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Friday, September 30, 2005

Who can study a subject when there are difficulties in the way not belonging to it?

Posted by John Holbo on 09/30/05 at 01:47 PM

I'm working up my review of the latest PMLA (March 2005), a very belated follow-up to this post from long ago. Back then I reviewed a whole year's worth of articles, but rather than doing close readings, I gave a tabular breakdown of my judgments. (Efficient me!) I alleged: the problem isn't bad writing - neither in a Provokie sense, nor any other. The problem is triviality. Slightly more than half the papers could not be interesting to anyone who understood them; not because they are dry and specialized but because - as I put it - "doubts about the correctness of the paper's conclusions do not fall within the scope of the paper." Following up now, I want to talk about how and why that happens. And, of course, I will try to get a handle on what it all has to do with Theory. One of the papers which suffers from this problem is Bruce Robbins' "Commodity Histories". His subject is interesting, the writing is good - lively, clear - but the thinking is bad. I am going to bring in Michael Faraday's Chemical History Of A Candle. It is conveniently online. And a pleasant read it is. But I just want to say, to get this out of the way: Faraday contains one of my favorite footnote first sentences. "The late Duke of Sussex was, we believe, the first to show that a prawn might be washed upon this principle ..." The principle is capillary attraction. The phrase? I think it is somehow Shakespearean, but I can't quite settle it.

Fool: I' faith m'lord, what be the difference between a prawn and a sprig of heather?

King: Down, patches.

Fool: That a man might wash the one upon a principle, and principle the other 'pon a wish.

(That one was a joint effort with Belle.) Or adapt an old favorite:

Thersites: Would the fountain of your principle were clear again, that I might wash a prawn upon it!

Hamlet: O God, I could wash a prawn upon a principle and count myself a king of infinite regularity – were it not that I have bad dreams.

Falstaff: If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle 'pon which I would wash their prawns, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

Edmund: Thou, nature, art my goddess; upon thy principle my prawn is washed.

Try it!

Comments

"There was no possibility of washing a prawn that day.”

“It was not a very washed prawn, but washed enough, in all conscience, as the sequel must show.”

“Mrs Dalloway said she would wash the prawns herself.”

“Mother washed her last prawn today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.”

By on 10/02/05 at 09:02 AM | Permanent link to this comment

Iago: Wash but your prawns on principle, and not
by faith on proof?

By on 10/03/05 at 02:32 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Friday, September 30, 2005

Who can study a subject when there are difficulties in the way not belonging to it?

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