The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.— J. B. Priestley, born in 1894
BLACK FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019
“Eliot is one hell of a writer. Good God, she’s superb. I’m an old man but it’s still a thrill to pick up a book and find oneself, even in old age, taken by that thrall one felt years ago when one was captured by a book, seized ahold of and shaken into wonder, mystery and delight.”
Daniel Deronda is the adopted son of an English aristocrat, with who Gwendolyn falls in love. Deronda rescues the beautiful Jewish actress and singer Mirah Lapidoth from suicide by drowning, introducing us to another interesting and endearing character. He then becomes intimately involved with the society of English Jewry.
Deronda later discovers his Jewish birth from his dying mother who was the daughter of a prominent Rabbi, who married her cousin. Deronda's story therefore as that of a Jew brought up as a Gentile aristocrat before discovering his identity and committing himself to the national welfare of his people is partly based on that of Moses.
The book puts some focus, mainly through conversation on the yearning of the Jewish people to return to the Holy Land to rebuild the Jewish Commonwealth. Deronda and Mirah later leave
England to help rebuild the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. This component of the novel has lead some prejudiced bigots, such as the loathsome Edward Said to condemn this 1876 classic as `Zionist propaganda'-an Orwellian charge indeed.
People like Said cannot abide the anything that relates to the right of the Jews to live in and return to their ancient homeland.
At the time of this novel's writing progressives saw the revival of nations and national self-determination as a positive thing. It was only nearly a century later that the nihilistic New Left in a sick and bizarre twist began to label the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland as an act of `colonialism'.
'Writing on What Pleased Me Best'
The internet has taught me an ugly, useful transitive verb, tomonetize: “To exploit (a product, service, audience, etc.) so that it generates revenue,” the OED explains. This usage is new, though ancient in digital terms, with the earliest citation dating from 1998. Online, people are forever monetizing something or other, turning a hobby, skill or character flaw into cash, and I have nothing against that (though I haven’t monetized this blog, the very idea of which sounds like a joke). My entire career, in fact, is based on monetizing my sole marketable gift – fluency with language. Give me a topic and no more than sixty minutes and I’ll give you twelve column-inches of reasonably competent prose.
I recently (and privately) observed the fortieth anniversary of my occupation as a writer. Earlier I had cooked, sold books, tended bar and pumped gas but for the rest of my life I’ve been a pen for hire. I started as the editor of a weekly newspaper in a small town in Northwestern Ohio. I’ve always had models in mind when writing, which is not the same as influence or plagiarism. Guy Davenport speculated that every book is a response to another book, whether or not the writer is conscious of his motive. In those early days I kept in mind A.J. Liebling and William Hazlitt. The latter’s essay “My First Acquaintance with Poets” was especially inspirational, as when he describes his younger self as “dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding lifeless . . .”
It seems significant that the first thing I wrote that was monetized – that is, for which I was paid – was the obituary of a man named Miller. I’ve spent a lot of time since then writing about dead people, who sometimes seem more substantial and interesting than many of the living. Another sentence from Hazlitt’s essay now reads prophetically:
“So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best.”