Chance Acquaintance Research Articles

Liudmila Ulitskaia's Literature of Tolerance

When Liudmila Ulitskaia published The Funeral Party in 1997 the novella received the critical scrutiny warranted by the latest work of an already prominent figure in postSoviet letters. The plot, set in New York in the humid summer of 1991, revolves around the dying artist Alik and the crowd of friends, former and present lovers, and chance acquaintances gathering in his Chelsea loft. Booker Prize laureate Ol'ga Slavnikova misdiagnoses this narrative as an engaging failure: it attempts to achieve the impossible by trying to fill the void left by the deceased.1 Not surprisingly, Ulitskaia’s own description of the novella provides an alternate view: “This is a book about a person who has done everything possible so that after his departure there will not be a black hole of despair, but an atmosphere of reconciliation and love.”2 The author’s assessment is more than a commonplace designed to snare sensitive readers— it is a key to her prose and plays, shaping The Funeral Party and culminating in Daniel Stein, Interpreter (2006), a structurally heterogeneous novel about healing the rift between Jews and gentiles.3 These two works powerfully depict the results of misunderstanding and, more significantly in the context of Russian culture, stress the need for reconciliation. Both narratives foreground Ulitskaia’s longstanding fascination with hybrid characters: those individuals who combine different (and usually divisive) ethnicities and belief systems. Such characters and their roles in these two novels suggest the main concern of her oeuvre— tolerance as the practice of acknowledging and engaging the conflicting viewpoints that, as Isaiah Berlin reminds us, form everyday experience.4

The Legacy of László Cseh-Szombathy

Laszlo Cseh-Szombathy decided in 1945, after the end of World War II, that sociology would be the discipline he would be engaged in during his entire life. His interest in social sciences was further strengthened in the Calvinist grammar school of Lonyay Street, where one of his favorite teachers taught history on university level. His sensitivity towards social issues was enhanced by the fact that through his father who was a medical doctor as well as a politician of the Smallholders’ Party, he personally knew Zsigmond Moricz, Mihaly Babits, Lorinc Szabo and Peter Veres. As a result he regularly read the books of the authors he had come to know, and works of the writers taking up the cause of the peasantry in Hungary. He was twenty years old when World War II ended, and he could continue his studies after the experiences he lived through, and some of it threatened even his life. At the Peter Pazmany University of Sciences he attended also the seminar held by Istvan Hajnal, which was decisive in the shaping of his thinking. It was Istvan Hajnal whose personal influence and works led him towards sociology. From then on his life was closely intertwined along several lines with the history of sociology in Hungary. In 1946 he was already employed at the Institute of Social Science founded and led by Sandor Szalai. Szalai invited eminent experts to the Institute, among others Janos Harsanyi, the later Nobel-laureate in economics, who at that time was the closest friend and intellectual companion of Laszlo Cseh-Szombathy. Due to his international relations Sandor Szalai succeeded in assembling a social science library unique in the whole of Europe, and his domestic contacts made the financing of researches possible. This promising workshop of Hungarian sociology was liquidated in 1950, and the books were burned. Laszlo Cseh-Szombathy survived these difficult years of the ‘persecution’ of Hungarian sociology as a primary, and later on secondary school teacher, but by a chance acquaintance he applied for a job to the Central Statistical Office already in 1955. Initially he was commissioned with some jobs as an outsider, but to his great surprise this situation changed in 1957. “All of a sudden the Statistical Office contacted me in October or September ...they said that one could go in now. It was interesting because the entire political situation toughened in earnest at that time. It shows that things are sometimes unpredictable” (Kovacs 2000: 27).

