The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

This is the folder to plan and begin chatting about Zuleika Dobson

I love Zuleika Dobson! It's social satire and very funny. I reread it a couple of years ago so I won't reread but may dive into the discussion based on memory.

This is a funny, outrageous book.

Welcome to all who care to Buddy Read Zuleika Dobson; Or an Oxford Love Story.

Thank you to Francis for creating this space for us.

My initial suggestion is that we look to open our respective copies by Monday June 17 with the goal of chapters1-5 by Friday. Goals are important, so is flexibility. Between the few I expect to join us we can agree to speed or slow the pace to suit the general opinion.

Respective copies, mine is a fairly damaged copy from some time after 1946. There are numerous editions including free on line copy. My suggestion is that it is a fairly short book and as long as we stay with chapter sized units there should be no problem. Unless you know otherwise I do not think MB ever made major re writes.

I have only a minimum experience leading book discussions. Feel free to speak up if I have forgotten any important or trivial points.

When in the lead I try to moderate myself least there be any confusion about a reasonable expectation of mutual respect. I like a tad of heat. Zuleika is a fairly light book so perhaps there will be no items of major contention.

Then again, I am a believer in the old saw: Disagreements among academics are so violent because there is so little at stake.

Absent your suggestions for improving the operations - this is the Admin section.

A little Background Max Beerbohn

Born August 1872 Died May 1956
The Wiki Short Form:
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the Saturday Review from 1898 until 1910, when he relocated to Rapallo, Italy. Wikipedia

If you wish more, I liked this one:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/...

Zuleika is his only novel. First published in 1911. I have read enough reviews to suspect that the most friendly one are perhaps moreso because of a fondness for the author. I do not mean to slight the work except that it is rather slight and not considered as (All Caps) Great or Classic Literature. No one is going to confuse it with Anna Karenina. Or maybe some one here will argue otherwise. A case can be made.

Evidently it was important to MB that this not be read as a satire. Again a topic for us to ponder. To him this was a fantasy. MB was a graduate from Oxford and may have wanted this book as a memorial to what he experienced as much as a-- well a satire.
So our scene is Judas College at Oxford where a very pretty young unmarried lady is going to find herself (yet Again ) Surrounded by young fawning men.

My sense is that there are a lot of ways we can add to this chat with some pictures. I encourage any add what they think will help. For now I have a few introductory images:
The man, and a typical self-caricature.





Max attend Merton College at Oxford and the safe bet is that it is the model for Judas

The Emperors! Thanks for the find!

As of now we are8 days out.
How many still need another week for kick off?

That's an extraordinarily beautiful photograph, Christopher! Do you know who took it?

Abigail wrote: "That's an extraordinarily beautiful photograph, Christopher! Do you know who took it?"

When I do a retro google search, it links to the Sheldonian Theatre website, so I guess it's an official promotional photograph:

https://www.sheldonian.ox.ac.uk/

second call
Who still needs a week for the official start?

I’m using the Project Gutenberg edition and therefore can begin anytime it is convenient for the rest of you.

It may just be Christopher Jenny and me. This is a re read for Chris.

Ok here are some thoughts that struck me so far
Is this a so called academic or college novel?
Need we parse out terms like satire and comedy
Analyzing comedy may be a fools errand, but I am feeling foolish.

A long term question.
If every novel is somewhat biographical, Can we picture Noaks as the College Boy Max Beerbohn?

If nothing else I hope this gets the ol juices going.

I last read it a couple of years ago but can also join in.

I got to about Chapt 8 and stopped , looks like I need to get in a much higher gear

So lets get some of the response?

I’ve only read through chapter four. Trying to decide how I feel about the mock heroic tone of the writing. Unrelieved satire can sometimes wear thin for me. But then we are given a beautifully written passage like the one in chapter 4 about the bells ringing the hour.

“The air was confused with the sweet babel of its many spires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinkling impatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them.”

With regard to the university setting, I think it is essential. A secluded world of maleness and youth, the two qualities essential to Zulieka’s perceived happiness.

