still managed to work almost to the end.

Here is a little bit of “certain maxims of archy”:

And speaking of Prohibition, check out “a roach of the taverns” about the communal aspects of drink. Archy was a wise cockroach.

Happy birthday Don Marquis!

On this day in 1895, the great British scholar and writer Robert Graves was born. The volume and diversity of his work is overwhelming. He probably thought of himself as a poet. But he did an enormous amount of pure scholarship: critical analysis and translation. But I believe he paid the bills by writing the historical fiction that he is most remembered for, I, Claudius, Claudius the God, and other books like Wife to Mr Milton: the Story of Marie Powell, which is about the wife of John Milton.

I don’t have a great deal to say about Graves beyond relating my intense jealousy of him. My standard line about my own education is that if I had it all to do over again, I would study mathematics and not physics; but if I were starting now, I would study classics. I remember reading in a biography of Christopher Marlowe that originally, the term “illiterate” meant that one could not read Latin. And that a basic college education at that time (late 16th century) meant you were fluent in Latin. When Marlowe got his Master’s degree, that meant he was fluent in Greek as well. Graves did quite a lot of Greek and Latin translating, although I don’t think anyone was paying him, which makes it all the more cool.

The first thirty years of his life were something of a muddle where he went to school, then to war, got married, went back to school, was unsuccessful at business and then abandoned his wife and children for poet Laura Riding. His career kind of started there with the two of them publishing poetry and academic works. Things really got going when Graves published his autobiography, Good-bye to All That. Much of it was about his experiences in World War I, which was not laudatory and even discussed the murder of German prisoners of war. He also managed to offend a lot of people with the book, but I get the impression that Graves was generally rather good at that.

In 1934, he published I, Claudius, which has hugely successful and probably set him for life. Five years later, his turbulent relationship with Riding ended. Then he took up with Beryl Hodge, the wife of his collaborator Alan Hodge. They married and Graves went on to have a more boring life befitting a successful writer. But it is hard not to think that Graves was kind of jerk to many of the people in his life. Not that it matters. And none of us are perfect.

The gods, it would seem, did punish Graves. In his mid-70s, he began suffering from severe memory loss and for the last ten years of his life, he was able to do no work at all. It is a sad way to go, although actually rather typical. The mind tends to see a distinct diminution in its abilities in the early 70s, although it doesn’t seem to get notably worse even if you live to be 124 (which seems to be about the maximum possible age for humans). But it must have been particularly hard on a great mind like Graves. It is one of the reasons that I think it is best for me to die at around 75, even if I don’t have a great mind like Graves. What I do have is my mind and when that starts to go, what will be the point? Moving on…

Happy birthday Robert Graves!

On this day in 1899, one of the greatest American novelist Ernest Hemingway was born. When I was younger, I was quite fond of his work. To my young boy mind, he seemed to establish what it was to be a man. That’s most especially true of Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises. There was something very poignant his sexual dysfunction along with his drive to still be around women. But looking back on the book now, it seems a very immature view of men, which doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t true. But it certainly doesn’t present anything like the male ideals that Homer provided for the ancient Greeks.

What still moves me as much today as it ever did is his style. I still remember this one sentence from A Farewell to Arms that is so simple and yet evocative, “I looked back and saw the three cars all climbing, spaced by the interval of their dust.” That’s like poetry and Hemingway’s fiction is probably the most lyrical of the 20th century writers. There’s no doubt that Gertrude Stein was a master of language, far exceeding Hemingway. But she is such a master that I find her difficult to read most of the time. And based upon pure writing, I think Hemingway was better than both Fitzgerald and Steinbeck.

But here I am at 50 and I still read Fitzgerald and Steinbeck. I even occasionally read Stein. But Hemingway: never. Part of that is having read a good too much of Hemingway when I was younger, but the same could be said of Steinbeck. What Hemingway always lacked, and this became clearer and clearer as I got older, was what Fitzgerald and Steinbeck had in abundance: great characters and a humane worldview.

Hemingway’s work seemed to be limited by his own personal demons. He was afraid to allow his own humanity to be shown in his work. That’s why I think his mostly solitary The Old Man and the Sea works the best of his fiction—because it is more mythic and even spiritual. The me, it is an allegory for life. It doesn’t really matter that he got the marlin back safely. The essence of life is the journey, not the destination or the trophies. It would have been interesting to see him have developed in that direction, but instead, it stands like Orson Welles’ F for Fake: a great work never built upon.

The last couple years of his life, Hemingway seems to have suffered from hemochromatosis—the accumulation of iron in the body. This caused him to deteriorate mentally, if not physically. It led to him twice being “treated” with electroshock therapy, which made his mental state even worse. Regardless, he eventually killed himself. It’s sad, because I think he had a lot to offer as an older writer. With his clarity of vision and careful style combined with wisdom, he might have done really great things. Then again, it might just have been a lot more gossipy trash like A Moveable Feast. But he could have had more important things to say. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Happy birthday Ernest Hemingway!