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE AND THE SCIENCE OF POETRY: GERMAN POETRY IN THE LABORATORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

ABSTRACTThis essay addresses the interest in science among modern German poets. Although, in the twentieth century at least, literature and science have often been considered quite separate cultures, it could be argued that they share similarities of mode and preoccupation, especially in the use of metaphor. Whether they are, however, ‘chance acquaintances’ or share more profound ‘affinities’ is examined with special reference to two distinguished young writers: Durs Grünbein and Raoul Schrott. Both, however different their tone and diction, do not simply raid the exotic and seductive vocabularies of science as do many contemporaries. Instead they employ a scientific view as a way of apprehending the world. Finally, both attend to that which is beyond the reach of scientific thinking and try to give it voice.

Non-reciprocal altruism may be attributable to hyperbolicity in social discounting function

Humans show altruism even for chance acquaintances whom they will never meet again (non-reciprocal altruism). With respect to evolutionary and economic perspectives, reciprocal altruism is not actually puzzling, because reciprocal altruism maximizes subjects' benefit/fitness in the long run; while non-reciprocal (pure) altruism still presents a challenge to evolutionary biology and neuroeconomics. Understanding neuropsychological bases of non-reciprocal altruism/generosity for unrelated people is also important for neuropsychiatry, because several types of impulsive psychiatrics (e.g., social phobia, substance abusers, psychopaths) often have reduced altruism/generosity for other people, which is associated with their problematic/impulsive social behavior. Regarding the relationship between impulsivity and reciprocal altruism, it has been shown that subjects who are impulsive in intertemporal choice (having a large time-discounting rate) have low degrees of reciprocal altruism, which is in line with economic theories and neuropharmacologically treatable with serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. However, little is known regarding the relationship between non-reciprocal altruism and discounting behavior, and neuropsychological processing underlying the relationship. Recently, Jones and Rachlin reported that generosity for other individuals with different social distances follows a hyperbolic discounting function, which has been employed to describe inconsistent time-discounting. In this study, I propose that non-reciprocal (pure) altruism may be, at least partially, attributable to hyperbolicity of a social discounting function (inconsistency in "interpersonal choice"). Neuropsychological mechanisms underlying interpersonally-inconsistent social discounting and possible implications for neuropsychopharmacological treatments for impulsive psychiatrics' problematic social behavior are discussed.

'Cold media': the poetry of science and the science of poetry

This paper addresses the interest in science amongst modern German poets. Although, in the twentieth century at least, literature and science have often been considered quite separate cultures, it could be argued that they share similarities of mode and preoccupation, especially in the use of metaphor. Whether they are but chance acquaintances or share more profound affinities is examined with special reference to two distinguished young writers: Durs Grünbein and Raoul Schrott. However different their tone and diction, they have in common that they do not simply raid the exotic and seductive vocabularies of science, as do many of their contemporaries. Instead they employ a scientific view as a way of apprehending the world. Finally, both attend to that which is beyond the reach of scientific thinking and try to give it voice.

The Role of the Reader: Signs and Semiosis in Peter Handke's Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter

Like many of Peter Handke's texts, narrative or dramatic, Die des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1970) is conspicuously short on plot in any traditional sense. Josef Bloch loses his job as a construction worker in Vienna, strikes up a chance acquaintance with a cinema cashier, and immediately takes her to bed. Next morning he abruptly strangles her and then takes a bus to a remote village on the southern Austrian border where an ex-girlfriend of his lives. There he rambles about aimlessly for several days, idly reading the newspapers that tell of the steady progress the police are making in tracking him down. The story ends – completely inconclusively – with Bloch, who was once a well-known soccer goalkeeper himself, critically watching a local goalie's performance and expatiating at some length on the almost insuperable difficulties involved in saving a penalty shot. Bloch is clearly a very disturbed man, and Manfred Durzak speaks for one major thrust of Tormann criticism over the last twenty years (and no doubt for most ordinary readers) when he sees the text as being first and foremost a pathological case study, inspired by Handke's reading of Klaus Conrad's psychiatric work on incipient schizophrenia (67) – a debt to which Handke himself had already drawn attention in a letter to the journal Text und Kritik. In the same letter, however, Handke also succeeded in muddying the critical waters considerably – and no doubt not without a certain degree of mischievous intent – by maintaining that Tormann, in spite of this, should not be read as a case study of a schizophrenic. Bloch, as Handke claimed, was in fact just a normal person disorientated by the sudden shock of the murder, even if the narrative perspective chosen for the text was admittedly modelled on the perspective typical of incipient schizophrenia (Die Angst 45). In the wake of this distinctly dubious advice, Tormann criticism has duly developed in two different (though certainly complementary) directions, the one

Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America , and: The Art of Frank Norris, Storyteller , and: Art for Social Justice: The Major Novels of Upton Sinclair (review)

Reviewed by: Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America, and: The Art of Frank Norris, Storyteller, and: Art for Social Justice: The Major Novels of Upton Sinclair Tom H. Towers Elsa Nettles . Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1988. 248 pp. $23.00. Barbara Hochman . The Art of Frank Norris, Storyteller. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1988. 149 pp. $22.00. R. N. Mookerjee . Art for Social Justice: The Major Novels of Upton Sinclair. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1988. 161 pp. $18.50. Howells' language, Norris' "storytelling," Sinclair's ideology—these are the subjects of the books under review, and each seems almost made for the application of one or another postmodernist critical strategy. However, all are quite innocent of any such ambition, and, although it is always refreshing to be spared the jargon [End Page 734] of contemporary theory, all three books are weakened by the absence of theory and the insights it can provide. For example, Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America appears to suggest some crucial connectedness between Howells' language and his representation of society&mdashperhaps a study of how his language "deconstructs" his social and moral ideology. Whereas Nettels sometimes hints at such a possibility, she never truly engages it. Rather she is almost exclusively concerned with Howells' use of dialogue for individual characterization. She concentrates on Howells' rendering of regional or ethnic departures from the grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and usage of the "good natural English" employed by such auctorial surrogates as Basil March, the Reverend Sewell, or the lawyer Atherton in A Modern Instance. Those characters—and, even more, Howells' narrators-use language to rationalize and control experience and thus to define and, they might hope, promulgate Howells' idealized democracy. Dialect or "ungrammatical" characters, whether rustics or immigrants, lack such linguistic sophistication and consequently seem marginal to or even inimical to the American ideal. Therein, according to Nettels, lies Howells' great dilemma. The means of his realism—in this case the faithful rendering of nonstandard speech—potentially conflict with its end, "to unite people in recognition of their common humanity." That is, regardless of an ungrammatical character's innate goodness, that character must inevitably seem "low" in comparison to the normative middle class characters. "Common humanity" thus might seem not so "common" after all, and linguistic differences might point to debilitating class or cultural differences subversive of democracy. Nettels suggests that Howells tries to overcome this problem by insisting that dialect speech derives from "the personal rather than the provincial character of the speaker." That is, individuals are not bound by necessity to the nonstandard speech of their locality or ethnicity but can, usually through reading, less frequently through formal education, enter the privileged linguistic community. Examples are Kitty Ellison of A Chance Acquaintance, Lydia Blood of The Lady of the Aroostook, Penelope Lapham, or, most notably, that reformed westerner Basil March. Thus participation in the ideal America is a matter of individual responsibility, and Howells is saved from the spectre of an undemocratic class structure. So far, so good. Probably nobody has examined Howells' dialogue as closely as Nettels. She argues convincingly that no other nineteenth-century American writer was so conscious of the varieties of American speech or so clearly perceived speech as "the unfailing sign" of class and culture. Nettels usefully calls attention to the surprising abundance of direct comment on language in Howells. Not only do his narrators constantly intrude their judgment of characters' speech, but also virtually every novel contains important scenes in which characters judge one another on the basis of language. Nettels supports her contentions by the detailed examination of a dozen novels and briefer discussions of many others, and her attention to less often studied works like A Chance Acquaintance, The Lady of the Aroostook, and The Ragged Lady is welcome and instructive. The trouble is that her book delivers less than it might, perhaps less than Nettels herself believes. Despite his attentiveness to actual American speech, the range of Howells' dialect characters is really quite narrow. The vast majority are speakers of one or another regional dialect, but regional differences are significant only in relation...