Jenny wrote: "I’ve only read through chapter four. Trying to decide how I feel about the mock heroic tone of the writing. Unrelieved satire can sometimes wear thin for me. But then we are given a beautifully wri..."

I am now around the 2/3s mark .
I too am finding the tone wearing thin.

Maybe if someone can point to something that works for them I can re kindle my fire.

Well, although the story is preposterous on the surface it does, I think, shed some pretty shrewd light on groupthink and the power of peer pressure.

If anyone is interested in checking out the 2015 discussions here is the link to the background section

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

there are lots of digressions but there is also some interesting information about Beerbohm and society at the time.

I scanned through that discussion. Much of it I had read elsewhere, but felt it was too soon to mention.

Of Max's Oxford experience. What is known of it? Was he a popular? A jock? or more of a Noaks?

I’ve only just finished chapter 7, so still behind many of those who have commented. I also tend to avoid looking at background info until I’ve completed a book, so my thoughts are far from complete.

However, clearly Beerbohm is mocking love as portrayed in romantic novels. But is he also mocking love itself? The tradition of unrequited love inspiring art? Was the pretty passage I enjoyed and quoted above included in the mockery of overblown romantic writing?

Was Beerbohm encouraging celibacy as alternate inspiration for art? Was he celibate himself (if he was indeed celibate) for philosophical reasons? Or convincing himself that his reasons were philosophical?

Once you begin mocking, it’s hard to decide where the mockery ends. My above questions may be considered rhetorical but I would also encourage anyone who has a firmer grasp on satire than myself to jump in with any clarification or evaluation they can provide! (Half-a**ed opinions like my own are acceptable as well!)

P.S. I haven’t even reached a point where Noaks has begun to figure in to the equation!

Counter-question: was celibacy still a requirement for Oxford-Cambridge fellows, or had that been abandoned? It was the rule in the early nineteenth century that fellows never marry.

Jenny wrote: "P.S. I haven’t even reached a point where Noaks has begun to figure in to the equation!"

I am not sure if Noaks figures in or exists as other than a negative. Noaks is not whatever it is that the Duke is.

It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure, on the whole.
"Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have been to a lecture?"
"Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.
"And what were they?" asked the Duke.

end quote.

Note that sentence, btw: Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure, on the whole.
The narrator has just explained, in context, why it is literally true, but it is still ironic. The inferior man considers the superior man pathetic.- which is basically the human condition.

This is what I mean by reverse double irony. I suppose it is also simple paradox, like one of Oscar Wilde's, or like ten thousand of Chesterton's.

I was looking through my excerpts for a passage I could quote and point to, and say, there, that's indisputably funny, but didn't find any 'money' quotes.

I liked the bit about the pearl studs- the symbols of the Duke's love. "He would have liked to wear them in the daytime, but of course that was impossible."

Christopher wrote: "I was looking through my excerpts for a passage I could quote and point to, and say, there, that's indisputably funny, but didn't find any 'money' quotes.

I liked the bit about the pearl studs- th..."

I think you let this one sneak by you.

“She did not look like an orphan," said the wife of the Oriel don
On Z' s first appearance at Oxford.

As I am fond of droll:
on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.

One I think is soon to happen :You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her.”

Speaking of like unto Wilde
It is the privilege of nobility to condescend.

Also funny-
The Duke has just enumerated, ad nauseam, his marriageable attributes: many mansions, quaint customs, ancient ghosts, devoted peasants...
Zuleika’s response is less than impressed: My reply is that I think you are an awful snob.

Or for those of us of questionable maturity who find nothing funnier than watching someone take a spectacular digger:
“Involuntarily, he ran—ran like a hare, and, at the corner of Turl Street, rose like a trout, saw the pavement rise at him, and fell, with a bang, prone.”

Or the uncomfortably true: You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But stand a crowd of sheep on their hind legs and you can make a crowd of men.

Beerbohm has a knack for pointing out our human absurdities but in a way which still shows a fondness for our contradictions.
I’ve finished the book and found I liked it very much. The satire gives way to tenderness for our human frailties but still gives us a bite at the end.

