Book Review: The World Broke in Two

[osprey_archer]

I was under the impression that the world, or at least the Bloomsbury Group corner of it, broke in two on or about some date in 1910 (and there is something extremely Bloomsbury about the willingness to generalize from a break with social mores in one's tiny social group to a sea change in the ENTIRE WORLD) - but either I am misremembering utterly, or Bill Goldstein is riffing off this quote in the title of his book The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature. Which is about 1922.

I am not sure that this book wholly lives up to its title; most of these authors neither published nor completed anything particularly stunning in 1922. In fact, now that I think about it, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is the only one that really counts. Woolf & Lawrence had their best work ahead and E. M. Forster - I actually don't know the critical opinions of E. M. Forster's work; is A Passage to India considered his best? In any case he didn't finish it till 1923.

So don't read this book for the supposed thesis, because it's bunk. 1922 is not a sea change in literature, just a convenient way to arrange an otherwise unwieldy amount of material about four quite disparate people.

However, the book doesn't lean much on this supposed thesis - it really does seem more like a convenient organizational tool than anything else - so it might be worth reading if you're interested in any of the four writers aforementioned.

Or if you just want to read a book that could be entitled Moderate Neurosis: A Writer's Life, this is the book for you. Nervous breakdowns all over the place! Lots of gazing into space while sitting at a desk before a half-completed manuscript! T. S. Eliot spends six months not getting the manuscript of The Waste Land typed, even though publishers are literally begging for it (even though none of them have read it yet! Because it's still in manuscript! WHAT IF IT WAS TERRIBLE, YOU GUYS?) and that is the only thing standing between him and publication, acclaim, and a much-needed infusion of cash.

Admittedly at the time Eliot was in the process of getting his own magazine off the ground and perhaps having second thoughts about having his poem published at a magazine that would be a rival, which leads one to suspect that his dilatoriness was at least as much a business strategy as neurosis.

His publishers are so heroically patient with him, too. When he finally gets them the poem - still handwritten! - they rush it into print in the autumn issue and give him a big fancy prize for it, never mind that this will give his magazine (which is a rival to their magazine) an enormous boost in prestige.

Actually I get this feeling about a lot of publishers of yesteryear: they're often heroically patient with their authors, even when said authors don't sell that well. (Lawrence's sales aren't good at all, but his publisher puts out book after book. Someday he will find his public!) It was a different time.

Comments

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[kore]

That's....weird. It sort of works for Woolf, because 1922 was Jacob's Room and when she started to write about Mrs Dalloway in linked short stories. Forster wrote the travel guide to Alexandria, but that wasn't exactly revolutionary. It REALLY doesn't work for Lawrence, who left Europe for America and racketing around between Ceylon, Australia, Taos, &c &c. He did write Kangaroo in 1922, which is terrible, and Studies in Classic American Literature, which was very influential in the fifties and early sixties but has fallen way out of fashion like most of his prophetic pronouncements.

I don't think I've ever seen a convincing explanation for "On or about December 1910, human character changed." I've always thought she was taking the piss, or referring dryly to Halley's comet. Although rather amusingly someone has written a book that sounds a lot like this one -- about Bloomsbury in 1910! http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674636064

[osprey_archer]

I guess he just felt that he needed to have a thesis of some sort to make the publisher happy; he doesn't really refer back to it after the introduction, so perhaps even he realized it wasn't a very strong one.

I may have read that book about Bloomsbury too. Or perhaps considered reading it but didn't get around to it yet? I ought to have a better memory for these things...

[kore]

There do seem to be a lot of "19--/18--: The Year X was Invented" or "Human Nature Changed" or whatever books now, or maybe their existence just makes me grumpier than it used to.

[thisbluespirit]

T. S. Eliot spends six months not getting the manuscript of The Waste Land typed, even though publishers are literally begging for it (even though none of them have read it yet! Because it's still in manuscript! WHAT IF IT WAS TERRIBLE, YOU GUYS?)

LOL. It's like fandom and WIPs. Sort of.

I know why history theses need to have an angle or a hook, but often they cause so much trouble, because really, no, everything didn't change with this one thing, and it can be so annoying when the book is otherwise interesting, but the author is pushing this unconvincing thesis argument, because otherwise it's just, like, biography. (I see nothing wrong in biography; this was a lot of my problem in why I remained a fairly middle of the road history student at uni. Why was I required to have a provocative opinion and prove it? I had no such opinions, except once, and it was the wrong one.)

Actually I get this feeling about a lot of publishers of yesteryear: they're often heroically patient with their authors,

I think there were a lot of smaller printers/publishers; therefore your author was someone you had a close relationship with (you might even sometimes be their editor, and they wouldn't have had an agent). Although, even today, especially once an author is v famous and has been with a publishing house for a while, you still get that, with editors (who, of course, are not the top executives, who are the ones who are less likely to be patient).

Barry Cunningham of Bloomsbury famously took Harry Potter, after it had been rejected by just about everyone else - and Bloomsbury was not a big publishing house - and J. K. Rowling met him and said, actually it's a seven book series, and he was Somewhat Perturbed, as one might be. But then she told him the ending. (He told my library conference this, so this is actually not something I read somewhere! It's true! Unless he was lying. And, actually, he told us this somewhere around Book 4 or 5, so he was lucky he didn't get dragged off somewhere to get the secret out of him.)

And GRR Martin's publishers, and Jean Auel's, and Susanna Clarke's. (Are the publishers of brick like fantasy works more saintly than others?)

(Sorry. /waffle.)

[osprey_archer]

Well, publishing is... kind of like fandom for original work, right? "PLEASE UPDATE SOON," the swooning public demands, and then turn about to savage the update if it turns out to be terrible.

In this case the author kind of forgets he has a thesis after the introduction, which is all to the good; he just moseys around picking up interesting bits of information about stuff that happened to these various authors in 1922 and occasionally gestures vaguely toward the fact that it focused and sharpened their literary vision or what have you.

And I am so impressed that your library conference didn't lock Barry Cunningham up somewhere and ply him with tea and crumpets till he told you the ending of Harry Potter. I would have been tempted!

[thisbluespirit]

There was a distinctive reaction in the lecture theatre that suggested the thought was passing through our collective mind... (Probably he had practised his getaway run to perfection by that time!)

[littlerhymes]

Moderate Neurosis: A Writer's Life

I lol'd. GOSH they were patient with Eliot!

(I never really liked A Passage to India. Much prefer Howards End and A Room with a View, 1910 and 1908. But to your point - a thesis this is not!)

[osprey_archer]

A Room with a View was the first Forster that I read, so probably I am biased, but it is obviously the best. Obviously!

[brigdh]

T. S. Eliot spends six months not getting the manuscript of The Waste Land typed

Oh, Eliot. I identify with him more now than I ever have before!

'A Passage to India' is MY favorite of Forster's work! But I think the most critically acclaimed is probably either A Room with a View or Maurice, though Maurice of course wasn't actually published until long, long after it was written, which makes it hard to assign to a world-changing year.

[osprey_archer]

Doesn't that make us ALL identify with Eliot, though.

At least till it turns out that maybe he wasn't so much procrastinating as cunningly trying to undercut his potential competitors for his new magazine. That is a level of masterminding beyond me, alas.

I should probably try to read Maurice again. I tried to read it during my first Forster binge when I was a teenager but it was just SO SAD - I didn't get to the end; I know it has a happy ending, which is radical in context etc. etc., but SO MUCH SADNESS on the way.