Mansfield Park: Introducing the World

Going over my notes from a few posts ago, I realized that I overlooked a magnificent example of Nabokov's assertion that the author of genius creates "real life": Millard Kaufman's extraordinary comic novel Bowl of Cherries. The 17 year-old hero's journey from Yale Graduate School to eccentric farming communities, Colorado ranches full of sex-starved people and animals, porn studios in New York, and that country in the Middle East where every building is made from human excrement never feels less than real, as Kaufman grounds his characters in recognizable desires for power, discovery, and above all love.

And there may be no better definition for Anna Karenina than a "delightful explosion admirably controlled." It's long and slow, but definitely burning with an inferno Dante would have trembled at.

Today I can't underline text for this shrot post, so Nabokov will be in bold.

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"Mrs. Norris is a very loud person." The contrast, as Nabokov points out, is in her self-declaration to be a woman of few words, a fine instance of the third characterization method.

Austen's usage of the word "cried" suits Mrs. Norris well and sets up an outstanding linguistic comparison to the quiet Fanny, who literally cries with distress at her voice. Nabokov does not elaborate this point, but "cry" is also the best choice to describe Mrs. Norris's speech patterns since most times she raises her voice involve her declaring how things should be gonig her way or putting down something or someone. She's a whiner, and how often in childhood...and Fanny is a child when she meets Mrs. Norris...is whining accompanied by crying?

"By the time the first chapter is over, all the preliminaries have been taken care of." This is writing Blake Snyder would have approved of had he been alive in the 19th-Century...there's even a Save the Cat moment where Edmund shows Fanny real kindness after everyone else at Mansfield Park has failed to do so. But at the end of Chapter One, the three sisters, their spouses, and their offspring are all on the scene with major character traits and all. Only the Crawfords are absent, and then, there is no logical reason for them to appear yet. Indeed, their timing coincides with when Snyder would suggest a "B Story" should emerge. But we are talking about books, not films, and Austen's ability to weave expositional introduction in with the narrative is a pleasant contrast to Anthony Trollope, who could take ten chapters to have all the major beginning-to-end characters appear. If nothing else, Austen was efficient. Sometimes too efficient, as we shall see when Nabokov and I get to the end of the book. (This is a very appropriate skill, considering her most famous novel was originally titled First Impressions.)

Have to get to work, and then the Fox & Hounds...tomorrow will see a post worthy of Heller's favorite major.