Cleanliness and Class in the Countess de Ségur's Novels

Cleanliness and Class in the Countess de Ségur's Novels Marie-France Doray (bio) Translated by Margaret R. Higonnet (bio) There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder. —Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger In the mid-nineteenth century, even before Louis Pasteur's discoveries rationalized the struggle against dirt, dirtiness became a major preoccupation of the French bourgeoisie, who wove new links among filth, stench, poverty, and vice.1 Uncleanliness became emblematic of immorality in a perceptual code of value that run-of-the-mill children's literature helped transmit. From its first years, the principal children's weekly, La Semaine des enfants (The Children's Week),2 published numerous stories whose leitmotif was "poor but clean." In these stories the concern for cleanliness both masked and expressed the bourgeoisie's apprehensions about the "dangerous" working classes. Only one of the authors who wrote that year for the Semaine des enfants is still known and read by French youth: the Countess de Ségur. Her nineteen novels, written between 1858 and 1869, shed special light on a critical moment in the formation of class relations and social values. This exceptional author rejected the new descriptive code, according to which cleanliness plays an essential moral role. Her sense of propriety in effect harks back to aristocratic definitions of manners that predated nineteenth-century bourgeois efforts to neutralize corporal excretions and exhalations; inner virtues take precedence over outer traits. For her, filth could be an undesirable result of physical circumstances or (on rare occasions) could even serve as a catalyst of hearty humor. As a realist, she charted the newly reinforced distaste of the bourgeoisie for the dirt of the lower classes. But she condemned the simplistic equation [End Page 64] of dirt with vice; as a profoundly religious woman, she believed this moral arithmetic threatened the peaceable coexistence of rich and poor and undermined charity.3 As nineteenth-century adults struggled to repress the evidence of our natural drives, a split appears to have developed between parents and their children. The children, who only gradually internalized adult repugnance for dirt, natural functions, and odors, seem to have remained closer to the manners of an old Russian aristocrat than to the newer bourgeois mores.4 What was true then is probably still true today. Ségur's treatment of these themes helps explain her persistent success among children.5 At the same time, her explicit discussion of taboo material, especially bodily excretions (and corporal punishment), brought her condemnation by adults, including even Freud.6 "Poor but Clean" There is no French proverb equivalent to the English Protestant "cleanliness is next to godliness," and yet by the mid-nineteenth century, this message was conveyed by many stories in the Semaine des enfants. The originality of the Countess de Ségur clearly emerges, if one considers the fiction in this weekly. A study of the narratives published in 1859 (a year when one of her novels also appeared there) indicates that, as a broadly accepted social norm permitting us to judge chance acquaintances, cleanliness displaced vulgar language and manners. Subtly, this new index of value led readers to reconcile the socially useful principle that "poverty is not a vice" with its subliminal opposite, a general suspicion of the poor or the nearly destitute. In later years, the encoding of dirt as vice in this journal became even more pronounced. Even more than an author addressing adults, a children's writer must be careful to indicate whether new characters introduced into a narrative are good or evil. Concise moral adjectives may furnish this information ("the honest," "the sly") or physiognomic descriptions ("open-faced," "shifty"). Or a simple physical description may do: "A little boy of nine or ten years, modestly but cleanly dressed" (Plemeur 212), where "modest" is a measure of wealth, not character. To describe a character as "cleanly" dressed is to signal a "nice" person (and "nice" in English carries just this ambiguity), but the clue is valid only if the individual is poorly dressed—or even [End Page 65] covered with rags. For the well-dressed person, cleanliness is a matter of course...

Eating disorder and affective disorder: Relatives or merely chance acquaintances?

Evidence is reviewed suggesting that more than a chance relationship exists between affective (depressive) disorder and eating disorder. Despite occasional glaring exceptions, findings from clinical, outcome, family, medication response, and biological studies of persons with anorexia nervosa or bulimia are strikingly consistent in indicating the presence of a subgroup (but only a subgroup) characterized also by depressive disorder, whether as antecedent, concomitant, or consequence of the eating disorder. Different models are proposed that could account for this relationship and it is postulated that all of these may actually be relevant.

