But it seems he may have had that love for words in the previous chapter. That is what troubles me. He senses something of himself that he’s lost, it seems. He married when he didn’t have the funds, perhaps, in a time and place when that meant specific terms.
You would think that people with Reardon's love of scholarship wouldn't be so averse to teaching. That he becomes a novelist seems a perverse twist of fate, one he might have avoided, in theory, anyway. It all seems quite a bit worse than it had to be.
Possible title for this chapter (instead of "Respite" - too cheery): Past Happiness — Reardon's reflections — my reflections — authors making headlines elsewhere. Would I rather read the news of then or of now?
Too cheery, to be sure! Is the title intended to be ironic? Given the circumstances recounted: “profound vexation,” “gloomy muteness,” “ominous hardness,” and the final reality articulated: “We shall have fifty pounds to go on with,” is any real respite found?
Your comment reminded me of a Kay Ryan poem, "The Best of It". The whole New and Selected Poems is great (and her earlier poems, which I had to go back to find), but this one, which she wrote at her apex, really encapsulates her for me.
Many years ago I read in the introduction of my now well-worn dog-eared broken-spined Signet Clasics version of War and Peace that that novel is actually more about marriage than anything else. That seems to be true of New Grub Street as well.
"At six o'clock she showed her face in the doorway and asked if he would come to tea. 'Thank you,' he replied, 'I had rather stay here.' 'As you please.' And he sat alone until about nine."
The fool. He should have accepted her bid for kindness and reconciliation rather than wallowing in self-pity for misfortune of his own making.
I agree about Edwin snubbing Amy just as she was reaching out - he had been so defferential and desperate to please Amy up to this point and this seemed like no time for him to harden his heart
Of course we knew what Amy's reaction would be to Edwin's asking Carter for money, and when Edwin became aware he said, "I never thought of that. And perhaps it wouldn't have seem to me so annoying as it does to you."
We can only hope that Edwin's novel does better than he thinks it will ("...it would meet universal contempt, and indeed deserved nothing better."), especially as we see how little relief 75 pounds actually brings them. He didn't even mention getting his watch out of hock.
"A short chapter of misery” centered around a sentiment that still (sadly!) saturates society today: “Blessed money! root of all good, until the world invent some saner economy.”
I’m intrigued with comparisons of Rosamond Vichy and Lydgate in Middlemarch with Mr and Mrs Reardon. To me, Amy is a deeper and more sympathetic character. She and Reardon share much in common. Is there any doubt Rosamond would have thrown Lydgate off in a moment? Victorian society has paralyzed both women who could have rewarding careers in the 21st century. I like both Lydgate and Reardon. They are both idealists who married too soon for their times, before becoming established.
I read about Gissing online, how he spent days observing the poor in London, and also about his travails with writing and his series of relationships with women and I can see how much this may have informed his book. He does such a good job evoking the desperation of poverty and the lack of options for writers. Never have I been so grateful for my husband the breadwinner of our family whose paycheck has allowed me to write-- the feminist in me has always felt hypocritical that this is my situation, until now.
As a compliment to Yiyun’s inspiring words: “The only thing that makes writing a worthwhile pursuit is the joy one gets out of putting words together,” this morning I randomly happened upon a Vanity Fair article focused on Jesmyn Ward, her newest novel, and writing through grief to facilitate joy: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/11/jesmyn-ward-descend-interview. Reardon could benefit from both Yiyun’s and Jesmyn’s profound insights (in which real “respite” might be found): "This place [Jesmyn’s small Mississippi home town] taught me to sit very still, and to observe and to listen, and then to take what I observed and to translate that into language. This place taught me poetry.”
I wonder what @yihun's take would be on this. The "novel's" reply is that joy of writing is limited to those who have enough economic means. Not necessarily the rich but those with enough other means to support themselves. Otherwise the act of writing turns into a mechanized affair "It seemed to him [Readon] that he turned screws and pressed levers for the utterance of his next words."
Virginia Woolf would say 500 pounds a year: "financial independence (specifically, 500 pounds/year) and a private space if she wants to become a writer"
"Respite" is such a short, dark chapter after the sweeping idealism in the last….and then I look at the next chapter, which wraps up Volume 1, “Work without Hope.” Gallows humor. (I’m developing a writer crush on Gissing.) I wonder how this novel landed in its different place and time. Who were his readers? Other writers?
I agree with you Jennifer. I never heard of Gissing before this read. I am finding the subject regarding the impact of poverty on individuals, particularly in the Victorian writing world is more interesting that I expected. The individual characters all have their own understandable priorities and frustrations that seem very genuine. Did you know Gissing stole money as a 19 year old and went to jail? His life intrigues me.
Helen Follett, of the Atlantic Monthly, wrote a chapter on him as an "author of yesterday" in 1918. That would have been only 30 years after New Grub Street!
I can't really imagine what Reardon would find to write novels about when he seems to know so little about himself and the world and nothing of really practical use. I felt for him acutely having to ask Carter for a loan, but thank goodness he did.
What would the stuff of novels have been if credit had been invented earlier?
The narrow little cells people are being pushed into in this novel are very suffocating.
It seems, though, that Reardon does have some talent, as his previous novels did okay. But it also seems true that he is not a novelist by vocation but more by bad decision making!
It seems that people often do write with some idea of success, the hope of ... I mean, rather than failure ...however success is defined. I know I write this way. This book gives everything a bit of a downward twist, I think.
my father's pessimistic words to me growing up seems like reality as I get older: it is really hard to make money in the world, to find a place where your work is valued.
But it seems he may have had that love for words in the previous chapter. That is what troubles me. He senses something of himself that he’s lost, it seems. He married when he didn’t have the funds, perhaps, in a time and place when that meant specific terms.
