I am an Apollonian, one of those whom, in 1946, Auden warned Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa against, “who read the bible for its prose.” Generally, it is form*, not content, that gives me the greatest pleasure (or displeasure) when I read. Occasionally I can get carried away by an intriguing plot, a sympathetic character or a clever idea that hadn’t occurred to me, in which case the importance of form, as long as it is competent, diminishes.
Sometimes—most often when I’m reading short fiction—I feel as if I am present, that I am there with the author while her or she is writing the story and making important (to me, at least) formal decisions about what, at that moment, I am reading. It’s almost as if I were looking over his or her shoulder, kibitzing while he or she writes.
“Very nice,” I’ll say (sometimes even aloud) or “Oh, no, that just doesn’t work.”
For some months I’ve kept a book of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories (“Stories”, Vintage Classics, 1991) beside the chair where I go to sit and have a cigarette after dinner.
I’ve read Mansfield’s stories on and off for many years. some of them more than once. This particular edition, which I have been going through at random, includes more stories than other Mansfield collections I’ve read. I’m not sure whether it’s a “Complete Stories”, but it has stories in it which I have not seen elsewhere. And I can understand how the editor/curators of other collections, wanting to present Mansfield at her best, might have felt that some weren’t up to snuff’s pristine standards.
Less than perfect short stories can still be wonderful—as wonderful as perfect stories. And unlike perfect stories, they allow the author-at-work to show through. Even if the writing seems effortless, which is the most basic requirement of any piece of prose, the reader of a less than perfect story--this reader, anyway—can tell when an author is fumbling a bit, or being overambitious, or trying to say more than the prose can carry, or straining for originality, etc., etc., or has abandoned any hope of making its parts into a unified whole.
In the light of the stories of Mansfield’s that were new to me, as I read those and re-read others, I began to sense Mansfield as a person—not the person of the biographies and Wikipedia (all that stuff happened long before I met her), but Mansfield as the person writing what I am reading.
For some reason (not worth speculating about) I have become emotionally involved with Katherine Mansfield, the craftswomen as, a century ago, she created the story I'm reading. When she succeeds, I am proud of her; when she doesn't, I'm understanding; I admire what she was attempting to do.
In her story, “Je ne parle pas Français”, Mansfield attempts to break through the boundaries of fiction set by Literature. (She was hardly the only author attempting this at the time.) She fails. (In my humble opinion, she fails because the tale itself isn't strong enough for a breakthrough.)
It was while reading “Je ne parle pas Français” for the first time that I realized that I was no longer just an affectionate kibitzer leaning over Katherine Mansfield’s shoulder.
I had fallen in love.
How did I know?
(1) I felt it, right here in my heart (a couple of inches above my physiological heart): the place where we always feel love.
(2) Usually, when I finish reading a story by a short story writer whose work I know pretty well (Chekhov, Saroyan, Kipling, Welty come to mind at this moment) I find myself comparing it with other stories by that writer and giving it a ranking. It is only a passing thought, accompanied by the awareness that it is complete nonsense and that I will probably change my mind the next time I read the story. I finished “Je ne parle pas Français” without experiencing that unfortunate critical tic, which has plagued me since college.
Katherine Mansfield—not who she was (1888-1929), but who she is now, as I sit in the evening and read her—is my darling, my beloved. Whatever she writes is beautiful. It sometimes may be not so well-crafted, it sometimes may not even particularly move me—it is beautiful because I love her.
That being said—I urge any of the happy few (half-a-dozen? I should be so lucky) who happen to have gotten me this far, to read “The Fly”, available here on the Katherine Mansfield Society’s admirable website. It’s just four pages and I promise you, you have never read anything like it.
Sometimes—most often when I’m reading short fiction—I feel as if I am present, that I am there with the author while her or she is writing the story and making important (to me, at least) formal decisions about what, at that moment, I am reading. It’s almost as if I were looking over his or her shoulder, kibitzing while he or she writes.
“Very nice,” I’ll say (sometimes even aloud) or “Oh, no, that just doesn’t work.”
For some months I’ve kept a book of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories (“Stories”, Vintage Classics, 1991) beside the chair where I go to sit and have a cigarette after dinner.
I’ve read Mansfield’s stories on and off for many years. some of them more than once. This particular edition, which I have been going through at random, includes more stories than other Mansfield collections I’ve read. I’m not sure whether it’s a “Complete Stories”, but it has stories in it which I have not seen elsewhere. And I can understand how the editor/curators of other collections, wanting to present Mansfield at her best, might have felt that some weren’t up to snuff’s pristine standards.
Less than perfect short stories can still be wonderful—as wonderful as perfect stories. And unlike perfect stories, they allow the author-at-work to show through. Even if the writing seems effortless, which is the most basic requirement of any piece of prose, the reader of a less than perfect story--this reader, anyway—can tell when an author is fumbling a bit, or being overambitious, or trying to say more than the prose can carry, or straining for originality, etc., etc., or has abandoned any hope of making its parts into a unified whole.
In the light of the stories of Mansfield’s that were new to me, as I read those and re-read others, I began to sense Mansfield as a person—not the person of the biographies and Wikipedia (all that stuff happened long before I met her), but Mansfield as the person writing what I am reading.
For some reason (not worth speculating about) I have become emotionally involved with Katherine Mansfield, the craftswomen as, a century ago, she created the story I'm reading. When she succeeds, I am proud of her; when she doesn't, I'm understanding; I admire what she was attempting to do.
In her story, “Je ne parle pas Français”, Mansfield attempts to break through the boundaries of fiction set by Literature. (She was hardly the only author attempting this at the time.) She fails. (In my humble opinion, she fails because the tale itself isn't strong enough for a breakthrough.)
It was while reading “Je ne parle pas Français” for the first time that I realized that I was no longer just an affectionate kibitzer leaning over Katherine Mansfield’s shoulder.
I had fallen in love.
How did I know?
(1) I felt it, right here in my heart (a couple of inches above my physiological heart): the place where we always feel love.
(2) Usually, when I finish reading a story by a short story writer whose work I know pretty well (Chekhov, Saroyan, Kipling, Welty come to mind at this moment) I find myself comparing it with other stories by that writer and giving it a ranking. It is only a passing thought, accompanied by the awareness that it is complete nonsense and that I will probably change my mind the next time I read the story. I finished “Je ne parle pas Français” without experiencing that unfortunate critical tic, which has plagued me since college.
Katherine Mansfield—not who she was (1888-1929), but who she is now, as I sit in the evening and read her—is my darling, my beloved. Whatever she writes is beautiful. It sometimes may be not so well-crafted, it sometimes may not even particularly move me—it is beautiful because I love her.
That being said—I urge any of the happy few (half-a-dozen? I should be so lucky) who happen to have gotten me this far, to read “The Fly”, available here on the Katherine Mansfield Society’s admirable website. It’s just four pages and I promise you, you have never read anything like it.
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