The Black Heart's Truth: The Early Career of W. D. Howells.

W. D. Howells once wrote to his friend Mark Twain of heart's-truth, which we all know of ourselves in our hearts -- the dark core of inner life that underlies whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirt front.For Howells, a writer with a lifelong history of psychological disturbances, telling this black heart's-truth evinced his courage and imaginative spirit. John W. Crowley examines psychological clues in Howells' life in order to understand his art and to show how his writing was shaped by his neuroses. Applying the methods of literary psychology, Crowley reveals the submerged patterns and preoccupations that influenced Howells' early career.As both a biographical and literary study, The Black Heart's Truth offers a detailed analysis of Howells' childhood and adolescence, his career as a fiction writer, his marriage, and his breakdowns. In his youth, Howells suffered from a variety of neurotic symptoms, including severe phobias, and he himself spoke of his morbid boyhood, which culminated in his first breakdown at the age of seventeen. Using a Freudian perspective, Crowley shows how the events of these early years influenced Howells' fiction. His analysis of Their Wedding Journey, A Chance Acquaintance, A Foregone Conclusion, Private Theatricals, The Lady of Aroostook, The Undiscovered Country, A Fearful Responsibility, and the unpublished Geoffrey Winter culminates in a systematic study of Howells' first major novel, A Modern Instance.In his penetrating treatment of A Modern Instance, Crowley demonstrates how writing the novel effected Howells' 1881 breakdown and how, in turn, the breakdown affected the novel -- making it less than the great work it had promised to be. Crowley further argues that writing, as a means of emotional self-defense, enabled Howells to deal with his fear of the unconscious and allowed him some control over his complex impulses and problems.Crowley concludes that studying Howells' psychological problems will lead to a fuller understanding of the writer's strengths and limitations. Combining biography and psychoanalysis, this work illuminates the problematic and ultimately irreducible workings of a neurotic writer's imagination.Originally published in 1985.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

A Chance Acquaintance: How Fiction Would Mean

Research Article| December 01 1985 A Chance Acquaintance: How Fiction Would Mean John E. Bassett John E. Bassett Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1985) 40 (3): 312–326. https://doi.org/10.2307/3044760 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John E. Bassett; A Chance Acquaintance: How Fiction Would Mean. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1 December 1985; 40 (3): 312–326. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3044760 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1985 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A Chance Acquaintance: How Fiction Would Mean

A Chance Acquaintance: How Fiction Would Mean

Chance acquaintances

Chance acquaintances

The London Diorama

Abstract A Month in London, or Some of its Modern Wonder described1 is as evocative a title for a book as one could wish for, and when I saw it was dated 1832, it was irresistible. It turned out to be a piece of thinly disguised fiction, so beloved in that age which felt that serious instruction, particularly for the young, must be sugar coated. An American tourist treats two young English relatives to a month's sightseeing in London. A chance acquaintance, named Mr Finsbury (and, most appropriately, living there), appears before the end of the Introduction, and volunteers to take them on the rounds. One particular adventure starts with a ride on George Shillibeer's three-horse Omnibus.

A Chance Acquaintance by W. D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham by W. D. Howells

Book Review| July 01 1972 A Chance Acquaintance by W. D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham by W. D. Howells A Chance Acquaintance. By Howells, W. D., with Introduction and Notes to the Text by Thomas, Jonathan; Nordloh, David J.. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1971. Pp. 189. $8.50.The Rise of Silas Lapham. By Howells, W. D., with Introduction and Notes to the Text by Meserve, Walter J.. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1971. Pp. 402. $12.50. Carl L. Anderson Carl L. Anderson Duke University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1972) 71 (3): 445–446. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-71-3-445 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Carl L. Anderson; A Chance Acquaintance by W. D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham by W. D. Howells. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 July 1972; 71 (3): 445–446. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-71-3-445 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsSouth Atlantic Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1972 by Duke University Press1972 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Acute Intestinal Infection in Alaska