A few pages to go, I am underwhelmed.
I get the feeling this was written for some kind of live adaptation. Max was a theater critic, maybe this was intended to become a play.
So far I am just not believing he had any real feeling for love.
Did I miss read that there was a death among the leaping Lords of the Junta and no one ever seemed to notice?

Also this is not that funny, satirical or not. Fantasy is as good a word as any.

About love- there is one line in chapter 15 that was easily missed:

Now he knew that the secret, the open secret, of happiness was in mutual love—a state that needed not the fillip of death.

My thought was that while Beerbohm himself may know what love means his sole focus is poking fun at everything which is supposed to bring dignity to the human condition. He takes the ideals by which we try so hard to take ourselves seriously: love, honor, death and shows that even these lead us into absurd, false positions.

He never gives us a peek at the times that those ideals actually do lift our condition. Maybe not because he didn’t believe it to be possible, but to show the utter ridiculousness of our snobbish tendencies.

I don't know Phred. I'm a little surprised at your coldness, given that you have once or twice made pretty funny jokes yourself, and you have anglophilic proclivities, so to speak.

When I first read the book, years ago, I thought it explained love pretty well. Re-reading it, I was less charmed by the whole- I do think it goes on too long and has too many set pieces.

Looking again at my clippings, here are two more. Again, a light irony in using melodramatic cliches in an inverted sense:

"... I will be quite frank with you. I will confess to you that, in this humbling of myself before you, I take a pleasure as passionate as it is strange. A confusion of feelings? Yet you, with a woman's instinct, will have already caught the clue to it. It needs no mirror to assure me that the clue is here for you, in my eyes. It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul. And I know that from two open windows my soul has been leaning and signalling to you, in a code far more definitive and swifter than words of mine, that I love you."

Zuleika, listening to him, had grown gradually paler and paler. She had raised her hands and cowered as though he were about to strike her. And then, as he pronounced the last three words, she had clasped her hands to her face and with a wild sob darted away from him. She was leaning now against the window, her head bowed and her shoulders quivering.

Yellow highlight | Location: 477

"Sit down! You bewilder me," said the Duke. "Explain yourself!" he commanded.

"Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?"

"I don't know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has a right to some explanation from the woman who has ruined his life."

"You are frightfully sorry for yourself," said Zuleika, with a bitter laugh. "Of course it doesn't occur to you that I am at all to be pitied. No! you are blind with selfishness. You love me—I don't love you: that is all you can realise. Probably you think you are the first man who has ever fallen on such a plight."

So was any part of that funny?
Over wrought , over stylized maybe.
But Funny?
A smirk, perchance a secret smile. Something other than too much of frankly not very much.
I try to believe this might work on a stage,

Anyone with anything to say? Otherwise the impression is that there is not a lot of lov for poor ol Max B.

I found it very funny; but I tend to gravitate toward comedies of manners. That said, I can agree with those who felt that it got wearing. A long short story might have been more to modern tastes.

There were few laugh out loud funny parts but I found the story humorous over all, especially toward the end. My opinion of the book definitely shifted more in favor as the story progressed. Were there overwrought sections? Absolutely. The image of all those young men jumping into the river like lemmings and the Duke swimming to the surface briefly to discover the winner of the race was ridiculous. But IMO Beerbohm’s intent was to show humanity’s ridiculousness.

Irony works best when there is a shared cognizance between the author and audience. I have no experience with a setting such as Oxford nor have ever met a dandy. No one in my life chooses their lifestyle based upon their theories of art and beauty. So I had no instances of nodding wisely and saying “yes, I know someone like that”. I’m sure if I’d known an Oscar Wilde my experience of this novel would have been richer and I’d have probably found it even more humorous.

With that said, I found enough in the story which transcended the specific time and place to ring true for human nature generally. Beerbohm’s friendship with Wilde must have been a tenuous one at times. From what I’ve read, I can’t imagine Wilde being able to suspend his own image of himself long enough to laugh at his own foibles!

