marginally sublime
If nothing but posting is getting done this afternoon, I place the blame squarely on Melville's all but unreadable Confidence Man. So I can't take credit for Hadley's discovery (email excerpted below), but i want to share it cause I know at least a couple of you will get the same tingly joy I did from this scene of the collision of three great texts (Emerson's, Porte's, and our marginalist's):
"I love library books because I love marginalia. I especially love marginalia when it is as compelling as that which appears in the library's copy of Joel Porte's "Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists in Conflict." The informal annotations in question are cheekily written in pen, all caps. 'FRAIDY ESCAPISM it begins, followed up by - and this is reference to Hawthorne - SELF-POSSESSED NEUROTIC. And then I was hooked. Who was this reader whose hostility toward transcendental thought prompted him (or her) to call Emerson a SCHIZOID HERMIT? Who, despite his or her outrage over the content of the book, kept reading long enough to level the charge of MONKISH HANDJIVER (my favorite new insult) against Emerson's audience? Should we take this as a cautionary tale? Will we too one day find ourselves adding emphatically AND MAKE PEOPLE CRINGE AT YOUR SIGHT to Emerson's dictum: "Now and then a man exquisitely made can and must live alone; but coop up most men, and you undo them." Or is this an undergraduate lashing out at the TA who, like the artists he or she hates (SIMPLY INTROVERTS), dared make him or her read secondary literature? Or was this you, Cristie? .....
....... or Cara?
............ or maybe Rob, working out SC-related aggression?
In any case, I must return to my SELF-SERVING PHILOSOPHY. If any of you monkish handjivers would like a drink tonight, do call. xoxo H"
"I love library books because I love marginalia. I especially love marginalia when it is as compelling as that which appears in the library's copy of Joel Porte's "Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists in Conflict." The informal annotations in question are cheekily written in pen, all caps. 'FRAIDY ESCAPISM it begins, followed up by - and this is reference to Hawthorne - SELF-POSSESSED NEUROTIC. And then I was hooked. Who was this reader whose hostility toward transcendental thought prompted him (or her) to call Emerson a SCHIZOID HERMIT? Who, despite his or her outrage over the content of the book, kept reading long enough to level the charge of MONKISH HANDJIVER (my favorite new insult) against Emerson's audience? Should we take this as a cautionary tale? Will we too one day find ourselves adding emphatically AND MAKE PEOPLE CRINGE AT YOUR SIGHT to Emerson's dictum: "Now and then a man exquisitely made can and must live alone; but coop up most men, and you undo them." Or is this an undergraduate lashing out at the TA who, like the artists he or she hates (SIMPLY INTROVERTS), dared make him or her read secondary literature? Or was this you, Cristie? .....
....... or Cara?
............ or maybe Rob, working out SC-related aggression?
In any case, I must return to my SELF-SERVING PHILOSOPHY. If any of you monkish handjivers would like a drink tonight, do call. xoxo H"
posted by cele at 1:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home