The Coarse Underwear of Some Minds

It's official: if I read another word written by Jack London, I will hunt down his great-grandchildren and make them pay for his sins by shaking my fist with force and a countenance so unsubtle even their great-grandfather would understand it. 

Arguments about aesthetics often boil down to nebulous notions of complexity, but I think that wrong-headed.  Boiled to the bone, it really is a matter of what familiarity breeds: contempt or contemplation.  But the category of contempt needs to be considered more carefully.  Does it breed a contempt for a particular author or for the written word itself?  Does reading and re-reading a particular author drain from you the desire to ever read anything again?  Does it make you doubt the value of the printed word? 

To counter the "London Effect" I'm re-re-reading Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  I've read it through twice and both times I've been struck by the intensity of the experience of reading a 2,545-page unfinished novel.  After 250 pages you begin to think like the narrator.  I'm all of eleven pages into my re-re-reading, but its allure's already a comforting reacquaintance.  Reading about the "the fine underwear of their minds," or what it's like to be "irritated by the subservience of a man who was, after all, a member of the intellectual aristocracy toward the owner of horses, fields, and traditions" reminds me that not all writers possess the "depths" of Jack London.  I've been plumbing them and my forehead pounds from my results. 

Comments

[Stephen Schryer]

I can only think of a few writers for whom this "exhaustion effect" does not apply - Joyce and Pynchon come to mind, since both of them were very careful about what they published and generally (with some exceptions) avoided writing too much occasional journalism and essays (although there's a collection of these for Joyce).

It applies to virtually every other writer and strikes you particularly hard when you're dissertating and have to read everything they've ever written. I just finished doing this with Mary McCarthy, and by the time I had finished the mediocre stuff (like her book-length report on the Watergate scandal - who the hell reads that anymore?) had thoroughly infected the good stuff that got me interested in her in the first place.

[anonymous worker on the cathedral]

Poor fellow, hang in there. I speak as someone who greatly appreciates both London and Musil. Can I suggest a better palate-cleansing sorbet after London would be something fruitier from the American 19th century? Thoreau or Whitman? Just little doses, mind you. Then a swallow or two of Poe.

BTW, The Man Without Qualities is perfectly finished, Musil just didn't realize it. Pretend the second volume never happened and you'll be fine. :-P

[the Little Womedievalist]

My recommendation would be a good dose of Ockham. Even a small dose will have you longing for London in a matter of minutes.

[Walter P. Wadiak, jr.]

Will have you, in fact, reaching for a razor blade...

Sorry; somebody had to say it.