You would think that people with Reardon's love of scholarship wouldn't be so averse to teaching. That he becomes a novelist seems a perverse twist of fate, one he might have avoided, in theory, anyway. It all seems quite a bit worse than it had to be.
he seems like such a wet noodle. but people like him exist in spades.
Possible title for this chapter (instead of "Respite" - too cheery): Past Happiness — Reardon's reflections — my reflections — authors making headlines elsewhere. Would I rather read the news of then or of now?
Too cheery, to be sure! Is the title intended to be ironic? Given the circumstances recounted: “profound vexation,” “gloomy muteness,” “ominous hardness,” and the final reality articulated: “We shall have fifty pounds to go on with,” is any real respite found?
Your comment reminded me of a Kay Ryan poem, "The Best of It". The whole New and Selected Poems is great (and her earlier poems, which I had to go back to find), but this one, which she wrote at her apex, really encapsulates her for me.
Many years ago I read in the introduction of my now well-worn dog-eared broken-spined Signet Clasics version of War and Peace that that novel is actually more about marriage than anything else. That seems to be true of New Grub Street as well.
"At six o'clock she showed her face in the doorway and asked if he would come to tea. 'Thank you,' he replied, 'I had rather stay here.' 'As you please.' And he sat alone until about nine."
The fool. He should have accepted her bid for kindness and reconciliation rather than wallowing in self-pity for misfortune of his own making.
I agree about Edwin snubbing Amy just as she was reaching out - he had been so defferential and desperate to please Amy up to this point and this seemed like no time for him to harden his heart
Of course we knew what Amy's reaction would be to Edwin's asking Carter for money, and when Edwin became aware he said, "I never thought of that. And perhaps it wouldn't have seem to me so annoying as it does to you."
We can only hope that Edwin's novel does better than he thinks it will ("...it would meet universal contempt, and indeed deserved nothing better."), especially as we see how little relief 75 pounds actually brings them. He didn't even mention getting his watch out of hock.
"A short chapter of misery” centered around a sentiment that still (sadly!) saturates society today: “Blessed money! root of all good, until the world invent some saner economy.”
I’m intrigued with comparisons of Rosamond Vichy and Lydgate in Middlemarch with Mr and Mrs Reardon. To me, Amy is a deeper and more sympathetic character. She and Reardon share much in common. Is there any doubt Rosamond would have thrown Lydgate off in a moment? Victorian society has paralyzed both women who could have rewarding careers in the 21st century. I like both Lydgate and Reardon. They are both idealists who married too soon for their times, before becoming established.
I read about Gissing online, how he spent days observing the poor in London, and also about his travails with writing and his series of relationships with women and I can see how much this may have informed his book. He does such a good job evoking the desperation of poverty and the lack of options for writers. Never have I been so grateful for my husband the breadwinner of our family whose paycheck has allowed me to write-- the feminist in me has always felt hypocritical that this is my situation, until now.
As a compliment to Yiyun’s inspiring words: “The only thing that makes writing a worthwhile pursuit is the joy one gets out of putting words together,” this morning I randomly happened upon a Vanity Fair article focused on Jesmyn Ward, her newest novel, and writing through grief to facilitate joy: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/11/jesmyn-ward-descend-interview. Reardon could benefit from both Yiyun’s and Jesmyn’s profound insights (in which real “respite” might be found): "This place [Jesmyn’s small Mississippi home town] taught me to sit very still, and to observe and to listen, and then to take what I observed and to translate that into language. This place taught me poetry.”
I wonder what @yihun's take would be on this. The "novel's" reply is that joy of writing is limited to those who have enough economic means. Not necessarily the rich but those with enough other means to support themselves. Otherwise the act of writing turns into a mechanized affair "It seemed to him [Readon] that he turned screws and pressed levers for the utterance of his next words."
Virginia Woolf would say 500 pounds a year: "financial independence (specifically, 500 pounds/year) and a private space if she wants to become a writer"
"Respite" is such a short, dark chapter after the sweeping idealism in the last….and then I look at the next chapter, which wraps up Volume 1, “Work without Hope.” Gallows humor. (I’m developing a writer crush on Gissing.) I wonder how this novel landed in its different place and time. Who were his readers? Other writers?
I agree with you Jennifer. I never heard of Gissing before this read. I am finding the subject regarding the impact of poverty on individuals, particularly in the Victorian writing world is more interesting that I expected. The individual characters all have their own understandable priorities and frustrations that seem very genuine. Did you know Gissing stole money as a 19 year old and went to jail? His life intrigues me.
Stole for love if Wikipedia is correct!
Yes! Which makes me even more interested! Sounds like an interesting character!
Stole for love of a prostitute! He later married her!!
Helen Follett, of the Atlantic Monthly, wrote a chapter on him as an "author of yesterday" in 1918. That would have been only 30 years after New Grub Street!
https://archive.org/details/somemodernnovel01follgoog Found it. Thanks
I can't really imagine what Reardon would find to write novels about when he seems to know so little about himself and the world and nothing of really practical use. I felt for him acutely having to ask Carter for a loan, but thank goodness he did.
What would the stuff of novels have been if credit had been invented earlier?
The narrow little cells people are being pushed into in this novel are very suffocating.
It seems, though, that Reardon does have some talent, as his previous novels did okay. But it also seems true that he is not a novelist by vocation but more by bad decision making!
It seems that people often do write with some idea of success, the hope of ... I mean, rather than failure ...however success is defined. I know I write this way. This book gives everything a bit of a downward twist, I think.
my father's pessimistic words to me growing up seems like reality as I get older: it is really hard to make money in the world, to find a place where your work is valued.