I will have more to say, perhaps in my review.
The Beerbohn/Wilde angle sounds interesting. Please say move.

Mostly I thin we have 1 central construct a variation on the immovable object and the irresistible force. The specific application is to humans, but need not be specific to its day and age.

I am rather revolted at the death so passively viewed but I get that the entire point of the story revolves around it.

Below is a link (or just a url if I haven’t successfully embedded the link) to a caricature of Wilde done by Beerbohm. I haven’t read too much about their friendship. I don’t get the impression they were especially close. Beerbohm seemed to enjoy satirizing Wilde and his work. Wilde is quoted as finding it funny. So I could be way off on my impression of Wilde not being the type to laugh at himself.

https://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/f...

But I will note that the scene is 1882 (Wilde's American tour), Wilde died in 1900, but the cartoon was drawn, and is dated 1916.

All I'm saying is, the link is more like an artistic influence than one of personal friendship, although Max's half-brother did play the lead in A Woman of No Importance.

I do have an anthology in which they both appear:

Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890's: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose

but with Beerbohm as one of the youngest, and Wilde as one of the oldest. Although without a doubt, they were contemporaries.

The tidbits I’ve found here and there on the web indicate that Beerbohm was introduced to Wilde when he was an undergraduate at Oxford, by Beerbohm’s half brother. (Beerbohm also had an infatuation with a young actress around this time).

Rupert Hart-Davis, who edited “The Letters of Oscar Wilde” in 1962 and “Max Beerbohm: Letters to Reggie Turner,” is quoted:
Long before the Wilde trials, as Rupert Hart-Davis remarks, Beerbohm's family "worried because so many of his friends were homosexual - Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas, Reggie Turner, Robbie Ross - but, although Max greatly enjoyed their company, there is no scrap of evidence that he ever shared their sexual propensities"

To Beerbohm, Wilde wrote that "The Happy Hypocrite," a "wonderful and beautiful story," was obviously inspired by his novel: "The implied and accepted recognition of Dorian Gray in the story cheers me. I had always been disappointed that my story had suggested no other work of art in others".

“A Peep into the Past” (edited by Rupert Hart-Davis) projects an alternative reality in which Oscar Wilde is an elderly, all but forgotten belle-lettrist, living ‘a life of quiet retirement in his little house on Tite Street with his wife and two sons, his prop and mainstay, solacing himself with many a reminiscence of the friends of his youth’. This was written by Beerbohm in 1893/4, a year before Wilde was brought down by scandal.

None of this indicates how close this friendship was between men of disparate ages. But with regards to Zuleika Dobson, it does hint to me that Beerbohm may have considered himself more of a Noaks- if we take a leap and link the Duke with Wilde. He obviously greatly admired Wilde but also publicly poked fun of his perceived faults and foresaw him “coming to a bad end.”

Jenny wrote: "The tidbits I’ve found here and there on the web indicate that Beerbohm was introduced to Wilde when he was an undergraduate at Oxford, by Beerbohm’s half brother. (Beerbohm also had an infatuation..."

Thanks for taking the time.
Maybe the best contribution to the thread.
Helped me for sure.

I agree w. Phred, although he is obliquely dissing me.

Yah, but whose photos are "extraordinarily beautiful"?

be fair Chris, I never dis you...
Obliquely
And yes I am jealous that your pic rated the "extraordinarily beautiful" and mine barely a nod.
Beside you found the Emperors and I never thought to look

Some of what I have read is that Max was one ,of a Jewish family but by family decision, this fact was suppressed or denied.
2 Either Homosexual or Asexual.

There is a letter to his first wife speaking tenderly but repeating the point that they would be childless with this being his decision.

For reasons I cannot defend I always think if Wilde as a very public Man about Town Type, voluble and social. My proof is slim so anyone knowing better here, is a free shot.

For a book so much about love, I see little evidence of it. As if Max is not able to imagine two people feeling passionate about each other. Then again, this is not really about love. It is, and the word is his a fantasy, not to be confused with reality.

