(the) American (Novel of)

70 Alison Leigh Brown
how badly these are done, the basic coldness of great novels sentimentalized
beyond recognition. Not only is the novel lost, but also the
power of what makes a movie a movie is buried under too much
meaning. Following in spite of themselves the gender politics of the
movie, women and men become unrecognizable as creatures commanding
any interest beyond celluloid excitement. Movies are embodied;
novels are cerebral. Austen’s novels can be, and have been, translated
into film with none of the humor, none of the strength, captured or
portrayed. Women without agency in these novels become mere objects
of romance. That is, the delicately crafted tension circumscribed by
their lack of agency is buried or erased. A coldness found in fictional
heroes is turned to a syrupy devotion to men. These men are changed
from strategizing robots to sappy devotees of the female form.
Myself, I am devoted to the novel. I spend hours a week reading
as fast as I can. When I was asked to compile the correspondence
between Chantal Berger and Marianne Post I balked. The history of
this sorry affair is well known. The Chronicle of Higher Education ran the
front-page story on their treachery. Letters concerning the events were
printed for months. Harper’s had the roundtable on the state of the
academy in which this tale was the central example of all that is bad
there. After much soul searching I decided that I would take on the
task. There is good to be found in any story and lessons to be learned.
What is instructive in the letters is an unconscious awareness that the
university itself is largely responsible for the paucity of meaning attached
to the novel. University life can be vicious and idiotic. There
seems to be little question that this is the case. Turf is cautiously guarded;
personalities become the focus of every dispute; grown-ups spend their
time fighting over pitiful amounts of money and empty honors. Honors
that they deride, win or lose. From these halls, from those subjects, it
is not surprising that the grandeur of the novel cannot be appreciated.
What is worst in these letters is the intelligence of the correspondents.
One could easily decide that there is something of worth in these
missives. I reprint them here not to show intellects at work. One could
deduce that these nihilistic letters exhibit something noble and good—
that even in the pursuit of personal relations, academics are working,
working, working. But this can no longer be seen as work if the
academy is to survive. Work must be redescribed as it once was. Finding
the good and the beautiful and the true in the artifacts of culture has