On this day in 1860, American aristocrat Owen Wister was born. He was born on the “storied Belfield estate in Germantown.” His father was a wealthy physician and his mother was the daughter of the famous actor Fanny Kemble. When he wasn’t attending school in Switzerland and England, he would hire poor people to lie in puddles so he never got his shoes wet—shoes made of the skin of poor immigrant children. Okay, that wasn’t actually true. But he was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt. Of course, being rich, once the Great Depression hit, Wister was totally against the policies of Roesevelt’s cousin, who was President at that time. If you learn one thing from reading me it should be this: bad economic times are great if you had a lot of money. Wister had a lot of money.

So why on this day is the birthday post about just another American aristocrat? Well, partly is is because last year I did Woody Guthrie. And I could have done Ingmar Bergman, but I just don’t feel up to it. It may be a cliche, but he was a great filmmaker, and he deserves a lot of attention. And I think I have a cold. A cold! And it is supposed to be 99° today! My plan is to go back to bed as soon as I’m done with this. Anyway, so we were talking about American aristocrat Owen Wister and how when times got hard for the American people, he was angry that FDR tried to do anything to ameliorate the suffering of millions of Americans.

But the main reason that I’m writing about Owen Wister is because he is considered the father of the Western. He got that name for writing The Virginian in 1902. It’s an episodic novel with pretty much what we have come to expect. The Virginian character is a kind of natural aristocrat, who of course, ends up as an actual aristocrat by the end of the novel. He falls in love and marries a school teacher, Molly Stark Wood. (Wister’s wife’s nickname was Molly.) And generally, he fights for life, liberty, and the American way against the Tramps who are just evil because, well, they aren’t natural aristocrats.

Interestingly, Wister never wrote another western. He did work with diabetic playwright Kirke La Shelle to bring it to the stage. And it has been made into at least six movies. You’ve got to give it to the man though, according to Wikipedia, the book was reprinted fourteen times in eight months. In addition to not writing another western novel, he didn’t much write anything. There was a ten year period where he was writing novels. And had he been struggling financially, he probably would have pumped out other rambling novels about life in Wyoming with noble men and pretty and pure school teachers. But who needs to do that when you can be sipping brandy and soda at The Philadelphia Club?

Wister died in 1938 at the age of 78. He was tragically killed when the four servants carrying him, dropped from exhaustion. I mean, he was tragically crushed to death when a wall made of money collapsed on him. I mean, he died of starvation after his food tester was tragically killed moonlighting as a puddle-coverer for a rich fat man. The truth is, I don’t know how he died. But he was 78. And that’s one good thing you can say about American aristocrats: they eventually die.

Happy birthday American aristocrat Owen Wister, pioneer of the most tedious of American genre fiction!

On this day in 1764, the pioneering Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe was born. I’ll be honest, I’m not that fond of the Gothic novel. But Radcliffe had a great influence on novelists who I don’t even think of as writing in this style. Part of this is because a lot of her work wasn’t exactly Gothic. So she influenced Jane Austen, although not directly. She parodied her in Northanger Abbey where Catherine just loves the novels of Radcliffe. Austen did this sort of thing a lot. Most people miss it today, but Sense and Sensibility is a scathing attack on the Romantics and what Austen thought was an affected love of nature.

One thing is for sure: we would not know of the Bronte sisters if it weren’t for Radcliffe. Jane Eyre definitely has that Gothic thing going on in the middle of the book with the mysterious estate. But the worst part of book is the most Gothic when Jane’s considering marrying St John and she hears Rochester’s voice from the ether, “Jane! Jane! Jane!” If I were to rewrite the the novel, she would hear, “Jane, come back to me! But first kill St John because he is the most annoying character ever!” But certainly, it was Emily Bronte who perfected that Gothic novel with Wuthering Heights. To this day, while I admire that book, I feel very strongly that Emily Bronte needed to be slapped.

The middle section of Jane Eyre is actually more in keeping with what Radcliffe wrote. In her novels, things seem strange but there is always a rational reason for it. Intellectually, she was definitely part of the Enlightenment, even if she was a big source of inspiration for the Romantics. Edgar Allan Poe was clearly aware of her work, although (as usual) he didn’t think much of her. And she was an influence far past that. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is clearly influenced by her.

Like a lot of the early novelists, I think that Radcliffe thought of herself as more a poet than a novelist. Just like Cervantes, she peppered her novels with poetry. And just like with Cervantes, everyone agrees she was a mediocre poet. Walter Scott, who was an admirer of her, noted that “her prose was poetry and her poetry was prose.” But you have to give artists credit who, while slogging out what the people want, still take the time to do what they love. I’ve always admired that about about Thomas Hardy, although in his case it is generally admitted that he was a rather good poet. And anyway, given his trajectory, any novel after Jude the Obscure was certain to cause widespread suicide.

As you can probably tell, I’ve never read any of her novels. It’s just not my kind of thing. I have read some of her poems, however. They aren’t bad — at least in a technical sense. In fact, she a fine feel for the formalism of the time. But given her reputation for evocative descriptions in her novels, it is shocking how banal her poetry is. Again, as with Cervantes, I think that the rigidity of the form suppresses the great creativity that existed in her. So I think you can take a pass on reading any of her poetry. But if you are in love the Brontes, Ann Radcliffe is probably worth checking out.

Happy birthday Ann Radcliffe!