Book Review: Queed
Sep. 19th, 2023 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAfter my visit to Mankato, I’m not quite ready to let go of Maud Hart Lovelave yet. In addition to reading some of her own non-Betsy-Tacy books (about which more anon), I’ve been reading some of the books that her characters read in Betsy-Tacy, starting with Henry Sydnor Harrison’s 1910 bestseller Queed, mentioned in Carney’s House Party.
Queed was evidently THE hit book of 1910. Queed is the name of our unlikely hero, a scholarly young man who is writing a book about sociology - at a rate of twenty hours a day, stopping only for mealtimes. In the chill evenings, he works in the dining room, and irascibly banishes his landlady’s daughter if she dares to intrude to work her algebra, as his work is clearly so important that it deserves perfect silence.
The book is, of course, about his closed bud of a life opening out - at first, somewhat hilariously, mainly through the proddings of wounded vanity. When he finds himself too physically weak to thrash the typesetter who introduced an error into one of his articles, he takes up exercise. When he learns he’s about to be fired from the paper because his articles are so dull, he takes up the art of newspaper writing with the same ferocious energy he has hitherto applied to sociology, determined to show those rascals that he can write just as well as they can!
But, in between exercise, and newspaper writing, and accidentally befriending the landlady’s daughter, and then accidentally making yet more friends, he begins to realize that… perhaps… he needs to allow the principle of altruism that animates his sociological theories to animate his own life, as well? That, in fact, perhaps that principle is worthless if it doesn’t influence his own actions?
This is just an EXTREMELY 1910 plotline: the sound mind in a sound body theory, the idea that active good works in one’s immediate vicinity is the most important thing that human can do, the gently ironic humor with which the story is told. There’s an earnestness about it which I suspect was popular when it came out, and made it sink like a stone when the modernists came in during the 1920s.
Reading it in 2023, it also jumps out at you how thoroughly this book has embraced the white Southern point of view. The book is set in an up-and-coming Southern city (never named), loyal to the United States but loyaller still to its rapturous memories of its Confederate soldiers. Black people appear in the briefest glimpses, always as servants. The end of Reconstruction was an unvarnished joy, and loathing is heaped upon the memory of that villain Henry G. Surface who had the audacity to join the Republicans.
Queed was evidently THE hit book of 1910. Queed is the name of our unlikely hero, a scholarly young man who is writing a book about sociology - at a rate of twenty hours a day, stopping only for mealtimes. In the chill evenings, he works in the dining room, and irascibly banishes his landlady’s daughter if she dares to intrude to work her algebra, as his work is clearly so important that it deserves perfect silence.
The book is, of course, about his closed bud of a life opening out - at first, somewhat hilariously, mainly through the proddings of wounded vanity. When he finds himself too physically weak to thrash the typesetter who introduced an error into one of his articles, he takes up exercise. When he learns he’s about to be fired from the paper because his articles are so dull, he takes up the art of newspaper writing with the same ferocious energy he has hitherto applied to sociology, determined to show those rascals that he can write just as well as they can!
But, in between exercise, and newspaper writing, and accidentally befriending the landlady’s daughter, and then accidentally making yet more friends, he begins to realize that… perhaps… he needs to allow the principle of altruism that animates his sociological theories to animate his own life, as well? That, in fact, perhaps that principle is worthless if it doesn’t influence his own actions?
This is just an EXTREMELY 1910 plotline: the sound mind in a sound body theory, the idea that active good works in one’s immediate vicinity is the most important thing that human can do, the gently ironic humor with which the story is told. There’s an earnestness about it which I suspect was popular when it came out, and made it sink like a stone when the modernists came in during the 1920s.
Reading it in 2023, it also jumps out at you how thoroughly this book has embraced the white Southern point of view. The book is set in an up-and-coming Southern city (never named), loyal to the United States but loyaller still to its rapturous memories of its Confederate soldiers. Black people appear in the briefest glimpses, always as servants. The end of Reconstruction was an unvarnished joy, and loathing is heaped upon the memory of that villain Henry G. Surface who had the audacity to join the Republicans.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-20 01:24 pm (UTC)This sounds like one of those things where good principles (in this case the 1910s good principles that MHL is showing in the story, not the good principles that Queed sets out with initially) make life better because of course they do! Live according to Right Principles, and life improves! And in general, I suppose that's true. But it's just not such an easy cause-and-effect thing as we might wish.... I'm thinking of this show Strange Universe, on Apple TV, which is based on these comics, which you've probably seen. But the comics are sometimes rather sharp (without ever being bleak or cruel), whereas the show is rather agressively prescriptivist. The episode that made me shake my head was when parents, tired of the bickering of the soccer-hating daughter and the soccer-mad son, said they had to spend time together understanding each other. And the show contrived to have it be that when the daughter once tried soccer, she loved it. Wow! It's that simple! I forget what concession the son had to make to the daughter--it obviously didn't make much of an impression on me. But more importantly, sometimes you put people together and insist that they try to understand each other and ... it just doesn't work out! Like maybe in some cases a better solution is "Don't insist that watching soccer together is going to be our one and only way of spending quality family time." ... What I mean to say with this extremely digressive example is that writers sometimes see cause and effect as inevitable and write it that way, and if as a reader you doubt that, then you feel unsatisfied.
Reading along with your description, I felt charmed! I do think getting out and living your ideals in a concrete way is good, and being with real people instead of just in your head is good, and varying your activities in a day and taking care of your physical body are important etc. And yet. It's not as easy as just "Oh wow, I never thought about this and now that I'm trying it, everything is so much better." ... But maybe I wouldn't even think that if you hadn't voice doubts, and especially if you hadn't mentioned the part about the Southern viewpoint. That really puts a pall on things, and I wonder how much of my negative reaction is retroactive, from reading that last paragraph.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-20 01:46 pm (UTC)Yes, this book is in some ways definitely too tidy, although not so much that it wasn't fun to read. The individual steps make sense in themselves, but there were definitely moments when I was like "But would he change this much? Could he change this much?" as cumulatively the steps became transformative. But there's also something appealing about watching a character change - about feeling that change is possible, I guess? You're not just locked in to being the worst version of yourself. And he does somehow remain the same person while also changing a lot.
I think every generation has its prescription for what to do to make one's life better (the current one seems to be "therapy"), and there's always a certain appeal to art where this works out well, even if you bring to it a nagging knowledge that in real life it doesn't always work. And of course another generation's prescription is apt to seem charmingly quaint.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-20 01:59 pm (UTC)Oh: and I didn't link to the comics. They're these ones.
ETA: And the show is Strange Planet, not Strange Universe