THE ARCTIC is no longer the isolated, almost legendary part of the world that it once was. The military consequences of an atomic age, the press for natural resources, and the demands of international air travel bring increasing numbers of people to arctic and subarctic regions, with a consequent need for information on medical problems incident to life in cold climates (1). Epidemiological investigation in the arctic has a peculiar fascination; so little has been done that almost every observation is a contribution to knowledge. This satisfaction is tempered, however, by the realities of fieldwork in a physical environment demanding beyond most others. Hotels are not to be found in the far north; even a modest lodging house is rare; and the hospitality of what may be no more than a chance acquaintance becomes priceless. Travel is arduous. Long trips by commercial airline and local travel by boat, bush plane, and dog sled to collect information on a few hundred people are not unusual. A diet that includes whale meat and seal liver, although admittedly these are delicacies, still takes some accommodating. The intestinal infections are an attractive starting place in arctic epidemiology because the mass behavior of these diseases has been well worked out through long study in temperate and tropical regions. Also, the required bacteriological procedures are relatively simple, a consideration of moment in the arctic where field conditions are as difficult as they are. Alaska was chosen as the first study area. As a cultural and administrative part of the United States, conditions were good for communication and cooperation. The primary purpose was to determine under arctic conditions the mode of transmission of acute infectious diarrhea of man, and to learn something of prevalence and seasonal incidence. Also, intestinal parasites of dog and man were surveyed in two villages, and the ecology of fish tapeworm was examined in one area. Recurring outbreaks of enteric disease have been recorded among Eskimo populations of Alaska for at least a century and a half, along with dramatic epidemics of smallpox, measles, and influenza. In 1807, Unalaska was devastated by an epidemic, presumably of bacillary dysentery, and the Klondike gold rush of the late 19th century brought outbreaks of dysentery and typhoid fever (2). Salmonella typhosa and other salmonellae were isolated repeatedly after the first public health laboratory was established in 1936. Seventeen cases of typhoid fever occurred in Anchorage and its Dr. Gordon is professor of preventive medicine and epidemiology, and Dr. Babbott, formerly associate in epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass., is now assistant professor of preventive medicine and epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia. This .study was sponsored by the Commission on Environmental Hygiene, Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, and supported in part by the Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, Washington, D. C.

Howells Turns to the Inner Life

IN July of 1897, William Dean Howells and his wife set off for Europe, bound first for Carlsbad-where Howells would take the waters-and then for Holland for the after cure. Planning to convert his tour into literary material, he had promised Harper's Monthly a serialized travel story for 1899. This projected form, which he had largely evolved for himself and had used successfully in his earliest novels, Their Wedding Journey and A Chance Acquaintance, promised to be a congenial one. In the leisurely progress of his journey through Carlsbad, Nuremberg, Mainz, Dusseldorf, The Hague, Scheveningen, Paris, London, and Liverpool, he filled three pocket notebooks with his impressions of places, people, and events. He returned to New York in November 1897 and by January 18981 had begun work on what was eventually to become Their Silver Wedding Journey. But as he struggled with the composition of the travel novel he experienced a decided reaction against that genre itself. His dissatisfaction was not the passing whim of a day, and the self-scrutiny it provoked led him to recognize that his literary interest was shifting from the wvorld of scenery, events, and manners to that of inner life. This shift, which gave to his creative work of the next few years a different character from what it had in the 1890o's, is recorded in some of Howells' unpublished letters now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.2 These letters also give a running, though sketchy, account of how two quite different novels split off from each