For what it’s worth, I lifted this verbatim from the Victorian Web:

In July 1893, fifteen-year-old Cissy Loftus made her debut at the Oxford Music Hall (Beerbohm, Letters to Reggie Turner 42). Beerbohm was one of Cissy's most ardent admirers, and for the next few months his letters were full of his infatuation with her. Beerbohm insisted that his love for the young star had purified him. "I have become good and am really happy at last," he wrote to his friend, Will Rothenstein (Beerbohm and Rothenstein 18). Under this romantic influence, the references to Wilde in Beerbohm's letters became more critical.

That Beerbohm was distancing himself from his mentor was evidenced by his 19 August 1893 letter to Turner, in which he wrote, "Apropos of my former self, Oscar was at the last night of the Haymarket [Theatre]....Nor have I ever seen Oscar so fatuous....Of course I would rather see Oscar free than sober, but still, suddenly meeting him after my simple and lovely little ways of life since the Lady Cecilia [Cissy] first looked out from her convent-window, I felt quite repelled" (Letters to Reggie Turner 53). Repellent or not, Beerbohm still admired Wilde's writing, as another passage from the same letter demonstrated. "I have just been reading Salome again," he wrote, "terribly corrupt but there is much that is beautiful in it, much lovely writing: I almost wonder Oscar doesn't dramatise it" (Letters to Reggie Turner 53). In this uneasy alliance between homage and parody, Beerbohm undermined his professed admiration with a flippant closing paradox.

Beerbohm insisted that his love for the young star had purified him.

Beerbohm’s idea of love is not overly consistent with passion, which supports your point, Phrodrick.

When I think of a concept with a capital letter in regard to Zuleika, I don’t think of Love. I think of Dignity.

The Duke loses his dignity by groveling when he falls in love with Zuleika. When he realizes he can’t escape his fated death, he attempts to die with dignity by choosing when he jumps but is forced to jump early. Noaks at first is the only one who does not lose his dignity through mass suicide but is found hiding behind a curtain! And then jumps to his death anyway. Just when you think there can’t be anything more ridiculous than a river full of fools, you are faced with Noaks and his poorly timed death which makes even a river of fools look more dignified.

I liked how Beerbohm had the gods become involved with the Duke (not Noaks.) Looking down and chuckling to themselves. The Duke is still a victim of fate but he has gained their respect. I came away with the idea that there is nothing so ridiculous as a human being with delusions of self-importance. But the door is left open that you can at least differentiate yourself from the crowd.

What a poignant account, Jenny! It makes me terribly sad. It seems his perception of Wilde has been stained by their society's perception of homosexuality as sinful and disgusting; and Beerbohm himself is trying so hard to be not-that. Maybe he was or maybe he wasn't, but how hard it must have been (and still is, in some settings) to know and accept one's true self in such an atmosphere! I can't fathom the pain that must be felt, the damage to one's sense of self, when one is told that one's feelings of love and attraction are repellent and unnatural.

Phrodrick wrote:
Thanks for taking the time.
Christopher wrote: I agree with Phred

Thank you, gentlemen. With school out for summer break, I have time on my hands.....and apparently nothing better to do!

Abigail wrote: "What a poignant account, Jenny! It makes me terribly sad. It seems his perception of Wilde has been stained by their society's perception of homosexuality as sinful and disgusting; and Beerbohm him..."

I was completely unfamiliar with Beerbohm before reading Zuleika. And I’ve only read Dorian Grey by Wilde, but of course have heard much about his reputation. Whatever one’s theory about literary criticism, I’ve found Beerbohm’s life and opinions very intriguing.

I agree with you about society’s perception of homosexuality. It must have added another painful layer when exploring the ideal of Love, passion and “purity” of feeling.

Jenny wrote: "Beerbohm insisted that his love for the young star had purified him.

Beerbohm’s idea of love is not overly consistent with passion, which supports your point, Phrodrick.

When I think of a concep..."

The closest I came to more than a passing smile is close to the end when with Noaks and esp the land-landy's family and friends we get a scene close to classic English farce.