Felicitous Encounters
October 22, 2010, 8:01 am
Even today’s best literary studies rarely possess what those in the book trade call “crossover potential”-that is, any appeal for the average intelligent reader who resides outside the ivory tower. Harrison Solow’s Felicity & Barbara Pym, recently published by Cinnamon Press, is a happy exception. The volume is, at its core, a heartfelt appreciation of the oeuvre of the author who produced, in Solow’s canny words, memorable portraits of “silly men” and “mousy women.”
But Harrison Solow’s approach is unique. She constructs her case not through normal narrative, but via a series of imagined professorial communiqués to a young disciple who has taken up the study of Pym. As her book wends its way through this budding personal tutorial, it also offers sharp, provocative asides on academic politics, scholarly nonsense, and such unlikely subjects as science fiction, comparative religion, and the culture of Hollywood. The result is enlightening, entertaining, unconventional, and, above all, readable.
“Any idiot can take a hatchet to the Pietà or a book,” writes Solow. “How many who do so can create one?” If, however, as Eliot assured us, that there will be time to murder and create, Solow has demonstrated in Felicity & Barbara Pym the capacity to do both. The following interview offers some insight into how she does so:
Read more… http://bit.ly/c80Rgs