Materials and Form in Howells's First Novels

HOWELLS SERIALIZED his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in the Atlantic Monthly from July to December and published it in volume form December 27, I87I. But the thirtyfour year old ex-printer and reporter, by this time editor of the Atlantic, had also written nearly eight hundred poems, editorials, reviews, short stories, travel sketches, and columns of social comment for Ohio, Boston, and New York periodicals before writing his first novel. This mass of little-known newspaper and magazine material dating from I852, when he first published a poem, forms rather staggering proof of his youthful industry and literary passion. It is of definite interest biographically. portion of these apprentice writings, moreover-the portion to be dealt with here-reveals much about Howells's choice of materials and his method of giving them form in his first three novels, Chance Acquaintance, Foregone Conclusion., and particularly Their Wedding Journey.' Political controversy, anti-slavery argument, and intense proUnion feeling filled Howells's writing during the fifties and the late sixties after he returned from his Venice consulship. Such early stories as Independent Candidate, and A Tale of Love and Politics2 suggest the strong political biases of Howells's father and of the family newspaper, the Ashtabula Sentinel. The prewar columns, Letter from Columbus in the Cincinnati Gazette and News and Humors of the Mails in the Ohio State Journal, are full of union and anti-slavery sentiment and argument, and fre-

REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS.

British Journal of InebrietyVolume 17, Issue 3 p. 140-151 REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. First published: January 1920 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1920.tb04369.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Reviews in This Article The Whole Truth about; Alcohol. By George Elliot Flint. With an Introduction by Dr. Abraham Jacobi. Pp. Sir Victor Horsley: A Study of his Life and Work. By Stephen Paget, F.R.C.S. Pp. Autobiographical Reminiscences of Sir Hermann Weber. With Annotations, and a List of his Medical Writings, by his son, Frederick Parkes Weber. Pp. Mental Diseases: A Textbook of Psychiatry for Medical Students and Practitioners. By R. H. Cole, M.D., F.R.C.P. Physician for Mental Diseases to St. Mary's Hospital. Second Edition. Pp. The Problem of Nervous Breakdown. By Edwin Lancelot Ash, M.D. Pp. The Practitioners Manual of Venereal Diseases, with Modern Methods of Diagnosis and Treatment. By A. C. Megian, M.D., Hon. Surgeon, Manchester French Hospital. Pp. Theories of Social Progress: A Critical Study of the Attempts to formulate the Conditions of Human Advance. By Arthur James Todd, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota. Pp. The Great Unmarried. By Walter M. Gallichan. Second edition. Pp. How to Love : The Art OF Courtship AND Marriage. By the same Author. Pp. Human Life and How it May be Prolonged to 120 Years. By Brevet-Lieut.-Colonel F. F. MaeCabe, M.B. Pp. Self-Health as a Habit. By Eustace Miles, M.A. Pp. An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Homeopathy. By Charles E. Wheeler, M.D., B.S., B.Sc. Pp. Forests, Woods, and Trees in Relation to Hygiene. By Augustine Henry, M.A., F.L.S., M.R.I.A., Professor of Forestry, Royal College of Science, Dublin. Pp. The Future Citizen and His Mother. Being a Series of Chadwick Lectures on Maternity and Child Welfare. By Charles Porter, M.D., B.SC, M.R.C.P.E., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law, Medical Officer of Health, Metropolitan Borough of St. Marylebone. With a Foreword by Sir James Crichton-Browne, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. Pp. Vital Statistics Explained : Some Practical Suggestions. By Joseph Burn, F.I. A., F.S.I. With a Preface by Sir William Collins, K.G.V.O., M.D., Chairman of the Chadwick Trust. Pp. Chance Acquaintance. By Robert Holmes. Pp. The Prison Cell in its Lights and Shadows. By the Rev. John Pitkin, F.R.G.S. Pp. The Army and Religion : An Enquiry and its Bearing upon the Religious Life of the Nation. With Preface by the Bishop of Winchester, Pp. The Case Against Spiritualism. By Jane T. Stoddart. Pp. Circuits. By Philip Camborne, P p. 325. London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 36, Essex Street, W.C. 2. 1919. Price 6s. net. Volume17, Issue3January 1920Pages 140-151 RelatedInformation